Caledonia Kearns on Nora Ephron

originally published in Literary Mothers

I was more prepared for my divorce than most. Not only am I the only child of a single mother, but I have read Nora Ephron’s Heartburn every year since I was sixteen. This meant that by the time my marriage ended eleven years ago, I had read the novel eighteen times. It was almost prophetic; the story of a woman weathering an emotional storm and keeping her sense of humor has always resonated with me.

Throughout the book, Ephron’s fictional alter ego—Rachel Samstadt—provides a steady stream of trenchant observations like, “A child is a grenade. When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different than what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different.” Rachel’s humor and her spaghetti carbonara trump her ability to stay married. Heartburnis about a woman controlling the narrative of her divorce: if you’re going to be sad, you’d better be funny.

Ephron famously told Wellesley graduates in 1996 to be the heroines of their lives, and not the victims. I wonder what kind of movie she would have produced about a single mother in her forties dating online in contemporary New York City. She would have insisted on a happy ending, but there might have been some recognition of the stacked deck. Throughout my search for a really good boyfriend, my pursuit of poetry, full-time employment, and parenting my daughter, I have held onto Nora for hope. She married her third husband when she was 45. ‘WWND – What Would Nora Do,’ I asked myself. She wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. She’d get off her ass and write, and she’d get back in the dating saddle without a fuss. I haven’t always been true to these tenets, but at least I knew what I should be doing even when I wasn’t actually doing it.

I saw Ephron once with her husband. They were holding hands walking around an antiques show where I was working. It was a benefit for a botanic garden and I arranged for their photo to be taken in front of an array of flowers. I told her that Heartburn—the book not the movie—meant a lot to me. It was a moment she quickly forgot, no doubt, and I left feeling foolish. I didn’t need to ask Ephron for advice about my life, because I knew what she did. She defied the lemons of two failed marriages and turned them into When Harry Met Sally, the gold standard for all contemporary romantic comedies. She made Potatoes Anna, lima bean casserole, and lemonade.

For me, Ephron’s signature contribution to American culture is not her food or her films, but this short novel. Heartburn is based on her own life but I won’t call it autobiographical because, as Ephron pointed out, male novelists like Phillip Roth who also write from life don’t have their books labeled as such. With Heartburn, Ephron broke a necessary silence about divorce. It was a bestseller because its deceptively light touch makes any woman reading it feel like having a husband who has an affair and leaves is normal. Rachel is an everywoman. She is a mother, a worker, a cook and a friend. She lives up to Ephron’s credo: heroine, not victim, and she weaves recipes into her narrative. She wants you to bake your own key lime pie while cracking jokes, and to hold your head high.

The turning point in Heartburn is the salad dressing. After her husband’s betrayal, in an act of culinary and spiritual generosity, Rachel teaches him how to make her vinaigrette. Her ability to share the recipe is a sign. She can move on. This is just after the dinner party where she throws a pie in his face. She’s already sold her engagement ring to finance her escape and Ephron gives her book a happy ending–only it’s not another man, but Rachel’s return to her beloved Manhattan with her sons.

Often in the funniest of people there is real pathos. I remain haunted–and comforted–by these sentences that reveal that beneath the humor, decades after her divorce Ephron herself wasn’t entirely unscathed: “The most important thing about me, for quite a long chunk of my life, was that I was divorced. Even after I was no longer divorced but remarried, this was true. I have now been married to my third husband for more than twenty years. But when you’ve had children with someone you’re divorced from, divorce defines everything; it’s the lurking fact, a slice of anger in the pie of your brain.”

My daughter was with her father when I heard news of Ephron’s death three years ago. When we talked the next morning, I told her one of my favorite writers died. She said, “You mean the one who was seventy-one? We heard it in the car.” And I replied, “Yes. That one. She was important because she was a great feminist in an understated way. She wrote one of my favorite books and she led the way for women to write and direct successful movies. She loved her sons.”

What I didn’t say is that Ephron is now the guardian angel of divorced mothers and writers everywhere. She makes it possible for us to be both marked and reconciled, all the while believing not just in second acts, but the possibility of even more delicious thirds—served with pie, of course, strawberry ice cream on the side, and whipped cream, but only if it’s real and not out of a can.