Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father (24 page)

18.

I
FELT A DEEP CHILL
walking along Avenue Mozart. On a Sunday night, all the area shops were closed. Only a few
boulangeries,
with their pristine tarts and pastries glistening under glass, still welcomed the neighbor picking up her last-minute dessert or baguette for dinner. Other than the yellow glow emitted by these bakeries, the neighborhood was a resolute gray, all the windows shuttered. There were few if any pedestrians, and the ones I did see were hushed, buttoned up in their secret journeys. Everything here felt sealed, like flower buds before the bloom, all the beauty hidden.

We are a neighborhood, the 16th arrondissement told me, not a playground. Our streets are walked only by our neighbors.

I was a neighbor. I lived at 23 Rue de la Source. My Métro stop was Métro Jasmin, which I jokingly referred to as Métro Jasmine, as though it were a hippie refuge and not the heart of bourgeois Paris. The intersection of Avenue Mozart and Rue de Passy, near the NYU in France building, was teeming with young BCBGs (
bon chic, bon genre
), French preppies who wore pearls, headbands, and cashmere sweaters. They kissed each other twice on each cheek, instead of the customary one kiss, and were notoriously
coincé
, uptight.

But I was not
coincée
; I didn’t belong to this neighborhood, I simply lived here, in the Lazars’
chambre de bonne
, the maid’s room. Through the glass front door I could see the lace curtains of the concierge’s window part, her coal-black eyes suspiciously following me, whenever I came in and out of the building.

Every year the Lazars took in students from the NYU program. In exchange for lodging in their sixth-floor walk-up attic, the students were to iron the Lazars’ laundry for two hours a day and be an English-speaking “presence” for their twelve-year-old son between his return from school and their return from work.

Like many French families, the Lazars owned a washer but, with no dryer, line-dried all of their clothing. To remove the resulting stiffness I ironed every article, from their dishtowels to their underwear. Edouard, their doughy redheaded teenager with a lazy gait, preferred to watch TV and eat
les brownies
than to speak English with me, so I let him. At seven o’clock, when the Lazars returned from work, I walked up the back stairs to my little garret, where I’d eat alone and read back issues of
Madame Figaro
, kindly given to me by Madame Lazar.

“I have this private joke between me, myself and I,” I wrote to Dad early that fall. “A lot of my friends are looking into health clubs. For $300 they want access to saunas & Stairmasters and I have to laugh because I get all of this for free at the Lazars’! I steam my face as I iron, and walk 6 flights of stairs at least 2 times a day going to my room.”

As far as maid’s rooms go, mine was, in fact, quite comfortable. I had a wardrobe to hang my clothes, a small refrigerator, sink, counter, and hotplate where I stirred instant Knorr soups, which Monsieur Lazar brought me from his job at Nestle. I slept in a full-size bed layered in blankets, where I read books for school and watched the French evening news on a small black-and-white TV. Looking out my window I could see the tiled roofs of the 16th, where pigeons gathered in pockets of gray and black.

I was happy to be back in Paris. My fluency in French and the Métro, and the occasional visits with Camille (who was studying that year in Madrid), gave me a sense of possibility. “In Paris where life is already more liveable, I am a free agent,” I wrote to my dad. “I have my own space and that is important.”

But by January 1991, a deep malaise had set in. The Weiksners generously flew me to New York for Christmas, but I had to return to France by January 2 to resume my work for the Lazars. School was closed for winter break and the friends I made in the fall were all home for the month. Théophile, a slim blond Frenchman whom I’d met at a Cleary Gottlieb holiday party and had recently started dating, was stationed outside Paris, on military service. The previous August, Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and George Bush was counting down the days before American troops were to invade Iraq. NYU faculty advised us to avoid groups of loud Americans, not to sing American songs, and not even to walk home the same route twice, thinking that if we did we might be attacked by local Muslims. All the garbage bins in the Métro stations were removed for fear of bombs. The only thing that made the winter of 1990 bearable for me were my father’s letters.

Each day I arrived at the NYU Center, the first place I stopped was my mailbox. It was in this thin wooden slot, sandwiched between other mailboxes, that I found the source of my sustaining hope and joy. Arriving two, sometimes three times a week, Dad’s letters made me notorious in the program. No other student received so much mail, especially from a parent.

My father’s letters always arrived in business envelopes, long and rectangular, deliciously heavy. I delighted in the mountain range of As that crowded the front of the envelope: Steve
A
bbott
,
545
A
shbury
, A
lysia
A
bbott
.
As I tore open the envelopes, the pages of ruled paper, edges frayed from being ripped out of my dad’s spiral notebook, unfurled like Christmas wrapping in my lap. The gift inside this wrapping was the density of my father’s script, filling each narrow college rule: words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages—all for me!

These words were written, I knew, to the rhythm of my father’s twitching foot. Deep in thought, he always wrote with his right leg crossed over his left, his notebook balanced on his right knee, his dangling right foot twitching from side to side as though it alone motored his overactive intellect.

Even now, when I remember my father writing, I unconsciously throw my right leg over my left and mimic his twitching. It feels remarkably natural, this twitch. That right foot can get going with instinctual ease, but when I try to reverse the legs and twitch my left foot I can’t do it. There’s something in that right foot, something I like to imagine I inherited from him.

With my yearly trips to Kewanee, Dad and I had been writing to each other for years. But something changed that year in France. With both of us living on our own, thousands of miles apart, we relied on letters to be close. And in these letters we were no longer looking to the other as the cause, or solution, of our respective problems, but instead as a loving witness, a devoted and concerned audience.

Where Dad had described our needs mixing “like fire and oil” when I was a teenager living at home, in letters we felt free to confide crushes, test new ideas, and wrestle with frustrations and fears.

I no longer criticized his boyfriends (or the boys he wished could be more than friends). If I didn’t have anything nice to say about another misbegotten crush (Alex, Jeremy, Myles, Olivier), I could easily keep those feelings to myself. I was no longer disappointed by Dad’s preoccupation with work, because I no longer looked to him as the source of my company and care. The ups and downs of his romantic adventures, his professional trials and economic woes, no longer crowded my living space.

Because we sometimes had to wait two weeks for a response, each carefully composed letter became an act of faith, like a coin thrown into a well, along with a fervent secret wish. After writing, I hoped most to hear that echo, that confirmation that my wish would be heard and answered. Since I didn’t want to wait for Dad’s reply before writing to him again, I decided early on to write whenever I wanted. We wrote each other almost every day, our letters like diary entries, especially Dad’s:

Yesterday I was thinking you’re the only person I love. Others I’m only fond of from time to time. Sometimes I feel loved but oftentimes I feel that no one loves me, no one I ever want is attracted to me & that I’ve lost the capacity to love. I have to keep constant vigilance with myself so as
not
to fall in love w/ Alex. What he wants & needs is just my friendship.

It’s Dad’s emotional availability that most strikes me. Making my way through the pages of his letters, I feel as if I’m settling into a bathtub full of warm water. Weightless and floating, at peace, I am caressed by the near-constant expression of my father’s trust and attention. In this watery world I am that version of self that I knew before any other: daughter. And in this role I am loved as only a child can be loved: wholly and without condition. With my father I felt no pressure to behave in any particular way. I could be trite, boring, selfish, petulant. I never felt there was anything I could do or say that would jeopardize his affection. This is the father I always wanted. This is the father that I miss the most.

There are the many articles and essays he clipped for me from the local paper, about Paris’s Moreau museum or the latest research on why girls suffer low self-esteem. He writes one letter on the back of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy.” “Certainly a different take on Daddy than you have – or is it?” he jokes before going into an analysis of why it works. “Plath’s genius in this poem is to invest very
simple
language (nursery rhyme & fairytale) with intense power & anger.”

There are his own impromptu poems:

The arms of the bookstore are full

of postcards & tee-shirts.

The coffee has triumphed.

I got several letters today & read

Yours (of Dec. 4) first.

And there is the vividness of his San Francisco, which was also my San Francisco—his seeing a film noir series at the Roxie, picking up a biography of Baudelaire at the Adobe bookstore, or sipping on a mocha at the Macondo.

Am sitting in Tassajara Café. Very cute guy sitting @ next table w/his friend or boyfriend, unfortunately. I assumed he was gay right off, before hearing them talk even – something about his delicate manner. Straight guys tend to be more aggressive, less refined, in their non-verbal behavior. Baseless stereotype?
You
be the judge.

And then there is that version of me. I never liked my self as much as the self I saw reflected in my father’s eyes. He continued to delight in my letters, even with my incessant worrying, my silly self-pity: “Lauren spends money like it was nothing. Her mother was just here and bought her all these clothes. Everything Lauren wears looks so new!!!”

Again and again he asks me questions. He entertains, instructs, and inspires, always working to build me up, up, up.

I always enjoy reading your letters, even when you’re blue. When Henry Miller lived in Paris he always ate off friends. And Appollinaire was so poor he imagined the favorite meals of his childhood when he was hungry. Lynn Tillman says she was the poorest person she knew in NYC, even though she once worked for Malcolm Forbes. Money isn’t everything. I certainly value my friends & having time to write more.

When I despaired over my confusion about what to do with my life, fearing that I’d already failed, Dad offered advice on ways to clarify my goals and then detailed how he met his own:

I know you’re sensitive to all the expectations that your grandparents, the Weiksners, me, etc. have for you. And that’s an irritating bother to say the least.

But how about this: make a list of what kind of life you want (don’t worry “can I do it, get it” whatever – just honestly list what you want regardless of whether it seems unrealistic or not). Then: prioritize. What do you think you really want most? What goals seem more realistic or doable to you? What steps would be needed to realize them? Is taking those steps something you enjoy?

For me, for instance, I wanted to be a writer – a famous writer. (Now I don’t care so much about the “famous” part). The steps involved a) reading a lot to see what other writers are doing or have done b) writing & improving my writing and c) getting my writing out in the world – which meant taking risks & overcoming fear of judgment or ridicule at times.

But this didn’t happen for me @ age 20 – it didn’t really get started till I was 32 & afterwards.

When I wrote him about Lauren’s growing friendship with another classmate in the program, and how their friendship made me jealous, he advised me to transcend these feelings, teaching me the precepts he’d learned in his Zen practice, yet never pushing me down a Buddhist path.

Through meditation or reflection or whatever, find out how to go to that place in yourself that can observe without judging. If you feel jealous, or depressed, or guilty – just try to pay attention to how your body feels. Where does the physical feeling start? Does a tightness go up or down your stomach for instance. If you notice that you’re being critical of yourself – then try to observe yourself doing this without judging it as good or bad.

This observer self is the deepest part of you – deeper than your fearful self, guilty self, emotional self, or intellectual self. By observing what’s happening to your body when you go into these head states, you can learn little tricks to alter your body & mood. Like if you catch it early, try countering the negative physical feeling or emotion by doing something nurturing for yourself (exercise or pleasant bath, calling a friend, going to a movie, or whatever).

Anyway, this is something I started doing at a time in my life when I was wracked by jealousy, loneliness, self-doubt, excessive self-criticism. And overall it worked.

Until this chapter, I’ve relied on my father’s journals and published work to understand the nature of his creative passions, addictions, and relationships, but rereading these letters I feel him right here with me, like a beloved whispering in my ear—the way he ends with “Think of you
always
!” or draws on the back of an envelope in big block letters: “Believe In Yourself! Love Life! NEVER GIVE UP!”

My father worked so hard to nurture me in these exchanges because he knew his time was limited—which is why the handwritten letters feel like such a gift now. Each is a unique artifact, pressed with the imprint of his pen on the paper. Each one has a different sign-off, with postscripts scribbled in the margins, the occasional cartoon to illustrate a point.