Luisa sighed. “Okay, I’ll begin at the beginning. But stop looking at the postcards. They’re taking your mind off the subject. Now think hard. What is your very first memory?”
My very first memory? I had never thought about it before and I tried to turn my mind back, back, to make up to Luisa for having spoiled the beginning of her analysis. The first thing I could remember was lying in a crib at night and waiting for my mother to come in and say good night to me— no one specific night but just a vague general blur of warmth and security and lamplight and my mother wearing an evening dress and smelling wonderful, wonderful, as she leaned over and kissed me and called me little loving names. And then she would go out and part of the wonderful fragrance would remain behind.
And then I remembered sometimes going into her room in the evening before Binny put me to bed. She would be sitting at her dressing table, and her evening dress, freshly pressed and still smelling faintly of the hot iron, would be laid out across her bed. And she would have her beautiful hair tied back with a dark blue velvet ribbon and she would be smoothing the tiniest bit of rouge into her cheeks and on her lips and touching perfume behind her ears and to the delicate blue veins on her wrists. Then she would take the velvet ribbon off and let me brush her hair, and I remembered that I felt terribly important, standing behind her at the dressing table, passing the silver-backed brush gently over her hair.
These were the first things I remembered, and I told Luisa.
She was sitting at her desk busily jotting things down. “Very interesting, very interesting indeed,” she said. “Both of those memories deal with your mother. What is your first memory of your father?”
I tried to think. “I can’t decide what is my very first memory of Father,” I said at last. “When I was little he always seemed sort of somehow like God. Oh, I do remember one lovely thing.”
“What?”
“It’s a Christmas memory,” I said. “I’m not sure which Christmas, but it must have been an early one because I was terribly excited about going out after dark.”
“That’s nothing,” Luisa said. “You still are. I’ve never known anybody as protected as you, Camilla.”
“Half the kids at school, at least.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Luisa said quickly. “Go on about your father.”
“Well—I remember Binny dressing me up in my best coat and leggings, and—”
“Who’s Binny?”
“She was my nurse. And Mother and Father and I went downstairs and got into a taxi and drove all around New York looking at the Christmas trees.”
“Very expensive,” Luisa said.
“It was beautiful. I sat on Father’s lap and he kept his arm around me, so that I felt completely safe shut out in the dark of the night, and we saw the trees up and down Park Avenue and the big tree at Washington Square and the big tree at Radio City and all the trees the driver could find. We even went to Brooklyn and The Bronx.”
Luisa nodded and wrote some more things down in her notebook. She wrote very rapidly and I wondered if she would be able to read it afterward. Even when she writes carefully her writing looks like henscratching; half the time she can’t decipher her assignment book and has to call me up to find out what the homework is.
Then she looked up and shot at me, “Camilla, what do you know about sex?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said. “I know about it, I guess.”
“Well, didn’t your mother tell you or anything?”
“Of course!” When I was ten Mother gave me a very pretty book about flowers and animals and babies, illustrated with beautiful photographs of apple blossoms and a litter of tiny clean pigs and a funny ancient-looking baby holding its knees up to its chest. “You’d better get on with psychoanalyzing me,” I said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”
“Your reactions do,” Luisa told me seriously. “But if you want to do the talking it’s okay with me.”
“It’s not that I want to talk—”
“Oh, forget it.” Luisa wrote something else in her notebook and then said in her most impressive, the-famous-Dr.-Rowan way, “You know, don’t you, that you, Camilla Dickinson, are completely different from anybody else in the world, that no two human beings are ever alike?”
“Well, of course!”
“Now, can you tell me when you first became aware of yourself as an individual?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Then, “Yes, I think I can.”
Luisa smiled with satisfaction. “One very good thing about you and me, Camilla, we both have excellent memories. I suppose it’s necessary for our professions. Go on. Go on.”
“Well,” I started, “it’s kind of complicated. It’s a whole lot of things combined. I mean, that’s why it’s something I really remember so I couldn’t ever forget it even if I wanted to. I don’t think it’s an awfully easy thing to discover you’re yourself and nobody else can be you and you can’t be anybody else. It’s sort of lonely.”
“How old were you?” Luisa asked.
“I don’t remember. It started the night before my birthday, but I don’t remember which birthday. I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited. You know, the way you get the night before your birthday or Christmas. The next day was going to be Sunday so Mother and Father would be with me all day long and I might be able to go skating with Father on the pond in the park and there would be presents and I could stay up half an hour later.”
I looked up at the slats and I wasn’t seeing them because I was looking back into the past; it was as though I were talking to myself and not to Luisa; and my voice sounded a little sleepy, almost as though Luisa were hypnotizing me. I’m sure she was trying to, the way she sat there leaning forward in her chair, staring at me with such intensity in her blue eyes that I had to turn my own eyes away from her and back to the slats of the upper bunk each time I turned my head to speak to her directly.
“Don’t leave out any details,” she said. “Tell me everything. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that are the most important.”
“Well . . .” I said, “I lay in bed staring up at the pattern of light on the ceiling from the rooms across the court, from the rooms of the people who hadn’t gone to bed yet—the way I do now. And then I slipped out of bed, because I was so excited, and stood by the window and looked across the court. In one of the windows was the shadow of someone undressing behind a drawn shade, someone pulling a dress over her head, and then a slip, and bending down to take off shoes and stockings. And then all of a sudden I wondered: What was she thinking while she got undressed? What did other people think? What did other children think when they weren’t with me? Then it suddenly struck me that I hadn’t ever realized that they thought at all when they weren’t with me. I turned away from the window, and I was frightened, because people must think when they get undressed at night, not only people across the court, but strange people on the street, people I passed walking to the park, and children in the park. It still frightens me.”
“Yes,” Luisa said, as I paused. “Oh, yes, Camilla, I know what you mean. It frightens me too. Go on.”
“Well,” I said, “I remember that I turned on the light and stood in front of the mirror, looking at myself, frightened because people thought when they were getting ready for bed and didn’t think about me because I wasn’t the most important thing in their lives at all. Mother and Father’d always made me feel that I was important, and now all of a sudden I realized I wasn’t. How can you be important if nobody knows about you? It’s very frightening to realize all of a sudden that you aren’t important after all. So I stared hard at my face in the mirror, sort of for comfort, because here I was, and I was Camilla Dickinson, and this was my world, only all of a sudden it was everybody else’s world too. I started to cry. I got back in bed and cried and cried and called for Mother and she didn’t come. Nobody came. Somebody had always come when I cried.”
“Frank used to come when I cried,” Luisa said. “When I
had a bad dream or something. Of course I didn’t cry often. But Frank used to be awfully nice to me when I was a kid. He’s certainly changed. Go on.”
“Well,” I said, “finally my father came in to me; he was very gentle and kissed me. It’s funny, but whenever Father did take care of me, I felt much safer with him than I did with Mother. And he gave me a drink of water and told me ‘The Three Bears’ (that was my favorite story) and told me to go right back to sleep. So I guess I must have. The next morning I woke up early—you know, the way you always do on your birthday or Christmas, and I still felt kind of funny.
“I went back to the mirror. The floor felt cold on my bare feet. I stood there looking at this other person in the mirror who looked just like me, and all of a sudden I wasn’t thinking at all. This other person in the mirror was someone and I was someone and I wasn’t sure who because I didn’t know either of us and we weren’t the same person and I wasn’t there at all, because I wasn’t thinking, because my mind was quite blank. And then something seemed to go click. This is me. I am Camilla Dickinson. I’m me, and this is what I look like standing on the floor with my feet just off the edge of the rug, staring into the mirror in my room. This is my birthday, this is the birthday of Camilla Dickinson, and I’m a real person just like the people across the court, like the one who got undressed with the shades down, like people on my way to the park. I am Camilla Dickinson and no one else and no one else is me. And then I didn’t mind so terribly because people didn’t think about me. And then I was frightened again and wanted to cry only I knew that I mustn’t because I still believed that if you cried on your birthday you cried every day for the rest of the year.”
“I remembered when I discovered I was myself too,” Luisa said, “but it wasn’t like that. It was once when I got mad at Frank in the park and threw a stone at him and it hit him on the head and knocked him out and I thought I’d killed him and all of a sudden I realized I was the one who’d done it. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, Camilla? I wonder if everybody remembers. Do you think they do?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Then Luisa picked up her pad and pencil again and wrote something and said, “Well, why didn’t your mother come in to you? Was she sick or something?”
“Yes. She was awfully sick. I think she nearly died.”
“Did they take her to a hospital?” Luisa asked, with quick interest in any details of illness or hospitals.
“Yes. The morning of my birthday. It was the most awful birthday I ever had.”
“Did you go to the hospital to see her?”
“Yes. My grandmother came, Grandmother Wilding, and took me in a taxi. And I remember what a peculiar ride it was.”
“Why?”
“Well—everything seemed so much worse because the people we passed on the street didn’t know about Mother’s being sick or about its being my birthday or how frightened I was. They just went on the way they always do, as though nothing had happened.”
“Yes,” Luisa said, “I know. It’s funny how it helps just if people know things, isn’t it? I mean, after Mona and Bill have had a fight I don’t seem to mind so much after I’ve told you about it and I know you know about it too. They didn’t tell you what was the matter with your mother?”
“No. I guess I was too young to wonder. I was just frightened. I thought if Mother had to be in the hospital on my birthday she was going to die.”
“Well, go on,” Luisa said.
“We went to the hospital. I hadn’t ever been in a hospital before, and I’m still sort of terrified the way I was that day.”
“I love hospitals,” Luisa said. “When I’m a doctor I want to live right in the hospital. Go on.”
“Well, that’s all, really. Mother was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and then she came home and—well, that’s all.”
Luisa wrote busily for a moment, and then she said, “That’s very interesting, very interesting,” and then she gave a funny sort of shamefaced grin and said, “Golly, Camilla, I guess I must have an awful lot to learn if I want to be a psychiatrist. I ought to have been able to find out an awful lot from what you’ve just told me. I mean I ought to know about why you have complexes and things and what makes you act the way you do now, and the way you still keep talking about grown-ups as though you were still a child and everything, and I really don’t know if I’ve found out anything at all. Well, one thing I’m learning from psychoanalyzing you is how much I don’t know. You really don’t know what was the matter with your mother?”
“No. I don’t remember whether they told me or not.”
“I wonder if she was having a miscarriage.”
“I don’t know.” I felt disturbed, because that had never occurred to me. I don’t know a great deal about things like that and they don’t seem to enter my head as they do Luisa’s.
“When did you first want to become an astronomer?”
Again I shook my head. “I don’t really remember. Always, ever since I can remember. My grandmother used to tell me the names of the stars in the summer when we were in Maine. And she used to take me to the Planetarium and give me books to read. I’ve just—I don’t know—I’ve just never thought about doing anything else.”
“Okay. Strong influence of grandmother on career,” she said out loud as she wrote.
We heard the front door of the apartment bang then, and we heard Bill come in. Mona said something in a low voice, and Bill didn’t answer. Then we heard Mona say, louder, “Well, can’t you even say hello?”
Still Bill didn’t answer. Luisa looked at me and then she looked quickly down at her notebook.
“Frank went out right after breakfast, and he didn’t come back for lunch,” Mona said.
We heard the sound of a chair being shifted, but still Bill didn’t speak.
“Well, don’t you care?” Mona asked.
“Why shouldn’t he go out if he wants to?” Bill said at last. “I don’t blame him.” His voice sounded dull and somehow flattened out.
“Doesn’t it make any difference to you that your children spend most of their time on the streets?” Mona asked. There was a noise as though Bill had kicked a piece of furniture, but he didn’t say anything. “How can you be so unfeeling?” Mona cried, her voice high and shrill. “I’ve never known anybody so callous as you in my life! Don’t you care about anything, anything at all?”
Still Bill did not say anything, but we heard him move from one chair to another and the sound of an ashtray banging down on a table.
“All you do is smoke!” Mona cried. “All you care about are those damned cigarettes! The children and I could be murdered before your eyes for all it would matter to you.” Oscar barked excitedly. “Oh, get away from me, you loathsome beast,” Mona cried.
Luisa bent her head low over her psychiatrist’s pad and pretended to be busy writing. But I had seen her face grow flushed when Mona started to scream, and then drain empty of color. Now as her pencil moved jerkily across her pad her face was dead white and her hair blazing as it swung forward over her cheeks. I looked at her and then I looked away and stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.
6
“EVEN IF I CAN’T REALLY EXPLAIN IT, ” Luisa said in a shaky voice, “I know that what you said is very indicative. Can you tell me something more? Do you remember anything else?”
I lay there on the bottom bunk and the pattern of slats and springs seemed imprinted on my eyes, and I remembered. I remembered something that had been pushed so far back into the dark corners of my mind that until that moment it was almost as though it had been forgotten completely. It was strange that I could manage to forget something so terribly important and yet remember other things. But this new memory I must have pushed back deliberately because it was something I could not bear to remember; I could not remember it and go on living casually and happily each day.
Now the words that Mona screamed at Bill suddenly stirred the cloudy dregs of my mind and sent this bad memory
swirling to the foreground. I closed my eyes in order not to feel Luisa looking at me and trying to concentrate on her analysis so that she would not have to hear the words that Mona was throwing at Bill. In the living room Mona’s voice went on, but I no longer heard the words because there was in my mind no room for anything but the memory that was now thoroughly roused and thrusting itself upon me.
It was in the summer when we were up in Maine. I must have been four or five. It was the middle of the summer and I remember the feeling of everything being very languid and warm and green. Grandmother Wilding was coming up to spend two weeks with us; Uncle Tod Wilding was driving her up and we expected them around suppertime. All day I kept asking, “When is Grandmother coming? When is Grandmother coming?” and my mother or Binny would answer, “She will be here for your supper.”
But suppertime came and my grandmother did not come.
Binny took me upstairs and undressed me and gave me a bath and put on my pajamas and told me to go downstairs and say good night to Mother and Father. I went downstairs and stood in the doorway to the porch and watched my father pouring out two cocktails, one for him and one for Mother. And Mother sat on a green porch rocking chair and rocked back and forth and the tears streamed down her cheeks and I was afraid to go out to them. Then suddenly my mother leaned forward and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and said in a shaky, angry voice, “How can you be so unfeeling! Tod and Mama should have been here hours ago, they would have unless . . . and you sit there drinking cocktails as though nothing had happened.”
“What do you want me to do?” my father asked, and his face assumed the stony look of one of the statues in the Metropolitan.
“I want you to worry!” my mother cried. “I want you to care that I am worried sick! I know something terrible has— And you just sit there, you just sit there with your cocktail and do nothing! All you care about is your cocktail!”
“There isn’t anything I can do, Rose,” my father said very quietly. “I’ve called your mother’s house and there wasn’t any answer so they must undoubtedly have left. If they haven’t arrived by ten o’clock I’ll call Marge and Jen, but I don’t want to worry them unless absolutely necessary.” This was before Aunt Jen married, when she was still living with Uncle Tod and Aunt Marge.
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