Nora Ephron - I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections

ALSO BY NORA EPHRON

FICTION

Heartburn

ESSAYS

I Feel Bad About My Neck

Nora Ephron Collected

Scribble Scribble

Crazy Salad

Wallflower at the Orgy

DRAMA

Love, Loss, and What I Wore (with Delia Ephron)

Imaginary Friends

SCREENPLAYS

Julie & Julia

Bewitched (with Delia Ephron)

Hanging Up (with Delia Ephron)

Youve Got Mail (with Delia Ephron)

Michael (with Jim Quinlan, Pete Dexter, and Delia Ephron)

Mixed Nuts (with Delia Ephron)

Sleepless in Seattle (with David S. Ward and Jeff Arch)

This Is My Life (with Delia Ephron)

My Blue Heaven

When Harry Met Sally

Cookie (with Alice Arlen)

Heartburn

Silkwood (with Alice Arlen)

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2010 by Heartburn Enterprises, Inc.

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Some of the pieces in this collection have previously appeared in the following: Christmas Dinner, I Just Want to Say: Teflon as Farewell to Teflon, I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette as The Informational Cascade and the Egg-White Omelette, I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat as And by the Way, the World Is Not Flat, Twenty-Five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again in The Huffington Post; Addicted to L-U-V, Going to the Movies as The Last Picture Show, I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup as The Chicken Soup Chronicles, I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino as What to Expect When Youre Expecting Dinner, The Six Stages of E-Mail, and Who Are You? in The New York Times; My Life as an Heiress in The New Yorker; and The Legend in Vogue.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ephron, Nora.
I remember nothing,
and other reflections / Nora Ephron.
1st. ed.
p. cm.
This is a Borzoi Book.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59562-1
1. Ephron, Nora. 2. Middle-aged womenHumor. 3. American wit and humor. I. Title.
PS3555.P5125 2010
814.54dc22
2010026989

v3.1

For Richard and Mona

I have been forgetting things for yearsat least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time. I have proof. Of course, I cant remember exactly where I wrote about it, or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.

In my early days of forgetting things, words would slip away, and names. I did what you normally do when this happens: I scrolled through a mental dictionary, trying to figure out what letter the word began with, and how many syllables were involved. Eventually the lost thing would float back into my head, recaptured. I never took such lapses as harbingers of doom, or old age, or actual senescence. I always knew that whatever Id forgotten was going to come back to me sooner or later. Once I went to a store to buy a book about Alzheimers disease and forgot the name of it. I thought it was funny. And it was, at the time.

Heres a thing Ive never been able to remember: the title of that movie with Jeremy Irons. The one about Claus von Blow. You know the one. All I ever succeeded in remembering was that it was three words long, and the middle word was of. For many years, this did not bother me at all, because no one I knew could ever think of the title either. One night, eight of us were at the theater together, and not one of us could retrieve it. Finally, at intermission, someone went out to the street and Googled it; we were all informed of the title and we all vowed to remember it forever. For all I know, the other seven did. I, on the other hand, am back to remembering that its three words long with an of in the middle.

By the way, when we finally learned the title that night, we all agreed it was a bad title. No wonder we didnt remember it.

I am going to Google for the name of that movie. Be right back.

Its Reversal of Fortune.

How is one to remember that title? It has nothing to do with anything.

But heres the point: I have been forgetting things for years, but now I forget in a new way. I used to believe I could eventually retrieve whatever was lost and then commit it to memory. Now I know I cant possibly. Whatevers gone is hopelessly gone. And whats new doesnt stick.

The other night I met a man who informed me that he had a neurological disorder and couldnt remember the faces of people hed met. He said that sometimes he looked at himself in a mirror and had no idea whom he was looking at. I dont mean to minimize this mans ailment, which Im sure is a bona fide syndrome with a long name thats capitalized, but all I could think was, Welcome to my world. A couple of years ago, the actor Ryan ONeal confessed that hed recently failed to recognize his own daughter, Tatum, at a funeral and had accidentally made a pass at her. Everyone was judgmental about this, but not me. A month earlier, Id found myself in a mall in Las Vegas when I saw a very pleasant-looking woman coming toward me, smiling, her arms outstretched, and I thought, Who is this woman? Where do I know her from? Then she spoke and I realized it was my sister Amy.

You might think, Well, how was she to know her sister would be in Las Vegas? Im sorry to report that not only did I know, but she was the person I was meeting in the mall.

All this makes me feel sad, and wistful, but mostly it makes me feel old. I have many symptoms of old age, aside from the physical. I occasionally repeat myself. I use the expression, When I was young. Often I dont get the joke, although I pretend that I do. If I go see a play or a movie for a second time, its as if I didnt see it at all the first time, even if the first time was just recently. I have no idea who anyone in People magazine is.

I used to think my problem was that my disk was full; now Im forced to conclude that the opposite is true: its becoming empty.

I have not yet reached the nadir of old age, the Land of Anecdote, but Im approaching it.

I know, I know, I should have kept a journal. I should have saved the love letters. I should have taken a storage room somewhere in Long Island City for all the papers I thought Id never need to look at again.

But I didnt.

And sometimes Im forced to conclude that I remember nothing.

For example: I met Eleanor Roosevelt. It was June 1961, and I was on my way to a political internship at the Kennedy White House. All the Wellesley/Vassar interns drove to Hyde Park to meet the former first lady. I was dying to meet her. Id grown up with a photograph in our den of her standing with my parents backstage at a play theyd written. My mother was wearing a corsage and Eleanor wore pearls. It was a photograph I always thought of as iconic, if Im using the word correctly, which, if I am, it will be for the first time. We were among the thousands of Americans (mostly Jews) who had dens, and, in their dens, photos of Eleanor Roosevelt. I idolized the woman. I couldnt believe I was going to be in the same room with her. So what was she like that day in Hyde Park, you may wonder. I HAVE NO IDEA. I cant remember what she said or what she wore; I can barely summon up a mental picture of the room where we met her, although I have a very vague memory of drapes. But heres what I do remember: I got lost on the way. And ever since, every time Ive been on the Taconic State Parkway, Im reminded that I got lost there on the way to meet Eleanor Roosevelt. But I dont remember a thing about Eleanor Roosevelt herself.