Martha Stewart’s daughter, Alexi, has released a memoir. The perfectionist’s progeny had a Roomba with a view and Concentrated Awesome has gotten its grubby hands on the engrossing excerpts:
When I was 10, I brought her breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day. She sent it back to the kitchen and said if I didn’t learn to poach eggs properly I wouldn’t even be fit to operate the griddle at Denny’s when I grew up. When she got out of bed, she spanked me with a $1,000 spatula.
Mom told me to make my bed. When she came to inspect it, she said I had to re-do it because didn’t meet five-star hotel standards. Another time my sheets were tucked in sloppily and she forced me to lie on the bed and piled throw pillows on top of me until I could barely breathe. Later, she sent me to live at a Days Inn for a week as punishment. I saw enough stains in that place to last a lifetime.
She had me save my earwax in a jar, then when enough had been collected, taught me how to turn it into a scented candle. All the candles in her house are made from either her own earwax or that of the help, which she steals from them while they sleep.
Mom routinely washed my mouth out with soap. Not because I had misbehaved or said something inappropriate, just because she thought it was “good hygiene” and the best way to get the germs toothpaste missed.
If Mom was hosting a dinner party, I was expected to greet the guests at the door and offer to take their coats. I was expected to wear all the coats given to me until the guests left. Ditto with scarves, shawls, gloves, galoshes and hats. You could say I was an “accessory” to abuse. Or that I literally had the wool pulled over my eyes. Did those last two sentences just give away that this book was ghostwritten?
At age 8, I baked a batch of brownies for my mom’s birthday. When she found out I had used a mix, she refused to eat them and instead used them as doorstops and paperweights. She then made me write “Betty Crocker is a whore” 100 times on a sheet of paper.
(Ear)wax on, (ear)wax off was part of Alexi Stewart's upbringing.
In 2006, I suggested an article for her magazine about how to tell which potholders are right for you. She rejected it because she said she believed in potholder polygamy and that it was impossible to pick just one perfect pair. She then slapped me several times with a velvet oven mitt.
After unsuccessfully trying to fold my napkin into a crane, she crane kicked me. Following a failed second attempt, she hired Ralph Macchio to crane kick me.
For my 18th birthday, Mom promised me a “motorized, wheeled machine that all my friends would be envious of.” She bought me a carpet shampooer.
While Mom was in prison serving her five-month sentence for insider trading, she stabbed her roommate and proceeded to tastefully decorate her cell with her victim’s entrails. She also started selling sequined shivs to fellow inmates.
In the summers of my college years, I interned for the home goods collection that bears her name as a thread counter. When a sheet set says 300, I can confirm that it actually is. The rough part of the job was that Mom made me use an abacus and Roman numerals.
Mom’s secret hobby is writing erotic fiction involving Mr. Clean and the Brawny man. One scene features a feather duster and is too filthy to describe.
