The Year My Mother Came Back (12 page)

“That's what my feminist theory professor says.” I offered, hoping to steer the conversation into more neutral territory, to no avail.

“Your professor is right. For example, your father owns this house, not me. I own nothing. Nothing. I've worked for thirty-five years, I've taught at universities and earned money for thirty-five years, and what do I have to show for it?”

Her voice got louder. She was no longer talking to me. I sat on the saggy daybed by the window and listened to a large moth flying into the screen, over and over, trying to get out. Mom paced the room, carrying
Open Marriage
and gesticulating with it.

“Even though I helped support our family, and even though I paid for your father to go to graduate school, and even though I did all the childcare and housework so that he could build his business, I'm not a stakeholder in this marriage. The whole institution of marriage is designed to keep women financially dependent and subservient. And when it comes to sexual politics? Please, don't get me started!”

“Okay, I won't.”

But she'd already started, and there was no stopping her. I didn't know where she was going with this, but she was mad at men in general, and my parents weren't getting along. I was pretty sure Mom wanted to confide in me about something. I feared it was about my father having an affair. I hoped he wasn't, but if he was, I didn't want the burden of knowledge, even though I suspected it myself. Mom wanted my loyalty, but I wanted to be loyal to both Mom and Dad.

She plunked down next to me on the daybed, which bounced and sagged, knocking me off balance. I leaned on my right elbow.

“Suffice it to say—and you can draw your own conclusions—after I had cancer, after the double radical, my husband no longer saw me as a woman. Because, Alice, that's the way men are. And to tell you the truth, I no longer felt like a woman. We're trained to believe that our womanhood is defined by our external appearance. And when you lose your—Well. So. I've never talked about this with you before. It was excruciatingly difficult, still is. And your father . . .”

Her unfinished sentence was the open door for me to enter and invite her to tell me everything. I was torn. She'd never shared so much personal stuff with me. We hadn't been close for a very long time, and it was very tempting to step through that door and become her friend and confidant. She obviously wanted to tell me a secret, and that secret was undoubtedly about my father. But then I'd have to take sides, and I didn't want to side against Dad. The thought of it made my heart hurt.

She flipped through the pages of
Open Marriage,
without reading them. “Well. Hmm. You want my advice, Alice?”

“Okay.”

“Don't get married.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Don't get married unless you want babies. And who wants babies?”

“That's weird advice, Mom.”

“I'm kidding. I love my children.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“But if you
do
get married,
do not
put your husband through business school.”

“O . . . kay . . . ?”

“It simply reinforces the status quo of financial inequality in this
lousy
institution. I was supporting our household, paying for my husband's tuition, taking care of babies, being a housewife, washing dishes. The dishes. The dishes! The goddamn dishes! No wonder women don't succeed.”

“
Wonder Women
don't succeed?”

“What?”

“It's a joke, Mom.
Wonder Woman.
The comic superhero? Never mind. You were saying?”

“Women don't succeed, because we're up to our elbows in dishwater.”

“I know what you mean, Mom.” I felt a pang of guilt, suddenly remembering that time, years ago, when we gave her a broom and a dustpan for Mother's Day. How could we have been so stupid?

“By the time you three babies were out of diapers and I finally got back to writing, so much time had passed that what I had written was out of date. Every time I read over a new draft, I'd outgrown the damn thing. The goddamn dishes keep us from writing fast enough to make a mark in the world.”

“Wow. That's a really interesting concept.”

“We make a pittance while our husbands get rich. When the woman gets older and the sexual attraction is gone, what was all that sacrifice for?”

“I don't know.”

“Exactly! So my advice, Alice, is don't get married unless you find someone who doesn't buy the old rules, because the old rules stink!”

“Got it. And that's good advice.”

She got up and paced the room again, glancing at me to deliver her main points, as if this were a lecture hall and I was her only student. It was dusk, and the crickets were singing.

“I used to be called an eccentric. Now I'm called a feminist! It's a wonderful thing. For the first time, I'm professionally valued for my life experience as a wife-slash-mother-slash-housewife-slash-perpetual PhD candidate. This new role legitimizes that which previously was assigned zero value.”

“That's cool.”

“I gave a talk to a group of women at the library last week. I said, ‘I had an
epiphany
on the tennis court! My husband and I have always played tennis together. Whenever a new racket came on the market, he bought the new racket and I got his old one. His game kept getting better. Mine stayed the same. This year, my husband got a
Prince
and his game improved dramatically. And I said, impulsively, “Ira, I want a Prince.” After a moment's pause, he said, “Okay.” And I bought a Prince. Voila! My tennis game improved.'”

“What was your epiphany?”

“That all these years, I could have been improving my tennis game, like my husband. And I began to think of all the areas of my life where I have settled for leftovers, hand-me-downs, second bests, and how much I could have improved—and still can improve—if I stop settling.”

“That's great. Mom. You always taught us to challenge the status quo. I'm proud of you.”

She sat on the creaky daybed again and looked at me. My heart hurt again.

“I thought I might talk to you about something . . .” she said, pausing long enough for me to consider saying, W
hat do you want to talk about, Mom? You can tell me anything.
But I didn't say a word, and the unspoken
something
remained suspended in the ellipsis, until the moment passed and the silence became awkward.

It was getting darker. She got up, turned on a lamp, and rummaged around the clutter on her desk. “Alice, did you see where I put my glasses?”

“They're on your head.”

“Ah.”

This was my chance to open up to her, invite her to talk to me. She initiated this, and now the ball was in my court. It could be a turning point for us, a new beginning. But then I might have been obligated to reject my Dad, and I didn't want to take that risk. Anyway, Mom had close friends her own age she could confide in.

The moth was still throwing himself into the screen,
ping, ping, ping . . .

“I should start packing for school.”

“Yes, of course.”

At the end of the week in the new house—which would never feel like home, because I had hardly lived there, except for a couple of weeks each summer before college—I went back to school.

My sisters swing by after work to say hi to Julia before she heads back to school. Madeline, Jennifer, and I are best friends, even closer as adults than we were as children, and they're both stellar aunts to my girls. Madeline has been consulting with Eliana on her Halloween costume. She has a master's degree in costume design and I can barely thread a needle, so I leave the execution of this project to them. They disappear into Ellie's room to add the finishing touches, while Julia, Jennifer, and I make dinner and schmooze in the kitchen.

Eliana emerges to model the craziest costume I have ever seen—“I'm half Voldemort, half umbrella.” Her long hair is tightly pulled back under a white bathing cap, and her face is painted white, with black slits for Voldemort's serpentine, noseless nostrils. She wears an umbrella hat and a long black robe, with an aluminumfoil umbrella handle sewn on the front. Hilarious and creepy. She takes a bow. We applaud and laugh and agree that while there will be loads of Harry Potter characters trick-or-treating tomorrow, she'll be the only Voldebrella.

After dinner, Julia slings her Princeton Crew bag over her shoulder (now that she's an athlete, she's got tons of swag). Eliana reaches up and Julia reaches down, folding her long arms around her little sister. They hold each other for a long time. “I gotta go, Eliana,” whispers Julia, gently.

I ASK MY
sisters about our childhood.

“For the most part,” says Madeline, “I remember growing up being a pretty happy-go-lucky time.”

I laugh.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Did you really say ‘happy-go-lucky'?”

“Yes, that's how I remember it.”

“No way.”

“
Yes
way!”

“I thought you were being ironic.” I stifle my laughter. I'm amazed.

“But you know me—my credo is, avoid negative thoughts at all costs,” she adds, with a touch of self-mocking humor that I find reassuring. “It wasn't
all
great. Dad and Mom argued a lot. And Mom had all those phobias. She was afraid of mountain roads and open windows and thunder and elevators and sharks and the ocean. There was a year when she was agoraphobic. And she was so indecisive and so overprotective that it drove me crazy. It was mortifying when she'd march into school in curlers and a raincoat over her nightgown, to give the principal a piece of her mind.”

“Now
that
I remember exactly the same way.”

“And there were all these race issues in our neighborhood. Starting in junior high, I was passionate about the civil rights movement. In eleventh grade I went to the prom with a black guy, and a few days later, I overheard a classmate saying, ‘Madeline went to the prom with a nigger.' But I had already established myself as a marginal, lefty, high-achieving nerd, so I guess that insulated me. And I had my friends. So I stand by my statement. All in all, my childhood was happy-go-lucky.”

(I guess I don't have the happy-go-lucky gene.)

“I wish I kept at least some of Mom's writing,” I say. “Dad was in such a hurry to clear out the house after she died. I feel terrible that we dumped her papers. Boxes and boxes, thousands of pages. I can't believe it's all gone.”

“I have her masters thesis from Columbia,” says Madeline.

“Really?” I'm stunned.

“Yeah,” she says, “You want it?”

“Yes! Definitely. Thank you.”

“I remember having a very happy childhood, being loved and cared for in a fun and happy home,” says Jennifer. “It's hard for me to believe that you have those negative memories and feelings about Mom. I put her on a pedestal. She loved and protected us so intensely—she was like a mother bird who would peck the eyes out of anyone who hurt her babies, she loved us that much. And I saw how different and awful it could be for the other kids in our neighborhood. Rosalia's father beat her and her siblings with a belt on a regular basis; in second grade I saw him throw his wife down the stairs. And it was just terrible the way my friend Emma's mother told her she couldn't play with me anymore, because all Jews had bedbugs. So, in contrast to my friends, whose parents were so cruel and violent, I felt safe and cared for. It was hard to compete with my big sisters for Mom and Dad's attention, but I knew we would always be protected and loved by our parents.”

Wow, okay. I remember all these awful things Jennifer described. And I, too, remember feeling loved and cared for in a fun, happy home—that is, when I was a little girl. In adolescence? Not so much. I'm perversely envious that the cruelty Jennifer observed in the neighborhood underscored for her how wonderful our family life was in contrast; whereas, from my camera angle, they reinforce my memory of our neighborhood as a hostile place.

My sisters and I are best friends. We grew up in the same house, in the same neighborhood, with the same parents. But we perceived it all so differently while growing up, and we remember it so differently as adults. Why? Genetic predisposition? Birth order? Circumstance? Chance? How significant was it that Mom's losing her breasts coincided with my breasts developing? Madeline was at college at that time, and Jennifer was still a little girl, so Mom's illness didn't affect them as dramatically. For me, it was a tectonic shift, which caused a tsunami of tension between me and Mom.

SIX

Dr. Giordano warned me that the last week of radiation was the worst, and that the symptoms would get progressively worse for a couple of weeks following treatment. I apologize to Eliana for not hugging her (because it hurts), and then regret mentioning it when she says, “That's okay, Mom. It's embarrassing when you hug me in front of my friends. I only do it because I know you like it.” Ouch and ouch.

It takes them forever to position me. Reggie and Jamal push and prod my back and ribs, which hurts. I try to lie passively. I'm dead weight. They seem unable to move me. And the skin on my left breast is burning, burning.

I can't think about anything but breasts.

When I was twelve and my breasts first started developing, they felt like apricots, and I loved touching them at night under the sheets.

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

Still not over.

A Short History of Breasts
(my mother's and mine): My mother didn't breastfeed; it was out of fashion. When I gave birth, breastfeeding was back in fashion, but I was a flop. The whole freaking La Leche League couldn't figure out how to get my
leche
to flow. The sublime utility of breasts, ever since the first mammal secreted milk, two hundred million years ago. The futility of mine—and of my mother's. Our utter udder failure. Except as an erogenous zone. In that context, I have enjoyed outstanding form and function, for four decades and counting. Oh, yes. Yes. YES, GOD, YES!

Ouch, ouch, ouch, poor left breast.

I think about other women's breasts. In the movies, in the locker room, roommates, friends, that nude beach. All varieties of beautiful. I picture women and their bare breasts in myriad shapes and sizes.

Damn. I want to get this over with.

How 'bout that time when my friend Hinda, the cofounder and president of JogBra, enlisted me as her model for “BigBra,” a new product for big-breasted joggers. I met her on the Lower East Side, where her tailor, Shlomo, fitted me, and together we designed a Nobel Prize – worthy bra that would enable buxom women the world over to jog in comfort.

Longest ten minutes ever. Aarrgh!

AS MY TREATMENTS
are nearing the end, I meet with Eliana's teacher, Cindy Swan, to line up our ducks.

“How long will Eliana be out of school?”

“It's hard to predict. Depends how she deals with the pain. We think she'll be home for about six weeks, till right after the New Year. When she goes back, will she have a paraprofessional to help her get around the school safely?”

“It's already in our system.”

“She's worried about returning to school using a walker. She'll be self-conscious if other kids stare at her.”

“She can always talk to me about it.”

“This will be really hard for Eliana.” I fight back tears.

She pushes the box of tissues toward me. “It'll work out.”

“ELIANA,” DR. CAMPBELL
said cheerfully, when we met him almost a year ago, “you're lucky that leg-lengthening is an option.” He grabbed a fake fractured femur from his windowsill display of artificial bones encased in metal scaffolding, and brandished it with manly brio, looking like a high-tech caveman. “Until recently, limb-lengthening was considered a medical impossibility, except in Siberia. After World War II, hidden behind the wall of the Cold War, Dr. Ilizarov discovered bone-lengthening, by accident.

“Dr. Ilizarov instructed one of his patients to tighten a screw every day for two weeks, on a device meant to straighten his fractured knee. But the guy accidentally turned the screw the wrong way. Two weeks later, he was surprised to find that the patient had lengthened his own leg.

“From this lucky accident—not so lucky for that fellow, but lucky for you, Eliana—Ilizarov discovered bone's capacity to create new bone.

“This is what
your
fixator will look like,” he said, handing Eliana another fractured femur—this one with a long metal rod screwed into it with six large bolts. “Do you have any questions?”

Eliana stared at the impaled bone in her hands. “Um . . . Will my life be different, I mean, like on an everyday basis?”

“Yes. You won't be running around, jumping, skipping, or climbing for a few months.”

“Can I go to gym class?”

“No.”

“Will I miss any school?”

“Yes. Some kids go back to school a week after surgery. Other kids need a few weeks or a few months. Every child is different.”

“Cool! I get to miss school! When will I be a hundred percent better?”

“It takes eight months.”

“Let's just get it over with,” she said.

Dr. Campbell was pleased that she was so agreeable. But the casual bravura of her “Let's get it over with” told me that she envisioned this as a mere inconvenience. I'd heard from other parents about the months of pain and incapacitation. I didn't want to rush into an irrevocable decision.

Dr. Campbell countered my furrowed brow with a raised eyebrow, which I translated to mean
, Unfurrow your brow, Mom! This is as much as we can tell an eight-year-old. We don't want to scare her out of having surgery. She's too young to imagine how painful this procedure really is. She said, ‘Let's get it over with,' and that's as much as we can ask of her right now. Children are resilient. She'll get through this. Trust me.

Our eyebrow dialogue persuaded me to trust him. Until he added:

“In my opinion, any parent who doesn't have their child's leg lengthened—when they have the option—is guilty of child abuse.”

His statement had the opposite of its intended effect. It made me wonder if subjecting my child to this torturous procedure was a form of child abuse. I resented his damning insinuation about any parent who hesitates, who questions, who has the audacity to consider that surgery for a non-life-threatening condition may not be right for their child.

The absolute certainty of his statement about parental guilt was even more infuriating, in light of the several times in my life when doctors have made declarations of absolute and unassailable truth—which have subsequently turned out to be absolutely and unassailably false. (Case in point: my pregnancy with Eliana, which three doctors and four radiologists misdiagnosed for six months as everything
but
a pregnancy.)

“When modern medicine affords children this opportunity to improve the quality of their lives, parents who stand in the way . . .”

The more he talked, the angrier I got. I began to feel like my mother, enraged on her daughter's behalf at some real or imagined injustice. I pictured Mom storming into my high school in a raincoat over a nightgown, demanding “a word with the principal,” earning a reputation as “an irate parent” and “Alice's crazy mother,” humiliating me in the process. I didn't want to do that to Eliana. Maybe I was getting a little carried away. I had to believe that Dr. Campbell had Eliana's best interests at heart.

“I just want to get it over with,” Eliana repeated, handing the fake bone back to the surgeon and defusing our eyebrow standoff.