Fine, I'm A Terrible Person
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Graduation Year
2024
Writing Track
Fiction
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Program
Creative Writing
Program Director
Judy Halebsky, PhD
First Reader
Thomas Burke, MFA
Description
Fine, I'm A Terrible Person, is a funny, heart wrenching, mother daughter story. 73-year-old, Aurora Hmans Feldenburg, a hapless, perpetually broke, eccentric, divorcee living in the wealthy enclave of Marin County, is wakened by a phone call informing her that her father's widow, has died. Possibly her last chance at solvency she decides to drive to Los Angeles to see if there is a will and how she might benefit. Aurora is always ready for the next get rich scheme.
Aurora's high-strung daughter, 43-year-old Leyla Feldenburg Rothstein, is a hypersensitive, insecure, perfectionist, insomniac, emotionally damaged from her father's lifelong abuse and rejection. She is married to a wealthy, Jewish prince charming, investment banker who specializes in the legal Cannabis industry. Leyla spends her days keeping up with the other Marin uber mom's, manically pursuing perfection in herself, her home, and her children. When she overhears a conversation at parent's night at her children's elite private school, and suspects her husband is embarking on an affair, she decides to sneak into a Cannabis business conference he is attending, also in LA, to spy on him and put her suspicions to rest. While at the conference she accidentally ingests 40 mg of THC packed granola bite samples.
Aurora and Leyla's separate quests simultaneously intersect and enmesh over the course of a weekend, where they both end up staying with LA cousins, quirky, endearing, Sephardic Jews who speak Ladino, mostly in proverbs and cook prodigious quantities of delicacies from the old country. When Aurora's meager inheritance is stolen by a once trusted cousin, she drags Leyla into a ludicrous chase. Unable to resist the pull of the trauma bond she shares with her infuriating mother; Leyla fails to adhere to her boundaries-even after years of therapy-and risks losing everything to another one of Aurora's harebrained schemes.