The Talmudists, who proposed a contraction of God—called zim-zum (I think)—to allow in the abandoned space the world to exist with its inhabitants condemned, after Eden, to moral choice—separately from the omniscience of Omnipresent God—also proposed never listening to women. Or rarely. What my mother hinted at was her sense that thought was the track or wake of the truth but wasn’t the whole truth but was as strange, as ambiguous, as subject to interpretation as a Biblical text was for the Jews—and for others.
She meant even one’s thoughts about driving—even one’s thoughts before making an error or committing what others called a crime.
She didn’t mean there was no crime: she was very practical. She merely meant it was a difficult matter for humans. I think she was proposing that at the edge of the present the ideal ceases to exist; no contraction of the human or the divine makes room for it in the present.
And if the present is real and not a dream—and she never proclaimed what it was, real or dreamed, less than thought or more than thought, never so far as I know—but if it is what is most truly real and is what most immediately has to be dealt with by a parent, say, or by an ambitious woman and by every man (that was how she had been brought up and she rebelled but she permitted, I believe, the thought in herself, and in others, that she had been wrong to rebel), by a person, then that is God if GOD is real . . . If, that is, some final meaning or point exists, some finally intelligent thought or other—as in the moment of revelation in a dream episode, then it doesn’t dismiss reality or the present: it must rise from it as from the mouth of a tunnel but one going upward (so to speak).
If I take Mom to be a major novelist and someone to be listened to and a narrative artist whose work is to be analyzed and whose life is to be studied or at least like that for me, then, among all the other problems of dealing with that, among the problems of my dealing with that (an outsider can, of course, see into the psychological twists and turns with less fuss than I can; it doesn’t matter as much to an outsider—unless the outsider has taken the story over and changed it and made it apply to his or her life) is the almost simple fact that she took the real to have two levels of reality—male and female, for one—but also one of uncertain voting about the nature of things in the onrush of reality and another one of more solidified sense that only a fool would trust.
And she hid this from me most of the time. For all her truth-telling, she was an absolutist sort of mother—or semi-mother. She let me, and others, peek at reality; her flirtatiousness was of someone peeked at and who allowed it, a wicked Susannah with the elders but a serious one with the juniors; she constructed a central lie, let’s say, of respectability and of respectability in an Anglo-Saxon mode somewhat (and not piety), but she lied about reality—both about the crimes there, the pains, the assertions of will, the blindness and the rest of it, and about the limits that the crimes perhaps did not go past.
She lied about the degree to which we were not in Eden and the degree of absolute innocence she, and we, had.
That we were not in Eden was balanced partly—but strenuously, rigorously and vigorously, stringently—by snobbery about who we were, about the social level we had reached (largely through her efforts): her snobbery was social and personal, sometimes intellectual or at least was about the mind, and often, nearly always, it was sexual. An accusation she made often (of others) was: Who would FIND someone like that ATTRACTIVE? But, you see, then, Nonie and I, S.L. too, we were in Eden, part-time, when she allowed it. And, sometimes, we were sent out by assassins from a castle to deal with reality. It was very complicated, really. She nearly always defined my role and the real morality possible for me—young, then less young, then a boy, then an adolescent—as simple—she often used images to say so: Just go ahead and fire when ready, Gridley, a thing from the Spanish-American War in her girlhood, meant you didn’t have to think, but she often said, You don’t have to think, you’re a boy, there’ll always be some woman to think for you, if you’re smart—but that was not only ambiguous and teasing and part of her superiority as a commanding officer (a commanding person), it advertised her own merits as a commander: she had given us each A Golden Age.
And that, too, was an image, for us having some bit or piece of a heart’s desire, lied about or true.
But, further, because of emotions and the silence at night sometimes in a suburb, and food-on-the-table, and clean clothes, nice clothes, it was more genuinely true . . . sentimentally and actually a truth . . . than perhaps one might expect. This confused her, too—our true, local queen. She struggled to accept this image-ridden, tilty, oddly actual reality.
And attached to that but undermining that was what she, as a woman, always saw as less simple, as not simple at all, as never simple, but which, as a realist she admitted, sometimes out loud, and often claimed for herself: it was what you owed yourself. But that became complicated if you were clear and put it into round sums.
The lies; the reality . . . If I try to see over reaches of time, it is a bit like looking across the black water of a bay at night; and I see very little if I haven’t studied the view first—if I haven’t seen a diagram of a cardinal across the black water of a bay at night. And if I have been instructed, then I see the distant lights of conclusion, of a destination (if I were travelling). Or I see where other lives are being lived at that moment. But I see in a ghostly way, with the lights and shapes and salt odors of the water veiling and yet explaining my actual reality standing on a pier, say, while the distant sight fits the pattern that informed me of possible meaning.
Or I can say it materializes, to some extent, the reality of what I see, as good sense: a view across a bay at night. A notion of my mother . . .
The other narrator. But the first narrator, or the second, me, if I look nearby, I see dark water—the dark, meek surface of the quiet bay and the faintly illuminated dark air; and then, if I think of its stirred, maybe wild depths, the primary sense I have might be of the strong restlessness of the salt water and a kind of amazed fear that something might exist that was without surfaces or levels—that was without limits.
And it is a thought about what-I-see in the distance. Or about my mother’s gestural narrations. Daddy said once, looking at an open fire, that fire was a whore. He meant it had a natural promiscuity, a disdain for family meanings and for personal affections. If I were making up a story I might hint in it coolly and falsely that I had always lived in a way that I understood. I might say I always understood that a mother was not a whore—a mother might have fires without number in her, a hundred whoredoms, social and sexual, but she had ties or, really, realities that were not that—that were, at least in my case, after my real mother died, contractual and personal. Of course, for me, that is the pattern I then see everywhere in the nervous kingdoms of my observations.
But the heat of attention—the wars of the world—the look-at-me’s of others and one’s own doing that—the selfishnesses, the dark water, the meanings, the blunders, the kinds of self-assurance there are and the truths of a kind about this that emerge urge that as many as possible of the lies should stop.
Momma, perhaps drugged and remembering the past, sliding into the past, into an old self, into a costume version of it, a little dusty, not very dusty, said: Don’t push me too far. Believe me, there are many, many things to like about America but the part I like best is that people are allowed to defend themselves—take me for granted and just watch my dust. I LIKE going too far. If I have to pay the piper, I’ll pay . . . I don’t give a hot damn: I’ll pay through the nose—to hell with everyone: I’d rather be a hellcat than a doormat . . . Want to try my temper and see?
This is the mid-ground where faces and eyes are not censored for children. Or for the neighbors.
I learned—and you’ll learn—you have a few lessons to learn yet, whatever you may think. THE WOLF IS AT THE DOOR—try that on once in a while. And believe you me, the wolf is OFTEN inside the door: try THAT and see. Be an angel and see where that
gets you. I’ll tell you something, Little Lord Goes-to-Harvard-[and-]has-a-profile-for-a-change, you’re aren’t civilized, S.L., you don’t know what you’re doing . . .
It hurts to hear her. In childhood games of Torture, who would you ever trust enough to tell what you were afraid of most? Even my gentlest friends experimented to see if they could own me with their knowledge of me. People try different things. They say, Don’t do that or I will hit you . . . Or: I won’t let you listen to the radio . . . Or: You won’t have dinner . . . Or: I won’t like you anymore . . . Or: I will lock you in a closet and put out your eyes . . . You build certain walls in yourself—defiances—violences of the mind and body, violences (and coldnesses) of temper, snubbings, withheld love, public scenes. You know each other, children I mean, by your courage in regard to your parents. The kids who gave in, who were thoroughly owned, were a separate sect. Us rougher kids who did not give in, we lied to each other when we played Torture: we would pretend to be afraid of rats or spiders rather than of blows on the backside if that was what shook us up the most. I don’t remember a tough kid ever, even under pressure of extreme infatuation—or in some cases of actual torture, tied up and the executioner using soldering irons and the rest of it—admitting to what he or she was genuinely most afraid of back then.
Lila said, You were always afraid of the truth. If you’re going to get hurt over and over by the same things, don’t come to me for comfort. Learn to take care of yourself. I let you run in the streets like an I-don’t-know-what . . . You’re the Wild Man of Bornèo. I want you to learn how things work, Wiley—do you hear me? I don’t want you to listen to fools. I don’t want you to listen to anybody. Learn for yourself. Don’t be a scaredy-cat. If you ever want to WIN at anything, keep your eyes and ears open AND LEARN. Don’t come to me complaining—and don’t tell me too much good news either: I can be as jealous as the next man. Crow to me too much and I’ll give you a swift kick in the tush. Be a realist. Choose your bed: lie in it. I may not be ending up as the champion of the world but I give good advice. Whatever it costs you, be a realist, not a dreamer. If you’re a holier-than-thou, you’ll end on the cross. I’ll tell you a secret: learn to win. Take a lesson from me. I fight fair. Being finicky is no use. A lot of good it ever did anyone to be finicky. You have to try things out. You have to learn . . . Oh, you’ll never listen to me . . . Listen, Smarty-pants, I’m not the type who gives advice—not to a boy. Why throw good money after bad? You have a mind of your own—you have to have your own say: well, go ahead: so, catch on or the caboose will run over you good and proper. You’re wrong more often than you’re right. Well, go ahead: don’t expect me not to notice. Don’t expect to fool me. The Rogerses got mean and this is a nice place to live and their meanness cost them the ball game. Listen, if you have clean hands, it’s because I don’t run away from things and I protected you. My hands aren’t clean and sometimes I’m heartsick. Listen to me: do one or two bad things and you’re still innocent enough for most people’s tastes. For my taste. Live a real life and watch out. I think if you want things to turn out okay you better put yourself in the right toute suite. That doesn’t mean you hold back: that means you know how to live. Nobody goes around confessing the truth. You want to stand out of the crowd as a fool, that’s how to do it. THERE IS A GOD. THERE IS JUSTICE. There could be justice. Probably. What do I know? Margy Rogers called Nonie a little whore, she said she’d kill her, she said she’d kill her herself but she wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty with Jew blood . . . That cost her the ball game; she had to leave the neighborhood . . . The nice people wouldn’t put up with that . . . She went over the line. Why should I respect what she feels? If she talks like that she can go straight to hell. I can forgive her but Nonie won’t. If you don’t know where the line should be drawn, that’s your Achilles heel. The Rogerses had to move . . . Well, I’m not a fool. I won after all. I guess I do the right thing now and then. When the chips are down. See, the guilty run away. Not always—just sometimes. Sometimes they pick your bones—it’s not a hard and fast rule. But THEY left the field of battle—HAVE I MADE MY POINT? What bothers me is that no one thanks me. There’s no reward, Wiley; that’s hard to live with; but that never stopped me . . . Nothing’s ever stopped me yet . . . There are a lot of lost stories in my case . . . I want a cigarette . . . I’ll settle for a piece of candy . . . At times in the past, when Lila wanted a favor from Nonie—or me—she had courted us, her daughter, her adopted son . . . She said now, I don’t count on gratitude: do it because you like me. You want me to put on makeup and a good dress? You want the whole song and dance? I’ll go back to being sweet—in a minute. She had a sweet-eyed look, greasy and funny and steamy and with mean, glowing, ache-y eyes. You like stories? I’ll tell you a story. You think monkeys are the smartest people? Well, try me. It’s a bad day. I’m blue, Wiley—that’s better than being black and blue, Pisher . . . See, my sweet voice is back . . . You know what? I never saw the truth about a mother in a book . . . How are you going to be a mother to a real girl? I never saw anything about it in a book. Wiley, I’m tired. I’m so tired, I could die . . . Do you like my little joke? I’m not scared to die; I’m scared of meeting your real mother in hell. In heaven—who knows? Who knows anything? But, Wiley, how do you help a child? How do you know what the right thing is? I was never one to take orders about things. Do you make a little saint out of a child? Do you give them a gun and tell them to go be a Nazi roughneck? Do you tell them nothing? That isn’t very friendly. I’d like to know what the middle ground is. How do you teach a nice self-respect? Well, I for one don’t know. Do you daydream about heaven on earth, Pisher? I don’t. You have eyes just like an owl . . . You’re not pretty anymore . . . I’ll tell you this, Wiley. I’m not scared of anything. I taught myself and I learned it: there’s nothing I won’t do if I have to. Then: Too much around here is said to be my fault . . . Enough is enough . . . A friend would understand me . . . We all have to learn how to keep going as long as we can—but not me, I get to stop now . . .
I can’t write an ordinarily moral book.
Wiley in Love: 1956: The Second Ora: Twenty Minutes Later
“When you were young,” she asks in the darkened bedroom in New York a few minutes later, “did you know I would come along in your life? Did you imagine someone like me?”
“No. Not at all. No one like you.”
“You never daydreamed of someone and now you see it was me all along?”
“No. I don’t think I daydreamed about anyone I didn’t know . . . I never daydreamed about movie stars, for instance.”
“Who did you sleep with first?”
Pause. “I don’t know . . .”
“You don’t know?”
“How do you define sleep with? Who I first put it in? Whose vagina I first put it in? How many inches did it have to be in before you’d count it?”
“Oh God, you’re so complicated. Put it all the way in . . . the girl . . .” Pause. “Was it a girl?”
Pause. “You have the energy for this at two in the morning?” She didn’t reply. “A gruelling interrogation in the dark and nightmares afterward and you being sullen in the morning—then the sexual daydreams—you want to do this? And the jealousy? Toward what I did and who I did it to and who I was in the years before I knew you? When we have an agreement not to pry in each other’s lives?”
The Runaway Soul Page 30