Ali in Wonderland Read online

  My mother has Givenchy gowns she bought at a Saks sale (or for all I know, were created for her by Givenchy himself) in the closet next to frayed evening jackets she excitedly scored at Goodwill. She doesn’t believe in hedonism, loathes ostentation, and will buy boxed wine from Costco over Châteaux Margaux if it means more money for the Boston Museum. She didn’t grow up in the age of private planes, Pilates instructors, and hiring Ke$ha to play at birthday parties. She finds the new world self-serving and indulgent. She constantly screams “Hello?” at her iPhone before hitting the answer button.

  I have spent half my life rebelling against my upbringing, as most people do. If my mother had been a hooker, I’d be a Rhodes Scholar today. If my mother had been a Rhodes Scholar, I’d be a hooker. I was once asked by Playboy to show skin in an issue they were doing on funny women. The exciting thing for me was not that they thought it was even feasible to feature me naked in their august publication, but the exhilaration I would get from telling my mother. “Playboy is offering me one hundred thousand dollars to pose naked,” I announced gleefully. (It was actually more like ten thousand, but the money was irrelevant.)

  There was one of her famous long pauses. “Well, I will pay you a hundred and ONE thousand dollars not to pose naked.”

  Of course, I never intended to even consider the offer, more for aesthetic reasons than out of any moral qualms: I knew what I looked like naked, and it wasn’t going to sell many magazines. In any case, Phyllis Diller took my page.

  Chapter Two

  Mama, Can You Hear Me?

  When I was four years old, we moved from a modest family home into an immodest four-story brick house situated on a dead-end street. There were thick woods to the right, and the driveway to the British embassy to the left. To an adult it was quiet, exclusive, and swank, but to a child it was eerie and lonely, the woods riddled with ghosts, goblins, and faceless zombie children on a quest to eat my soul through decapitation (was this just my fear?). It was a lonely existence on Whitehaven Street; the whole concept of Sesame Street and the always upbeat people in the neighborhood was lost on me. I never got to experience hanging on the stoop with multiracial kids, kicking the can with the neighborhood gang, or frolicking in the fire hydrant sprinklers. I could walk the length of our street (about a quarter mile) without ever seeing a single person. Much less a freakishly tall yellow bird.

  The house was in a section of Washington called Embassy Row, where every country in the world has a residence and representation in the nation’s capital. It’s like frat houses, with the cool ones (Italy and France), who threw parties like recruitment week at William and Mary, and the lame ones (Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka), who’d maybe get a few interns from the UN who had to BYOB their own Red Bulls. When I was a teenager, during the Iran hostage crisis, there were so many protests right outside our door, we could have been living in Tehran. It has never been proven, but I know I saw a Khomeini supporter in our kitchen stealing cheese.

  At that time in my life, I abhorred sleepovers. Why would I want another kid breaking off my Barbie legs and forcing me to stay up until midnight discussing which acne-faced and annoying boy I would kiss if there was a gun to my head? I never got past why someone who had a gun would choose to use it to unearth my hidden third-grade desires. At nine years old, you were supposed to beg for sleepovers, so I did, the same way in college you were supposed to have a tattoo, so I did (but with a Sharpie). I dreaded packing my sleeping bag, toothbrush, and clean underwear. As a child of divorce, I saw it as just one more dysfunctional family I had to stay with.

  I had a best friend in second through fourth grade named Constance. We wore identical outfits, wrote secret notes without words, and conducted endless phone conversations without talking. It seemed natural that my first sleepover would be with her. You know the movie Carrie? It paled in comparison to a night at Constance’s house. The problem being, her mother was nuts: she was erratic, had hallucinations, and spoke in tongues. The woman should have been a leader at a witches’ coven, not the PTA. One night Constance and I were getting ready for our first girl/boy party. We had spent all day pairing the correct bell-bottom corduroy with the appropriate Danskin turtleneck, Hush Puppies with the matching headband, and earrings that didn’t accentuate braces. We started blow-drying our hair at two o’clock in the afternoon and applying lip gloss at four. It was a big night, a preteen’s prom; just when the hormones were starting to kick in, here was a platform upon which to exercise them, in the concrete form of Spin the Bottle and Five Minutes in the Closet, bathroom, freezer, heaven, wherever.

  Constance’s mother drove us the twenty minutes to the party, which was being hosted by Stewart, a pipsqueak in a rugby shirt and penny loafers, eager for his first kiss (Stewart is now a U.S. senator). As we reached the ranch-style house, Constance’s mother pulled the car to an abrupt halt. She whipped her head around and, with eyes beaming red, screamed, “I know what you’re going to do in there! You think I don’t know? You are little whores!!!” With that, she stepped on the gas and we were speeding back to Constance’s house, where we were berated and sent to bed.

  Fearing I would be forced to pray to Jesus Christ in a candlelit basement the next time, I decided I would no longer sleep over at Constance’s house. In fact, I decided I would no longer even drive by Constance’s house. If we were going to make Jiffy Pop popcorn and color in our fashion books, it would be in the safety of my own home. With chaperones who didn’t say things like, “Pimples are the Lord’s way of chastising you.”

  I decided to give the sleepover frenzy one more chance. Constance’s mother finally acquiesced, and Constance came over for my first hosted sleepover at our house at the end of our creepy street. We had our favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs, vanilla ice cream, and Welch’s grape juice blended with ice. And we were allowed to eat it in pajamas. Everyone in the house was far more excited about this playdate than I was; they acted like I was experiencing a major rite of passage. “What a big night! A SLLLEEEEEEPPPPPP-OOOOVVEERRRRRR!!!!” my older sister kept saying. My mother was in a sparkling Armani gown, my stepfather in a tuxedo, as they watched us slurp up the last noodles. They were off to a dinner, but before they left they wanted to fan the sleepover excitement.

  “Look at you guys having spaghetti on your sleepover!” Really, it became a bigger event than my wedding night.

  Finally, by eight o’clock, my parents were out, my older siblings were out, and Constance and I were alone in the house. Well, except for our babysitter Elizabeth, but she was in the basement with a cigar watching Barney Miller on top volume, so we were essentially alone.

  My mother’s room was always the center of our universe. If we were sick, we would sweat and vomit in her bed; if we were sad, we would cry and bury ourselves under her pillows. Any important news was headlined from her bed—things like “Your father is having an affair” and “Your brother’s been arrested climbing the outside of the Washington Cathedral.” I have carried on the tradition by designating my bed a free-floating lift raft for both my daughters. In fact, we would all get by perfectly well with just a king mattress and a hot plate.

  So Constance and I curled up on my mom’s bed with a stack of comic books and a box of Ding Dongs. I yearned to be in my lower bunk in matching nightgowns with my miniature dachshund, Max, but instead powered through the dreaded sleepover ritual.

  The phone rang. Constance darted toward it and, even though I reminded her that I never answered the phone because I never got calls, Constance picked up. “Hello?” She stared at me in silence and then slammed the receiver down.

  “What?” Constance dug herself under the down comforter. “Who was it?” She ignored me. I ate another Ding Dong.

  The phone rang again. Constance picked it up before the second ring. “Hello?” There was a long pause, and she hung up. She screamed loudly and insanely. “Some man was on the phone! He said he is going to kill us tonight!”

  My heart was beating so hard it almost leaped out o
f my ballerina nightgown, taking my inner child with it. “What do you mean? What did he say?”

  Constance pulled the sheets over her head, and from under the covers I heard a muffled, “I don’t know who it is! He just said he was going to kill us!”

  I had never seen a slasher film in its entirety or read the New York Post, so I wasn’t savvy about the real-world horrors lurking outside, but I did have an active and vibrant imagination. My brain could host its own Wes Craven scare fest unprompted. I visualized a beady-eyed man wearing a black leather jacket (like all bad guys) with a large chain saw in his hand hacking up Constance’s body. (I never thought of it as my body because it’s always scarier to witness the crime than to be the victim.)

  I climbed over the mound of Constance and grabbed the phone. I dialed 411. “British Embassy. Yes, residence.”

  Within minutes, the police sirens and floodlights had transformed our dead end street into an Aerosmith concert. There was pounding on the front door, and when I opened it, the British ambassador stood anxiously in his navy striped pajamas and Burberry raincoat. The embassy guards and D.C. cops started searching the house, along with two rabidly sniffing German shepherds. I cowered on the front steps with the ambassador and a female police officer with zero maternal instincts. Constance stayed in the lump until a cop escorted her out to the front yard with the rest of us. You would have thought it was a bomb scare at the UN or the Barneys Warehouse sale.

  My parents pulled up in time to witness all the commotion. I remember my mother running up the driveway, her dress billowing behind her. There was a reaction of relief—nothing was stolen, and I was still breathing—and embarrassment—the ambassador was standing in our front lawn at midnight in his PJs. Elizabeth the babysitter had fallen asleep during The Rockford Files and had snored through the whole show.

  I still couldn’t shake the fact that there was a man somewhere out there, hiding in an embassy Dumpster, plotting my demise. I slept next to my mother that night in a position that ensured I maintained contact with 90 percent of her body mass at all times. Constance slept upstairs in my room on the upper bunk. My stepfather couldn’t handle two kicking and thrashing nine-year-olds in his bed. Plus, they had never been fans of Constance’s; he felt it was enough he didn’t charge her for meals.

  I could hear my stepfather’s teeth grinding and felt my mother’s last muscular twitch before she fell into a deep slumber. I had almost nodded off when Constance cracked open the door, blinding me with the hall light, and slipped into the room. She came close to my face and whispered, “It was a wrong number.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “What?”

  She whispered again, “I made it up. It was a wrong number.” She smiled like she had informed me I was soaking in Palmolive and crept out. My first and last sleepover until my college years, and even those I would tiptoe out of before dawn.

  Chapter Three

  Just a Spoon Full of Something

  My mother can juggle more plates in the air than the androgynous clown in Cirque du Soleil. When I was between the ages of five and twelve, she was particularly industrious. Her second husband, whom she married four years after she and my father divorced, was a British foreign correspondent who was so steeped in the Washington scene there was no getting him out, like blood on silk. He was covering the JFK, LBJ, and Nixon administrations, so access to the inner sanctum was crucial. Consequently, our home became soiree central.

  I recall clutching the back of Henry Kissinger’s neck as he hauled me around the deep end of the pool. Only in Washington could a man paddle around like a tortoise in a heated swimming pool with a giggling five-year-old while he was simultaneously bombing Cambodia. But what did I know, he had a wide back.

  There were grandiose cocktail parties where my little sister and I, adorned in matching nightgowns, would pass peanuts that our sticky fingers had played with in the kitchen. There were always the same hors d’oeuvres, which I still crave from time to time—a round piece of white toast with a pastry squirt of baked mayonnaise and Parmesan cheese. A fistful of those, and we’d call it dinner. There’s a fine line between WASP victuals and white-trash cuisine.

  When a government official was a guest, he would be accompanied by a band of humorless Secret Service agents in dark suits. When I was eight, I had a miniature dachshund named Max who was my soul mate, my guru, my captain, and my priest. My political prejudice toward the Nixon administration was not brought about by Watergate, illegal wiretaps, or the Vietnam War—no, it was their conduct toward my dog. (And by the way, this is by and large how I still judge people today.) One night when the Secretary of State was over for a leg of lamb and heated discussion about the Soviet Union and North Korea, he had the audacity to have Max locked in a cage. I fumed: He was one of the leaders of the free world, surrounded by enemies and potential assassins, and he chose to imprison a puppy the size of an evening clutch and as cunning as a melon ball? And if that wasn’t appalling enough, a Secret Service man was posted outside my bedroom door. I can understand securing the exits and blocking basement doors, but an eight-year-old girl’s room with matching blush pink tulip wallpaper and curtains? What was I going to do? Leap out of bed in my nightgown and stab the Secretary of State with my Snoopy toothbrush?

  My stepfather’s sixtieth birthday party was an extravaganza, complete with diaphanous white tent and multitudinous candles. Max was in a cage, per usual, and I had spent most of the afternoon with Betsy, a zaftig cook hired for special occasions, who was making individual apricot soufflés. I loved Betsy not just because she was a comforting butterball of a woman, but because she had no filter; she would just say what she thought at the exact moment she thought it. If my mother ran by in curlers, fretting about the seating, Betsy would mumble, “She’s running around so much like a crazy, I should have her whip these egg whites instead of this beater.” Betsy would sit on a stool all night, sticking her fingers in every bowl, plate, and platter. And she was always disgusted with everything and everyone. “Who are all those people out there with too much perfume?” She would pick up a chop. “This ain’t cooked! This poor animal’s going to get up and walk off the table.”

  I had rehearsed my endearing rendition of “Animal Crackers” to perform that evening. I assumed if Shirley Temple could steal people’s hearts by singing and tap-dancing, then I could seduce my stepfather into accepting me as his own flesh and blood even without the curls. Or the talent. The tables were one big blur of glowing lights, and I couldn’t make out any faces, with one exception. Henry Kissinger watched me chasse, grand jeté, and pas de bourrée my needy little butt off without even the hint of a smile. He stared me down with an expression borrowed from the evil child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I ended with a ta-da pose: arms in the air, back arched, an all-teeth smile. There was enthusiastic applause from the crowd and erratic clapping from Kissinger (it looked more like he was trying to kill a mosquito). I moved in for an encore, but was led back into the kitchen with Betsy. She mumbled something about me making an ass out of myself as she ran her finger around the icing of the gargantuan white chocolate cake.

  If there wasn’t a fete at our house, there was definitely a fete somewhere else. My mother and stepfather were elegantly coiffed and bejeweled most nights of the week. They also traveled a fair amount. As a result of their rigorous social schedule, we were awarded a live-in babysitter. We started with Jessica, a Brandeis student with a pixie haircut and enormous breasts, so enormous she told me she could never find a bathing suit that fit, which became very clear during my sailing lessons. Jessica stayed with us the summer I was seven at our house in Plymouth, Massachusetts, while my mother and stepfather were in China for a few months. I spent my time hitting a tennis ball against a cracked backboard and anticipating the chimes of the ice cream truck. It was a blissful summer, but for two things: I missed my mom, and there was an overpopulation of sand flies. In the fall Jessica had to return to college, but not without an irreplaceable going-away gift. My older
brother confessed to us, years later, that one sultry summer night Jessica crawled into bed with him, pulled off his race car pajamas, and stole his virginity. He was fourteen, and the size of one of her boobs. In retrospect it made sense; Jessica and my brother spent hours behind locked doors while she “tutored him” in algebra. He should have been Bill Gates today, given all the hours they logged studying algorithms and polynomials. He still failed algebra twice.

  When Fiona was born, my mother chose an authentic British nanny named Julia from an agency in London that still serviced in uniforms and little crisp hats. I was always amused because as my sister learned to talk, she did so with a strong British accent: water was “wattah” and Mommy was “Mummy.” Julia was the kind of disciplinarian who believed in a tight schedule, clean clothes, and brisk walks no matter what the temperature. Fiona was indoctrinated into an important work ethic during the potty-training years, which is why she went on to Brown University and I to Bard College. Julia was our Mary Poppins, until one day she turned in her resignation. She was marrying a successful financial adviser, not the chimney sweep. And she was off to have babies she wouldn’t be paid to love.