Her Mother's Daughter
I shot Tromsø, a frontier town with windbeaten wooden buildings and wooden sidewalks to protect you from the mud that was the main sign of summer. (Years later, visiting Siberia, which suffered from the same problem—permafrost—but which didn’t have wooden sidewalks, I remembered Tromsø. As I sloshed in the mud of Irkutsk searching vainly for orange juice, tomato juice—anything with citrus in it, since I couldn’t find fresh fruit anywhere—I figured the Norwegians couldn’t be smarter than the Russians, and there were certainly plenty of trees around, so why didn’t they have wooden sidewalks? I decided that the Russians devoted all their resources to making weapons, to keep up with us. But that was later.)
In Tromsø, even in June, people preferred to spend most of their time indoors. The wind was still fierce, and the sun lacked warmth. In the cafés an aromatic fire always burned in the hearths, and people climbed wooden staircases noisily, laughing, and settled themselves on wooden banquettes that lined the walls, around long wooden tables covered with blue checked cloths, and called for beer. Conversation was loud and lively, political and intelligent. Everyone seemed to be worried about the world situation. I was unused to such concern, people at home did not talk about politics or morals.
I took my share of festival pictures—people in traditional costumes, dances, flowers heaped on carts—and cityscapes, although I felt that these cities were really built for winter, especially Stockholm, massive, grey, stony, its buildings presenting to the grey cold river a facade of equally ominous impermeability. I used black and white for the cities, the cobblestoned roads, and an occasional small farmhouse standing in utter isolation on an island surrounded by grey mountains. I took pictures of people—wonderful faces, especially the old, who have character no longer found in America. American faces are the faces of children who have somehow aged.
I found friends everywhere. Of course there were journalists and photographers, built-in “contacts” who were supposed to help show me around. But there were professors and publishers, doctors, lawyers, radio personalities as well, people who were friends of my “contacts.” And lots of students, whom I liked best—I felt they were closest to my age, although that wasn’t literally true. There were formal dinner parties with members of the government that ended with people down on their hands and knees pretending to be bears in games of charades; and quiet evenings sitting in austerely furnished farmhouses around a kerosene lamp, drinking aquavit. The silence of the countryside was amazing—no trees to break the wind, only the house itself and its barns and outbuildings, nothing really grows in the north, even in June. The wind, the quiet water, people breathing: that was all. A creak in the house shocked like a thunderclap. I would lie in a featherbed, a puffy duvet around me as if I were lying in a nest, and think that I could get used to that silence, that in it I might hear myself again. At home I put on the radio as soon as I walk in the door.
But the deep-carved faces full of character, that I saw in these places, did not recommend silence to me. Maybe what you hear when you hear yourself is not altogether cheering. And I did so want to be cheerful.
Many nights my friends and I went pub crawling, drinking into the morning. We’d go from place to place, running under the trees along city streets as bright as early morning, singing, cracking jokes. We talked completely impersonally, but once in a while, someone would, without preamble, confess some deeply intimate fact. I have heard confessions of marital infidelity, bisexuality, homosexuality, impotence, incest…But painful as these often were, they were not the most painful. No, the worst confessions to come in the early hours of morning, whispered across a table—sometimes the speaker would stare at me as if in my face he read his destiny, and sometimes he would not look at me at all—the announcements that were like moments of sudden intelligence that turned the face and knuckles white and cracked the voice were: “I hate my father!” Or: “My father hates me.” Then, often, tears, helpless, inconsolable. Or sometimes, a furious disquisition on papa.
My friends were almost entirely men; it wasn’t easy to meet women, there were almost no women in journalism then, they were all home with the kids or working in jobs so low-level that a relation between them and me, an honored professional visitor, would not be considered appropriate, by them or me. Yes, I was like that.
I met a few men who hated their mothers, or felt their mothers hated them, but this knowledge didn’t devastate them. Men who hate their mothers, I have found, generally feel perfectly right in doing so. Hating your mother is acceptable, but hating your father is not, it seemed. They uttered their hate explosively, like something retched up, something that should be hidden even from the self. That they hated their fathers, or felt their fathers hated them, was a ravaging new knowledge, discovered, perhaps, that very night.
It was not until years later, when I began to know more women, that I heard similar utterances from them, although it was hatred of their mothers that ravaged them. And women tell their tales differently—with drooping faces and sad voices, or expressionless faces and brittle voices. The main difference is that women are never surprised by their knowledge. They recite the cruelties visited upon them by their mothers in simple language, like my mother saying, “When I was nine years old, my father died,” as if they were telling old stories, known forever. Some make jokes. Women do not tell these stories late at night, drunk, startled by a sudden awareness. They tell them casually, on beaches, or sitting comfortably on wicker sofas in summer rooms gazing out at the water, or in the plush luxury of a flowered armchair in a hotel lobby surrounded by the clatter of tea being served, piano music drifting in from the cocktail lounge, oblivious to the luxury around them, oblivious to anything outside, encompassed by memories they are used to, bitter knowledge they have lived with forever.
Sometimes a night of drinking would end with my having company in bed. Drink usually created a maximum of desire with a minimum of capacity, but there were many good nights in bed after lingering dinners with guys with shining faces, shining eyes, and what passed for uncontrollable passion. I liked to screw men who adored me, who were outside themselves, ecstatic. I loved making love, even though I rarely had orgasms. I didn’t care about that: I loved being there with them, being who I was, loved the rolling, transient feel of it, the freedom, the exhilaration. I loved feeling like a high-spirited, smart, energetic, sexy, brilliant photographer, always on top of everything, utterly understanding and compassionate, but still gay, still in control: Stacey Stevens, the Rosalind Russell of real life.
Even disasters—there are always disasters when you travel—can be turned into adventures. You miss a plane—so you have to charter your own; or you charm someone who owns his own and get him to fly you into the very field where the event you have come to shoot is being held. An airport closing down because of bad weather—something that happens often enough in Scandinavia—can lead to the adventure of searching faces for a new companion who will invite you to dinner, and perhaps a bed for the night; cars breaking down in the middle of wilderness mean hitchhiking with a new acquaintance, the joys of exchange and new knowledge, or maybe tramping together for miles over barren land until you spot a farmhouse, knock on a strange door, eat strange food, and sleep in a strange bed. I joined forces with people I would, in the normal course of life, never have met—a French couple, backpackers with weak English, who shared my chartered plane, watched the ceremony on the castle grounds, and afterward took me to dinner; Japanese businessmen (all of course with cameras hanging from the shoulders, fascinated by mine) with whom I spent an evening talking in the Göteborg airport, and who later sent me a wonderful Japanese telephoto lens; people of all ages and kinds with whom I became friends on no more basis than that we were together in trouble. And of course, anything that happened could be an opening to photograph, a chance for a special picture….
Coming home was a letdown. I left Stockholm on a Friday, before noon, went to the lab from the airport, and didn’t arrive at my house until after six. Pani saw me getti
ng out of the cab and met me at the door with her hands clasped as in prayer. Sorry, so sorry, she said, she had told the children I was coming home this afternoon, but they had things to do, and no one was there but they would be home soon, she was so sorry, she knew they wanted to see me, she could not always get them to do what she wanted them to do….I knew this meant there had been trouble.
She apologized for the house—her legs were all swollen up with rheumatism (which is what she called all her aches and pains)—she had not been able to clean up. She lifted her skirt to show me her swollen, blue-lined puffy limbs. Tired as I was, I had to exclaim, to insist she go to bed and I would bring down some dinner for her. Oh, no, she cried, no no, you tired, she would be fine, she had already eaten dinner, she was sitting in her wonderful reclining chair watching the television, I was not to worry about her. I was relieved, I didn’t want to worry about her. I was worried enough.
The house was a mess—stuff was scattered everywhere. I walked through it like a woman in shock, I’m sure my face looked like the faces of people you see in photographs, who return home after the enemy has bombarded their village. Only the kitchen was relatively neat, and that, I suspected, was because Pani kept cleaning it up. I could not see the floor of Arden’s room, it was littered with dropped clothes, books, toys (although you’re not supposed to call them toys when a kid is nearly twelve). Billy’s was not as bad, but there were food-soiled plates on his desk and bed table and empty soda cans on the floor.
I went into my room. It was dusty, but neat. It looked as if neither of them had entered it in the last month—except for a deep dent in the middle of my bed, and a slightly disordered pillow. Someone had been lying there. My throat thickened. I couldn’t swallow.
Billy came in at six-thirty. He smiled when he saw me, he hugged me, but his color was poor, he looked pale. I asked him how his exams had gone, did he know any of his grades? was he a great tooth, did people praise him? had he seen Daddy, had the baby been born? had he tried out for the Little League team? I got answers from between locked teeth—okay, no, okay he guessed, no one said anything, no, he didn’t know, yes. Great, I said: and did you make it? He didn’t know.
Since I’d put myself through the emotional upset of asking Brad to spend more time with them than usual, while I was away, I was upset at that answer. “You haven’t seen him? Why not?” Billy just shrugged. He stood there looking limp, and when I, silent with dread, said nothing, he left the room. I sank down on a chair in the kitchen. I was trying to keep myself from pouring a drink. Then Arden walked in, cool and distant. She said hello as if she’d last seen me that morning, and we’d had an argument. I tried my questions out on her. She didn’t even bother to answer. She glared at me, and started to walk out of the room.
“Arden, I’m talking to you!”
She stopped in the doorway and partly turned around. “Well, I’m not interested in talking to you. You go away for a whole month and don’t even come to my dance recital or help me study for my math test, you leave us completely alone with just an old woman you pay to take care of us, and now you want to talk. I don’t.”
“I had to go away! I was upset about it too! I called you! It’s very expensive to call from overseas, but didn’t I call you? I called you the day of your recital, and before your math test! I called Billy and gave him ideas for his social studies projects, didn’t I?” I was near tears.
She didn’t answer. She simply disappeared. I poured the drink. It got later, but I just sat there. I couldn’t think. Around eight, both of them wandered into the kitchen. Arden opened the fridge door and rummaged around among the containers of leftovers. There was a package of hamburger sitting on a shelf—Pani had been considerate and bought some food—and something easy. But I couldn’t think about cooking. Billy drifted over and peered over Arden’s shoulder. She was eating something—leftover mashed potatoes, it looked like—with her finger out of the container.
“Aren’t we going to eat?” he asked me.
I burst into tears. “I can’t cook if you’re not going to talk to me!”
Both children froze. They stared at me. I was sobbing in my hands. Billy’s hand touched my shoulder, then slid around my neck. Arden put the mashed potatoes back in the fridge (with the cover loose) and came over and took my hand.
“We’ll talk to you, Mom,” she said. Billy’s face was wet against mine.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered.
“Well, will somebody tell me what’s going on around here?” I yelled. “I know you’re mad at me! But I love you, and I have to do what I do, I have to have some kind of life too, I need it! Can we please be normal again?”
We cooked dinner together—cheeseburgers on buns, creamed corn out of a can and salad made of iceberg lettuce, a grainy tomato, and bottled dressing. We all drank Coke. (I could hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head: “Is this what you feed your children, Anastasia? Carbohydrate, fat, sugar? Do you realize that in America they put sugar even in salad dressing?” “Shut up!” I roared silently. “I can only do what I can do! I know you would have managed somehow to cook a good meal for them, but you wouldn’t have talked to them! Would you!”)
The children talked a little warily. As things went on, I understood that they wanted to avoid certain subjects. Most of all they did not want to talk about their father, and we never did. They also didn’t want to admit, to me, but mostly to themselves, how they counted on me without even knowing it. It mattered that I was there to kiss them good night, to tell them they were good and wonderful children, to listen to their daily litany of miseries.
At that time I felt they—I—none of us should have miseries. Weren’t we fortunate? Weren’t we living in greater ease and comfort than our parents, well, my parents had? What right had we to feel miserable about our small misfortunes? Only because they were children did I let them have sorrows. I smoothed their foreheads, I told them things would look brighter in the morning. (You can see why Brad called me Pollyanna: but the truth is, things do look brighter in the morning.) But this luxury I allowed them I did not allow myself. I had no right—after all, look at me, the most fortunate of women imaginable!—no right to be anything but pleased with my life.
It is Clara who made me see this, who has been trying these last months to make me see that everyone has the right to feel bad about the things that happen to them, the right to complain and even cry about them. I haven’t quite managed to accept it though. For me, the only people entitled to cry about their lives are my mother, my grandmother, and people whose lives were as miserable as theirs.
And maybe even though I was allowing my children to complain and cry, maybe in some subtle way I was also telling them they were being childish and petty. So what if Arden was the only girl in the dance recital, and Billy the only child in the play, whose mother did not show up to applaud, to hug afterward, to bestow praise, to beam? (I should have been there, of course. I wish I had been there.) Life is hard all over, and they had a loving mother, even if she wasn’t present. They had enough to eat, a decent place to live, and they weren’t abused, beaten, or even yelled at.
What I said was, “I told Daddy to come and see you. I told him it was important.”
“Well, he didn’t.” Not only had he not attended their play/recital, but he hadn’t taken them to dinner except for the first week I was gone. He had said then he might be busy for a while, and when they asked him why, he’d evaded them. Arden had said “Because Fern’s having a baby, right?” and he’d been startled and suspicious.
“Who told you that!” he glared.
“Our eyes,” Arden said.
He admitted it then. She was due in a week, and because she was nearly thirty, the doctors were worried about her. He’d see them if he could, but he couldn’t promise. Then silence. He never so much as called the rest of the month.
“Did you call him? Did you call him Tuesday night to see if he was taking you to dinner on Wednesday?”
Two hea
ds shook no.
“Did you call him after that to ask him where he was and why he hadn’t come?”
Two heads shook.
“Why not!” I screamed, something I rarely did. And strangely, they understood, because they did not get upset at my screaming.
I was shocked. I understood Brad had been punishing me for going away, but that he would take it out so cruelly on them passed my line of understanding.
There were tears in my eyes when I said I was sorry—sorry that Daddy wasn’t there, but sorry most of all that I hadn’t seen them, that I had missed seeing them at a moment of their lives that would never be repeated. I don’t think they understood what I had lost, but they understood that I was grieved. I wiped my face and cleared the table. I proposed a hot game of hearts. I promised them we’d go away for a vacation in the summer, and told them to think about where they’d like to go.
That night, after they were asleep, I called Brad, I screamed at him, I told him he wasn’t fit to be a father. He said I wasn’t fit to be a mother. I told him he was cruel, he said I was. I told him he’d better pay some attention to them fast or I’d see a lawyer about denying him visitation rights. He laughed. He said no visitation, no child support. Then I cried again: I asked him how he could do such a thing to them. He said he’d been busy, okay? He had a new daughter and a sick wife to worry about. I said maybe the kids would like to meet their half sister, and to be reassured that even though he had a new baby, he still cared about them. That seemed to surprise him. I guess he never thought about how things seemed to them, how his behavior affected them. I hated him.
School ended, the kids got their report cards, and they did well except that Arden had dropped from a 95 to a 70 in math. Billy got into Little League. And one Sunday, Brad came and got them and drove them back to his house to meet Annette, their new little sister. They came home quiet and pale, although they were enthusiastic about the baby—so little, such tiny fingernails, so beautiful, so cute, so sweet, she kept smiling at Billy and clutching Arden’s finger. They said nothing about their father.