When she turned eighteen, my mother’s birthday present was a mansion. It was strategically chosen for its location on a dull stretch of California coast. Her father thought the town to be ripe for development. A gift, then, bought in my mother’s name for tax reasons.
“But I can’t even live in it,” my mother squalled. “I’m going to college, remember?”
“It’s an investment,” said her father. “For your future.”
They had the hackneyed screaming match, in which father laid down the law and daughter wept; mother fretted, saying patient reasonable things.
Around them were the beautiful acquisitions – like a jury. High ceilings and marble and even the placid air with its scent of autumnal roses; my mother fought bitterly, at that age, against their sway.
“I’m going to burn it down!” she screamed finally. “I’ll invite you all over and burn it down!”
Her parents died in a car accident one year later.
She lived in that mansion for the rest of her life; Eddie and I grew up in it.
Her mother, Lily, who really was like a white funereal flower, and trembled, used to say that tomboys grew up to be the nicest big ladies.
Her father used to say, “Lannie’s going to blow everything we’ve worked to save, you wait and see!”
1 After her parents’ death, she moved into her mansion.
1.1 No one else lived there; there was no gardener, no maid. There was no furniture.
1.2 The derelict guest wing leaked, and moss grew, demarcating the parquet.
1.3 It was 35 rooms, two towers, a private beach, and a cultivated wood.
1.4 In the wood, she found a pointy-eared white mutt she called Remember.
1.5 They used to sleep together on the beach on summer nights.
2 Her brother Jerry got away with the bulk of the family fortune.
2.1 She hated him, she called him “King Jerry,” she was implacable.
2.2 There were court cases all her life; she never forgot that money.
2.3 The rest of the family backed him because my mother rode a motorcycle.
2.4 She never forgave them either, though she attended polite family gatherings.
3 When she was at Berkeley, she rode two hours to get to class.
3.1 She was penniless.
3.2 She sold all the mansion’s antique doors.
3.3 She had three million dollars tied up in a lawsuit, but wouldn’t borrow in case the bank “stole” her house.
3.4 When the money came through, she bought three cars.
4 Her mattress on the floor was surrounded by cigarette butts.
4.1 She’d taped cardboard over the broken windows on the ground floor.
4.2 In the courtyard lawn, one of her boyfriends had dug his name.
4.3 “It brought tears to your eyes,” my dad said, “Lannie was such a slob.”
For a while, he was only one of many rotating boyfriends. Then he put his foot down. He turned up at her house one weekend, wearing a suit, to say, “Okay, Lannie. Now we’re going to buy furniture and then you’re going to marry me. I had about enough of this runaround.”
He was standing on her cracked white step, in sunlight, bearing a sheaf of flowers. The engagement ring was hooked on the first joint of his pinky; a diamond solitaire she wouldn’t like. His stance was easy, friendly. They knew each other well; and he wanted, badly, to put the flowers down and touch her face.
She said, “No!”
But he was right.
Then he was in Vietnam.
Then he was in Chile at a secret destination, conducting studies.
For the rest of her life, my mother always had a mutt who would follow her down, down our private beach and out of sight, on summer nights.