Lies My Mother Never Told Me (3 page)

My mother was probably still sitting at Brasserie Lipp or the Deux Magots or La Coupole, having another glass of wine or brandy or whatever it was she and her friends drank after lunch, having totally forgotten that she'd told Judite she'd pick me up.

By the time we got someone on the phone, it was close to dinnertime and Judite, harried and tired, rushed over in the family station wagon. It was pitch dark outside and I was so relieved I felt drugged, but I was also so angry I could not speak to her.

“Bien, c'était ta maman qui devait venir.”
Eh, it was your mommy who was supposed to come today, she said in her singsong voice, abdicating all responsibility.

Back home, not remotely calmed, I went downstairs to my parents' room to confront my mother. She might be lying back on her round bed with its faux fur cover, her eyes closed; or taking a bath, getting ready for her evening out.

“You forgot to pick me up at school again!” I shouted.

“Absolutely not!” she retorted, offended. “And don't talk to me that way. God, you're so neurotic!”

At eight years old, I asked my father to call Mme. Cohen and tell her that if no one showed up to get me, I had permission to go home by myself on the public bus. He agreed to this, with the usual warnings about bad men and crazy people. He taught me how to kick a man in the balls and break his nose with a well-aimed cross punch, something no one, especially not a dirty old Frenchman, would expect from an eight-year-old girl.

Several “dirty old Frenchmen” did expose themselves to me on my way home over the years, but in my opinion, that was nothing compared with being left at school when night was falling and the echoing old building was closing down and even Mme. de la Marselle was in a hurry to get home.

Here is a famous story of my mother's that has been described in at least two other books.

 

While he was writing
From Here to Eternity
, Jim worked for a bit in a trailer park in Arizona. The book took him four years to write. He had a $500 advance from Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's, and to make ends meet, he helped move trailers around the park.

Years later, perhaps in the late fifties, while he and Gloria were in Los Angeles on a business trip, they went to a fancy party at an elegant restaurant with valet parking. The valet who took the keys from my father suddenly said, “Jim, is that you?”

“Hi, Fred,” Jim answered evenly, as if they'd seen each other yesterday. They shook hands, and Jim introduced his young wife to his old friend. It turned out they'd worked together in the trailer park.

“Hey, you ever finish that book you were writing?” Fred asked.

“Yeah, Fred, yeah, I did.”

“Well, did it get published? What's it called?”

“It's called
From Here to Eternity
,” Jim said.

O
NE EVENING, AFTER DINNER, AS
Jamie and I were about to ask our parents to be excused, our father held up a hardcover edition of
Stuart Little
, by E. B. White, and announced that he was going to read us a book. We were only six years old, but we were not surprised, for our dad had a habit of making plans on the spur of the moment and then following through on them right to the end. No one except perhaps our mother knew what sparked these sudden decisions of his. But having his undivided attention was a momentous treat, almost as exciting as taking a trip to a foreign land.

For several weeks we remained at the dinner table after Judite had cleared the dishes, and we listened to him read in his deep, deliberate voice. Our mom sat quietly drinking wine, and listened too.

Generally he read a chapter at each sitting, but sometimes, if we begged hard enough, he read two.

I have never forgotten the scene in which the mouse Stuart Little leaves his loving, doting family of humans and sets out into the vast and scary world with his suitcase, chasing after the sparrow who has stolen his heart. My brother and I were perplexed while our big, strong, grown-up father's voice broke, and tears fell from his eyes.

“Oh, Daddy, don't cry!” my brother said. “It'll be all right, he'll find her!”

Our dad sighed, then said in a calm, fatalistic tone, “Well, maybe not…”

This was the first time we were faced with the possibility of loss and the reality of sad endings. Stuart does not find the sparrow, but he goes on, wandering purposefully down the road with his suitcase.

To this day I cannot look at a copy of
Stuart Little
without thinking of my father and the lesson he tried to impart to us for our future years. Just looking at the book today in Barnes & Noble makes me so choked up I can barely speak.

 

Apparently our dad had enjoyed reading to us, because the following summer, in 1967, we went to Skiathos, a small Greek island where there was no nightlife to speak of, and during our two-month vacation, he read to us, from a huge and imposing cloth-bound volume, the entirety of Homer's
Odyssey
. First, he prepared us by recounting a visually precise and detailed version of
The Iliad
, strong on character and motivation, which to this day has influenced my readings of that great, wondrous book. Our father told us, his eyes shining in the golden light of the hurricane lamp he'd set beside him on the table, that Achilles, while being the greatest warrior who ever lived, was also vain and therefore easily insulted, as most vain men are. He was angry over a woman slave who'd been taken from him by King Agamemnon, and now Achilles refused to fight. So the Greeks were losing the war. His best friend and lover, Patroclus, goes off to fight in Achilles' stead and is killed in hand-to-hand combat by Hector, the best of the Trojan warriors. Achilles loses his mind with rage and grief and goes on a killing rampage that scares even his own men half to death.

My brother looked a little disconcerted. “They
loved
each other?” he asked. “Two men? They were like…like you and Mommy?”

“Well, yes,” our father explained. “Back then, it was considered normal. There was nothing wrong with it.”

Jamie did not seem convinced, but soon, as our dad continued, Jamie lost his perturbed look and an expression of utter absorption took over—the same one he got when watching a cowboy movie on TV.

 

Our Paris apartment was filled everywhere with books. Once our dad had filled the wall-to-wall bookshelves in the living room, he filled the ones in my room, which climbed the wall surrounding my bed, right up to the ceiling. Jamie and I would climb the shelves like a rock wall and jump off, onto the bed below, hollering like attacking pirates. This was one of our favorite games. There were so many books that we simply took them for granted, never looking past their spines.

I remember James Joyce's
Ulysses
lay on the living room coffee table for several weeks. After that, it was
The Rape of Nanking
. This is still one of my greatest regrets—it never occurred to me to ask my dad what he was reading, or why. Once, many years later, when my father had been gone almost twenty years, I found his old, cumbersome
Columbia Encyclopedia
up in his dusty office, with a piece of paper stuck in it somewhere in the
C
s, and on it, in his bold, careful print, were the words
Council of Antioch
. What on earth could this mean? No one was able to tell me.

 

Almost all of my parents' friends who were present during my childhood have told me how much my mother adored me. I was the apple of her eye, they say. She constantly bragged about my accomplishments and said how proud she was of me. My godmother, Cecile Bazelon, an exceptional artist who was my mother's college roommate at Syracuse, tells me all my mother's letters from Paris raved about how intelligent and beautiful I was.

Yet, from the moment I was capable of thought, I was certain that something was seriously wrong with me, because I annoyed and bored my mother to distraction, and elicited from her the most soul-shattering cruelty—the kind only a mother can inflict. There was no pattern, no rhyme or reason to her outbursts. I tried for years to uncover the secret to her mood swings, to understand what I did to set her off.

You're a mean, spoiled, ugly girl.

You bore me to death. I can't wait till you grow up.

You have no sense of humor.

I know you love your daddy but my daddy was much better than yours.

You're a klutz.

You have ugly legs, not like me. I have great legs.

Who is Fat, Fat, the Water Rat?

And later, as I grew older:

Mothers who are jealous of their daughters are sick in the head. I wouldn't want to be you for anything in the world.

I was much prettier than you when I was your age.

Your life is so boring. I had a much more fun life than you.

You're a whore, you know that?

You're a nut.

Your father would be ashamed of you.

Fighting back was like throwing oil on fire. She'd laugh and say, “Oh, shut up!” or, “I don't care!” At these moments, I could feel myself turning into a massive, hulking iceberg.

 

I can see my father sitting at the long, luminous, dark wood dining room table, and I'm hovering just behind his shoulder. I'm still quite young, because I am barely looking down at him. In my memory most of our talks take place here, but I'm not sure if they really did or not. This was where I knew I could catch him,
on Saturdays or on school holidays, when he was eating his lunch alone, or sometimes at dusk, after a long day of writing, he'd be there, just sitting by himself, thinking.

“Your mother is the most honest person I've ever known. She could never tell a lie. And she loves you instinctively, without thought.” I remember his words clearly, though I don't remember what elicited them.

“What about you, how do
you
love me?” I asked him.

“I think about how much I love you all the time. It's not instinctual, like she loves you.”

For years, I interpreted this as a simple geometrical proof: My father always tells me the truth. He says my mother could never tell a lie. Therefore, my mother never lies.

So, clearly, all the terrible things she says to me must be true. I must deserve them.

“But she's so mean to me,” I answered haltingly, afraid he might get angry. But he was a fine arbitrator; he didn't automatically take her side in our battles simply because she was the adult and his wife and I the child.

He responded quite calmly, “Well, you know she doesn't mean it, that's just angry talk. She says things she doesn't mean when she gets angry. You have to make an effort. You have to try to get along with her.”

Now, in my fantasies of returning to a time in my childhood, this is it—that is where I am, standing by the dining room table in our Paris apartment. I take a seat, catty-corner to him, I place my palm over his cool hand, and I say in a calm, measured tone, “You know what, Daddy? I think you believe what you're saying, but it's not true.”

 

For the summer of 1969, my parents rented a house in Deauville, a chic resort town in Normandy. I liked to watch my mother pack her hard-bodied Louis Vuitton suitcases. She'd roll two bottles of
Johnnie Walker scotch into sweaters—the first thing she'd take out when we arrived. When we traveled, sometimes she'd forget the tickets, or the visas, or the passports. But never—
never
—the scotch.

The lovely white-fronted Deauville house with cross-hatched dark wood beams stood in the first line of buildings, on the boulevard Eugène Cornuché, just a short walk from the Hôtel Royal and the Casino de Deauville. From its front windows stretched a view of open fields and the beachfront boardwalk in the distance. Deauville was the Hamptons of the Paris jet set, where vastly powerful members of the European nobility and famous actors like Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn, and directors like Roger Vadim came during the high season to hang out at the casino, the Clairefontaine racetrack, and the boardwalk cafés.

Two weeks before we left Paris, I'd gotten a cold and had overused the extra-strength nasal spray, and now, I couldn't go to sleep at night without it. For the first week I still had my spray, but I ran out. On this night, at bedtime, my sinuses exploded, and the pressure was excruciating. Bedtime was already traumatic for me—everything had to be just so, the sheet turned down a certain way, the curtains drawn tight, a light on down the hall, but not too much light, and total silence. These theatrics annoyed my mother, who was usually in a hurry to go out, or to return to her guests. On this night, both my parents were decked out in formal attire, de rigueur at the casino.

“Mommy,” I said, nervous, upset, my voice shaky, “I can't breathe through my nose. I'm really not feeling well.”

Sitting at the edge of the large, creaky, still unfamiliar bed, she said sorrowfully, “You're so neurotic,” and shook her head. “It's because Judite isn't here, that's all. You never can sleep when Judite is away. One day you'll realize that Judite is only a maid, a servant. She's not your mother. I'm your mother. There's nothing wrong with your sinuses. Now go to sleep.” And she stood up,
smoothing down her luminous, silvery casino gown. I heard her elegant high-heeled sandals clicking down the hall and then down the wooden stairway, the sound growing fainter as my desperation increased.

How could I have let this happen? Get caught like this, unprepared? I had the feeling I was suffocating and couldn't get enough air in my lungs, even though I could breathe perfectly well through my mouth. I didn't realize I was hyperventilating, breathing too fast and getting too much oxygen, but breathing into a paper bag was not something I knew to do at that age.

The next day, exhausted and anxious, I went by myself on my bicycle to find a pharmacy. I had no problem buying whatever I needed at our local pharmacy in Paris, but here, in Deauville, the druggist asked me if it was for me and I answered yes, when I should have simply said it was for my mother. He gave me some mild children's formula. I searched for another pharmacy within riding distance but couldn't find one.

I worried obsessively about whether or not I'd be able to sleep, and indeed, for a second night, my sinuses swelled and ached and blocked off the air. The mild children's spray had no effect. Why was this happening to me only at bedtime and not during the day? Was my mother right, and it was all in my head? For the summer my parents had hired a housekeeper named Madeleine, a very nice fat lady from Le Mans who'd spent the war hiding Jews and stranded American fighter pilots from the Nazis. She had the medals to prove it. She loved Americans and sometimes shouted out the expressions she'd learned from the pilots, such as “Hi there, beautiful!” or “That's swell!”

I liked Madeleine a lot, but I wasn't about to go find her in her little, alien-smelling bedroom under the eaves and explain my problem. Finally, sitting up in bed, I heard the first birds beginning to chirp and was relieved that dawn was nearing. The darkness began to turn blue, and I thought, It'll be daytime soon and
everything will be all right. Finally I dozed off before my parents returned from the casino.

That morning, I decided to go to my father. This was not a decision I made lightly. I was keenly aware that his writing came first, and that we were never to disturb him while he was working. He could be interrupted in an emergency, of course, and this, certainly, was not a normal emergency. But I was scared enough, and upset enough, to climb the stairs and knock timidly on his closed door.

He probably hadn't gone to sleep at all, I now realize.

He'd taken over one small room under the eaves, as was his wont. He'd turned the desk to face a blank wall, away from the window with the magnificent view of the open field that led to the boardwalk and the golden sand and the red beach parasols and blue Channel beyond. He wasn't sitting at the desk, I remember, but reading in an armchair and balancing a large mug of black coffee on the armrest with two fingers. The room already smelled of him: pipe smoke, the black coffee, and 4711 cologne, a scent that still causes a knot in my throat.

“Why don't you put the desk in front of the window?” I asked him.

“It's too distracting,” he said. “What's up?”

I told him the whole truth—how I couldn't go to sleep without the adult nasal spray from Paris; that I'd gone to the drugstore but the man wouldn't give it to me and I couldn't find another drugstore. I told him I was really, really scared because I
needed
the spray. I tried to keep my composure and not burst into tears. He looked at me, concern written in the wavy lines of his forehead.