Thomas Telford School



4827270000So, I’m meeting my friend Emma—yes, this Emma, the one you’re looking at right now—for a socially distanced walk. Me with my 5-week-old daughter in tow, her with her 28-week-old baby in utero. We’re getting together like we usually do to talk about all the usual stuff: the hundredth California heat wave, the books we’re reading (Emma’s current pick: Transformed by Birth, by Britta Bushnell), impending motherhood and how the hell we’re going to raise well-adjusted children in Los Angeles.Except this time it’s not usual at all, because at Emma’s request, everything’s on the record, fair game for her Cosmo cover story.Emma and I met years ago when she came to a West Hollywood reading of my first novel, Sweetbitter, and we bonded instantly. It wasn’t a networking move—Belletrist, her wildly popular book club, didn’t exist yet, and Emma had no reason to be there beyond the fact that she was a fan of the book. That meeting sparked a friendship between us, two obsessive and passionate readers. At the time, I didn’t even know enough to be starstruck—or that Emma was Julia Roberts’ niece, which seems to be the opening sentence of just about anything ever written about her.Instead, I learned about Emma from Emma. She was a woman who quoted Didion, Rilke, and Solnit from memory and held writers in the highest reverence (which, being a writer myself, made me feel just a tiny bit of pressure). We’ve been trading book lists ever since.-565157747000To actually know Emma is to understand that so many of the stories we’ve read about her have nothing to do with the self-aware woman walking next to me. You probably know those stories. The ones with the opening lines about her aunt. The ones that treat her as an eternally young girl “on the verge” of womanhood. The ones that speculate on her personal life. Allow me to fact-check them: Emma is the opposite of a fragile ingenue. She is grounded, with a laser focus. She’s the friend you call for sensible advice; the friend who plans, makes lists, and manages to cross everything off. She can shift seamlessly from astrology to hard news. She’s been in the business since she was 6, and that’s obvious in the way she pays attention, asks questions, and actually listens to your answers. She’s been able to inure herself to the tawdrier aspects of fame, and every time I’ve ever spoken with her, she’s expressed gratitude that she gets to work.502920040005000That work includes her latest Netflix movie Holidate, a departure from her more anxiety-inducing projects like American Horror Story and The Hunt, a dystopian horror-action-thriller-comedy mashup from earlier this year. “The script came along and I remember thinking, This is what I want to do. I want to make a movie like this,” Emma tells me. “It’s nostalgic; it’s romantic; it’s fun. I love serious work, but sometimes, you just want to laugh and watch a movie 10 times in a row, and that’s okay.” So there’s that, too, about Emma. She’s self-aware but not self-serious.She will also assist you when your newborn’s diaper explodes. Halfway through our walk, Paloma, my daughter, grunts in warning and then is suddenly covered in poop. I’ll spare you the most intense details, but basically, it goes up her back and down her thighs. (Yes, this is me sparing you the most intense details.) Managing a diaper blowout in public is always unnerving, but managing a diaper blowout in front of a movie star, even if she’s your friend, is what stress dreams are made of. Emma—god bless her—actually seems excited as she hands me wipes and digs out a backup outfit from the diaper bag. When Paloma blows out a second diaper in seconds, we burst out laughing. “Does this freak you out?” I ask. “This is amazing!” she answers. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download