Last Train to Paris (5 page)

“Listen, R.B., you're the one with the mind like a corkscrew. I'm Mr. Simplicity.”

We talked and argued late into the night, primarily about writing, and about Freud and our favorite topic, our unbearable mothers.

“My mother threatened me with a knife and said she hated me,” I said.

“My mother threw a can of beans at my face and gave me a black eye,” he said.

Whenever we got into this conversation, we would try to laugh at the similarities. But when we had a bit much to drink, we would moan and groan and try not to cry and make fools of ourselves.

 

That evening, since we both lived at the Hôtel Espoir, we wobbled home together. As we were turning onto the boulevard St. Michel, a
Paris Courier
truck pulled up to the curb in front of the newspaper kiosk. The driver handed Monsieur Villières a roll of paper and then tossed down bundles of newspapers. ‘Hey, Mademoiselle Manon,' Monsieur Villières said, ‘want the first edition of your paper?'

“No, thanks,” I said. We were too bleary-eyed to care about reading, and kept walking.

As I tried to sleep, I couldn't shake my disappointment with myself. The evening with Andy reminded me that I might have come far geographically, but a small distance emotionally. I tried to push the self-doubt aside and think about something different: My home. Simon's Creek, Nevada.

 

Simon's Creek was a small silver-mining town that had been carved out of the crown of Moon Mountain. It had profoundly influenced me with its azure skies, the crisp thin air, the rocky barrenness of the mountainside. I loved the miles of trails sliced out of rock gullies by extreme weather, the copses of pine trees, the smooth-barked, claret-red tamarisk, and the remarkable horizon. The open spaces allowed me to escape the problems at home. Outdoors in the mountains I could be quiet and listen to the wind, listen to the stillness. The austerity of the land gave me a sense of being special, as if I were alone in the world.

 

Born in France, my father immigrated to New York with his parents when he was a young child. He met my mother at Brooklyn College; after graduating they eloped. A marriage between a Catholic and a Jew was not smiled upon in 1900. They had seen an advertisement: “Teachers Needed in Nevada,” and applied—not caring a whit where Nevada was, as long as it was in America. My father was hired as a history and Latin teacher, and for a small extra stipend he served as the custodian.

Mother was an accomplished illustrator, who had paid her way through college with freelance commercial jobs. In Nevada, she was hired to teach biology and art, part-time. She supplemented her salary by taking jobs as a court illustrator in Reno, and less often, Carson City.

1905. I was born at home. There was a midwife and old Dr. Springer, who, I gather from family anecdotes, hung around, nipped at a bottle of whiskey, and chatted with my father, who stayed sober. My mother refused to breastfeed me. Later, she would laugh and claim that she was more evolved than a cow. She hired a local woman, Mrs. Cheng, as a wet-nurse. Two weeks later my mother went back to teaching.

Mother had the talent of an artist and the heart of a naturalist. Arrowheads, rocks, plant life, petrified wood—all interested her. It didn't matter that during a strenuous hike, she could be drenched from a downpour or sweating like one of the miners in the local silver mines; she loved being outdoors. Sometimes, when my father was drinking and things were difficult at home, she would slip out the back door with a tent, food, water, and her metal botany satchel slung across her chest. Depositing me with the ever-dependable Mrs. Cheng, she would stay away for at least a full night, sometimes more, depending on her mood and her job.

A self-possessed woman, my mother had to work to be accepted into the narrow confines of that rural Nevada community. Not only was her education advanced for a woman of the time, but she had cosmopolitan airs. She tried to combat the community's opinions with irony. When someone would say something about her leaving her child, about being away alone in the mountains, she would answer, “Oh, there's nothing to worry about. I've hung Rose on the forged hook on the front door. Mrs. Cheng will feed her,” and they would laugh, smitten with what they thought was her sophisticated New York humor.

Although she was relieved to have left New York, from the moment she arrived in Simon's Creek, she longed to leave. The town was full of Italians, Ukrainians, and Chinese people who had come to work on the railroad or in the silver mines. All the women had one style of dress—long black shirtwaists, black stockings, and black laced-up boots. Mother would laugh and tell my father, “I'll dress the same, so as not to stand out—but I feel as if I'm wearing my shadow.”

Used to being quiet in the mountains—not wanting to disturb a rattlesnake nest, a family of coyotes—my mother moved like a shadow. She slipped around corners; she shocked me with her sudden appearance in a room. She stayed hidden. She was never emotionally present, except when she was angry. I always felt like a lumbering fool, while she moved like a dancer. In the end, though—and I'm horrified to admit this—there are, indeed, characteristics that we share.

 

I know we all have many facets to our personalities. But my mother appeared to have only a few. One was the quick-witted, talented teacher and artist—a good friend to many women. The other was her doppelganger—the stranger, the mirror. I would often watch her when I was little and we were shopping in the Moon Mountain General Store. She was friendly and funny, asking questions that showed how she cared for the people she was talking to. Her ability to make new friends always surprised me. People liked her. Until we got home. Then she was spiteful toward them, calling them stupid, without imagination. And as for me—she either ignored me or was angry with me. To the day she died, I had trouble determining when to speak to her and when not to.

 

Father was of medium height, thin, with a chest that was almost concave. He had curly thick hair that began to be sprinkled with gray when he was in his early twenties. His face was oval and his nose was slightly bent, almost as if he had been a boxer. Walking like a crooked broom, he leaned to the left and swept his feet along with a shuffle-shuffle sound.

Most of the time he was a soft-mannered man, happy to let everyone else do the talking. But he wasn't perfect. He drank too much. Not all the time, but in spurts—and he hated this weakness. For no reason that he could determine, a terrible urge would grab him and not let go until he had passed out from his indulgence.

“I feel,” he once said to me, “that the devil captures my soul and flings me into hell.”

 

When he was on an alcoholic rampage, I was petrified. Even now I remember cringing at the way he hugged me, how he insisted upon my sitting on his lap and reading to me. He was disgusting. And I was often confused. I detested him for his weakness, for his slobbering behavior—and I never forgave my mother for abandoning me to him. Thank goodness for Mrs. Cheng. As soon as she saw what was going on, she would take me to her house. After a couple of days, my father would arrive to collect me—forlorn and groveling with guilt. My mother let him perform that ritual: his Catholic penance. Then we all three would pretend that everything was fine—until the next time.

 

At ten years old, I was already tall for my age, developing breasts, and quite outspoken. My classmates assumed I was strong. I understood this and postured as if it were true. One day a classmate said with a sneer, “You're a stinking kike. Your people killed Jesus!”

I shoved him. The boy came back at me with fury and threw me to the floor, holding my arms behind my back until the pain was unbearable.

“You dirty Jew,” the boy yelled at me in front of everyone. “Go back where you belong.”

“I give! I give!” I had to beg for mercy. Then the gang of children descended on me—kicking me, grabbing my hair, and finally in the most humiliating act they could conjure, pulling off my panties and ripping off my skirt. Then they ran, flying my skirt behind them like a kite. They left me there, naked from the waist down with nothing to cover me up. I curled into a fetal position and wept. A teacher found me and put his jacket around my body and carried me home.

I was delivered to my parents. Soon after my mother's oohing and tsk-tsking about the horrible thing done to me, the teacher left. “For heaven's sake,” she turned on me and scolded, “can't you do anything right? I hope you had on clean underwear!”

“Leave her alone,” Father said. “That's an awful thing to say to the girl. Imagine being attacked by a pack of animals.”

“Oh, be quiet,” she said. “And where in the world did this Jewish thing come from? I thought that nobody knew except us, and your drunken Father Maloney. What a blabbermouth he is. Does he tell you,” she wheedled, “the good dirt he hears during confession?”

And she walked out and slammed the door.

It was always this way. My mother was impossible to please. My father was easy. I was caught in between.

Once I heard Father say, “Let her be, Miriam. You're too hard on her.”

“Yeah, well, she's just like you,” she said. “A dreamer who won't get anywhere. You both disgust me.”

 

I thought I was plain. I loathed my long upper lip and the prominent Silverman nose. When I was a little girl I would sit and read with a finger holding up the tip of my nose, hoping to make it straighter. I wore my hair in thick braids. Like my father, I was terribly shortsighted. My parents tried to keep me in glasses, but I hated them. They always got in my way. I would lose them, bury them in the backs of drawers, leave them around until someone stepped on them. And although I didn't always appear to be paying attention, I had learned to listen keenly.

 

Even now, I hear well for my age, but I'm still losing my glasses. It's become a habit. I remember when I first met Leon I kept my glasses in my pocketbook. For the longest time I didn't wear them. Then, once, when we were on an outing, he noticed that I was squinting through the train's window. “Have you ever had your eyes checked?” he asked. “You don't seem to see very well, and you're missing pretty scenery.” And because I couldn't bear to miss seeing anything, I took them out of my purse and put them on. “This is why I don't wear glasses,” I said. “They make me homelier.”

“You're a silly woman,” he said. “You look a hell of a lot better than when you're peering out with teeny, straining eyes. Actually, you have very pretty eyes.”

I still think about what I've missed. What I haven't seen.

 

When I was eighteen I left home and moved to Virginia City, about ten miles west of Simon's Creek. I lived in an apartment over a bar on C Street. Taking classes in journalism by mail from the University of Chicago, I worked as a substitute reading and writing teacher in the Fourth Ward School. This was a hateful job. I had no patience, and absolutely no interest in children. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter—that was my passion. No marriage. No children. On this I was clear.

At night, if I weren't studying, I would head over to the
Territorial Enterprise
,
the only newspaper in town. Sitting quietly in a corner, I would read back issues. The men all knew me. “Hey, Rose,” the typesetter would sometimes offer, “want to set the headline for me?” And I would go downstairs to the composing table and the font cases and get to work.

 

Aunt Clara continued to visit every two years. One year, the year before I left Nevada for good, she brought my cousin for a visit to the “Wild West.” Her parents had named her Stella. My Aunt Leah Mair, having read the name in the society column of a newspaper, thought it quite modern. “After all,” Leah had written to my mother, “don't we want to be real, honest-to-goodness Americans?”

Stella dreamt of being a famous actress. She made exaggerated hand gestures, no matter the topic of conversation. And given the opportunity, she would throw her body into grand dramatic poses, as if she were on the stage. At first I was fascinated with her. But after a couple of weeks I grew tired of her theatrics. I did have to admit that she caused quite a sensation in town. The men were goggle-eyed; the women tried not to look concerned. But one of the things I liked about Stella was her unabashed openness about being Jewish.

At the beginning of her visit, in her ebullient fashion, Stella threw her arms around me and said, “We can be sisters! I only have a brother and he's a stick-in-the-mud—absolutely no fun. But you, well, you're a real cowgirl from the West! Isn't this neat?”

I was already nineteen years old and she was eighteen, and although I thought her silly, I had to admit that I was enchanted.

“Are you all Jewish?” I asked her.

“Of course I'm
all
Jewish,” she said proudly. “What a silly question, Rose. You know that even though your father isn't Jewish, your mother certainly is. No one in the family understands what Aunt Miriam has against Jews. My mother told me that she became this way while they were all living in a tiny town, far out on Long Island. There were no other Jews in the town and Miriam was desperate to fit in. She could already speak Russian, Yiddish, and a beautiful French. But she struggled to learn English.”

“How odd. I wonder why she became an English professor.”

“It's obvious, Rose. Learning English was a challenge.”

“That sounds like her!” I said.

I couldn't help but compare my Jewishness with that of my cousin. Stella was comfortable with being Jewish. She never questioned her situation. But being Jewish challenged the grandiose image I had of myself—the all-American girl who was above the petty labels of race and religion. I told myself I wanted to be a woman of the greater world. But honestly, what I really wanted was to please my parents.