Jewish Mothers Never Die: A Novel (11 page)

6

Rebecca

I’ve made mistakes in my life. For one thing, I was born. That was my first mistake.

Woody Allen

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Groucho Marx

Rebecca wanted to be alone to think about these women whom she was beginning to know intimately. Louise Cohen seemed the most honest to her; she put her son on a pedestal like the others but she could still harbor doubts about how she had raised him. Mina fascinated her; she would forever be in love with her Romain, who was some kind of rare perfection. Still, she found her too competitive to ever become a true friend. Minnie Marx treated her like a domineering mother, the same way she treated everyone else. Amalia Freud intimidated her. And she was careful about Jeanne Proust, too well behaved to be totally honest.

She ventured further than she had before, but there was nothing to be found: only the blue, cloudless sky and silence. A total emptiness beckoned the mind to let go of all preoccupations. Everything that Rebecca had been, everything that had made up her being, now seemed far away to her. She let herself float . . . It was heavenly. She wondered if this was the ultimate high that drug addicts seek, to be outside oneself in a thick and restful, cottony cloud. When she was alive, she had been a control freak; she could never have let herself go like she was doing now.

It occurred to her that if she wandered further she might get lost. Would she forget Nathan? Was that even possible? Wasn’t her son the one thing that she loved? If she had shown interest in her students or if certain books had enchanted her, only her son truly kept her invested in life. She had had no friends. Caught up in her courses and research and conferences, brooding endlessly over her son, Rebecca had never taken any time for herself. She had some girlfriends from her university days, of course, and they could spend hours discussing the placement of a comma in Flaubert. He had a famous line: ‘For me, the most beautiful girl in the world is nothing next to a perfectly placed comma.’ An opinion Rebecca shared; for her, nothing was better than a well-written book! The few childhood friends who had remained close were like a fine wine to her: their flavors and intensity had changed with time but on occasion still left delicious notes she was happy to find again. New friends weren’t part of her baggage, though. She had Nathan.

But he wasn’t with her in this place. She regretted terribly that she could never ask his forgiveness. She used to nag him constantly about his manners, his taste, his degree of culture. She realized now that maybe she had been wrong. Nevertheless, she hadn’t the slightest idea how to raise a child by complimenting him and respecting his opinions and decisions. In the end, she had been a terrible mother; rather than make him jump through hoops to become a lawyer, she should have indulged him a little and encouraged him to find himself. If he was unhappy, if he lacked self-confidence and was unable to convince anyone of his worth, including himself, it was her fault. Nathan’s pessimism reminded her of something Woody Allen says in
Annie Hall,
when his character is telling his therapist the story of two elderly women at a resort in the Catskills. One woman says: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “I know, and such small portions.” Woody Allen’s character concludes: “Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life—full of loneliness, misery, suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.”

How badly had she failed Nathan? She had paid both too much attention to him and too little. Whenever she would ask him what he was doing, she only half-listened to his answer, for fear she wouldn’t be able to resist imposing a contradictory opinion. She never wanted to be a dictator. Too often, she had lost her temper and had made him feel her own worries, but she had fawned upon him too. Maybe he would turn out alright? All these mothers had raised their children in their own way. What had they done better than she?

Rebecca imagined the joyful disorder of the Marx household where creativity was king. She couldn’t remember ever making Nathan laugh. He usually regarded her with apprehension, as if he expected a critical remark, as if he could never please her. But their lives had certainly been more peaceful than the Cohens’, where Albert’s instinctively violent father had been “the male and the tamer” who had reigned in terror over his wife and son. Albert felt sorry for his mother, whom he considered a victim. That had never been Rebecca’s problem. Then there was Mina; her suffocating, vampiric love had undoubtedly ruined Romain’s life: no one could ever love him as she did. He admitted it himself: “In your mother’s love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep.” With the Prousts, on the other hand, the trick was to be a good boy, or suffer the wrath of Jeanne’s insidious harassment. She fooled herself that her abusive attention to Marcel was “for his own good.” She would tell the servants to turn down the heat in the evening in the sitting room so that Marcel couldn’t entertain his friends, and she insisted he invite her to every dinner party he organized, so she could see who his friends were. He had no freedom whatsoever.

These thoughts left her confused. On the one hand, it seemed that she had nothing to be jealous of: these mothers’ relationships with their sons were clearly flawed. On the other hand, she admired the fact that they had all done what they had set out to do; raise their boys to be successful men. Her mind returned to Nathan. It might seem that her indecisiveness had tripped him up. She was never sure if she was being too hard or too soft on him. But it was too early to say what might happen. After all, he was only eighteen. None of the famous sons of these women were celebrities at his age.

She began to imagine a glorious future for him. The dream didn’t last, however. She was dead and buried: She could do nothing more for him. All that was left now was to trust in his abilities. No matter what opinions she might hold about these Jewish mothers, she knew they had never backed down from their mission, and their sons had made them proud.

Rebecca returned to the library. She wanted to read some of Romain Gary and Albert Cohen for herself, both about their mothers.
Promise at Dawn
is the story of Gary’s childhood and adolescence, from his earliest years in Vilnius until his mother’s death. He describes how Mina’s overflowing love and ambition for him carried him to heights he never could have dreamt of for himself.
Book of My Mother
uses a more recitative style to tell the moving story of a woman who was as naive as she was self-sacrificing. Although Cohen remembers every moment he spent with her, he is remorseful at the idea that he never lived up to her love for him.

Rebecca was reminded of the waves of emotions she had felt as a teenager when she read Romain Gary’s book. She must have been in high school because she pictured herself in her father’s country house, where there was never anything to do during the long days of her summer vacation, except read. Since then, she had never known such boredom. She had briefly attempted to take an interest in her bucolic surroundings, in the hope of finding a new distraction, but the mere sound of the wind in the trees put her to sleep. A nature program on television had an even more soporific effect on her. She learned to keep to her room to avoid both insect bites and the smells of the cows, horses and pigs, and sought refuge in books, reading with a kind of bulimic hunger as if she too suffered from a shameful disorder that sapped her confidence and enjoyment in life. The long immobile hours, no matter how she positioned herself on a chair, the floor or her bed, made her legs stiffen with cramps, however, and a new wave of ennui awaited at the end of each novel. Sometimes she amused herself by looking for the word “boredom” in whatever she was reading at the moment. The exercise left her even more lethargic, if possible. She had picked up
Promise at Dawn
as a lighter read, in between
Finnegan’s Wake
and
Moby Dick
. It hit her like a lightning bolt: such understanding, complicity and love between a mother and her son seemed extraordinary to her. It marked her as deeply as
Book of My Mother
, which she had read in high school and found even more moving for not having a mother herself.

Feverish now, Rebecca was anxious to find the others. She felt alone and isolated, far from everything. She went looking for them but found herself wandering for a long time in endless space.

7

Success Shall Be Yours, My Son

Guynemer! You will be a second Guynemer! Your mother has always been right . . . An Ambassador of France, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor . . . a new Gabriele d’Annunzio.

Romain Gary

A mother finds true satisfaction only in her relationship with her son, on whom she can transfer her own suppressed ambitions.

Sigmund Freud

“Rebecca?”

Hearing her name called from the dining room, she went in to find Amalia Freud spreading jam on slices of bread.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, looking up with a smile.

“I’d love one,” Rebecca replied, relieved that Amalia looked happy to see her. The two women made quite a contrast: one sporting faded jeans and a loose pullover sweater, the other in a tight-fitting dress with her long hair in a neat braid.

“You seem preoccupied.”

“How can I be sure my son will succeed in life?” she blurted out. “There’s no magic formula and yet all of you managed it.”

“Have faith,” Amalia replied. “In my case, it was obvious Sigmund had a promising career before him. An old peasant woman had even predicted it; I can still remember her exact words when she saw him. ‘With your first-born, you’ve brought a great man into the world.’”

“Maybe she was just trying to be nice.”

“Possibly, but her words filled me with confidence, so that, later, when he was deciding between law and medicine, I could tell him truthfully that I would support him no matter what he chose. Jacob wanted him to take over the business. I thought he should make up his own mind. He proved me right by creating a profession that had never existed before: psychoanalysis. Sigi surpassed even my wildest dreams.”

Amalia adjusted her shawl, which had slipped down over her bare arms. Then, with a coquettish toss of her head, she stood up and made her way towards a long table lavishly laden with breads, fruit and cereals.

“But, Nathan, what will become of him? No one predicted a great future for him.”

“You worry far too much.”

“He used to reproach me for only wanting to talk about his grades, but I couldn’t help myself. I was a professor, so for me being a good student was as natural as washing yourself. He hated me for it, though. I was too demanding. But he was so intelligent. I thought his laziness was inexcusable, an affront to anyone who had a difficult time studying.”

“Children find it hard to express themselves. That was his way of rebelling against you, without saying it in so many words. Maybe he wanted you to see he was his own person?”

“Oh, he knew ways of doing that! He invented an imaginary friend named Christian; don’t ask me why. We had to set a place for him at the table and he talked to him constantly. Thinking he was lonely, I began inviting his friends over every weekend. But he never played with them. ‘What’s so interesting about a soccer ball?’ he would ask me. All ballgames were the same to him; it was only the size of the ball that changed. He was bored by it all so he kept to himself.”

“He had a wonderful imagination, no doubt. Instead of worrying yourself and criticizing him for being antisocial, you ought to have encouraged him.”

“Is there anything left to eat?” Mina demanded, looking over the buffet. “Where is the coffee?”

“On the table, where it always is,” Amalia replied. Mina was always in a terrible mood before she’d had her three cups of coffee in the morning. Amalia didn’t hesitate to share this confidence with Rebecca in a low whisper. “The bad habits of an overworked woman,” she concluded.

Mina poured herself a cup, grumbling under her breath, but Amalia had returned to her conversation with Rebecca.

“Why did you think Nathan ought to become a lawyer? A strong imagination doesn’t lend itself to practicing law . . .”

“‘Law opens the door to everything.’ Or so the saying goes. And when Nathan told me he wanted to be a lawyer, I didn’t realize that he was only trying to please me. He understood how impatient I was to see him on a clear professional path . . . as if he could choose a profession the way you choose which sweater you’re going to wear in the morning. I wanted to direct him. I should have allowed him more time to think it over.”

“Did you do everything you could to convince him?” Mina wanted to know, setting her coffee cup down. “Did you explain to him how famous he would be as a great criminal lawyer? Did you buy him a properly tailored suit? Did you make him feel the elation of seeing a client acquitted? Did you read him the speeches of the great defense lawyers? If he were my son, he would have been assured of his success before he’d ever begun. I would have painted his glorious future for him while he was still in his crib . . .”

“Did he know what he wanted to be when he was a child?” Amalia interrupted.

“Yes,” Rebecca answered, embarrassed. “He wanted to become a pilot.”

“Romain was a hero, as you know of course,” Mina bragged. “His plane was shot down by German artillery. The pilot was blinded. Romain was wounded in the stomach and half-unconscious but he took control of the plane and managed to land it. He was decorated for his bravery, but I was no longer around to see it. I took credit for it though.”

“How in the world did you do that?”

“We had dreamed so much of the distinguished life he would lead, that he eventually believed it. I know it sounded strange when he was little. Even the fruit and vegetable sellers in the market in Nice had to listen to my stories about what a great man he was going to be, but they came to respect me in the end.”

Amalia leaned in a second time toward Rebecca: Mina was surely the only mother in the world who could determine her child’s future. To help him bear up under the hardship of their daily life, all her bedtime stories began with “Someday you will be . . .” and continued with a list of everything he would accomplish.