Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) (23 page)

“I'm not a child,” Betty said. “Do
you
have to go to the bathroom?”

When Betty did get up to use the restroom, Mimi leaned over to me.

“She's incontinent, so I have her wearing maxi pads. It helps.”

I smiled as neutrally as possible. I was grateful Mimi was there to give Betty the help she clearly needed, even in her own unique way. At the same time, I could sense it probably wasn't just paranoia on Betty's part that made her distrust her own daughter.

After lunch, we went back to Mimi's apartment, where Mary met me. Seated on the chair Mimi had gestured her into, she glanced down at the item resting near her seat and did a double take. I did, too. It was a prosthetic leg. Mimi had liked the look of it when she'd found it in the street, so she brought it home and painted the toenails bright red.

On another trip my Dad and I made to New York City together in an effort to get Betty into assisted living, the miraculous happened. Mimi's health was not good, causing her to be in a wheelchair. Betty was leaning on her walker more than ever. But we managed to have lunch together—Betty, Mimi, my dad, and I—and everyone came
out unscathed. Sitting at the table with them, watching my dad to see whether these female relatives he felt so persecuted by would say something to make him bolt, worrying about Betty's health and yet still wary of her sharp tongue, surrendering to the completely unpredictable diva that was Auntie Mimi, I somehow felt intrinsically comfortable in that strange, ineffable way of family. I had longed for my dad and anything related to him for decades, and now he was here with me, and weirdly, these near strangers were my people.

Next, my dad and I took Betty to a doctor's appointment. Betty was, as ever, pure Betty.

“Why would you ever start smoking at thirty?” Betty's doctor asked.

“My looks were gone, so it didn't matter,” Betty said.

I was twenty-five. Apparently, I didn't have much time left.

At lunch after the appointment, Betty did her best to eat her hamburger, even though her poorly fitting dentures popped in and out of her mouth. It was clear the moment for assistance was now, and I was glad I had my dad to help me.

Scott came to visit after Christmas, and although his stay had a few rocky moments, we enjoyed our time together. My period had remained irregular, and I had been diagnosed with an endocrine disorder, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). It wasn't explained to me very well at the time; I was just put on the pill to regulate my cycle. It worked, which was a relief after more than a decade of my body doing its own thing. This also meant we didn't have to worry about birth control. I hadn't been with anyone else, and I didn't ask whether he'd given us a reason to use condoms again. I did my best to pretend nothing had changed.

No matter the underlying tensions between us about what would happen next, or how consistently we avoided talking about it, Scott and I seemed to fit together just as well as we always had. He was extremely affectionate and sweet with me, and we still felt very much like a couple. And yet, neither of us knew how to bridge the geographical divide
between us. We got drunk the night before his scheduled return, conveniently causing him to miss his flight. Without having decided, we'd decided. Scott hit it off with two of my new friends and started playing music and working with them. His view of Boston improved, now that he was earning money doing something cool and maybe forming a band.

John came out to Jamaica Plain to have coffee with Scott and me. My relationship with John had been so new and tentative before that they'd never met. Even now, it was so baffling to have John meet my boyfriend that it seemed as if we weren't ourselves. We were characters in a romantic comedy starring Craig T. Nelson as the dad.

Surprisingly for me, I was nervous about what Scott would think of John's rotten teeth and how he talked loudly about topics other people found off-putting. I was so confident in my love for Scott, it never crossed my mind to worry what John would think of him. I was relieved when they fell into easy conversation, both charmed by the bright, inquisitive mind of the other. Sneaking happy side glances at Scott, I felt it was all possible, like we could really build a life in Boston that would make us both happy.

Scott was never great about returning phone calls to his friends and family, and by the time he'd been in Boston with me for five weeks, he hadn't talked to his parents in almost that long. Eventually, they got him on the phone. We were both sitting on my bed as Scott listened to what his dad needed to tell him. Suddenly his whole body tensed. I sat up and put my hand on his back, growing increasingly concerned as he started to tear up.

“Yeah, let me talk to her,” he said.

By the time Scott hung up, he was already far away from me again. His mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and while her prognosis was good, his family and he had agreed he should go back west during her treatment. Given where we were in our relationship, I couldn't just give up my apartment, my freelance contacts, my whole new life. He got himself on the next flight back. Our second honeymoon was over.

A week after Scott left, Betty called. She was really out of it and upset, but I couldn't figure out exactly why. I didn't know how to help her, even though it was clear how badly she needed assistance. When faced with all she required, and how little my dad and Mimi seemed capable of, I felt young and powerless. I also hated feeling beholden to her, because after my happy reunion with Scott, I was thinking more and more of moving back to Portland. My other grandmother, Grammy, had lymphoma, and it had spread to four places, including her bones. Mom was sad. I was sad. Nowhere felt safe. I wanted Scott to comfort me, but he was far away and in need of comfort himself.

By April, Scott was giving me less to hold on to. After barely returning my calls for weeks, he sent me an e-mail: “I'm in a weird head space, and I don't feel like I can talk to you right now.” It was only fair. As much as I wanted to get back together, I'd since had flirtations with another guy. I wrote back a short message saying I respected his request, and he should take as long as he needed. But as I was writing, I got an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I had nothing and no one in the entire world. I applied myself to our time apart like the straight-A student I'd once been, sure if I emerged perfect, we'd find a way back together.

Every time the phone rang, I was filled with hope: Scott. When I heard John's voice on the other end, I was disappointed, which I never would have thought possible when I was a little girl. Betty's condition had worsened and he was traveling to New York the next day. I didn't feel up for the conversation and I had no advice or encouragement for him. Thankfully, he seemed to sense this and kept it short. He called me again from New York, understandably upset. While we had aimed to get Betty into the best assisted-living facility possible, even if it meant being a little less than honest about how much assistance she really needed, we hadn't registered her rapid deterioration.

At the end of April, as I sat where I spent most of my time in those days—at my desk—Scott called me and said we needed to talk. I could hardly breathe.

“
I need to end our relationship and get on with my life,” he said. “I've been unhappy over you for too long now, and it has only gotten in the way of my ability to get my life together and be happy.”

I cried, a lot. As much as I'd been prepared for this, I was completely devastated. I wanted to get away from his words. But I didn't want to get off the phone, because when I did, he wouldn't be my boyfriend anymore. He told me he'd been seeing someone, and even though it had ended, he'd been happier without me in his life. Even though nothing had changed—he was still in love with me, still wanted all the things we'd talked about having together, and still considered me his best friend—he had to move on. Even if I did plan to move to Portland that fall, it was too far away. I was lost, but I could see how important it was for him that he'd finally made some movement.

“I'm proud of you for doing what you need to do,” I said. “All I've ever really wanted was for you to be happy, and to be doing what you care about in life.”

There was nothing left to say, and we hung up. It was official. After five and a half years, we had broken up. Not only had I lost Scott, I'd lost my fantasy of escaping back to Portland, the small pond with the cheap rent and the dive bars. I had no choice but to be strong now. I vowed to turn my longing into places I'd seen, things I'd accomplished. I knew I had so much to offer, maybe more than Scott was able to see.

B
etty's social worker found her in her room, disoriented and frightened, in her own waste, apparently having been like that for several days. Instead of going to a retirement community, she went to the hospital. John rushed down to be with her.

“All she wanted was ice cream,” he said from a pay phone, his voice cracked and tired. “It was like she was a child again. And that's all that mattered to her.”

John and Mimi quickly resumed their multidecade squabble. He spent the next day at his hostel, arguing on the phone with her—literally
fighting about how to best handle Betty's affairs, while both picked at the scabs created by the lack of overt love and affection Betty had shown them—and sulking at Mimi's domineering personality and unnecessarily hurtful words. During all of this, Betty died at the hospital.

When John called to tell me, he was inconsolable over the fact that his issues with his sister had prevented him from saying good-bye to his mother, and now she was gone.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

The loss registered for me like something getting sucked out of the pressurized cabin of an airplane. Betty had been a force in my life, and I'd miss her eccentric zeal. I was glad she was at peace after a lifetime of struggle. But more than anything else, honestly, I was incredibly grateful that none of this had fallen on me, as it would have only a few months earlier.

John was already in New York City. He would stay and dispose of her belongings and make the arrangements for her remains. He would handle Mimi. While John wrestled with guilt that he had not been with his mother when she passed, the experience of helping her, even the little bit he'd been able to when she was alive, and taking care of her estate after her passing, had a visibly positive effect on him. Something had needed to be handled, and for once in his life, he had stayed and dealt with it. His steadfastness made me see him in a new light, too. It made me respect him, a feeling I'd never had before. I started thinking of him, and referring to him, as Dad again.

Finally, he was doing what a dad was supposed to do, stepping up to provide a buffer between me and something I wasn't yet ready to handle. And so when we found out it would cost three hundred dollars to have Betty cremated, although I could have come up with the money, I didn't offer to do so. My dad didn't have three hundred dollars and couldn't raise it. Mimi couldn't or wouldn't help. So my dad borrowed the money from Betty's social worker.

Meanwhile, Dad went through Betty's papers and made some alarming discoveries. There were department-store credit card bills
charged up for thousands of dollars. Apparently, she had been entered in several jewelry-of-the-month clubs, and other extravagant purchases had been made on the cards as well. It was possible that an unscrupulous store employee had preyed upon her confusion at the end of her life, but my dad suspected Mimi. Their interactions soured further when he found the paperwork for Betty's life insurance policies. She had two. One benefited Mimi, and the other benefited me. Dad would have only benefited if Betty had died through accidental death or dismemberment, which Mimi taunted him with, as if it somehow signified how little Betty had thought of him. The payout was only a few thousand dollars for both Mimi and me, but that was a lot of money for all of us. I needed that money, desperately, and I was afraid Dad would ask me for some, which my mom had always warned me to protect myself against. At the same time, I wondered whether I was selfish not to offer him any, even though it was Betty's decision to divide the money as she had.

It became a given that my dad and I would see each other at least once a month for our regular outings to the Harvard Film Archive. At the beginning of the month, he mailed me a calendar and had me write him with my pick. He had been appalled by my lack of culture when it came to cinema, even though I'd taken several classes on the subject in college. He'd become a lifelong cineaste when he'd stumbled into a European film at age fifteen and enjoyed the sight of a woman's bare breasts.

When my dad took me to my first Fellini film,
La Dolce Vita,
I was hungover and frayed, as usual, having been out late the night before. I was in no mood for a dad-daughter outing, but I knew I was the one with the power to disappoint now, and I couldn't bear to let him down, so I rose to the occasion.

As Nico sulked onto the screen, all of my worlds came together in a way I found comforting and inspiring. I was transfixed by the story. It followed a journalist who longs to write a great novel but can't because he's too distracted by his job as a society reporter and the many affairs he is juggling. I could not have related more.

After the film let out, my dad and I walked amid the hushed glow of the Harvard campus, talking about Fellini's gorgeous compositions and bittersweet comedy. When he said he'd walk me to the train, as I knew he would, I no longer resented his offer. Instead, I found the gesture thoughtful. As my father leaned toward me and listened closely to every word I said about my newfound passion for Fellini, I bloomed under his attention.

The autumn was hard. Mary started dating the guy I'd rebounded from Scott with, and I was deeply jealous whenever we were all at our apartment. Scott was seeing a new girl. I felt very much alone. He came through town with his band in November, and we fell right back together, even though his new girlfriend had said he could sleep with any other women on the road, except for me. For four days, I completely gave myself over to our reunion, just like I'd done with my dad as a kid. When he left, I was demolished.