Dancing in the Light (20 page)

Mother shrieked. When she subsided she said, “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve only known one.” Now she shrugged again. “It was probably stupid of me.”

Daddy took a long drag on his pipe. “Well, maybe,” he said, “but when people ask me what I do best I always say, ‘Look at my children and you’d know the answer to that. Obviously I do my best work in bed.’ ”

“Oh, Ira,” Mother said, “you’re really awful.” She straightened up as though she had had enough. “I think I’ll die if I don’t go to bed now.”

Sachi and I helped her up and into the guest room, where they would sleep together. I wondered how the double bed would work for them since they had arranged their homemade truce to include not only separate beds but separate bedrooms.

We helped her into her pink filmy nightgown. She had bought it on sale for the trip to New York. As I helped dress her, I remembered that she had given me a nightgown for Christmas every year for as long as I could remember. I have never been able to figure out why.

We helped her into bed. Sachi leaned over to kiss her. Mother hesitated. “I just want to say that after all I’ve done for your father, I want him to do four things for me.”

“What are they, Mother?” I asked.

She moistened her dry lips and formed her words
carefully. “I want him to clean up his room, stop humiliating me in front of my friends with his bawdry humor, stop drinking, and keep a record of the checks he makes out.”

“Yes, Mother,” I said. “Okay, we got the point. Now please stop fussing.”

She sat up in bed and began to cry again.

She looked up at Sachi and me and, incredibly, she said, “Don’t let me upset you. You two leave me here to cry. I will be fine. It’s not important. You need your rest.”

“Grandmother,” Sachi said loudly, “you can’t do this to us. You’re telling us to leave you like this? You’re not being fair. You are too manipulative. I’m not going to bed until I see that you are all right.”

Sachi shocked Mother, both with her logic and her firmness.

“Oh,” she said, and stopped crying. “Then you just go and tell your grandfather what I said. And don’t let him have a drink out there in the living room by himself. That’s why he wants me to go to bed early, you know.”

“Okay, Grandmother,” said Sachi, “I think everybody would like some peace and quiet now. You have a good sleep and remember how much we love you. I’ve got to go back to California early tomorrow morning, but I’ll call you when I get there. I love you, Grandmother.”

“I love you too,” said Mother. “Have a good trip, darling.” Then she turned and looked at me. “You were so wonderful tonight, Shirl. It was breathtaking.”

“Thank you, Mother,” I said. “Did you love the audience when they recognized you?”

“Oh, it was wonderful,” she said, “and there was one man in the row in front of us from Canada. He reached back and squeezed my hand. I was so proud to be your mother. Now, you run along. Don’t let anything interfere with the work you have to do tomorrow.”

I kissed her and Sachi turned out the light by her bed and we left.

I fell asleep marveling at the freedom with which my mother could express her fears, frustrations, and anxieties when she felt comfortable and safe.

Of course my dad’s reaction to her behavior was as impressive as she herself had been.

Neither of them could know it, but trying to analyze what she and Dad were to each other and to me would become the “work” I would be most interested in for the rest of the summer.

At breakfast the next morning, Dad decided that Mother’s “emotionalism” the night before had been caused by some chocolate she had eaten in the dressing room.

“Chocolate is worse for your mother than strychnine,” he said, cheerfully ignoring his contribution of a gooey chocolate cake when she was still in the hospital.

Mother, however, was mortified. “I’m so sorry, Shirl,” she said, genuinely upset with herself. As difficult and alarming as it had been, I tried to explain the positive aspects of it.

“Mom,” I said, “it was so important for you to get it all out of your system. You made Sachi and me feel very loved because you would expose yourself like that in front of us.”

“Oh,” she said, “I never thought of it that way. It really was all right?”

“Yes, Mom. It was more than all right. It was necessary and good for all of us. There are more positive aspects to expressing yourself than negative.”

“Gosh, Shirl,” she said, “I was always taught to control my emotions and not upset anyone with what I was feeling.”

“Well,” I said, “you don’t have to do that anymore.”

“Thank you, darling,” she said. “Thank you for
understanding. It’s a nice feeling to be able to be myself.”

She then shot an acerbic glance at Dad.

“So,” I continued, “let’s forget about it.” I looked at both of them for agreement.

They nodded like mischievous, chastised children.

That was that. We dismissed the venom of the previous night and went on to talk about how difficult it was to grow old. How sometimes they felt like children because of their helplessness. Each worried about the other driving a car, and yet each needed their private places to escape from the intensity of being in the house with each other. They agreed that the one who died first had “the better end of the bargain.” The bargain, I presumed, was their marriage. Both of them agreed that their own families had conditioned their thinking patterns, and as we explored the values in their backgrounds, we found ourselves drifting into the subject of politics. Both of them had developed political values which were based on resistance to domination. In Dad, this took the form of a violently prejudiced anticommunist stance.

“The Russians are bullies,” said Dad, “and I don’t like bullies. And I don’t believe anyone else does either.”

“Well,” I said, “a lot of people around the world think the United States is nothing but a big bully.”

“Well, at least we can vote for our bullies,” he said, chuckling.

“Yes,” I said, “and we have the right to be communists here, too, if we want to be. That is what freedom is all about.”

“Well,” he said, “that freedom is causing our Congress and our courts and our taxes and even our Supreme Court to dictate to us the Russian way of thinking.”

I laughed out loud. This was so flagrantly absurd that it wasn’t even good for one of our flaming political arguments.

“You must be kidding,” I said. “A communist Congress and Supreme Court with
Ronald Reagan?”

“Well, that’s why I agree with the cowboy. Fight Russian force with force. Otherwise we’ll be doomed to live like they do.”

“You mean on twelve dollars and fifty cents a week?” I asked.

“I’d rather have your mother boss me than some son-of-a-bitch bully. And your news-media friends, why do they portray this country on television like it’s some kind of terrible place? Why isn’t there ever any good news? That’s what I’d like to see. Good news.”

“Then maybe you’d be happier in Russia. The news media never tells the truth there.” I thought to myself for a moment and said, “Would you accept a socialist or communist society if it was voted in by the people?”

“God, no,” said Daddy, “because they would have been battered into it without realizing it.”

I sighed, speculating that probably a lot of people in America had the same point of view. “Daddy?” I asked, “why are you
so
disproportionately paranoid about the Soviet Union?”

“I told you,” he said staunchly, “I don’t like bullies.”

“Well, who bullied you so much that you’re so resistant to it?”

“My mother.”

“That’s right,” said Mother. “I told you. His mother taught your father how to fear better than anything else. Why, he’s so afraid of communists that I couldn’t write to my best girlfriend for years just because she
knew
a communist.”

“Yeah, and that guy was a damn fool,” said Daddy. “A damn fool who was editor of that damn fool magazine. Why, your friend even got conned into going to Moscow.”

“What’s wrong with going to Moscow?” I asked.
“I’ve been to Moscow. Lots of people have been to Moscow, but that doesn’t make them communists.”

“Lordy, I know that,” said Daddy. “I got invited to the Russian Embassy in Washington once and I’m sure the FBI has my picture in a file somewhere.”

“Oh, Daddy,” I said, exasperated, “now, who are you more afraid of, the commies or the FBI?”

“Well, the FBI doesn’t intend to do away with the family and the churches and leave life up to the government experts.”

“Still, there are a lot of people sitting in the Kremlin who are just as afraid of us.”

“Yes,” he said, considering what I said, “I’ve heard that.” A smile began to play on his face. “And since we are discussing Russia and what they think over there, you ought to consider the fact that you’ve been under the influence of a Russian for some time now.”

I stared at him, genuinely astonished. “Me? Under the influence of a Russian?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. My mind raced to the Russian ballet dancers I knew. “Who do you mean?” I asked. “What Russian?”

“You know who,” he said mischievously.

“No I don’t,” I said. “Honestly.”

“Your friend—what’s his name, Vassy? We met him when he lived with you in Malibu.”

Oh no, I thought. I had wondered what Dad thought about the Russian I was with, but it never came up. Now, four years later, he was prepared to let me have it.

“Daddy,” I said, trying to remain calm, “Vassy was under the influence of
me.
He was the one living in America, driving convertible cars in Hollywood and enjoying a free life. Just because a person is Russian doesn’t make them a communist.”

“Well,” said Daddy, his reasoning turning as easily on a dime as Mother’s did, “you know that
all
Russians enjoy sadness. They are dedicated to suffering.
That’s probably why they have the government they do.”

Well, I thought, he might have a point there. I got up and looked out the window, down First Avenue. Vassy had loved New York. He said he’d never be able to live in New York City without thinking of me. Memories of our time together flooded back to me. Suffering? Yes, in that respect I guess Daddy was right about Vassy. But my goodness, what a joy his Russian soul could be as well. What a tearing, happy, consuming experience our relationship had been. But none of what went on had anything to do with political ideology. If there was anyone who’d rather be dead than Red, it was Vassy. No, it was his
Russianness
that had fascinated me.

“Daddy,” I began, “don’t you know that I’ve been somehow haunted by Russia all my life?”

“Now, what do you mean, Monkey?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “it’s always been there with me. Their music, their language, their food, their humor—their soul. I somehow understand it. It feels familiar to me. It seemed inevitable that I would meet Vassy. And I can’t explain why. And if you want to know, I think
you
nave some of the same feelings about Russia or you wouldn’t be so involved with your prejudice about the place.”

“What are you getting at?” he asked, genuinely interested.

“Well, I think maybe all of us lived there once,” I said simply.

“You mean in another life?”

“Yes, I mean in another life.”

“Who is all of us?” he asked.

“Our family,” I said.

Mother looked on with eyes wide, remembering the conflict about Russia with her girlfriend.

“And,” I went on, “look at Warren with his magnificent obsession with John Reed and the hopes for the Russian Revolution. That was such a creative obsession that he produced
Reds.
Now, where do
you think all this comes from? I mean, wouldn’t you say there might be more to this than meets the eye?”

“Monkey,” he said, “Jesus H. Christ, Peter be the Baptist, and George W. God from Goldsborough—when it comes to your mind and your eyes, you can make anything seem possible.”

“Well, with the way my mind’s eye is working these days, it’s possible.”

“Yes,” he said, lighting one of his pipes, “anything is possible.”

“Funny”—I smiled and sighed to myself—“that is exactly what Vassy used to say more than anything else.”

“Well, let’s hear about him,” said Daddy, preparing to be entertained by one of my love affairs.

“Wait a minute,” said Mother, “I want to get some tea.”

I waited until they were all settled and told them the story.

Chapter 8

F
rom the very beginning, Vassy and I both believed we had known each other in at least one previous lifetime. For that reason as well as many others, we were spiritually compatible. The concepts that I was exploring were not foreign to him. In fact, they were quite traditional among many Russians.

Yet our relationship was colorfully embattled because our personalities were diametrically opposed. Dad was right. Vassy’s middle name was suffering and creative conflict, while mine was optimism and positive thinking. The combustion of the two of us together made it impossible to believe that our intense relationship was entirely new. We each knew we were involved in a karmic experience. We believed the intensity existed because we were drawn to work out unresolved aspects, not only with each other but also in ourselves, which the other inspired.