Rebecca Handler

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

Rebecca Handler

Can Someone Change That Much?

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A former white nationalist is sitting at the table next to me, reaching for a miniature fruit tart. I want to tell him he is a goddamn motherfucker and doesn’t get to eat a miniature fruit tart. But I am at an anti-racism event and this man is no longer part of the white nationalist movement. He is now trying to help. He reformed because in college he made friends with Jews who presented him with research that showed that white people are not smarter than anyone else and holy shit is he reaching for a second fruit tart? 

I drive home from this strange event and my stomach hurts. I stop at the Middle Eastern grocery store to buy some beans and hummus and the woman at the counter asks me how my day is going. I tell her that I am having a strange day. She asks why and I tell her about the reformed white nationalist. She peers at me over her reading glasses, and says, “Can someone change that much?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He was homeschooled by racists so he was basically raised in a cult.” My voice trails off and I feel my stomachache return. 

“I don’t think he can change. No way.” 

I pay for my food. “I guess I like to think that people can change.”

“Maybe like someone who used to be allergic to peanuts. But not a racist.” She sighs and hands me a receipt. “Do you need a bag?”

I shake my head. “The whole thing made me feel weird.”

She laughs. “That’s because it is weird.” 

I go home and eat carrots and hummus while finishing up something for work. There is an email from the event organizer. Thank you for helping move the conversation forward. And then something about talking about things is better than not talking about things. 

A hummingbird is outside my window, fluttering in place. Its brightly colored feathers make me think of the delicate miniature fruit tarts, and the way his mouth opened and closed around them. 

To The Man At The Café Talking On His Phone

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Even before you said, “I can’t move their cheese too fast,” I suspected you might be someone who lacks self-awareness. You are on the phone at a café and your voice is too loud. 

I am trying to read the news. A sixteen-year-old girl with Asperger’s is angry about adults’ disregard for the environment. She travels by boat. 

I think about asking you to stop talking so loudly but instead run through a variety of scenarios. You might be hard of hearing. You might be under a lot of pressure. It is important you keep this client otherwise your business will dissolve. Your husband has cancer and this is a brief moment away from his bedside. All of your friends died in a van accident. You need this money. You are running out of money.

This café charges five dollars for a latté. 

You slam your fist on the table to emphasize your point, and I wish you would take up less space.

Grown men are angry at this Swedish girl for loving the planet. Her straightforwardness has touched a nerve. She must be a poster child for the left-leaning liberals. She has braids for goodness sake. Braids!

You have now used the expression “pressure points” four times in the last 15 minutes. You look up from your laptop to glance at a younger man who has just entered the café on an electric unicycle. You don’t seem alarmed by the man ordering an oat milk cappuccino while balancing on a circus apparatus. Adults have confiscated all the toys in this city. Where are the children?

Recently I admitted to a friend that I find it hard to get worked up about the environment when there are homeless people and guns. She said she couldn’t talk about global warming without crying. I told her I felt ashamed. Since then, I have wondered why I never cry thinking about the planet. I don’t even get choked up. In fact, I go days without thinking about greenhouse gases and the increase in tropical storms. 

I wonder what you think about climate change. Maybe you are in the business of saving the planet. Your booming voice might have an opinion, and I might ask you about it if you weren’t on the phone. Or, we could beat our chests, walk on our knuckles, steal all the unicycles, and ride off the edge of the world.

If I Had Wings

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“The girl was brought to school with very little paperwork, by her great-grandmother, who was showing signs of dementia.”

We leaned in, clutching our jars of water, wanting to know more. We were at Book Club, but as usual, the conversation had veered in another direction, because we stalk stories like hunters.  

“She was non-verbal for several years. She wears a big bow in her hair, like a girl from another century.”

The water was served to me in a jar because we were at Helen’s house, and her home has houseplants, beautiful art, homemade galette, and water served in jars. Tonight, there were also tiny cucumbers that looked like dollhouse watermelon. 

“She sometimes gets angry and throws things. The school’s emergency plan is that the teacher takes the other students out of the room and leaves the girl alone. Then someone comes in to talk to her.”

I held my breath for a few seconds too long and coughed. That morning I had seen a coyote gnawing on a squirrel, and now the day was ending with another strange story. 

The girl was instructed to finish a sentence that started with, “If I had wings.” She wrote, “If I had wings, I would fly everywhere and look for my mom who is living in a car.”

I could have been a girl who didn’t speak, who wore bows in her hair, and ripped a television off a wall in her classroom. I could have been the smallest cucumber, or a great-grandmother with dementia. I could have been a squirrel minding my own business. I could have been a winged superhero, locating all the mothers living in cars. 

Instead I am a person in a book club with women who drink Sauternes and talk about resilience. What will happen to this girl, we wondered, and decided it could go either way. Our silence was a collective prayer. A prayer for the great-grandmother, that she will hold on long enough to see this girl through. A prayer for the girl to learn to live with her anger. A prayer for more nights like this one. 

Big Dog

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My eleven-year-old and I were trying to decide between two foster dogs. One was a calm, half-blind, small Boston terrier, and the other was an eighty-five pound longhaired mutt who lived for years as a stray in a forest outside of Istanbul. “Let’s foster the terrier,” my daughter said. “She’s so sweet. Look how cuddly she is. Take our picture.”

“No,” I said, “Let’s get the big one.”

“He’s huge,” my daughter said. “Wouldn’t the terrier be easier?”

“But he lived in a forest. How cool is that? Plus, you and your sister always get to choose. It’s my turn. And I want the big one.”

“But I don’t want him.”

“What if I buy you some Skittles?”

“Ok.” 

The dog refused to get in the car and I had to send my daughter back to the shelter for assistance. Once he was safely in the backseat, I put the windows down and blasted Cyndi Lauper. Finally, I was a person with a startlingly large dog. It was like driving a mascot to a football game. I couldn’t see out the back window, which made me feel giddy with rebellion. 

As we were heading up Market Street, the dog threw up all over the seats and my daughter. “This is the most disgusting thing in the entire world,” she said quietly, staring out the window in a state of paralysis. She hates vomit. Sometimes she wants to be a doctor but “only the kind that never has to deal with vomit.”

“I can’t stop now,” I said. “Let’s just get home.” In the rear view mirror was a panting, drooling, brown and white face the size of a computer monitor. He looked like a full-grown man in a handmade, poorly fitting, Bernese Mountain Dog costume.

The dog threw up some more which made the car smell like airplane beef stroganoff.

We made it home and I told my daughter to run in and shower. My older one stayed outside with the dog while I cleaned up the car. The vomit had leaked down the back of the seats and got all over my hand as I reached down into the crack with a paper towel. My older daughter called out, “Oh my god Mom, this is the biggest poop I have ever seen.” I cleaned that up too. Looking back, the dog was getting himself into fighting shape, ridding himself of unnecessary weight.

“He’s just nervous,” I said, rubbing his soft head and staring into his beautiful brown eyes. “I mean, he lived in a forest. Did you know that?”

“You said that already, Mom.” She used a small towel to try and remove a piece of poo from the dog’s hair.

“In Turkey!” I shook my head in disbelief. I tend to get carried away with the history of dogs we foster, regardless of accuracy.

The younger daughter was clean now, in pajamas. She was sad that we couldn’t stop for Skittles earlier due to the vomit situation, and asked if we could watch TV. I ordered pizza and we settled in with the dog to watch Parks and Rec.

We ate quickly, on edge because the dog had started to pace. Also, he had discovered that if he got up on his hind legs, he could reach any surface. I moved the plums and lemons to the fridge, and the leftover challah to the pantry. I also put the phone chargers in a drawer, and the jar of pencils in a cupboard.

It was time to feed the cat. My younger daughter emptied a can of creamed chicken into the cat’s dish and within three seconds, our house turned into a National Geographic episode.

Apparently, while I was putting away pencils, the dog attacked the cat. There was screaming, and blood, and it was awful. In a heroic feat reminiscent of Mother Lifting Car Off Toddler, my younger daughter, who weighs less than the dog, yanked the beast off the cat, and then the older one, wisely, lured the dog outside. My children instinctively and bravely addressed the disaster while I was organizing office supplies. It was like peeking into a future where I am sipping Ensure through a straw while they balance my checkbook and interview home aids. 

I brought the dog back to the shelter that night. And then I threw myself into the arms of my husband, who was finally home from work. He told me it sounded like everyone did the right thing, and his understatedness was both a breath of fresh air and a nuisance. I put my head on my younger daughter’s lap and sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have never brought that dog into this house. I forced it on you and I bribed you with Skittles.” She patted my back, told me it wasn’t my fault, and reminded me that the dog was very gentle with people. “He just shouldn’t be in a home with cats,” she said sensibly. I wiped my face on my sleeve and told her how strong she was.

Her older sister relayed, in vivid detail, the way the younger one had pulled the dog off the cat, and told her she was the bravest person she knew, which made me cry even harder. I complimented her on quickly removing the dog from the house, saying, “I don’t know what I would do without you.” She told me she didn’t know what she would do without me either. And then she said this will make a good blog post. 

Our cat, who survived nearly four years in Australia without being attacked by a single snake or spider, appears to be fine. And our new foster, a Chihuahua, was found as a stray in the East Bay.

The Girl Is Now A Mother

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She was five when I first met her. Hiding behind her mother, who was wearing a forest green robe and slippers. They weren’t expecting visitors, but here we were, pulling up in a dirty burgundy Buick. A time before cell phones, a time of surprises, what’s forty-five minutes out of the way? Let’s try it, they might be home. 

I was traveling with a close friend, and this was his family. He grew up outside of Providence, across the street from fields and cows he used to say. The oldest of seven, my friend was in college now, and wanted to check in on his mother and the kids. 

When his mother saw he wasn’t alone, she teased him. You could have given me a heads up, she said, tightening her terrycloth belt. The girl giggled. I can’t imagine being the youngest of seven children but I suppose you might need to physically attach yourself to your mother’s robe if you wish to spend any time with her. 

I shook the mother’s hand, which was small and soft. I remember these details, like the small hand and the green robe, because this was one of the few times I met my friend’s mother, before the darkness that swirls around all of us seeped in and took her away. I waved at the little girl. She was beautiful with dark eyes, light brown skin, and soft curly hair. She had the kind of face that would inspire origin questions, to which the answer could equally be Iceland, Indonesia, or in this case, Rhode Island.

It was three years after this first meeting, after this friend of mine and I had fallen in love, when the darkness struck. Witnessing children of various ages lose their mother was a study in dread and quiet fascination. This was the saddest thing I had ever seen, and to this day, still is. Some of the children reacted in anger, others in denial, and the little girl, now eight, in stoicism. She announced, with confidence, that her mother would not want her to hide, that she would want her to be strong. As an adult now, I understand that we often look to children for tips on how to live, but then I was twenty-two, pretending to be an adult, and her bravery stunned me. 

I have had the privilege of watching this brave girl grow up, along with her equally courageous and kind siblings. The loss of their mother was character defining for all of them. 

Recently I visited this girl, now thirty-one and the mother of a newborn. She has the same beautiful face, and the same measured strength. With the support of a devoted partner, she is confidently sorting out nursing and sleeping. Her cozy apartment in Queens is decorated with family photos, including one of her mother in aviator sunglasses. When I first saw her baby, who has dark eyes, light brown skin and a few tiny soft curls, I felt that a mysterious question had been answered. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or spirits watching us, but then again, I choose to believe my deceased father is now living on the moon. Things don’t happen for reasons, but they do happen. And this girl is now a mother.