Dream Catcher: A Memoir

by Salinger, Margaret A.

  Joyce, too, wrote about meeting me. I’d nearly finished the first draft of my own memoir when hers came out, so it was interesting to compare two views of the same event.

  Sometime in the night Peggy comes in and lies down in the single bed beside mine. It’s late. She’s been with her Dartmouth boyfriend. When I wake up, she’s still asleep. . . .

  It’s close to noon when Peggy emerges from the bedroom. . . . She’s not unfriendly, but neither does she exude enthusiasm.

  “I want you to meet Joyce,” Jerry says. “She’s the one I told you about. She wrote that magazine article.”

  “Hi,” she says. Then she picks up a magazine and flips through it. No small talk. (At Home, pp. 111–12)

  . . . I like Jerry’s children, but I have little in common with this cheerful, friendly twelve-year-old boy and his basketball-loving sixteen-year-old sister . . .

  Where my way of operating in the world has always called for large amounts of conciliatory behavior—cuteness and charm, dissembling for the purpose of pleasing adults—Peggy’s demeanor speaks of uncompromising honesty. Peggy, though she’s two years younger, seems far more self-possessed than I. Whatever insecurities she may harbor, or secretly competitive feelings she may have toward me, I watch her with a kind of awe and fear, viewing her as someone who seems far more sure of herself in the world than I am. In Peggy’s presence, I feel naked and oddly silly.

  (p. 143)

  To tell the truth, I didn’t give her too much thought. It was, indeed, like having someone naked and oddly silly in the room; I instinctively looked the other way, to avoid embarrassment. Dan and I seemed so normal, which was both comforting to me and a source of discomfort in comparison to the “whatever” (that’s how I would have put it then—I just didn’t “go there” in my mind) of Dad and Joyce. She wrote:

  Sometimes they [Peggy and Dan] hang out together in Jerry’s living room. They come over on Sunday afternoons to watch sports. They bring their basketballs. Peggy carries hers in a case. They do not abide by Jerry’s dietary rules, that I can see. [Dan] even drinks Coke.

  (p. 169)

  When Dad and Joyce broke up, I had the misfortune of being around. We were in Daytona Beach and my dad took me aside and told me that Joyce would be returning home tomorrow. I didn’t ask why, but he uncharacteristically volunteered that she wanted to have children and he was “too old to hear the pitter-patter of little feet again,” so he thought it only fair to cut things off quickly and cleanly. There was no rancor in his voice, none of the usual diatribes against women. He thought she had a perfect right to want to have children of her own and, like de Daumier-Smith said of Sister Irma, though not in so many words, thought that he should set her free to find her own destiny. I couldn’t help but feel, at the time, that the realities of even a brief vacation with his own children had convinced him that he had no desire to do it over again. I knew he loved us, but the prospect of having children around for more than a few days had a chilling effect on whatever fantasies he and Joyce may have entertained about having a child together.

  Joyce confirms my suspicions as to the sobering draught of reality that a week with real children can present to those who deal primarily with fictional children, dream children: “Bint.”

  He stares out at the water, the children, the hungover college students on spring break, the cars racing up and down across the sand. He looks very old. His shoulders are hunched. He rests his forehead in his hands.

  “You know,” he says, “I can never have any more children. I’m finished with all this.”

  (p. 206)

  Joyce says he told her she should go back early to Cornish and pack up her things so as not to upset the children. Just as I had imagined my father’s English girl wishing, on our trip to Scotland so many years ago, Joyce writes that “lying there in the darkness while she [Peggy] sleeps, all I want is to be able to cry freely. But I know I mustn’t wake Peggy. So I go into the bathroom.” Apparently the sound of her crying awakened my father in the next room, and he joined her in the bathroom, briefly, whispering to quiet her down. I must say, I find it hard to believe that I slept through all this; I’d have been up in the blink of an eye if my brother had been so much as sniffling. Perhaps I just tuned her out, I don’t know. She vanished the next day. It was as if she had never been there at all.

  I WAS THE ONE WHO, in reality, got pregnant that year, though I didn’t suspect anything until I started vomiting every morning before school. I came across a slip of paper in an old box of mementos recently. I had no idea I’d kept it. It was from a clinic in Lexington and said simply: “pregnancy test positive.” I was living in Lexington, a suburb of Boston, at the time, in an apartment I’d rented with Janis, a classmate from Cambridge School who had decided that she, too, could not stand another year of boarding school. We looked at a few schools, including Lexington Christian Academy, where the Celtics used to practice and Jo-Jo White would let us sneak into the balcony to watch if we were quiet. The best was one day listening to their coach prep them for the next day’s game with the Knicks. He went through New York’s roster and discussed strategy man by man until he got to Walt Frazier. He just shook his head and said, “And Frazier is Frazier.” Nobody laughed, nobody needed to say anything more, the man was untouchable that year. Our other choice was the public high school in Lexington. We chose the latter, for reasons I no longer remember, rented an apartment, made up a guardian, and enrolled at Lexington High.

  In hindsight, I would have been better off at an inner-city school than suburban Lexington High. At least I wouldn’t have felt like such an oddball. My classmates seemed worried about things like getting grounded and prom dresses. I was worried about waitressing, pregnancy, and paying my rent. My father grudgingly sent a sum of money for the year that would have kept a roof over one’s head in the 1930s. I told him he was saving all that tuition money, but he still had a fit about sending any at all. He had no problem with my living wherever; it was the money that, as usual, sent him into a rage about everyone wanting something from him—they were all “parasites,” one of his most common expressions, usually reserved for women and college professors. Was I ever pissed when I found out from a biography that he lived with (and lived off) his parents until his mid-twenties. Oh, sorry, he’s a true artist, that’s different. I wouldn’t have minded working a lunch counter and being broke, lots of kids are; what stuck in my craw was that so much of my anxiety was so damned unnecessary—he wasn’t exactly without means. Luckily I had the foresight to invent a guardian with a low income, so at least I got free lunches at school.

  A fictional guardian turned out to be a handy thing, too, for responding to notes about absenteeism. I attended school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and spent the long weekends with Dan up at Dartmouth, except during basketball season, when I had daily practice. I’d write notes about how I was deeply concerned about Peggy’s absences, but managed to slip in that if she was getting A’s in three days, what could I do?

  When I told Dan I was pregnant, it was early in the morning. He rolled over, half-asleep, and managed a really quite elegant proposal of marriage, which I accepted. A month later he told me he’d be spending next semester on an exchange program in Africa, but would be back by the time the baby was due.

  Leaning over my toilet puking one morning before school, I freaked. All I could think was, I can’t do this alone. At nearly four months pregnant, I bailed out. I took, without asking, $150 from my brother’s passbook for an abortion and bus fare to New York. It was the saddest episode of my whole life. I wanted the baby, I was just too scared and too alone, and I had no idea that any help, welfare, AFDC, etc., might be available. They don’t teach you those kinds of life skills in prep school.

  My friend Amy’s father, a psychiatrist, wrote a letter for me to a New York clinic, saying that in his opinion it would cause irreparable harm or whatever if I carried the baby to term. You had to have a letter from a doctor in those days. I sure wish I had know
n about group homes for young mothers or other kinds of support, but it didn’t even occur to me that there might be anyone to help, anyone to take me in. Perhaps, in hindsight, I could have stayed with some of my old friends’ parents, but the way I felt at the time, I couldn’t even imagine a safe place. In my mind, I was entirely on my own. Friends could help me out, but I didn’t need a friend now, I needed a grown-up to take care of me and help me learn how to take care of a baby. I wish I’d had someone like me, the person I am now in middle age, to turn to. Dan has often said the same thing to me, how he wishes we had had someone like him, at middle age, around to help us out the way he now talks with his son and daughter about relationships and problems that they’re having.

  I wanted the baby, I just didn’t want to be a mother because I knew I didn’t know how. I knew I’d do a lousy job, and that scared me to death. Scared into death. I take full responsibility for the decision, mind you, I just wish I had known how to take full responsibility for the child instead. Pat and Tracy both got pregnant that year as well, but they went home and had their babies. Even without the photographs they periodically send me of their daughters, I always know just how old my child would have been. At the moment, she would have been the exact same age as my son’s baby-sitter. I find myself giving her silk scarves and good sweaters I’ve had forever. And pearls for her college graduation.

  I DON’T REALLY FEEL like going over it again; I said it all in my diary anyway, just how unromantic teenage pregnancy can be in reality:

  [1972]

  I’m trying to calm down to keep from going mad. I’m left alone again. I’m so afraid of being left alone again with my baby. Puking over the toilet all alone wishing I could die. All alone waking up and thinking my God I’m going to be a mother all alone. Watching my stomach growing all by myself. No plans for frilly white curtains and pretty Fisher-Price toys for the baby in a bright new room that we set up. No body to tell me, “Don’t lift that, its too heavy. Here let me get it for you.” No one to say, “Oh its kicking just think there’s a little me in there.” No, not for me. For me its hiding it for as long as possible, feeling my thoughts all ALONE. Left alone all alone and so confused my god I’m a mother. Looking out the window of the bathroom all alone and puking. Eating shitty lasagna in the school cafeteria with nobody to tell me to eat good food.

  I’ll probably be going through labor all alone with Doctors all in white staring at my body helpless with my feet tied up in stirrups out of some Marquis de Sade horror movie while people poke and rip out my guts all alone nobody waiting for me in the waiting room. No nobody paces the floor for me. Oh yes he’s in Africa and he’ll visit us sometime. He really wants to be a father to the baby. Yes on Sundays when the diapers have been changed and the 4:00 AM feedings all alone and the questions asked “Am I going to be able to be a good mother—Why doesn’t this blasted baby ever shut up and get to sleep”—all asked all alone. Oh yes he’ll be the father allright like a wound that never heals. . . . Maybe I’ll be in Alaska or Hawaii he says. I’ve been looking forward to this trip to Africa for a long time. I’ll be back before the baby is born.

  But here I am all alone in an empty apartment. I’m pregnant and all alone. I swear to God sometimes I feel like I’ll be all alone for the rest of my life. Christmas at somebody’s house where you’re a stranger or worse yet Christmas in a hotel room with a lover who’s a stranger in a foreign land with sailors all around all alone. Walking by the sea almost happy again when you realize someone’s following you so you run back to an empty lover and apartment only to be all alone while he’s there. . . . It aches so much. It aches and aches you want to be loved and held but you know the feelings aren’t mutual, alone in your feelings. The world drops out from underneath you every time you let yourself need somebody and your left emptier than before because you made more room in your heart and now there’s more to fill. Just like my uterus it’s emptier than empty. Worse much worse than just empty—there’s more room now its been stretched out dilated vacuumed scraped had foot long pieces of metal coming out with bloody gauzes on it and life gets sucked up into a big machine with a motor the sound of a thousand vacuums. And Pain. The horrible agony of something being ripped and torn and scraped out of your most fragile parts like your guts themselves will be the next to follow. Looking up at the white ceiling with no pain killers or anesthesia with pop music playing out of the radio which is piped into every room including the death rooms, excuse me, the operating rooms. Stab of pain—“Oh dear, that’s only your cervix dilating.” Huge needle jabbed into me—“Oh dear, its only a shot to numb your uterus.” And when its all over there’s no soft sensitive wide eyed boy who looks like he’s barely old enough to get the cab over by himself to look scared and like he wants to cry but lovingly at me. He can’t say anything, but two by two the young kids in blue jeans leave together holding each other like in the Donovan song, “we stood in the windy city, the rain dropping tears in our eyes.”

  Me and the fat girl who came all the way from Pennsylvania and a few others leave alone. There’s nobody in the waiting room for us. I get the girl from Penn. a cab, and myself go back to the projects where I rely on another baby to help me. Bad idea. Amy can’t handle it. She wants to party. I need somebody so bad so I run out of the apt. all alone into the dark streets of New York at midnight. Gangs of Boys on the street corners shouting obscenities. I’m scared. I forget how to get to the bus station and even if I did get to the bus station where the hell would I go. I have no one. I am alone and frightened. I go back to the apartment which is better than sleeping in the subway especially since I’m bleeding a whole lot and am supposed to be taking it easy incase I hemorrhage. How the hell can I lose more than I’ve lost all ready. Think I care if I hemorrhage and infect—Hell No. I already have an open wound that will never heal. So I go back and cry myself to sleep on a couch in the livingroom alone as usual. So many nights spent crying myself to sleep all alone.

  IF MY LIFE IS GOING TO BE LIKE THIS FOREVER I JUST CAN’T STAND IT. Will I always be in some shitty apartment all alone with nobody when I need somebody the most? Will I always be pregnant and alone? Will I? If staying with Dan says that the answer is yes then I don’t want to be with him. I don’t trust him with my guts.

  All I want is a home. Someplace nice and cheery where its MY home and I belong and I’m loved. Somewhere where I can always depend on the person who loves me not to leave me lonely. Someplace I belong. Someplace peaceful and safe. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never ever find a home where I’m wanted loved and TREATED RIGHT. I feel like I’ll never be not alone in some dump with bare light bulbs and no lampshades. . . .

  Well I successfully stopped my hysteria. No more rocking and crying and talking to myself out loud. I suppose thumb sucking goes next but why take away all life’s little pleasures at once! Actually, seriously, I’m really glad I can stop myself when I get hysterical. I can tell when I start shaking and rocking and feeling super lightheaded that it is time to STOP. And I still can. When you have no one it’s imperative that you can control yourself and shrink yourself or else your up shit creek without a paddle canoe life saver etc. etc. I still feel kinda pregnant and alone. Shit it’s a good thing I’m not or I’d really be SUPER CRAZY right now. Well, I’m off to find a friend in Jesus cause boy do I ever need one!

  I sure hope and pray that Dan is OK and not alone. I know he knows what it means to be alone up in that shitty hotel room with lead paint chipping off the walls Big Bad Hard Tough 13 year old boy scared shitless so shitless he doesn’t even know it and all alone. That kills me. I hate to think of him like that. That little guy in the photograph in pajamas, barely four, nearly beaten to death by his old man in a drunken rage. The little boy spilled his last can of beer. Fractured chest, one eye blown out, face rearranged monthly ’till the old fucker died. I always wish I could have been there to make things better. When he needed me I wasn’t even born yet! . . . It must be pure living agony and hell to be a parent and not be
able to provide for your kids. Pure living hell.

  I may be getting an ulcer. I hope not but my stomach sure hasn’t felt too hot lately. Now its throbbing like its been throbbing and burning for the past few days. Actually, I almost hope I do have one and I don’t know why.

  SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING from New York, I applied to Dartmouth early decision and was rejected outright. My father was furious at Dartmouth—my daughter’s not good enough for them? I now had to decide which of my secondary choices I wanted to attend. The selection criterion was proximity to Dan, who stuck around, after all, at Dartmouth. This is the crisis, the “sizable decision,” my father referred to in the letter he sent me when I didn’t get in. He said he was glad I always kept my head in a crisis. He enclosed some homeopathic medicine for the head cold he thought he heard in my voice over the phone.

  I GRABBED ON TO JESUS like the drowning young woman I was. My daily diary entries of boys and babies and booze were interrupted in bold letters: “MAY 5th I GOT SAVED.” I had never set foot in a church in my whole life until now. The closest I’d come to any formal religion was when, at Cross Mountain School, Holly had brought me to synagogue with her once during the High Holy Days so we could escape school for the day and sit someplace warm.

  I was talking to a classmate, Earl St. James (today the Reverend Earl St. James, I hear), feeling deeply miserable and adrift. He and his sister invited me to come to church with the family. I thanked him, but said that it was a real stumbling block to me that anyone should go to hell just because they weren’t Christians. When, years later, I brought this question up in divinity school, a Jesuit classmate of mine said, “The pope says we have to believe in hell, but no one says we have to believe that there is anyone in it.” Earl was such a kind and gentle person, he didn’t need Jesuit reasoning as his witness. When I said I didn’t believe in hell for non-Christians and wasn’t sure that a good God would even think up such a place, he said simply and thoughtfully that he didn’t know how it all worked, but he, too, believed in a merciful God and maybe there were chances for others, ways of getting to heaven that we don’t know about.