Family Secrets (58 page)

When they were together she was less interested in having him tell her he loved her than in having him tell her she was a person, that she existed. Sometimes, with the family, she felt herself floating away as if she were nothing at all.

“Say I’m a person,” Paris would plead to her lover. “Am I a person?”

“Of course you are. You’re a person. You’re a person. You’re a person.”

His soothing voice calmed her. It was not to be sexy she wanted, not to be beautiful or rich or talented or popular or clever, but to be a person. A whole human being, someone who mattered. Bits of her were being torn away, gobbled up, molded and formed to another’s will, ever since she could remember. There had to be something left, something others could see and then she herself could see.

They didn’t always make love when they had their lunch dates; sometimes they went to a restaurant and really had lunch. They tried to make their time together as spontaneous and normal as possible under the constricting circumstances. He made her feel safe. She could talk to him without always getting an argument the way you did at Windflower with everyone butting in and offering an opinion without being asked. The word “because” had become a permanent part of almost every sentence she spoke with her mother, because whatever she said was answered by “why?” Paris no longer said, “I want to do this,” or “I’m going to do this,” she said “I want to do this because …” There always had to be a good reason. If she were a real person, she knew, she would never have to say why. The fact that a person wanted to go somewhere or do something was enough reason.

One summer day Paris woke up with a cold. There was no hiding it from her mother; she was coughing a little and her nose was stuffed. She had a lunch date with her lover that day.

“You’re not going to the office,” her mother said.

“I’m not sick.”

“Yes you are. Get in bed.”

“It’s an allergy,” Paris said.

“I know a cold when I see one.”

“I have to go to the office. I have an important lunch date.”

“Cancel it.”

Her mother’s word was law. No one would drive her to the station. She could have called for a cab but it didn’t even occur to her. She was entirely tied to her mother’s will. Paris felt the familiar anger choking her and her throat closed the way it had when she was younger and had asthma. The asthma closed in on her then, along with the rage, forcing off her breathing, choking her, locking her in; all the protest she wanted to shriek out turned inward. She was suffocating with rage, and with impotence.

“See,” her mother said, “now you’re getting an asthma attack. Call your lunch date and cancel him.”

Him! She knew, she must have known. Paris telephoned him (she was as free to call him at his home as he was to call her at hers) and told him she had a cold. He was regretful and said he would see her as soon as she was well.

“Tell your office you won’t be in,” her mother said. Paris obeyed.

That fall, when the family moved back from Windflower, Paris went to see Cassie. Cassie and Andrew lived near enough to her parents that she could go there after work and be back in time for dinner. Paris’ mother liked that Paris was close and friendly with Cassie.

“Such a big sigh!” Cassie said. Paris was sitting on the chaise longue in the bedroom.

“I didn’t even know I sighed.”

“You sigh all the time.”

“It’s the only way I can breathe sometimes. Cassie, do you know a psychiatrist I can go to?”

“Well, there’s Uncle Andrew’s, but he won’t take two people from the same immediate family.”

“Can you ask him to recommend someone else?”

“Yes, I’ll ask him.”

“I want to go to a psychiatrist,” Paris said. “I’m so unhappy.”

“I think it’s a very good idea,” Cassie said cheerfully.

“But don’t tell my mother. She won’t understand and she’ll get upset.”

“She won’t know unless you tell her,” Cassie said.

So began the hushed secret phone calls and the slipping out of the house without saying goodbye or giving a reason. Paris went to the psychiatrist three times a week, during her lunch hours, and now she had someone on her side. Her mother had never let her shut her bedroom door and got upset when Paris tried to. “You’re shutting me out,” her mother would say. “Why do you have to shut your door? No one in this house spies on you.” Paris told the analyst, and he said she should shut the door because he told her to. She was aware that she was substituting one authority for another, but at least this one was on her side. Her mother was hurt, and she remained intrepid.
He
had given her permission to shut her door.

Finally she decided to tell her mother she had been going to an analyst. It was hard to tell her in the apartment; somehow it was her parents’ territory and Paris needed some neutral place. She asked her mother to have lunch with her at Schrafft’s.

“You may have noticed I’ve changed a little,” Paris said, over the dessert.

“Yes, I have. I’ve been worried.”

“It’s because I’ve been going to a psychiatrist.”

“Oh.” Her mother thought a moment, then brightened. “Your father and I were afraid you were falling under the influence of some man.”

“No, just a shrink.”

“Where did you get him?”

“From Uncle Andrew’s doctor.”

“Oh. But why do you need a psychiatrist?”

“You’re not supposed to discuss that when you’re in treatment.”

“Who is he? What’s his name? Can I go to see him?”

“Why do
you
want to go to see him?” Paris asked.

“Well, there might be something from your childhood that you forgot that I could tell him. I’m sure I could be of help.”

“I’m supposed to tell him, not you.”

“You were so sick as a child, all those allergies,” her mother said. “Maybe they caused a trauma …”

“No.”

“But you were such a happy child. Always laughing and giggling. I never saw such a happy child.”

“Look, let’s not discuss it, okay?”

“I hope you don’t sit there and tell him it’s all my fault,” her mother said.

“Nothing’s anybody’s fault,” Paris said. “I’m not crazy, you know. I just want to work out some things.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have just come to me,” her mother said, “and we could have worked them out together.”

That winter Rima got a job in publishing at last, as the secretary to the editor-in-chief of a hardcover publishing company. Paris’ stocks were bringing in some dividends, and with the money she had hoarded and saved she realized she could quit her job to write full time and still be able to pay the analyst. She’d been working at that office for nearly six years and still was nowhere. She wanted to write her own novel. Nights and weekends weren’t enough time. She gave her boss her notice and the staff gave her a going-away party. She had told them all that she was going to write a novel; now she really had to. She still met her married lover for lunch. She had told him about the psychiatrist and he was both glad and saddened.

“You won’t love me any more after a while,” he said sadly. “But it will be good for you.”

She supposed that like all married men he thought the only girl who could love him must have something wrong with her head.

She polished the novel she had been working on for years and sent it everywhere, and it was rejected everywhere. Her mother came into her room every morning to read what she had written and criticize it. Her mother liked the elegant language of Paris’ novel and couldn’t understand why it kept being sent back. The editors always wrote little notes, saying there was no plot and the characters had no feelings.
Just like me and my life
, Paris thought.
All locked in. I’ll have to get away to really be a writer
.

Then the editor whom Rima worked for sent back the book with a note saying she should come in and have a talk with him.

“Oh, isn’t that the place where Rima works?” her mother said. “She’ll be jealous and she’ll put the kibosh on the whole thing.”

“Mother, Rima is the least jealous person I’ve ever met in my life. She is
thrilled
about my book.”

“Hmm,” her mother said, protective, suspicious, and dreamer of nightmares.

Paris went to see the editor. He was a distinguished-looking middle-aged man. “You could be a helluva writer,” he told her. “But this one isn’t the book. It’s the kind of book people describe as ‘having promise.’ Nothing happens in it.”

“I know,” Paris said. “Nothing ever happens in life.”

“Why don’t you write a real novel, about something you know about? You could write about your contemporaries, your friends. No one has written a novel yet about being young in the Fifties.”

“I’ve worked for years on this book,” Paris said, holding her thin manuscript protectively. “Years and years. It’s like you’re killing my baby and telling me to go have another one.”

“Well, think about it,” he said kindly. “If you want to give me the first fifty pages, I’ll give you a contract.”

They shook hands. Rima walked her to the elevator. “You’ve got to do it!” Rima said, all excited. “Don’t you realize what a chance this is? This is the best publisher in America.”

“A contract … someone wants to give me a contract … I can’t believe it. I’ll have to leave home. I can’t write at home. The new book would be just like the old one, all fake.”

“You could write the first fifty pages in two weeks,” Rima said. “I know you. And then when you got the contract they would give you an advance. Get an apartment. You’re always talking about it. Your parents won’t let you starve. They’ll pay the rent.”

“That’s what you think.”

“I know your parents. They’ll scream, but once you’ve done it they won’t let you down.”

“I wish he’d publish
this
book,” Paris said, cuddling it.

“But only three people would buy it. Do you want that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I would still be thrilled.”

So Paris began to look at apartments, from ads in the Sunday
Times
. She quickly discovered that they were either hovels where the person who showed them was very nice to her, or good, expensive apartments where the sleazy super thought she must be a call girl to be able to afford the rent and made lewd remarks and winked. Obviously, a girl of her age, in her midtwenties, single, who wanted to rent a nice apartment, had to be up to no good. She finally asked her father to have lunch with her, alone.

They went to a steak house. “I can’t live at home any more,” Paris said. She saw that he looked hurt and bewildered. “I have to get my own apartment. I’ve been looking, but they treat me like dirt. I need your help.”

“Why can’t you live at home?” he asked, his eyes so sad and yet beginning to question, ready to help.

“I can’t. I’m going to get an apartment anyway, but if you came with me it would be easier.”

“All right,” he said.

“And don’t tell mother yet. When we find something nice then we’ll surprise her.”

He told her mother of course, he always told her everything, but her mother didn’t take the two of them seriously. It was too horrible a thought to contemplate, so she chose to ignore it for the moment. Paris spent the weekend at Rima’s parents’ house in the suburbs, and in the Sunday
Times
they saw an apartment that looked perfect. On Monday Paris and her father went to look at it. It was three small rooms, but it looked enormous to her, and just right to her father.

“It’s such a nice new building,” he said happily, “and it’s right across the street from the temple.”

“I don’t go to temple.”

“But it’s so pretty to look at. And maybe you’ll change your mind.”

They took the apartment, with her father cosigning the lease. Next time, Paris thought, I’ll sign my own lease because I’ll have the money. Her father was as pleased and thrilled as if it were his own new apartment and he was young again. He imagined visiting her in this nice clean place. He had rationalized it all immediately: his daughter was a writer and kept odd hours, she needed peace and quiet, therefore she needed a place of her own to do her work. What he didn’t realize was that his rationalization happened to be the truth. There was only one thing Paris intended to do in that apartment: write her book.

Her mother didn’t care for the apartment and didn’t tell any of her friends that her daughter had left home before she was married. She had to tell the family, but she told them Paris needed a place to write “because she works all night.” She then turned around, as Rima had said she would, and took Paris to wholesale houses with her old decorator from Brooklyn, paying for all her daughter’s furniture. Whenever anyone criticized Paris for moving away from home her mother came swiftly to her defense. Her father even acted proud.

Paris knew this was the greatest gamble of her life. As long as her parents paid her rent they still had the power to make her come home. She had to write the book and make her own money, as quickly as possible. The furniture wouldn’t come for months: she had only a bed, a lamp, her dresser from home, her typewriter, and a borrowed bridge table and chairs. That was enough.

When her married lover came to visit her in her new apartment Paris realized she couldn’t stand to have him touch her. She kept away from him, not even letting him take her hand. Suddenly she didn’t like him; he frightened and repelled her. He seemed like a stranger in this life. He realized it immediately.

“I knew this would happen,” he said sadly. He went to the door. “I’ll keep in touch, I’ll call you. Call me if you need anything. I love you. Goodbye.”

How could he say he loved her? He hadn’t married her, had he? He didn’t love her enough for that. She realized that he had only been her way of rebelling against her parents and their values, and now she didn’t have to rebel any more.

She lit the one lamp, on the bridge table next to her typewriter, and continued to work.

NINE

When Gilda Finkel was born her parents named her Golda, after her father’s dead mother, thinking they could call her Goldie for short. But when she was a little girl, with long red curls, her parents went to the movies on the Grand Concourse, to see Rita Hayworth in
Gilda
, and when they got out her mother said to her father: “Do you know who our Goldie is going to grow up to look like?”