After I get her settled, I scoot around the corner to a pay phone and call Delibro. I get right through and he asks if I can come to his office. I tell him that’d be hard right now but I can come later. We make an appointment for five. I’ll just say I’m going painting; Mother has this marked off as one of the nutty things I do. But Delibro can’t wait; he has to get it off his chest.
“Mr. Tremont, has your mother always been like this? Has she always been so defensive?”
“Long as I’ve known her she’s been that way, Doctor.”
There’s a pause. I can tell he’s not happy talking over a phone; he’d like to read my face.
“She’s certainly a suspicious woman; she’s suspicious of me, she’s suspicious of your father, of you, of your sister. There doesn’t seem to be anyone she trusts; she’s completely alone, a deeply frightened woman.”
I don’t have to say anything, it keeps coming.
“Do you know she’s convinced your father is trying to hurt or even kill her, Mr. Tremont?”
“Yes, I know. These days it’s one of her main themes. It makes it hard for my father. She’ll also tell him he’s crazy straight to his face and she’s totally intolerant of his dream fantasies.”
I want to say more but I’m not sure myself what’s happening. Dad changes so fast, revealing new facets, I’m not sure from one moment to the next who, what or where he is. We decide I’ll see Delibro after his last patient so we won’t be rushed. We could be in for an all-night session.
I buy myself a beer at the liquor store next to the phone booth. I lean against the booth and drink it slowly.
At home, Mom’s worried about where I’ve been. I tell her I went out and had a beer in a bar. I know this will shock the bejesus out of her, and I don’t know why I do those things. She comes close and smells my breath.
“You do smell of beer! Did you really go in a bar? What would Veronica think of that? We have beer right here in the refrigerator; it’s a waste of money. You don’t have to drink in secret.”
“Mom, I’m a grown man. If I want to stop in a bar for a glass of beer and relax a few minutes, it’s my business. You’ve got a nice cozy bar around the corner, you ought to try it.”
I completely fooled her. I chummed her with the bar and the beer so she forgets about my going off alone. Handily, just then, Dad comes out in his jogging costume.
“Hello, all you beautiful people! It’s a lovely day; let’s go down to the ocean.”
He jogs in a set of small circles between us around the living room. He loosens his shoulders like a boxer coming into the ring.
“Maybe I can do a little jogging along the bike path. We ought to take advantage of Johnny while he’s still here, Bette.”
He tries a few high knees, which means he lifts his feet about as far off the floor as most people do when they’re walking. He’s wearing his light blue Adidas shoes with the hole in the toe. He’s got to know he’s getting Mom’s goat, but it could be he’s having such a good time he doesn’t notice. I look over at Mom.
“Not me! I wouldn’t be seen in public with the two of you wearing those simple beards and him in that crazy costume. Why don’t you take him to his psychiatrist in this costume one time, Jacky; then he’d know what it’s all about.”
I’m not responding. I’m learning, but slowly. Dad’s pretending not to notice, too; he’s still jogging his tight little circles, concentrating, his arms bent and held close to his sides.
“Sounds fine to me, Dad. It’s a beautiful day, seems shameful to waste it indoors; let’s go down to Venice. Mom, you’re sure you don’t want to come?”
She stares at me, sniffs.
“You two’d drive anybody into an insane asylum.
“Why don’t you take him back to Paris with you? You can both live under one of those bridges with all the other bums and hippies. You two go, I’m sick of looking at you.”
I back the car out and drive slowly toward Venice. It’s one of those clear California days. On top of the Palms hill we can see the mountains in Topanga Canyon. I try picking out our forty acres by the patterns of firebreaks. I check my watch and it’s only a little after two.
“Dad, how’d you like to drive up into Topanga and visit our forty acres? Billy’s been camping there on and off with a friend but I haven’t been up at all myself.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me, Johnny. I can jog along the fire trail. Heavens, I haven’t been in Topanga for over ten years. I always wanted to build a little cabin up there, sort of a hideout.”
I cut over, switch onto the Santa Monica Freeway, then cruise along the Pacific Coast Highway. There are mobs at the beach, there isn’t even a beach fog or mist. We’re through the crowds when we pass Sunset; by the time we get to the Topanga turnoff, there’s practically no traffic.
Soon as we get a mile into the canyon, things change. It’s like a different country. It’s drier, the air is lighter, it’s warmer and there are new smells, sagebrush, chaparral, raw dirt and rock exposed to hot sun.
The road is steep and twisting, boulders hanging over one side, deep ravines on the other. I take it slowly around curves not to scare Dad, but he’s hanging out his window like a kid. He drags one hand in the wind, gliding it up and down with the pressure of the wind, tilting it like a wing. He has his eyes pressed shut.
We drive through the Topanga community and turn up toward the Topanga school. Our property is on a ridge road heading out from behind the school.
It’s about a mile and a quarter in. As we go up, the ocean becomes visible on one side and an expanse of the San Fernando Valley on the other. Between, and close around, are views up and down various small canyons leading into the main one. It’s incredibly clear; even the Valley isn’t too smudged.
“Boy, John, I’d forgotten how beautiful it is up on this hill. You ought to build yourself a house here, raise avocados and oranges.”
He’s leaning so far out the window now I’m afraid he’ll fall out. He’s up on his knees on the seat. I check the lock.
On top, it’s a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.
I park the car. We climb slowly up onto the brow of our hill, where we find Billy’s tent. I reach in and pull out blankets for us to sit on.
We settle and let our eyes drift off into the air. There’s a slight mist hanging in the bottom of our canyon and the sun’s glittering hard bright on the ocean in the distance. We can see the entire sweep of the bay all the way to Redondo Beach.
I wonder to myself why I don’t live up here. I’ve never seen anyplace more beautiful. We could watch Marty’s new baby grow. I probably could put in fruit trees and make a fair living. Jacky would go to school just down the hill, a real old-fashioned walk-to school and we know it’s a good one.
I’ve already found out there are things here to paint. I’ve lived away long enough now I begin to see it. I could most likely paint here happily for years: the canyons, the beaches, maybe even the insides of those garages. When I get into painting something, it keeps expanding.
Dad might be right. Perhaps I am hiding in Paris to stay away from competition.
It sounds so logical, up here on the mountain surrounded by nature, but something shrivels inside me when I consider actually doing it, coming back.
Part, I know, is too many people looking over my shoulder. It’s hard to believe in my own inside personal life when I’m forced to see myself as just another subject-object in the great outside delusion, always comparing and being compared. The closest thing to reality becomes a muddled consensus statistic.
Slowly it dawns on me I’m having a covert conversation with Dad. Without saying anything, I’m trying to explain why I live away, why I can’t come back and live here. We’ve been sitting quiet for almost fifteen minutes. I’ve been meandering mentally, but somehow he’s been there with me, inside me.
Dad’s staring out, in some kind of meditation, nodding his head slightly once in a while.
“Yep. You could si
nk a well right over there and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you’d hit water within five hundred feet. You could grow anything up here with water and all that sun.”
He looks at me and smiles.
“But I suspect you and Vron are happier in Gay Paree.”
Before I think, I give him a good punch on the arm so he almost falls over. He ducks, laughing, giggling, and catches himself with his hand. I’ve never touched my father like that, the kind of punch you give a man when you’re feeling close. And he’s laughing, no hiding, no hand over mouth; laughing out, a horse laughing at the sun.
We sit up there for half an hour. Then Dad starts jogging around the edge of the hump, windmilling his arms. He’s beginning to lift his feet into something of a jog and not so much a shuffle.
At four o’clock we start down. We’re facing into the ocean all the way and the sun’s on our right. I feel like a mewing hawk slowly soaring to earth after a trip to the clouds.
I leave Dad at the door and let him handle the brunt of explaining. He says he’d tell Mom I’m going over to Marty’s. He’s turning into a splendid liar. Maybe that’s what psychiatric therapy can do, give you the freedom to lie happily; how else can you fool yourself? I arrive at Delibro’s just before five o’clock.
He wants to know my feelings toward Mom. I try telling him. I say it’s hard to know what you actually feel and what you’ve made yourself feel to protect yourself. Somehow, I begin to talk about Joan.
“My sister and I are very close, Doctor. From as far back as I can remember it’s been this way, an intense closeness. I’m quite sure I’ve modeled women on my sister, first in a feeling of protection to her, which has never really stopped, then a tremendous admiration.
“In a certain way, I think we blocked Mom out of our lives. Probably we didn’t, couldn’t, but that’s the way it seemed.”
I stop.
“Please go on. This is exactly the kind of thing I need to know. Your mother is a sensitive, intelligent woman. She must have felt this and resented it; this could explain much of her defensiveness, resistance to love.”
“Now she’s so ill, I feel guilty. I can’t love her the way she wants to be loved. I have deep feelings she’s obliterated Dad to her advantage. Probably, my fear is what keeps me away from her.
“Dad’s become such a shadow in Mom’s glaring light, I’d lost all feeling for him, too. It’s as if he’s been dead for over thirty years. In some ways he became invisible.
“It’s only when we lived together while Mom was in the hospital, we got to know each other as adults. It’s another whole resentment. For her own reasons, I feel Mom kept us apart.”
“Seriously, Mr. Tremont, you must realize she didn’t do this alone. There’s something in your father and in yourself which allowed it to happen. After all, your mother is only another human being, perhaps more scared, more motivated to dominate, than most; probably with a very weak ego; but what’s happened to your father is exceptional.”
“Maybe, but Dad retreated into his dreamworld, I retreated to Paris and Joan married a man Mom could never dent, a human barrier. Then again maybe I’m only rationalizing.”
There’s a long silence. I’ve committed the unforgivable error, doing the analyzing. I’m sure he’s convinced I’ve definitely reverted to type, the half-baked educational psychologist who’s read too many novels and do-it-yourself psychology books. He may be right but I am trying to tell him how I see it. He catches me with the next one.
“Has your mother ever threatened or tried suicide?”
This is hard to answer.
“She’s been threatening and hinting at it all her life, Doctor. Her favorite expression is ‘Nobody cares if I live or die’; still, overall, I wouldn’t say she’s suicidal. Her self-image doesn’t include it.”
He looks at me. It’s not a stare; more an expectant, waiting look. It can be damned uncomfortable sitting in front of somebody with wide-open, listening eyes. Finally, he looks down at the papers on his desk.
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Tremont. Your father is functioning. He’s confused concerning his fantasy, but he’s making it. I’m more worried about your mother. She’s such a deeply unhappy person. As a psychiatrist, a professional, I feel a strong obligation to help her.”
I sit, watch him and wonder how he’ll react to what I’m going to say.
“Dr. Delibro, this might sound cruel, but I don’t think it’s worth the effort. I’m not sure you can help Mom in this life, even if you devote full time to it.
“Mom has a way of going on. I’m sure she’s never going to commit suicide; the tracks she runs on are too deep, too much a part of her.
“I really wish you’d concentrate on helping Dad come to terms with himself. I don’t want him to reject his fantasy, but at least help him live without these terrible guilt feelings.”
“But, Mr. Tremont, let’s face it; I can’t help your father so long as the original situation persists. I don’t think he can resist your mother’s pressures.”
So here we are at the double bind, or maybe it’s a triple bind. It’s what I’ve been skirting around, refusing to look at, knowing the tremendous emotional energies involved.
“Is there any possibility your parents could live separately for a time? If your father had some time in a protected environment to strengthen his ego, it could help.”
There it is, face on. I tell him the way I see it, the impossibilities. I explain how I don’t want to come here and live, how I can’t take either Dad or Mom with me, they’re dependent on Perpetual medical care.
“We can’t leave Mom alone and she raises hell at Joan’s. We’ve been looking for nursing-in help but it’s impossible to please Mother. It’s like the old riddle of the chicken, the fox and the grain; there’s no place for Dad.”
We talk around it some more but don’t get anywhere. I tell how she’s convinced he isn’t a real doctor and is probably a hippy. He takes it well. I’m tempted to ask if he’s married but resist.
When I get home, everything is very uncomfortable. The tension is definitely building. The idea that Dad and I drove into Topanga and sat on top of the mountain does not help; it verifies our hippy status.
I don’t know where Mother gets her ideas but the new one is a lulu. She’s now convinced the psychiatrist wants to put Dad in an institution. Of course, she announces this in front of Dad. It has to be malicious; she’s too smart to do a thing like that by accident. I try laughing it off but she digs deeper and deeper. Now she’s pretending this would be the best thing. She goes on about how she can’t take care of him herself, with her heart, and nobody else gives a damn.
Then we’re into the routine about what a wonderful father Dad’s been to all of us and we won’t take care of him when he needs it.
I sit and listen, smiling at Dad whenever I get the chance. About three-quarters through, Dad finds a break and goes out to the greenhouse. I know he’s off for a quick trip to Cape May. I begin to see how it’s been like the alcoholic who takes a sneak to the closet where he has a bottle hidden.
I listen to her. But as I’m listening, I realize this might be the chance to separate them for a while. I plan and wait. It’s going to take some careful timing. There’s no sense interrupting. I know now she does run down, finally. It’s almost like an actor stopping in the middle of a play and peering out over the footlights to see if there really is an audience when there’s been no reaction to his best lines.
The secret is to sit absolutely quiet, give off no waves, not even look her in the eye. I concentrate on the little mole she has on the left side of her chin. It grows hairs and she plucks them. She keeps shifting her head to catch me and I know I’ve got her; sooner or later she’ll stop. She does.
“Mother, you’re right!”
How’s that for an opener?
“You can’t stick it any longer here with Dad. There’s no sense going for a divorce; you’ve been married too long, it doesn’t make much sense
and besides it’s against the church.”
Let her hang on that one. It’s almost as devilish as the lecture in the hospital about despair.
“Mom, why don’t you take a little vacation? Don’t do anything too strenuous and don’t go too far from the hospital, but give yourself a rest. Maybe go to Gilman’s Hot Springs, or take a hotel room down at the Miramar in Santa Monica with a nice view over the ocean. You could walk on the Mall in Santa Monica and have a good vacation, a vacation from marriage.”
I throw in that last bit; it fits with her soap-opera view of the world. I wait to see how she’ll react.
“You must be crazy, Jacky; I can’t do anything like that. He’d kill me!”
“Oh, come on, Mom. He’d stay here with me. I know he’s worried about you and it’ll be the best thing in the world. It’d give him some time to put himself together, too. By the time you come back, he’ll be a new man.”
I shouldn’t’ve said that. What she wants is the old man; but I leave it. I know she isn’t going to go anywhere anyway.
“Jacky, are you trying to break up our marriage, the marriage of your own mother and father? You’ve definitely been living in Paris too long. I’m not leaving your father for anything!”
“All right, then, Mom; at least take a little rest at Joan’s. You’ve been saying all along you’re afraid of Dad, that he’s going to kill you or something, so you go there and I’ll stay here with him.”
I’ve mousetrapped her. She knows if she doesn’t go I’ll throw it up to her every time she starts on the Dad being crazy business. I will, too. She sits there, quiet; her mind’s running so fast her eyes almost turn in circles. She shifts from crossing her legs one way to crossing them the other. I remind her not to cross them. She pushes one finger into the side of her cheek beside her mouth; dimple-making, I used to call it.
“I could never live with that wop. He wouldn’t have me in the house anyway. I watched him the last time I tried staying there; why, he treats her like a servant!”