Her Mother's Daughter (121 page)

SEPTEMBER
15, 1979. Joy has a new man and is going to marry him. I was at Mother's Saturday and she told me about it. We were sitting in the TV room, the eleven o'clock news was over, but she didn't get up to go to bed, she was waiting for me to begin our usual evening chat. And I sat there trying to think up things to tell her, but she doesn't listen to anything I say anymore. I'll tell her an entire story about somebody—my latest news from Arden, say—and ten minutes later she asks me how Arden is. After I've exhausted all my news, I ask for hers—it's like extracting teeth. How's Elvira? And Jean? She answers briefly, disgusted with everyone. Dad was sitting beside Mother on the loveseat, his arm across the back of the chair, embracing her, protecting her, without touching her.

“How's Joy?” I ask.

“Oh, she has a boyfriend.”

“Really!”

She grimaced. “I think she's going to marry him. Well, you know, she's like the Dabrowskis, she needs a man. She's not like us.”

Not like
us:
independent, alone. What is that man's arm doing around the back of your chair?

Still, I see her point—even though I resent her making it. There's only one person in this family who pays the price of this vaunted independence, and that's me. I'm the only one who's alone. How dare she!

But on the other hand, what is Joy doing? Now that she is finally fully independent, she's going to leash herself to someone again. Jonathan is working as an assistant coach at a small college in the Middle West; Julie's midway through her Ph.D., Jennifer is nearly finished with high school. They did it all themselves, working and getting fellowships, with just a little help from Amy. They are not a burden to Joy anymore. Why, then?

I met him Sunday—Joy had a brunch and invited the family. He seems okay. Nice, even. He's a widower, he owns the insurance agency where she's been working these past years. She seems ecstatically happy, but she defers to him all the time just the way she did to Justin.

Why?

OCTOBER
19, 1979. I've broken with Clara. It was too much, it's been too much for a long time. Italy clinched it, I suppose, although because Franny was there we kept the lid on, stayed polite. Constant squabbles, it was hopeless. We had to eat in the cheapest restaurants because that was all she could afford, even though I offered to pay. And when the cheap pensione began to get to me—I longed for a comfortable room with bath, a few luxuries—she wouldn't stay at a good hotel, even though I offered to pay. She had pride, she said.

And I know we agreed that we would both work on the trip; but what that meant to her was that she would work and I would hang around. She wanted to meet with the feminist women of Milan and that was fine with me, I wanted to photograph them too. But we went to Milan partly to see La Cena before it's gone, and the Brera and the Poldi Pezzoli, go to La Scala and the Galleria. But she has as much interest in art as I have in mountain climbing! All she wants to do is sit around talking with these women—she speaks Italian, and she's fascinated by them. But I
don't
speak Italian, and I wanted to be seeing! So that's okay, I said okay, if that's what you want, we'll go to the museums without you. And then she's hurt! The same thing happened in Florence. She didn't set foot in the Uffizi! I couldn't get over it!

The thing about being involved with someone is you do nothing but compromise. And the one who compromises is always me. I always have, it's my nature, I can't hold my own when I love someone. I end up giving up myself. It's intolerable!

On top of all that, she presents an ultimatum! She has waited patiently, and now it is time: we must become lovers. How can I be a lover when desire has dried up in me, when it is hard enough for me just to spend an evening making conversation. It's a drain. Everything drains me. The trip exhausted me, I was in a fury the entire time.

It's when we are alone together, Clara and I, that the magic happens. Something… what is it?…something to do with the way she nags me, insists on my speaking what I feel, pushes me until I do, and then I feel better, I feel healed. She doesn't give a damn for my reputation, my accomplishments. There is someone inside me that she loves, someone sweet and hurt and frightened that she tries to bring out. I don't recognize that person, don't want to either. Still, I feel different after I've spent time with Clara, the way your stomach feels after you eat mashed potatoes, warm and calm and full.

But when there are other people around, I feel her pressing on me, she wants to have me to herself. Unless she is meeting an important feminist, someone she can use. She wants us to live together. How can we, when we agree on nothing? when we do not live the same way? I am too old now to change, so is she. At our age, compromise is impossible. We can no longer merge our lives.

So that's that.

Clara says I am sick, neurotically depressed. I don't know who she thinks she is, diagnosing me. What is she, living like a graduate student, insisting on being marginal but hating the marginality! Enough, I said, say I'm sick and let it go! I'm tired, I'm old, I'm nearly fifty, let me be! She says there is no room in my heart for compromise because I am in love with my own pain, committed to it, and have no energy for any other kind of love. She says my mother is enshrined in the center of my heart, and jealously refuses to let anyone else in except my children, who are also her blood. I think she is insane on the subject of mothers because she hated her own. I am
not
influenced by my mother. Maybe I was when I was young, but I'm not now, in 1979, my god I'm going to be fifty next month. I hardly ever see Mother and I'm impatient with her when I do. My main feeling toward her is guilt. What is Clara talking about?

I am the way I am because my life has been hard and I was always too sensitive and I've been hurt too much and I'm worn out. And I don't mind being alone, I even like it.
She
may need someone but I don't. I've been alone all these years, essentially alone, even when I've been with someone. I can't change now. I don't even want to. I like being alone, doing what I want to do when I want to do it, no begging leave, no compromising.

Depressed indeed! What else could I be? who suffers the inevitable consequences of having a grandmother who died of grief and a mother who didn't. I combine them in myself, a living grief, a pillar of salt, an inconsolable, indestructible monument to sorrow, a rock like Niobe, too hard for tears.

When I rose to leave—we'd had dinner in her apartment—she cried. I could hear her all the way down the four flights of stairs.

TUES.
I can't understand how she can want me, given the way I am.

WED.
It's funny how I've become used to speaking to Clara every day on the telephone. No matter how busy she was, she always took time to listen to me, to talk to me. We talked about little things, how we slept and what we ate. If we ate—Clara is so driven that sometimes she forgets. We told each other whom we talked to that day and what we worked on, and we discussed problems—I have this pain, do you think I should see a doctor about it? Franny is acting up, what do you think is bothering her? This is the third time this writer has been late with her copy, but she is good, do you think I should stop giving her assignments, or should I go on doing it and lie to her about deadlines? What do you think is the best way of dealing with this guy at Majormedia? He's such a macho pig, but I don't want to lose their patronage, they give me interesting assignments. What do you think?

I say: “I slept badly last night.” In truth I sleep badly every night, have for years, maybe always. She says, “I'm sorry, sweets.” Her voice is a caress on my soul.

Was.

I called Clara last night. She said she didn't want to see me. Too painful, she said. I acted haughty and cold. She cried.

NOVEMBER
10, 1979. A marvelous assignment has come up and
I
got it! I am off to France for three weeks to photograph Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, women like that, for
Style
magazine—an in-depth photoessay on French woman writers. A real boon to my career! lots of prestige and
Style,
unlike
Woman,
pays top dollar. I happened to meet Maggie Dunne on the street and told her about it: she always gets the high-style photographic assignments, but not this time, and my dear, her face turned quite green.

Maybe I'll buy myself a fur coat for this trip, why not, I can afford it. Paris can be raw in November. Something high-style, impressive, why not?

It will be good to get away. Franny can stay at Jillian's.

FEBRUARY
Sanibel Recuperating—since just after Christmas. Got sick right after France. In France. Mussels. Diarrhea—dehydration, aches arms legs, high fever. Didn't go away. Could barely move. Too weak to walk. No one seemed to know what it was. Even Billy—who flew down from Boston and examined me. He spoke to Mina—she discussed all the test results with him. Everyone mystified. When the fever passed—got up and tried to function.

Couldn't. Couldn't do anything at Christmas. Mother so angry that we didn't come out there and cook that she didn't come Christmas Eve. First Christmas in my life I didn't spend with her. Didn't say she wasn't coming—just “got sick” the last minute. But Joy and her man and the kids came—and Billy and Livvy. And
Arden
and kids. Don't know where they all stayed. All helped—tremendous help—couldn't have done it. Dizzy. Weak.

Then pneumonia. Mina sent me down here, found the name of an internist here. She said: Do nothing but sit in the sun. Wouldn't pay any attention to her but can't do anything. Can't even lift my camera.

Too tired to write more.

FEB T
hink it's the third. Never know what day it is anymore.

Sitting out on the deck of this rented house looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. Blue-green and calm today sky pale blue. Nice. Been here—a month?—chilly and cloudy—everything grey—water—sky. Blessing today: sun—warmth—color.

MON
Feeling a little stronger today. Going to try to write a little every day.

Am I one of those women who use weakness to hold their kids. Because Arden is here—came down to nurse me—Franny wrote her before Christmas—I didn't know—I didn't plan it. I didn't know much. She came down with the children and she and Franny made the Christmas Eve feast. Where did everybody stay, I have to ask her. And then she insisted on coming with me to Florida.

It is so nice, her here, warms me.

TUES
At a motel! Those poor kids had to pay to stay at a motel over Christmas. Makes me feel awful.

We have a beautiful house here facing the water, with four bedrooms—Arden and I each have one, the boys share one, and Sarah has a tiny one to herself. She's adorable. But I worry: Jeremy ought to be in school. Arden says no. She says school ruins children destroys creativity. She wants to keep him out as long as she can. But what about learning to get along with other children. He has a brother and a sister, she says. Every afternoon, while Sarah is napping, she sits with the boys in the family room or whatever they call it of this house. She's set up a blackboard and she teaches them writing and counting. They already know how to read. After their lessons, they read together, each taking turns.

It's good she came. Good for me. But good for her too. She doesn't look well. She's pale and too thin and strained three little children it's so hard she looks older than thirty-one. Maybe, if the sun will stay out for a while, she'll get some color.

FRIDAY
Missed a few days, feeling cronk again.

Letter from Franny this morning cheered me up. What a sweetheart she is. Poor baby must feel strange living with Jillian, even though the Murrays are very fond of her. She makes herself sound cheerful. Maybe she even
is
cheerful. I thought I was making myself sound cheerful but I wasn't. Angry they said, all of them. Fooled no one but myself. Thought I was Pollyanna and all the while I was Medea. Used to be Pollyanna.

Grey weather today.

SATURDAY
Just realized I forgot Mother's birthday. Forgot my own too. Fifty. I turned fifty it came and went and I hardly knew it. Did anyone wish me a happy birthday? Was I home? Surely Franny did. Did Billy call? Too sick to know.

MONDAY
Don't know how to explain it to her without telling her how sick I've been. Don't want to tell her the truth, she worries so about me, she's sick enough herself. Not today.

T
UESDAY
She's probably feeling hurt and abandoned. She already feels no one cares. Evening I spent with them last fall, went out there after Clara and I…Sitting in TV room after the news, looking for conversation.

How's everyone? I ask.

Grimace, tragic face. No one comes to see me.

I know how she is to me, I know she is the same to Joy and her children, Joy has told me so. I say: “But, Mother, when people do come to see you, you act as if you aren't interested in them. You don't listen to what they say. Maybe they don't come because you act as if you don't care about them.”

“Well, the truth is,
I don't
!” she rages, flushing.

“I know,” I say sadly, accepting her, accepting whatever she is, licensing her self-absorption.

That's how I feel too when I'm in the black hole, but look at me, all my kids came. They do love me. I'm not utterly alone, it isn't true, not true. Why do I go on feeling it, then?

WEDNESDAY
But it isn't true for her either. So why does she feel it is? Why does she insist it is? Because it's her truest feeling, it's what she felt when she froze into her present shape, when I was nine years old my father died my mother never combed my hair it is her enduring truth and nothing that has happened since has touched it. Her sorrow is the one thing she trusts, her jewel, her truth; it is the pearl she has created out of her wretchedness, the one thing she owns, the one thing that is indisputably hers.