These thoughts left her confused. On the one hand, it seemed that she had nothing to be jealous of: these mothers’ relationships with their sons were clearly flawed. On the other hand, she admired the fact that they had all done what they had set out to do; raise their boys to be successful men. Her mind returned to Nathan. It might seem that her indecisiveness had tripped him up. She was never sure if she was being too hard or too soft on him. But it was too early to say what might happen. After all, he was only eighteen. None of the famous sons of these women were celebrities at his age.
She began to imagine a glorious future for him. The dream didn’t last, however. She was dead and buried: She could do nothing more for him. All that was left now was to trust in his abilities. No matter what opinions she might hold about these Jewish mothers, she knew they had never backed down from their mission, and their sons had made them proud.
Rebecca returned to the library. She wanted to read some of Romain Gary and Albert Cohen for herself, both about their mothers. Promise at Dawn is the story of Gary’s childhood and adolescence, from his earliest years in Vilnius until his mother’s death. He describes how Mina’s overflowing love and ambition for him carried him to heights he never could have dreamt of for himself. Book of My Mother uses a more recitative style to tell the moving story of a woman who was as naive as she was self-sacrificing. Although Cohen remembers every moment he spent with her, he is remorseful at the idea that he never lived up to her love for him.
Rebecca was reminded of the waves of emotions she had felt as a teenager when she read Romain Gary’s book. She must have been in high school because she pictured herself in her father’s country house, where there was never anything to do during the long days of her summer vacation, except read. Since then, she had never known such boredom. She had briefly attempted to take an interest in her bucolic surroundings, in the hope of finding a new distraction, but the mere sound of the wind in the trees put her to sleep. A nature program on television had an even more soporific effect on her. She learned to keep to her room to avoid both insect bites and the smells of the cows, horses and pigs, and sought refuge in books, reading with a kind of bulimic hunger as if she too suffered from a shameful disorder that sapped her confidence and enjoyment in life. The long immobile hours, no matter how she positioned herself on a chair, the floor or her bed, made her legs stiffen with cramps, however, and a new wave of ennui awaited at the end of each novel. Sometimes she amused herself by looking for the word “boredom” in whatever she was reading at the moment. The exercise left her even more lethargic, if possible. She had picked up Promise at Dawn as a lighter read, in between Finnegan’s Wake and Moby Dick. It hit her like a lightning bolt: such understanding, complicity and love between a mother and her son seemed extraordinary to her. It marked her as deeply as Book of My Mother, which she had read in high school and found even more moving for not having a mother herself.
Feverish now, Rebecca was anxious to find the others. She felt alone and isolated, far from everything. She went looking for them but found herself wandering for a long time in endless space.
7
Success Shall Be Yours, My Son
Guynemer! You will be a second Guynemer! Your mother has always been right . . . An Ambassador of France, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor . . . a new Gabriele d’Annunzio.
Romain Gary
A mother finds true satisfaction only in her relationship with her son, on whom she can transfer her own suppressed ambitions.
Sigmund Freud
“Rebecca?”
Hearing her name called from the dining room, she went in to find Amalia Freud spreading jam on slices of bread.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, looking up with a smile.
“I’d love one,” Rebecca replied, relieved that Amalia looked happy to see her. The two women made quite a contrast: one sporting faded jeans and a loose pullover sweater, the other in a tight-fitting dress with her long hair in a neat braid.
“You seem preoccupied.”
“How can I be sure my son will succeed in life?” she blurted out. “There’s no magic formula and yet all of you managed it.”
“Have faith,” Amalia replied. “In my case, it was obvious Sigmund had a promising career before him. An old peasant woman had even predicted it; I can still remember her exact words when she saw him. ‘With your first-born, you’ve brought a great man into the world.’”
“Maybe she was just trying to be nice.”
“Possibly, but her words filled me with confidence, so that, later, when he was deciding between law and medicine, I could tell him truthfully that I would support him no matter what he chose. Jacob wanted him to take over the business. I thought he should make up his own mind. He proved me right by creating a profession that had never existed before: psychoanalysis. Sigi surpassed even my wildest dreams.”
Amalia adjusted her shawl, which had slipped down over her bare arms. Then, with a coquettish toss of her head, she stood up and made her way towards a long table lavishly laden with breads, fruit and cereals.
“But, Nathan, what will become of him? No one predicted a great future for him.”
“You worry far too much.”
“He used to reproach me for only wanting to talk about his grades, but I couldn’t help myself. I was a professor, so for me being a good student was as natural as washing yourself. He hated me for it, though. I was too demanding. But he was so intelligent. I thought his laziness was inexcusable, an affront to anyone who had a difficult time studying.”
“Children find it hard to express themselves. That was his way of rebelling against you, without saying it in so many words. Maybe he wanted you to see he was his own person?”
“Oh, he knew ways of doing that! He invented an imaginary friend named Christian; don’t ask me why. We had to set a place for him at the table and he talked to him constantly. Thinking he was lonely, I began inviting his friends over every weekend. But he never played with them. ‘What’s so interesting about a soccer ball?’ he would ask me. All ballgames were the same to him; it was only the size of the ball that changed. He was bored by it all so he kept to himself.”
“He had a wonderful imagination, no doubt. Instead of worrying yourself and criticizing him for being antisocial, you ought to have encouraged him.”
“Is there anything left to eat?” Mina demanded, looking over the buffet. “Where is the coffee?”
“On the table, where it always is,” Amalia replied. Mina was always in a terrible mood before she’d had her three cups of coffee in the morning. Amalia didn’t hesitate to share this confidence with Rebecca in a low whisper. “The bad habits of an overworked woman,” she concluded.
Mina poured herself a cup, grumbling under her breath, but Amalia had returned to her conversation with Rebecca.
“Why did you think Nathan ought to become a lawyer? A strong imagination doesn’t lend itself to practicing law . . .”
“‘Law opens the door to everything.’ Or so the saying goes. And when Nathan told me he wanted to be a lawyer, I didn’t realize that he was only trying to please me. He understood how impatient I was to see him on a clear professional path . . . as if he could choose a profession the way you choose which sweater you’re going to wear in the morning. I wanted to direct him. I should have allowed him more time to think it over.”
“Did you do everything you could to convince him?” Mina wanted to know, setting her coffee cup down. “Did you explain to him how famous he would be as a great criminal lawyer? Did you buy him a properly tailored suit? Did you make him feel the elation of seeing a client acquitted? Did you read him the speeches of the great defense lawyers? If he were my son, he would have been assured of his success before he’d ever begun. I would have painted his glorious future for him while he was still in his crib . . .”
“Did he know what he wanted to be when he was a child?” Amalia interrupted.
“Yes,” Rebecca answered, embarrassed. “He wan
ted to become a pilot.”
“Romain was a hero, as you know of course,” Mina bragged. “His plane was shot down by German artillery. The pilot was blinded. Romain was wounded in the stomach and half-unconscious but he took control of the plane and managed to land it. He was decorated for his bravery, but I was no longer around to see it. I took credit for it though.”
“How in the world did you do that?”
“We had dreamed so much of the distinguished life he would lead, that he eventually believed it. I know it sounded strange when he was little. Even the fruit and vegetable sellers in the market in Nice had to listen to my stories about what a great man he was going to be, but they came to respect me in the end.”
Amalia leaned in a second time toward Rebecca: Mina was surely the only mother in the world who could determine her child’s future. To help him bear up under the hardship of their daily life, all her bedtime stories began with “Someday you will be . . .” and continued with a list of everything he would accomplish.
“It worked like a charm,” Mina agreed.
Seeing Rebecca’s doubtful look, she added:
“I assure you, it’s true. I already told you about that Mr. Piekielny . . . He would look with awe at Romain as if he had already reached the summit of glory. I’m sure he was just like me, Mr. Piekielny; he believed in miracles. Here was this poor little Jewish boy in France with a mother who was going to make him become someone, and so he had to succeed, just because she believed in him. I think the sheer force of my conviction kept Mr. Piekielny going for a while longer. He wanted to believe in the dream like I did. Romain worked tirelessly to prove me right.”
“Do you really think he told the Queen of England that ‘Mr. Piekielny lived at number sixteen, rue Grande-Pohulanka, in Wilno,’ like he wrote in his novel?”
“He certainly did,” Mina replied. “But this lovely man never knew it. He had already died in a gas chamber.”
“Such a sinister conversation at the breakfast hour!” Minnie Marx exclaimed, bursting suddenly into the room.
“Don’t sit down,” Amalia warned her.
“And why not?”
“We’re not spending the day here.”
“And why not?” a laughing Minnie wanted to know again.
She turned to Rebecca and began addressing her as if there was no one else in the room.
“You did the right thing, choosing your son’s profession. There’s no telling what children might come up with on their own.”
“I completely agree with you,” Mina seconded. “Rebecca was not firm enough with the boy.”
“All I wanted was for him to be happy,” Rebecca explained.
“You see? You cared more about his happiness than his career.”
“Obviously.”
“It’s not as easy as it seems. When you’re young and idealistic, you can let yourself be carried away by the dream of a job that doesn’t pay, and then regret it later. Being successful professionally is always one less thing to worry about. And it’s something to make you proud, even happy, if that matters. I had such difficulty finding something that Romain was good at. We tried everything. I shouted to the rooftops that my son would be a prize-winning jockey, but he had no talent at all for it. It was the same with fencing and pistol shooting, which was a shame: I could just see him in the dress uniform of the Republican Guard! I taught him Latin, German, and French, of course, the Fox-Trot, the Shimmy . . . There was nothing I didn’t try. Every failure was like a stab in the heart, but my greatest disappointment came with music: A disaster! His teacher finally told me, as sweetly as possible, that I was throwing my money out the window on violin lessons for him. My theory is that he couldn’t stand the screeches. As if my son was the first mediocre pupil he ever had. He didn’t get it. I would have paid him double if he could only teach my Romouchka to play well! But there was nothing to be done: I had to let it go.”
Rebecca was mentally tallying everything at which Nathan had failed: music, fencing, soccer, chess . . . Images began to haunt her, like when she used to wake up at 5 a.m., seized by a panic attack. How did these mothers do it? How did they make their sons so famous? Was it enough to just decide they would be? Mina never gave up until she found the one thing Romain was good at and then, when he began writing, she still wasn’t satisfied: he had to be an ambassador, too.
“What drove you like that?” she asked Mina. “Were you a fan of Claudel? He was a writer, a diplomat and a member of the Académie Française.”
“Oh, he did get into the Académie after all?”
“In 1946.”
“I was dead already. No, it was Chateaubriand I found the most exciting.”
Mina, like the actress she had once been, declared:
“He lived through eighty years of French history and politics, traveled around the world, and he still managed to find time to reflect and to write. He even said this: ‘I would like to have never been born or be forgotten forever.’ I so wished my son would have lived that maxim. What good is it to live if not to become famous?”
“Such pressure!”
“Yes, but I knew Romain could do it, and he didn’t let me down.”
Minnie Marx, who until now had been absorbed by her eggs and sausages, turned to Rebecca while continuing to chew:
“It’s better to make decisions for your children. There’s always a job you would cringe to see them do.”
Mina interrupted her:
“I was afraid Romain would want to become a painter. His teacher announced to me with great pride that he had talent, but I made him swear to never say so to Romain. As soon as he would start to draw, I would take away his brushes and pens.”
“Why did you pay for lessons in that case?”
“Certainly not with the idea that he would mistake an elegant hobby for a profession. All painters end up penniless and mad.”
Mina was categorical: A life of misery was the fate of every artist. She wanted her son to be famous and feted in his own lifetime. So she encouraged him to be a writer, and whatever he wrote she thought it was marvelous.
Minnie asked Rebecca if her greatest fear was that her son would become a pilot.
“I thought it was an unwise choice for someone so easily distracted. But what would have made me the angriest, would be if he had chosen to become a sociologist.”
“What do you have against sociology?”
Rebecca didn’t know, but she had always thought it to be a pedantic and meaningless way to earn a living.
“Was there a particular sociologist you didn’t care for?” Minnie offered.
“Did you know many?” Mina wanted to know.
“No, I didn’t. It was just one of those preconceived notions.”
This line of questioning exasperated Rebecca. She had singled out that one profession on a whim, but the other women wanted to treat her comment as a serious opinion and debate its pros and cons!
“My greatest fear was that one of my boys would act in porn films,” Minnie said.
“Did you have a reason for thinking they might?”
“Not at all; why do you ask? Groucho wanted to become a doctor.”
“And you wouldn’t let him?” Rebecca asked with a barely stifled cry of anger.
“Of course not. Why should he waste years studying when the theater was beckoning?”
“You must be the only Jewish mother in the world who stopped a son of hers from becoming a doctor! Do you know the one about the mother whose son is invited to a party?”
“No,” Mina and Minnie responded in unison.
“She has two sons, five and seven years old. So she asks: ‘Which one is the invitation for? The doctor or the lawyer?’”
“What’s so funny about that?” Minna asked. “Doctors have the worst job in the world: they have to spend their days listening to people complain about their aches and pains and the never-ending litany of ailments of hypochondriacs. But actors just have to walk around in a tuxedo and a top hat to earn
enough money to throw fistfuls of it at the urchins in the street, like my brother Al did.”
“Was it your brother who suggested your sons go into show business?”
“I had to force the hand of destiny,” Mina recalled, stretching. “They were going to pot . . . Chico was gambling in a dive on 99th Street. Harpo had just said goodbye to his career as a bellboy. Groucho was acting part-time, and Gummo was still trying to convince his teacher that Paris was the capital of Greenland. The best way to be in the spotlight was to get hired together. I cooked up a little number and named us ‘The Three Nightinglales.’ Everything changed from that day.”
“What did your children say? They agreed to that?”
Minnie looked squarely at Rebecca, flabbergasted:
“Did I give them a choice? I knew exactly what I was doing. I became their impresario, as I’ve already mentioned. Harpo tried to put up a fight, protesting that he couldn’t sing. I told him to keep his mouth open and pretend. No one was the wiser.”
Rebecca imagined a plump, young Minnie besieging every theater agent in town, negotiating contracts and accompanying her new act from city to city before settling in Chicago, second only to New York for vaudeville. She didn’t hesitate to rename herself Minnie Palmer, thinking it was sexier and better for business. Nothing could stop her.
Jewish Mothers Never Die Page 9
