by Ginny Gilder
In the far lane, the Wisco crew was cheering. What the hell?
We beat Radcliffe. That was a big first, but Wisconsin sneaked by us while we were focused on passing the black-shirted crew. Our coxswain forgot it wasn’t a two-boat race. Sometime in the second thousand meters, Wisconsin claimed the lead and didn’t give it up in spite of our mighty final sprint. We finished second.
I’d thought we were invincible. I hadn’t considered any other outcome.
“Losing sucks,” I told Nat later.
He frowned slightly, but said philosophically, “You learn more when you lose.”
He sounded like a professor, but I wanted a sympathizer.
Nat was right, however. The lessons would follow fast and furiously. I didn’t know until then how much winning mattered. I had taken our crew’s success for granted; it came so easily. Suddenly I had to contend with the possibility that I’d not done my best, not pulled hard enough, or maybe not wanted to win enough. My confidence, hard won over the previous nine months, felt suddenly tenuous again.
My freshman teammates seemed disappointed but not disheartened: we beat the hated Cliffies, our arch rivals, a never-before-accomplished feat. Captain Chris Ernst was less sanguine, noisily frustrated and disappointed. A senior with no more second chances, she couldn’t understand how Lynne Alvarez had neglected the Wisco crew: that was the coxswain’s job, to know the score and report our position, and help us react and adjust to the competitive situation as it unfolded. Chris knew we would’ve won if our crew had known what was happening during the race.
But Chris turned away from the done-and-gone Sprints, accepted her second-place medal, and resolved to rally the team to focus on the season’s final race, which would also be her last for Yale. She was determined: we would beat Radcliffe again in two weeks at the historic Yale–Harvard race, which would include women for the first time in the race’s 125-year history. The Harvard and Yale men’s varsity crews raced against each other head-to-head for four miles on the wide and rough tidal Thames River in New London, Connecticut. The women would race two miles.
I shrugged off the uncertain thoughts weaseling into my head. We were going to do just fine. Chris had decided; she was my captain, and I trusted her.
Stormy skies. A chill wind kicking up aggressive waves. Grim water. Two miles: 3,218.7 meters. The starter stood behind us with his red flag held high, rippling. We left as the flag swept down, leaving his command to “Row” behind.
We started well, but Radcliffe did, too, and kept on going. The boat felt heavy, as if Radcliffe’s speed took us out of our mental game. Our crew lost its concentration, instead focused on trying to catch our competitor. My legs were dead at the halfway mark, empty of drive. A race that started with our determination to win dwindled into a dispirited slog as Radcliffe forged into the lead and didn’t give it up.
It’s impossible to row a good race if you can’t feel what’s happening within your own crew, and if you’re too distracted to focus. That afternoon we discovered that past performance is not a sure bet when it comes to predicting the future. The Radcliffe women ignored the fact that we had beaten them at the Sprints. They refuted the solid evidence that we were the faster crew. From the moment the race went off, they acted like the winners and left us in their wake.
After the race, we landed at the Gales Ferry dock. Nat greeted us silently, handed us our shoes, held onto the boat while we ungated our oars, stepped onto dry land, and laid the blades on the dock. Only our coxswain spoke, uttering familiar instructions to guide the boat safely into the shell house.
We had proven insufficient to the challenge; I had proven insufficient. I had no one to thank but myself. The sting of the moment stirred something inside, my defiant voice. Wait ’til next year. We’ll show you; just you wait. Reason was bantering with me, keeping things light inside. We lost a race. It’s not the end of the world.
I felt a tiny bit better. Not great. I was disappointed, yes; angry, yes; but mostly okay.
Until I saw Chris. Her college career was over, marred by unfinished business. She would never beat Radcliffe head-to-head. Her scowl started at her forehead, drove her eyebrows sharply down, deepened into her eyes, flared her nostrils, and settled across her mouth; then she howled at us huddled on the dock. Focusing specifically on the five freshmen, she unleashed her fury. “You gave up! How could you? You gave them the race! When are you going to learn how to pull?”
I had never seen Chris cry. I felt like a traitor.
When my father pricked the bubble of my growing up in a happily-ever-after family that evening in the twilight off Madison Avenue, the air began to leak out of my world. I didn’t realize when I was eleven that the dissipation of our family’s atmospheric mix of routine, structure, duty, and affection meant the end of life as I knew it, but everything became clear soon enough.
A great divide had always existed in our family between subject matter for adults and children, until Dad moved out. Overnight he assumed the stereotype of a disappearing dad, and it fit like a well-worn shoe. He didn’t visit, rarely called, and saw us only on weekends. Mom’s anger moved in and filled the empty spaces he left behind. The normal family topics of homework, dinner, clean rooms, and laundry fell by the wayside, derailed by new, grown-up ones of betrayal and abandonment.
Mom sniped nonstop about Dad: “You know, he left me for that whore, that bitch. Just ask him. See what he says!”
I couldn’t deny or downplay her pain, but I doubted her charges against Dad. The tumble and turn of events seemed so sudden and fantastic. I couldn’t keep up. I felt as if I was living in a made-up story told by a crazy person, and the shock of the new script immobilized me. Without my father’s confirmation or denial, I didn’t know who or what I was supposed to believe. My parents, who’d always served as the bastions of truth, had blown apart into separate corners of the universe, leaving me to sort out the facts myself.
It wasn’t only the topic of family conversations that changed, but Mom’s behavior, too. The first time she ventured out of character, I was unprepared.
The yelling sounded far away, muffled by layers of sleep. When I finally woke up, the loud noise sounded as if it was next door. Then I realized it was: in Peggy’s room. “You disgusting pig. Look at this mess. No wonder he left,” my mother was saying.
I crept out of my room down the hall to Peggy’s open door. Light spilled from the bedroom into the darkened hall. Peeking around the doorway, I saw the cluttered floor, covered as usual by clumps of clothes, piles of dirty dishes, and stacks of books and homework papers. Peggy was in bed, halfway sitting up and looking scared. Mom stood over her, disheveled and ranting. She wore one of her flowing nightgowns, filmy material designed for allure, a flimsy cut suggesting sex. Her dirty-blonde hair stuck out in all directions, her face contorted.
Mom reached out to grab Peggy. Peggy eluded her grasp, rolled out of bed to the floor, and then crouched with her hands in front of her body. Mom lunged toward her but tripped, banged her shin against the bedpost, and fell on the bed.
“How could you do this to our family? You selfish bitch. He’s not coming back.” Mom started sobbing. The remnants of her mascara smudged her eyes and cheeks with black ink.
I wanted to tell Mom she had it all wrong, that Peggy was just being Peggy, messy maybe, but not a villain. I wanted to put my arm around her and comfort her, but I couldn’t move. Her snarling and physical aggression terrified me. She had always been friend, never foe, even when she was angry, but she was crossing into new territory now.
She straightened up. “You pig, clean up this room completely. I’ve had enough of your slovenliness. Now.” She bent down and picked up a book, flung it at Peggy, but her aim was off, and it thudded harmlessly on the floor.
Peggy kept her expression impassive as she reached for the clothes nearest her and began folding them. Mom watched her briefly and said, “I’ll be back shortly and it better be perfect!”
She turned toward
the door and saw me. Without a nod or a word or a gesture, she strode past me, her fancy nightgown trailing behind like a train. I caught a whiff of her sour smell as she sailed by. I flinched and recoiled, and felt an immediate burn of shame.
I shuffled into Peggy’s room. She glanced at me, eyes brimming, and turned away. I realized we would not speak of this incident tomorrow, or ever. Half-heartedly, I reached down to pick up some papers from the floor.
Peggy waved me away as she got off the floor and sat on her bed. “She won’t be back tonight, don’t worry.”
“How do you know?”
“Couldn’t you tell? She’s drunk.” She saw my shocked expression. “We’ll be okay, Ginny. I can deal with her. Don’t worry.”
Without my dad at home in those days, life deteriorated further. Mom lost her way. She stopped cooking, cleaning, and organizing on any regular basis. She stayed in bed for entire days, crying or sleeping, leaving Peggy and me to fill in the gaps where we could—making dinner, cleaning up, giving the Littles their baths, and tucking them into bed at night. Our home became a ghost town, with four shadows tiptoeing through, trying to figure out the new lay of the land.
And then, our family imploded.
One night, after we had cooked dinner, eaten with the Littles, and cleaned up afterward, Peggy and I happened upon Mom in the dining room. She sat in Dad’s old place at the far end of the table. Her head bobbed gently as she slurred a hello. A depleted liquor bottle teetered in front of her, and her closed fist rested on the table.
Peggy didn’t waste a moment. She ran into the room, grabbed Mom’s wrist and jerked her hand to open it, but Mom tightened her closed fingers.
“Come on, Ginny, help me.”
Peggy pulled Mom’s hand toward me and I grabbed the clenched fingers, trying to pry them open. It took Peggy’s and my combined strength to counter Mom’s determined clawing, until I finally saw what Peggy had already seen: the prescription vial Mom was gripping like a life preserver. I wrenched it out of her talon-like grip.
“Ugh, Valium and vodka. Get rid of these,” Peggy said.
I didn’t have textbook knowledge of the risks associated with downing a giant dose of “mother’s little helpers” chased by several shots of alcohol, but I knew enough to be scared. I ran through the French doors separating the dining and living rooms and stopped all the way at the other end of the room at the piano. I scattered the pills among its innards.
“No, you idiot, the toilet!” Peggy said, still battling Mom over the bottle on the table.
Reversing course, I ran into the main entry hall, through the library and jerked open the lid on the toilet in the powder room. As I flushed away the tiny blue rounds of oblivion, the phone rang. I rushed back into the library to answer it.
“Ginny, is that you?” asked Gramps. My father’s parents lived three short blocks away, on 79th and Lexington, and we kids were regulars at their place. In fact, Peggy and I had run away there once when we were seven and five. Oh, thank goodness, someone I knew and trusted! “I’m just calling to check in, see how everything’s going.”
I replied in a rush, “Mom just drank a bunch and took I don’t know how many pills. I’m not sure what they are. Baby blue, small, maybe Valium. I think that’s what Peggy said.”
“I’ll be right over.” He didn’t even say goodbye, but just hung up. I stood in the doorway of the library with the phone in my hand, frozen. I didn’t want to see Mom die.
She stopped struggling with Peggy and put her head down on the table. Peggy propped her up so she wouldn’t slide off her chair.
Mom revived slightly when the paramedics came flying through the front door, summoned by my grandfather, who appeared shortly thereafter. Suddenly, she was fighting again, but in her groggy state, her grip was weak and she could only wave her arms around in their faces. They put her in a straitjacket to strap her onto the gurney.
Dad showed up shortly after Mom left in an ambulance. Gramps must have called him, because I sure didn’t think to, and Peggy was preoccupied first with Mom and then with trying to calm down the Littles. Dad didn’t say much to any of us, other than to confirm he would return home and stay with us so we wouldn’t be alone.
That’s when Peggy slammed her fist through a pane of glass in one of the French doors in Dad’s dressing room. He cleaned her bloody cuts, bandaged her hand, and sent us to our own rooms to calm down by ourselves. His presence comforted nobody; he offered no solace.
Instead of using Mom’s suicide attempt to reach out to us over the next several days, Dad fended off all questions with the same unperturbed response: “Your mother’s going to be fine.” As if by sweeping away discussion, he could banish our confusion and fear. He offered no explanation for what had happened, nor any concern for Mom or our reactions. We did squeeze some information from him: Mom hadn’t died, although she could have. She had fallen unconscious by the time the ambulance had arrived at the hospital, but the doctors pumped her stomach. Beyond that: silence. If we asked questions, he became irritated. I could only draw one conclusion: keep your troubles to yourself, young lady. Silence is golden.
Mom returned after a couple of weeks with a pair of nurses who provided 24/7 care. Only then did I learn she’d spent those days committed to a psychiatric hospital. I felt betrayed all over again. Why hadn’t Dad told us?
From the moment she returned home, Mom was different, more like a real-life zombie, tired and defeated, than a thinking, feeling person. She even had new hair, a wig that sat at an odd angle, covering her own dirty-blonde wisps.
Dad moved out the morning of her release from the hospital and left us in the hands of a recovering mental patient. Sure, she had nurses, but not even twelve hours after she arrived back, Mom left one of her stalwart Lucky Strike cancer sticks burning down in an ashtray next to the couch and started a fire. Miss Muffet, all of eight years old, woke to the smell of acrid smoke and roused the rest of us, including the night nurse, going from room to room and shaking us out of deep slumber.
Mom refused to get out of bed when Muffet came to wake her up. Instead, she pulled the covers over her head and ignored her daughter’s pleas for help and comfort. The nurse called the fire department and herded us into the kitchen when the firefighters arrived. We cowered there while they extinguished the blaze in the library and stomped through the adjacent rooms to make sure the fire hadn’t spread elsewhere. When they finally released us to return to our beds, I was afraid to fall asleep, sure that I could smell smoke.
In the morning, Mom got mad because the firefighters had left dirty boot marks on her precious Oriental rug. I never thought about the imprint of her recent behavior on me. Like my parents, I shoved everything that threatened the surface story under the rug. Forget about the longing for protection or rescue; don’t mention the grief and shame, or the birth of my unquenchable longing for escape. Follow their expert footsteps; bury the unmentionable under the glitzy façade of our Park Avenue address, my private school education, and all the things my father’s fat wallet could buy.
In my family’s most desolate moments, in scene after Technicolor scene, I had learned that disappointment could crush people, even those who seemed uncrushable. Disappointment was dangerous, to be avoided at all costs. Now, here was my tough-as-nails captain, Chris Ernst, crying in front of me. She was angry, yes, but worse, much worse, deeply disappointed. Mom, Chris, Mom, Chris … who was devastated? For a moment I couldn’t tell the difference between them.
That’s when I decided I couldn’t lose again; that would be deadly.
No wonder racing lost some of its lighthearted fun after this interaction, as somehow the present became confused with the past.
As Chris ranted, a swirl of tension gathered at the back of my head and spread quickly through my body like a spiral staircase winding from a knot of tightness at the base of my skull. The tension found its way into all my nooks and crannies until I felt crowded inside, my muscles and limbs swollen, constrained by my skele
ton and skin. I felt as if I’d fallen into a pressure cooker.
And then I exploded. “What do you mean?! I pulled the whole way down the course. I did everything I could. How do you know it wasn’t you? We’ve never lost before; you have. Maybe it was you,” I said.
Chris said, “Bullshit! What do you know about pulling? You’re a novice. You just didn’t want it enough.”
I was shaking. “You’re wrong! You don’t know anything.” I felt like throwing up. I had to get away from her. She had ruined everything. I didn’t understand why she had to go crazy and get so mad. I couldn’t help it. I did my best. It wasn’t fair that she blamed me. “Bitch,” I whispered as I walked away.
Maybe I fooled Chris, maybe I sounded angry, but I was afraid again.
My captain was gone. Things would never be the same. Just like old times. Something that started with so much promise contorted into disaster in the blink of an eye.
I had no idea that I had just been hijacked. My unrelated past had risen from its own hiding place, lunged into control, and wedged itself between me and Chris, between me and racing. That’s both the nature and power of fear. It comes unbidden and when it does, it packs a wallop.
Fear isn’t something you have to think about to feel. It’s an independent agent, operating without the aid or assent of your cerebral cortex, jumping in to assume your controls without giving you a moment to decide if that’s necessary. Fundamental to survival of the human race, fear is rooted in a primal response to change, designed to ferret out potentially dangerous circumstances and react to them literally in the blink of an eye.