Reading Nora Ephron in D.C.

Not such a comforting experience, let me tell you.

A woman who knows what she wants.

I find a lot of happiness in knowing all the best snacks, public restrooms, and secret passages in the city where I live. I have a mental rolodex of scenic walks, efficient walks, walks past particularly fragrant lilac bushes, and walks where I’m likely to encounter cute dogs. I know which coffee shop to visit, depending on the day, hour, and whether I want espresso, iced coffee, or tea. Some places put too much milk in their so-called cortados, some sell thin and bitter cold brew, and some make chronically lumpy matcha. I will not be the fool spending $7 to cough up green particulate matter.

I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone else — I’m just fussy, watchful, and prone to stewing over a poorly brewed cup of tea. Mapping my environment makes me feel at home, wherever I am, and it’s a productive use of my anxiety. In college, it literally got me home once: After a regrettable night out, during which I lost the keycard required to enter my fortress-like dorm, I realized that I could slip into the gated building through the loading area behind the cafeteria kitchen, after which I only needed to loiter outside one locked door, waiting to flag down a fellow resident, before sailing into my room.

New York is a city built for people with fevered minds like mine. Lena Dunham wrote, in a New Yorker essay about growing up in and leaving Manhattan: “My aunt Susan once said of my mother, ‘Laurie is a ‘from’ girl — the lox is from one place, the bagels from another, the flowers from someplace else.’ Knowing how to get the best out of the city — from discount Manolos to vintage buttons to a ten-dollar blow-dry — gives my mother the satisfaction of a chess grand master stumping her opponent with a series of unexpected moves.” Reading this, I felt a rush of vicarious pleasure. It is a triumph to know exactly how to get whatever you want and need. This is the nexus of discernment and self-sufficiency — the fulfillment of a primal impulse to hunt and gather, especially if you’re a bit bougie and have no interest in camping.

When Alex and I moved to D.C. in 2022, I found myself staring at a blank sheet of paper where my mental map used to be. It was an unsettling feeling. So, while I spent my days doing recon of my new neighborhood, I engaged in a classic Eliza coping tactic by night: I watched and read a lot of Nora Ephron.

Ephron’s rom-coms are comforting because they’re cozy, witty, and charming. Her essays and magazine columns offer something different: certainty. In a moment of personal blurriness, it was nice to marinate in Ephron’s matter-of-fact, and often acerbic, conviction. (On the publisher of the New York Post in 1975: “Dorothy Schiff has a right to run her paper any way she likes. She owns it. But it seems never to have crossed her mind that she might have a public obligation to produce a good newspaper.”)

Ephron is, by the way, the ultimate “from” girl. Only a person with strong preferences and a drive to get the best out of her environment could have written Sally Albright’s persnickety diner order with such precision: apple pie à la mode, with strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla; if there’s no strawberry, then whipped cream, but only if it doesn’t come from a can; if not, just the pie, but not heated. Because When Harry Met Sally is a comedy, I can deduce that Sally is meant to sound slightly insane. But to me, her order makes total sense. I’m guessing Ephron felt that way, too.

There was only one problem with imbibing so much Nora Ephron during these early days in my new home. Once upon a time, she also moved from New York to D.C. — and she absolutely hated it here.