Annabelle Gurwitch - Youre Leaving When?: Adventures in Downward Mobility

Praise for Youre Leaving When?

A Good Morning America Must-Read Book of the Month

In her new collection of essays, Youre Leaving When?: Adventures in Downward Mobility, [Annabelle Gurwitch] writes with hilarious poignancy about tackling midlife malaise on an austerity budget.

Los Angeles Magazine

[Gurwitch] trains a skeptical eye on her eras foibles in the manner of a Dorothy Parker, leavens it with the housefrau elan of an Erma Bombeck, and spices it with her own witty, irrepressible personality.

BILL THOMPSON, The Post and Courier

Youre Leaving When? will most likely feel like a long, intimate chat with your funniest friend.

SAMANTHA SCHOECH, San Francisco Chronicle

Annabelle Gurwitch is wry, witty, and a master of the bon mot.

DIANA WAGMAN, Alta

Erma Bombeck meets Dorothy Parker in this topical and often laugh-out-loud funny take on our modern malaise.

Kirkus Reviews

By turns bittersweet and hilarious.

Publishers Weekly

The latest from Gurwitch will have readers rolling with laughter one minute and picking up the phone to commiserate with friends or family the next. Gurwitchs perspective on both the major and the mundane will be relatable to anyone who understands how the American Dream has devolved into a fever dream.

Library Journal

Thoroughly modern and thoroughly entertaining.

PureWow

ALSO BY ANNABELLE GURWITCH

Wherever You Go, There They Are

I See You Made an Effort

You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up

with Jeff Kahn

Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, & Dismissed

For Ezra

there will always be a toothbrush
and a life-size sarcophagus waiting for you at home

Contents

IT WAS THE WORST OF times, it was the worst of times.

My friend Sasha and I are meeting up for an impromptu lunch. Sasha proposed a casual Mediterranean caf on the east side of Los Angeles, the kind of place where you order from the counter and a server drops it off at your table. Its not an expensive eatery, but Im on my recently instituted austerity budget, so I scarf down a few handfuls of almonds on the ride over and order a small side of pickled radishes. Sasha gets a lamb kebab salad, and had I known she was picking up the check, I would have ordered that too. Drizzled with creamy tahini dressing, it looks and smells delicious. When she invites me to tuck into it, I accept with an amount of enthusiasm that startles both of us. Thank you, I gush as though I hadnt eaten in weeks, which is not true. If anything, Ive been stress eating; its just that lately even small gestures of kindness seem as precious as winning the lottery.

Sasha and I have only been in sporadic touch over the last few eventful years, and as we catch up she tells me that she has just enrolled her family in Medi-Cal, our state-sponsored low-income health insurance plan. Im stunned. She always seems so... so... downright jaunty, at least on social media. But no, were in similar straits, like ducks, madly paddling just below the surface.

Much of her regular employment has evaporatedher income, like mine, is now subject to the vagaries of the gig economy. Decades of maintaining a manageable if sometime marginal stability have imploded, sending us on a roller coaster of emotional and financial mobility, a decidedly downhill ride.

I explain that I recently lost my coveted union health insurance and am considering following the lead of a friend whod recently signed up for an absurdly affordable plan, the only catch being that you had to have a preexisting condition. What is it? I might already have it, Sasha said, hopeful at the prospect of lowering her overhead even more.

Accepting Jesus Christ as your savior. Oh, and they dont cover birth control, I answer. And thats when we lose it, dissolving into a fit of laughter because were both in menopause and birth control is one of the only things we no longer have to worry about.

After inhaling most of her kebab, I treat us to coffee; we share a cookie and commiserate. We are not living in a war zone; we are not economic or climate refugees. We are so fortunate. As we say goodbye, the last bite of cookie wrapped in a napkin in my purse, we hug, clinging to each other longer than either of us expected. When did things go so horribly wrong?

THIS IS HOW IT STARTED.

In the weeks before my kid flew the coop, I was racing around the house like a maniac.

You need to know how to boil an egg! Iron a shirt! Make a fire by rubbing two sticks together!

Mom, Im vegan. Ill be living in a dorm, you dont know how to start a fire without matches, and nobody irons anymore. We dont even own an iron.

From what Id read, after our tearful college dorm room goodbyes, my future would be filled with hot-air balloon tours and Zumba classes. Motherhood? My work was done. Kid successfully launched, with all that me-time, I could improve the quality of my life, enjoy my blissfully quiet and tidy home. Maybe Id learn to make soup from scratch; my husband and I would rekindle our waning desire for each other. Not only that, I was excitedly planning on replacing the living room sofa wed had since before wed gotten married, twenty years prior.

That love seat had seen a lot of action. It was the first piece of furniture wed bought together and it was perfect for newlywed canoodling. Then came baby puke, mac and cheese spillage, popcorn grease, and pen marks, followed by teenage hormones. A friend of Ezras had camped out on the couch for a week, that last hurrah before heading off to college. Echo had some kind of endocrine disorder, and now I couldnt get the scent of armpits and old sneakers out of the fabric. After my kid was safely ensconced in their college dorm room, I went furniture shopping at a neighborhood store. Its the kind of place that sells handmade chocolates and candles with ironically themed scents like neo-hippie bullshit and nonbinary anxiety, and carries a furniture line named for iconic Californian authors. The James Ellroy: louche, low to the ground, ideal landing spot for the falling down drunk. The Bukowski: a bit hulking, large enough to accommodate a big man or a couple in flagrante. The Didion: half the size, more delicately rendered, nothing froufrou about it. I was leaning Bukowski. I had plans for that couch. Sure, my marriage had been so strained wed been sleeping in separate bedrooms for upward of a year, but in the 1950s, couples spent entire marriages in separate bedrooms.

The state of our union wasnt perfect. I assumed my husband and I werent any more miserable than everyone else who made the same amount of money as we did. Id see him passed out on the couch, frustrated by the transactional nature of our relationship, and Id wonder: was it worth it to forgo garlic for dinner (bloating, so unattractive) and persevere in the search for the perfect lube (chafing, so excruciating)? If we could just muddle through these middling years, I calculated that between Social Security and our union pensions, we could look forward to a moderate but reliable income when we turned sixty-five. Provided Social Security remained solvent. Provided our union pension plan didnt implode. Provided I could keep providing an income, as I was the breadwinner at that point. That was a lot of provideds, but I was counting on them.