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Hello, Lovelies, how the hell are you?
I’m a bit like this—so if I am late answering your emails, please know, you are on my list, and I haven’t forgotten you. Things are just a little over the top.
I’m still in a kind of disbelief at the events of this week and about how casually life drops its most meaningful moments into the most random events.
The night I met Rob Reiner was one of those nights.
It was a truly terrible awards dinner—an earnest, joyless affair honoring composers Ennio Morricone and Henry Mancini, which sounds impossible, but there we were. The décor suggested a funeral parlor with a sponsorship deal—all set to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Moon River.
I was there as a plus-one to a well-meaning, but perennially single, sad dad from my kids’ school. I was also at peak post-divorce sorrow, wearing my best Max Azria gown I’d dug out of the closet—the one I’d worn to the Blood Diamond premiere years earlier with my boss. That dress had seen better emotional days. So had I.
By some cosmic joke, I was seated at a table with Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, and Sacha Baron Cohen—the funniest people alive—while I felt like a sadsack Cinderella who’d arrived at the ball only to realize it was being catered by grief.
Halfway through the dinner, Rob turns to me, kind-eyed, but still mischievous.
“What’s your story?” he said. “You look like somebody.”
“Oh, pfft,” I said. “I’m not anybody. I’m nobody. If I’m lucky, I get paid to write a pithy zinger. I am a tiny potato.”
“Well, you look like a sad potato.”
“Well, I’m a divorced potato now.”
“I didn’t know potatoes could get divorced.”
“Neither did I.”
“So, you lost your soul-tate?”
I hmphed. “He was the best potato. He got all my jokes. I can’t be funny without him.”
“Oh, kid,” he said, with that voice—the one that sounds like he’s seen the movie and still believes in the ending. “You’ll find a new potato. A total spud. Someone who gets your funny.”
“I will?” I raised a suspicious brow.
He looked left. Looked right. Lowered his voice.
“Well… maybe not these assholes. Because this is the worst award show ever.”
I leaned in. “I know, right? It’s like an awards show for Best Mausoleum!”
“Yeah, there are no funny potatoes here. You’re it, kid. And maybe that guy.” He nodded toward Billy Crystal, who was getting up to do his bit onstage, while Sacha Baron Cohen picked at his wilted salad.
“But what if I want my old potato back?” I sighed. “What if I was the impatient, insensitive nightshade, who needed to be a better listener potato? What if I’m the potato who’s blown it? What if I’m completely mashed?”
“Aww,” his face fell. “You’re a romantic spud.”
“Well, they keep forever.” I reasoned.
He paused. “But don’t they sprout all kinds of weird shit?”
We both cracked up.
“I think,” he said, “the potatoes might be done.” And we laughed some more.
And then—because he’s Rob Reiner, because he listened—I told him the whole story.
How I’d met my husband at an Upper West Side diner in New York City with a bunch of other friends.
How we argued about the literary merits of Moby-Dick. I mean, come on! 43 pages about going to sea? That is some fucking throat clearing, mister! I’d argued. “Get on with things, Melville.”
How he moved home after Yale to take care of his sick mom and teenage sister, and how that made me realize he might be the best person with the best bad qualities of anyone I’d ever met, and I might have to forgive Moby-Dick.
Then, six months of snail mail letters before a real date.
A wedding in Paris.
Two gorgeous daughters.
And then the scary diagnosis—our eldest daughter shuttled in and out of hospital treatments and therapies that make you doubt everything: the experts, the systems, your own instincts. Those moments when you’re supposed to trust the people with the credentials, while inside you’re screaming, Is this the right decision? Are we doing the right thing? How do we get our kid back? How do we make this make sense again?
Rob didn’t interrupt. He didn’t offer a moral. Or try to fix things. He listened.
That’s what made him who he was to so many people—not just a master storyteller, director, writer, and actor with an absurdly wide range, but someone who understood that the secret to good stories is paying attention to other people’s lives. Especially when they’re sitting next to you in twice-worn couture at a bad dinner, feeling like a sad root vegetable.
That night didn’t save me. But it steadied me.
And sometimes, that’s the real miracle. I shall miss him. Profoundly.
Meanwhile, over at the Empress Coven…
We are overjoyed by yesterday’s announcement from Publishers Weekly about ’s forthcoming novel being named an Editor’s Pick… I mean, wow!
So righteously deserved and birthed right here on Substack with a whole community of readers to cheer her on. Huzzah, Eleanor!
In the interim, Joan Didion’s estate generously reached out to ask how they might help us promote our upcoming memoir of her friendship with bestselling author Sara Davidson, Come to Dinner, to their 200,000 readers. We are deeply grateful—and more to come very soon.
And in the greatest merriment of all, we’ve just closed another round of financing, which allows us to keep building a robust, vital backlist as a small press—and, for the first time in our lives, provide health insurance for our tiny team. We even received an apology letter from our distribution partners for the lack of transparency in publishing financial reporting. That acknowledgment meant the world to us, because our goal is to understand—and help unbreak—this business, if only for our authors.
Now, a treat before I go… Dame Jilly Cooper
I adore the very Britishness of her take:
I deliberately forget about presents until the week before, at which point I spend three times as much as I ought to, “out of guilt and panic”. When I once told my son I couldn’t afford the shotgun he wanted, he replied “with perfect logic” that I could have afforded it if I hadn’t spent the past year pouring drink down people’s throats. One friend goes round several shops and makes a list for her hopeless husband, but I’m “dead easy”. All I want are cashmere jerseys and “the man who plays Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice”.
This holiday season, choose presence over presents.
Unwrap love. It fits everyone, never goes out of style,
and doesn’t require pretending you like it.
Happy Christmas - Love you all SO - xoxo - gotham girl
📚🎁 For Unfixed: our holiday sale is pure gratitude economics—buy four for holiday gifting or your book club, and we’ll send a free copy to your favorite Substacker as a thank-you for their inspiration, solidarity, and emergency soul-maintenance.
Don’t you want this lady as a gift?
Gift eBooks… Merry Everything!
PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.
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