Laurence Layton had no secrets. He was born in Boomer, West Virginia, a poor coal mining town. Almost all of the inhabitants worked deep down, under the earth, but Laurence’s father was different. John Layton was a college-educated engineer. Life for Laurence began a little better than for others in Boomer. His father spent hours with his son discussing ideas and allowing him to help perform experiments. But when Laurence was eight years old, his devoted father died unexpectedly. Within days, his mother was forced to move back in with her father, where she instantly became a servant. Laurence Layton, the child who became a man overnight, resolved that his siblings would never feel his desperation or loss. He assumed the paternal role until his mother remarried. At that point, he was dealt another cruel blow when his new stepfather told him to leave the household. He was determined to rise above his lot in life, but his adolescent perceptions of desertion and betrayal became the basis for a lifelong fear of abandonment.
By 1938, the year Lisa was torn from the life she loved, my father had escaped from his world of poverty and betrayal to the world of college intellectuals. Intelligent, enterprising, and seemingly confident, Laurence now lived far away from the coal town of his youth. He stylishly joined the Socialist party and, for the first time in his life, met educated Jewish émigrés. He aspired to one day join the world of the bourgeoisie.
In 1940, Laurence was introduced to Miss Lisa Philip, the physical therapist at Penn State’s Student Health Services. I believe it was my mother’s cultured and affluent background that enchanted the young doctoral candidate. Lisa, a beautiful German, lent legitimacy to my father’s own endeavors. Her distinguished lineage (her cousin, James Franck, won the Nobel Prize in Physics; her uncle, Oscar Hirsch, was a world-renowned Viennese brain surgeon) provided impressive credentials to the ambitious student from West Virginia.
Desirous of making a life with promising roots for herself, Lisa began to date the Ph.D. candidate and in 1941 they became engaged to be married. But my father, who had remained chaste, was very troubled that his fiancé had been intimate with another man before him. Her culture and experience cast a shadow on his fragile self-esteem.
However, Lisa believed if they truly loved one another, her past could be forgotten. Fearful of any more upheavals in her already tumultuous life, my mother became apologetic, outwardly meek, and obedient. On October 18, 1941, their marriage of thirty years began.
Unfortunately, Lisa would never be able to bury her past enough to calm the demons inside her innocent country boy’s head. In 1943, she made the following entry into her diary:
There is one thing that is causing me to be more desperate and unhappy than I ever thought I could be, living as well as I do, having a perfect little son and a good husband. It is the opinion another person one greatly cares for has of one … I would have repented and tried to be as good a person as I could, but now things seem to be pulled out from under me. There is nothing. I see, no ground to stand on …
A few months later, she wrote a letter to her husband:
Dear Larry,
There is neither a going back to, nor a future. All I have ever hoped for seems to be denied to me … I want a home and children … I want to feel part of you. When things are all right between the two of us, my love for Tom is happy, and it fills me with contentment and a feeling of security to see him play and feel good. But when things are the way they have become now, my love for him is not a real, true unselfish love, because I try to regain from my love for him, what I have lost in you. And since this is not possible … my love becomes desperate … You cannot believe my feeling toward you, because you cannot feel it. You are a prisoner of yourself, because selfishness prevents you from overcoming your limits …
With three little children under the age of four, she was washing diapers and sheets by hand and hanging them outside on a clothesline to dry. She was weary, having to manage without servants and without the loving support of her own family. Her isolation grew when she could no longer share her thoughts with her German friend Annelise, as it was forbidden to communicate with anyone in an enemy country. Finally, when the war ended, Lisa excitedly wrote to Annelise. But the reply was devastating: Annelise and her baby had been killed in a British bombing raid. Lisa’s only remaining lifeline to Hamburg and her past was severed.
As a child I was mostly unaware of my parents’ troubled marriage. If my mother was a mystery to me, I completely knew my father, or so I believed. There was never any doubt in my mind that my father was fiercely proud of his little “Bugsy,” his nickname for me, his small and energetic youngest child. I was sure of what pleased and annoyed him. I loved sitting on his lap and reading aloud to him on Sunday afternoons. I knew that Papa was a scientist and the smartest man in the world. I hung on his every word, knowing it was gospel. Papa eased the confusing world I tried to share with Mama, making it clear and black and white. I never had any doubts about what I should do, think, or say when I was near him. He made me confident by boasting of my accomplishments, my creativity. I had meaning in my life when I pleased my papa. Looking back now, I can see that learning to please in this way became a dangerous liability when I met Jim Jones. On the other hand, it was because of my father’s unwavering belief in his little Bugsy that I would, at a critical moment, find the strength to flee Jim Jones and escape to safety.
In 1957, Papa accepted a position in Albany, California, where he commenced research on allergies. In our spacious home in the Berkeley hills, my older siblings huddled around me, lavishing me with eager attention, coddling and protecting me from myself. In return, I idolized, adored, and entertained them, reveled and blossomed in their attention, and became accustomed to unconditional love. There was so much noisy commotion around me that my parents often didn’t get a glimpse of me all day.
Papa encouraged my love of drama and ballet. At age five, I was performing my own interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at dinner parties in our mansion at 670 San Luis Road. There were always adoring whispers as my swan pirouetted across the hardwood floor, my tutu’s ruffles gently rising and falling with each graceful landing. Afterward, Mama would hug and kiss her ballerina and we’d head upstairs, hand-in-hand, for my good-night story.
Still, I was aware that I was not a part of the intimacy that Mama shared with my older siblings. One incident, when I was six years old, brought home the realization that I was excluded from my mother’s world. My sixteen-year-old brother, Tommy, and Mama were sitting together on the front porch. They were talking, but I saw a thin trail of smoke rising over my mother’s shoulder. I knew that couldn’t be, as Papa had forbidden anyone from smoking—it was trashy and only uneducated people did it. I also knew that what I had seen was a secret, which I faithfully kept to protect Mama.
I longed to join Mama and Tom in their secret time together and would later wonder why Annalisa and Mama always talked behind closed doors. What could my fourteen-year-old sister be talking about with her? What on earth could be so private? By the time it was my turn to sneak behind the door with Mama, she seemed exhausted. She never shared with me the secrets of growing up. She never even told me the scary facts of how my body would change.
In 1960, however, my dreamworld still glistened with sibling adoration. I continued to garner applause for my tomboy feats such as the double flips on my parents’ bed and the twenty-five stitches on my head I got from crashing into the corner of their headboard. My favorite time was evening. Papa would discuss his research, then ask us about our days. Most often the discussion would center around the book Mama was reading and planned to discuss at her regular afternoon tea, hosted at our home. My live-in baby-sitters, Tom, seventeen; Annalisa, fifteen; and Larry, fourteen, still chased me around the house in the evening. When we played “Evil Tooth Decay,” Tom and Larry would hunt for me behind couches, in closets, and under beds until I was found. I screeched with delight as they looked for me, then chased after me as I fled. Finally, I had to brush my teeth while Tommy, “Mr. Evil Tooth
Decay,” growled and tried to prevent me from brushing and Larry, Bucky Beaver, protected me.
When Annalisa had her high school sorority’s monthly evening meetings at our house, I was their mascot. I would proudly sit on the table, ring the bell for the meetings to come to order, and play waitress to serve them refreshments. My siblings were always there to smooth the sometimes rough relations between me and our parents. They allowed me to remain the center of attention, the twinkling star.
My father continued to write and publish his research, travel and give lectures in America and Europe. I never understood why my mother refused to accompany him when he lectured in Germany. I begged her to go and take me, too, but she would look far into the distance and softly say, “I will never go back.” Her refusal to explain herself made me feel left out, frustrated, and furious at her.
Then suddenly one summer Tommy disappeared, deserting me for the University of California at Davis. Annalisa remained behind and although I remained her high school sorority’s mascot, at nine years of age I was becoming a fading star. Around this time I started to tell really interesting stories to my friends. I believed these stories myself—I really was an Indian princess who had been adopted and taken away from my tribe. Annalisa scolded me for lying but was unaware of how much it was becoming the fabric of my being. I earned a rather unpleasant reputation in the neighborhood and became known as “Liar Layton.” Then Annalisa deserted me for Davis, too.
I still climbed trees and played kickball, remained the best at handball and arguably was the bravest kid in the neighborhood. I could go out the farthest on any tree limb on the block—that the fire department had to be called to help me down was not a point against me either, I still knew that I had won. I was the biggest daredevil of all! If only my family were there to see me. But everyone was gone. I would have to use other means to catch someone’s attention.
I began to have conflicts at school. I felt completely justified in chipping the tooth of the boy who cut in front of me in the handball line, and refused to apologize to him in the principal’s office. I threw pebbles into the eyes of the girl who called me a liar. Some parents told their children to stop playing with me. I was too ashamed to tell my parents. Papa was not supposed to know that I wasn’t his adorable Bugsy any longer. I tried to hide from Mama that her little baby girl was losing her charm.
I still had one more sibling at home, Laurence, but he couldn’t take up the slack. He was focused on more meaningful things: philosophy, being president of the Berkeley High School Democratic Club, and doing his homework every night. Getting his attention was far more time-consuming and arduous than it had once been. I was forced to stand at his door calling his name over and over again.
“Laurency,” I’d yell until he threatened to get me. Then his exasperated count would begin. He would warn me that by the time he reached ten, I had better be gone. When he reached ten, I’d run and hide, but he never came and looked for me. Then he, too, cast me aside for the ominous black hole in Davis that sucked up everyone important in my life.
I was ten years old and three of the most influential people in my universe had abandoned me. Absorbed by the pressing concerns of paying for three college tuitions, Mama began to work part-time at the University of California at Berkeley’s main library. Although she was only ten minutes from the house, I returned home from school to an empty home. I remember climbing our tree and sitting high over the front porch waiting for the postman, hoping for letters from my favorite people in the world. Few came.
My exhausted parents, clueless about how cunning I’d become, were left alone to deal with a spoiled pubescent daughter coming of age in the Berkeley of the tumultuous sixties. They had raised three perfect children, obedient, scholarly, and attentive. And now on their coattails came this wild, lonely, and angry adolescent. My parents were caught off-guard.
Papa became increasingly disenchanted with my tomboy behavior and publicly mourned the loss of his ballerina. When I transformed into a well-endowed teenager he continued to instruct me in what was right and wrong, who was good, the girls I could play with, how ladies should dress, how my hair should be combed off my face, and which people were not acceptable acquaintances. Life took on a bleak pallor in our empty mansion. Growing increasingly argumentative and surly, I pulled farther away from my enigmatic mother. I had so many questions and none seemed to be adequately answered. Why, I asked her, was she so bothered by my playing with Jewish girls? They didn’t seem any different to me. They also had pretty brown curly hair and their parents really liked me. But Mama was troubled. “Why do you like playing with Megan Hesterman and Carol Davis more than the other girls?” she’d ask. I didn’t know what Jews believed … how could I? I wasn’t one.
As Mama continued to fret and query me, I became more uncivil. “Why, are you a Nazi?” I’d shout. I began to argue constantly with the sweet, soft-spoken woman I had once adored, especially when she deferred to Papa about requests I had, like sleeping over at a friend’s house. “Can’t you make any decisions on your own?” I’d yell. I felt betrayed by her for reasons I did not understand and I was confused by my wild anger. I could tell when Mama had been crying after my tirades. She tried to talk with me. She would pack picnics and we would drive into the countryside, just the two of us, to talk, but the moment we were alone I would attack her again or refuse to speak, just shrugging my shoulders.
In 1968, my older brothers and sister were again causing distress for me. Tom had passed his Ph.D. qualifying exams at Harvard, Annalisa had married a biochemistry professor at University of California at Berkeley, and Larry was involved in an organization doing humanitarian work. I was unable to compete. I wasn’t interested in my classes and got poor grades. Unable and unwilling to emulate the achievements of my siblings, I was losing my status in a family of great achievers.
It had become almost impossible to please my father, so I learned to deceive him instead. Mama, on the other hand, was becoming wise to my cunning ways and confronted me on several occasions. I believed I was unfairly forsaken and began to search for attention elsewhere, at any cost.
2
Exiled
My perception that I was an outcast, the misunderstood underdog, began to shape all my actions. I took my uncontrolled anger about things I could not articulate outside my home.
Formerly the teacher’s pet, I suddenly found myself in detention classes after school, with the tough kids. I forged tardy slips and absence notes, cut classes and played cards with my new and more accepting friends, the Hell’s Angels, whom I had met through my boyfriend. I dyed my curly brown hair raven black and straightened it. I stole Southern Comfort and other hard liquor from my parents’ liquor cabinet and skillfully refilled what I had taken with water. While other kids experimented with smoking dope, I had already graduated to harder narcotics. With my lunch money I was purchasing speed, red-downers, and mescaline. I smoked opium with college kids at lunchtime and dropped acid in math class. My report card showed only D’s and F’s, but for my presentation to my parents I was able to modify the F’s into A’s and, with greater difficulty, the D’s into B’s. Before ninth grade was over, I had been suspended for forging a teacher’s name on a hall pass, I had run away, attempted to convince Papa that my gangster boyfriend needed our financial help so he could go to college, slashed my wrists, called a 911 suicide hotline (but hung up when I heard my parents trying to eavesdrop), and successfully persuaded several friends’ parents to let me come live with them since mine just didn’t understand me.
I also began to write stories, poems, and letters to my distant parents. In 1966, I wrote:
… Dark unsympathetic clouds gather in the sky
A heavy wind begins to blow. Away from the
land where he is able to survive the scarlet bird,
alone now, falls to his death under the bleeding tree.
As I tried to connect with Mama, I developed a strong compassion for people unable to fend for themselves. I
wanted to become one with the real people, the honest people, people who showed their anger, like the Hell’s Angels, the poor, the working class, people from whom Papa tried to keep me safe. I wanted to commune with those who had experienced grief and misfortune. At fifteen, I felt akin to the underclass and was comfortable only with my nineteen-year-old Filipino boyfriend who was a high school dropout, poor, and lived in a nearby working-class community. He thought I was pretty, he thought I was funny, he thought I had something to offer, and thus he replaced the father I could no longer please or amuse. I liked when he was firm with me, when he told me I was drinking too much, or when he grabbed my arm a little too tightly in order to make me listen. I thought his toughness demonstrated his love for me.
But I was vigilant and careful about remaining chaste; I knew that only really bad girls had sex before marriage and that deep inside I was good—my parents and other outsiders simply did not see through my facade.
At school I often felt out of control. I went to battle for students I felt had been unfairly treated. On one occasion, I threw a desk at a teacher who accused my best friend of not having written her own term paper. I passionately wanted and needed to correct all the wrongs that had been perpetrated in my world. I was fighting the demons who ate at me and who were trying to hurt my mother. But I became incensed toward Mama because she remained distant and would not let me fight for her. Again and again, I felt betrayed by her. Why, I wondered, when she knew, deep inside, that we were made of the same material, had the same spirit—why did she silence her self, her essence, and always side with Papa?
My intuition was calling to her, begging her to “Come away, child, and play.” I was willing her to join me, like the gnomies in the poem in my Childcraft book. I was outside in the dark, like they were. I was lonely and knew she wanted to join me, but I could not understand the greater forces that held her back. Sadly, I misinterpreted her fear of stepping out from her cocoon. I saw her reluctance as a sign she didn’t care for me, the aching fifteen-year-old, haunted by the truth untold.
Seductive Poison Page 4