Heartburn

by Nora Ephron

my sister Eleanor, who is known as the Good Daughter in order to differentiate her from me.

“Too New York” is what the last network that was approached about me responded, which is a cute way of being anti-Semitic, but who cares?

This was before the discovery of the clitoris, when there was far too much sticking of fingers into things and not nearly enough playing around with the outsides;

“Men,” he said as he left. “I hate them. I’ve always hated them. You wonder why I always hang around with women and never with men, it’s because men do things like this.” He waved his hand vaguely at me and my stomach, and jogged off into the night.

I contemplated suicide. Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all.

Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole.

contemplated lesbianism. Lesbianism has always seemed to me an extremely inventive response to the shortage of men, but otherwise not worth the trouble.

Here’s Amelia’s cheesecake recipe; she always said she got it from the back of the Philadelphia cream cheese package. Make a nice graham cracker crust and pack it into a 9-inch pie pan. Then mix 12 ounces cream cheese with 4 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup sugar and a teaspoon vanilla. Pour into the pie shell and bake 45 minutes at 350°. Remove and cool 15 minutes. Then spread gently with 2 cups sour cream mixed with ½ cup sugar and bake 10 minutes more. Cool and refrigerate several hours before serving.

I look much better when I smile. In fact, when I don’t smile, I look as if I’m frowning even though I’m not.

Anyone who winks at pregnant women on subways must have something wrong with him, it seemed to me.

the kind of hopeless father who goes through the whole business under the delusion that it’s as much his experience as it is yours. All this starts in Lamaze classes, where your husband ends up thinking he’s pregnant, and let me tell you he’s not. It’s not his body, it’s not his labor, it’s not his pain—it’s yours, and does any man give you credit or respect for it? No. They’re too busy getting in on the act, holding their stopwatches and telling you when to breathe and when to push and taking pictures of the kid coming out all covered with goo and showing them to your friends at dinner parties and saying what a beautiful and moving experience it was.

I realize now that his affair with Thelma was just beginning, and his reaction was simply the one you affect when you’re becoming involved with someone else and you’re determined not to be remotely interested in or amused or touched by the person you’re married to.

I simply wanted you to understand that when my group was robbed, I was almost grateful: it gave me another shot at being a witness to a crime. And this time I knew stuff, I really knew stuff. I had actually laid eyes on the bugger. I couldn’t wait to be deposed, or whatever it is they call what they do to you.

“I didn’t really believe he was a mugger,” I said. “I just realized that he might not be a suitable object for fantasy. I didn’t even know if he’d gone to college.”

“Is that a story about how smart you are, or how dumb I am?” I said. “Both,” said Vera.

And you could sit down with your husband and thrash everything out in a wildly irrelevant fashion by drawing up a list of household duties and dividing them up all over again. This happened in thousands of households, with identical results: thousands of husbands agreed to clear the table. They cleared the table. They cleared the table and then looked around as if they deserved a medal. They cleared the table and then hoped they would never again be asked to do another thing. They cleared the table and hoped the whole thing would go away.

At first I thought he was charming and eccentric. And then I didn’t. Then I wanted to kill him.

But it seems to me that what’s happening is far more basic; it seems to me that it’s just about impossible to live with someone else.

Even when you end a marriage you want to end, it’s awful.

Unfortunately, the lesson he learned wasn’t the one I had in mind: what he learned is that he could do anything, and in the end there was a chance I’d take him back.

beware of men who cry. It’s true that men who cry are sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.

always seemed fitting that one Eastern shuttle flies New York to Boston, where the Puritan tradition began, and the other flies New York to Washington, where those produced by that tradition are rewarded with the power to force the rest of the country to heel to its values.

Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2 ½ cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350° for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.

Put 1 ¼ cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and ⅓ cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.

For Swiss potatoes:

For potatoes Anna:

Lillian Hellman’s pot roast is the sort of recipe that makes my reputation in the food world what it is, since it contains all sorts of low-rent ingredients like a package of onion soup mix and a can of cream of mushroom soup. It even has something called Kitchen Bouquet in it, although I always leave it out. You take a nice 4-pound piece of beef, the more expensive the better, and put it into a good pot with I can of cream of mushroom soup, an envelope of dried onion soup, I large chopped onion, 3 cloves chopped garlic, 2 cups red wine and 2 cups water. Add a crushed bay leaf and I teaspoon each thyme and basil. Cover and bake in a 350° oven until tender, 3 ½ hours or so.

Our car, definitely. I parked and got out and stood on the curb, staring into it. There was Sam’s baby seat, strapped into the back. Sam’s baby seat was always strapped into the back of the car, but somehow, at this moment, it seemed the ultimate obscenity—Mark’s involving even the baby seat in his affair.

This year my husband is a stranger. Do not let this stranger see me eviscerated.

bundle. We were so proud—so proud of ourselves, of

We marched into parenthood so full of hubris. We were on our second marriages; we had got the kinks out of the machinery; we would bring up our children in a poppy field of love and financial solvency and adequate household help. There would be guns for our daughters and dolls for our sons.

So. Nathaniel was early. I could hardly blame him. Something was dying inside me, and he had to get out.

The Key lime pie is very simple to make. First you line a 9-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Then beat 6 egg yolks. Add I cup lime juice (even bottled lime juice will do), two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and I tablespoon grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit five minutes before serving.

If I throw this pie at him, I thought to myself, he will never love me. And then it hit me: he doesn’t love me. It hit me with a shimmering clarity: that was all there was to it. It didn’t matter if he was crazy. It didn’t matter if I was innocent or guilty. Nothing mattered except that he didn’t love me. If I throw this pie at him, he will never love me. But he doesn’t love me anyway. So I can throw the pie if I want to.

Vera said: “Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?” So I told her why: Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons olive oil, until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy; this makes a very strong vinaigrette that’s perfect for salad greens like arugola and watercress and endive.