Her Mother's Daughter

  It was just emptiness, a horrifying emptiness at the heart of things. Because nothing mattered—who won, who lost, who was up, who down—except the game. And the fact that real people, with real blood streaming down an arm they raised as they cried out over the body of a dead child, real lives that involved things like buying vegetables and washing their hands and stroking the head of a child and arguing with their spouses, the fact that this was destroyed as the game flowed inexorably across cities, countryside, across the whole fucking world it seemed, that fact was irrelevant.

  Our whole expedition was a joke. I was the only one wounded—and that by accident; Ettore’s wife and children were the only ones killed. The CIA must have known how incompetent this group was, but the agency didn’t care—they would aid and abet anything that might cause Castro trouble. And the men themselves, except Ettore, would quickly transform the incident into a tale of adventure, add it to their repertory.

  I retreated from politics, from opinion. I pulled myself inside a shell; I became a suburban liberal, one of those people who argue that right and wrong were relative and could only be judged with full knowledge of personalities and the context of a situation. Since it was rarely possible to know that much, judgment was essentially impossible. It was an unassailable moral position, and furthermore, cost nothing to maintain.

  I did tell part of the truth to Toni and the kids—making the whole thing a joke, a sitcom war. I left out what real shooting there had been; I minimized my wound, saying I fell on a sharp stone, cut myself, didn’t take care of the wound, which became infected and I developed blood poisoning. For a few weeks the kids chanted a rhyme about me, “Mommy is a Clumsy Clown, went to war and she fell down!” but then they forgot that too.

  The doctors saved my arm.

  4

  LONG AGO, ALL THAT. Not just twenty-odd years ago—a different life. Or maybe, that was my life before I died, years ago. A thousand, even a hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have lived past forty, if I made it that far; few men did and even fewer women—women worked so hard, they had less to eat and less nourishing food than men, and they died in childbed. So maybe the years after forty are a bonus, nature’s reward to women for surviving that long. Most men are dried up, grey and weary after forty; women aren’t. Their children, if they have them, are grown, and their careers, if they have them, are well-launched, and they have their friends, and they still have living juice in them.

  But if I am any example, well, and lots of other women I know too, we are alone, we have only our work. There are no men for us, there is no love waiting to happen. And I figure maybe nature intended us to use these bonus years for the well-being of others, recognizing in its wisdom that somebody’s got to do something about the world the men are transforming into their own image—rigid, sterile, mechanical.

  That’s what I try to do now, do for others. I can’t do anything for myself because there’s nothing I want. Clara says the truth is that I don’t want anything because there’s nothing I want that I believe I can have, when in fact all I have to do is reach out my hand. She really gets on my nerves sometimes.

  Whenever I am not out on an assignment, I sit here hour after hour writing this account of my mother. This room is the best thing in my apartment. The window in my studio looks out over the city. The view is just rooftops and the long open tunnel of Eighty-sixth Street ending in a triangle of shimmer that is the Hudson River; and a wide swathe of wounded city sky retreating, gauzed and vacant. I am alone. I don’t mind being alone, I like it. If I wanted someone here with me, I couldn’t think of a name. There is no one I want, nothing.

  I have few resource materials: my journals, which I kept only intermittently, a stack of yellow envelopes stuffed with family photographs, pictures I didn’t file and label, didn’t paste in albums. I leaf through account books I used to keep a record of my expenses in those days. They are my only help in recalling where I was at times when I wasn’t keeping a journal. And there are a few letters. That’s all. That and my brain, in which the past is registered, my brain and the kids’, except they forget things, it’s amazing how they forget. Oh, I guess I forget too.

  Yet my memory for some things is keen. I remember vividly that my first thought when I arrived home after the Cuban trip was that I might be pregnant—something I’d managed to forget during it. I didn’t know if I’d had a period while I was unconscious, so it wasn’t until I missed in February that I brought the matter up with Toni and went for a pregnancy test. It was positive. Toni was overjoyed; the kids were thrilled. I tried to be positive about it, but I was mostly worried. How would I explain this to World?

  The baby was due—by my reckoning—in August, so I told Russ I wanted to work on a book, and needed to take a leave of absence from June through the end of September. He wasn’t angry—in fact he seemed impressed; he was happy to give it to me, he said, I needed it after my “ordeal.” He paid me for the Cuban trip, paid for all my time in the hospital, and threw in a bonus. I was touched. It was the first time I’d seen anything kind in him. With that and the money I had saved we’d be okay for a few months even though I wasn’t working.

  And then—feeling grateful that I’d kept my arm and my life, and feeling content with my life—even with the pregnancy—something happened that made me believe the old saw that those who have get. Russ Farrell knew lots of people in publishing; his favorite pastime was gossiping. And over his many lunches he mentioned that I was going to work on a book, although he had no details. So the story went out, but no one could figure out who I’d signed with or if I had, and this caused interest, and by the end of April I’d had four calls offering me advances on a book of photographs. The advances were small: money wasn’t the issue. Legitimacy was. I signed a contract with Focus Inc., the most prestigious publisher of photography books at the time, for a book to be called Power. And then I settled back to a relaxed pregnancy, careful only not to gain much weight.

  In the middle of August of 1962, my third child, my baby, my little Franny was born; and early in September, World called and begged me to break into my leave and fly to Algeria to cover the elections. I couldn’t refuse: the reason they’d sent me there in March was to get to know the place, to make contacts, to gain an informed view. And they wanted a heroic slant on the outcome of this struggle for independence. I didn’t tell them I no longer had a heroic slant. I was fascinated to see what had happened there, quite apart from heroism.

  Toni did most of the caretaking of Franny right from the beginning, assisted by Billy and Arden. I didn’t even nurse her because I knew I had to go back to work and didn’t want the mess that comes when you stop nursing. I felt fine. My figure had bounced back to normal after her birth, my arm had regained its strength after a summer of swimming, and my book was finished.

  So a little over a month after the appearance of Frances Nowak, named for both our grandmothers, Toni’s and mine, I took off for Algeria carrying my usual knapsack and camera case, feeling utterly secure that she would receive great care and even greater love, knowing my book was good and that my family was happy. I was on top of the world.

  Or was I. Maybe that’s just the story I told myself. Maybe I was anxious and guilt-ridden about leaving the baby, and upset at Toni’s dismay at the thought of taking care of her alone.

  “But I’ve never taken care of a baby! I won’t know what to do if you’re not here to tell me!”

  “You’ll learn! I had to learn, you will too.”

  “But you’re a woman!”

  “What in hell does that matter? I never took care of a baby before.”

  “But you saw other women taking care of babies…your cousins or something.”

  “I did not. I learned. I read Dr. Spock. I used my perceptivity. I sympathized. I made mistakes.”

  He moaned. “Suppose I make a mistake!”

  “I turned off the cold tap first, once when I was bathing Arden. The hot water almost scalded her back.”

  His head w
as in his hands. “Ohhh,” he moaned.

  “But not really, not badly. I mean, the water hurt her but she wasn’t really burned. She just cried.

  “And when Billy was little, I put him in his Grandmother Carpenter’s bed one afternoon for a nap, and he woke up and got into the pills she kept in her bed table. I found him sitting on the floor, pills dotting the carpet all around him, while he chewed and babbled and grinned happily to see me. I didn’t know what he had taken or how many.”

  Toni was mock-sobbing now, his head on the table in front of him.

  “I fed him Syrup of Ipecac. He threw up for hours.”

  Toni sobbed louder.

  “Toni.”

  He raised his head.

  “You will be fine. Just pay attention to her.” He looked doubtful. I took his face in my hands. “Darling, love is attention. Attention. Just give her that. She’ll be fine. I’ll be back in ten days.”

  So maybe the whole time I was away, I worried. But I should have been feeling good: those were happy years. Why didn’t I realize that then? I always let myself be distracted by small details, the troubles that can fill any day, any week, if you let them. I neglect to sit back and enjoy the overall experience. I keep thinking that once this and that is repaired and this is solved and that is explained, then I can sit back and relax, savor the air, the scent of roses. As if life were a garment that had to have every minute wrinkle ironed out of it, that had to be perfectly smooth before it could be worn. Knowing that nothing is ever perfectly smooth.

  Yes, I was filled with guilt about leaving a newborn baby, even for ten days; and there was something in me that didn’t want to leave her, that missed those clutching tiny fingers, the baahing cry startling me in the middle of the night, those sudden smiles that came from nowhere and made my heart, just as suddenly lighter than air, float. I missed her smell, that baby smell of milk and talcum and pee and fresh new skin.

  I missed the scent of roses, too: the spring before Franny’s birth, Toni dug up sections of the backyard and planted a garden. He put in lilacs and daffodils, tulips and rosebushes, some annuals. Only the roses bloomed that year, and he and the kids would cut bouquets and carry them in to Pani. She had improved some—was able to move around with a cane and to eat by herself. Although she could not speak, she did understand much of what was going on around her. When I came back from the hospital with Franny in my arms, I held her out to Pani, and tears rolled down her poor old cheeks, the wrinkles so deep in them, like channels for the tears. I wondered if her tears had always run down the same way and that was what made the wrinkles. We didn’t dare to let her hold the baby by herself, but Toni pressed the tiny form against Pane’s body, and she put her arms under it so she felt that she was holding her, and she gleamed at her. We told her we’d called the baby Frances after her and my grandmother, and she hugged me. Maybe she’d forgiven me for scolding her, for marrying Toni.

  Belle had not. She didn’t say much but the look on her face said everything. But what mother would be different? Would like the fact that her daughter had had a third child when her first two were nearly grown, with a boy eight years younger who couldn’t support himself much less a wife? She said nothing. She simply withdrew from me, treating me formally, like an acquaintance. She did the correct thing: she visited me once in the hospital, and once at home, bringing a new bassinette as a gift—the old one had rotted out. She called to invite us to dinner once every month or six weeks. The following year, she got as far away from me as she could—she moved.

  I suppose it is egocentric to imagine the reason she moved was because I had had a baby. She’d been wanting to move for a long time and she and Ed had looked at new houses. She wanted to live near water. But new houses were expensive, and Ed was to retire in ten years. They worried they might not then be able to afford large mortgage payments. So they stayed where they were.

  Summers they went to Valeria, a resort in Peekskill open only to families with incomes below ten thousand a year. They played golf and took walks and drives and ate three large meals a day and chatted with other people like themselves, the genteel low-income middle class. Valeria also had a lake, rowboats, and canoes. Ed had always loved canoeing; they had taken a canoe trip up the Hudson on their honeymoon. With age and a touch of arthritis, Belle had become nervous about getting into a canoe—still, on one stay, she agreed to go.

  She dressed for their canoe ride as she dressed for everything—in stockings and heels and a freshly pressed outfit—a stylish cotton dress with a heart neckline and a full skirt. Ed too was dressed well, in lightweight wool slacks and a freshly ironed sport shirt. (Belle always had Ed pack a travel iron when they went anywhere.) But he wore canvas shoes with rubber soles. He got in the canoe first, holding onto a pier rail to steady the craft. She was carrying her handbag and the camera he had handed her when he stepped into the canoe. She hung both over one arm, holding to a pier rail with the other, and put her stockinged leg forward tremulously. He cried out in alarm, angry-sounding, “Not there, in the middle!” and she looked up in terror and put her weight down where she was and the canoe tipped and she screamed and they both toppled into the water, along with handbag and camera.

  After their return she told this story in an aggrieved tone. Anastasia laughed. Belle set her lips and silently determined never to tell her another thing. Anastasia saw her mother’s face.

  “But it is funny, Mom. Didn’t you laugh when you got dunked?” She searched her mother’s forbidding face. “I mean, it wasn’t dangerous, Mom.”

  Her face stiff with indignation, Belle almost sobbed. “We were sopping wet! We had to walk all the way back to our room sopping wet! Everybody who passed us laughed! They laughed at us! It was humiliating!”

  “They were probably laughing with affection. Everyone knows how easy it is to go over in a canoe. It’s probably happened to them too,” Anastasia argued, hating her own tone of voice, patient, tolerant, preaching.

  “I was so humiliated. I’ve never been so humiliated. And Daddy’s camera was ruined. I’ll never get in a canoe with him again. If he hadn’t yelled at me, I wouldn’t have fallen that way. He knew I was nervous! Why did he have to yell?”

  “Well, he shouldn’t have yelled,” Anastasia tried to placate, “but he was probably nervous too….”

  Belle glared at her. Betrayal.

  “He always yells!” she cried, close to tears. “He didn’t need to yell! Oh, such humiliation! I’ll never get in a canoe again,” she concluded with grief-stricken resentment, as if he had taken from her one last pleasure.

  The next thing she lost was Valeria itself: Ed’s last raise put him over their limit. They began then to take trips—they drove to the Maine coast, through the Blue Ridge Mountains, explored the Poconos. When Ed was given three weeks’ vacation they started to take winter vacations in Florida, exploring both coasts. Belle loved the sleepy shabby villages in the west, little low houses made of wood and screening, resting on a neck of land jutting out into a river, overhung by swamp trees. They priced them, and perhaps she pretended they would buy one but they could not afford two houses. Although they appeared to be well-to-do, Ed still did not earn a high salary. They lived as comfortably as they did because they knew how to economize.

  Then, one spring, Belle got a job. She did not tell anyone she wanted a job or was looking for one; she simply announced she had one.

  “Wonderful!” cried Anastasia. “Where?”

  There was a plant in Rockville Centre that packed and distributed sheet music. In one large airy room of this plant, a dozen women sat on high stools from eight to four five days a week for minimum wage, folding and packing sheets.

  “Oh,” said Anastasia. “Do you like it?” Incredulous.

  “I love it!” Belle glowed. “The women are so lovely! We have such a good time. They know I’m hard of hearing, and they just speak up, and they laugh all the time.”

  Anastasia tried to picture it: her mother in her expensive outfits, mat
ching shoes, bag, and gloves, driving up in the four-year-old but new-looking Cadillac, parking beside the plant, entering, laying aside her coat or jacket and putting on a smock, sitting on her stool. How did the women greet her, how did she behave to them, poor women, large of body or very skinny, greying hair pulled back in a bun, or frizzled with a permanent, wearing cotton housedresses and slippers, some missing front teeth, some unable to speak English. What did they think of her, the grande dame? They must like her or she would not be so happy there. And if they liked her, that meant she was not putting on her grande dame act. She was comfortable enough with them to tell them about her hearing.

  She was back in the sweatshop, back with the women she’d known in her youth, women she understood and did not fear. For all she had acquired the armor that characterizes the middle class—the neat house in the expensive suburban town, the fine clothes, the well-tended hair and skin, the polished nails, the Cadillac—nothing had changed inside her head, she was still the big gawky shy girl in the sweatshop.

  Whenever Anastasia visited her, she would talk about “her ladies.”

  “So skinny, and she works so hard, and that boy! Now he’s in the hospital, he may lose his leg. And Josephine has worked so hard for him, he’s her whole life! He had to have a motorcycle! She’s heartbroken. Boys, they’re so wild, it makes me grateful I never had a son….”

  “Sophie doesn’t talk much about her husband—well, I think he drinks. She doesn’t say so, but he’s never home, and he’s Polish—you know. She has such a sweet face, she reminds me of my mother, she pulls her hair back in a bun like Momma, of course Momma was never that fat—not while she was working. But Sophie is always smiling, nodding her head, so agreeable, Momma was like that too with the women she worked with. Even though things are hard for her, she is trying so hard to earn enough to send all her boys to college. She hides her money, the other girls tease her about it, she has to, I guess….”