Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience (14 page)

“I have taken her for coffee,” Mom agreed. She straightened her skirt, smoothing out the creases. I waited for more. Instead, she headed toward the hall. If I followed her, I might regret it for life.

But I needed her care. Despite what I’d heard about my mother that day and what she might have done, willingly or not, she was precisely the woman I needed. Even more than reassurance, I needed her to stand up for me: to say that no one, not even a nun, could humiliate or otherwise tamper with her daughter. No way, not without answering to Joy Cronin. But Mom’s last words as she rounded the corner in the hallway were: “Eileen, there’s a baby in every corner of this house ... Donuts and coffee? Since when have I had time for that?”

CHAPTER 11

The Last Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Me

A
year after I first heard the word “thalidomide,” I had all but forgotten Sister Luke’s revelation in front of my fifth-grade class. Had it really happened? Then I woke up one morning to hear cries from downstairs, moans mixed with an incoherent language spoken by my mother—signs of another manic episode. The rest of the morning was a flurry of transactions: someone said an ambulance had been called and Mom would be back in the locked ward before school let out; toddlers bawled from cribs in three different bedrooms; someone handed me lunch money; we middle children were whisked out the door. “Just go. Just go to school,” we were told. And we left.

My classmate Debbie had moved to another parish, making school lonely again. Having arrived early, I had to wait in a lineup on the playground until the first buzzer sounded. I couldn’t contain my anxiety about what was going on at home, and I blurted out to a group of girls in the lineup that my mother had just gone crazy. I said, “They’re taking her away right now. They’ll put her in a straitjacket and jolt her with electricity.” The girls responded as one might expect of sixth-graders: they dropped their jaws, stared in disbelief, and spread the word through the line.

While I waited for our teacher to take us into class, it occurred to me that this was not exactly the reaction I’d wanted. The shock of seeing and hearing my mother in such a state now seemed like a dream, and maybe I had just told a lie. Inside, as I took my seat, I decided that it was probably just as well that I’d gotten it off my chest.

By the time school let out I might have forgotten about my public announcement, except that I was ambushed at home by Liz, who tackled me and climbed onto my stomach. In front of my friend Penny, Liz squished my jaw between her fingers to look right into my eyes. “Did you tell people that Mom was crazy?” Liz had this habit of biting her tongue, as if she were getting ready to bat a grand slam when instead she was drawing her hand back to hit. I looked to Penny, who, as an only child, was utterly defenseless at these times. She started laughing uncontrollably. This would make me furious with Penny until I reminded myself that there was a year when her mother barred her from coming to our house because, in another brawl, Penny had been slapped by an older girl who was visiting our house. I missed Penny so much over that year that I glowered at her mother every time I saw her. Now I was wishing her mother were here to referee. In the meantime, Penny’s laughter escalated to a panicked cough, broken only by wheezes.

Liz held my jaw and slapped with the other hand. “Did ya do it?” she asked. “What were you thinking? Take it back. Right now, take it back! ‘Mom is not crazy,’ say it!”

With my tears flowing against every attempt to hold them in, I screamed, “She’s not crazy! I’m sorry! Let me go.”

“Not yet,” said Liz. She bit her tongue again and thought it over. “Okay, Looney. ‘I’m the crazy one.’ Say it. ‘I’m Looney.’ Say it!” Three years before, Liz had nicknamed me Looney. At that time, Liz was eleven and had not yet learned the definition of the term “lunar module,” but she heard the phrase and said, “That’s you! You’re a space animal, a lunar module.”

Now, as my fingers tingled to a numb state from her knees jammed into my upper arms, I shouted in a convincingly crazy voice, “I’m LOONEY! OKAY? I’ll say anything. Just leave me alone.”

A
couple of months later, Mom was released from the hospital with a prescription for lithium, and this time she bounced back faster. It was beginning to feel as if these hospitalizations were merely a “time out.” Our family rarely spoke of them. If so, they referred to Mom’s “nervous breakdowns” as if almost every mother had one. The more frequently the episodes occurred, the less real they seemed to us.

Antiques relieved Mom’s illness to a large extent. At the recommendation of her psychiatrist she took up the hobby, jamming our suburban home with Windsor chairs, dry sinks, and corner cupboards. We tripped on braided rugs and tossed our garbage into a modified butter churn.

Maybe she was buying back the life that her father had squandered in his days as an alcoholic gambler. Whatever she was doing, it was a relief from her obsession with the Church. As she bought and sold, bought and sold, she developed self-confidence and a keen eye for oil paintings: portraits of stern-faced adults and granny-faced infants, or ships—the age revealed by the flags’ symbols. Eventually dealers called from New England to seek our mother’s opinion on the period and value of items.

Dad never complained about the antiques. Fortunately, his Volkswagens had been so successful in the sixties that he opened a Porsche dealership in the early seventies. He’d sent four children off to private colleges and hosted a huge wedding reception at the Cincinnati Club for Bridget. While Mom bought and sold, she complained that
her
mother had not been able to afford colleges, private schools, and receptions in the Oak Room. And
she
had turned out just fine, she said, to which Dad simply nodded. “All right, all right, calm down,” he said. “No one is
getting away
with anything here.” And this was how all of my older sisters would be married, with Mom griping and Dad agreeing to whatever his daughters requested.

I’d finally reached the eighth grade and was only days away from the high school entrance exam. My sisters had been sent to Ursuline Academy, a girls’ college preparatory school on the Eastside. I was eager to make the switch and hoping to meet girls who weren’t into sports. Mom had mixed feelings about this school. Her mother had not been able to afford it. “It’s a charm school,” Mom said, and I wondered why this was a problem now only as I was approaching high school. Besides, the school’s reputation had changed with its move from an old mansion in Walnut Hills to a northeastern suburb. These days it was seen as a progressive school for young women with ambitions to build a career. The entrance exam made it more competitive than the parochial high schools, so it drew from all over the city. The girls I knew who were applying were serious students. “Too much freedom now,” Mom said. “When do they have time to learn? They’re all taking underwater basket-weaving.” Since when did Mom care about her daughters’ academics? Only the boys’ grades mattered to her. Or was this school now
too
academic for a girl?

One evening I helped Mom with the dishes while Dad pored over the newspaper at the kitchen table. Reading was his nightly ritual. He valued it as much as his summer Sundays with the Reds. Suddenly Mom announced that she would be sending me to our parochial high school instead of Ursuline. I’d pinned my hopes on this chance to make new friends, and I wouldn’t sit still for Mom’s resistance. “Dad, tell her. All the other girls in the family went to Ursuline. Liz is there now.”

“That school is getting out of control,” Mom said to Dad. “Next they’ll be burning bras in that place.” She pointed at him. “You watch!”

He nodded and went back to his newspaper. Why wouldn’t he speak up? In the meantime, Mom yammered on about “those wild nuns” at Ursuline.

“If she passes the exam, she can go there,” he said finally, shooting Mom a look that said, “Hold on, she may well flunk that exam.”

It might have been that my parents had argued this point on every single daughter—I couldn’t say—but I wished that just once I might make a transition without controversy or second-guessing. My test-taking skills were erratic enough. I’d been tested before kindergarten, according to Mom, and the examiner concluded that I was “half genius and half retarded.” My siblings knew to shrug off such comments from Mom, but I always allowed for a grain of truth in what she said. So far I’d had a string of teachers and Girl Scout leaders who had greeted me with the same dubious expressions on their faces. Other than my physical therapist and my second-grade teacher, the two leaders who had inspired the most confidence in me so far were a softball coach and a ballet teacher. According to them, I could do anything. If Mom and I were confused about my abilities, we had plenty of company.

On the other hand, my sisters’ futures were without debate. They would go to good colleges, preferably Jesuit schools, and marry Catholic schoolmates upon graduation. Soon I would be old enough to date. My teeth had grown in straight and my hair was styled in layers instead of the bowl cut that I’d had before. I wasn’t sure if boys would find me pretty, and I doubted they would want to date a girl without legs.

Then I received an invitation to my first boy-girl party. It was at the home of a boy who gave a chain-link identity bracelet to a different girl every month, a sort of shackle announcing “ROB, forever
.
” I figured that if I played my cards right I might wear my own shackle someday.

On the Friday afternoon of the party, I walked home with my navy blue sweater tied at the waist in my own kickass style, ready to ask Mom about boys. Heading for the stairs to her bathroom, I paused in the foyer to stare at the front door. I’d seen a parade of boys come through that door for my older sisters. Until now I had felt completely cut out of that deal. I was hoping I’d been wrong.

Upstairs, I barged in on Mom. Privacy never seemed to apply to her baths. In fact, we girls tended to approach her at precisely this time of day because we could corner her in the bathtub. She could never lock the door because at any moment a small child might stab a screwdriver into an electrical socket. The bathtub was situated on the right side of the wall opposite the door, with a partial wall encasing it, and to the left of that partial wall was the toilet, above which a ray of late afternoon sun came through the window, making it into a perfect confessional space.

“Can I come in?” I asked, as I closed the lid to the toilet and took a seat.

She sighed, already reading my mind. “What’s wrong now?”

I leaned my forehead against the tile wall between us.

“Well?” she said. I heard splashing.

I swallowed and said, “Mom?”

“Who else!” Did she have to scream even at times like this?

“Okay. Mom.” There was still time to walk out. I could forget about boys and go back to the idea of becoming a nun. “Mom!” I said.

“What! And don’t say ‘Mom’ again!”

“Okay. Are boys—” The splashing stopped. “You know how Liz gets asked out on dates? Well, are boys going to ask me out in high school?”

There was only silence. Now I rocked slightly, while holding my breath so she couldn’t hear my panic. She might have settled this problem by digging deeper. The boy-girl party held a loophole. In our family girls weren’t allowed to go to these parties until high school.

I wanted her to say, “What a ridiculous question! Why wouldn’t boys like you? And don’t get any ideas. You’re too young for that stuff.” I peered around the partition. She was staring at the faucet as if she were willing it to turn on by itself, her eyebrows scrunched into such bewilderment that she didn’t even notice me staring at her. I could read on her face that she had never associated the word “Eileen” with “boys.” Mortified, I pulled back. How had I ever considered this boy thing possible?

I stood up to walk out when Mom said, “Oh, I-lean. Maybe you better ask Liz. She knows more about boys these days than I do.”

“Liz,” I muttered on the way out. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

My friend Doris and I snuck out easily enough to go to the party that night. She was another new girl at Saint Vivian, a rabble-rouser by our peers’ standards. Doris loved to provoke their outrage. Lately she was educating me on Dylan and Baez, whose albums we listened to for hours in her bedroom, or, when really daring, in the basement with her older brothers. She had even recruited me to hand out Jerry Springer flyers during one of his campaigns. Now we stood under a red strobe light in Rob’s basement, while the boys flirted with the popular girls. For me it was enough excitement just to be invited. The new Paul McCartney album fascinated us more than the boys. All the way home we sang “Band on the Run.”

I
passed Ursuline’s entrance exam with high scores and chatted enthusiastically in school with the other girls who would go there with me. Doris was going to Ursuline’s sister school, and we would stay in touch. We contemplated which languages and electives we would choose. My goals in grade school had reached no further than survival, but now I envisioned myself becoming a leader. We were only days from graduating when a group of popular girls going to the parochial high school pulled me aside to say that “Ursu-slime” was for stuck-up girls. The girl who led the pack was a blond, blue-eyed beauty. The best diver at our swim club, she exuded those Germanic good looks that so many Cincinnatians possess, but few quite so well. Every boy was mad about her. We were by no means close, but we went to the same slumber parties. I was flattered that the popular girls had bothered to insult me and wrote the comment off as rivalry between schools, nothing to take personally.

That same day, I followed my routine for the walk home from school. The eighth-grade classrooms were on the third floor, and since I’d been trampled in the after-school rush on the staircase, I always waited for the stairs to clear before I left. The trampling had mostly damaged my dignity. I was safely down half of the first flight of stairs, alone, when I heard feet pounding on the floor behind me. The pounding escalated, followed by shrieks. Three girls rounded the corner.