Rebecca Handler

o n e w o m a n p a r t y

Rebecca Handler

In Search Of Lost Time

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I did the Proust Questionnaire with my children. “What quality do you most admire in a man?” One said kindness and the other said moustaches. “How would you like to die?” We all agreed. Old age, in bed, dreaming. I play viola in a band. We practice Monday nights in a school music room. Last night, one of my bandmates arrived with very sad news that she wore like a tight vest. A teenager had died tragically. How will the parents make it through, we wondered before we figured out how to play the chorus of Video Killed The Radio Star.

I returned home and smoked a cigarette outside in the dark. It was the fourth anniversary of my father’s death. He smoked cigarettes until he met my mother who hated all forms of smoking. Cigars were the compromise. He called smoking a cigar taking a walk around the block. I just sort of chew on it, he explained after I told him I was scared he might die of cancer. He promised me cigars wouldn’t kill him. He was right.

When I was pregnant, strangers liked to tell me how everything would change. They were wrong. They should have told me having children is more fun than you think, and that someday your father will die and everything will change. But this is not something you say to a stranger in a grocery store.

This morning I woke up abruptly, in the middle of a dream about having to pee inside of a washing machine. After I went to the bathroom, I crawled back into bed, tucked both arms under my pillow, and listened to the kookaburras. A few minutes later, my daughter joined me. Our legs entangled, she told me my hair smelled good and my breath smelled bad. I told her everyone smells funny in the morning. We’ve all just returned from adventures, I explained. Some of us flew to the top of skyscrapers, while others relieved themselves in washing machines.

In 1890, Proust provided an answer to one of his questions, “Where would you like to live?” He said, “In a country where certain things that I should like would come true as though by magic, and where tenderness would always be reciprocated.”

Party Town

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It is the Fourth of July and radio station Nova 93.7 in Perth is hosting Independence Day Throwback, playing songs like Party in the U.S.A. and We Speak No Americano. I just dropped off the kids at a week-long theater camp where they are rehearsing Beauty and the Beast. Due to what I’m guessing is a licensing issue, this is not the musical with Cogsworth and Lumière. Instead, this version features a fidget spinner salesman, a painter, and a pack of wolves singing Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf.

Before I head to the Nedlands Library to park myself in one of their study carrels near the comic books, I drive further down Stirling Highway to make one quick stop.    

Stirling Highway runs through the western suburbs of Perth like a scar on an otherwise lush landscape. A seemingly endless array of mattress stores, pizza restaurants and outdoor furniture warehouses, Stirling is a commercial strip that could be plucked out of any sprawling American suburb. I’m looking for sparklers, and I swear there is a party supply store somewhere around here. I sing along to Empire State of Mind.

I am the first customer of the day at Party Town and the gentleman on his knees tying together red, white and blue balloon arches looks happy to see me. 2Pac’s California Love is blasting and the man stands up and says, “G’day.” He has two silver loop nose rings in his left nostril, and is wearing a navy blue beanie with a white pompom and a wool sweater with pine trees and the New England Patriots logo. I ask if he has any sparklers and he walks me down an aisle past pirate costumes and feathered boas. I select both the regular and long sparklers and then ask if they have anything else for the Fourth of July. He says of course, and I wonder if there’s a party supply store anywhere in the U.S. with a section dedicated to Australia Day. I look at the flag garlands and stars and stripes tablecloths and tell him I’m not feeling that patriotic after all. “I get it,” he says as we walk to the register.

The man in the beanie was in the states last year for vacation with someone he refers to as his “then-girlfriend.” They went all over – New York, Boston, Detroit, New Orleans, and Lake Tyler in East Texas. He tells me this as he rings up my sparklers. “In the north, we met Clinton supporters and in the south we met people who were going to vote for Trump. Quite a diverse lot you have there,” he said. “We were in Texas two days before the open carry law passed. We went to a bar and my then-girlfriend talked to a guy with a rifle slung over his shoulder.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Was a rabbit going to run across the floor?”

“Nice sweater,” I say, as I hand him a twenty. “My husband likes the Patriots.”

“I follow the Patriots and also Oregon State,” he says. “I’ve been a fan of American football ever since I was a kid. Like it way more than the AFL to be honest with you. Went to a Patriots game against Philly last year. Unfortunately they lost but the place was going off. Blokes had those long puffer jackets. They kept buying us beer because we’re Australian.”

The phone at the counter rings and he ignores it. A woman with frizzy hair clutching a mass of gray plastic convict chains runs to the front to pick up the phone. “Party Town,” she says wearily. “Yes. Yes we do.”  

The man leans over the counter and lowers his voice. “I feel more at home in Boston than I do here,” he says. “Americans are the nicest people.” He pauses and looks wistful. “They’ll sort it out,” he says finally.    

I drive to the library, sparklers next to me on the passenger seat. Nova is playing Lady Gaga’s The Edge of Glory, which seems like a stretch but I sing along anyway. It starts to rain and I hope it stops by the time the sun sets tonight. I want to take the kids outside and talk about America as we sign our names in the air.

I Thought That I Heard You Laughing

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I am driving to pick up my daughter from pantomime rehearsal. Pantomime as in theater, not as in white gloves, stuck-in-a-box. The younger one sits in the passenger seat adjusting the radio dial. Stop, I say, go back. I haven’t heard that song in years, I say, as we drive by the four auto repair shops right in a row. She sits with one foot on the seat, another hidden, her long-limbed body twisted into a position that looks uncomfortable to anyone but her. What’s it called, she asks, turning it up. Losing My Religion. It’s by R.E.M.

This song was playing when I had that car accident, I tell her. The one where the red car got smashed and the air bag punched you in the face? Yes, that one. This song was on the radio. Was that the time that everything seemed to go in slow motion? Yes, everything except this song.

I stop at a crosswalk and watch a man and a young boy walk hand-in-hand to the train station. What if we got into an accident right now? What if this song causes accidents? It’s like the kids at school who made up that story about a little boy named Whirl Pool and every time someone says his full name, another whirlpool appears somewhere in the world. The boy is
responsible for the condition of our planet, and he doesn’t even know it.

We arrive and wait in a parking lot. We watch two ravens take turns picking crumbs out of a discarded plastic container. The sun is setting
early because it is winter in Perth. It is almost summer in San Francisco. We
have lived here more than two years and it only recently occurred to me that temporarily moving across the world means two moves, not one. We don’t want to leave but we will. We prefer talking about pop music and car accidents.

Consider this, the hint of the century.

Many years from now I will hear this song again, perhaps on another car radio, in another country that at first felt foreign but soon became something that resembles home but isn’t quite.

The song ends and a woman with a voice like a creaky staircase starts singing that she’s got issues, and you got ’em too. My daughter loves this
song. We talk about how sometimes our bodies can feel too small to hold all of our emotions and that is why there is art and friendship. There she is, my daughter says, twisting her body even more to catch a glimpse of her big sister. I drive them home, on the left side of the road.

The Dingo Did Not Eat My Baby

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When I first heard the dingoes howling at dawn, I thought it was the birds. Curlews wail like hurt toddlers and blue-winged kookaburras like barking puppies. I was in the middle of a dream. My mother was going to “open for Elton John” in London. I asked her whether she would sing or play an instrument. She was frustrated. I’m just opening for him, Rebecca. Why can’t you understand that?

Each howl was a musical triplet, with identical first and third notes and the second note at a higher pitch. Joined together, it sounded like you were holding one note but got surprised in the middle of it.

Even though I was in a cabin in a remote part of Australia’s Northern Territory, it didn’t occur to me that the sound could be dingoes. In Perth, the morning chorus is composed and performed by feathered creatures, specifically ravens, corellas, magpies, and laughing kookaburras. So that morning in the cabin, I lay in bed trying to memorize this new call, envious of my husband who is a sound sleeper.

“Did you hear the dingoes this morning?” Bridget the Bush Guide asked us at breakfast. My children and husband shook their heads and continued eating their eggs and bacon.

“Those were dingoes?” I asked her. “Did they sound like this?” And then I did my best howl impression. She nodded politely. “There’s a pack that lives around here. Occasionally they wander through camp.” She saw the look on my face and smiled, “Nothing to worry about.”

We spent the day on a boat in a billabong, which had me humming Waltzing Matilda instead of the dingo howl. With our guide, we discussed possible American names for billabong including estuary, lagoon, and marsh, and finally settled on bayou. Several days from now, with internet access, I would learn about oxbow lakes, but on this day, before verification replaced wonder, a billabong was a bayou.

We cast our rods, not too far from a crocodile that was also fishing. We cheered and took photos of our nine-year-old with her shimmery silver barramundi before throwing it back.

That night, after changing and brushing my teeth in the dark in an attempt to deter the Extraordinary Nocturnal Insect Parade, I wasn’t thinking about dingoes. I was thinking about the bruise on my thigh. Did I bang it against a rock? Finally I recalled earlier that day, I sat under a waterfall for a long time, letting the cool water pound my head, shoulders, and obviously the top of my thigh. I joked with my husband that waterfall pummeling should be a spa treatment, and then I fell asleep.

I have never been grabbed and mercilessly tickled by clowns, but I imagine the sensation is similar to being awoken by two dingoes howling in front of your children’s cabin in the middle of the night.

My husband did not sleep through this. He shot up from bed to the screen window and said the three words you never want to hear in the middle of the night, “Something’s out there.”  

I recognized the howl. “It’s a dingo.” I said, sitting up in bed, hugging my knees to my chest.  

“No it’s not. It’s wallabies or something.”

“It’s not wallabies. It’s two fucking dingoes.” I sprung up from bed and squinted at the screen. I didn’t know where my glasses were, probably somewhere near my toothbrush. “Why are they pacing? What are they fucking doing?”

“I wonder if the girls are awake,” he said calmly. Oh my god, we have children. “Don’t worry, it’s not dingoes,” he said.

My brain assembled the following narrative: My husband did not believe there were dingoes outside our children’s cabin because that’s terrifying and we are on vacation and if we all just agree that the awful howling and creepy footsteps is nothing more than an adorable wallaby family going out for a midnight hop then we can go back to sleep.

I did not say any of this to him.  

I tried to calm down. I knew that with the exception of one naughty dingo who ate a nine-week-old baby in 1980, inspiring a Meryl Streep movie, dingoes are shy around humans. It is more dangerous to have a German Shepherd living in your neighborhood than it is to camp with dingoes (I made that up.).

“It’s not dingoes,” he repeated. The howling persisted. I heard one of our children make a sound. They won’t remember this in the morning, I told myself, which is in fact accurate.

“It’s definitely dingoes,” I insisted, my jaw clenching.

Next, let me be clear. I did not try and find something heavy to throw at the dingoes, nor did I run next door to my children whom I love with all my heart.

I got out my phone to record the sound of the howling. My plan was to play the recording for the guide and prove to my husband that the sound was in fact dingoes. My need to be right is an embarrassment.

It is also heroic. The light from the phone screen caused the dingoes to run away.

We returned to bed. I told my husband I loved him. Then he told me he loved me and whispered, “It wasn’t dingoes.”

The next morning I told the guide about the dingoes. I also told the girls who were remarkably unfazed. An hour later, my husband found the head of a bird outside the kids’ cabin. Wallabies are herbivores.

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The Day I Stop Feeling Anything Is The Day I Stop Hunting

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“People all over the world are craving potatoes,” she whispered to me across the table, between bites of barramundi. Her husband was in the middle of a story, and she didn’t want to interrupt him. It wasn’t a story exactly, more of a description of his frozen food storage company.

“Guess what makes up more than fifty percent of our business?” the Belgian man had asked me. I didn’t have a guess.

“French fries!” he revealed, before sipping his Pinot Grigio and smoothing back his hair. He looked like he would be comfortable wearing an ascot.

This is when his wife confided in me about the worldwide potato craze.  

“The Japanese, especially,” the Belgian man added. “The Japanese cannot get enough french fries. They are starting to eat them instead of rice.”

I pictured a sushi chef serving raw salmon atop beds of Stouffer’s french fries. I glanced at my husband who smiled at me as he brushed a fly off his glass. This is all you, he seemed to be saying.

We were dining in a lodge in Arnhem Land, a remote area in Australia’s Northern Territory. We had traveled here to hike, fish, swim in fresh water, and view Aboriginal cave art, some of which was more than 20,000 years old. Earlier that day, we had climbed up and over rocks to see delicate drawings of stick figures that were created at a time when you could walk from Australia to New Guinea. My mind was full of majestic and mysterious things.

“All Asians actually,” the Belgian man said. “Asians are really getting into potatoes.”

I decided to change the topic. “Have you ever been somewhere this remote?”

He had. Kyrgyzstan. For a “boys trip.” Hunting Marco Polo sheep.

He spoke about stalking these spiral horned animals for days before identifying the oldest male for the kill. He slept in the mountains in a tent with his friends. “The kill is a small part of our time together.” He explained how big game hunting assists in the conservation efforts of protected animals, and that the sheep’s wool is used to make pashminas and the meat is eaten by the locals. I asked if he had photos of himself squatting beside dead animals, and he said yes. I asked if he kept mementos from his kills and he said yes. I thought of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast singing, I use antlers in all of my decorating.

That morning, I had watched a St. Andrew’s Cross spider weave her decorative web on the edge of a rock, peacefully preparing for her meal.

“Do you ever feel bad? Shooting animals?” My question was childlike but I was curious.

“Of course. The day I stop feeling anything is the day I stop hunting.”