Malabar had arrived with cheese and crackers and the makings for power packs: bourbon, vermouth, a shaker, even a lemon to peel for garnish. The plan was to have a drink at my place and then meet Ben uptown for dinner. It was a bit early to start the cocktail hour, but we were at a loss for conversation and I could see my mother needed something to do with her hands. As she went into the kitchen to begin preparations, I itemized the ugly things she was likely to come across: peeling contact paper in the utensil drawer, a blue plastic ice tray, loose faucet handles . . .
The cocktail shaker made a crisp ka-chick-ka-chick sound.
“Martini glasses?” Malabar asked with false cheer. “A cheese board?”
“On my to-buy list,” I said, pulling out wine goblets and a dinner plate instead. Five years earlier, my mother had insisted that Jack and I register at Tiffany. We balked. The notion of all that formal barware—the very idea of a decanter—seemed preposterously old-fashioned.
“Mark my words,” Malabar had said to us at the time. “You’ll thank me when you have a complete set of Tiffany crystal instead of mismatched artsy vases that you’ll never use.”
Now I was starting over. My kitchen was bare. Guilt had made me leave everything in San Diego, every piece of china, the silverware, martini glasses, cheese boards; even family paintings and photographs. I still might go back, I thought. Or Jack might move here. We were keeping those possibilities alive.
Soon Malabar and I were sitting on my sofa swilling our power packs and subduing any strong feelings we had. I’d found that getting drunk myself was the best way to handle my mother’s drinking. Tonight, her aloofness was making me anxious and self-conscious, and the bourbon relaxed me from the inside out.
In short order, Malabar emptied a second large shaker of Manhattans into our glasses and cleared her throat. “Rennie, I have to ask: How exactly do you intend to support yourself?”
In moving to New York, I had left a stable job, a reasonable mortgage, and a partner who had a solid income. I swallowed and hesitated. I had no idea how I would manage. I had some savings, but not a lot. “Well, my hope is to break into publishing,” I said.
This elicited a laugh. “Not an entirely obvious way to make a good living,” she said.
I had an unpaid internship at the Paris Review and was working as a fact checker at a travel magazine, which paid less than half of what I needed to cover my rent.
“I know it might not look good from the outside, Mom, but I’ll land on my feet,” I said, projecting more confidence than I felt. The truth was, the thought of pursuing a creative life in whatever way I could made me happier than I’d felt in years. “At least I’m not depressed anymore.”
“That’s wonderful, darling. I’m just curious how you plan to pay your rent.” Malabar took a sip of her cocktail. “I need to make something absolutely clear: Ben and I have no intention of supporting our grown-up children.”
Suddenly, I understood the purpose of her visit.
“I haven’t asked you for money, have I?” But she and I both knew that she was my backup plan. I’d always assumed I could count on my mother if I needed help.
“Not yet,” she said, “but you’ve been making some pretty big decisions without considering the rest of the family, so just be aware that you’re on your own.” My mother cleared her throat, an indication that there was more to come. “And if you think I intend for my mother’s necklace to support your new bohemian lifestyle, think again. That piece is going straight to a museum where it belongs.”
I felt like I’d been slapped.
My mother wasn’t finished. She went on to tell me that she and Ben had decided to give Peter full use of the family guesthouse. “It’s as simple as this: we no longer want the hassle of renting, and your brother can afford the maintenance and taxes.” My brother had an MBA from Kellogg and had already amassed a fortune as a management consultant specializing in telecommunications. Malabar gestured to my apartment, evidence of my inability to contribute.
I wished my head were clearer. I wasn’t prepared for any of this. At the very least, I thought my mother would have arranged it so that I could still use the house for a couple of weeks each summer. She knew how much I loved Cape Cod.
I sat quietly for a moment. Then: “Mom,” I said, “I think you need to leave.”
My mother’s expression grew cool. “I’ll leave when I’m good and ready,” she said, but she rose and went to the kitchen to collect her things. There was the tinkle of melted ice cubes meeting stainless steel as she dumped out her shaker. By the time she turned back to me, anger had transformed her face.
I had seen Malabar’s temper on countless occasions—knew the way her eyes narrowed and her chin lifted—but I couldn’t recall being the lone object of her wrath. She stood close enough to me that I could feel her breath on my face. I recalled the legendary fight that she’d had with her own mother some twenty-five years earlier. She had confessed to me on many occasions that she’d wanted to kill Vivian in that moment, had described how she’d wrapped her hands around her mother’s neck and squeezed. I still don’t know how my grandmother, twenty pounds lighter and three inches shorter, found the strength to throw off her daughter and send her stumbling backward into the stone fireplace. Malabar was in a full-leg cast for the duration of the summer, although at the time, she told everyone, including my father, Peter, and me, that she’d dislocated her knee getting out of bed.
Now I had managed to stir some deep rage inside Malabar. Her pained expression seemed to foreshadow physical violence. I was prepared for her to hit me.
Instead, my mother said, “Has it ever occurred to you, Rennie, that I don’t want you anywhere near me?”
Given all the compliments and kind words my mother has said to me in her lifetime—and there have been many—it seems unfair that my brain formed such a deep wrinkle around this particular sentence. Why is it that an insult stays with you forever, whereas love and praise passes through you like water through a sieve? To this day, I can relive the moment of this insult more easily than almost any other.
No, it hadn’t occurred to me that she wouldn’t want me anywhere near her.
Not once.
I thought my mother loved me in the same way that I loved her: with singular and blind devotion. She had been my everything, more important than any partner, including the man I’d married.
But I had overlooked the simple fact that now that Malabar finally had Ben, that hard-won prize, she no longer needed me. My supporting role in her romance was over, and my mother wanted me to exit the goddamn stage. I knew too much about the past, too much about how she’d acquired everything she now had. Malabar had made it to the glorious final act and it was time for the denouement, not for a new plot twist about the daughter’s unhappiness. If the essential dramatic question was, Had it been worth it?, Malabar’s answer was yes. If there was one truth that I’d learned from all my reading, it was this: Happy endings do not apply to everyone. Someone is always left out of that final, jubilant scene. This time, that someone was me.
* * *
Following that terrible evening, my mother and I spoke infrequently and saw little of each other. Malabar and Ben’s adventures continued, and months turned into seasons, seasons into years. On the occasions that I showed up for Christmas or a birthday, I stayed there only for the meal, not for the week, and rarely even for a night. Technically, I still had a mother, but in every way, I felt motherless. For the next decade of summers, my father vacated his Truro home for a week or two in August so I could have a house to myself on Cape Cod, the place I still loved more than any other despite the complicated memories it held.
Although the separation was painful, it was long overdue. Dr. B. had been right—in a perfect world, I should have taken flight in adolescence, some fifteen years earlier, and my mother should have supported my doing so, navigating privately whatever sorrows my new independence kindled in her. Instead, at the very age I should have been breaking fre
e, Malabar bound me to her with her secret. And although she’d been the one to initiate our unhealthy dynamic, I had perpetuated it.
Finally, I had the opportunity to change my life. I’d left my home, my career, a man I dearly loved. If I didn’t radically rethink how I moved through the world, all that turmoil would be for naught. I needed to notice what was around me as well as within me. I promised myself I’d be vigilant; I’d pay attention to my dreams at night and to where my mind meandered during the day. I found my way back to my daily habit of writing in my journal, less to chronicle events than to compile and order my thoughts. My daily entries went from confessional to revelatory. I wanted to understand what had happened to me and why I’d done what I’d done. Above all, I didn’t want to move through life unaware of how my actions affected others. I didn’t want to become Malabar.
I continued to read obsessively, novels but also nonfiction, works by Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Henry Miller. Often, my reading felt manic. Desperate to become enriched by books, I sometimes barely remembered what I’d read, yet the unconscious effect of so many sentences felt cumulative, like recurring dreams. A friend who’d noticed the notecards strewn about my apartment gave me an antique filing box, perfectly worn with soft corners, to house all these pieces of hope and research. I continued to push myself to learn what words meant and how to deploy them. The more words I had, the more precisely I could communicate my feelings.
But what really enabled me to relinquish the straitjacket of my past was a renewed devotion to friendships. Aristotle famously suggested that through the mirror of friendship, people are able to see themselves in ways that are otherwise inaccessible. This kind of insight happened to me along the way, thanks to Kyra, Margot, and other cherished confidantes. Friend after friend held up a looking glass, and I was able to see myself through their eyes. Perhaps I was not so terrible; maybe I was even compassionate, smart, and a little funny. In the past, when Malabar had been my best friend and singular love, our secret kept me isolated, kept me from being fully known. Now I was opening up, allowing myself to be vulnerable in new ways and accept the company, love, and consolation of friends.
Margot continued to send books and always set aside time for our lengthy soul-stretching phone conversations. I also spent countless hours with Kyra, who was making a life as an illustrator and whose affection and conversation activated my thoughts of purpose and life. There were other friends, too, a bounty of them, all of us bearing wounds from our past that we no longer felt obligated to conceal because we had one another. As I relaxed into these relationships, I felt moored in the rushing stream of life. The loneliness and depression I’d experienced throughout my twenties finally lifted. I learned to become a friend to myself.
Twenty-four
I turned thirty in the fall of 1995, and through a series of both random and curated collisions, I was introduced to Francis Ford Coppola—the famed director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now—and we discussed the possibility of launching a fiction magazine together. From that conversation and others that followed, Zoetrope: All-Story was born. Absolutely nothing on my résumé suggested that I was the person for this job. I did not have a vast Rolodex of literary contacts or a professional history of editorial success. I knew nothing about circulation or distribution, about buying paper or finding printers, about hiring designers or acquiring material from literary agents.
But I had grown up with writers for parents, had a vision for the magazine’s success, and felt confident that I could create something fresh. I poured myself into my new job, often working until midnight and beyond, some part of me believing that only literary accomplishment could validate the havoc I’d unleashed in the rest of my life. If I had my father to thank for my work ethic, my mother was a role model for determination: If you wanted anything badly enough, you did whatever it took to make it yours. Period. I finally had a toehold in the literary world; I just needed to stay focused on each subsequent step and not dare look up the mountain.
Jack and I drifted apart, came together, and drifted apart again and again, each time allowing ourselves to venture a bit farther out into the world without the other. Our phone calls and visits became less frequent and at some point along the way, we agreed to see other people, testing the waters of single life while staying married. Our predicament was odd—nothing felt horribly wrong, but nothing felt right either. The essential dilemma for me was whether I could become the person I wanted to be—someone who lived a creative life, openly searching for meaning—within the confines of our marriage. I doubted it. Jack wanted simply to live his life, not examine it endlessly. We were wired differently. In August of 1997, four years into our living at opposite ends of the country, we agreed to divorce, promising to remain close.
Deciding it would be best to break the news to our parents in person, Jack and I visited them together on Cape Cod in early 1998. We hoped to alleviate their fears of a fractured family by showing them that we remained friendly and wanted only the best for each other. Our split would not cleave the family. We could behave civilly at holiday gatherings; in fact, we would be genuinely glad to see each other.
Malabar and Ben had been married just over four years by this time, and although my mother never fully forgave him for staying with Lily when their affair was discovered, their passion went undiminished. They had fallen into an easy domestic routine with traditional roles: Ben made the cocktails, stoked the fires, grilled the meats; Malabar orchestrated the home, their social calendar, and everything else. And although she spent far less time in the kitchen than before, my mother could still, seemingly effortlessly, produce extraordinary meals. On this night, she prepared roasted lamb chops, bulgur tabbouleh, and sautéed greens, a succulent and hearty dinner.
Shortly after we all sat down at the table to eat, Jack cleared his throat and delivered an eloquent monologue on how, despite the affection he and I felt for each other, we’d decided to go our own ways once and for all.
“Have you filed yet?” my mother asked.
Even though my mother and I were still cool toward each other—the fight we’d had in my apartment always fresh in my mind when we were together—I was caught off-guard by the question’s practicality. “Not yet,” I said. “I mean, we plan to soon, but we wanted to let you know first.”
“Well, thank God the decision is finally made.” Ben lowered his large hands to the table with a thud. “I don’t think I could have stood another year of limbo.” He reached for the mint sauce and spooned some over his chop. “Malabar, you’ve outdone yourself, as usual.”
“Isn’t the lamb fantastic?” my mother said. “If you can believe it, it’s from New Zealand.” Then she added sotto voce, “We bought it at Costco.”
Jack and I had been living on two different coasts for years, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that our parents had anticipated the demise of our marriage. Still, I was expecting a more emotional response, along with some assurance of love and support. Not only were Ben and Malabar unfazed by the news that our marriage was officially over, they were uninterested in discussing the matter further.
What did endlessly fascinate them, however, was the scandal unfolding at the Clinton White House. Malabar dissected the incriminating stain on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. Ben ranted about Bill’s boundless libido. And both castigated Hillary for her unseemly ambition, which somehow, to them, made her culpable in her husband’s philandering.
“You know what just galls me?” Ben said with disgust.
Malabar put down her fork and gave her husband her full attention.
“That no one considered Chelsea’s well-being. Not for one minute,” my stepfather said.
My mother shook her head.
Jack squeezed my knee under the table and we locked eyes. This was the aspect of our parents’ affair that had always horrified Jack most: not that they had betrayed their spouses, not the elaborateness of their deceptions, but that they had used me to facilitate their relationship and never ackn
owledged the pain that had caused me.
A door slammed shut in Jack. I could see it in his eyes. He’d forgiven our parents their affair and tolerated their speedy marriage, but this was too much.
“You know what galls me?” he said, as calmly as if he were asking about the weather. He folded his napkin and placed it alongside his plate. “Hypocrisy.” Then he stood, nodded goodbye to me, and left the table and their house for good. In the coming years, Jack would continue to visit his father, but as far as I know, he never stayed in our family home again and avoided Malabar at all costs.
I was not nearly so poised as Jack. Knowing the apology I longed for would never arrive, I felt furious at myself for having thought I owed them an in-person visit. I sputtered some vitriol that left Ben and my mother shaking their heads, confused, no doubt, by my lack of gratitude, and took my leave of them.
* * *
Once my divorce from Jack was final, I made up for lost time. Having been fixated on my mother’s romantic life for so much of my teens and twenties, it was thrilling to focus on my own desires. At long last, I was living the life I wanted and felt at the top of my game. Zoetrope: All-Story, birthed in my alcove apartment, now had a sunny office space, a permanent staff of four, and a robust circulation. Not only had the magazine launched the careers of aspiring writers, it received many accolades, including winning the National Magazine Award for best fiction in 2001. I moved into a large and sunny one-bedroom space in London Terrace, an artist-friendly building complex in Chelsea where Kyra also lived.
A far wearier dater than I, Kyra tolerated reports of my romantic and social life with good humor. I wasn’t overly concerned with outcomes and found bad dates as entertaining as good ones, as they provided fodder for our late-night conversations. I had a few relationships, some short, others a bit longer—a thwarted academic, a dishonest actor, a creative executive with a bad temper—and all unhealthy. I was drawn to men who, like me, came from dysfunctional families and were wary of commitment.
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