Rebecca Handler

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

Nonfiction

Scare the Children

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Last Saturday, I bought an enormous fuzzy spider at a thrift shop called Second Time Around. It is black with red eyes and was in a large plastic bin with a broken skeleton, two dirty scarecrows, and a whole mess of Christmas ornaments. It was three dollars. 

I carried it half a mile back to the Intercontinental Hotel, along an exercise-y walking and biking path. Earlier, when fussing with the hotel espresso machine, I had repeated the word “intercontinental” quietly to myself. It is not often I use a word with six syllables, and I noted the tiny hit of elation that comes with repeating such a long word. I was in Monterey for the weekend, taking advantage of a free hotel room while my husband did a work thing. I like to seek out thrift shops in new cities, which is how I came by the spider who was now escorting me home. It took up the same amount of space as a second person walking beside me. I held it by the head and its fuzzy, wiry legs bonked against my thigh. The sun was strong, and my forehead was sweating. 

Families on rented bicycles whizzed past me. An older very tall man on a low-to-the-ground reclining bicycle rolled towards me and just as I thought he looked ridiculous, I remembered I was carrying a large spider. 

My companion soon became a very exciting sight to passers-by. A woman jogging past said cheerfully, “Nice spider.” Another man in Birkenstocks said the same thing. At one point, I had to hold the spider aloft to avoid one of its legs smacking the arm of a sleeping child in a stroller. The mother looked annoyed. 

I was beginning to feel like a celebrity. I hadn’t gotten this many stares since I was bald last year.  

Two little boys came running up. “Can I touch it?” the older one asked. Just as he reached out, I shook the spider and said, “Boo!” He started to cry and ran back to his father’s leg. I booed the second boy too, but he handled it much better, probably because he knew what was coming. Years ago, I would have felt bad, being responsible for a child’s tears. But that day, I felt empowered. Just think, my spider was a possible memory for this child. This tiny future man might remember the day he was scared by a big fuzzy spider and a sweaty woman in a loud flowered t-shirt and oversized sunglasses.  

One little boy in a Monterey Bay Aquarium t-shirt asked me quietly if the spider had a name. I said no not yet and asked him to name it for me. I was excited as I waited for his reply. Could we have a spider named Skittles or Mr. Fox? He decided on Spidey which made me think of the time I gave my then two-year-old daughter a doll that she promptly named, “Willa’s Baby.” “Really?” I said to the boy, visibly disappointed by his lack of imagination. “Alright,” I sighed, “Spidey it is.”

On the way up to my hotel room, I thought of how fun it would be to leave it in the elevator and send it back down to the lobby. But I didn’t want to risk my spider being taken from me. I had grown attached to my new friend and looked forward to scaring my husband when he returned from his work thing. 

Spidey is home with us now, resting on the coffee table. Tonight I’ll move him to the front door, where it will hopefully give someone a memory.  

Delirium

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My mother went to the hospital for a broken hip and stayed for Covid. She is currently in a state of delirium which, according to numerous websites, is not a precursor to dementia nor “a senior moment.” It could be a response to physical pain, a drastic change in environment, a new medication. It could be temporary. No one knows. 

She is talking about a group of well-dressed Mexican men. They are very well-dressed, Rebecca. 

The man in the royal blue scrubs asks me if I’m her daughter. Is she always like this?

No. 

She asks me for a top. A top to what, Mom? A top to wear, Rebecca. She rolls her eyes. 

She is slightly slumped over in bed, preoccupied with organizing an imaginary event. There’s so much to do. So many things to do. Twelve people are at her house and some of them are messy. What will I feed them, Rebecca? What do you want to feed them, Mom? Frankly I just wish they’d go away. They’re leaving soon, Mom. 

Her wrinkled bruised hands move gracefully through the air. Take this for me, she says, handing me nothing. Do you have it, she asks sharply? Yes, Mom. I’ve got it.

The goal is to get her home where people can visit her without filling out forms and getting their temperature taken. Maybe she can get her dog back. In the meantime, she is in a rehabilitation facility in a creaky bed with a view of City College of San Francisco. 

When my mom was a dean at City College, she often had days of back-to-back meetings with cranky administrators and stressed-out students. Once her secretary stabbed someone with a butter knife so she had to deal with that. There might have been a day when she finally got to close her office door to call me and tell me to preheat the oven because she was coming home. And maybe, as she put on her coat, she paused to look out the window. Maybe she could see where she is now.

Women Outside

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“Are there any rich guys in the crowd who want to buy me shit?”

Popstar Kim Petras is talking to the audience between songs. She is wearing a black leather miniskirt and an off-the-shoulder gold top. The sunlight is reflecting off her long blond extensions and her white teeth are sparkling. Her backup dancers are dressed for a Sexy Mad Max party. She stomps across the stage and blows kisses to the tall person in the Lucille Ball wig in the front row who is pushed up against the metal railing. 

“It’s a really hard time in the world,” she adds. “Especially for trans girls.” The crowd hollers in solidarity. One tall man next to me in a maroon t-shirt wipes his eyes as Kim launches into her next song, Hillside Boys. I start jumping up and down to the beat. I quickly memorize the chorus, “Hillside Boys you call my name. You make my heart sparkle like champagne.” I pretend I’ve been listening to Kim Petras for years, when in fact I only learned of her a few days ago, in preparation for this weekend. 

I am at Outside Lands, an annual music festival in Golden Gate Park. I am forty-eight which means I paid extra for shade seating and access to upscale porta potties. I am wearing practical sneakers, sunscreen, and a neon fanny pack containing lip balm, Advil, and Band-Aids. Eighty-thousand people are here. There are various stages and dozens of vendors selling acai bowls and dried flower crowns. When I eat my Korean loaded waffle fries at a picnic table across from the Monster Energy Drink booth, I overhear a girl in crocheted pants say to her friend, “Matthew is the king of going to music festivals for the music.” 

Like Matthew, I go for the music. I also love the people-watching and the overhearing of comments like, “Oh my god your parasol is everything.” When Pussy Riot plays the Ukrainian national anthem, a dad with his toddler on his shoulders turns to me and says, “These girls are amazing.” He hadn’t heard of Pussy Riot until his Russian coworker suggested he “go pay tribute.”

Pussy Riot is amazing. Apparently so is Wet Leg, the band my husband is seeing on the other side of the park. He texts, this show is incredible. Thank god women can now lead bands. I know what he means. It is no longer unusual to see female-led acts, or in the case of Pussy Riot and Wet Leg, all female bands. I text him back, First bands, next the country.

Later, swaying back and forth during Mitzki’s set, I am transfixed. She sings about the strange discomfort happiness can bring when you are conditioned to constantly wait for bad things to happen. And her dancing is more like theater. At one point she death-stares the audience and then mimics slowly slicing her neck with the microphone. Between songs, I can hear Post Malone across the park screaming, “I fucking love San Francisco.” I whisper into my friend Sarah’s ear, “The patriarchy is always in the background.” 

Most women I know feel like we have a lot to be angry about. When Phoebe Bridgers leans into the mic and says, “The world is burning,” thousands of high-pitched “Yeahs” travel across the grassy field like an electric current. 

Kim Petras is right. It is a really hard time in the world. Music won’t save us. We will save us. And when we do, music will be blasting.

The Obvious

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The Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco. It wasn’t there when I moved away in 2015, but when I returned three years later, my city had gotten a mohawk. It’s visible from the beach, the park, the grocery store. 

Like a new loud family member, at first it was embarrassing, but over time, I’ve gotten used to it. It’s just who we are now. 

A month ago, I was downtown, ordering an iced coffee from a place with too many milk choices. Leaving the café, I looked up at the office buildings. I couldn’t see the Salesforce Tower. I walked a few blocks and kept searching for it. It had vanished. Then it occurred to me. The tower is not visible when you’re right next to it.  

I had forgotten about that until yesterday. My daughter and I took a long walk down a path surrounded by weeds and wildflowers. We talked a little, about boyfriends and pancakes, but were generally quiet. “Can we walk a little slower?” she said at one point. “It’s so pretty.” 

Our footsteps on the gravel sounded like popcorn crunching. We stopped to watch a brown bunny chew on a leaf. And then my daughter said, “Mom. Look. A fish.” At first, I thought the shimmering skin on the ground was the flesh of a bird but I was wrong. There were dead fish strewn on the path. Some whole with eyeballs intact, others in pieces. “My friend told me about this,” she said. “Anchovies fell from the sky.” She said this with the nonchalance of a teen who has lived through a global pandemic. 

“How the hell did anchovies fall from the sky?” 

She shrugged and said there was an article about it. I told her we should watch Magnolia later that night. We continued to walk in silence. Crunch, crunch. 

We were over a mile from the ocean. How did anchovies fall from the sky? I concocted various scenarios in my head, but was too ashamed to share them with my analytical child.

Later, at home, my daughter looked it up. “Overpopulation of anchovies,” she announced, sprawled out on the couch with her phone. “Sea birds tried to get them all to their young but carried too many, so they fell on the ground.” She took a sip of her banana smoothie.   

There was no mysterious fish tsunami. The explanation was perfectly logical. Birds were responsible for the fish on the ground. This had not occurred to me. I was ready to believe in fish clouds. Then I remembered the Salesforce Tower, the thing you can’t see when it’s right in front of you. And then I started thinking about what else I’m not seeing. The thing that later, when it reveals itself, will make me say, “Of course. How obvious.”

Marriage

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We are in Madrid. The heat is relentless. As we used to say in Boston, it’s underwear-in-the-freezer weather. The kind of weather where each activity entails negotiation. We are eating at delicious, air-conditioned restaurants only after dipping ourselves in hot lava. At the Prado Museum, we stood in a long ticket line, and then looked at paintings of hunters with their dogs. I mentioned I hadn’t seen any dogs in Madrid. Not one. Soon after, within ten minutes of leaving the museum, I saw a small black and white dog on the shady side of the street. Then a large brown one wearing shoes. Later, when we were eating salads (with ham) and drinking Coke Zeros, Dave said, “Look! A standard Schnauzer.” I missed it but I asked if it was the big kind of Schnauzer. Taking a bite of manchego, he said, “Mid-sized. Standard.” 

My husband is a great traveler. I told him this today before realizing that is a strange thing, maybe even a condescending thing, to say to an adult. He asked me what I meant by “good traveler,” and I said it’s because he is a very “can-do person” and “has ideas for restaurants.” We are coming up on our twentieth wedding anniversary. It occurs to me I could have married someone who was not up for things, and now that thought makes me wince. If you are going to go through all the trouble of being married, it’s wise to select someone who doesn’t complain about humid, outdoor markets. 

When Dave and I got married, we agreed to sickness and health, and were thrown a doozy last year when I got cancer. When you go through cancer treatments, you get to see if your husband can dress your wounds while steering away well-meaning friends you don’t want to see. Part of why I married him is because he is an excellent roommate. Clean and thoughtful. I’ve always encouraged our children to live with someone before considering a more permanent arrangement. Now I’m thinking I should amend my advice to include, “and also go through a very hard time together.” It doesn’t have to be cancer of course; something less severe would be preferable. 

When we fight, I want to rip his face off. I once confessed that to him and he said, “Oh that’s normal.” I appreciated that he didn’t tell me he also wants to rip my face off. I told my friend Alex this and she said I feel that way because I love him so much. That doesn’t sit right with me, but she’s probably right. She is a therapist.

As I write this, my husband is next to me on the hotel bed, on his laptop, trying to change the date of our train tickets to Seville because he booked the wrong dates. He isn’t wearing a shirt because of the hot lava, and he just muttered, “This website fucking blows.” I want to lean over and kiss him, but I know it will irritate him to be interrupted like that. That’s what happens when you’re married for this long. Kisses aren’t always romantic. Sometimes they are distractions. But he is a problem-solver and I want to thank him for that.