Lies My Mother Never Told Me (33 page)

My father would have been outraged by the message of
Saving Private Ryan
, that the just and fair U.S. government would expend the energy and manpower to locate Mrs. Ryan's last surviving son—one man among the myriad soldiers whose lives were at
stake that day. He believed that war and warfare turn most men into animals, not heroes. And the individual, in warfare, does not count, never did count, and never will. And anyone who says otherwise is lying. But people in general would probably rather believe a Spielberg film over the soldier-writers who dedicated their lives to trying to debunk such glorifying myths. It is much safer, and more comfortable, to believe in the notion of “the good war,” and that no American soldier killed, or died, in vain.

Our modern society has managed to turn a good many legendary battles into successful films and video games. Herodotus wrote in his
Histories
about three hundred Spartans, who in 480
B.C.
held off a Persian force of 80,000 for three days at the Thermopylae pass. But why read the difficult Herodotus when we can now experience this famous battle in a graphic novel called
300
? And if we don't want to read at all, there is a film based on the book, complete with supernatural creatures—a huge commercial success. There is even a video game of the Omaha Beach assault, created in the wake of
Saving Private Ryan
, in which we may virtually experience killing Nazis, getting blown up, deploying Bangalore torpedoes, storming the German pillboxes, and saving the day.

My friend Ray Elliott, former president of the James Jones Literary Society, writer, and former marine, had a cousin, Bruce Elliott, who participated in the Omaha Beach landing. A neck injury Bruce received during the war bothered him for the rest of his life, and he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. He was able to hold down a job until his last few years, when he was forced to go on total disability. Bruce Elliott eventually shot himself, on D-day 1982—a statement heard loud and clear by his family. Ray visited Omaha Beach on several occasions; in 1994, for the fiftieth anniversary, he attended the ceremonies on a D-day pass granted by the Pentagon, thanks to Bruce's service. During that visit, Ray noticed a number of young faux soldiers in vintage
U.S. military garb and medals, tooling around the countryside in World War II U.S. Army jeeps—boys playing war.

Ray went back in 2004, just a few weeks before I did, and was stunned by the changes he noted in just ten years. Pointe du Hoc, a mile farther down the beach from Omaha, where Army Rangers had clambered the sheer rock face under heavy machine-gun fire, now looked like a Disney World ride, with state-of-the-art observation towers and panoramas. I was reminded of a recent attempt by some commercial-minded entrepreneurs to turn an infamous Virginia Civil War battlefield into a Civil War–themed amusement park. This plan was actually considered seriously until many notable historians and writers—including William Styron—vehemently spoke out against it and put a stop to it.

But every war has had its great writers, soldiers who witnessed the ugliness and were not fooled by lies of grandeur. I thought of Stendhal, who survived Napoleon's retreat from Russia; and Tolstoy, who survived the battle of Sebastopol, and read Stendhal to understand how to write about war; all the way down to my father, James Jones, who read both Stendhal and Tolstoy, and laughed his head off at their gallows humor and their elegant descriptions of young men's hunger for glory.

 

For several years now, I'd stopped writing. I'd lost hope in the literary novel. In the midst of this crisis, in 2002, I spent the month of June in Paris with Kevin and Eyrna, organizing the James Jones Literary Society yearly symposium, which was held at the American University of Paris on June 22. Norris Church Mailer, George Plimpton, and Norman Mailer came and performed their play,
Zelda, Scott, and Ernest
, before a crowd of hundreds at the American Church on the Quai d'Orsay, to raise funds for the Society. A well-known French literary journalist, François Busnel, wanted to interview Norman for French radio, and Norman asked me to be his translator.

Busnel's first question was about the September 11 terrorist attacks. I was so stunned by Norman's response I could barely translate. Norman laughed and said he was amused that the French were more interested in his opinion of 9/11 than the Americans. He said, with a bemused smile, that literary writers' opinions no longer held any sway in America. The time of the great American novelists had passed. In the forties, a few writers thought they could change the world. And perhaps they did. James Jones's novel
From Here to Eternity
, for example, changed the U.S. Army, Norman said. “I still think that's the role of literature: to try to change the world. But that's no longer what preoccupies American writers, unfortunately. If I had to do it over, I'd be a film director.”

But, he explained, this did not mean that we could stop taking a stand, and stop hollering when it was time to holler. I thought Norman was fantastically brave, because people in the States were being called “unpatriotic” if they opposed the Bush administration's intention to invade Iraq. As
patriotic Americans
, we weren't even supposed to be in France, which refused to back the U.S.'s invasion plans.

Busnel and Norman looked at me, expecting my simultaneous translation. I was so busy listening and thinking that for a moment, I'd forgotten what I was doing there. I quickly resumed.

And what genius, Norman continued, to hit the Twin Towers, the greatest American symbol of globalization and financial greed!

After Busnel and his crew left, I told Norman I thought the Tower card in the tarot deck was eerily descriptive of what had happened to us on September 11.

“How interesting,” he said. “Do you read tarot cards?”

I told him I did and had been studying the tarot for years. He asked me if I had my cards with me. I didn't. They were back at my friend's apartment.

“Oh, too bad. I read cards too,” Norman added, after a pause. “I find them fascinating. I used to read my cards every day, but it began to obsess me, so I stopped. We should trade readings sometime.”

“Norman,” I blurted, “I haven't written a word in ages. I was so depressed over the fate of literature in the U.S. that I felt completely useless. But now, listening to you, I see it's not an option. I
have to
write. I see it's more important than ever.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Even more so if you do it without any expectation of success.”

 

Now I looked up the green cliff face to the top, where on a white esplanade tourists had crowded to gaze down at the beach. Why did everyone look so joyful? I was thinking of Norman's words and wondering if I would have become a novelist if I'd known, back in 1981, that the literary novel would hold so little sway in the years to come. Well, too late now, I thought. I don't know how to do anything else. Not a fucking thing, except teach.

Time to start writing again.

I limped slowly back up the steep, uneven path to the cemetery, and made my way through the crowds to the parking lot, where our bus was waiting.

As I approached the bus, I saw Richard standing a few feet away, looking pensive. “I didn't feel what I thought I would feel,” Richard said, his voice hollow. “I don't know—it was strangely unemotional.”

“I was here before,” I replied awkwardly. “My father brought me. It was so quiet. There was no one here.”

Richard nodded. In silence, we made our way back to our seats on the sunny bus.

Here is a story Mary Johnson, my mother's housekeeper, told me.

 

The next vehicle my mother bought after she smashed up The Fat Lady was a Dodge Caravan, another minivan that was only slightly less fat, but easier to maneuver. Apparently, sometime in the summer of 2005, driving home from a liquid lunch at Dockside restaurant in Sag Harbor, she hit the stone embankment of the narrow train overpass on Butter Lane and totaled the passenger side of the Caravan. It was no longer possible to open the passenger door, and the side mirror was ripped right out of its casing.

Every day, at around eleven, Mary, who was three-quarters blind and could no longer keep house, accompanied my mother on her outing. First they would go to the post office, then to the shopping center, where my mother and Mary played Lotto and picked up booze. Once or twice a month they drove to the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton to buy cartons of discounted, tax-free cigarettes.

After the passenger door was smashed in and could no longer be opened, Mary was forced to sit in the back, and that's how they drove around town. One day, Mary said in her dreamy Georgia drawl, “It's just like
Driving Miss Daisy
—in reverse!” and let out her deep, rumbling smoker's laugh.

My mother was not amused. After that, she stopped driving and had Vladimir—the drunken Russian artist who'd moved into the attic—drive her and Mary around town, both of them now in the backseat.

M
Y MOTHER THREW US OUT
of her house one last time in mid-July 2004. By then we were visiting rarely, and stayed only for one night. Her fit of rage was triggered by a phone call from Max Mosolino, who told her that Kevin and I were trying to undermine her.

We had called Max, who was a builder, earlier that morning to ask for his help with the house's most urgent and serious problems, like the crumbling porch steps and the wasps' nests inside the steps' wooden posts. The bigger issues, like the rotting window frames, would have to wait. Kevin told Max he was very concerned about my mother's state of mind, and repairs were absolutely necessary or someone was going to get hurt. Max, after a thoughtful silence, told Kevin that Gloria should sell the house and move into a manageable condo. Yes, Kevin said, of course, but she won't move. Max did not offer to come help, and Kevin said something like, After everything she did for you, it wouldn't kill you to take a couple of days to fix the more urgent problems.

I don't know how Max reported this to Gloria, but it was an easy conversation to spin any number of ways. I can understand, on some level, Max's loyalty to his aunt, and his refusal to accept that she was in serious trouble. But the result was that Gloria returned from her friend Liz Fondaras's yearly Quatorze Juillet luncheon bash and stormed into our downstairs bedroom. Eyrna,
now six years old, was changing out of her wet bathing suit, the three of us having just returned from the beach.

“You and I are finished.
Finished
,” she said to me. “Get out.”

I stood there, stunned, staring at my mother, who had gained quite a bit of weight recently, and I got a strong whiff of that weird, pungent, fermented fruit smell emanating from her. And yet my mind refused to compute what should have been patently clear. Instead, I felt a surge of unbearable guilt and tried to determine what I'd done wrong. I realized immediately that Max must have called her.

She turned to Eyrna, whose face was already twisting in horror and pain. “
You
can stay,” she said.

“Don't be ridiculous,” I said, my voice quivering. “She's our child.”

“You see,” she said to Eyrna, pointing at us, “this is all because of them. This is
their
fault.
They
've done this to us.” She turned and walked out of the room. Eyrna started to howl.

I felt as if I'd exploded from within as my vision closed in around me. I charged up the stairs behind my mother, shouting at her in a voice I did not recognize. I called her a fucking bitch. I kicked open her bedroom door with a perfect front kick and raised a fist to knock her down. I could still hear Eyrna howling downstairs. My mother cowered before me, cringing, and I saw not a colossal Hydra but a frightened old lady, and I was able to hold myself back. Instead, I picked up a heavy glass ashtray and threw it at the wall, putting a dent in the sheetrock.

I shouted, out of breath as if I'd run six miles, “You're a monster. Our relationship as you know it is over. And you've just lost your privileges as a grandmother. I am
never
going to let you do this to us again, you fucking cunt.”

 

We took everything of ours we could fit in the car, until there was not an inch of room left, and drove away. We left all our winter
clothes in the attic. Kevin, behind the wheel, was shaking and breathing shallowly, attempting to get control of his anger. Eyrna cried the whole way back to New York and was still so upset she couldn't go to her summer camp the next day. By Tuesday, I felt it necessary to take her to my therapist, Sherrye, who was an expert in treating children of alcoholics. Kevin came as well, and we let Sherrye tell Eyrna that her grandmother was not in her right mind.

I felt I had completely let my child down, not to mention my husband and myself. But never did I think that Gloria had been drinking.

 

We tried to maintain our stable, normal, daily routine. Eyrna was enrolled in a summer day camp on the Upper East Side that took the kids to Westchester every morning by bus. I continued to attend my tae kwon do class. We had not been going to my mother's for weekends as we used to in the past, so the change wasn't so radical. Every person I spoke to who was sane thought Gloria had been undermining Kevin and me as parents, and the relationship between her and Eyrna had to change. I would not let Eyrna call her.

That July, I read Eyrna
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

When Harry returns to Hogwarts Academy after witnessing the murder of his friend at the end of the previous book, he sees for the first time that the school's carriages are not self-propelled but are pulled by cadaverous, black-winged horses. He learns they are called thestrals, and they have always been there, but the only people who can see them are those who have watched someone die. At first, they are terrifying, but Harry learns to appreciate their peculiar beauty.

At this point, I started to feel choked up and had to stop reading.

“
You
could see the thestrals, Mommy,” Eyrna said in a quiet voice.

“Yes,” I said, “I could.” And I added, “And so could your daddy.”

I love the way J. K. Rowling describes the line between those who have looked death in the face and those who have not, allowing children who have suffered such a loss to feel special, part of an exclusive club. My father witnessed death at the age of twenty, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. My mother was much younger; she was four when her sister Kitty died of polio. But my mother seemed to have spent her life trying to pretend the thestrals weren't there.

“When you can see the thestrals, you're very special,” I said to Eyrna, my voice warbling.

I knew that soon enough, Eyrna would be able to see them too.

 

Mr. Bill began to look unwell. From one day to the next, his skin seemed to lose its luminous sheen, and all at once his hair appeared to go gray. He breathed too hard during class and moved as if he were aching all over. He could barely lift his legs to demonstrate the kicks.

“What's wrong with Mr. Bill?” Eyrna whispered to me as we were changing in the locker room one Saturday, after class.

“I don't know,” I whispered back.

Everyone was afraid to ask him.

The next Tuesday, I asked Mr. Bill to join me for lunch. I told him what had happened with my mother, and how Eyrna was suffering. I asked him if he thought I was wrong to keep Eyrna away from her grandmother.

“Kids raised in violence only know violence. They confuse it with love,” he elliptically said.

“Mr. Bill, are you okay?” I asked him.

“I got prostate cancer,” he said without emotion. “I took all them tests. CAT scans, MRIs. I hadn't been to see a doctor in years. It already spread to my bones.” He placed his hand flat against his sternum. “Right here, they say.”

Thirty years ago I watched my father die slowly, and I was not afraid of illness. I wanted Mr. Bill to know that, but I also didn't know how to tell him.

“What can I do to help you?” This was the only response I could think of.

“Just keep showing up.”

“I won't quit,” I said. “It's a promise.”

He nodded. Then he ordered a margarita, and after it arrived, he took a delicate sip and said, “I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of leaving my moms alone. Ain't nobody else to care for her.”

“I used to flirt with death,” I said. “I used to drive drunk, too fast. Now, I'm scared of dying because I can't stand the thought of Eyrna having to face this world without me.”

He nodded, took another sip. We sat in silence for a moment.

Then Mr. Bill told me he didn't get paid much to teach at the
do-jang.
He saw it as his spiritual duty. He had his VA check, and they took care of his medical, but of course that was hardly enough. His moms had some dough, he said. That took care of her bills, as long as he was the one caring for her, not a nurse.

He had two sons, almost the same age, from different women; one lived in California, and one was away at Bard College. The one at Bard was majoring in Japanese studies and was a tai chi expert. I had met the Bard student when he'd come to meet Mr. Bill for lunch at the
do-jang.
Mr. Bill didn't want his sons to know he was sick.

“They need to know, Mr. Bill,” I said gently. He didn't respond.

“Now I got to do that chemo shit,” he finally said.

When the bill came, he pulled some crumpled twenties out of his pocket and wouldn't let me pay my share.

“If that don't work,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “then I'll just have to learn how to die.”

 

On the way to pick up Eyrna at the camp bus stop, I went into an upscale health food store and asked the man behind the counter what was good for prostate cancer and chemotherapy treatments. He recommended green tea extract and phellinus linteus extract, a Chinese mushroom. They were almost as expensive by weight as marijuana. I got both for Mr. Bill and brought them to class on Thursday.

He looked at me somberly and bowed in thanks.

“When you run out,” I said, “tell me and I'll get you more.”

 

At first Mr. Bill lost a good deal of weight. But as soon as he started his chemo and hormone treatments, his hair started falling out in great clumps, and his face grew bloated right up to his eyes. But he still showed up, and worked slowly and laboriously, teaching us as he always had.

He couldn't do the kicks or stretches anymore, but we still responded to his commands as if he'd lost none of his strength and form. This was exactly the way we treated my father as he weakened and grew thin and shrank before our eyes. We pretended he could still manhandle us.

I told Mr. Bill, “You look great. You always do.” This was tricky, for Mr. Bill hated to be patronized, or to have anyone feel sorry for him. I watched my father weaken, drowning slowly as his lungs filled with water, and yet I never felt sorry for him, only helpless to ease his discomfort. Mr. Bill did look great. And he kept showing up. I realized, with a jolt, that the
do-jang
was the center of his life. While it was not the center of mine, I hoped to make it the new foundation from which I could proudly move forward into an unknown and terrifying future.

 

Eventually, my mother and I had a slight rapprochement. I went out to her house toward the end of October, dreading every moment, so I could pick up our winter clothes. I didn't call ahead. I knew the house would not be locked, and she would probably be out to lunch. No such luck. She sat at her usual place, on a high stool at the butcher block island in the center of the kitchen, smoking.

“Hi, Mom. I came to get our winter clothes. I'll only be here for a minute.”

“Eyrna hasn't called me,” she said.

“It's not up to her to call you,” I said calmly. “You threw us out of your house, in front of your six-year-old granddaughter. She had to go see a therapist because of it.”

“No-o,” my mother countered, as if I'd just told her a spaceship had landed in her backyard.

I ran up the two flights to the attic and retrieved our plastic bags, rolling them down the narrow stairs, one after the other. I was in the house a total of four minutes. On my way out carrying the last two bags, I said, “If we're unwelcome in your life, so is she. She's just a little girl.”

On Halloween, my mother finally called our apartment; it was nine days before Eyrna's birthday. Giving in for Eyrna's sake, I invited her to meet us to celebrate—in neutral territory—for tea, at the American Girl Doll Store on Fifth Avenue. I made reservations in the restaurant, where girls could bring their dolls, and the dolls would be served their own tea and cakes in miniature cups and plates.

“What a gimmick, this place,” said my mother under her breath as we walked around, looking at the dolls in their delicate, colorful, historically accurate rooms. The Native American doll, Maya, had a faux buffalo hide teepee with furs for a bed and a spotted pony with a travois. Eyrna was carrying Felicity under her arm, dressed up for the occasion in a black velvet and white satin ball gown.

My mother made a twisted-mouth face. “They have all these people fooled, but not me.”

“Eyrna loves this store,” I said, “that's all I care about.” I had a strange realization: in the past, her words would have hurt me, but now, what she thought no longer mattered to me in the least.

We had fancy high tea with a triple-decker arrangement of little sandwiches and pastries that cost me eighty dollars. Eyrna was delighted. To anyone seeing us, we looked like a television ad. Three generations of attractive, well-groomed, healthy, loving women. Sitting at the table with my mother, I caught a whiff of that terrible fermented fruit smell. Could she be drinking? No. It was impossible. I dismissed the thought as a case of nerves on my part.

My mother bought Eyrna a new doll—one she'd wanted for a long time. Coming out of the store in the chill November afternoon, there were no cabs anywhere, and my mother couldn't catch her breath, so she hired a bicycle cab to carry us and our bevy of shopping bags back uptown to Cecile's apartment.

“You know, not too long ago I was driving and I had the radio on and they played that song by Beethoven, remember? ‘Da, da, dada, da…'”—she sang in her low, raspy voice that still always managed to be in tune—“and I thought of you”…” Her voice trailed off.

“Beethoven's Sixth,” I prompted. I felt like reminding her that it was a symphony, not a song, but held my tongue. Apparently she wasn't going to continue. “What did you think when you thought of me?” I wanted to know.

“I just thought of you, that's all,” she curtly replied.

Was she trying to say she was sorry for the terrible scene she'd caused last July? Was she trying to say she'd missed me? In the old days, this would have been enough to make me drop my armor and prostrate myself at her feet. Not anymore. My heart was not even quivering.