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  For Harper, Emerson and Beckett,

  May every year be a Year of Yes. May you inherit a future that no longer requires you to be an F.O.D. And if it is the future and that hasn’t happened yet, go ahead and start the revolution. Mommy says you can.

  and

  For Delorse,

  For giving me permission to start my own private revolution. And for saying yes to showing up every single time I’ve called your name. You are the F.O.D. within the family—the five of us who came behind you thank you for creating our second chances.

  The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

  —MAYA ANGELOU

  If you want crappy things to stop happening to you, then stop accepting crap and demand something more.

  —CRISTINA YANG, GREY’S ANATOMY

  Hello

  I’m Old and I Like to Lie (A Disclaimer of Sorts)

  I’m a liar.

  And I don’t care who knows it.

  I make stuff up all the time.

  Before you start speculating about my character and my sanity . . . let me explain myself. I make stuff up because I have to. It’s not just something I like to do. I mean, I do like to do it. I thoroughly enjoy making stuff up. Fingers-crossed-behind-my-back flights of fancy make my motor run, shake my groove thing, turn me on.

  I do like to make stuff up.

  I love it.

  It’s also kind of ingrained in me. My brain? My brain naturally just leans in the direction of half truths; my brain turns toward fiction. Like a flower to the sun. Like writing with my right hand. Fabrication is like a bad habit that feels good, easy to pick up, hard to quit. Spinning tall tales, knitting yarns made of stories, is my dirty little vice. And I like it.

  But it’s not just a bad habit. I need to do it. I have to do it.

  It turns out that making stuff up?

  Is a job.

  For real.

  Seriously.

  The very thing that had me on my knees in church during recess reciting the rosary for one nun or another at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Park Forest, Illinois, is an actual honest-to-Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph job.

  “Don’t tell anyone, but my Mom? She escaped from Russia. She was engaged to this guy, Vladimir—she had to leave the love of her life behind and everything. It’s so sad. And now she has to pretend she’s a totally regular American or we could all be killed. Of course I speak Russian. Dah. What? She’s black Russian, stupid. Like white Russian. But black Russian. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what kind of Russian, we can never go there ever, she’s a dead woman over there now. For trying to assassinate Leonid Brezhnev. What do you mean why? Don’t you know anything? To stop nuclear winter. To save America. Duh.”

  You’d think I’d get extra credit for knowing who Leonid Brezhnev was. You’d think I’d get bonus points for reading up on Russian politics. You’d think someone would thank me for educating my fellow ten-year-olds about the Cold War.

  Knees. Church. Nuns. Rosary.

  I can recite the rosary in my sleep. I have recited the rosary in my sleep.

  Making stuff up is responsible for that. Making stuff up is responsible for everything—everything I’ve done, everything I am, everything I have. Without the tales, the fiction, the stories I’ve spun, it is highly likely that right now, today, I’d be a very quiet librarian in Ohio.

  Instead, the figments of my imagination altered whatever downward path the nuns at school expected my life to take.

  The stuff I made up carried me from the small bedroom I shared with my sister Sandie in the suburbs of Chicago to an Ivy League dorm room in the hills of New Hampshire, and then it took me all the way to Hollywood.

  My destiny rides squarely on the back of my imagination.

  The sinful stories that earned me prayer as penance during recess are the same stories that now allow me to buy a bottle of wine plus a steak at the grocery store and not worry about the price. Being able to buy wine and steak and not think about the price is very important to me. It was a goal. Because when I was a struggling graduate student in film school, I often had no money. And so I often had to choose between wine and things like toilet paper. Steak did not even enter into the equation.

  It was wine or toilet paper.

  Wine.

  Or.

  Toilet paper.

  The toilet paper did not always win.

  Did I just see you give me a look? Was that . . . did you just judge me?

  No. You are not about to come up into this book and judge me.

  That is not how we are going to start off this journey. We are gonna ease on down the road. We’re in this book together, my friend. So let she who is without wine cast the first stone. Otherwise . . .

  Sometimes the toilet paper does not win.

  Sometimes a broke woman needs the red wine more.

  So you’ll have to cut me some slack if I’m unapologetic about my love for the magic of a little bit of fibbing and invention.

  Because I make stuff up for a living.

  Imagining is now my job. I write television shows. I make up characters. I create whole worlds in my head. I add words to the lexicon of daily conversation—maybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.

  Yes, I’m a liar.

  But now I’m a professional liar.

  Grey’s Anatomy was my first real job in television. Having a show I created be my first real TV job meant that I knew nothing about working in TV when I began running my own show. I asked every TV writer I bumped into what this job was like, what being in charge of a season of a network television drama was like. I got loads of great advice, most of which made clear that every show was a very different, specific experience. With one exception: every single writer I met likened writing for television to one thing—laying track for an oncoming speeding train.

  The story is the track and you gotta keep laying it down because of the train. That train is production. You keep writing, you keep laying track down, no matter what, because the train of production is coming toward you—no matter what. Every eight days, the crew needs to begin to prepare a new episode—find locations, build sets, design costumes, find props, plan shots. And every eight days after that, the crew needs to film a new episode. Every eight days. Eight days to prep. Eight days to shoot. Eight days, eight days, eight days, eight days. Which means every eight days, that crew needs a brand-new script. And my job is to damn well provide them with one. Every. Eight. Days. That train of production is a’coming. Every eight days that crew on that soundstage better have something to shoot. Because the worst thing you can do is halt or derail production and cost the studio hundreds of thousands of dollars while everyone waits. That is how you go from being a TV writer to being a failed TV writer.

  So I learned to lay track quickly. Artfully. Creatively. But as fast as freaking lightning.

  Lay some fiction on it.

  Smooth some story into that gap.

  Nail some imagination around those edges.

  I always feel the heat of the speeding train on the backs of my thighs, on the heels of my feet, on my shoulder blades and elbows, on the seat of my pants as
it threatens to run me down. But I don’t step back and let the cool wind hit my face as I watch the train speed by. I never step back. Not because I can’t. Because I don’t want to. That is not the gig. And for me, there is no better gig on the face of the earth. The adrenaline, the rush, the . . . I call it the hum. There’s a hum that happens inside my head when I hit a certain writing rhythm, a certain speed. When laying track goes from feeling like climbing a mountain on my hands and knees to feeling like flying effortlessly through the air. Like breaking the sound barrier. Everything inside me just shifts. I break the writing barrier. And the feeling of laying track changes, transforms, shifts from exertion into exultation.

  I’ve gotten good at it, the making stuff up.

  I could lie in the Olympics.

  But there’s another problem.

  I am old.

  Not shake-my-fist-and-holler-if-you-run-across-my-lawn old. And not revered-wrinkled-elder old. I’m not old on the outside. I mean, on the outside, I look good.

  I look young.

  I don’t look old and probably never will. Seriously. I will never age. Not because I am a vampire or anything.

  I will never age because I am my mother’s child.

  My mother? Looks incredible. At most, on a bad day, she looks like a slightly worried twenty-five-year-old who maybe partied a little too hard last night. I mean, the woman is nearing . . . she won’t like it if I tell you. So let’s just put it this way: my mother has six children, seventeen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. When I see her, I like to tell her that she is “keeping it tight.” Mainly because it appalls her. Also because it makes her laugh. Mostly because we all know it’s true. But secretly I say it because it’s something of a relief to me—I know I’ve got that face to look forward to.

  The women in my family? We’ve won the genetic lottery.

  You think I’m kidding?

  I’m not kidding.

  When I get older, I will stand in line along with the rest of the women on my mother’s side of the family and enjoy the benefits that come with cashing in that winning ticket. Because we didn’t just win that lottery, we won the Powerball, baby. All six numbers—even the big red one.

  My aunts, my cousins, my sisters . . . you should see us all standing around looking like toddlers in tiaras. We women, we descendants of my grandmother Rosie Lee? We look damn good. Our black don’t crack—for real. As my sister Sandie and I like to remind each other, “We will always be the hottest women in the old folks’ home.”

  And that is the thing that is so bittersweet and sad. Because my brain.

  My brain. Oh, my brain.

  My brain, she is old.

  Really old.

  Gumming-her-food old.

  So, yes. Yes, I will be one of the two hottest women residing at the Sunset Senior Citizens Center for Old Folks Who Don’t Want to Live Like Grey Gardens.

  But while I most certainly will be a belle of that senior ball, I will not remember that I ever thought being hot in an old folks’ home was a fun thing to be.

  I may have won the genetic lottery on the outside, but on the inside . . .

  We are choosing between wine and toilet paper up in here, okay?

  My memory sucks.

  It’s subtle. Perhaps if I didn’t spend my entire day needing to express myself, needing to pull words out of my head, I’d have never noticed it. But I do. So I did. Maybe if my first TV show hadn’t been a medical show that sent me screaming to a doctor with hypochondriacal certainties of tumors and diseases every time I sneezed, I would shrug it off as lack of sleep. But it was. So I can’t.

  Names are forgotten, details of one event are switched with another, a crazy story I am sure was told by one friend was actually told by someone else. The insides of my brain are a fading photograph, stories and images drifting away to places unknown. Leaving patches of nothingness where a name or an event or a location should be.

  Anyone who has watched Grey’s Anatomy knows that I am obsessed with curing Alzheimer’s. Anyone who knows me even vaguely knows that my greatest fear is getting Alzheimer’s.

  So I’m absolutely sure I have it. I’m sure I have Alzheimer’s. So sure that I take my crappy memory and my shrieking hypochondria to the doctor.

  I don’t have Alzheimer’s.

  Yet.

  (Thank you, universe. You are pretty and smart. So pretty and so smart.)

  I don’t have Alzheimer’s.

  I’m just old.

  Pour one out for my youth.

  Time is simply not my friend. My memory is ever-so-slowly being replaced by blank spaces. The details of my life are disappearing. The paintings are being stolen off the walls of my brain.

  It’s exhausting. And confusing. And sometimes funny. And often sad.

  But.

  I make stuff up for a living. Been doing it all my life. So.

  Without ever committing to a plan, without ever actively trying, without even realizing it is going to happen, the storyteller inside me steps forward and solves the problem. My inner liar leaps in to take over my brain and begins to spin the yarns. Begins to just . . . fill in the blank spaces. To paint over the nothingness. To close the gaps and connect the dots.

  To lay track for the train.

  The train that is a’coming no matter what.

  Because that’s the gig, baby.

  Putting fiction on it is where it is at.

  Which leaves me with a conundrum.

  This book is not fiction. It’s not about characters that I made up. It doesn’t take place at Seattle Grace or Pope & Associates. It’s about me. It takes place in reality. It’s supposed to be just the facts.

  Which means I can’t embellish. I can’t add a little here or there. I can’t put a bit of sparkly ribbon or a handful of glitter on it. I can’t create a better ending or insert a more exciting twist. I can’t just say screw it and go for the good story and say a rosary later.

  I can’t make stuff up. I need to tell you the truth. All I have to work with is the truth. But it’s my truth. And therein lies the problem.

  You get that, right?

  So. This is my disclaimer, I suppose.

  Is every single solitary word of this book true?

  I hope so.

  I think so.

  I believe so.

  But how in the hell would I remember if it wasn’t?

  I’m old.

  I like to make stuff up.

  Okay. It’s possible. There could be some track in here. I could have laid track for the train all up in these pages. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t try to. I don’t think I did. But it’s possible.

  I’ll say this. This is the truth I remember. The truth as I know it. As much as an old liar can know. I’m doing my best. And so if I didn’t get every detail correct, well . . .

  . . . once more for the cheap seats, everybody . . .

  I’m old.

  And I like to lie.

  Prologue

  Full Frontal

  When it was first suggested to me that I write about this year, my first instinct was to say no.

  Writing about myself feels a lot like I have just decided to stand up on a table in a very proper restaurant, raise my dress and show everyone that I’m not wearing panties.

  That is to say, it feels shocking.

  It puts the bits of me that I usually keep to myself on display.

  Naughty bits.

  Secret bits.

  See, I am an introvert. Deep. To the bone. My marrow is introvert marrow. My snot is introvert snot. Every cell in my body screams continuously at me with every word I type that writing this book is an unnatural act.

  A lady never shows her soul outside the boudoir.

  Showing you a bit of full-frontal me makes me nervous and twitchy, like I have a rash in an unfortunate place. It makes me breathe really hard in a weird panicked dog–sounding way. It makes me laugh inappropriately in public spaces whenever I think about people reading it.


  Writing this book makes me uncomfortable.

  And that, dear reader, is the point. It’s the whole thing. Which is why I am writing it anyway. Despite the twitching and the laughing and the breathing.

  Being too comfortable is what started all of this in the first place.

  Well, being too comfortable plus hearing six startling words.

  Plus turkey.

  1

  NO

  “You never say yes to anything.”

  Six startling words.

  That’s the beginning. That’s the origin of it all. My sister Delorse said six startling words and changed everything. She said six words and now, as I write this, I have become a different person.

  “You never say yes to anything.”

  She didn’t even say the six startling words. She muttered them, really. Her lips barely moving, her eyes fixed intently on the large knife in her hands as she was dicing vegetables at a furious pace, trying to beat the clock.

  yesyesyes

  It’s November 28, 2013.

  Thanksgiving Day morning. So obviously, the stakes are high.

  Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been my mother’s domain. She has ruled our family holidays with flawless perfection. Food always delicious, flowers always fresh, colors coordinated. Everything perfect.

  Last year, my mother announced that she was tired of doing all the work. Yes, she made it look effortless—that did not mean it was effortless. So, still reigning supreme, my mother declared she was abdicating her throne.

  Now, this morning, is Delorse’s first time stepping up to wear the crown.

  This has made my sister intense and dangerous.

  She doesn’t even bother glancing up at me when she mutters the words. There is no time. Hungry family and friends will bear down on us in less than three hours. We have not even reached the turkey-basting segment of the cooking process. So unless my sister can kill me, cook me and serve me with stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce, I am not getting her full attention right now.

  “You never say yes to anything.”

  Delorse is the eldest child in our family. I am the youngest. Twelve years separate us; that age gap is filled by our brothers and sisters—Elnora, James, Tony and Sandie. With so many siblings between us, growing up, it was easy to feel as though the two of us existed in the same solar system but never visited each other’s planets. After all, Delorse was heading off to college as I was entering kindergarten. I have vague childhood memories of her—Delorse cornrowing my hair way too tightly, giving me a braid headache; Delorse teaching my older brothers and sisters how to do a brand-new dance called The Bump; Delorse walking down the aisle at her wedding, my sister Sandie and me behind her holding up the train of her gown, our father at her side. As a child, she was the role model of the kind of woman I was supposed to grow up to be. As an adult, she’s one of my best friends. Most of the important memories of my grown-up life include her. So I suppose it is fitting that she is here now, muttering these words at me. It is fitting that right now she’s the one both telling me who I am supposed to grow up to be and standing at the center of what will become one of the most important memories of my life.