Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  But the damage was done. It took a year for the fertilizer to become public knowledge.

  Elaine was the second person to tell me I’d never make it in politics. The first was Robin Morgan, who said, “You don’t know how to dissemble.”

  The terrible thing is, they’re right. In order to succeed, you have to lie.

  If I didn’t lie about being gay at a time when you could be shot for it, worst case, or ostracized, more common response, why would I lie about anything else?

  That doesn’t mean I don’t forget things or repress others or plain make mistakes. If you have total recall, I feel sorry for you. Repression is like nicotine—it soothes in small doses. Also, if you have total recall you will be bereft of friends. No one likes to be reminded of exactly what they did at Old U at that wild fraternity party.

  If my mind is clear, I will not lie. I guess I won’t be your president or even your senator or state senator.

  From Boston I moved to Cazenovia, New York, where I taught for a year at the Women’s Writers’ Center, housed in Cazenovia College.

  Cazenovia, twenty miles east of Syracuse, glistens with white clapboard houses, stone houses, big houses on the lake. It’s gorgeous. The upstate New Yorkers are like New Englanders, taciturn, distant, wary. Once they decide they like you they are friendly. It’s the reverse of the South, where everyone is warm on the surface. No wonder Yankees get so confused. They think we’re fakes because we’re so welcoming while they associate that warmth with family or years of friendship. Our rules are different, that’s all. Underneath we take just as long to size someone up, but we don’t feel the need to stick people out in the cold while we are making up our minds.

  Another huge difference is that a southerner hates to say no. We have evolved elaborate ways to refuse things or offer criticism without saying no or being unduly harsh—in public. At home and with your best friends you can be scalding. Yankees feel as though they’ve fallen into a vat of marshmallow because they’re curt with one another and feel no need to smooth things over. It’s a generalization but more often true than not. It’s an odd Yankee who does the two-step of refusal without seeming to say no.

  Here I was amidst the infidels, the people who had carried off the family silver. I looked for our pattern but didn’t find it.

  A local realtor, dead now, complained to the president of Cazenovia that I was teaching lesbianism. The president gave her a copy of my course list, which included lots of Euripides, and told her she was off the mark.

  The funny thing was, I’d never met my defender. For him it was a matter of principle even though I was employed not by Cazenovia College, but by the Women’s Writers’ Center.

  This was the first time a straight man had stood up for me.

  The second wonderful thing was the Genesee Valley Hunt. I could see the hunt off. They go early up there because of the cold. They start cubbing in August, and hunting is over by Christmas.

  Upstate New York has good horses, all breeds. The state legislature has passed legislation to make the state hospitable to horsemen. Consequently, there are large breeding operations, especially for Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds.

  There’s polo at Skaneateles and driving everywhere. The estate, Lorenzo, at the west side of Cazenovia Lake, hosted a driving competition while I lived there.

  Another wonderful thing was that Mom visited me. She had visited me once before, in Boston, but it took less effort to get her to Cazenovia in June when the weather was perfect, the nights crisp and the days warm.

  Mother and I walked everywhere. We gardened. We rode out to stables looking at horses. We ate her fried chicken and greens, drank vats of ice-cold Coca-Cola and found that we could be good friends.

  One evening we walked along the two gardens that ran the length of the yard, which had to be about a quarter of an acre. A lovely apple tree graced one of the gardens, a small ruins by the canal, the other. We heard a sorry mewing and found a long-haired calico, a half-grown kitten, under the apple tree. Undernourished, full of fleas, she was not an impressive sight. We raced her to the vet, cleaned her up and introduced her to Baby Jesus and her sidekick, Frip, a big black and white cat who had joined the family, too.

  Cazenovia, as Mom named the cat, grew into an animal of such beauty people would stop and stare at her when they first visited me.

  I hated to put Mom back on the plane to Florida. It was the first time I realized how much I loved her.

  She may not have been the best mother. She was certainly a strict disciplinarian, and her remarks cut to the bone, but she was the only mother I knew. Her visit to Cazenovia brought out a softer side. Maybe I’d matured enough to let her be and maybe she’d matured enough to stop giving orders.

  I sat down and wrote Six of One, a novel about Mother and Aunt Mimi starting when they were children. I cleaned it up to get it published!

  Anyone can write one book. Almost anyone. Fewer people can write a novel, as fiction is difficult. The true test is writing the second and then the third work of fiction. By the time you fire off that third one, you’re either a writer or you’re not. If you don’t know it, everyone around you does. A fiction writer lives or dies on the page.

  Six of One lifted me up and over. I was the real deal.

  And with the royalties from Rubyfruit, I could sit down and think about what I wanted to do next.

  I didn’t have to think long. Marion Rosenberg, who once worked for Elliot Kastner, the producer, invited me to Los Angeles to sniff around the film business.

  The five preceding years hadn’t changed me inside. It took Hollywood to do that.

  55

  Dead Fathers

  Mother’s stationery, bright yellow with coral lettering, brightened the mail. Her letters stood out from the others like a goldfinch amidst the sparrows.

  Packed for California, ready to go, I picked up the mail that had dropped through the mail slot, carefully removing it from underneath Baby Jesus, who craved paper. If you put a postage sump in an empty concert hall she’d sit on the postage stamp.

  I opened Mom’s letter first. An obituary fell out for James Gordon Venable, world-class weight lifter and part of the Bob Hoffman team at York Barbell in Pennsylvania.

  Mother wrote, “He went to his grave with a secret. This was your father.” She declined to elaborate. I had known she knew who he was all along.

  The Venable name, one of the great names of Virginia, sounded lovely even if I couldn’t claim it legitimately. Like all southerners, I knew the great family names: Custis, Valentine and Byrd, to name a few. Nathaniel Venable founded Hampden-Sydney College and Colonel Charles Venable, aide-de-camp to Robert E. Lee, stood by his side at Appomattox. After the war he became a mathematics professor at the University of Virginia. It’s a family with a history of service.

  My natural father’s wife survived him, as did a son.

  I called York Barbell and talked to John Terpak, an Olympian from 1936 who had worked with Gordon, as he was called. He said everyone had adored Gordon. He was a great guy with a drinking problem. In the end it killed him. His liver gave out. Mr. Terpak wasn’t surprised when I told him I was Gordon’s natural daughter. He remembered Gordon’s troubles in the mid-1940s and he said that’s when his drinking increased. Mr. Terpak said I could drive up and meet him at work.

  John Terpak himself was in his seventies. Fit, energetic and handsome, he looked better than most men in their forties. Another great one from that time and group was John Grimek, also a sensational-looking guy who hits the iron just like he did in the old days.

  Bob Hoffman was dead by then, as were many of my father’s cronies. Mr. Terpak recalled the days when they all built York Barbell in the depths of the Depression. Gordon, a gifted athlete, boxed, lifted weights and missed the 1936 Olympics by a few pounds. He peaked during the war and by the time the Olympics were reinstituted he was over the hill. Until 1943 he was heavyweight lifting champion of North America.

  After his competitive c
areer was over, Gordon edited magazines, notably Strength and Health.

  He had wondrous hand-eye coordination. At the risk of bragging, so do I. I come by it honestly.

  “You look like Gord” was all that Mr. Terpak said to me.

  My father had betrayed his wife and then abandoned my mother. He deserved no credit for either. However physically strong he was, he was weak.

  I guess if you’re going to hate people for being weak you’re going to hate most of the world because we’re all weak in some fashion or another, at one time or another.

  I prayed for his soul.

  I never met my paternal half brother. He and his mother, if she’s still alive, probably don’t know I exist. I suppose if they read this book they’ll know but we’re all too far down the road for it to make much difference.

  Mother should have been hit upside the head for her thirty years of lying to me, but her fear that I would ditch her overwhelmed her usual good judgment on the larger emotional issues.

  The funny thing is, you’d think I would be the one to fear being ditched. I called Mother and told her what I’d learned.

  “He was thirty. Juliann was eighteen. He should have known better.”

  “Did anyone talk to her?”

  “You try talking to someone in love. Nothing you can do but let them learn the hard way.”

  “Guess they both did.”

  “He got off scot-free.”

  “Who knows, Mom? Maybe he suffered inside. People cover up pretty good.”

  I heard a suspicious puff. “Yeah.”

  “Mother, are you smoking again?”

  “No” came the not very convincing reply.

  “I smoke Montecristos when I can get my hands on them. I can’t say anything.”

  “Oh boy, Cuban cigars. Your father loved those cigars.”

  “Romeo and Juliet, and when he couldn’t buy a good cigar he contented himself with White Owl.”

  “I didn’t like those.” She paused. “You have anything else to tell me?”

  “No. Done is done.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I look at it.” Another puff. “You got a girlfriend yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “You aren’t very successful as a gay person, are you?”

  “Mother, I haven’t had time.”

  “Before it used to be ‘I haven’t the money.’ ”

  “Right. I don’t think I can live off love. I’m not getting involved unless I have resources.”

  “Got some now.”

  “Yeah, but I need the time to establish my career.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  This was a shock. Mother never did anything wrong and if she did she never admitted it.

  “I can’t afford to talk on the phone that long.”

  “Ha. Ha,” she drily replied.

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Think all this stuff about Gordon and Juliann set you back? You sure shy away from settling down.”

  “No. Anyway, how could it? I didn’t know about Gordon.”

  “I don’t want to die and have you alone in the world.”

  “You’re too mean to die. I’ve always been alone.”

  “You need someone to take care of you.”

  “Mother, for God’s sake, that’s the last thing I need. And with my luck, I’ll wind up taking care of someone else. I can’t do that. I have to write.”

  “I got those release forms you sent me.”

  Harper and Row, my publishers in hardback for Six of One, insisted that Mother and Aunt Mimi sign release forms before they published the book because they feared lawsuits.

  I told my editor, Harvey Ginsburg, “Where I come from we don’t use lawyers, we use guns.”

  He laughed but insisted the papers must be signed.

  “Sign them and send them to Harper and Row,” I told Mother.

  “You’d better come down here and we can talk about it.”

  56

  Two Old Bandits

  My detour to Florida on the way to California irritated me. I’d bought a used Rolls-Royce because everyone who’d ever been to Hollywood said, “You are what you drive.” Then, by God, I’d be the best.

  Mother’s first order of business was for me to cart her butt all over south Florida. There wasn’t a crossroads we missed from Five Points to Coral Gables. We’d reach a stoplight. She’d press the electric window button, and the glass would purr down. She’d start a conversation with the victim in the adjoining car. I could have killed her.

  She loved the Silver Shadow. I liked Silver Clouds better but they’re harder to drive, so I’d bought a newer Silver Shadow, a metallic sand with a coral pinstripe.

  I drove her to church. I drove her to the grocery store. I drove her to work. I drove her to the beach. I drove her to Aunt Mimi’s. That was jubilation. I drove her to Julia Ellen and Russell’s. I drove more miles than if I had driven straight through to California on Route 10.

  Time was pressing. I urged her to sign the release form. She picked up a Bic pen, sat at the kitchen table and held her hand over the dotted line. She put the pen down. Picked it up again.

  Pen poised in midair, she said, “Honey, I could sign this so much easier if I had an emerald-cut diamond on my hand.”

  She skipped to the car. I drove her to her favorite jeweler. She picked out a sparkling emerald-cut diamond, not too gaudy. The carat size of a diamond depends on your hand size as well as your pocketbook. Anyone wearing a gigunda diamond, too big for her hand, is marked a crass. Mother might be crass but she wasn’t going to look it.

  She put the diamond against her wedding band. We drove home. She signed the release form.

  “Mom, you were supposed to help me with Aunt Mimi. She hasn’t signed anything yet and I’ve got to boogie.”

  We hopped in the car, a wonderful car but too flashy. By now I realized I would have preferred a Bentley. Of course, even being able to own a car was magic.

  We reached Aunt Mimi’s. She lay in wait. I was handed an ice-cold Coke. Pickled eggs and fried chicken awaited me. Aunt Mimi, a good cook, sat me at the head of the table. She and Mother sat on either side of me. Her smooth macaroni salad tasted like ambrosia. Her fried chicken, same recipe as Mother’s, crunched. She had even taken some chicken off the bones for the cats back at Mom’s. However, she called Baby Jesus “B.J.” since she thought the cat’s name was sacrilegious.

  “B.J. will love this. Frippie too.”

  Needless to say, I was suspicious.

  Aunt Mimi sipped an iced tea. “You know, kid, getting old is hard. I can’t work like I used to. Neither can Mearl, and we have to help out the kids from time to time.”

  “Aches and pains.”

  “The day will come when Mearl can’t make the good living we’re used to—”

  “How much, Aunt Mimi?”

  “Why, I am offended!”

  Mother kicked me under the table. “What she means to say, Sis, is she loves you so much. After all, you were the one who drove in the blizzard and held her all the way back from Pittsburgh.”

  “That tiny undernourished baby.” Aunt Mimi got misty.

  Why was I going to Hollywood? Clearly, these two were Academy material.

  “Aunt Mimi, I am eternally grateful. Why, I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for you.”

  She beamed and shoved another piece of fried chicken my way. “I’m no slouch myself. Why, if I were a young woman, who knows what I’d do.”

  “You’d be the best.” I sighed a big sigh, hoping I could get out of there without being skinned alive. “Well, let me send those release forms up to Harper and Row.”

  I finished my food while Mother brought me my purse, ostensibly so I could find a pen for Aunt Mimi but really so I could fish out my flattening checkbook.

  I wrote out a check for $2,000. That may seem a small sum. Money was worth more then. Why is it that money keeps getting devalued? Think what $150,000 was worth in 1831. Weird. Anyway, ju
dicious hints from Mother let me know that was what was left on Aunt Mimi’s mortgage.

  I know she never told anyone, but she and Mother celebrated plenty. They’d put one over on the college-educated kid. I knew it was coming. What the hell. It gave them far more pleasure than if I had just paid up without the theatrics.

  Before the kitties and I finally left for the West Coast, I had to go through the death drill one more time.

  As I walked to the car Mother busied herself making kitty nests in the backseat. We put a dirt box on the back floor on top of plastic sheeting.

  Baby Jesus enjoyed riding in the Rolls. She didn’t much like other cars but she tolerated the Shadow. Frip and Caz despised it. They’d cry until they fell asleep.

  We also put a travel box, door open, on the backseat so they could go in and out. It made the two nontravelers feel safer.

  I kissed Mom goodbye. She had packed a big basket for me. Aunt Mimi gave me a round plastic Tupperware container filled with her macaroni salad. I was supposed to return the Tupperware, of course.

  “Kid.” Mom stood by the driver’s door, her hands on her hips. “I love you.”

  “Love you too. Mom.”

  Then she waved me goodbye with her left hand turned toward me, palm inward, so the diamond would spray rainbows.

  57

  18th Century-Fox

  The United States unfolds like a treasure chest of soils, crops, small towns and big mountains. Doesn’t matter whether you take Route 10, Route 40 or Route 94 way up north, you leave the dense hickory and oak forests of the eastern seaboard, plunge into the Appalachians, once taller than the Rockies, and come out in the rich valleys of Ohio or Tennessee. Delta soil, rich as gold, puts envy in the hearts of those of us who farm. The Mississippi floods cyclically, but each time she does she makes up for her damage by leaving those rich alluvial deposits.

  America is a series of river crossings; those rivers made us rich. They left the soil that has made us the breadbasket of the world, whether it’s the James or the Ohio, the Mississippi or the Missouri. The great rivers define us and made transportation possible until the railroads revolutionized life in the 1830s and 1840s.