Inventing Memory (24 page)

"I promise never to fuck you," he said, "but only to make love to you." Sally thought that was the nicest thing a man had ever said to her. When at last they came to physical coupling, Max, who had studied tantra and many other meditative techniques, would remain inside her forever without moving. He would look at her with the softest expression as she reached climax again and again, but he would not lose his erection.

"Why don't you come?" she would ask.

"When you come, the feminine part of me comes," he'd say, "and the manna is released into my soul." They would lie entwined for hours and hours. Sally felt as happy then as she had as a little girl in bed.

Still, she tormented herself with questions. Was it because of her essential fatherlessness—her father had committed suicide when she was a little girl, but no one had told her until years later—that she was with a man forty years her senior? Was it healthy? Was it right? She shared these questions with Max.

"Was what you were doing
before
healthy?" he'd ask. "These questions are pointless, a form of self-torture. Self-torture is your greatest talent. If anyone else were as mean to you as you are to yourself, you'd shriek in pain. Sally—
let it be
. The point is, you aren't drinking, aren't smoking pot. You've never been this healthy, this serene. You say so
yourself
."

"But can I just stay here while the world passes me by?"

"What is the world anyway? The music business? The world is what you choose to make the world. This is your world, our world. We make it ourselves. Everything else is delusion."

Whenever the weather permitted, Sally and Danzig would snowshoe across his property over the deep snow. They would follow animal tracks, put out seed for the birds, salt for the deer. Even the raccoons, those little scavengers, they fed.

"This is real," Danzig would say. "Everything else is delusion."

The mountains were purple, and the smell of wood fires followed them as they crunched through the snow, talking about what was and wasn't real.

Nanook leaped on ahead. At times like this, Sally felt entirely blessed. She thought of neither past nor future. Only the crunch under her feet existed and the smell of burning wood in the air—applewood and oak. The stolen baby bottle was far away. Her questions about her lost father were far away. She refused to remember she had a mother.

There's plenty to do in the country. Danzig read her Blake—not only the "Songs of Innocence and Experience" but the "Prophetic Books," which she hardly understood.

"Don't worry—nobody understands them, not even Blake."

"And Mrs. Blake?"

"Not her either."

They'd walk awhile in the snow.

"Who is Nobodaddy?" Sally would ask.

"Blake's god—the disappointing father figure."

"Like my father!" Sally shrieked. It was an
aha!
moment.

"If you like…."

"Nobodaddy, Nobodaddy…I must write a song to Nobodaddy!"

"You must," Danzig said.

And that was how Sally came to write "Nobodaddy's Daughter"—a song that captured a generation's hunger for an absent father.

Silent and invisible

as a misplaced glove,

my nobodaddy daddy

sends me nobodaddy love.

I seek him in the darkness,

I seek him in your arms,

my nobodaddy daddy

cannot shelter me from harm…

Shall I bind him with my singing?

Shall I bind him with my joy?

My nobodaddy daddy

My winged life destroys.

I could fly

without him, I could fly—

I know why,

without him I could fly—

Danzig's reading Blake to Sally inspired that song—and his tales of Ireland, which he loved above all other countries, inspired many others. They talked endlessly about going there.

"I want to take you to Ireland, to the Black Valley, the Back of the Beyond, where the elves and sidhes play and glaciers have turned the rock layers upside down. There is a land inhabited only by ghosts and prophecies, a 'land of scholars and saints'—Ireland. A land where the rain wails and 'her name keeps ringing like a bell in an underground belfry….' Or so said Louis MacNeice. I'd love to take you to the last unspoiled place in the world."

"I'd love to go."

"I want to share with you what I've learned about making things. When I used to write for publication, I was always tense. My back would go into spasm when I was finishing a book. But now that I write only for myself, everything is sheer play. Making the words dance together is now a way of being happy. I dance with them. I no longer fret. I would like to teach you how to do that."

"Teach me! Teach me!"

"What I learned in Ireland was that anxiety is the enemy of art. If you relax, treat it all as play, put one foot in front of the other and do the jig, and knock the critic off your shoulder with a nimble walking stick, there's
nothing
you can't do. We were
made
to make things, to play, to dance. We ruin it all with competition, with wanting always to be the best, to win a prize or make a dollar, when actually there is
no
best and the prize is the doing itself and the dollars are never enough and anyway we don't do it for the dollars. The cosmos is in a
constant
state of creation. We have only to tap into the flow. We are already part of it. We have only to say yes to the universe."

Sally would have stayed with Danzig forever, but forces were aligning themselves against her that would make this impossible. Danzig was old. His children were possessive. The second act was waiting in the wings.

She never came to kiss the Blarney Stone until much later. And by then it was too late. By the time she paced upon the battlements and stared, by the time she arose and went to the Lake Isle of Innisfree, peace could never drop slow for her again.

10

Sara

BURIED
TREASURE

2005

All forms of mental flow depend on memory, either directly or indirectly. History suggests that the oldest way
of organizing information involved recalling one's ancestors, the line of descent that gave each person his or
her identity as a member of the tribe or family.

—MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

L
isette de Hirsch had invited Sara to a luncheon party at her house in Connecticut on a Sunday afternoon in May. It was not the sort of party you could bring a little kid to, so she had to get a sitter for Dove. She took the train to Darien, painfully aware that this was not the chic way to arrive. That would have been by vintage car or new ecological electric wagon, but Sara didn't have options. Still, she knew she looked good in her beige linen jumpsuit with beige linen three-inch platform clogs, her chic new pith helmet swathed in veils against the ravages of the sun.

Lisette's son, a dark-eyed, long-lashed, very tall young man named David, picked her up at the station in one of those new Chinese electric runabouts and took her out to the house, on a gated promontory overlooking Long Island Sound. There were waiters in white jackets lofting trays of champagne in flutes, but Sara didn't drink. She never drank. Her mother had drunk enough for both of them.

David, a lawyer who seemed a few years younger than Sara, led her across the green lawn to where Lisette was waiting, greeting her guests with double-cheeked air kisses.

Sara was introduced to various paunchy elderly tycoons, who fell under the rubric "board members." She had seen a few of them at the Council. It seemed the men all had the names of investment banks—Lazard, Morgan, Goldman, Rothschild—but surely this was a delusion.

Introductions were made, then David took her arm and led her on a stroll along the path that looked out on the Sound.

"How do you like working at the Council?" he asked.

"Is this a trick question?" said Sara.

"Not at all. My mother says you're absolutely brilliant. She has great hopes for you."

Sara watched the sailboats scudding along under puffy white clouds.

"That's good—because I have great hopes for myself," Sara said.

At lunch, Sara was seated at a table with a famous abstract expressionist painter of the sixties who had just married an investment banker, a famous black opera singer of the eighties who had just married an investment banker, and a famous feminist of the seventies who had just married an investment banker.

Once renowned for leading a liberated life, each of them now waxed poetical over engraved stationery, joint bank accounts, and renovating multimillion-dollar real estate. (A house on the Sound cost twelve million and up these days, and on the ocean, thirty million and up.)

The painter, Rebecca Lewin, a willowy brunette with a thrice-lifted face, said, looking uxoriously at her new husband, Laurence Morgan, "I used to feel the whole world was Noah's ark and I was the only one not going two by two."

"I know just what you mean," said the stately opera singer, Roberta Chase.

"I never thought I could be with anyone for
life
," said the tall, slender feminist, Lily Crosswell, "but when I met Philip, I knew…." Toasts were made to love and matrimony and marrying your best friend. Sara felt sick. Suddenly she said, "But if all of you—my heroines—are subsiding into matrimony, then who's to set an example for women like me?"

Lily said: "Of course it's not
necessary
to be married to live a full life."

Rebecca said: "I was so productive during the twenty or so years I was alone."

And Roberta said: "I don't think any woman of ambition should even
think
of marrying until she's fifty! There's plenty of time after that, even for children. My best friend just had triplets at fifty-four!"

Sara felt even sicker. She thought of Dove—so inconvenient, yet so lovable.

David squeezed Sara's hand under the table and shot her a look that said: I understand. But did he?

Later that afternoon, when they were having coffee on the lawn, he asked:

"Has my mom given you the keys to the secret storeroom yet?"

"What secret storeroom?"

"I guess not," said David. "But I know where they are—and if you're nice to me…"

"Is this blackmail?" asked Sara.

"I guess so," David said. "Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?"

"Yes," said Sara. "Actually they have…. Now tell me about the secret storeroom. So far I've been immersed in the photographs, traveling through time as I catalog them for the database. The photographs are fabulous enough—a whole vanished world, the vanished world of our mothers…to coin a phrase."

"I don't know if I should tell you about the storeroom…yet."

"I have ways of making you talk," said Sara, kicking him gently in the shins.

"I need to know you better," said David.

"You seem to know me pretty well already," said Sara. "What a disgusting conversation at lunch!"

"It does make you wonder, doesn't it?"

"
I'm
trying to figure out how to get divorced, and all these women want to do is get married. Marriage is much overrated."

"Only if you're with the wrong person. If you're with someone who is right for you, it's the most wonderful thing in the world—two best friends venturing through time and space. The three graces back there are right about that. Marriage can mean joint real estate or it can mean freeing each other to do your work, loving each other in good times and bad."

"Have you ever been married?"

"No. That's why I'm such an expert."

"Now—the secret storeroom."

"Oh," said David. "What do you think is the real agenda of the Council on Jewish History?"

"Beats me," said Sara.

"Oh, come on—what do people want when they're rich enough to have everything else?"

"Ummm…Immortality? Eternal life? Their names in marble? In gilt? Their brains suspended in nutrient agar, their bodies frozen for the future?"

"You got it!"

"So they're preserving rich old Jews and keeping them on ice?" Sara asked. "Is that the secret storeroom?"

"Almost…," said David. "But not nearly so gruesome. Actually they're collecting family archives, and my mother is charged with figuring out what to do with them. That's where
you
come in."

"I thought your mother was head of development."

"That and everything else," said David. "She endowed the place, and

like a lot of people, she thinks money translates into
control
. Fortunately her board agrees with her. That's why they're her board. You see, she's looked at some of these family papers, and they don't necessarily prove what she
wants
them to prove."

"What's that?"

"What do
you
think?"

"That the Jews are the most perfect people on the planet…."

David laughed. "Exactly."

Sara said: "People are people. What's interesting is how mixed up they are."

"So if you were asked to tell your family story through an archive, what would you do?"

"I'd let the materials dictate how the story should be told and what it should say."

"Right," said David. "I'm with you. But there are plenty of other people who would like to destroy any part of the record that says anything negative about the chosen people."

"But weren't we chosen to be
human
?" said Sara.

"I think so…
you
obviously think so. But my mother thinks we should suppress any details that might be bad for the Jews or give the antiSemites ammunition…. Let's continue this later," said David. "Here comes the lady of the house."

Lisette de Hirsch sailed over to them in her white silk caftan.

"
Here
you are!" she said.

"Here we are," said Sara and David in unison.

By June, New York was steaming like the tropics. A grayish-yellow haze hung over the city, and the humidity became the major topic of conversation. But the underground vault of the Council on Jewish History, David's so-called secret storeroom, was frigid.

Sara had once read about a man who buried portions of his treasure all over his native city, then left his grandchildren nothing but crude, hand-drawn maps as their legacy. Whether they found the treasure or not was up to them.

That was the way Sara felt excavating ancestors in the crypt of the Council.

She had worked her way from photographs through oral history interviews to letters and journals in backward script, but what it all meant was baffling, and what she was meant to do with it was even more baffling. Lisette spoke of a great exhibition, a richly illustrated book, a documentary film. Perhaps all three. Money was no object. It never was an object with her. The point was to show the way the past informed the present, the sanctity of memory, the heroism of the people who embodied memory itself.

The previous night, Lloyd had come to see Dove, walking into Sara's apartment as if he had every right to be there. He had strolled into the kitchen, flung open the refrigerator, and helped himself to an apple. It was a symbolic apple. He bit into it with a loud crunch.

"
Daddy! Daddy!
" Dove had cried, throwing her arms around his long legs.

Sara was in the process of making dinner after a long day of trudging through archives at the Council. She was deep in thought about what she might do with these materials, and Lloyd's presence was an unwelcome distraction. Sensing that, he seemed to want to stick around.

Lloyd pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down. Dove climbed on his lap. What a cozy scene this was! The profligate papa returns. All is forgiven. Sara's anger at him was temporarily gone. He seemed to know it.

"How's your new job?" he asked.

"Fine," Sara said. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of saying anything else.

"Is it okay if I give Dove her bath and put her to bed?" Lloyd asked.

"Yes!" said Dove. How could Sara dent her enthusiasm?

While Lloyd bathed Dove and happy sounds emanated from the bathroom, Sara thought: If I could stop time here and now, we could be together again. And why not? We're a biological unit after all. She remembered the strong sense of fleshly connection she had felt when she first held Dove in her arms and looked at Lloyd through eyes that were blurry with tears. Who could have imagined such a miracle? Such an
everyday
miracle, so ordinary, yet so transcendent. The ubiquity of the miracle made you believe in God. In Goddess.

After Dove was safely tucked in bed, Lloyd came to talk to Sara in the kitchen.

"I still love you," he said.

"What good does that do
me
?" she asked.

"Maybe we can work it out," he said.

"Maybe I'm the queen of Romania," she said.

They went to bed anyway. The worst part of it was that bed still worked for them. It had never stopped working. His smell, his touch, his breath on Sara's neck, all felt perfectly right. No matter how enraged she was at him, he could cut her open and rub sugar in her wounds.

What would the indomitable Sarah Sophia Solomon Levitsky have done? Sara quickly consulted her. She had—she always had—the right answer.

"You can't ride two horses with one behind," Sara said to Lloyd.

"What?" he asked.

"It's the wisdom of the grandmothers of our tribe. Either stay or go,

but don't ride two horses with one behind. Or dance at two weddings at the same time."

Was she telling him, or was she telling
herself
? She thought she was telling herself.

However great the sex was, she didn't really want him back
all
the time. She was taking on some of the fierceness of that other Sarah, and she was tempted, for the first time in her life, to bet on herself—something her own mother, Sally, had never really done.

Sara was already half grown when she met her mother. Fourteen, with breasts and periods and lots of questions she was afraid to ask. Her father and his friend Sandrine had taken her to Montana when she was two. At fourteen, she had run away to find her mother, after discovering a furious letter from her that her father had hidden in his sock drawer.

Running away was
exciting
. With money she had saved, she took a series of filthy buses to New York, deeply gratified by knowing that her father would be worried sick. Once in New York, she thought she would stay at a scuzzy Y and call her mother in London. Then she'd ask her to wire a ticket.

But wonder of wonders, Sally was
in
New York when Sara got there. The family gallery was having a show in honor of its late founders, Sarah and Lev. And Sally had come to New York for the opening.

Thrilled to see her long-lost daughter, Sally scooped her up and took her everywhere in New York—from tea at the Mayfair (where she plied her with scones and jam and clotted cream) to shopping on Fifth and Madison (where she bought Sara clothes she had never
seen
in Montana, let alone worn).

Sara would never forget the transition from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the Mayfair! Nor would she forget what she always thought of as her Holden Caulfield day alone in New York, talking to pigeons and bus drivers and bums sitting on park benches. Even though it was not even a whole day but only a few hours, Sara had mythologized it as a turning point in her life.

Sally was the most glamorous creature Sara had ever seen, and their reunion was ardent. But after that burst of ecstasy, their relationship had never really worked. Sara had always called her mother Sally, not Mom. It was hard enough to call her
anything
, because for much of her Montana childhood, her father had claimed her mother was dead. She would never forgive him for that. It was one of many things she would never forgive him for.

Of course, there had been a scandal and a custody suit—but Sara learned the details only later, from Sally. She also learned later that her mother was more than a singer, she was a sort of mascot for everyone born in the postwar baby boom.