Unfolding
I taunt her by saying I will write, then publish, an essay that begins, “If one is to truly experience Christopher Street and Greenwich Village, one must approach from the west, from as close to the Hudson River as possible.” She shoots me a look that I know well, the one that confirms my impression that she views me – and has for most of her adolescence – with a mix of admiration and annoyance.
What she says is, “I have no doubt you will.”
But wait. Is she talking about my writing the essay? My getting the essay published? Is my 20-year-old daughter conceding that my writing might be evocative enough – anything enough – to catch an editor’s eye? Or has she acknowledged that I just might be pompous enough to begin a piece with the distancing “one”?
Here’s the thing. She’s never been a fan of my writing. This becomes clear to me in the car one day, when she is 15. I mention that a Vermont food magazine had expressed interest in an essay I’d written on cooking and family, about making pesto. She listens to my details, then drops the bomb.
“No offense,” she begins, then pauses. “But I just don’t get how anyone would be interested in that.”
Part of my brain says, “Fair enough.” I’m a good mother, you see. I pride myself on my understanding. I know that my sense of self comes from multiple sources, not just parenting.
But another part of my brain is more straightforward, maybe more honest. That part just says, “Bitch.”
We’re in the car another day, two years later. We’re talking about an essay she wrote in school about peeing in her favorite chair as a toddler. She’d done it to spite me, because she was mad I’d given her a time-out. Then we’re talking about my writing. She says I should write about things that other people actually care about, emphasis on the care. I tell her that when I was a child, there was a woman in my neighborhood who carved an X into her forehead to bond with Charles Manson.
“That’s what you should write about,” she says. “Things that people have a connection with. Some historical event. Not” – short pause here – “pesto, or” – longer pause here – “your mother’s death.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I say. “Lots of people have ambivalent relationships with their mothers like I had. You know, a combo of the good and bad. And ambivalence makes grieving more difficult. It’s a thing. I do think people care about that.”
“Well, maybe,” she says, unconvinced.
*
She’s sensitive, soft as a grape, as the saying goes, but more tender than sweet. When she was younger, I misinterpreted her hardish edge as a lack of compassion. Eventually I realized that her empathy was, in fact, enormous, more raw and all-consuming than mine could ever be. Seeing pain in someone – people on the subway who appeared to be homeless, an overweight person self-consciously eating ice cream – could silently derail her for days and keep her a little subdued.
The day before Easter this year – Hannah is 20 – we’re busy shopping and running errands. It’s not the way I would choose to spend a Saturday. She and I have a joke about a hospital mix-up, that her real mother, who loves shopping and fashion, is out there somewhere. Between the jeweler and the supermarket I say, “Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you, Lionel from church died.”
We never knew specifics about Lionel’s disabilities. A physical condition hunched him over progressively through the years, until his body’s profile took the shape of a question mark. We’d see him everywhere in town, walking from one engagement to the other. On Sundays he’d drop into services at more than one church. He loved inspirational quotes and music; he played piano and composed lovely pieces. The men of the church tried to take him under their wing, but what they did for him – rides into Boston, help moving, meals – never seemed to satisfy him. It seemed he wore people down. He desperately wanted a woman in his life and would complain that the church lacked a singles’ group. He’d meet me and seem interested; would ask if I was married. “Yes,” I’d say. Weeks later he’d meet me again as if for the first time, ask if I was married. “Afraid so,” I’d say. Months later, same thing. “I sure am,” I’d say.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says about his death. “That’s so sad. When? How?”
I fill in the details – recently, peacefully.
“Will there be a service?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know when,” I say.
There’s some silence, then she says, ‘Wow, I don’t know why this makes me so sad.”
She’s upset about the divorce that’s now in progress – my divorce from her father after 27 years of marriage. She’s in turns angry with me for initiating it, and anxious about how it will all play out. She’s sad about the shaky-bridge out of adolescence that she was crossing tenuously enough on her own. There’s little I can do other than try not to add to her burden, try not to confuse our closeness for a friendship into which I can pour my details. I shouldn’t tell her how sad I become when I see giddy photographs of her father and me when we were her age. She doesn’t need to know how freeing it feels to no longer be the one – the only one – to see problems in the marriage and then try to fix them.
I try to lighten the mood. “Remember when Lionel used to try and flirt with me?” I say. “He’d ask if I was married, then re-ask a few weeks later?”
“Well,” she says. She pauses. I know something’s coming.
“I guess he died at the wrong time.”
* * *
Kindergarten: Hannah begins attending the neighborhood school, and the mom parts of my brain and the non-mom parts of my brain do battle with one another. The other mothers seem so much more at ease with the job, so much more committed. They appear to spend more time planning the annual pumpkin festival than I spent on graduate school. I try to be involved. The research in my field – psychology – tells me that involved parents are good for children. But spending time with people who talk only about their children or – worse – about their parenting makes me feel restless, sometimes even a little short of breath. I’m certain that my unease is visible, a fraying ochre shawl around my shoulders. I use the excuse that I work so much; I use the excuse of my newborn son.
Second grade: The curriculum features Colonial America. The children are assigned a character for a history fair, and Hannah is Betsy Ross. A flyer comes home with simple instructions for making the white puffy hat – known as a mob hat – worn by women of that era. I try to make one but can’t pull it off. I tell myself I don’t have to be perfect, that most of the mob hats will look like mine. At drop-off I see just how wrong I am. The other girls look adorable, somewhat authentic, even with their backpacks and sneakers. Hannah looks like a mess, more Victorian street urchin than Colonial matron. Even my eras are off.
Third grade: I go to tell her a knock-knock joke. I’m busy at the kitchen sink and she’s busy at the table, coloring. Here’s how the joke was supposed to go:
Will you always remember me?
Of course.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
What, you forgot me already?
I don’t get far into the telling.
“Will you always remember me?” I ask.
She puts down her crayon; her face becomes alarmed, then serious, then sad. “Are you kidding?” she says, her voice not far from crying.
“Of course I’ll always remember you. You’re so nice to me. You’re so funny. You’re so inappropriate.”
I rush to hug her, though she’s never been much of a hugger, to tell her that I wasn’t talking about anything serious, that it was just a joke.
“Really, honey. Listen. Knock knock. Who’s there? . . .”
She listens, she gets the joke, then her face drops back into its peaceful mode.
My daughter was eight. She called me inappropriate. And she meant it as a compliment. It’s possible that what she loved most about me was my inappropriateness. I swore more than I should have around her, let her use the small swears like “shit” quietly, as long as they weren’t used in anger. I laughed when she confessed to having given me the finger at dinner one night, under the dining room table.
Fourth Grade: They focus on U.S. migration from East to West, and there is a call for costumes. As though my mob-hat failure is mere dust behind the Conestoga, I tell myself I can sew a pioneer woman’s dress. Of course I can! Pioneer women were simple folk, and their dresses were pure simplicity. All I need is a sewing pattern, I tell Hannah in the car. All I need is some calico. And, right, a sewing machine. I buy the cheapest one I can find, then some supplies.
I’m oddly energized by this project. My Irish forbears may have been fanciful and melancholic, but the French-Canadians – my mother’s people – were sturdy and practical. They were mill workers, for heaven’s sake. It’s in my DNA. I talk with my mother; I look at old photographs of her aunts and mother, lined up in their no-nonsense wool dresses and rough black shoes, squinting into the sun. I make manic notes in a journal about channeling them, connecting back through the ages. In the margins I tell myself to consider thread and seams as metaphors. Hannah watches. I’m so happy to see her excitement that I fail to see her skepticism, her expectation of an “Oh, no” moment.
The crash comes quickly. The tissue-paper pattern blows around and I spill a drink while struggling to pin it down. My scissors aren’t sharp enough and there are thread fragments everywhere, annoying like lint. I read the instructions but have no idea what the word “selvage” means. And then the sewing machine breaks, a simple snap of plastic near the all-important needle cartridge.
“Fuck!”
Hannah asks gently, “But what about my dress?”
I answer bitchily, “Can’t you see I’m trying?”
* * *
It’s the summer between high school and college. Hannah is 17. We host a French exchange student for a couple of weeks, a young woman whose family hosted Hannah for several homesick days the year before. Hannah and I have a joke that’s the B-side of the one about her “real” mother. It’s that I have a real daughter somewhere, one who is sophisticated and worldly, never anxious or self-conscious. Before Victoria arrives, Hannah asks what if she turns out to be the daughter I’ve always wanted. It’s only partly a joke. She does worry, I think, that she disappoints me sometimes, that she’s more conventional and less complex than I’d like her to be. She doesn’t fully believe me when I say that any child who engages in vengeful urination is the perfect child for me.
As it happens, Victoria turns out to be quite remarkable. It’s an honor to host her first visit to the States. Hannah works, and Victoria and I go to the Institute of Contemporary Art. Hannah works, and we go to the Museum of Fine Arts. We eat lunch outside in the Financial District where she is fascinated by the architecture. She takes pictures while we walk; she has a real camera. Our conversations go pretty deep despite the language difference. She cautiously tells me she doesn’t want children and doesn’t believe in marriage. She seems relieved (or is she disappointed?) when she sees she hasn’t shocked me. I do feel a fondness for her, but I know that she’s just using me, in the best sense of that word.
Hannah and I bring her to New York for two days. At Grand Central, Victoria bounds out of the train and takes the lead on the platform. “I will walk this city all night,” she announces, once we’re up at street level and she’s had some time to take it all in. The nimbus that appears above Hannah’s head is visible only to me, or so I hope. It’s part thought-bubble, part dark-cloud. We know this city, and she’s never been. How dare she? I try and convince Hannah to let this be. Victoria has extensively researched the city online, I remind her. She knows exactly what she wants to see. She has excellent navigation and people skills; she has our cell phone numbers. Nothing bad will happen; she won’t really stay up all night.
That first day we stick to points around Midtown. Our hotel is near Central Park, and after check-in we walk the park, then head south. We visit MOMA, the shops, the cathedral. We go to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, then eat dinner with a friend who lives in the city. Despite the rainstorm that erupts as we finish our tiramisu, we decide to take a cab to Times Square and walk around. Once Victoria has purchased all the I Love New York souvenirs she’s intended to buy, we’re so soaked there’s nothing left to lose. Why not walk the two miles back to the hotel? Unaffected now by the pouring rain, we manage to walk slowly and savor. I’m relieved when all three of us towel-dry our hair, and our damp heads hit their pillows, at the same time.
On day two we ride the subway downtown and board the Staten Island Ferry to get a free peek at Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge. Hannah and I both tear up when Victoria tears up seeing the Statue of Liberty, then cringe when she comments on America’s obsession with security. I point to Ground Zero, to all the non-tourists on the ferry. I suggest that most of them probably knew someone who died on 9-11, that the bomb-sniffing dogs are hardly inordinate. Victoria acquiesces; Hannah eyes me with pride.
The question comes when we’re walking north on lower Broadway, Victoria many paces ahead with her camera. Hannah asks if I think she pales in comparison to Victoria. I’m distracted, keeping an eye on Victoria and worrying if I really know how to get us to Greenwich Village – what I’ve promised our visitor for her last destination. I don’t answer quickly enough. The disappointment registers in Hannah’s face, but I know from experience there’s not much I can do. It would only make matters worse if I try to explain why my answer – my curt “Of course not!” – came so late.
When we arrive at Houston Street, and I realize we just walked through SoHo, I know that the Village is within reach. But then I screw up. I screw up kind of big. We take a left onto Houston, all good, but then I become giddy seeing McDougal Street, thinking of coffee at Reggio. We take a left instead of crossing Houston and following McDougal into the Village. We snake through side streets and walk in senseless circles. We smell the river, and warily eye the men outside the warehouses. As I start to feel the beginnings of panic, Victoria asks, “We are lost?” She’s trying to sound merely curious, but it’s hard not to hear the annoyance in her voice. Checkout time at the hotel is an hour away, and we’ve just wasted nearly that much time.
We buy water from a man at his cart, and then walk a few blocks more until, like movie magic, I see the sign for Christopher Street. I know that a simple turn onto it will make everything okay. Sure, the neighborhood is still a bit rough, but it is Christopher Street. We walk a bit and then, ah, there’s the subway stop we sped below earlier, there’s Seventh Avenue. There are the charming small shops. Then there’s Stonewall, then Waverly Place (ha ha Hannie, remember that Disney Channel show?), then Sixth Avenue. Wait. Doesn’t Fifth Avenue spill into Washington Square Park? Yes, of course it does. And then we’re at the arch.
As Victoria wanders the park at short range, I sense that Hannah is sizing me up, assessing whether I’ll become smug about the lucky turn onto Christopher. It’s here under the arch that I taunt her that I’ll write the essay that will make my missteps sound intentional, as the authentic way to approach the Village. “I have no doubt you will,” she says, and because she’s still annoyed about my late answer to her question about paling in comparison, I don’t know how to interpret the remark. In the cab back to the hotel, the driver bitching about traffic, I realize that Hannah will believe for a while that she doesn’t quite measure up to Victoria’s free-spirited intensity and curiosity. Nothing I do or say will change that. It’s the flip side, maybe, of my own immutable worries about my parenting. Yeah, yeah, all parents are imperfect, I get it. Yeah, I know, kids are resilient. But what if my imperfections have caused harm? What if all my little hypocrisies have done real damage, damage that I can’t yet see?
*
If I had known, back in that summer after high school, who she would become in college, would I have told her? Would she have listened? Would she have believed that she would flower in the ways that she has? That seeing Bob Dylan live, in his 70s, would change her. That she would rush to read his memoir and text me asking if the Montague Street in Tangled Up in Blue is the same one in Brooklyn where we’d just dined for her birthday. That Dylan would bring her to Rimbaud, and she’d read him on the floor of my narrow home office while I wrote, sharing excerpts from time to time. That Rimbaud would bring her to Ferlinghetti and she’d read Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West aloud to me while we’re out in the car one day. That she would sing off-the-cuff medleys of Beatles lines to us, just to make us laugh: When I was younger so much younger than today/You say goodbye I say hello/Baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue. That her crush on the Village-era Dylan would bring her to isolate the electronic “han-na” syllables in Visions of Johanna and mash them together with romantic lines from other of his songs. That any time she wanted to make us laugh she could play him singing to her: Han-na, lay across my big brass bed. Han-na, I want you. Han-na, my one true love.
Thankfully, all this new energy extends into the classroom. She excels as never before, on her own terms, by her own rules. She excels in her psychology major and then applies to double-major in marketing, so maybe she’ll be able, unlike her mother, to earn a salary that will allow her to live in Manhattan for a while. She worries that the competitive business school at her state university won’t accept her. I have no idea if she’ll get in, but I can’t imagine anything blocking her success now.
Last November, Hannah is 20, the two of us plan an overnight in New York, the sole purpose of which is to finally understand how the Village is laid out. We call it the “Make that Neighborhood Our Bitch Tour.” We research and we study; we plot our walking. We come at it from the West, from what we think is the south end of Chelsea. Recently, she’d visited with cousins and they’d eaten Mexican in the West Village, and Hannah is happy to navigate us there for an early dinner. After dinner we walk some more, and we arrive at Christopher Street just as twilight hits and the lights start going on. All other colors seem suppressed for a while, as if they’ve surrendered to the dark blue of the sky and the soft yellow of the streetlamps.
And we nail it. We see it all, the way we should, at least as far as we can tell — a full-bodied and calm version of what unfolded so jaggedly with Victoria, but this time including McDougal Street. We end at Washington Square, head east, then north on Broadway to find the Strand Book Store. We stand for a while looking at two bearded men near nonfiction. They both look like Allen Ginsburg in the 1960s, and they’re arguing passionately about health policy. I whisper that they’re actors hired by the book store for authenticity purposes and our smirks match. She buys – what else? – a book of Bob Dylan’s prose poetry; I buy Gertrude Stein’s book written for children.
I post two photos as my Facebook status. The first is of her on the steps of Dylan’s old apartment. I caption it Positively 4th Street. She made me take more than one, worried that her face would look too full, wanting her hair to look good. It is a pilgrimage after all. The second is of her strolling into Bleecker Street Records. Her hair, more reddish-brown now than the blonde of her childhood, is long with subtle curls, beach waves I think she told me they’re called. Her real mother would know. She’s in a blue pea coat, black leggings, high leather boots the exact color of her hair; she may have planned that. Her stride is long, and you can sense the movement of her hair swinging.
“Wow, just look at the strut,” a friends says days later when I show her the photo, “What confidence!”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Except for that left hand.”
It’s a detail only a mother could see, maybe that only this mother could see. She had just adjusted something, some article of clothing, near her left hip. I can tell it was an instant of self-consciousness, of not being fully at ease. It is a pilgrimage after all. The photo is blurry just in that one spot, showing the exact moment when she’s done adjusting, and her hand is moving back to its resting, comfortable, confident place by her side. The blur seems to be announcing her arrival – at the record store, the Village, and maybe even at adulthood. The blur seems to be telling her: Relax. You’ve got this. Welcome to your future.
• • •
Anne Noonan teaches psychology at a public university north of Boston. Her creative nonfiction work has appeared in Prick of the Spindle, SNReview, The Sextant, and Soundings East (the latter under the pseudonym Evie Hartnick).