––––––––
How was it possible my father’s handwriting matched my own? That, more than anything else, startled me as I reread the two-page letter my uncle had faxed to me via the local Kinko’s in Petaluma. Was handwriting somehow genetically passed on?
After the plane took off and leveled out at a cruising altitude, I let my eyes drift over the rolling sentences filling the pages. Why my uncle wanted to send me this letter in advance puzzled me. We’d had a short congenial conversation, but I got the clear impression Samuel Sitteroff was one of those people who hated to talk on phones. His sentences were choppy and awkward, but he did express a warm invitation for me to come to New York and visit. He’d arranged a room for me in a clean nearby hotel, and Mandy would come to the airport to pick me up.
How could I even begin to relate the emotions I felt as I read that letter? Two pages, written by my father a few months before he died. Oozing with pain, shame, and remorse. I’d read the letter a dozen times, but it kept drawing me. I was a thirsty wanderer in a desert searching for spiritual water between the sparse enigmatic lines written by my father’s hand. I tried to picture him with a pen in his grip, scrawling out the words from his bed of pain. Rather than provide answers, his secretive allusions to scandal and impropriety stirred up more questions. But, most importantly, my mother’s picture of a happy marriage beset by tragedy had been shattered.
I read slowly, wishing I could make the words sing their deeper meaning instead of mumble incoherent hints of anarchy.
Dear Samuel,
When I read your letter this morning, I cried like I hadn’t in years. There is so much to say, but it’s not possible to fit it all on a piece of paper. The years have somehow forced a hard crust of fear over all the true nature that I have. There is so much I’ve hidden from you because of shame that I don’t know where to begin. Someday I want to tell you the real story of my marriage, which is so important in this picture of mine. You’re right—I did intentionally withdraw from you, but you represent all there is in the world to me—love, affection, understanding, father, mother, brother, family, life. And you are right, the crap has to stop piling up. Still, what can I say in a letter? When you hear my story, when you listen to what may appear to you so bizarre, so strange, and in some ways so alien to every last thing you believe in, I pray with all my heart that you will have the compassion to still love me.
I’ve sinned so much, my life has been such a mess, especially these last seven months. I’m afraid to say any more in this letter because I don’t know how you’ll take it. I’ll simply say that, while I have the most wonderful children in the world whom I love very deeply, for nearly ten years it’s been an ever increasingly difficult married life, exceedingly difficult to endure. There is no point in trying to fix blame. It hardly matters anymore. Guilt on my part was great—I wanted out. But I felt to overcome the guilt that I needed to commit suicide (not very pleasant) through pernicious anemia, drinking, and finally, emotionally induced leukemia. I have done something so horrible, I know it will bring grief to my children. There is so much more, but I’m afraid to go on.
Great guns, I think I could go on for hours but I’ll finish here. If I don’t get to see you, I’m afraid I’ll have to drop another bombshell in your lap, which frankly I feel would upset you too much now. But as you see, I’m beginning to open up. Write me soon. Love to you from the bottom of my heart.
Nathan
That one sentence stuck in my craw: “I have done something so horrible, I know it will bring grief to my children.” What was he referring to? Would my uncle have a clue? I thought of Macbeth asking the witches, “How now you secret, black, and midnight hags? What is’t you do?” Their reply so branded my mind that I mulled it over for hours as I dozed on and off during the plane ride: “a deed without a name.” What unnamable deed had my father done—something that brought on the ensuing penalty of death?
Now I had an inkling of why my mother opposed my trip. Fortunately, I had avoided further encounters with her before heading to the airport. Jeremy’d even offered to give me a lift, but I declined. My mind was too preoccupied with my father’s words—words that had infiltrated my heart and mind like a penetrating dye. I couldn’t handle the distraction of trying to make small talk with Jeremy, and certainly was not up to wading into deep, treacherous waters of topics that centered around either my marriage or my mother. Instead, I caught a Super Shuttle to the airport and, half aware of my surroundings, checked in my bag and found my gate.
Now that I was gaining literal distance from my mother, I pressed myself to reflect on the emotional distance that seemed to be lengthening daily. Just who was this woman who had raised me? Did I really know her at all?
The intrepid and stalwart champion of her family, the hapless victim of unexpected tragedy—these were the personas my mother wore and which she wielded to gain pity, employment, admiration, and favor. All done with a quiet and self-effacing grace that drew people to her over the years of our life in Mill Valley. I’m not sure when things shifted, but at some point, perhaps as we kids grew older and appeared less pitiable, my mother stopped evoking compassion and began her more complicated wranglings to gain unwavering loyalty from her peers and coworkers. Her commercial property portfolio grew, and she socialized within the richer entrepreneurial circles of Marin County, attending parties and “functions”—fundraisers where she made sure her name appeared on programs as sponsor or donator, and charity events that reflected her concerns for a host of causes—homelessness, education, pollution, and dozens more. She served on the board of the Chamber of Commerce from 1967–1970 and occasionally hosted chamber mixers at her office.
The swinging sixties swept into Marin, and from time to time I’d head to bed after doing homework and hear noises coming from my mother’s room down the hall. More than once I heard giggles and whispering as I lay in bed at dawn; my mother was either naive or unconcerned that her clandestine affairs got picked up on our radar. My brothers and I never talked about it, but on occasion we’d make faces at each other across the dinner table, when our mother “hosted” a male friend. She never did remarry, but clearly blamed that all on me.
The only time I ever saw my mother cry was when I turned fourteen. She had been dating a man named Elliott Blass, someone she met at one of her parties. Elliott made a regular appearance in our home for a time, even took us out to play miniature golf and see movies. Of all the men she dated, Elliott was the only one who stuck it out long enough. They had even talked about marriage.
But I made the mistake of walking into my mother’s room one morning—why, I don’t recall. There was Elliott, standing naked next to the window, facing me in all his alarming nudity. I recall my mother turning over in bed and looking at me, her eyes widened in horror. I rushed out of the room without saying a word, and she never brought it up.
But sometime soon after, I found her sobbing in the small upstairs office in our house. The sight shook me to my core. My mother was my rock and fortress. Strong, unwavering—nothing ruffled her. Seeing her broken and in despair caused me great fear. As grown up as I thought I was, I turned into a sniveling toddler at the sight.
Yet, my panic turned to horror when she dropped her hands from her face and gave me a look that chilled my heart to ice.
“You have sabotaged every single relationship I’ve ever had. Every chance I had to remarry, you ruined it. You, with your big mouth and hyper personality. Drove every decent man away, as soon as they met you.” And on and on her ranting went.
I was struck by the truth of her words. I had been a difficult, demanding child. My brothers endured humiliation from my fierce competitiveness. An aggressive tomboy, I could bat a ball farther, climb a tree higher, beat them in a race any day. I never once considered how it made them feel, and I was a sore loser. We used to go bowling every Saturday, but I was grounded for a whole year when I threw a temper tantrum at the bowling alley because I lost a game. I went through my early childhood obnoxious and vocal. I spent most of kindergarten and first grade in the corner, for excessive talking. My nickname was “blabbermouth.”
By age twelve, I had mellowed considerably, yet had lived with the label “hyperactive” all my life. How my mother lamented that she hadn’t put me on drugs to control my behavior. That no one ever told her about sugar and what it did to kids. When I think of all the boxes of Chips Ahoy I ate, the cartons of ice cream we kids devoured while watching TV, the bowls of cereal that began our day—sickeningly sweet Captain Crunch and Lucky Charms—it’s amazing all my teeth hadn’t rotted and fallen out of my mouth by age ten.
I never thought about the shrapnel damage from my hyperactivity until that moment when my mother blamed me for her ruined life. I had never associated what I considered was my uncontrollable medical condition with a blatant attempt at destroying every chance of happiness for my mother. Seeing my mother cry due to my heartlessness struck a stake through my heart.
The resultant flood of guilt changed me that day, started me on the path as loyal and fawning daughter. I sought to expiate my guilt over the years, but knew, somehow deep inside, that I was not, nor would ever be, forgiven. That day stood out as some kind of red-letter day, changing the dynamics of our relationship.
That day, I had somehow lost my mother. I realized while flying thirty-five thousand feet over the landscape of my life, seeing out of hawk’s eyes the landmarks of my childhood, that I had been trying for the last fifteen years to get her back.
As I stared out the airplane window at the flat patchwork farm landscape, it hit me that maybe the reason I had been so obnoxious was I craved attention from a mother who had rarely been home. Up until I was four, my mother was my life. She was a homemaker, as most wives were back in the sixties before women’s liberation. My father’s sudden death ripped her away from me. I was shuffled off to day care, left with maids who couldn’t speak English, and had to drop out of ballet and piano classes because we couldn’t afford them. No wonder I rallied all my energy to one end—to find ways of getting my mother’s attention, of getting her back.
Not long after my father’s death, I went on a stealing binge. I rode my bicycle around the neighborhood and took recyclable bottles and cans from neighbors’ garages. I pilfered change out of friends’ change jars and piggy banks, even pocketed Barbie clothing and Tonka trucks from my playmates’ toy bins. I wandered behind houses, strolled through walkways between homes, looking for what I could take. My success at going undetected made me brazen, which led me to start stealing candy from the local liquor store at the bottom of Molino Drive. Only when I was spotted by the pimply college student running the cash register—which caused me to run a mile uphill, then hide for the better part of an hour—did I question my behavior and stop stealing. Psychiatrists would probably have said my stealing was a cry for attention. I’m sure that was part of it.
Years later, with Raff away at college, my mother busy with her social calendar, and Neal playing baseball and other sports nearly every day after school, I was set adrift. Raff had been a gel that kept us together. His magnetism and authority wove a spell over Neal and me when he was around. Once he left home, my sense of family disintegrated, but against the backdrop of my mind Raff was larger than life: infallible, awe-inspiring.
Until the night he suddenly appeared at our house, a week before school let out for summer.
I had been given no notice. I don’t even recall how Raff had gotten home from the airport. Although I strained my memory, trying to fill in the missing details, I couldn’t place Raff anywhere other than on the edge of my mother’s bed, his face buried in his hands, my mother’s hand resting on his shoulder as he cried in convulsing jags. I knew he had been driving home in his light-blue Datsun—all the way from Colorado, for summer vacation. So where was his car?
Then it struck me. He had told me on the phone before finals were over that he was bringing his best friend with him. That Steve had never seen the ocean, imagine that? They would take a road trip, visit the Grand Canyon, check out Death Valley, then weave up through Yosemite and arrive home by the end of the month. It was only mid-June. Where was Steve? Had Raff’s plans changed?
My mother had noticed me standing in the doorway of her bedroom late that night, speechlessly watching this disturbing display of anguish. I couldn’t help myself—seeing Raff losing it had the same effect as seeing my mother cry only months earlier. Tears flooded down my face and I started to speak, but my mother held up her hand and stopped me.
“Raff was in an accident. But it wasn’t his fault.”
She turned to Raff and hardened her voice. “You have to tell yourself this, Raff. Because it’s true. It wasn’t your fault. Whatever you say on the phone, don’t let those words out. I know you feel you’re to blame. But if you tell them it was your fault, they will sue me for every penny I’ve got. Tell them how sorry you are, but make sure you say it was an accident. You did nothing wrong.”
My mind frantically chased after my mother’s words. What accident? What happened? I didn’t dare utter a sound as my mother handed Raff the phone receiver.
I could still see that scene so clearly in my mind. The old black dial-up phone sitting on my mother’s lap. The rumpled bedcovers, Raff’s argyle socks—tan and navy—on his feet, resting on the pale gold long-shag wall-to-wall carpeting. Passing car lights spattering through the blinds. I had watched in horror as my brother cleared his throat and wiped his eyes, listening to my mother dialing a number she read off a piece of scrap paper, and waiting for a voice on the other end.
From where I stood I could only hear Raff’s choppy sentences, phrased between sobs. My mother kept one hand on Raff’s shoulder to steady him, but even as Raff broke the news to Steve’s parents and recited the words as instructed, I saw little compassion in her eyes. Her intense focus was on the content of Raff’s speech, and after he hung up, she nodded and told him he did well, as if he had just pulled off a stunning performance on stage. Raff hardly heard anything she said; he was drowning in his guilt.
I only learned what happened the next morning, as my mother rushed to get ready for a day’s work at the office and Raff hid in his bedroom. I don’t remember where Neal was.
Raff and Steve had just switched driving. They were traveling through New Mexico when it started to rain. The road, oily and dry, became slick as the first spatterings of water wet down the asphalt. Steve was asleep in the backseat and Raff took a curve a little too fast. The car spun out, hitched as a tire caught when Raff tried to correct the skid, and the car tumbled and flipped twice before landing upside down. Steve was somehow thrown out of the car and onto the highway. Three of the four roof supports were crushed. The windshield was smashed, the glass shattered. But Raff, strapped into his seat, his section of the roof still intact, came through the tumble unscathed. Apart from the bump on his head from smacking the windshield, he didn’t have a cut or bruise.
By the time he unbuckled and worked his way out through the broken windshield, the rain pelleted steadily. He looked inside the car and found Steve gone. Moments later he found his friend unconscious a few yards behind the car. Steve died in his arms.
The officer who took Raff’s statement wrote in the report how that particular stretch of highway was known for fatalities. That as soon as it started to rain, people often skidded out and crashed on the curves. He told Raff they needed more warning signs, and that maybe they’d put some up now. I remember listening to my mother’s detached report of the accident. And her instructions to me to make Raff some breakfast.
After she left, silenced smothered the house. I stood in the kitchen, the smell of coffee and fried eggs strangling the air, wondering how my mother had found an appetite to eat breakfast. Or to leave for work, abandoning Raff to his anguish. How could she have done that? The charred bacon smell nauseated me.
I kept picturing Raff holding his friend in his arms, crouched on the side of the road, in the dark, in the rain, in an unfamiliar place, alone and afraid. At some point someone drove along and stopped, went and got help, called the police, an ambulance. Who knew how long that took, but I was sure an eternity passed for Raff. Surely, Raff felt Steve’s death was his fault. I pictured them talking excitedly in the car, Raff telling him how beautiful the ocean looked, how they would drive up the coast along the San Andreas Fault, stop in Bodega Bay for fish and chips. Then I pictured the vague face of a woman with her ear to the phone receiver late in the night, wondering who was sobbing on the line, trying to make out some young man’s words that made no sense, no sense at all.
Even though Raff’s accident occurred sixteen years ago, as I stared out the plane window, tears dropped hot onto my cheeks. I couldn’t imagine a more devastating end to childhood innocence than what Raff had experienced. His first year away at college. His life as an adult opening up to him with all its promises and potential. The heavy burden of guilt he would now carry around with him for the rest of his life, regardless of my mother’s assurances of his blamelessness.
The fun, adventurous summer I had eagerly awaited was replaced by Raff carrying Steve’s death in his arms everywhere he went, an invisible weight that bent him over and made him sluggish and enveloped in ennui.
That summer, Raff had crawled into himself, like a snail retreating into a shell. No one questioned his two months of depression or his unwillingness to join in our activities. We gave him a wide berth, spoke in quiet voices around him, the hushed tone you hear in hospital corridors. And then the dreary, oppressive summer ended and Raff returned to college, sending me into my melancholy and music, the horizon of my own future now tainted dark and foreboding.