NINE

Offer No Resistance

When I lived in England, I often answered “No” to people and events, or, at least, that is how I remember it. Once I had said “Yes” to Bob Gottlieb and his offer of a job in New York—which I did almost on a whim—I continued to respond that way, and it was a profound transformation. I’m not sure how this happened, but I am glad that it did.

Saying no takes so much more effort than saying yes. This doesn’t mean that you meekly accept other people’s outrageous behavior. What I am talking about is looking at what is before you and welcoming it if it seems appropriate. An opportunity that is presented to you is a present (a gift) and it calls you into the present (now). What most of us tend to do with the maelstrom of opportunities that besiege us is ignore them. Ignoring implies that you know something is there but you choose not to pay attention to it. This can take up a lot of psychic energy. It is a very deliberate act. I usually accept what comes along unless there is a very good reason not to. For instance, if someone calls to invite me to dinner or an event when I have nothing planned for that particular time and it is not something I am sure I would hate, I am reluctant to say no because refusing is like turning my back on what the world is offering. You just never know what each invitation or opportunity holds or where it might lead.

I was discussing this point with my friend Deb one day while circling the reservoir in Central Park, and she disputed my reasoning. A mutual friend had given her my name and number and encouraged her to call me at least a year or so before we met, but she kept not doing anything about it. Eventually we encountered each other through a different connection, and she was quite taken aback that I had materialized in her life anyway. She told me that it had been easier not to call me than to call me, but I don’t agree with her. Not doing something may feel easier, but it really isn’t. All those months when she didn’t call me I was hovering in her unconscious and taking up unnecessary room.

After I had been working at Simon and Schuster for more than three years, Bob was hired to run Alfred A. Knopf, and he said that I was welcome to go with him if I wanted to but that I should think carefully before making a decision. There might be many jobs opening up at S&S (two other senior executives were moving to Knopf in addition to Bob). It would not have occurred to me to leave Bob because I had become very attached to him, so I accompanied him to Knopf. Nineteen years later, when he came to tell me that he was quitting Knopf for The New Yorker; he didn’t ask me to go with him, and so it didn’t occur to me to raise the possibility.

I also embraced the situation as it presented itself when I was in my early thirties and a number of students at the philosophy school were looking for apartments and someone suggested that instead of us all paying rent, we should buy a house. I had never owned property. Once the idea arose, however, it seemed the obvious thing to do. There were ten of us needing somewhere to live and five who could put up money for a down payment. A brownstone on the Upper West Side of Manhattan materialized almost immediately, and the only problem seemed to be that no bank was willing to give a mortgage to five professional men and women who had no debts and no financial responsibilities. This was my first experience of the peculiar way the American economy works. It transpired that a bank would lend you money only if you already had debt and had therefore established yourself as creditworthy. Never mind that if you had incurred one debt and had not finished paying it off you were probably not in a position to take on another one. The banks told us that if we formed a corporation, they would give us a mortgage, but we didn’t want to do that because then we would have been unable to claim individual tax deductions. Luckily the building’s owner was willing to give us a purchase money mortgage at an extraordinarily reasonable rate, and so the deed was done.

We were the happy owners of a five-story brownstone that had been turned into ten apartments, although much of the renovation still remained to be done. So the next thing we did was start renovating. I learned a great deal about sanding, painting, electricity, and plumbing—all on-the-job training. Our spare time was given over to working on the house, and when I left to get married four years later, the renovation was still in progress.

Those of us who lived in the building all had different responsibilities. One person was in charge of the finances, another the boiler, a third the garbage, a fourth the garden, and so on. My responsibility was to care for everyone who lived in the house in a general way—someone had to be nominally in charge—and to keep the peace. This led to some interesting situations, including the following one.

Two of the people who moved in were a high-school teacher and her sixteen-year-old ward, Lorraine. As it turned out, there was some friction between them, and shortly after their arrival the guardianship came up for renewal, and it was decided not to continue it. I offered to become responsible for Lorraine, and we went to family court to make this official. This was a very long-drawn-out procedure requiring several appearances and much investigation. Lorraine had been assigned a guardian by the Bureau of Child Welfare when her mother had taken her to court three years earlier on a PINS petition (Person in Need of Supervision). The bureau suspected that we were running a commune and tried to block the transfer of guardianship. I pointed out to our legal aid lawyer that if it were a commune, we would be sharing expenses, which we were not—unfortunately for me. Then they said that the building was unsuitable because there were single men living in it. I countered by saying that each of the two single men occupied his own apartment on the garden floor while Lorraine was living on the fifth floor but that also, if there were an apartment building in the city in which young men did not live, there was probably something peculiar about it. In the end we got the bureau disallowed in the courtroom because of its prejudice. When I eventually came before the black woman judge, she asked me only one question: “What do you see as your responsibility toward this child?”

I took a deep breath and replied, “To know where she is at all times—physically, emotionally, spiritually …” I was about to continue, but the judge cut in:

“Precisely. The child is placed on probation, and the condition of the probation is that she live with Miss Rees. Case dismissed.”

The proceedings were over almost before they had begun. We all filed out, and I asked the psychiatric social worker what the ruling meant. She explained that because the Bureau of Child Welfare had not been allowed in the courtroom, Lorraine had been reassigned from the bureau to the Probation Office. Unfortunately, the Probation Office had no funds and so, although we had achieved our aim, there was not going to be money from any of the agencies to support Lorraine. She offered to take me to the Welfare Department and work with me to obtain some funding. She was as good as her word. She went with me over and over again, but I had to wait until a new mayor was elected before I got any money. I was grateful to John Lindsay when he overhauled the system and we began to get an allowance and food stamps. In the interim, various friends helped us out.

My mother was dismayed when she heard about Lorraine. I pointed out that she had been after me for years about a grandchild. Now I had provided her with one, and she shouldn’t complain. Apparently she had not expected a sixteen-year-old grandchild. She had been thinking of a husband (first) and then a baby. She asked me why I had done this, and I explained that I could tell her how I had done it but not why. Lorraine had needed a home, and I happened to be available. I quoted to her the words of George Mallory when he was asked why he had climbed Everest: “Because it’s there.”

Lorraine was in my care for three years. They were very thorny years because she was a tomboy and a real handful, but it never occurred to me not to do my best for her. I had made a commitment to the judge and to Lorraine, and I wasn’t about to renege on either commitment.

Eventually, things got really out of control. Lorraine would disappear overnight, and I wouldn’t know where she was. I told her that if she was not going to use her room, we would offer it to someone else. Space is always at a premium in New York City. I said that the next time she stayed out all night without permission she could look for somewhere else to live. A short time later she vanished for a whole weekend. I called the kind psychiatric social worker to find out what the legal situation was and discovered that if no term is set for probation, then it is just for one year. No one had bothered to let me know this. Apparently, after the first year the responsibility should have been her parents’. So Lorraine left our house on West Ninety-fifth Street and set off for “fresh woods and pastures new.” A couple of times she has been back to visit, and she still calls me from California every few years to chat and to ask my advice but not take it.

If I had said no to taking on Lorraine in the beginning, I would have missed out on so much. I really had no experience with young people, and everything I learned during our time together stood me in good stead when my own offspring finally arrived. Even if you start out with little or no affection for someone, once you care for her over a long period, this “caring for” turns into “caring about,” and then into love. People often asked me whether I would have picked her to be my child if I had had a choice. We were so different from each other. It always seemed a ridiculous question to me. Even if your child emerges from your own body, you don’t get a choice about the kind of person he or she is. Babies just arrive, willy-nilly, and you start loving them right away.

The other trick we often try (on ourselves) in order to avoid dealing with what is in front of us is changing the circumstances. This usually does not solve anything. It just postpones the moment when we have to face whatever it is. Some people are always changing jobs, and others go from one “life” partner to another. For instance, the few men I have fallen in love with have always been unavailable. Often they live thousands of miles away. Sometimes they are married to other people, and the man I did marry was gay. Perhaps if these men had been available, I would have overlooked them. One day I need to see who is right in front of me instead of looking somewhere else and repeating the same mistake over and over.

Both Neil and I tried to make our marriage work (I think), but one evening when Adam was a year and a quarter, Neil said that he needed three months by himself. He didn’t know whether he would return. I was shocked and bewildered. In many respects I am very old-fashioned. If I make a vow, I keep it, no matter what the cost. Divorce was not in my vocabulary. However difficult the marriage had been, it would never have occurred to me to leave it. I asked him why he was doing this.

“Our marriage has problems,” he said.

“Every marriage has problems,” I replied. “But once you identify what they are, you try to fix them. You don’t just walk out.”

I offered to go with him to a marriage counselor if he thought that would help, even though I myself had never contemplated any kind of therapy. But he said that he had all the tools he needed from the philosophy school (where we had met and which we were both still attending). I pointed out that having the tools and using them were two different things, but the next morning he left and, in fact, never returned.

When three months had passed, I asked Neil if there was any chance of his coming back to live with us. I told him that I was considering renting out half of the apartment, both to bring in extra income and also to help one night a week with the baby-sitting. I didn’t want to embark on this if there was a possibility he might return. But he said that there was not, and so I moved my bed into a corner of the living room and offered the spare bedroom and bathroom to the universe, wondering who would come and occupy it.

I never advertised, but for some years there was a steady stream of people who came and went—a young Swiss woman who enjoyed mountaineering and liked to walk up and down the six flights of stairs to keep herself in shape, an Episcopalian priest who worked in the city during the week and went back to his home on weekends, an organist and choirmaster who eventually departed without paying the last month’s rent, someone who wanted to take a sabbatical from her marriage, a couple from New Jersey who needed a pied-à-terre, and several others. I rented the space furnished and asked each tenant to pay half the rent and baby-sit one evening a week. The latter was always a problem. Even though there were seven nights in each week, no one wanted to make such a commitment. Some offered alternatives: a week’s groceries from the supermarket her husband owned (since I never knew when this would kick in, it was possible to ask only for paper goods and Kitty Litter, things that didn’t spoil), a massage (this from the woman taking a sabbatical from her marriage, and who was training to be a masseuse. This would have been a great trade but didn’t often happen because she came home from school so late, and I didn’t like to remind her of our bargain), and so on.

I really enjoyed the company, and it brought me into contact with people I might never have met, but eventually I began to feel as though I was living in Grand Central Terminal. This being New York, almost no one stayed more than six months. After that, a major shift would occur in their lives and they would move on. So at a certain point I went to Bob Gottlieb and said that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I wanted my home to myself. He said that he thought this was a great idea, but I pointed out that unless he was willing to give me a raise equal to the amount I would be losing, I couldn’t do it. He gave it to me without hesitation, and I was torn between gratitude and relief—and anger that he had not offered this chunk of money years earlier.

This year when I went home to take care of my mother, I fought a silent battle with her every evening. Books no longer hold her attention, and she likes to watch television. She turns the volume up very loud because she doesn’t like to wear her hearing aid (or cannot find it). I sat beside her because I know how much she treasures my company, but I have no interest in the antics being displayed on the screen and I was trying to work on my writing. I could have gone to sit in my bedroom, but then she would have felt snubbed. Still, it was hard for me to sit there with all that noise. I have often told her that I like silence, but she doesn’t believe me. From time to time she asked if I would like the television turned off, and I said that it was fine as long as she watched it and allowed me to work. But every minute or two she made a comment and demanded a response from me: “Look at that woman’s hair! See the beautiful flowers. Isn’t this an old film?” and when I kept silent, she asked whether I had heard her. I would explain that I was fine with her watching and me working. It’s just that she wanted to involve me in her activity, and I found this infuriating.

I was able to ignore the flickering and chattering of the television, but I could not ignore her voice. She would promise to be quiet and not interrupt me again, but she suffers increasingly from short-term memory loss. Looked at in one way, this is a blessing: She has reached a state that many of us are still aiming for in that she is more often than not in the present moment and does not refer back to the past. Still, for those around her, it does test the extent of their patience. As I often remark to my brother, my mother is more ecologically conscious than the rest of us, and she recycles her conversation every minute or so. Before I could get to the end of another sentence, she would be asking me innocently to look at the television again. Why did I find it so hard to give her this time? There is probably little enough of it left. I was trying to deny her my attention—the one thing that it is in my power to give but which I was selfishly withholding from her. Much of what she says and does these days is no longer under her control. I was ashamed of my lack of generosity and resolved not to tussle with her that way again. What on earth did I think I was achieving by punishing her in this way?

Gradually I became aware that it was simpler (and kinder, of course) to say yes to what was happening and let it be, to “suffer” it, in the real sense of the word. After that it was not nearly so hard to sit in the living room with her hour after hour, joining her in her activity rather than attempting to flee in my mind. After all, I had traveled three thousand miles to be with her. What was the point of wishing myself somewhere else?

Last night I was invited to accompany someone to a concert of art songs. I didn’t quite grasp that all the songs had been commissioned especially for this performance, and indeed all the composers were present and took their bows. Much of the music was atonal (I think that is the right word). There were no tunes you could hum, i.e., not the kind of music I enjoy listening to. It all took a huge effort on the part of the performers and the audience. This was not a demand I wanted to respond to, particularly since the soprano soloist was large, enthusiastic, and didn’t really need a microphone (there were moments when I had to put my hands over my ears to protect them from the inexorable, piercing sound). My first impulse was to escape, but we were right at the front and my companion would have been upset if I had walked out, so I decided that I had better stay put. I didn’t try to blank out what was taking place on the stage. Instead, I looked for features of the performance that I could appreciate. It is a rare event that has absolutely nothing to recommend it. The two music directors, who were also the pianists and hosts for the evening, gave a superb performance in each of their roles. The singers were very accomplished. Possibly the composers were gifted also, even if their work didn’t appeal to me. So it was not a total loss. I would certainly go to a concert organized by this group in the future—once I was sure that the music was at least a hundred years old. I was just unlucky in my choice of program.

Far too often in my life I have spent time imagining that other people are doing all kinds of wonderful things while I am home alone. This is another form of resistance—a refusal to be wherever you happen to be, doing whatever you happen to be doing. In fact, it is a double denial: You are not out there with the phantom revelers, and neither are you back here on your own.

I heard an interview the other day on National Public Radio with a tai chi instructor. He was describing how much more energy people feel they have once they start practicing tai chi. He always points out to them that what has occurred is that they are not using up so much of their energy tensing their bodies. Once you stop contracting your muscles unnecessarily, a great deal of energy is no longer being wasted.

The other side of offering no resistance is setting things up so that resistance doesn’t arise in the first place. Once I had learned the rudiments of playing the piano, a young Dutch woman invited me to join her in a Mozart piece for four hands. Knowing that she was a skilled pianist, I panicked. First I explained that I was an absolute beginner and then that I couldn’t sight-read, but she was not to be deterred. What I didn’t know about her was that she was also an extraordinary teacher. We sat side by side at the keyboard, and she slowed her pace to my painful picking out of the notes. Each time I made a mistake, she would say, “Try stretching your finger a little farther” or “Yes, now play those two notes together.” There was no hint of criticism in her demeanor. She supported me at every turn. Eventually we got to the end of a couple of pages of music, and she allowed me to escape. Both of us were all smiles. I don’t remember the piece we played, but to this day I recall how she made me feel. She had only said “Yes.” She never said “No.” She taught by encouragement alone, and this allowed me to gradually drop all my fear and hesitation and enter into the spirit of the playing itself.