Inventing Memory (26 page)

"
Mamele—
in America pregnant women
work
, ride trains, walk in the streets…."

And Mama would cluck her tongue, and produce amulets from the old country to protect my baby, and worry, worry, worry.

She was shocked at how irreligious the Jews were in America. Where was the
mikveh
? Why did the men shave their faces and work on Saturdays? Why did the married women wear their own hair? Why were the children so disrespectful to their elders? Where could you get freshlaid eggs?

I installed Mama in the kitchen, where she felt most comfortable, and I found sewing jobs for Tanya and Bella, but Leonid needed no help from me. He was out like a shot, drumming up business, learning English, working first as a butcher's boy, then somehow getting the use of a borrowed wagon and making a deal with a Chinaman to wash and starch the butchers' gowns. From these humble beginnings, he became the "founder and president" (as he always used to say) of Sanitary Star, which, by the end of the Great War, was providing linens to all the swellest restaurants in New York. And so Leonid Solomon became Lee Swallow, with diamond cuff links and diamond studs and a string of mistresses—Ziegfeld girls mostly—not to mention his glittering wife, Sylvia, whom I
never
liked. It must have been 1912 when they came—I'm sure of it—because a few months later, right after Christmas, I took the whole family—the
ganse meshpocheh—
to see
Peg O' My Heart
at the Cort Theatre, starring a younger-than-springtime Laurette Taylor. I attribute many of my brother's tastes to this outing. He
never
forgot the first Yankee play he saw in America. Mama hated it, not understanding a word. To her it was all
goyishe mishegas
. But Leonid—or Lee, as he already called himself—fell in love with Laurette Taylor as Peg (as only a
yiddel
gruber yung
can fall in love with a
shiksa
actress), and I believe he determined then and there to have an English Tudor house like the one in the stage set—not to mention a
goyishe
-looking wife. As for Bella, she always preferred
The Gold Diggers
, which we saw a few years later. And Tanya was a devotee of Second Avenue (which in those days meant the Yiddish theater and only the Yiddish theater).

And Mama? Well, Mama never liked
any
play but
Der Dybbuk
at the Yiddish Art Theatre.

"Dat's vat I call a
play
," she said in English. "Broadvay you can have…." And Leonid and I applauded, because she rarely said a word in English—though she understood a lot more than she let on.

Ah, my little mama—
Mamele—
how I miss her! And the older I get, the more she is with me. She is always with me. She used to drive me absolutely
meshuggeh
with worriment, but she is part of me. She is also part of you.

It was your mother, Sally, who began the whole project of interviewing me. This was when you were very small and she was overcome with family feeling. She could hardly believe how strong her feelings were. She fell head over heels in love with you—the way we all fall in love with our babies. Then, when your father kidnapped you (she had all kinds of plans to kidnap you back) and did all that legal
hoo-ha
, she wanted me to narrate the family roots for you, to talk to you on tape for the future, so you would know where you came from and why.

The future is such an odd concept. What do we know of the future? What do we even know of the present or the past? Your mother was not really a bad sort. It was never easy for her, with her father threatening to commit suicide all the time—and finally succeeding. I blame that side of the family for the alcoholism too, by the way. Levitsky used to say: "To mine opinion, they were all
shickers
, those Wallinskys, and if Hitler hadn't got them, the bottle would have." "
Oy oy oy—shicker
is a
goy
" was one of his favorite lines—never mind whether or not it was relevant, the Wallinskys being, of course, as Jewish as we.

Sally's life was hard from the beginning. Salome batted her back and forth to California depending on her romantic life—Marco, Robin, God knows who else. Levitsky and I adored her, but how could we make up for the father she did not have? We tried, God knows. I think even Robinowitz tried—but he was another
vantz
, it turned out. He tried to steal the gallery from all of us, and your mother eventually threw
him
out too. (Sally's long lost half-brother, Lorenzo, turned out to be a nogoodnik also. That's why I think he really is Robin's flesh and blood—though Salome was never one hundred percent sure
who
the father was.) After Salome threw Robin out, she invited her old friend Marco to live with her, but she never married him. She'd had enough of marriage. And now she decided that Lorenzo—your uncle who finally took over the Levitsky Gallery—was
Marco's
son.
Veys nicht
, as my mother used to say. "Little children you hold in your arms; big children stand on your head." Of course, it's better in Yiddish, like all these things….

Sally finally seemed to find herself when she found that guitar, but then she got
too
famous—there
is
such a thing as too famous. When she vanished and nobody knew where she was all that terrible time, Salome nearly lost her mind.

"Mama—Sally is missing!" she screamed to me on the telephone. And she hired all sorts of detectives to find her. I tried to comfort her. "Daughters always come back," I said. "After all, even
you
came back."

"This is different—you don't understand," Salome yelled.

Sally had taken up with that old writer in Vermont, as I suppose you know by now. Who doesn't? It was in the
New York Times
. Then, after he died, his children descended and kicked her out. She ran away again and this time joined up with a commune of women who called themselves witches. She claimed that the Jewish religion was
patriarchal—
her word—and witchcraft was better. She was always looking for some sort of salvation. That was her problem. There is no easy salvation—patriarchal, matriarchal, schmatriarchal. Mama used to say: "God gave more wit to women than to men." But I'm afraid Sally was the exception that (as they say) proves the rule.

No, I don't really mean that. I loved Sally—
how
I loved her. She was a wonderful little girl, so smart, so clever, so
musical
. She wrote music before she could even put down the
notes
. She would sing to her piano teacher, Lillian Zemann, and Lillian would say: "Perfect pitch! The child has perfect pitch! And she composes like a Mozart! A Mozart she is! I never met a child like her! God help her. Sometimes I think she's too talented for a girl."

"Lilly," I would say, "bite your tongue! How can a girl be too talented?"

"I have to explain this to
you—
of all people?" Lilly would ask. "You
know
what means too talented. You, Salome, your granddaughter. It's a curse and you know it: smart, talented, headstrong, opinionated women get their own way everywhere but in bed! I should tell
you
this?
You
should be telling me!"

Lorenzo was also part of the problem. Salome couldn't help being in love with him, the only
boychik
, and Sally felt displaced. He was a little
vantz
too—spoiled by Levitsky, spoiled by both his daddies (they both claimed him), and treated like the Prince of Wales. He had riding lessons in Central Park, wore handmade boots from Hermès in Paris, was driven to school by the chauffeur. I told Salome not to do it, but she couldn't help herself. She made her only son into a monster. Of course he assumed the family business was his—and the truth was, Levitsky wouldn't ever have thought of training a girl to it, however smart she was. Later, when Sally discovered she hated fame and all its trappings, she figured she'd have a place with Renzo in the family business—but Renzo didn't want the competition. He figured he had the inheritance all sewed up. Then he married that tough cookie, and she didn't want her sister-in-law around either, wanted
her
children to inherit. It was not that Sally lacked for money. She needed a job, a cause, something to do—but Renzo and Babs kept her out. That was the beginning of the end.

Lorenzo really had delusions of grandeur. He was an expert at bossing the staff, having suits made in London, sending home cases of wine from France, collecting starlets and polo ponies. Levitsky used to say he was working on growing a foreskin. He would send his mother pictures of himself on horseback and she would
kvell. My
mama used to say: "If a poor man ate a chicken, one of them was sick." God knows what she would have said about polo ponies! Probably: "If a Jew rides a pony, one of them is an ass." Never tell that to your uncle Lorenzo. He doesn't have such a sense of humor about himself.

12

Falling Stars

If the rich could hire people to die for them, the poor
would make a nice living.

—YIDDISH PROVERB

D
avid de Hirsch kept phoning, and Sara kept saying she had no baby-sitter and couldn't go out to dinner. He offered to come up to her apartment and make her dinner, and eventually—it was the fifth call—she agreed.

David turned out to be an extraordinary cook. He brought fresh vegetables from his parents' Connecticut place, live lobsters from a fish market downtown, shallots, herbs, wine, newly baked bread. While Sara put Dove to bed, David happily made dinner.

"Do you do this all the time? Or is it special for me?" Sara asked.

"The latter."

"Why?"

"Because I want to. Because this was the only way I figured I'd see you again. You're pretty resistant."

"Like a strain of flu outevolving an antibiotic?"

"At least I'm the
cure
in your figure of speech, not the disease."

"Don't be so sure. I'm a bad bet for romance. I'm still married, for starters. And I'm through with love."

"Nobody who looks like you is through with love."

"You're wrong. Looks are deceiving."

"Have some lobster," said David.

"When in doubt, eat
trayfe
."

"I know the way to a woman's heart—feed 'em and fuck 'em."

"How delicately you put it," said Sara.

"I try," said David, "to cover my terror with bravado."

They talked about their lives. Sara told David about her childhood memories of Montana—now distant as the moon—how strange it was to suddenly realize she
did
have a mother, her finding Sally, her estrange ment from her father, many other things she was surprised to find herself able to talk about.

"So where is your mother now?"

"Dead, unfortunately. I would like to ask her so many things. I'm hardly ready to be motherless. Though actually I was often motherless even when she was alive."

"What happened to your mother?"

"She started to drink again after I married Lloyd and left London with him. She was furious with her brother for some financial shenanigans he pulled. She felt abandoned by me and everyone. She fell apart. Supposedly it was a car crash that killed her. I know it was the booze in her blood. She was allergic to alcohol. When she picked up a drink, she was actually
saying
she wanted to die. She was an alcoholic, and I made fun of her support system because I was ignorant and stupid and angry—a snot-nosed kid—and I feel responsible. She was much more fragile than anyone knew. And all those meetings were holding her together. I should never have made fun of what was essential to her—her religion."

"It's not your fault."

"But I think it
is
my fault." Sara started to cry. "I blew it with my only mother. You don't get a second chance. Or a second mother."

"Maybe she blew it with you. A mother is supposed to be able to take guff from her own daughter without falling apart. It's the deal."

"It is?"

"Look," David said, "I found out only last year that I was adopted. I was furious with my mother for not telling me—then, gradually, I worked it through. I railed and screamed for several months, and then it hit me that I was not promised perfection. Who has an uncomplicated life? The truth is, we all have to make up our own lives, invent our own ancestors, sort out our own memories. In the end, we are all self-made."

"How do you know that at your young age?"

"I'm not so young," said David.

"How old are you?"

"I was born in 1980. I'm old enough to know I'm madly in love with you and plan never to let you out of my sight."

"You can't know that. You hardly know me."

"I can. I do."

"David, this is ridiculous," Sara said.

"Why? Because I'm so sure and people aren't supposed to be sure? Look, I'm not asking you for anything—just the right to make you dinner from time to time and talk to you. Why is that so scary?"

Sara looked at his sweet, earnest face and asked herself why she was so scared.

"I don't want to be dropped on my head again," she said. "Anyway, I don't need a man…. Why should I need a man?"

"For fun," said David. "Isn't that enough of a reason? And of course because I was the one who got you into the secret storeroom."

He did the dishes and went home without making a pass—the first of many nights he did that.

When Lloyd discovered that Sara was busy nearly every night, that she seemed to have a regular dinner date—even though she was always home—he became very agitated.

"Why can't I come up and see Dove?" he asked. "Are you trying to keep my child from me?"

"You can take her on the weekend. I just can't have you wandering in here as if you still live here. It's too difficult for me."

"You have a boyfriend."

Sara said nothing. She didn't have a boyfriend. She had, merely, a friend. It was nice to have a friend. She didn't say: You have a friend, too. She didn't say: You had one first. She knew that Lloyd could be dangerous if aroused to ire. She was going to outsmart him. It was a matter of survival.

"I'll see you on Friday when you come to pick up Dove," she said. "Got to go."

"Good for you," said David when she hung up. "You don't owe him anything."

How could she explain that she felt she owed him everything even though there was no reason for it.

"Then why do I feel my life is tangled root and branch with him?"

"Because it
was
. But you've started to untangle it. Now I'm going to make you homemade
orechiette
."

"Now that you know you have my guidance, Sarichka, what are you afraid
of?"
Sarah Sophia Solomon Levitsky seemed to whisper in her ear.

"Everything and nothing," said Sara.

"What did you say?" asked David.

"I think I was just talking to myself," Sara said.

The truth was that Sara was looking for flaws in David, signs that he was insincere, a bounder, the sort of man
Sally
would have become involved with, but she couldn't find any—not yet. Her mother had been a terrible judge of character, had constantly fallen in love with sycophants, interviewers, managers, R and D men, people who had hidden agendas. Sara had always been afraid that her mother's bad judgment would come to trip her up. She was very hard on herself, always looking for her own Achilles' heel.

"Does your mother know we're friends?" Sara asked David later when they sat down to eat his homemade pasta.

"Not from me, she doesn't. I think it would be too complicated if she knew. You haven't said anything, have you?"

"It's the
last
thing I'd talk about with her."

"Good," said David. "Stick to work. Talk to her about what you're finding in the archive."

"That's the problem," Sara said. "What I'm finding is not going to fulfill her theories about Jewish women. She's not going to
like
what I'm finding. My feeling is that she wants glorious heroines, and what I'm finding are women dancing with feet of clay."

"So maybe that's your story."

"It
can't
be my story."

"Let your story be whatever your story is," David said.

Sara remembered when she was summoned back to London to say goodbye to her mother's body. They had tried to put the pieces back together, but it was obvious they were held together by her clothes. Sara flung herself on the coffin, weeping, but even as she did that she wondered what she was weeping for. For the mother she never really had? For her own guilt? For her mother's wasted life?

The AA pigeons gathered around, clucking. They were kind, but they had no idea what Sara needed. Lorenzo made a brief appearance, weeping for his own mortality and he tried to enlist Sara in a scheme to sell her mother's remaining artifacts to some rock and roll museum. Sara was so offended that she fled from him.

He returned to the Connaught, where he had a girlfriend the age of his niece waiting. And the
crowds
that showed up! Hundreds of diehard fans arrived in the rain, holding aloft banners and pictures of Sally Sky. One scuzzy-looking man had an umbrella hung with pictures of Sally, circa 1969, hand-painted by someone with absolutely no talent. His raincoat was covered with buttons from Sally's concerts in the sixties and early seventies. One pathetic old hippie tunelessly sang Sally's most famous songs. "Listen to your voice," he croaked. "My nobodaddy daddy," he whined.

The fans even jostled forward in the chapel, wanting to touch Sally's corpse, tear off a piece of her shroud (a floaty Zandra Rhodes dress), or clip a lock of her hair. But the coffin was closed. So they turned to Sara instead. They tried to photograph her, to tear off bits of
her
clothes, at least to touch her. She recoiled. Her skin crawled. Why did they want
relics
? Should she have brought "pigges bones" to sell, like Chaucer's Pardoner? The best part of Sally was in her
music
. Why did they want pieces of her daughter's clothes? No wonder John Lennon never left the house! If Sally's fans loved her songs so much, why didn't they know that all that was left of her was in her music?

Sara found the funeral so upsetting that she wanted to flee, to see no one, but she was trapped in the chapel by all the surging fans. Pushed by the crowd, she
couldn't
escape. She wanted to scream, but no sounds came.

Sara suffered terribly from claustrophobia, which she could usually conquer when she was calm, but at times like this it hit her full blast. She was starting to panic. She thought she might hit people or wet her pants. And the worst thing was that nobody realized how close to hysteria she was. Except for one woman—an American who had grown up in the glory days of Hollywood with a film director father. She was at least twenty years older than Sally. And she seemed to have gotten her accent from Glinda, the Good Witch of the West. Tiny, she had a pretty doll-like face and curly hair, and she gave off an aroma of essence of roses. Sara imagined that a rainbow would be illuminated over her head if she ever sang "When you walk through a storm, keep your head up high…"

"I want you to know this about your mother," the woman said. "She loved you more than anyone in the whole wide world. She wanted the very best for you. She couldn't always show it. She was funny that way. But she wanted you to know how much she loved you."

Words do not make up for much, but sometimes the right words at the right time can open a door. The door opened as soon the door to the crematory fire would open. Sara's tears flooded out and would not stop.

The doll-like woman had a doll-like name: Shirlee Tuck. She took Sara by the hand and waited with her through all the rites at the hushed funeral parlor in Chelsea: the playing of Sally's recordings, the speeches by Judy Collins, Lucy and Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, and a very rambling Dylan, who allowed as how much he had
loved
Sally, how he
wished
he could have saved her, how she was
always
his muse. Then came the nondenominational cremation, with the coffin rushing into the flames as if in a ride in Disneyland. At least, Sara thought, I don't have to put a shovelful of earth on her coffin and leave her alone in the graveyard. She always hated that moment. She always thought the dead would be cold and lonely. But Sally would be dispersed in the moist English air. Eventually the molecules that once were her mother would drift toward the Pale, and her ancestors would reclaim her.

At last she would meet the angel Dovie, the
malech ha-movis
, who is also the Messiah. Does everyone have her own angel? Sara wondered.

When the endless day was over, Shirlee took Sara back to her place in the West End and stayed with her, soothing her.

Shirlee lived in a narrow house in a little mews off Berkeley Square, where the nightingale sang no more. Inside were white walls, red roses, a warm fire, a narrow staircase. Tea was brought by a gentle Filipina wearing white pajamas and white flip-flops.

"This is Sally's daughter, Sara," said Shirlee.

"Sorry for your loss," said the Filipina, whose name was Dolores. She had a sad face to match her name. Which came first—the name or the sadness?

Shirlee let Sara cry as long as she needed to. Then she produced a letter from Sally, written just days before her death.

Dear Sara,

I suspect that when I am gone and you try to add up the bits and
pieces of my life, you will not be able to make sense of much. It's in the
nature of things for daughters to dismiss mothers rather than vice versa.
You will know you have done well with your daughter when she storms
out of the house without your permission.

Lives are not given; they are seized. If you do well as a parent, you
give your child that fierceness—the fierceness of a baby eagle who
snatches nourishment out of the mother's mouth, then flies away. We
have to learn to compliment ourselves as parents. It's vain to expect
compliments from our children. I have not done all I wanted with you.
You must do the rest yourself. I must learn now to detach. The hardest
thing in the world is to love a child fiercely, then to detach—but they
are the two halves of love. This is the only way I can detach, so that you
may seize your life someday. I know you will forgive me—if not now,
then perhaps later.

Your loving Mother,

Sally Sky

P.S. I was fascinated to read once that mothers and daughters (and
the grandmothers and great-grandmothers before them) carry identical
DNA in their cells. Thus the feeling that they are alike has a
biological basis.
It is not merely conjecture. But just because the DNA is the same
does not mean the destinies are. We do have choice about our lives, and
our destinies are not wholly out of our control. I do not mean that we
can be God-like or make our wills override God's, but intention counts
for a great deal. What I have discovered in my life is that whenever I
have wanted something deeply and badly enough, I have achieved it, and
whenever I have been lazy and careless, it slipped through my fingers.