Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  Eventually, he balanced the tightness of spokes on his wheel and asked me where my sleeping bag was. I went to fetch it and when I returned, he rolled it out opposite to his in one long line, so our pillows lay head to head. He patted mine and told me to get in, we needed to get a good night sleep. I was too tired to mind being directed and crawled in, wrapping my arms around my pillow. He reached up and took my pinky finger in his, and I found myself sleeping the best night’s sleep of my life.

  We spent the next five years trying to stop thinking of each other so we could move on, but we were never able to let go fully, even while we continued in relationships with other people. Finally, we gathered the courage to make the leap. And that is how this young midwesterner ended up in London.

  In Which I Discover Dr. Charcot

  London, 1993—After my visit to the young neurologist at the NHS, I left wildly confused and tearful. It would take a couple of hours of chewing my mind apart to become angry, for the negative effects of the appointment to set in. Once I was at home and had an opportunity to do a little research, it only made matters worse.

  It turned out our junior doctor was not so original in his interview techniques. Had I been a woman at the Salpêtrière, the hospital for lunatics in Paris in the 1920s, and fallen under the study of Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist, I might have found myself a star in the weekly productions he staged. In the interests of science, he’d invite those interested to view women experiencing hysterical symptoms in the way the junior consultant had asked my future husband to display symptoms on the floor.

  My next discovery was Sigmund Freud’s views on another famous case concerning epilepsy, in his essay “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” in which he argued that the novelist’s seizure disorder was merely a symptom of “his neurosis,” which “must be accordingly classified as hystero-epilepsy—that is severe hysteria.”

  I read on with empathy as I learned that Dostoevsky, as a political prisoner, had suffered severe trauma after being made to stand in front of a firing squad with a burlap bag over his head, only to receive a reprieve from the czar at the last moment. But that was not all. His seizures stopped after he finished writing The Brothers Karamazov, a book drawn from his experience of living with his murderous father and the child abuse the young Fyodor endured.

  Reading the information made me feel better, but it also left me with an odd sense of déjà vu. When I told Thomas the Charcot story, he immediately guessed at what I was thinking and warned me off struggling with inappropriate stereotypes. He reassured me that I was not the type of person who would stage paralysis for attention, and said it was a horrible conclusion for anyone to draw about human suffering.

  At least it was complex enough that even the medical establishment was split on what exactly “pseudo” meant. And I didn’t lose sight of the good news. The doctor seemed fairly confident it wasn’t epilepsy or a tumor, but he’d order the necessary tests to rule them out.

  In Which the Maternal Shades of My Life Take Form

  Omaha, 1974—Christmas was the time of year when Mom would become house-proud. Her preparations began immediately after Thanksgiving, when the square foldout table—usually reserved for ambitious cardboard puzzles of one-thousand-piece magnitude—moved from the dining room to prime real estate in the living room. Around the first week of December, the new beaded ornament craft kits would start arriving. Each package came with a Styrofoam ball, beautiful ornate beads, and a pattern diagram to follow. Every year cool new baubles would be added to the tree.

  In addition to the ornament collection and needlework stockings with Christmas scenes on them (mine featured Rudolph), Mom added a new nativity scene each year. The most elaborate one she made from newspaper papier-mâché and plaster—three wise men, Mary and Joseph and the baby, all sprayed with gold paint.

  But the best part of Christmas was my grandmother Vivian’s annual visit. She was a personal assistant to the congressional lobbyist of General Motors Corporation and flew in from Washington, D.C. We’d all, including Zorro, pile into our Chevy station wagon to pick her up at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield.

  Vivian preferred me and my sisters to call her by her first name because she didn’t want strangers thinking she was that old. I was in awe of Vivian and so had no problem with granting her that wish. She’d descend from the stairs of the plane wearing her traveling outfit—a tailored yellow wool skirt and jacket with black knee-high leather boots, her hair pulled back and twisted into a nice French roll, sparkling clip-on costume jewelry earrings, and pink coral lipstick. She made wearing furs and long gloves in Omaha look casual.

  If I have not convinced you that she was the most glamorous thing on earth, then she was definitely the most glamorous person to have ever arrived in our subdivision of Lee Valley. She made you want to live big, whereby Mom made you want to run. Or play possum. Whichever was the safest.

  Mom called Vivian the Ice Queen. And when she did, Vivian would just sit, back straight, ankles tucked into her thin crossed legs, and smile. She was as complete in her equanimity as my mother was intent in her campaign to destroy it. But no matter what unseen mother-daughter dynamic existed, when Vivian came to visit, Mom clearly relaxed. They’d stay up late talking for hours. Vivian would spend time during the day cleaning and organizing things you wouldn’t even know were a mess.

  Mom’s major issue with Vivian was that she had screwed her childhood by leaving my grandfather, the Major. Mom said Vivian left him because he was cheating on her, which was an act of pure selfishness. Plenty of wives were dealing with cheating husbands in the 1950s, so they took antidepressants, but Vivian wouldn’t even try medication.

  I have a stack of photos featuring Vivian with the Major. In one of the pictures she and the Major are making out like they’re surrendering every last bit of soul. Who the eye was behind that camera I can only wonder. In another shot, my grandfather’s slender build is big with manly energy, and his arm is wrapped around Vivian’s waist like she’s water in a paper cup.

  But my favorite picture is of a different theme. In it, my grandfather is standing with four men whom he served with in the Korean War, wearing high-waist pleated pants with suspenders, and oxford shoes. Perched on his head is a trilby hat, tilted over the eyes. He’s squinting with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, oozing charisma.

  According to Vivian, the two of them fell madly in love in high school and married immediately after they graduated. They were so excited about building their life together that they wasted no time in trying to get pregnant. Mom arrived just after Vivian’s nineteenth birthday. Six years of family happiness followed with Mom as an only child. There were small hiccups of discontent, but nothing significant until the communists walked right into South Korea and my grandfather, being of strong nature, signed up to fight. While he was there, a hand grenade was lobbed in front of his men. He didn’t even think before throwing his body on top of it. Fortunately it didn’t blow up, and because of this act of heroism the United States of America awarded him a Silver Star Medal. And this is why I call him, respectfully, the Major.

  Vivian went on to share that the two love birds enjoyed a few more years of happiness after the Major returned from the Korean War, but when he received his orders to move to the German base of Heidelberg in 1958, Vivian politely declined to go with him. She had gone to work at the rations office while he was away and wasn’t interested in becoming a housewife again.

  When I asked Vivian about my grandfather’s affairs, she said there had always been a number of women in his amorous collection, but she just turned a blind eye because she knew he had a weakness in this area. There was no use fighting it, she said, because it would have changed the man she loved. But this wasn’t the reason she stayed behind, she assured me. She really needed her own identity and had no hard feelings when my grandfather asked for a divorce to marry his second wife.

  I’m not sure Vivian was revealing all the emotions surrounding the family breakup. She always
smiled when she told stories, even when they were intense. But Mom confirmed it, that Vivian and the Major remained the best of friends. Vivian was even with the Major and his second wife when he died tragically at the age of forty-four, after the army hospital gave him the wrong blood type during an appendicitis attack. Because of that, I’d never know my grandfather, and Mom remained wounded forever, not only because she was torn from him so young in life, but because death now cheated her forever of the father-daughter relationship so critical to her self-esteem.

  Trying to imagine what Vivian’s mindset was at the time of the divorce, I asked Mom if she thought Vivian might have been scared at the idea of moving to a foreign country. Mom’s response was that if there was one thing you could be sure of, it was that Vivian wasn’t scared of anything. Vivian even pulled a gun on her one time.

  When I later grilled Vivian about the gun incident, she said she most certainly did not pull a gun on my mother. Yes, when they lived in California, she did keep a revolver hidden for safety purposes in her bra-and-panties drawer to protect against burglars, and once my mother did come out with it in her hand and asked, “What is this?” Vivian recalled that the moment was tense and she had to calmly ask my mother to give her the gun. And this is when it occurred to Vivian that perhaps it might be a good idea to let Mom go live with the Major.

  Vivian added, without prompting, that if she was to be honest, my mother had become “slightly scary” as a teenager, and Vivian felt overwhelmed and unprepared to guide her, but she was not prepared to tell me what “slightly scary” was. I noticed when Vivian was around other people’s anger, she pulled her shoulders up as high as she could, to try to hide her head and neck like a turtle.

  After she shared the gun incident, I asked her if she had been sad to see Mom go. She assured me she was not happy that her daughter wanted to live in a different country, but she understood why Mom would want to be with her father. She hoped Mom would be happy, as Vivian felt this was a respectable aim in life.

  When I asked Vivian if she knew the best way for Mom to achieve this happiness, she said she wasn’t sure, but at the time Mom was sixteen, Vivian thought the Major might be able to give Mom something she couldn’t.

  It was like she was saying, “If you love someone—set them free,” just like she did with the Major.

  Later I asked Mom if she felt like one of those dogs who is given up for adoption because the owner didn’t want it anymore.

  And she said, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have two parents and a roof over your head.”

  In Which Our Family Chapter in Lee Valley Comes to an End

  Omaha, 1975—After beginning his career selling Twinkies and Ding Dongs and then graduating to sales of a different category and higher profit margin—steel light poles, the kind used to illuminate interstates—Dad was poached by a small family business, a father-son team that had designed an advanced industrial robot. They needed a particularly good salesman to break into the market because it was so cutting edge.

  A family meeting was called to break the news. Dad said it wasn’t going to change much, except that he would be making a lot more money, and we were moving—to a new neighborhood, eight miles away in the central historic part of Omaha. Mom jumped in to share they’d found a house; in fact, it was her dream house: a five-bedroom, red-brick colonial with two fireplaces. Judging by the pride of their presentation, it was clear we were meant to be excited.

  Dad threw a few more bonuses in; there were some big old trees and a municipal swimming pool down the road, and he pointed out, in case we hadn’t done the math, we would each have our own room. I knew a spin when I heard one. The new job was based in a charming small town called Laurens, in northwest Iowa, which was only a three-hour drive away. My sisters and I moaned in chorus, so he added that one reason he took the new job was because they said he could work from home on Thursdays and Fridays. He was tired of being away from us on the road for so long.

  Mom tried to turn up the mood in the room by cheering. This was a place where she felt she belonged—our new solidly middle-class neighborhood of Elmwood Park reflected her level of sophistication and her intelligence. At last, she would be moving among a single malt Scotch–drinking crowd.

  Meanwhile, that robot and I were not starting on good terms. My suburban childhood was being flushed down the drain. Seeing the reluctant buy-in, my father stepped up his sales pitch. The company was prepared to give him a sizable increase of income, in addition to a percentage of ownership. This would be our college educations. Like I really cared at age eleven. I didn’t want to leave Lee Valley. Gone would be the ease with adults who had known me since I was four and the open door stop-in policy of our neighborhood. Gone would be the folks who would gather in folding chairs with my father, drinking beer in our front yard on balmy summer evenings barbecuing Oscar Mayer wieners and hamburgers on our Weber grill while we played our outdoor games. Gone would be our regular Saturday night trip to Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars or double-dipped butterscotch ice-cream cones and all my neighborhood friends. Gone would be the velvety green groomed lawns and families with American flags hanging outside their front doors. Gone would be the golden fields of corn now full of numerous schools and shopping malls and grocery stores. A generation of children had been born and raised, and the sun still set in the horizon outside my bedroom window, but I wouldn’t be there to watch it.

  In Which Mr. K Drives By

  Omaha, 1978—As Mr. K and I were driving around with no apparent destination, he started asking about my parents, about where my dad worked. I told him Dad used to sell Hostess Twinkies and cupcakes, but then he moved to selling steel light poles.

  “Light poles,” he repeated, confused.

  “You know, the ones you see on the road.”

  “Cool—he sells light poles?”

  “Well, now he sells robots.”

  In the testimony Mr. K later gave to the police, he puzzled over this part of the conversation: “She said her father had some silly job or something.” I tried to explain what industrial robots were, but he interrupted me impatiently.

  “I meant, like how much does he make? Like money?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure. I think maybe sixteen thousand dollars a year or something like that.” I had no idea.

  “So tell me, where do you live?”

  “Elmwood Park.”

  “Is your house nice?”

  “Well, I think it’s nice enough, but I liked our house in Lee Valley better.”

  “Let’s go see it.”

  “My old neighborhood?”

  “No, where you live now.” He had become focused, like we were past the get-to-know-you part of the conversation and on to tasks. I thought about coming up with a different idea because Mr. K wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to bring home, or, more accurate, he wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted knowing where home was, no matter how nice he was now acting.

  “Give me something you live near.” He said it in a slightly pushy manner.

  “Well, we’re near UNO [the University of Omaha].” It came out of my mouth against every instinct I had.

  We were soon passing the Elmwood Park Swimming Pool and driving up the hill to Emile Street, where our brick colonial house came into view.

  “That’s a nice house,” he said, slowing down to get a good view.

  I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. My father and sisters were sitting inside, less than fifty yards in front of me, and I was totally helpless to reach them.

  Mr K. picked up on my drop in mood; his tone changed too. “We need to get some gas,” he said, pulling away.

  In Which I Receive Career Coaching

  Omaha, 1976—Elmwood Park was located in the heart of the city, a neighborhood developed a century before with mature trees and gardens; the houses were Colonial, Georgian, and of a Tudor Revival style. The park itself was at the end of our street, heavily forested, with vast expanses of green areas for recreation—baseball diamonds, t
ennis courts, areas to play Frisbee, and a municipal pool with more cement deck space than the one in Lee Valley.

  A lot of the men worked at banks and insurance companies, which was similar to our old neighborhood, but here they seemed to be a step or two up the management ladder. Their cars tended to be new and clean. And they didn’t arrive home with their ties loose around their neck. Even stay-at-home moms (which were the only type of mom I saw at that time) seemed to operate at a higher level of management. The open-door policy that existed in Lee Valley was gone. Kids weren’t allowed to run feral in the streets. A flag football game had to be organized in advance.

  The yards were smaller than they were in Lee Valley, so there weren’t weekly barbecues, but there were a couple of potlucks at people’s homes. They featured a good trade of Midwest food, usually enhanced with branded recipes like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Hamburger Helper casserole, along with the classics: apple, walnut, and celery salad, a varying array of Jell-O options, and soda pop.

  The UNO campus sat on the other side of the park, so Mom, more free since Jenifer had started school, decided she was going to become a lawyer. First, she had to get a degree. She qualified for a scholarship for moms going to university, and enrolled in a full-time bachelor of arts undergraduate program to study political science. It felt like there was something exciting happening in the house now.

  One of the upsides of her studying was that it moved her from discussing the burdens of childcare and the unfairness of life and the constant mournful dirge that no one loved her to topics of a much more interesting nature: how government worked, the rights of citizens, and political philosophy. I became a study buddy—she trained me to quiz her.