Dream Catcher: A Memoir

by Salinger, Margaret A.

  I guess he missed the news that night; the letter was written the evening of the fifteenth, and the march had been that day. I did take care of myself though. Most people seemed to be trying to crowd as close as they could to the speakers near the Monument. There was no way I was going to get caught in the middle of a large crowd if things got ugly. I hung around the outskirts of the Mall lawn, keeping one eye on the speakers, one eye on possible escape routes up the streets and into large stores or hotels. The day was pretty peaceful, and back on the bus, I sort of regretted not finding some people to eat my lunch with on the Mall, but this was not Woodstock. If you’ve ever seen riot police in full gear—space helmets, gas masks, shields and weapons—any notion of a street party you might have entertained vanishes instantly.

  What brought the war home to me, during my freshman year, was the draft lottery. (Each birth date was assigned, randomly, a number from 1 to 365, 1 being your ass is on the next plane over; 365, party time.) My boyfriend, Michael, was a senior and his number came up 73. I did not want him to go: not to Canada or Vietnam—not anywhere without me. Michael. Although several nice boys had approached me during the fall of my freshman year, I basically ran and hid like a spooked animal. One day I noticed a young man, a senior, shining golden in the sunlight that fell across the campus green. He smiled softly and turned away. There was something magical about him, like my woodland friends who preferred to do their dancing on moonlit nights deep within the pine forest. I would not have been surprised to have discovered telltale fairy dust on the grass where he had been standing just a moment before. I don’t remember how we started talking or what we talked about. I mostly remember how, as infrequently and mysteriously as a rainbow, joy would break through the dark clouds of his eyes. I’d have walked through fire if that was what it took to reach him, to take his hand and lead him out of the aloneness that seemed to grip him with tendrils strong as flesh and blood. There was a Neil Young song out at the time called “The Loner,” which said, “If you see him on the subway . . . step aside, open wide, it’s the loner.” I took this to be a battle flag thrown down in front of me.

  I’m not sure when it was that Michael fell in love with me, but I knew he loved me long before it was said. Somehow, while we were talking about something else, we met. I have the feeling that the part of us that still had the courage to love snuck out of our respective fortresses, to meet the other, body to body, in the moonlight, while the other part of us stayed back in the darkness of our rooms talking, like two disembodied voices, or prisoners in solitary scratching and tapping to another unseen behind thick stone walls. I’m only now beginning to understand the “curse whispered in my ear” should I look down from the Salinger tower but thro’ the mirror blue, let alone leave my room and go down into the field of barley and rye. At first, when I tried to write an embodied account of our relationship, one that might offer a hint, like a fragrance in the air or a poem or perhaps a certain change in the light, to awaken the reader’s own remembrance or dream of first love, I ran up against a stone wall.

  I can tell you about the damp blond curls, like a baby’s, that formed at the nape of his neck as he slept. I can tell you I was as startled as if I had seen a ghost when I unexpectedly came across Michelangelo’s David from the back, as I wandered happily around Florence by myself in my mid-twenties. But the silent soldier in me is too strong to be overridden by force of will. What worked so well to avoid pain and invasions as a child, the retreat deep beneath the surface of my skin, became a hard, hard wall to crack. My strategic withdrawal worked so efficiently that it wasn’t until my early twenties when I began to notice hints—like an accent that appears when drinking or an unaccounted-for scar discovered where one doesn’t usually look in mirrors—that there was something unknown to me, hidden from me about myself.

  This revelation, when it first came to me, nearly knocked me off my feet. I was in an airport hugging my friend Jacobo Timerman good-bye. He had just been released, a few months before, from a clandestine jail in Argentina where he had been tortured, and was, like me, attending The Aspen Institute. I saw the scars as we sat in a Jacuzzi looking up at the stars, smelled the oranges and grapefruits he hoarded in his closet because he had craved them so on the scurvy starvation diet of the cell, jumped out of my skin with him at sudden noises, rejoiced at the miraculous normality of being able to pick up the phone and talk to his beloved wife and sons. As we were hugging each other good-bye—and Latin American friends are generous huggers, none of this Anglo kiss kiss in the air and you’re off—it suddenly struck me that I couldn’t feel myself hugging him, my hands on his back, at the same time I felt him hugging me, his hands on my back. I tried and it was like a movie camera that jumps from one perspective, from behind one person, to another angle, behind the other person. I could not simultaneously integrate being hugged and hugging, I couldn’t get the camera angle that includes both persons. Islands.

  What I was aware of, even in my teens, is the Achilles’ heel of lone island dwellers, of those too long in reclusion. For us, when a body meets a body, the result is not two people dancing in the rye; but rather, it is like the embrace of twins conjoined in the womb (formerly called Siamese twins), who may share a single heart, a liver, a leg, and so on, and attempting separation is, more often than not, hazardous to the life of one or both under the best of care and circumstances. Yet the closeness, the merging and becoming as one, after being so long alone, is indescribably wonderful, rain on desert wasteland bringing forth a miraculous resurrection of hidden, dormant life. I can honestly say I do not regret a single reckless, beloved moment.

  WHEN MICHAEL’S DRAFT NUMBER CAME up, I had just spent a great vacation with him and his family. At their house, I held my own in touch football in the field with the three brothers. With me there, they could play two on two instead of round-robin when their dad was at work. I couldn’t throw the ball too well, but I could run like hell to make up for it. I think all the boys, being older than I, and gentlemen, probably let me think I was more useful than I really was, but never mind, I’m not adjusting the memory: I was Gale Sayers in motion.1

  A few weeks after spring vacation, I received a letter from my father informing me that my grandfather had died. No, that’s not right; he informed me that his father had died. Doris and he had managed things with a “minimum of crap and ceremony,” he told me. No mention, no thought, that I might have wanted to participate in some “crap and ceremony” for my grandfather. I hadn’t even known he was ill, and had been for months, when I might have visited him. Granny was, he told me, being difficult about the whole thing because, he said, she had a bad conscience. Lecture on rotten marriages. There was no inkling on his part that she might, for better or for worse, actually miss her husband after some sixty years of marriage. Aunt Doris told me later that Granny said she missed seeing that hair (he had striking, thick, lemony white hair) on the pillow in the morning.

  I sent Granny a plant and a card in sympathy. It was the least I could do, the most I was allowed to do. My father told me that Granny was pleased and touched by the note and the plant, but her eyesight was getting so bad that she couldn’t write to tell me. He thanked me as well, as though I’d done something really out of the way, above and beyond the call of duty. What sadly low expectations of, and for, family.

  The same thing happened, only worse, when Granny died the following year. Once again, he never even told me she was sick. Nor did he tell me about her death before my mother read about it in the newspaper. (This was the same way I learned of my brother’s engagement. They had forgotten to tell me. It sure is weird being in a family where you often learn more in the press than from each other.) When I asked my father about it, he again said he had wanted to “spare me all that crap.” He was, I thought, referring to hospital visits and funerals. Knowing him as I do now, I think he also meant sparing me from such “crap” as family and connection. Doris recently told me that when Granny was ill, she often asked for me. Doris said, “
Mother missed you so.”

  AT THE END OF THE school year, I dropped my stuff off at my mother’s, said hi to my brother, and took off for my boyfriend’s house for a two-week visit, which, like the seven stranded castaways on a three-hour tour, extended indefinitely. After fielding some wild and stormy phone calls from my mother, Mrs. S., my boyfriend’s mother and my hero, politely but firmly decided that she would not send me home under any circumstances unless it was my decision. That was the first time in my life that any adult had ever stood up to my parents and said directly, “This must stop, I won’t allow it.” Someone finally said to my mother, I will take care of your daughter until you are able, and it will be my pleasure. That’s how she made me feel, as if I were a pleasure to have around. Can you imagine that? She still hasn’t sent me home. (Nearly thirty years later, I still have the pleasure of her company, and her grown boys’ and their wives’ and their kids’ company.)

  My father met Mrs. S. several times and paid her his highest compliment: he said to me that she is a real lady, and that she reminded him of Mrs. Hand, the only other woman I’d heard him refer to as a lady. When Mrs. S. became widowed, I harbored hopes that they might get together; she is also, I might add, a beautiful, elegant, intelligent woman. He hadn’t been seeing anyone since his divorce from my mother, as far as I was aware, and Mrs. S. embodied all that he praised in a woman. A year or two later, when my father’s teenage lover moved in with him, I would learn a big lesson about the vast difference between what my father espoused verbally and whom he espoused in real life. However, the summer I lived with Mrs. S., my boyfriend Michael, and his brothers, she was, in my hopes and thoughts and dreams, my eminently suitable stepmother, mother-in-law, and mother of choice. Still is.

  Because Michael had a summer job, I had a lot of time to write in my diary, which would serve, throughout my teenage years, as a tattered “Chart” in the absence of a “Heart in port.” I also had time to write letters, and my roommate Holly and I kept in close touch. I offer my vote for best letter from summer camp, and it is not Seymour’s from Hapworth, but Holly’s from Brentwood. A real person’s letter from camp. It was addressed in bold letters—I’m sure much appreciated by the camp staff who collected the mail—Holly Tobias, “Brentwood Concentration Camp, Angelica, New York,” postmarked 1970.

  Dear Peggy,

  Oooh, am I ever furious! Tonight we had that marvelous all-purpose of evening activities: the Brentwood campfire. The cabins are each supposed to dig up a song, which we sing. (there isn’t actually any campfire—I guess they’re afraid we’ll hurt ourselves.) So, as a suggestion to our cabin, I mentioned that Country Joe and the Fish song, “Feel like I’m Fixin to Die Rag.” [“Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, Next stop is VietNam”] Of course, we had to write it down and submit it to a counselor panel for censoring—they must, of course, weed out anything corrupting; i.e. anything that is against war (un-American!) or anything that is not cheery. (unsuitable) They were shocked, and told us we couldn’t sing it. I asked why not, and they got all offended and self-righteous, and proceeded to give a few feeble protestations. (Well it just isn’t nice, that’s all . . . you know, it just isn’t the attitude you should have.) Well, I was sick of the “approved” songs, (each campfire, we sing such goodies as “The ants go marching” and most of the soundtrack to “Sound of Music”—off key, of course.) Also everybody sings as if they are ill, and all the counselors go flapping through the swarms of kids, shrieking “sing, sing! Come on, kids, let’s hear it! I wanna hear a little camp spirit! LOUDER!” And so on and so forth. Until we run out of approved songs, at which point it is about 8:30 and they send us to bed, or they try to make us all sing “100 bottles of beer on the wall” (We have to say “Coke” though—no kidding—instead of “beer”) all the way down to the end. (Two bottles of Coke on the wall, two bottles of Coke, if one of those bottles should happen to fall . . .) Anyway, I didn’t exactly feel like staying, so I left, which is a no-no, because you are never allowed to be in the cabin by yourself. You are also forbidden ever to take a walk by yourself. (They are afraid you might smoke a cigarette!) (Shock!) Not only is nightwalking a no-no but one of our counselors sleeps with her bed in front of the door, to make sure that no one passes through the portals—going in or out. Don also stays up—no joke—’till one in the morning, patrolling with a flashlight and his dog. Christ! Speaking of which, half the camp goes to church every Sunday. Pious. Nice.

  There is no such thing as a private phone call.

  We periodically have trunk inspection.

  As for me, a week ago I flatly refused to go to activities I didn’t want to go to. There was no way they could make me play dodgeball, so Don just leaves me in peace, and steers the visitors around me.

  I hope that you and Michael are seeing each other more and that your nerves have settled. And as for my coming and visiting you next year in Mclean’s, I’ll probably be sharing a room with you there! Why don’t we start another Prob Child Club? Sort of like A.A. (which I may join by next year! No, actually I haven’t been drinking too awfully much lately.) You know, where all the members play shrink to each other.

  Well, that’s about all. Nothing is going on here. All the boys look like Kevin A. with a crew cut, they have all the sex appeal of Jon. B, and the winning personality of Dan R. Yeccch! Also, they are all under 13.

  The food is inedible. One time we had pizza, (awful) bread and cake for lunch. Nothing else. No fruit or vegetables or (god forbid!) vitamins. I got sick from lack of vitamins and I got tonsilitis and ran a fever and was packed into the infirmary for 6 days.

  WRITE! (I love mail too!)

  Love ya,

  holly

  ps. I HATE IT HERE!

  pps. I bought both James Taylor albums . . . sort of as a monument to R. (But I have sworn that I will never talk to him again!) Now, in memory of S. and R., I have 2 James Taylor albums and 3 Creedence Clearwater albums. I’m completely insane! But I really like the albums anyway, especially the James Taylor.

  pps. Say hi to everybody I know.

  * * *

  1. Chicago Bears running back, poetry in motion.

  26

  Lost Moorings

  Ooooh storm is threatenin’ . . .

  —Rolling Stones

  IN SEPTEMBER, HOLLY AND I were back at school again to start tenth grade, but all was not well. Michael, having been graduated the previous spring, was now overseas, studying in Paris. I lived for our weekly phone calls and held on to his blue, Par avion letters as tightly as de Daumier-Smith held Sister Irma’s letters or the boy in France held on to Mattie’s. I, too, was in a real panic that I might not make it, I might not be able to hold on until I received the next letter. I slept with Michael’s woolly sheepskin jacket at night, praying that his scent wouldn’t fade from the coat before I could bear it. I was waiting, basically in hibernation, for Christmas when I was to fly to France and spend the holiday with him.

  He called on December 10 to wish me a happy fifteenth birthday and to discuss our plans for my arrival a week or so later. He didn’t sound quite right. He said everything was fine, but the minute I stepped off the plane and into his arms, I knew it wasn’t. I have to tell you, I hate Paris. It was cold and gray and icy and damp and everyone was speaking in French. The friends of his parents, with whom we were to stay for a few days before leaving for the south of France, were lovely. Their apartment was beautiful and they had all sorts of pretty things to eat that I’d never seen before, such as marrons glacés and whole preserved apricots and kumquats, like orange jewels.

  Our hosts’ little boys were just learning to speak, and their French and English were delightfully mixed up. One showed me proudly how he could “put the wrapper dans la poubelle.” After the children were put to bed, the parents discreetly retired and left Michael and me the living room to ourselves. I pressed and pressed and he finally told me, in sheer misery, that he had met a thirty-year-old French divorcée who had two children, and he wasn’
t sure he was still in love with me. I remember that part perfectly—where he sat on the couch, the marrons glacés on the coffee table, even the sheet music on the piano. Then suddenly it went dark. I remember another flash photograph, an image that lasts a single frame. I am on an examination table of some sort, in our host’s home office. His wife has her arm outstretched reaching for some medication on a high shelf. She is going to give me something to make me sleep. Michael told me the next day that I hadn’t fainted, I’d been crying and breathing hysterically; our hosts couldn’t help but hear, and they gave me a sedative. I was absolutely mortified. I’d never disgraced myself like that, lost control with no memory and become so completely unmoored.

  I went about the business of seeing Paris with a grim determination, sleet inside and out. I emerged briefly in a garden with statues by Rodin tucked into corners, The Kiss, and something with a group of people in a circle groping and in chains—I can see it but I don’t remember the name. Maybe Les Aveugles. The blind. We decided there was nothing to do but go on with the holiday as planned, and we took the train to the south of France where another friend of the family, an artist, had an apartment he was not using over the holiday. There was no mistaking the occupation of the absent owner: large canvases of his work were everywhere, some hung on walls, some leaning up against them. This artist went down to the sea, all over France, and collected bits of dolls, baby dolls, that washed up in the tide, and he glued these akimbo—an arm here, an eyeless head, a torso there—as if they had washed up dead on various parts of his canvas.