10. Natural births are overrated.
11. Always order dark drinks at charity events, in case you encounter the likes of Darlene Pickens, so you may spill the drink on her dress, which will be white, because she lacks a personality.
12. Bring pot brownies to your private bankers and flirt with them, if possible.
13. If you see someone weeping on a bridge, always stop and place your hand on that person’s shoulder.
14. Winter in Gruyères, Switzerland. Summer in Colmar, France. Autumn in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. Spring in Monemvasia, Greece.
15. The more attractive the stranger, the greater the imperative to use a condom.
16. Marry at least twice.
17. Forgo social media.
18. Believe in ghosts but not God, unless your conception of God is much like a ghost.
19. Take a pottery class in the fall; you will never be short of Christmas presents.
20. The streets you walk, the food you eat, the job you work, the method of transportation you choose, the beauty products you purchase, the shows you watch, the links you click, the way you sit on a train, the way you speak to waiters, the way you take your coffee—everything affects everyone. Find a way to believe this, even when sober.
21. Do not let your children become casualties of your damage.
22. Do not have children if you cannot ensure the above.
Three Lost Items, Which, if Found, Must Be Sold to Benefit the EDGE Campaign to Protect the Pygmy Three-Toed Sloths:
1. A leather notebook of handwritten recipes, to-do lists, prayers, and uplifting quotes. It has my mother’s name on the back cover. Margaret Deirdre McLoughlin. Robin’s-egg blue. (Last seen: winter, 1983, Geneva.)
2. A ruby-red coffee thermos with the initials E.J.M.B. inscribed on the base, given to me by my father, who seldom spent money, and hated coffee, and was an exceedingly good man. (Last seen: fall, 1964, Los Angeles.)
3. A taxidermic golden pheasant, lost in a cross-country move. (Last seen: April, 1990, somewhere between Los Angeles and New York City.)
An Open Letter to My First Husband:
Although I forgive you for the incredible pain you inflicted upon my young and tender heart, I am glad we never reproduced. You mugged my twenties. It is shocking to me that you are still alive.
An Open Letter to My Son, Moses Robert Blitz:
Hard to believe that my little blond baby is fifty-three years old. And no hope of grandkids! Ha! Though we have our differences, I love you beyond language. Your body is healthy, Moses—there is nothing sprouting out of it. And for Christ’s sake, I insist that you quit your bizarre charade. Don’t be surprised, Moses. Of course I know of it. If there’s one thing money can buy, it’s surveillance. Listen to me very closely: being looked at is not the same as being seen. If I can teach you anything before I die, let it be that.
An Absolutely True Story:
Back when my cells behaved, I believed that I would live forever. If you share this belief, do whatever it takes—go to church, get an app, break formation, get a tattoo, anything—to hatch out of this delusion and into the truth. Because one day you will die, I promise, and mortality does not care if you believe in it.
All my life, I just tried to have some fun. I was an artist of fun and a failure at everything else. What we need, at the end, is a parent or two. A leash and a fence, a bedtime, a tooth fairy. Milk on the stove. But if we’re lucky, we are furthest from childhood at the end of our lives. If we’re lucky, we are closest to our parents, but they evade us until it’s officially over. What we get instead of these comforts is a meet-cute with Death. He is always early.
I met Him one March afternoon outside a shoe store in Florida. I was gazing into a fish tank from my wheelchair, seeing myself in the glass, seeing America in the fish, who were busy and doomed and theistic. As usual, I was making plans to rectify the crimes of my motherhood when He interrupted. I was eighty-five years old. Sex had long evacuated my body, and yet when He marched toward me, my ovaries did a little jig. I have never found it easy to distinguish between arousal and a fight-or-flight response. His scent alarmed me—I could have accepted decay, but this scent was antilife, the scent of absolutely nothing, less alive than rock. He knelt and batted His eyelashes on the top of my right hand—that’s how He says hello, how He royals you up. I didn’t recognize Him at first, although He emitted an aura of celebrity.
“Can I take a selfie with you?” He asked me.
I never say yes to a selfie, but then I saw His scythe.
“You bet,” I said.
He snapped three. Then, in view of the security guard, He slipped his hand into my pocket and took something. After that, he left.
The security guard didn’t notice. My son was the one I wanted to call.
My assistant emerged from the store with three pairs of shoes for me. She opened one box like a casket and offered me the ruby walking shoes inside. An absurd gesture, all things considered. She nestled my feet into them with care. “You look like death,” she said. “Anything I can do for you?”
I told her to dial my son. She did, although we both knew it was futile; he had blocked me months before. She feigned surprise.
Later, my phone buzzed during tea. I jumped and beamed, sure it was him. But it was Him.
Text from an unknown number. A photo of the thing He took in a vase on a toilet.
How did you get this number? I typed. I am a slow typer.
He sent a rabbit emoji.
At once, I knew that this was, as they say, the beginning of the end. Soon, I would have to do a lot of agonizing. This is it, isn’t it, I texted Death. He sent me a GIF of a walrus vigorously nodding, with the caption: Indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed.
I wanted Him on my side, so I summoned some friendly banter. In the following weeks, we stayed in touch. I had heard from the clergy that He gives you some time to organize your affairs, so I asked Him for an extension. We negotiated. Three months, He settled. One more birthday.
He is not a barbaric captain—somebody has to do the dirty work. Nor is He a philosopher, thank God. The last thing you want to do at the end of your life is math. I am not His detainee, and He is not my boss, and I am not His client, and He is not my muse, but neither of us is free. I misjudged Him when we first met: He’s very DMV about his work. All business, despite the inefficiency. No sex. Not even dinner.
The doctor called a week after I met Him. I was nonplussed, but everybody else wept.
“What can I do for you?” asked my assistant.
“Rewire me,” I said. “My selfishness.”
She ordered me a massage.
People caught wind of it. My end. After decades of paparazzi, gossip columns, interviews, and talk shows, they wanted more. They wanted to know the Real Me. Crowds materialized outside my neighborhood like invasive pests, destroying the landscape. After the internet was invented, I often riffled through my son’s browser history—that’s how I got to know him. But how could anyone get to know me, when my history, browser and otherwise, has already been exposed? If you want to know me, memorize the wine stains on my sheets, I tweeted reluctantly. I am sorry I cannot be of more service. I have only seen myself three times.
Once while observing a female wolf at my hometown zoo.
Once at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacán, Mexico.
Once at the fish tank outside of the shoe store in Key West.
Suddenly, it was a Friday in the four o’clock range, two weeks before my death—my most loathed hour. A purgatorial hour, neither afternoon nor evening, too early to eat and too early to drink, an hour that encourages its hostages to tally up their failures, an hour that portrays one’s entire life as a parking garage. I stared at my phone.
“What can I do for you?” my assistant asked me.
“Tell him I’m dying.”
She did.
As my son knows better than anyone, I am Olympic at walking away, even after the wheelchair. Your gift is your cross, my mother always said. She was very Catholic and did not know how to have fun. That night, there was a fire chuckling in its marble throne. Blistered carrots, lamb shank, and hot pearled couscous with lemon and tahini on my plate. Fresh pomegranate juice in my glass, black and white on the television, an email from the estate lawyer in my computer, never-ending company in my house. Nothing from my son.