An Abbreviated Life Read online

  “When was this?” I ask.

  He tells me it was ten years earlier.

  This is when I was living in West London and working full-time as a journalist for the Sunday Times.

  IN 1997, MARIO worked on a boat in Sumatra. He was doing a sand survey. There wasn’t much to do and the others on the boat were Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Malaysian. They spoke English, but he didn’t interact with them. He closed himself off and made drawings. For one month he didn’t say a single word. Not even to hear the sound of his voice? I asked this in disbelief. He said no. Not a word.

  “I didn’t need to talk to anybody and nobody needed to talk to me.”

  I think about this often. That silence, for him, is conversation.

  WHEN WE HAVE fish for dinner, he will go into the ocean with his spear gun, free-diving and holding his breath for several minutes while he hides on the sea bed in the reef. He shoots the fish, guts it, and cooks it.

  “Is that snapper?” I ask when I see it in the pan.

  He sighs. “No, that’s a jackfish.”

  This is the same sigh I give when he asks, “What’s the New York Times?”

  We don’t hold it against each other. When I show him an article I wrote, he says, “So many words!” and I laugh because of how different we are.

  I ASK MARIO, “Could you be happy with a wordless life?”

  “Very happy,” he says.

  “Not me,” I state.

  “No kidding.”

  I continue, “So if you could be happy with a wordless life and that’s the opposite of what I want, what does that mean?”

  He pauses for a second and says, “That we make a good balance.”

  I TOLD HIM there is a place in America called the Container Store. The look on his face was astonishment. He couldn’t believe such a place existed. His taste is basic. He is, in many ways, like a local Balinese person. He identifies with those who are less fortunate and sees himself as lucky. He is satisfied with what he has and does not seek more. He does not have to work to be in the moment with affirmations or discipline; it is his natural state.

  Every day for sixteen years he has gone to the same beach, to the same job, and enjoys it. “It is not the same job,” he says. “Because one day I teach diving, one day I teach kitesurfing, one day I teach surfing.” He is at home in the water. He is content.

  WHAT WE HAVE in common are values. There is stability. There is loyalty. He is decent and undemanding. His character is solid. He could never manipulate. He wouldn’t know how. He doesn’t pretend to be anyone he’s not and he can spot a phony. He doesn’t ask people questions he doesn’t care about the answers to. And what people think of him is irrelevant. He won’t say “Nice to see you again!” if he doesn’t feel it. He’s got nothing to prove. His pleasures in life are not from things. The beauty he sees is in nature.

  What he is interested in is how to build a tree house. Or how to place the stone tiles in the garden in order to change the path. He is focused on things that improve his life in a practical way.

  The curiosity he has is in different areas. During the rainy season when the winged termites come out in droves at dusk, they are drawn to the light. He wondered what they would taste like. He caught a few dozen, boiled them in a pot, and ate them. The girls and I declined. “They taste like sweet corn,” he said.

  MARIO HAS AN answer for everything and is often bemused with my discomfort.

  “There’s a giant rat in the kitchen,” I say.

  He responds in his gentle tone. “We live in the country, amore.”

  “What happens if the spitting cobra spits in my eyes?” I ask.

  “You will go blind. Wear your glasses.”

  I miss having a living room.

  “The garden is our living room,” he says.

  To avoid getting drenched during the rainy season, I carry an umbrella going from the kitchen to our bungalow.

  “Amore!” He smiles. “It’s raining in the living room.”

  HIS TRADITIONAL BALINESE property has four small bungalows with a garden in the center and a separate, open kitchen. When I moved in, guests and friends occupied the bungalows, and there were constant people roaming around. The kitchen is largely outdoors and shared. In the morning, there were strangers, often speaking another language, making themselves coffee. Mario lived in one of the bungalows. He enjoyed having people around. But I was not used to this. Strangers would drop by, unannounced. When I came back to the house, there was no way to know who would be there. I would come home to visitors talking in German. Changes were made so that I could have privacy. So that I could have refuge.

  WHAT CONNECTS US are the basics, tenets of normalcy I never had. Need is redefined. Pots and pans, knives and dish towels, bed linens and bath mats don’t have to match. They don’t have to even exist.

  11

  I grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a prewar building. 180 East 79th Street, between Lexington and Third. Penthouse G. My mother purchased the apartment in 1967, the year before I was born, with the inheritance she received from her father. It was an unconventional setting filled with books and artifacts, sunlight and photographs. The apartment was decorated with people. Artists, writers, musicians, belly dancers. When a Chinese painter came for a visit, he’d drawn a charcoal mural on the living room wall by the time he left. In the kitchen there were books. In my mother’s bedroom there were bowls. Her taste reflected a cultured aesthetic, original and sophisticated; everything had a story. Things—some that were worth money, some that weren’t—were never for the sake of making a statement. They were there because they had meaning. And she saw their beauty because of this. There were fresh calla lilies on the coffee table. Amlash terra-cotta pottery from Persia in the living room. Books on every flat surface. And photos of my mother—with Henry Miller; with Gloria Steinem; with Donald, her boyfriend; with my father; with me. Happy times. Scotch-taped to the wall. Or punctured with thumbtacks. Life in a topsy-turvy spectacle, a Fellini-like universe with a view from the terrace.

  12

  After Kiki died there was a year of nannies moving in and moving out, taking care of me. None of them stayed longer than a few months. A nanny would come to live with us for a while, in the spare room off the kitchen, until she realized the pay was not worth the aggravation. There was Nadej. There was Jeanie. There was, “I forgot her name.” And others. When it came time for the departure, they would sneak away. Or there would be an explosion. My mother would withhold their paycheck and say they didn’t deserve it. But they would leave anyway. Departing the same day, wearing their uniform. Cursing in Polish or Portuguese, desperate to get out.

  WHEN JOSEPHINE ARRIVED, I knew better then to get attached. But she was different from the others. She was from Belgium and expressed, without hesitation, her opinions on how things should be done. She would wear what she wanted. Dinner would be at five-thirty. She would scold my mother because I had no set times for meals or for bed. “This child,” she said, shaking her head, “needs discipline.” She took control.

  My Dear Harvey,

  I have just spent 2 hours at 180. When I arrived the new nurse (Josephine) met me. Suzanne was in bed and Ariel, in her nightgown, was sitting on the floor playing alone with her toys. I’ve yet to go there and not find her in her room alone. Josephine was afraid to tell me what was going on because Suzanne would fire her. “Ariel bosses me around all the time,” Josie said. “And when I try to make Ariel behave, the Mrs. yells at me. Ariel is such a difficult child.” No, I said. “She isn’t. She wasn’t always like this.”

  xo Rita

  RITA MET MY father in 1970 when he was going through the divorce from my mother and staying at the Harvard Club. One night a friend of my father’s had a party and Rita was there. She too was recently divorced.

  Rita worked at The Saturday Evening Post as an editor, and during the time she was dating my father, she helped start Ms. magazine with Gloria Steinem. Rita was warm, cheerful, a
ffectionate, and silly. She was the fairy godmother who fixed what was broken and filled in the cracks. With attention, with care, with words that were never wasted. I could count on what Rita said.

  RITA AND MY father were together for two years, and in early 1972, after he moved away, she remained close to us both. She made a point of staying in my life. She came over to the apartment to spend time with me and we sat, just the two of us, on the floor of my bedroom and wore Mickey Mouse ears and spent hours playing Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders while my mother stayed in her bedroom or entertained during one of her parties.

  Rita and I went to the zoo in Central Park. Afterward we rolled around on the Great Lawn and she didn’t mind grass stains or dirt or mud and we stayed out all day, practicing handstands and cartwheels with her spotting me. She was such a caring person that my mother encouraged her to spend as much time with me as she could.

  When the doorman announced Rita was on the way up, I stood in the foyer to wait. The elevator doors opened and I jumped up into her arms.

  “Hello, Monkey,” she’d say. “I missed you.”

  I looked forward to her visits; she was the only person, aside from my father and Josie, that I let hug me.

  Even though my mother welcomed Rita’s presence, she was threatened by it as well. She sometimes snapped, “Well, if you love Rita so much, go live with her!”

  But I knew that hours or maybe minutes later, she’d come around. Because if someone could give me things that she couldn’t, such as time or attention, she wouldn’t deny me their company. She would allow it. And later resent it.

  ONE MORNING I woke up inconsolable. My mother called Rita. “None of us can calm her down,” she said. It was seven-thirty. “She wants to talk to you. Will you speak to her?”

  “Of course,” Rita replied. “What do you think the problem is?”

  “She misses you. She keeps crying for you.”

  Rita got on the phone, but I was sobbing so hard, I couldn’t speak. She calmed me down and told a story about when we played in the park on the statue of Alice in Wonderland. Soon she realized that I didn’t want to go to school if I thought I could be with her. My mother snatched the receiver from my hand.

  “Rita, you have to see Ariel more.” It was a demand. I sat on the bed next to my mother and listened as she shouted into the phone. “Why is it so hard for you to understand that a child can love and have feelings? She loves you, and if you don’t understand that, then I really pity you.”

  I tugged at my mother’s robe. “Don’t yell at her, please—don’t upset her.”

  She continued. “It’s normal for Ariel to feel like this. She’s a very sad and lonely child. It’s hard for her not having two parents. First her father left, then Kiki died. You’ve got to see her. Don’t be like her father and pretend you’re too busy.”

  Half an hour later, she called Rita back.

  “Don’t worry,” my mother said. “Ariel is no longer hysterical and everything is fine.”

  THE FIRST TIME Rita met my mother, she was nervous. It was 1973 and the documentary my mother made on the women’s movement was opening at a cinema on Fifth Avenue. Ms. magazine gave out passes to the event, and Rita decided to go with a colleague. When she arrived at the theater, a group of feminists out in front were holding a banner and singing anthems. “Move on over, or we’ll move on over you!” Photographers were covering the scene. Reporters had shown up. Bystanders had gathered and were staring at the assembly of radical women. Front and center was Florynce Kennedy—fierce and outspoken and wearing her leather cowboy hat, middle “fuck you” finger high in the air. My mother was beside Flo, causing a sensation. Being a troublemaker was energizing. It excited her. She relished the spectacle.

  “This was not surprising,” Rita wrote in her letter to my father. “But what did surprise me was that Ariel was in her mother’s arms, singing loudly and proclaiming her liberation.”

  My mother stood near the entrance to the theater, greeting people. “Hurry up, this kid’s getting heavy,” she said to no one in particular.

  A few seconds later, I spotted Rita. “Mommy, look who’s here!” I said, leaning toward her. My mother had spoken with her on the phone, but they’d never met in person. She immediately passed me into Rita’s arms.

  “Oh, are you her teacher?” she asked.

  “No, I’m Ariel’s friend, Rita,” she replied, dismayed that my mother didn’t know who my teachers were.

  My mother asked Rita to take me for a while because she was so busy. Rita and I stood on the sidelines catching up. She bent down and I sat on her knee.

  “Did you know that Kiki went to heaven?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Rita said. “And while Kiki is very happy there, we feel a little sad because we miss her.”

  I nodded and played with her hair. I tugged at her braids. We continued chatting as strangers from my mother’s dinner parties came over to kiss me hello. I was bewildered by all the commotion, and each time it happened, I hugged Rita tighter.

  We moved back to where the action was. I located my mother and told her I had to use the bathroom.

  “Do you want to go with me or with Aunt Rita?” she asked. She had known Rita for five minutes.

  WE FOUND OUR way to the bathroom and then to our seats. I sat on Rita’s lap for the entire two hours. My mother was on-camera most of the time and the film was told with her voice-over and filled with her poetry. In one scene she wears a papier-mâché crocodile mask over her head. She comments on the spectacle as masquerade. As she and Flo confront the media at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she is the zany heroine.

  She sneaks into the convention hall with Liz Renay, a six-foot-tall blond stripper in a revealing sequined dress, determined and defiant. And as the men predictably respond with all eyes on breasts, my mother later comments from a beach chair, “If a man walked into a convention with a huge cock, would women rush up and ask, ‘Who is he, where is he, what’s his name?’”

  THERE IS A tongue-in-cheek element to her belligerence. The poet as crusader can get away with anything. The more outrageous, the better. If the media makes women out to be freaks, why not be a freak? she asks. As she verbally challenges the journalist Mike Wallace, who stares back at her with a glazed look on his face, as though he is staring at an alien, in her voice-over she confesses, “I’ve never had so much fun as when I make trouble.”

  IN ONE SEQUENCE, my mother and Flo are talking about motherhood. Flo says it isn’t children that imprison women, but motherhood itself. My mother claims that no one wants to spend time with a dull, babbling two-year-old.

  I turned to Rita and said, “I’m glad I’m not two.”

  When the film is over, my mother asked Rita if she would take me home and then come to the after party, and when Rita told her no, my mother insisted.

  “Oh, but you can stay for an hour, at least.”

  “I was happy to have had time with Ariel,” Rita later wrote to my father. “And it wasn’t until I got home that I wondered how Suzanne could have so freely left her daughter with a perfect stranger. I took care of her and loved every second of it, but how could she know that? And she wanted me to take her home? I give up.”

  But she didn’t give up.

  The letter to my father ends with these words: “No matter how carried away I may get about the politics of the world, the status of women or personal problems, it takes a simple one-on-one visit with your dear little girl to readjust my sense of values. The next time Suzanne asks me to take Ariel I just may kidnap her. Sometimes I’m crazy enough to think I could get away with it . . . but don’t worry, I won’t try.”

  MY MOTHER OFTEN had fund-raisers for the women’s movement in our living room, and there were lots of women with floppy hats and raised voices. Flo didn’t alter her combative attitude when she spoke to me. In her hot-pink sunglasses she found someone equally untamed and ferocious in my mother. “Your mother is one tough motherfucker. Right, baby?” she’d ask. She h
anded me a cigarette when I was five to take a puff.

  WHEN I LOOK at this film as an adult, I admire my mother’s willingness to defy convention. There is a scene where she is tap-dancing on the pavement in front of the White House. I see her joyfulness. I see a campaigner. On behalf of women. On behalf of herself. When she had a cause, she was fanatical. Lack of boundaries was an asset. Her megaphone was always on.

  But I see the absurdity, too. Because heartfelt feminist beliefs were trumped by emotional needs. Clinging to men, begging them not to abandon her. Cries of “I need you, don’t leave me.” My witnessing contradictions play out in everyday life was routine. And in the absence of consistency, admiration unravels.

  IT IS NEARLY Christmas, I am six years old, and Rita has come to visit after work. My mother has purchased a Christmas tree. When Rita arrives, I am trimming the tree with my mother and Josie. My mother’s mood is upbeat. She suggests Rita stay for dinner.

  The trimming is continually interrupted because my mother takes phone calls in the other room. When she returns, I become angry with her, and she says, “You know, Ariel, most people trim the tree when the children are in bed. And now I know why.”

  She invites Rita to attend the Christmas Eve party she is having. “It begins at midnight,” she says. “Ariel is hosting.”

  When Rita declines, my mother asks her to spend Christmas Day with us instead. Rita explains she has plans with her family, but my mother doesn’t consider this an obstacle.

  “Oh, but couldn’t you come for a while? Ariel would love that.”

  After that, my mother takes another phone call in her bedroom, and when she emerges, she is wearing a long gown, with her fur coat over her arm.

  “Mommy, you promised to have dinner with me!” I scream.

  “I promised to sit at the table with you, and I will. For a few minutes. Then you and Rita and Josie can have dinner together. Isn’t that what you wanted?”