Like Family

by Paula McLain

  I’ve lived in Dallas, Phoenix, Ann Arbor, rural Vermont, but never again in California. I do visit every few years when I get particularly lonely for yellow hills dotted with scrub oak. If you take the Pacheco Pass from San Francisco into the Valley, you can stop at Casa de Fruta, where avocados are still five for a dollar, then head down and down, past the marigold farm that flashes electric orange through the curves, past the dramatic bluff where an Indian princess is said to have flung herself to her death for love. When you hit Highway 99, the land flattens into a table offering up fields and farm stands, weed-choked sloughs. Palm trees jut from the horizon like a misplaced dream. Trucks hurtle by full of tomatoes, pistachios, plums, blowing the oleander in the median into a flurry.

  This is where I’m from.

  Just last summer, I visited Fresno for the first time in eight years. I took a shortcut to the Lindberghs’ house, trusting memory, and still found the street. Of course, the house was smaller, the driveway shorter by half, the willow gone entirely. After her parents’ deaths, Tina and her husband took over as proprietors. They bought several new horses, changed the fence lines, added some new trees, but most things haven’t changed. The John Deere tractor was still standing, a gray mass by the woodpile, every trace of red long spent. Bub’s fantasy boat lay abandoned in the backyard like the skeleton of Moby Dick. I got out of my rental car, stood on the shoulder of the road and let myself be haunted. I didn’t go up to the house; it came to me, like the dust and pollen and silky fibers of milkweed. Like all the days I was a daughter there. I fished my camera out of the car, took one picture, then another. August had bleached the sky to eggshells, the orchards to straw, the house to a daub of clay. Nothing and everything was the same. Nothing and everything was enough.

  Driving north again, I found myself thinking about the evenings — lovely, plum-colored, hypnotically still — when I was a teenager. I’d ride my bike around and around our long block, just to be out of the house and alone. Sometimes, everything was so hushed I could hear a world of crickets in the long grasses, the wind ticking through my tires as I coasted, seeing just how long I could keep my bike upright and moving without pedaling. The phone lines hummed twenty feet up, and a breeze hummed in my ears and there was another humming too that might have been me. Might have been my own signal, parsed and plangent, as indelible as kite string — an SOS sent out past the thirsty air and the fences threaded with weeds and the tentative stars, of all the things I wanted and could not say.

  THERE’S A BONNIE WITH my father’s last name in the Fresno phone book. I check every year or so in the big row of phone books in the public library of whatever city I’m living in. Just this month I found a Franklin. Not Frank, as he was called when we were kids, but it might be our father. Might be. There’s no listing for Cousin Keith, but Tanya is there. I won’t call her, but I like knowing she’s there, and thinking that perhaps her brain doctor has let her keep a memory of me and my sisters in our blue dresses at Deedee’s funeral, or singing “If I Had a Hammer” in Granny’s car, or kicking high on the swings in Radio Park. I check the book for the Clapps too, and the Spinozas and the Fredricksons, though I have never found them. They seem to have vanished — but then again, so have I.

  Whenever I’m in Fresno, which isn’t often, I look for Granny’s mint-green box of a house, winding through streets in what feels to be the right part of town, casing neighborhoods like some kind of thief. Penny insists they tore it down years ago to put in a strip mall, but I’ll keep looking. If I could see her stoop again, the patch of concrete where Keith spray-painted his name in loopy cursive, the trumpet creeper or pile of rusted car parts or the child-size hole in her back fence, maybe I’d forgive myself — or come closer, anyhow — for not knowing the month or even the year Granny died.

  Hilde Lindbergh died of cancer near Christmas of 1993. Several months before, she’d called to say she’d heard I was pregnant and wanted to send a gift package: a pastel baby blanket she and Tina had worked on together, three pairs of tiny embroidered socks, some used T-shirts they’d found at a yard sale. I couldn’t have been more shocked. We hadn’t spoken since the day I borrowed the suitcase, and frankly, I had a hard time imagining Hilde giving me the slightest thought, let alone shopping for yarn, thumbing through baby socks at Kmart, wondering what colors I might like. As she asked questions about my new professor husband and congratulated me on the pregnancy, it was hard for me to stay focused. Her voice, still thickly accented, was dragging me back to where I knew she stood, in front of the kitchen window, the yellow phone’s receiver disappearing under her chin. It was February, and the field would be green, the grass long and damp in the morning hours.

  This was my opportunity to really talk to her, ask her the questions I had carried with me through every change of address, but I couldn’t. I felt as mute as a shoe, muter still when she cleared her throat loudly and told me how ill she’d been the year before. “There was fluid around my heart,” she said. “It was touch and go for a while.” Maybe she was gripping the phone then? The worn back of the kitchen chair? Maybe her eyes were closed for a half a minute against the light? She went on to say the doctors had also gone in to remove tumors in her throat, and that she’d had a double radical mastectomy. What I thought was: I wonder who will save her. And then, like a small, petulant echo: Why do I care?

  Bub died two years after Hilde when a massive embolism exploded in his brain, sending him crashing through a glass coffee table. With both of their deaths, I felt stricken and confused. If they had each lived several more years, would I have seen or talked to them again? Likely not, and yet I am still haunted by both of them. The Lindberghs weren’t our family and couldn’t be the parents we needed them to be, but we did belong to each other, and we belonged to those five dry acres. That was my home, more than any place before or since, and if I didn’t know I loved it then, every cobwebby eave and crack in the sidewalk and patch of cockleburs, it was only because I couldn’t.

  Now I’m in Wisconsin, where there’s a phenomenon called windchill and the tallest thing on the horizon is a grain silo, but Teresa is here. It’s why I came, and why I’ve stayed so far. She lives minutes away with her husband, Braun — the same guy she began dating within months of moving to Michigan — and their two sons. Like me, she put herself through school and is now a physician’s assistant, as supercompetent with her patients as she is with her kids, a mop, a roast. Penny is married as well. After several near misses with older men — like that first boyfriend with whom she set up early home — she declared she wouldn’t date anyone who didn’t know who Duran Duran was. She stuck to that, and six years ago married Josh, who is her age and adores her. They live in Jacksonville, Florida, where it’s hot and wet and crawling with things that’d be only too happy to eat them alive. Penny and I talk several mornings a week while her kids holler in the background, painting the walls with cookie and pestering the dog.

  Our mother is still in Michigan, though she divorced Mike long ago and has moved on to husband number five, an easy-tempered, bearish guy named Bart who builds a good fire and likes to putter in the garage and work with heavy equipment. On holidays, we all converge in Madison, drink too much red wine and fight over how long to cook the pork. Teresa’s in high-efficiency mode for these affairs, planning the menus and mealtimes and sleeping arrangements. We all just nod and try to stay out of her way. Penny loves holidays because she still likes to be taken care of, brought a second piece of pie, a light blanket, her slippers. She cuddles up to Mom on the couch as they look through the Williams-Sonoma catalog. They get along fine. Penny always was the one who could ask for mothering and find a way to get it. Teresa has a workable relationship with our mother too, and credits the fact that she doesn’t expect too much: “She’s just human, you know.”

  And me and my mother? We’re still figuring that out. She was there at my wedding, such as it was, and she was there when my son was born, but mostly I feel I know nothing about her. Sometimes, after a
few glasses of wine, she’ll divulge something about her girlhood in Washington. That’s how I learned her own mother ran off when she was nine, leaving her to be raised first by her father, then in an orphanage, then by her older sister, and that they were reacquainted years later. She never speaks of her first two marriages before my father, or the many years she was away at the movies. We never talk about her leaving or what we’ve lost. I’m thirty-six this year, which means she’s been back for sixteen years, exactly as long as she was gone. What have we learned during that time? What can we expect from each other? What can we still risk wanting, knowing, saying out loud? At Thanksgiving, I looked across the room and saw my son on my mother’s lap, saw her press the side of her face against his, whisper something low and tender. I didn’t look away; I didn’t move toward them either. What can we be to each other? I don’t know. The future is placeless, faceless, open as the backseat of a car heading anywhere at all. The past is a plastic garbage bag between my feet, hot air through a window. My sisters are with me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED to the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts for much-needed support and the gift of time. For early encouragement and advice, I thank Judy Sobeloff, Ted Genoways, Rick Field, Charlie Baxter and Terence Mickey. Thanks to the members of the Harmony Bar Writers’ Collective, and especially Steve Kantrowitz for absolute confidence when I most needed it. Big thanks and big love to the many friends who read, advised, abided, talked me down from various ledges and distracted me with Ping-Pong: Margaret Price, Glori Simmons, Lori Keene, Sharon Walker, Brad Bedortha, Pam and Doug O’Hara, Kenny Cook, Jamie Diamond, Sarah Messer, Jonathan Lethem, Bruce Smith, Harry Bauld and Michael Schwartz.

  I feel lucky to have found such a good home for the book at Little, Brown and grateful to have the faith, enthusiasm and considerable talents of Reagan Arthur, Emily Salkin Takoudes, Alison Vandenberg, Shannon Langone, Laura Quinn, Alex Kanfer, Andrea Chapin, Kristin Lang and Leigh Feldman. Finally, heartfelt thanks to Sandra Eugster for patience and compassion; to my son, Connor, for his fine mind and heart; and to Robin Messing for getting me through all the drafts and dark days, and for being my hero.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PAULA MCLAIN received her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and in the anthology American Poetry: The Next Generation. Her first book of poetry, Less of Her, was published in 1999. She lives in Ohio and is currently a teacher of poetry in the low-residency M.F.A. program at New England College.

  LIKE FAMILY

  GROWING UP IN

  OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES

  A Memoir

  PAULA McLAIN

  A Reading Group Guide

  A conversation with Paula McLain

  Like Family reaches all the way back to when you were only five years old. How did you go about tapping into your childhood memories to write the book?

  In early drafts, I avoided dealing with the very young stuff because I was afraid I couldn’t really get there, that those stories would be thin — but in the end it was easier than I thought. The details were there, available to me. In traumatic situations, children often protect themselves by stepping outside their bodies and viewing things happening as someone not involved, as a spectator. So you see, from the earliest, I was getting great training as a writer. I was a voyeur, quietly noticing everything, cataloging details, filing images away.

  How did your skills as a poet play into your use of language in the memoir?

  I love language, the sounds of words and what words can do. This served me in a surprising way as I was writing the memoir. Because I was very focused on and attentive to language and to building the book with one good, tight sentence at a time, one striking or lyrical image at a time, I could forget that I was writing about my life and revealing sensitive material. If I had been less aware of the art of writing, I might very well have shut down and not been able to finish the project.

  Considering your difficult and at times painful personal history, why did you choose to write a memoir instead of finding solace in a novel? Did you have reservations about writing about the abuse that you and your sisters experienced?

  I did try to write my story as fiction very early on, years ago, when I was still in graduate school, but it just wasn’t coming together that way. I kept running into dead ends. I didn’t know why then, but now I think that even though I was terrified (am terrified still) of exposing many of these memories and exposing myself at large, I wanted to own my experience. Claim it. Fiction would have provided a nice, safe out, but I believe I was ready to stop hiding from and denying the facts of my life.

  When you were younger, it seemed that you had a strong bond with your foster father Bub. How did his betrayal affect you?

  Out of all the foster fathers, Bub left the strongest impression, and not only because we were with the Lindberghs the longest. He was such a puzzle, a dreamer, a big talker, and full of a strange poetry, actually. He stole my heart, and, frankly, I didn’t know I still had one to steal. When I was a teenager and saw his flaws fully, I was devastated. I thought finally I had found a father, the real thing, someone I could trust and be safe with. When he betrayed me, a door slammed shut. I realize now that he was doing the best he could, that he loved me as much as he was capable of under the circumstances. But I’m still having trouble budging that door.

  It is clear in Like Family that your relationship with your sisters was impenetrable. Can you speak directly to what your sisters meant to you as you were growing up together, and what your relationship with them is like now?

  I think children are islands. I felt very alone in my childhood and shared my feelings about what was happening to me, to us, with no one. But my sisters never left me. This meant everything then and means everything now. They’re my family. Things and people come and go, terrible things happen, but what I have with my sisters is, yes, impenetrable. We have this shared history, which we do talk about now. And when we do, I understand that, although I felt alone as a child, I wasn’t.

  How do your sisters feel about Like Family? How were your personal experiences different from those of your sisters?

  My sisters have been very supportive of the book all the way along, and proud of me for undertaking the project. I’m deeply grateful for this, particularly since I know they would never have elected to be revealed in such a way. Both of them have said that reading certain passages — even from the distance of twenty-some years, and with the additional buffer that the telling was my version of events, not their own — was like reliving memories, experiencing them and the attendant pain and disappointment afresh. Being aware of their feelings has caused me some unease. My sisters have their own versions of our childhood, as well as their own strategies for dealing with the fallout. My sense is that they both feel more comfortable with the past behind them, or at least at a manageable distance from themselves. While I respect this, I’m more inclined to agree with Faulkner, who said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

  What is your relationship like with your birth parents today?

  I have no relationship with my birth father. I don’t know where he is or even if he’s still living. The last time I spoke to him was on the phone when I was fifteen. Hearing his voice was like being struck by lightning. I couldn’t handle it then; I hung up on him. I’m not sure I’m any more ready to handle it now.

  I do have a relationship with my mother and have since she came back when I was twenty. It’s a complicated relationship, as you might imagine. I don’t know if I can trust her or even if I want to try. I don’t know that I want her to know me, because that would make me vulnerable to her again. People often ask, “Do you forgive her?” I’m not there yet. For thirty-plus years, I’ve blamed myself for her leaving and everything that followed. I’m still trying to forgive myself.

  There are a number of instances in Like Fami
ly in which it appears that foster parents are exploiting the system. Do you think that this is common? Has the situation for foster children changed since you were young? Do you have ideas about how the system could be changed to make things easier for the children?

  I don’t know how common it is for foster parents to exploit the system; I only know my experience. Right now, I’m reading a memoir written by a longtime foster parent that presents another side. In it, the foster parent is a saintly, selfless figure, the one safe oasis in a sea of abusive birth parents and overworked social workers. I’m sure it is this way in some cases, but I didn’t know any oases. I knew frying pans and fires.

  Since I’ve left the system, I think things have only gotten worse. There are more kids needing care and fewer parents willing to give it, and no easy answers about how to improve the system. I do think prospective foster parents need to receive more specific and extensive training/education (standard training is thirty hours) to prepare them for the children, often quite troubled, entering their homes. I think there should be more extensive screening for foster parents to weed out the less-than-committed or the possibly exploitive, but I also know how hard foster parents are to come by, and that sometimes even a family who will take a child strictly for the money will be a safer placement for that child than an abusive situation at home. Which brings us right back to frying pans and fires.

  How do you define family?

  I spent most of my childhood fantasizing about what finding the perfect family — or having them finally find me — would mean. It seemed to me then that family meant permanence — a solid and unshakable connection. Something that couldn’t be reversed, erased, dissolved by disappointment or betrayal or the signing away of responsibility. By that definition, I had the ideal family all along, in the bond with my sisters. Our connection wasn’t and isn’t perfect, of course, because we’re not perfect. But it is constant; I trust it absolutely. I have also been lucky enough to find friends along the way who are, essentially, family — in that we love and sustain and know one another in deep and abiding ways. Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I think I once would have said that about family, hoping against hope that I would finally stick somewhere and stay, and belong beyond all doubt or evidence to the contrary. Now I would say, rather, that our real families — the people with whom we share the richest, most dynamic, most nurturing connections — we choose for ourselves.