Rebecca Handler

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

Rebecca Handler

Welcome to 2021: A One-Woman Show

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The stage is dark except for one lit candle poking out of a blood orange, balancing on a card table. The second movement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is blasting and it’s the frenetic strings part that sounds like rats running across a roof. A woman sprints down the center aisle of the theater and leaps onto the stage. She is wearing a hot pink cape and matching leotard. Barefoot, she begins to twirl. When the music stops the woman calls out, “Shepherd? Where is my shepherd?” She leaps through the air, back and forth across the stage, exactly six times, before putting out the candle with her thumb and index finger. At this point, a chandelier is lowered from the rafters. The fixture is made of dinosaur bones, bicycle chains, and battery-operated tea candles. It represents how far we have come, and how much further we have to go. The woman sways her arms overhead and starts singing “The Promise” by When in Rome. When she gets to the line, “I’m sorry but I’m just thinking of the right words to say,” she begins to cry. She pulls the candle out from the orange and throws both of them to the ground. Standing directly under the chandelier, she looks out to the audience and stage-whispers, “It didn’t have to be like this.” 

The crowd goes wild. 

The Could-Haves

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Living through a pandemic means endless hours of evaluating risk and erring on the side of caution. The enemy is invisible and highly contagious. Friends could be poisonous, and a neighborhood walk feels like a spin of the roulette wheel. We’re out of eggs but is it worth killing Grandma? When isolation frustration kicks in, I try to feel grateful for all I have. When that fails, I consume stories about people on ventilators, and watch videos of families saying goodbye to dying, isolated relatives. I remind myself of the horror of Covid. We do not want this. We miss our friends, but we do not want this. I repeat my mantra: This is all we need to do.  I think about how I want to look back on this year. I want my children to feel proud of themselves, sacrificing for the greater good. 

Over the summer, my family and I were heading south on the 101 towards the Golden Gate Bridge, returning home after an outdoor, distanced dinner with friends in Marin. I was driving, my husband in the passenger seat, kids in the back. We were listening to the band Khruangbin and were nearly giddy from the rare event of socializing with non-family members.  

Let me pause to mention that I am a nervous driver. In 2009, I was in a head-on car crash, one that left me – with the exception of a bruised nose from the airbag – miraculously, physically unharmed. But I carry that crash with me. I see the other driver’s face through the windshield and remember “Losing My Religion” was on the radio. I recall stepping carefully out of my red Honda Civic to examine the wreckage. A stranger took my arm and led me to the sidewalk. He said, “I saw it happen. I can’t believe you’re ok.” I remember the smell of his deodorant and the way his voice cracked when he said, “You’re ok.” My husband arrived and brought me to the hospital where I was placed under observation. Natasha Richardson had died earlier that year, two days after sustaining a head injury. No one was taking chances.  

Back to the bridge and Khruangbin. As sometimes happens when I drive at night, a sense of dread came over me. I imagined flipping the car and catapulting off the side of the bridge, slamming into the dark water. I reviewed my alcohol intake, wondering if that was a factor. Two glasses of wine over four hours. Intellectually I knew I was sober, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My hands turned sweaty and my legs trembled. I asked my husband to drive, and pulled off the highway into a mall parking lot. Later, after the kids had gone to bed, my only explanation was, “I thought something bad might happen.” 

Recently I have found myself replaying that night. I made a choice, and all I have to show for it is what didn’t occur. I’ll never know what could have happened on the bridge. All the could-have-beens drowned in the cold dark water. 

And now, during Covid, we make similar calculations without a spare driver. We are parked in our masks, on our Zooms, exhausted every night from assessing and quantifying everyday life. Tomorrow we will do the same. Make choices and wait.  

I Wrote A Book

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I don’t have any tattoos. I admire some tattoos – very few to be honest – but some. My favorites are the ones that are not thought out in advance. The ones that are sketched in a dark bar and inked that same night. I also love the roses. So many roses on so many bodies, and why not? They are beautiful and thorny. The only thing I envy about tattoos is the concealment. You order a coffee and the barista has no idea you have a snake on your hipbone. A coworker pulls up his shirtsleeve to reveal a lyric from a Taylor Swift song. The secrecy and subsequent disclosure are exciting to me. 

My secret is Edie Richter is Not Alone, my debut novel coming out in March 2021. This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for many years. It is not my story. It is fiction. But ever since Edie appeared in my mind and persistently tapped me on the shoulder, I have held her close and not shared her with many people. I didn’t know if I could write a book. But it turns out, showing up every day, writing a lot of words, and then eliminating most of them, works.  

Edie doesn’t have any tattoos. She probably wouldn’t see the point in trying to make something permanent out of something so temporary. But she would certainly notice them and wonder about the inspiration. She might ask someone an uncomfortable question, like how they feel about regret. 

Feeling alone is something we all understand. Especially in 2020. But of course, as Edie learns, we are never alone. We have each other. And some of us have snakes on our hipbones, and faded roses on our arms. And it’s all beautiful, and we’re all going to be ok. 

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[Edie Richter is Not Alone (Unnamed Press, March 2021) is available for preorder at most bookstores. If you live in the states and would like a signed copy, please order through Green Apple Books in San Francisco.]