Lies My Mother Never Told Me (20 page)

When she called to voice her outrage at Barbara, I told her exactly what I thought. “You absolutely have to stop drinking, Mom. That's not the issue. But I told Barbara an intervention wasn't the way to go.”

“You're a good, loyal girl.”

“No, that's not it. I just didn't think it would work.”

“Well, you're still a good, loyal girl to stick up for your mother.” She'd heard what she wanted to hear. And all I heard was the gratitude and approval in her voice, and it made my heart leap with joy. At thirty-six, I was no more advanced than one of Pavlov's dogs, whose tail starts to wag the minute the feeding buzzer goes off. I made my own self sick with loathing.

Still, this moment in her good graces did not prevent me from getting caught in her temper tantrums. In August, when I was six months pregnant, she threw me out of her house again. I can't remember what I said on this particular afternoon that set her off, or if I'd said anything at all, only that I was standing, enormous and vulnerable, between the antique dining table and the butcher-block-covered cabinets, when she shouted at me to get the hell out of her house and never come back.

I said, “Mom, for God's sake. I'm pregnant.”

“I don't care,” she said, “get out of my house.”

No matter what I might have said or done, I knew this was wrong. I did not deserve this, and I no longer felt that earth-shattering guilt and remorse and shame coursing through me, but I still felt rage at the injustice and couldn't stop myself from trying to interpret, or understand, what had triggered this explosion. Then I tried to stop myself from trying to figure it out. When that didn't work, I tried to count the number of times she'd thrown me out or exiled me: four. Versus the number of times I'd told her I hated her: once (when she threw Kevin and me out on Christmas Day). Versus the number of times she'd told me she didn't like me and never had: at least ten. Versus the number of times I'd kept my mouth shut and capitulated: countless.

What is the definition of insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

I quietly turned away, went into my room, and packed my bag. I went out through my room's back door to avoid further
confrontation, got into my car, and drove off. At around exit 44 on the expressway, I had to brake suddenly when traffic came to a halt, and I started to feel severe cramping in my abdomen.

We had known for a month that the baby was a girl. At first, the news had stunned me. A
girl
! I had always expected a boy. At least I'd know how to deal with a boy. But God had given me a girl. What kind of mother was I going to be to a baby girl, with my baggage? Would my baby hate me? I had been so worried, and yet now, I felt overwhelmed with love.
Oh, please, God, let her be all right.

I kept repeating the two prayers I knew by heart, like a mantra, all the way home.

That afternoon, my obstetrician sent me to the hospital for tests. I had a sonogram, and an EKG of the baby's heart. The EKG was normal, but the sonogram showed some kind of unusual shadow on the uterine wall. The obstetrician did not seem too concerned about it, or at least he let me go home, recommending a sonogram every week for the next several months. He told me not to get too excited, to stay home and relax, which was exactly what I did. I was very good at denial myself. When my mother was out of sight, I could almost entirely block her from my mind. For the rest of the summer, Kevin and I sat in our air-conditioned apartment and read, or watched TV, and it was very peaceful indeed.

Cecile must have told my mother about my visit to the hospital, because a week later, Gloria relented and called to invite us out for Labor Day weekend. I thanked her, but said I was going to stay put, my tone distant and removed.

“You'd be much better off out here, in the country.” She sounded offended.

“I need to stay really quiet right now,” I told her.

“Well, this is the quietest place in the world.”

It was as if she'd never thrown me out, yelled at me, or done anything to disturb my peace of mind. Most probably she'd con
vinced herself that I'd stalked off in a huff, lacking a sense of humor, or, even worse, being
such a moody neurotic
. I started once again to doubt my own sanity. I couldn't even talk to her on the phone without getting upset.

 

I went into labor on Saturday evening, November 8, a half hour after we'd finished eating Mexican takeout. Kevin hasn't eaten Mexican food since. I spent a pretty bad night waiting for things to progress the way the Lamaze people had told us they would, but right from the start the contractions did not follow the normal pattern, and I began losing a lot of blood. We went to the hospital at 5:00
A.M.
and the intake nurses laughed at us. They told us all first-time mothers showed up at the hospital way too early, looking completely horrified at the pain they were experiencing, as if they'd expected a walk in the park. I'll never know if the pain was normal or not because I've never had another baby, but with this baby, I was suffering from a placental abruption—a serious tear in the uterine wall that fifty years ago would have cost both of us our lives.

Some twelve hours later, on Sunday afternoon, I had a hemorrhage, and there was still no sign of the baby coming, so the doctor recommended an emergency C-section.

I asked Kevin to go call my mother again. She had come into town that morning and was at Cecile's apartment. Kevin came back and said that Cecile had picked up the phone and told him Gloria had been drinking since she'd arrived, and was now incoherent. I understood that. She was nervous and upset and scared that I was going to die, and couldn't face what she was feeling, so she drank, which was what she always did when confronted by any blip whatsoever on the emotional Richter scale.

 

I was awake through the procedure, although they hung a blue sheet over my chest like a curtain so I couldn't see what they were
doing. My teeth were chattering, the operating room was so cold. I felt some tugging and pulling, and then heard the baby's first cry. A few moments later, Kevin came around the sheet with the baby in his arms and tears streaming down his face, though he was smiling. I lifted my head to kiss her. She looked me right in the eyes, then her lips latched onto mine, and I kissed her over and over, crying out, “She kissed me! My baby kissed me!” The nurse, whose name was Ada, said, “No, honey, she's just looking for your breast.”

“I'm going to give you something to put you to sleep now,” said the anesthesiologist, and I felt a strange, wonderful warmth coursing rapidly up my arm and through my system. I had time to think, Ah, Peace. This must be what death feels like, before the world went completely black—a deep, soft, warm, silent cocoon of darkness.

I regained consciousness in a post-op room with Kevin standing beside the bed, holding my hand. He told me the baby was fine and everything was all right. I asked for water. The vigilant post-op nurse said no, I'd throw it up. I asked for ice chips, and again she said no. As soon as she walked away, Kevin sneaked off and got me a cupful anyway. I loved this about him; he wasn't afraid of authority the way I was. I sucked gratefully and slowly on the ice, and didn't even feel sick to my stomach.

I was moved to a room with a wall-to-wall window overlooking the East River and Roosevelt Island. It was very late, and the armchair Kevin was sitting in by the window looked miserably uncomfortable. I told him he should go home and get some sleep. He stood up, practically staggering, and shuffled his feet by the door for another five minutes. I urged him to go, and he promised to return first thing in the morning.

All night long I heard bassinet wheels squeaking down the hall from the nursery and crying newborns passing by my door. My heart would start to palpitate, for I felt I was about to meet the
most important person I would ever meet in my life. Finally, in the blue-tinted predawn light, they brought her to me, a perfect baby who already seemed able to focus on her surroundings.

“Best baby in the nursery,” the nurse said, “never cried all night.”

Someone had arranged her Mohawk of fine hair into one long finger curl, a little wave cresting on the top of her head. Her eyes, bright and clear, were gray, with a blue rim around the irises. The nurse left us, and the baby and I peered at each other for a long moment, in the stillness and silence of early morning.

I know you, I thought. And I can see you already know me. I brought her to my breast, and she latched on immediately with a greediness that stunned me. A moment later a tiny sliver of sun peeked above the flat rooftops of Roosevelt Island across the river and bathed the room in an eerie orange glow, which grew in intensity until the shiny linoleum floor and all the metal contraptions in the room turned the color of lava.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, God. I know I don't deserve this gift. I swear I'll be the best guide I can be and I'll always try to recognize the difference between my ego and hers, and I'll be there when she needs me, every time she needs me, as long as I live.
Tears of gratitude streamed from my eyes and dripped onto the baby's head.

When Kevin arrived about an hour later, I told him about the incredible sunrise. Every morning for the next four days, he arrived in time to see it, but the sky was overcast and the rising sun did not show itself again.

 

That first morning of Eyrna's life, I basked in the afterglow of that sunrise, happier and more serene than I'd ever felt in my life. James Ivory called from Paris to congratulate us, and told me the filming was going very well. Once a week or so he'd been calling and sending FedEx packages of photographs of the set and the actors, asking for specific details concerning certain French
expressions, and offering amusing anecdotes. Lying there in the hospital bed, I did not even mind the burn of the cesarian incision. I had some kind of anesthetic drip that went straight into my spine, and every now and then a nurse would appear and give me a shot of Demerol, and I asked repeatedly, “Is it okay for me to nurse her with these drugs?” and she'd respond, “Yes, yes, it's fine…” and I had my baby, and my life seemed to lack nothing except parents.

A bouquet arrived, two dozen of the largest, most perfectly shaped, glorious pink roses I'd ever seen in my life. They were from Dave, my dearest friend, who'd poured me into a cab on my last night of drinking on Super Bowl Sunday, 1992. The roses were the size of linebackers' fists and their scent filled the room with a light, airy perfume.

My new sober friend Nora came by, and she looked beautiful in the sunny room, her long red hair curling around her pale face and her green eyes bright. I felt so happy. I admitted to her I was afraid because I was enjoying the drugs too much.

“Relax, honey,” she said, laughing. “This one's a freebie.”

She looked into the baby's eyes and said, “An ancient soul, this one.” Nora deftly lifted the little bundle into her arms, as if she'd spent her whole life lifting and rocking babies. “Yes, you've been here a few times already, haven't you?” she murmured to Eyrna. How strange, I thought, to hear someone else say it, for that is exactly the feeling I had when Eyrna and I first looked into each other's eyes.

Around noon, my mother arrived, reeking of stale smoke and alcohol, her face and stomach so swollen she looked like an inflated effigy of herself. She didn't say hello but went right to the bassinet at the foot of my bed and peered down at the sleeping baby.

“She's not beautiful,” she said hollowly. “She doesn't look like anybody.”

Kevin, who was sitting across the room in the armchair by the enormous window, gazed at me helplessly. “Do you want to sit down, Gloria?” he asked, rising.

“No. I'm only going to stay a minute.”

It was clear to me that she was furious. She was practically bristling with rage. But why? I'd scared her, I guessed. She did not like being scared.

“What's the name again?” she now asked.

“Eyrna Holland Heisler,” Kevin said slowly, pronouncing her name
Air-na
. Eyrna was the name of Kevin's ninety-three-year-old maternal grandmother, a Dane who'd come to the United States in the twenties to find a better life. Now she was very frail and sinking fast. When she'd been told the baby's name on the phone early this morning, she'd cried. Holland was for my mother's and my great friend, Irma Holland Wolstein, who had died of cancer two years before. Her husband, Ben, was the analyst who had helped me so much during the nadir of my first marriage, and Kevin and I still met him for dinner around once a month. Holland was also the name of the town in Ohio where Kevin's grandparents had settled.

“That's the ugliest name I ever heard in my life. It sounds like a German maid's name,” my mother stated. Kevin slowly sat back down in the armchair. He didn't say a word. I could see by the stoic expression on his face that he was going to wait this one out.

“I can't imagine why you'd pick such an ugly name,” my mother continued. If she was spoiling for a fight, she wasn't going to get one here. Not today. She was met with complete silence.

But I knew why she was really saying this. She'd told me she wanted me to name the baby Catherine, for her sister Kitty who had died of polio at eight. I did not want to name my baby Catherine. I had on so many previous occasions folded under my mother's will, I just plain decided that this time, it was my
baby, and I was going to name her what I wanted. One thing was certain—no matter what name we picked, if it wasn't Catherine, or Gloria, she would have said it was a terrible name, the worst name she ever heard.

After another minute of weighty silence, my mother took a pack of Marlboros and a lighter out of her purse and just as she stuck a cigarette in her mouth and brought the flame up to it, Kevin stood up and calmly but firmly said, “You can't smoke in here, Gloria. That's a newborn baby.”