I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron Page B

car to drive home. The talk ceased, and they drove in absolute silence. They had nothing to say to each other. And then Lavinia said: “All right. Who is she?”
    That was on page 8 of the screenplay.
    I closed the script. I couldn’t breathe. I knew at that moment that my husband was having an affair. I sat there, stunned, for the rest of the flight. The plane landed, and I went home and straight to his office in our apartment. There was a locked drawer. Of course. I knew there would be. I found the key. I opened the drawer and there was the evidence—a book of children’s stories she’d given him, with an incredibly stupid inscription about their enduring love. I wrote about all this in a novel called
Heartburn
, and it’s a very funny book, but it wasn’t funny at the time. I was insane with grief. My heart was broken. I was terrified about what was going to happen to my children and me. I felt gaslighted, and idiotic, and completely mortified. I wondered if I was going to become one of those divorced women who’s forced to move with her children to Connecticut and is never heard from again.
    I walked out dramatically, and I came back after promises were made. My husband entered into the usual cycle for this sort of thing—lies, lies, and morelies. I myself entered into surveillance, steaming open American Express bills, swearing friends to secrecy, finding out that the friends I’d sworn to secrecy couldn’t keep a secret, and so forth. There was a mysterious receipt from James Robinson Antiques. I called James Robinson and pretended to be my husband’s assistant and claimed I needed to know exactly what the receipt was for so that I could insure it. The receipt turned out to be for an antique porcelain box that said “I Love You Truly” on it. It was presumably not unlike the antique porcelain box my husband had bought for me a couple of years earlier that said “Forever and Ever.” I mention all this so you will understand that this is part of the process: once you find out he’s cheated on you, you have to keep finding it out, over and over and over again, until you’ve degraded yourself so completely that there’s nothing left to do but walk out.
    When my second marriage ended, I was angry and hurt and shocked.
    Now I think, Of course.
    I think, Who can possibly be faithful when they’re young?
    I think, Stuff happens.
    I think, People are careless and there are almost never any consequences (except for the children, which I already said).
    And I survived. My religion is Get Over It. I turned it into a rollicking story. I wrote a novel. I bought a house with the money from the novel.
    People always say that once it goes away, you forget the pain. It’s a cliché of childbirth: you forget the pain. I don’t happen to agree. I remember the pain. What you really forget is love.
    Divorce seems as if it will last forever, and then suddenly, one day, your children grow up, move out, and make lives for themselves, and except for an occasional flare, you have no contact at all with your ex-husband. The divorce has lasted way longer than the marriage, but finally it’s over.
    Enough about that.
    The point is that for a long time, the fact that I was divorced was the most important thing about me.
    And now it’s not.
    Now the most important thing about me is that I’m old.

The O Word
    I’m old.
    I am sixty-nine years old.
    I’m not really old, of course.
    Really old is eighty.
    But if you are young, you would definitely think that I’m old.
    No one actually likes to admit that they’re old.
    The most they will cop to is that they’re older. Or oldish.
    In these days of physical fitness, hair dye, and plasticsurgery, you can live much of your life without feeling or even looking old.
    But then one day, your knee goes, or your shoulder, or your back, or your hip. Your hot flashes come to an end; things droop. Spots appear. Your cleavage looks like a peach pit. If your elbows faced forward, you would