by Kate Mulgrew
Seeing the expression on my face, my mother looked at me and smiled, a smile of inexpressible weariness, and said, “Oh, Kitten, don’t you know? That’s what happens when you beat your head against a wall.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
My first husband was a theater director, and I sobbed violently as we drove through the stone gates of Derby Grange the day after our wedding, down that long gravel road and into a new life. My mother stood in the middle of the driveway, her right hand held high, her expression inscrutable. Was she thinking, It’s about time, she’s twenty-seven years old, or was she perhaps reading in the tea leaves of her imagination that two months later I would be on the phone shrieking, “I’m pregnant, can you believe it? Jesus, I just got married!”
Three months later, after my beautiful towheaded son was born, I flew to Dubuque to show him off to my mother. She was unimpressed, which I found deeply perplexing, but worse than this was her appraisal of my body.
“You’re looking rather hefty, Daphne darling,” she said, and lightly swatted my hip.
“But don’t you think he’s absolutely divine?” I demanded, holding my perfect baby aloft.
“He’s a serious little thing, isn’t he?” she responded, studying Ian’s face.
Ian looked back at her, deadpan, which seemed to trigger a moment of elucidation.
“Watch out! He’s smart. He’s very smart, and very robust. He might be interesting when he’s twenty,” she declared.
Ten months later, I brought her a second exquisite son, and her response to this one was in keeping with the first, if slightly less dry.
“Big boy,” she said, patting his head. “Let’s hope there’s something going on in there.
“And as for you,” she continued, again raking her eyes over my figure,” I see that you may need to have your jaw wired shut.”
My mother showed little interest in my babies, and even less interest in my husband. She maintained this coolness for many years, and only once openly expressed admiration for him. He had directed me in a production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and at the party afterward, she leaned into my husband and said, “You’ve created a beautiful valentine to my daughter. Congratulations.”
As the years of my marriage unfolded, I often sought my mother’s advice. She parsed her counsel regarding the vicissitudes of matrimony by presenting me with anecdotes bearing incontrovertible evidence that the institution had long since lost its credibility, at least as far as she was concerned.
“Case in point,” my mother would say animatedly, demanding my attention.
“A seventy-year-old woman from Georgia filed for divorce after fifty years of marriage. The judge asked her if she were suing for adultery. ‘No, Your Honor.’ Domestic abuse? ‘No, Your Honor.’ Irreconcilable differences? ‘No, Your Honor.’ ‘Then on what possible terms, my good woman, do you wish to sue for divorce?’ ‘He bores me to tears, Your Honor.’ The judge looked at her, then slammed his gavel down and said, ‘Divorce granted! Case dismissed!’”
A pattern of sequestration had been established early in our relationship. When I was young, and her secrets were as yet unrealized, my mother conceived of sequestration as a way in which to reward herself. It also allowed her to steady herself. Our long heart-to-hearts at the kitchen table, or in my bedroom, always evolved with an urgency followed by immediate action.
“Kitten and I are having a talk and do not wish to be disturbed,” she’d announce to anyone present, then she’d take her coffee and quickly precede me through the dining room and up the front stairs. Looking back, I can see Jenny’s little face as she stood frozen in the dining room, dismissed and banished. With the crook of a beckoning finger, I could have filled my little sister with joy, with a sense of belonging, but I never did this because the imperative was so clear. My mother wanted my company, and mine alone.
What did we talk about that was so important it demanded complete exclusivity? Everything and nothing. She was escaping the drudgeries of life. She was locking herself in her room, away from her stepmother, she was hiding in the chapel with her first real friend at boarding school, she was putting off yet another inevitable encounter with her husband, she was unlocking secrets about Star, she was running from the memory of Tessie, she was trying to find a way to lift herself up. She was desperately seeking comfort. In me, she found a channel, as well as an excuse. She even regarded me as a possible substitute for the one person who was, quite simply, irreplaceable.
Many years earlier, we had been stationed at our usual places at the kitchen table, and my mother had looked at me strangely, as if recognizing something for the first time. I was fourteen years old and had dramatically risen to my feet, rhapsodically painting a picture of my future in the theater when suddenly my mother interrupted me and said, “You should be my mother.”
“What?” I laughed, thinking she was bored with my histrionics.
“I mean it. You know, Kitten, my mother died when I was very little, and that opened a terrible gap that I have never been able to fill. You can’t get over never having had a mother, it’s an impossible thing. I’m always looking for her,” my mother said, softly, “and, of course, I’ll never find her. But you could be my mother. You’re capable and sturdy and kind and strong, all the things a mother needs to be. I think things got mixed up, don’t you? So, let’s just keep this between us, but from now on, you’ll be the mother. What do you say?” At that, she lifted her coffee cup and I lifted mine, and we clinked. It was done.
These were secrets that were shared in the spirit of the moment and, although I recognized them as preposterous, they did not resonate that way. We may have laughed at the patent absurdity of this proposal, and I may have shaken my head at her incorrigible eccentricity, but as the weeks passed into months, I realized that my mother was urging me to leave, with the unspoken understanding that I was to send for her as soon as possible.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There were times when I thought she was putting it on. Delightfully putting it on, but still. The oddness of her humor, its unpredictability and distinct theatricality, had the curious effect of drawing us closer together. Many of her more outrageous quips were so clearly said for effect that all we could do was shake our heads, smile indulgently, and wonder at the eccentricity of such a mother. Despite the uncontrollable laughter her aphorisms provoked, she was not an affectionate mother in the conventional sense of the word. There were no warm embraces, no fond patting of the cheek, no idle stroking of the hair. If you were a daughter, you might be pulled down next to her on the couch and your head carefully examined for cuts, a nervous habit as much as an expression of tenderness. I never saw her do this with any of my brothers, it would have been too intimate a gesture.
She was a strangely formal woman who had made up a set of rules for herself that allowed her to persevere within the confines of her circumstances. This formality was in itself unusual, because my mother was a lively, intelligent creature who could conduct herself with confidence in any situation. She was not afraid of life, she traveled widely, her curiosity was insatiable, but she was not a conventional mother, and we grew up knowing this. Some of us accepted it, others had a harder time. If Jenny was complaining loudly about some privation or other, Mother would turn and declare, “You should be thankful—you were born in wedlock, you’re an American citizen, and you live on dry land.” If there was chaos in the kitchen and we were all buzzing around her like flies, impatient for her attention, demanding she name the ones she loved best, she would delicately sip her coffee and say, “I love all of you, but I like some of you better than others. You know who you are.”
She disdained linking arms and stated unequivocally that walking three abreast was for losers. She preferred striding off on her own. If this happened in New York, as was often the case, I would catch up with her only to find her immersed in conversation with a stranger. If she was talking to a black man, she’d ask, “Why do you love your mother so much?” If it was a whi
te man, she’d ask, “Why do black men love their mothers more than white men?” Her target was seldom, if ever, a woman. My mother preferred the male of the species and, when pressed, would assert that men are more interesting than women.
There was nothing remotely politically correct about my mother, and she categorically refused to be hamstrung by convention. If she were forced to be polite to someone who might not otherwise understand her, she would last about two minutes and then, turning to shield her face, would make the square sign followed by an exaggerated yawn, which signified that she was close to dying of boredom. Snobbishness was a learned trait, and one she was openly proud of. Above all, she both despised and feared mediocrity, and spent the better part of her mothering years warning us against the unending perils of the “herd mentality.” In this way, she infused us all with a perverse love of solitude, and nurtured in each of us, if not a longing for greatness, then certainly a need to distinguish ourselves from the crowd, and the best way to do that was to step outside it.
She did this herself quite effectively when she moved to Dubuque, Iowa. The very qualities that did not necessarily set her apart in New York blazed in Dubuque. In a way, she was saved by this extraordinary turn of events. In the East, where her pedigree was not considered exceptional, she may have struggled for years, and almost certainly would not have married to her satisfaction. But in Iowa, where her intellectual curiosity shone like a veritable beacon in the darkness, she was instantly and inarguably raised to a new and exceptional station. Circumstances abetted her movement. The remoteness of Derby Grange provided a distinctly different lifestyle, one over which she reigned supreme, albeit in unlikely and unexpected ways. My mother had no interest in the well-to-do families in Dubuque, and asserted that most of them were professional Catholics, singularly lacking in dimension. Instead, she attracted personalities who were drawn to the vividness of her spirit, who shared her passion for the arts, her thirst for mysticism, her decidedly off-key sense of humor. My mother spent her time with the abbess of the Trappistine convent, Mother Columba; with the dynamic painter Francesco Licciardi; with the renegade Christian B. J. Weber; and with her outlandish friend Peggy Ludescher, whose very voice set my father’s nerves on edge and whose death sent my mother into a depression unlike any she had suffered before. Stupefied with grief, my mother could not come to grips with the fact that Peggy had been cremated and repeated tonelessly, “They turned my friend into ashes.”
All of her closest friends overlooked the fact that my mother was an abysmal housekeeper, that laundry proliferated unnaturally on top of the washing machine, that there was never enough toilet paper or soap, that children eavesdropped at ventilators and behind doors, and that dinner was necessarily mysterious. Unlike the liquid, bawdy dinner parties over which my father presided, he was seldom, if ever, invited to these intimate soirées. It was not for the food they came, or for the children, or for my father’s company, but to sit at my mother’s uniquely composed table and talk about God, death, sex, and art. Their conversation was reckless, passionate, and ribald, their laughter rising with increasing abandon in the dining room.
As children we knew that the house was, as my mother put it, a disaster area. This in no way deterred us from inviting an unending stream of friends to share in the adventure; many of them stayed for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. My mother was aware of their presence, if only tangentially, but never encouraged untoward demands. If she were approached with complaints of severe hunger or dehydration, she would round on us and say, “Never become an indentured servant,” or, less effectively, “This place is surrounded by farms. Use your imagination.”
This idiosyncrasy was most in evidence when my mother wished to detach herself. On the occasions that called for serious focus, when one of us had done something she considered reprehensible, she brought to bear on the moment all of her hidden mettle and unleashed a part of her personality that was both startling and intimidating. Gone was the laughter, the lightness, the mischief. My mother could not tolerate a liar and mortified those guilty of this transgression by summarily withdrawing her affection. This was a misunderstood and misguided punishment, but it proved to be inordinately effective. Equally, she despised indolence, greed, and any kind of depravity. Although she loved nothing more than a good talk about sexual intimacy, when it came to her children, especially her daughters, she was profoundly disturbed to think that they could bring such shame upon themselves. The learning curve wobbled, but when necessary she fashioned it into a scythe.
Over the course of seventeen years, she instilled in me values that have proven immutable. Whereas I am constitutionally hyperbolic, I am incapable of lying. My table manners, despite a savage and insatiable hunger I have never been able to mitigate, are impeccable. Children are wonderful to look at, but I prefer the company of old women and young men. My greatest drive and pleasure in life has always been work and, although I enjoy a lifestyle that is unquestionably comfortable, I would relinquish all of it if I could not share it with those I love.
And of those I loved, I loved my mother more.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I sent for my mother as soon as I could afford to pay for a round-trip ticket. All things considered, she didn’t have long to wait. Ryan’s Hope, the soap opera I was starring in, enabled me to present my mother with this gift, the gift she had anticipated for so long, the gift that promised her freedom. She came immediately, establishing a pattern that did not change for more than thirty years. My good fortune was my father’s bad luck, acting, as it did, as an agent of separation and, although my father never said as much, he resented her leaving him. Even if it was no more than a four-day visit, it was four days without her presence, and my father felt her absence keenly. More than her absence itself, the urgent, excited way in which she left hurt my father. He mourned, then he seethed, then he got even, in the most expedient way possible.
Meanwhile, my mother would have arrived at my apartment building at 80 Central Park West and, leaping from the taxi, thrown out her arms and cried, “Kitten Kat Feathers of Joy!” She loved everything about New York, not least the fact that her best friend lived there. Jean Kennedy Smith and my mother had first bonded at the Sacred Heart Boarding School for Girls, and the attachment had deepened over the years into one of enduring friendship. The Kennedys were a possessive lot, and Jean would have monopolized my mother’s time entirely had I not put my foot down. We went to the theater, on Broadway and off, spent hours in subterranean art houses watching obscure foreign films, dined on linguine alle vongole at Paolucci’s in Little Italy where, after the dinner crowd had thinned out, Danny Paolucci pushed the chairs aside and created a dance floor where we sometimes danced for hours, finishing the evening with glasses of sambuca and amaretti cookies wrapped in delicate tissue which, once ignited, floated magically to the ceiling. We walked tirelessly through the neighborhoods of New York, exploring boutique bookstores, bringing afternoons to an end over manhattans at the Oak Bar. Often, my mother preferred to stay with Jean at her elegant townhouse on the Upper East Side, and I didn’t mind this. After all, my newly acquired apartment was furnished with only a couch and a glass-topped dining table, and at night frequently featured a handsome young man with inky black hair and sullen brown eyes. My mother did not like my boyfriend. She thought he was surly.
“You’re very quiet for someone in the theater,” my mother would remark, appraising him. “Has it occurred to you that you might be clinically depressed?”
Likewise, my mother showed little respect for the job that had provided me with the means to buy her a plane ticket.
“Kitten, I really don’t understand why you’re doing a soap opera,” she’d say, dramatically lowering her voice. “Why don’t you do movies instead? Then we could see them together.”
Her costume never varied. Whatever the country, the climate, or the circumstances, my mother never forsook the ensemble she had so carefully selected from the limitless racks of the Goodwill thrif
t shop. She would never betray the emporium that had allowed her to travel in style and comfort and often shook her head pityingly when we questioned her taste in venue.
“Judge not! You couldn’t buy this outfit for less than a thousand bucks in New York,” she would argue. “And the raincoat is terrific. It may not have a label, but it is a classic trench coat and I, in case you haven’t noticed, am a classic traveler. I like to pack with an eye to the next adventure, and I like to pack light, so your father can’t catch me.”
That ubiquitous raincoat: in the mist of a West Cork dawn, in the frigid, unrelenting rain of Seattle in winter, in the immutable heat and chaos of LAX, in the lavender coolness of a Florentine sunset, in the darkness of a Chicago bar, in the midday bustle of the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, in every quadrant of New York City, and at every conceivable time of year, in the ruins of the Pallatine, in the afternoon shadows of the Via Dolorosa, and on an early May morning in 1998, in the gray light of a London hotel room where she sat on her bed, waiting.
“What are you doing, darling?” I asked, so quietly I was afraid she may not have heard me.
“I’m waiting,” my mother replied, blinking behind her thick-lensed glasses.
“But what are you waiting for, darling? It’s five-thirty in the morning,” I said, moving slowly down the stairs into her bedroom.