Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (4 page)

Like all
failed
love stories
, mine
began
on the Internet.
I am, as you
’ve
probably
guessed, a literary-type person.
Being a volatile Romantic, I was especially attracted to the Bront
ë
s –especially
Charlotte, who combined common sense
(compared to Emily)
and a
singular
genius
.  Her descriptions of the Moon alone could send me into raptures.

Anyway, I ended up on a Bront
ë
L
istserve in th
e
prote
an days of the Web: 1997
.
We would debate the merits of each novel, and as always with the literati, there was sniping (one member claimed that another in Canada had been run over
and killed
by a moose).
At that time, I was interested in writing a screenplay about the Brontës’
lives
.
Like that hasn’t been done, right? 
I wanted to go to Haworth, where they’d lived, to do research and soak in the
Gothic
vibe.

“Does anyone know if they offer tours of Brontë sites?”
I typed – quickly.
I’ve been clocked at 125 WPM.

“No, but I’m just completing my Master’s and it’d be brilliant to show you around.”
The fateful reply, from one Nigel Warwick at Loughborough University, U.K.
We corresponded for the next
eight weeks
, twice a day (
aided
by
the
eight-hour
time difference).  O,
Dear Reader,
w
hat fanciful prose was exchanged!  What
é
clats
that “amazed the whole room”
!
I
flew
to London
; he proposed on the third day
; and three
months later, we
were
married.

Now m
y idea
of romance, like so many women of my generation, had been formed by Hollywood musicals,
Jane Eyre,
and
Pride And Prejudice
.
I guess I expected Mr. Rochester to lope up on his black stallion, address me with gravity, and burst into song.
I did believe
you could love the same person
for a lifetime
, and waltz off across
an
art deco floor with Fred in your arms, spewing feathers as you went.

Steel yourself.
Auntie Amy is going
to
deliver a
mini-lecture.
Don’t worry – it’s not about something boring like
dinosaurs or dialectics. Folks
–
hear me out.
Embroider it on a sampler if you must:
NEVER MARRY SOMEONE YOU’VE ONLY KNOWN FOR THREE DAYS.
Even my twelve-year old daughter
said
, “Mom, that’s stupid!”
You
would never do such a thing,
right?
That’s what I thought, and I was an MGM, remember?
My head was bursting with literature; arcana about The Crusades;
Joyce
; Czarist Russia; the
Morte D’Arthur
in Middle English.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lick of common sense.
I didn’t have the experience to know – that
even single
and desperate at thirty-eight
–
you didn’t acc
e
pt the first guy who proposed.
E
ven
if
he did
it
in
the
Romantic
night
setting
before the lighted Houses of Parliament
.

I have to say, t
he wedding
was beautiful
.
Shades of Kim Kardashian, though I did hang in
for
more
than seventy-two
days.
It was outdoors, in January (we can do that in L.A.)
before
125
guests, some of them newly flown in from England
.
I had a gorgeous rented
white
dress; professional makeup; and hair courtesy of my stylist who showed up, bleary-eyed, at five A.M.
My sister
– affectionately known as General
Rachel
– had whipped the details together like Patton storming
Messina.
Everything was perfect, and I was perfectly happy.
I
was thin; I
looked good; I was in love (so I thought); the
four-tiered
cake was from
Bea’s Bakery in Tarzana. A
friend of the family, who had studied for the cantorial, provided his glorious voice.
Rachel’s
band played the reception, and we – sisters of the
Ugly
Pink
Traveling
Bridesmaid Dress
– kicked off our heels and kicked into the Hora.
Even after everything that’s happened
, I
still cherish that day.

What, you ask
, in puzzlement, we
nt so horribly wrong?
It all comes back to
the
Three Day
Rule
.
Nigel and I had many common interests:
the Brontës; F. Scott Fitzgerald; the Tit
anic; politics; English history.
What we
didn’t
share were common
values:
for example, I saw the necessity of worki
ng for a living, since I enjoy
eating
; he felt he was
far
above common toil, and
that
, due to his self-
pro
fessed
intellectual firepower, people
should simply support him.

“What is it you’re aiming for?” I asked, during one of our innumerable arguments.
“To be a Candy
S
tri
per?”

“
What’s that?
”
Here
was anothe
r thing.
The cultural
divide
between us.
To see our r
elatives together was to relive
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
on
Ecstasy
.
I watched
as
his parents split a taco
(which they pronounced “Tā-co”)
and
ate
it with a fork,
while my family made jokes
behind them.
His Mum left me a Thank You
Card
after she stayed at my house – my Mom left
a bag of groceries
.
I was
also
tired of referring to underwear as “pants”; to shopping carts as “trolleys” and to trucks as “lorries.”
For f
uck
’s
sake, we were in America, and I wanted to speak my own language!
But
always,
per
Nigel, everything British was s
uperior.

“The tea here is simply dreadful,” he would pro
nounce
with the
hauteur
of Prince Charles.
So of course, he
imported
his
from Victoria, B.C.

“The roads here are appalling.
You really should have roundabouts.”
Yeah, that would work in L.A.
A county that was
4,000
square miles
!
With almost
10,000,000
people!

“Nobody here speaks English.”
Duh.
We had more Armenians than Armenia; more Iranians than Tehran; more Mexicans than Mexico (OK, I’m slightly exaggerating
t
here).
After all, t
his was Los Angeles, not Tokyo.
It was not a homogeneous city and probably hadn’t been since the Old
Spanish
Mission days.
To me, that’
s what made it fun and exciting.
You got to learn about other cultures (and eat their food, of course!).
Nigel couldn't understand w
hy there were so many Mexicans. After all, the French weren’t pouring
into London
. Probably
be
cause they
hated the English’s guts.

“I cannot bear the heat of the sun.”
This one got me.
Hadn’t the intrepid British, they of the stuff upper lip, gone into places like India,
Burma,
and Africa, dressing for dinner while a tiger prowled the garden?

“This apartment complex has horrible landscaping.”
Fine
–
it
wasn’t the Chelsea Flower Show.
But it was
still
a da
mned nice place in Studio City.

These
then
were
the
two things that
made me want to kill
:
the constant whining (worse than a
minyan
of Jews) and the utter unwillingness to work.
But this
was nothing
compared
to
his
total
lack of self-control.

He had panic attacks in traffic.
He had a sc
r
eaming
fit on
a gridlocked road in Washington
, pounding t
he dashboard and yelling, “C’MON
!” out the window. W
e found out minutes later that
five
people had just been killed.
On the way down from Big Bear with my parents, he started to freak out that we would never get off the mountain.

“Dad, what do I do?”
My father was
at the wheel, unperturbed by the
lunatic in
back.

“Chloroform?”

I have
to
say
, I co
me from a funny family.

Another time, at a restaurant in the company of my family
(
including
my ninety-two-year old Uncle George
)
, a toddler was yelling.

“SHUT UP!”
Nigel
screamed, and the whole place went silent.

A burly man approached, as
scary
(and as hairy)
as a pissed-off Hells Angel.
“
She’s
two
,”
he spat at Nigel, gesturing toward his daughter.
He made a fist
,
then
looked
toward
my sister and her then-small boys.
He softened.
“I’d ask him to step outside,
ma’am,
but I see you have young kids
of your own
.”
With effort, he went back to his table.

While we’re o
n the subject of
two-year-olds, Nigel had actual tantrums.
He hurled a phone through a wall; intentionally slammed his fist into a porcelain plate my parents had brought me from Italy;
and
called me – at various times –
a mad
cow
,
a
prostitute
,
and
a cunt
:
the
last in front of his
Mum
at a
lovely pastoral
setting:
Picture Lake
, which reflected the face of snow-streaked Mt.
Shuksan.
From the sublime to the profane.

Was it
a
wonder that even when he roused himself, he could not keep a job?
He was fired from Amazon
and The Getty
for his sneering, scornful attitude; from a
n
engineering
firm for cursing at his boss; from a nursing gig in England for pushing a fellow nurse.

He blamed his failure on the advent of women
in the workplace
, who had taken “his” jobs.
This was a forty-five year old with a Master’s who had never made more
than
$40,000
a
year.
He was constantly whining
at
his parents –and
my sister – to
give him money.
Just because he was so
fabulous.