Metropolitan Museum of Art in the rain. It’s a Woody Allen view, standing at the top of the stairs of the Met and looking down at Fifth Avenue. I love that about New York: all the great Woody Allen scenes you can pretend you are part of. I open up my orange umbrella; I walk down the steps and forget for a moment how much I am dreading the rest of the night.
Of course the thing with New York is that as soon as you are the star of your very own Woody Allen film still, you’re not. As I approach the entrance to the subway on Eighty-sixth and Lexington, the crowds get thicker and thicker, and the scenery gets vastly less poetic. All it takes in New York is a few blocks, a few minutes, and you’ve gone right from being Goldie Hawn in the opening scene of Everyone Says I Love You, all the way to Best Buy.
I put down my new orange umbrella, forget all about the Woody Allen movie I starred in so briefly, albeit only in my mind, and head down into the subway to catch the downtown train.
Twenty dread-filled minutes later, I emerge into the hustle and bustle of Union Square, about seventy blocks and a universe away from the uptown New York vista in the basement of which I spend most of my days. The downpour has not subsided at all, quite the opposite really; it’s that type of rain that comes sideways at you, that’s determined to drench you, no matter what.
I picture myself standing in front of a room full of strangers, saying, “Hi, my name is Hope,” maybe saying what my job is, and depending on the brutality of the teacher, maybe saying what brought me to Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class in the first place. And the self that I picture standing up there, in front of the classroom in my mind, she has an extra bit of confidence because she’s wearing nice shoes and her hair is straight. Good-bye to that, I think, looking down at the suede high-heeled boots that I wished I hadn’t worn. Good-bye , I feel I have to say again, because as I march on, past University Place and over to Fifth Avenue, I can literally feel my hair frizzing.
I’ll admit, I’m a person whose confidence does increase if I feel I’m looking good, and I’ll admit that for me that might be a bit of a vicious circle. See, in addition to having spent her career making rooms beautiful, my mother is also a person who has spent a lifetime having people see her from across those rooms and think that she is beautiful. My sister, Darcy, inherited this from her, the beauty along with the accompanying poise, the charm, the charisma, the ability to light up a room, and to always be the center of it. I didn’t.
All my life people have felt it necessary to tell me how beautiful my mother is, and how my sister is the spitting image of her, too. People seem to think this is a nice thing to say. People seem to think that your life must be filled with glamour simply because the people around you are so pretty, that everything is as shiny and bright and filled with laughter as a sitcom.
“You’re sister, Darcy,” people used to say to me, time and time again, “looks just like Marcia Brady.”
“Just like Marcia Brady,” they’d say. And you know what that made me; that made me Jan.
I wonder sometimes about where Jan Brady would be now. Not Eve Plumb the actress, but Jan Brady, the real Jan Brady, if her character had actually existed, had actually continued on, lived a life, not just in syndication, but out in the world. I hope she’d be fine and all, but part of me also thinks that maybe she’d be lighting up in a crack den somewhere, and if not that, at the very least, she’d be spending a tremendous amount of time in a therapist’s office. And you might think that sounds a bit rash, and you might think that maybe I’m getting a little carried away. I might be, I’ll give you that much, but I think what’s more likely, I think what makes so much more sense, is that it’s just really hard to understand what it does to you, growing up with
Of course the thing with New York is that as soon as you are the star of your very own Woody Allen film still, you’re not. As I approach the entrance to the subway on Eighty-sixth and Lexington, the crowds get thicker and thicker, and the scenery gets vastly less poetic. All it takes in New York is a few blocks, a few minutes, and you’ve gone right from being Goldie Hawn in the opening scene of Everyone Says I Love You, all the way to Best Buy.
I put down my new orange umbrella, forget all about the Woody Allen movie I starred in so briefly, albeit only in my mind, and head down into the subway to catch the downtown train.
Twenty dread-filled minutes later, I emerge into the hustle and bustle of Union Square, about seventy blocks and a universe away from the uptown New York vista in the basement of which I spend most of my days. The downpour has not subsided at all, quite the opposite really; it’s that type of rain that comes sideways at you, that’s determined to drench you, no matter what.
I picture myself standing in front of a room full of strangers, saying, “Hi, my name is Hope,” maybe saying what my job is, and depending on the brutality of the teacher, maybe saying what brought me to Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class in the first place. And the self that I picture standing up there, in front of the classroom in my mind, she has an extra bit of confidence because she’s wearing nice shoes and her hair is straight. Good-bye to that, I think, looking down at the suede high-heeled boots that I wished I hadn’t worn. Good-bye , I feel I have to say again, because as I march on, past University Place and over to Fifth Avenue, I can literally feel my hair frizzing.
I’ll admit, I’m a person whose confidence does increase if I feel I’m looking good, and I’ll admit that for me that might be a bit of a vicious circle. See, in addition to having spent her career making rooms beautiful, my mother is also a person who has spent a lifetime having people see her from across those rooms and think that she is beautiful. My sister, Darcy, inherited this from her, the beauty along with the accompanying poise, the charm, the charisma, the ability to light up a room, and to always be the center of it. I didn’t.
All my life people have felt it necessary to tell me how beautiful my mother is, and how my sister is the spitting image of her, too. People seem to think this is a nice thing to say. People seem to think that your life must be filled with glamour simply because the people around you are so pretty, that everything is as shiny and bright and filled with laughter as a sitcom.
“You’re sister, Darcy,” people used to say to me, time and time again, “looks just like Marcia Brady.”
“Just like Marcia Brady,” they’d say. And you know what that made me; that made me Jan.
I wonder sometimes about where Jan Brady would be now. Not Eve Plumb the actress, but Jan Brady, the real Jan Brady, if her character had actually existed, had actually continued on, lived a life, not just in syndication, but out in the world. I hope she’d be fine and all, but part of me also thinks that maybe she’d be lighting up in a crack den somewhere, and if not that, at the very least, she’d be spending a tremendous amount of time in a therapist’s office. And you might think that sounds a bit rash, and you might think that maybe I’m getting a little carried away. I might be, I’ll give you that much, but I think what’s more likely, I think what makes so much more sense, is that it’s just really hard to understand what it does to you, growing up with
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