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  THAT NIGHT MY UNCLE, Ira, flew to White Plains airport, and the next morning my father and he drove me the six hours up to camp, to be with Tony.

  Along the way to Treetops, it rained. Dad and Ira talked of inconsequential things. I, only six years old and frightened of the strange turn of events, sat in the backseat, dumb and virtually ignored. While I knew nothing of the disaster we were leaving behind, I cannot understand how the two of them avoided dropping in their tracks from the pressure. Halfway there we passed a flatbed truck carrying part of a house that had literally been sawed in two. A little farther on was the other half. Did Dad and Ira even see the unavoidably personal symbol it later came to represent to me: a world cut in two?

  Arriving at Treetops in the evening, I was put to bed in a room all by myself. Ira and Dad promised to visit me in the morning. For now, though, I was alone. My mother had not said good-bye to me. She, who was always to be by my side, comforting me when things got tough, had simply disappeared. I cried myself to sleep.

  In the morning Tony came to my room. He didn’t ask questions, simply taking me by the hand to the staircase. Alongside the stairs was a long, curving wooden slide on which the braver kids descended from the second floor to the first. I was enchanted by it and gave it a try. Then another, and another. Tony had to drag me to breakfast.

  Later in the day, I wrote and mailed a letter. “Dear Mommy,” I said, “I don’t like it here. I want to come home.” Dad and Ira came by, as promised, but then said they had to go. By now, with Tony as my protector and guide, I was sufficiently secure to let them leave. But that night I cried my eyes out again. How was I to interpret this abandonment by the one person with whom I had experienced such joy for six years?

  But children can be resilient, and as the ten days passed, in which my main memory is of sunshine, bad food, and carpentry shop, the lonely nights, fear, and bewilderment began to fade.

  Had the recriminations already begun down there in White Plains? Were they arguing over how to tell us about Mother’s death? Were Missy and Dad fighting over who was at fault in this terrible no-win war? Should they have gone back to shock therapy? Should they have kept a “suicide watch”? Should they have trusted the psychoanalyst?

  Dad once told me that he spoke to Dr. Nunberg shortly after Mother’s death, to try to glean a hint of how this event had not been foreseen. The doctor said, “How could she do this to me?”

  Dad was horrified, but said nothing to reprimand him.

  But wasn’t that what they all were thinking? How could this beautiful, sweet, talented woman desert me? Shame me. Anger me. Make me feel guilty. Make me fear for my own life.

  Ten days after Mother’s suicide, Tony and I came home, and Dad met us at the train station. I was six and Tony was eight. Normally, if either of us had been anywhere, it was Mother who picked us up. This experience was again not normal. I had never been to sleepaway camp, nor had I been absent from the house for more than a night. It was all strange, and the fact that Mother was not there made it even stranger.

  “Where’s my mother?” I asked as Dad opened the car door for us.

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” he said.

  Once we were on our way, I asked again.

  Dad said, “You remember that your mother was sick when you left?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, she died.”

  I turned toward the backseat and said to Tony, “Don’t believe him. He’s just kidding.”

  “No,” said my father. “I’m not kidding.”

  His face was solemn, but there were no tears, no quivering voice. I began to cry, and as I looked back at Tony, there was moistness in his eyes, but he did not sob or weep. Dad asked if we wanted him to pull over to the side of the road so we could cry. We said no. We wanted to go home. Maybe we’d find out he was wrong about Mother.

  When my own young children wept, I found it impossible not to sweep them up into my arms and comfort them. Even today—they are in their thirties—I would find it impossible not to hug them if they were in pain. I do not recall any such behavior on my father’s part—not then, not in subsequent weeks. Maybe my memory is faulty. Tony never did remember the events of those years, so he was no help. But I recall that we all froze in place, and only I gave way to the emotion of the moment.

  As we reached our house, I ran inside, shouting to anyone who would listen: “My mother’s dead. My mother’s dead.” Of course, they knew it. They knew it beyond reason and doubt.

  It would be ten years before we learned the truth.

  During those years, Dad never spoke about Mother. Nor did anyone else. It was as if she hadn’t existed. Tony and I were well-behaved little boys. We should have attended a memorial service where we could mourn and share our grief with others. We should have been given a chance to say good-bye. We should have been asking, “How did Mother die?” We didn’t ask, because that’s the way the adults seemed to want it. To some this may seem difficult to believe. How could two children not inquire what had happened to their mother—so mysteriously there one day and not the next? The answer lies in the tenacity of my father’s game plan to “protect” us (and himself) from the terrible experience, in the lie itself (“she died because she was sick”), which was so bland as to be believable, and, finally, in our wish to be good and careful and silent, so that bad things wouldn’t happen again. But underneath, at least for me, the questions kept coming. Answers did not come.

  AS SUMMERS END, I reflect on the several anniversaries that are coming up: the suicide on August 23; the return from Tripp Lake Camp in early September.

  I was taught from childhood to be a rational man.

  I do not believe in astrological signs.

  I do not avoid black cats or leaning ladders.

  I laugh when the elevator passes the twelfth floor and comes next to fourteen.

  I try to organize my life around what I can see, what I can hold in my hands, what I can prove.

  And yet—

  I believe deeply in anniversaries.

  OF THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS, I have almost no memory. My psychiatrist later said that it was some kind of defensive fugue—an attempt to garrison myself against feelings of helplessness and despair, not to mention intense rage, at my mother’s disappearance. I just could not comprehend it. No one took the time to tell me of her illness and angst. It was considered too grown-up a discussion to have with a six-year-old boy (or, for that matter, with Tony, an eight-year-old). As a consequence, I went through a series of painful question-and-answer sessions within myself: “Why me?” and “What if?” and “What did I do?” questions. The answers were all unpalatable, full of self-blame and self-doubt; I finally put them away, deep into my unconscious. I do not know what Tony thought or felt. Years later, when we could finally discuss these matters, my brother professed no recollection of the events preceding or immediately following Mother’s death. Nor did he indicate any desire to pursue the subject. It was, he insisted, another indication of my “preoccupation” with death. To my mind, not tackling the subject, continuing to shove it out of his consciousness, left Tony vulnerable to a barrage of feelings that sandbagged him over and over again.

  In 1941, Missy quickly took over the household. She stayed for a year, bringing with her an I-am-always-right attitude. Missy had firmly dominated Mother’s activities and behaviors until—judging by her letters from Europe—Elizabeth struggled and then did pull clear of my grandmother’s taffy-like grasp, finding both freedom and madness. It was a struggle with control and self-control with which I can empathize. I also found myself torn between Missy’s overprotective grip and freedom.

  I can think of no better demonstration of her sense of rectitude and her need to control than a story told me by Ira. In 1933, before Mother had been so ill, Ira had entered medical school and was studying for his first year’s big exams. Missy, always concerned for his health because of his youthful tuberculosis, wrote and suggested that he accompany her to Marblehead for a w
eek, so she could make sure he was well.

  “You need a rest,” she said.

  He replied, “I have exams. I can’t go.”

  A day later, she arrived at Johns Hopkins and told him that she had talked to the dean, who said it was okay for him to take the examinations when he came back.

  Imagine them, then, the twenty-three-year-old Ira and his forty-eight-year-old mother, up in beautiful Marblehead, sunning on the beach, eating good food. Ira loved to sail, and I can envision him out on his own (Missy wouldn’t go near the boats) in one of the sloops of his day, taking in the sylvan coastline, letting the boat heel over against his touch on the tiller, doing the balancing act that all sailors do: between speed and safety. Perhaps he experienced frustration at his mother’s insistence that he turn in early—as did I, twenty years later. Perhaps he felt embarrassed when she told him to wear a sweater, or suggested he meet that “nice girl” at the table next to them.

  After a week, refreshed, ready to take his exams, Ira returned to Johns Hopkins only to learn that he had been failed for not taking his finals. He rushed to see the dean.

  “But my mother . . .,” he explained.

  Actually, Missy had never talked to the dean. Luckily, when that august personage learned what had happened, he allowed Ira to take makeup examinations. And Ira had that story to add to his list of Missy tales.

  MISSY BROUGHT WITH HER ANNA FUCHS, the refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Conversant in several languages, this tall, thin woman with a craggy Slavic face served to guide and protect Tony and myself; we were both desperately in need of a friendly and understanding person to watch over us. Baba was there, too, but more and more it was Anna and Missy who were our guardians.

  That next summer Dad sent us off to camp while he wrestled with financial matters. Then, coughing violently and feeling weak, he went for a chest X-ray. Tuberculosis was diagnosed. While we were still away at camp, he underwent a pneumothorax operation. One of his lungs had become so infected the physicians needed to deflate it—to allow it to recover. The operation left Dad weak.

  What hurt the most for Dad was not the pain or the disease but that he had just started work at the Society for the Prevention of Crime. The Society was formed in the mid-nineteenth century to shut down porno shops and houses of prostitution. By the time Dad got there, however, it had a formidable board of advisers, including the director of federal prisons, professors, judges, and important public figures in New York City. By the 1940s, the Society had changed its goals from trying to prevent crime to trying to prevent criminals, a vastly different and equally difficult—if not impossible—enterprise.

  Dad signed on with great enthusiasm.

  Now, however, just as this exciting work was beginning, he was forced to leave the Society for a “cure” in a TB sanitarium.

  He had lost his wife and his health, and he would soon have to sell his home. He had some hard decisions to make, including what to do with us while he was away. He knew one thing: he wanted us to be anywhere but with Missy, who had offered to take us with her to New York City and send us to public school there. Dad would have none of that. He and Missy had been violently in disagreement on what treatment to give Mother. They each felt that her suicide was the result of leaning too heavily on the wrong therapy. This sad conclusion on their part caused rifts between them that disrupted all our lives for years. When Dad had to go away for treatment, it was impossible for him to ignore the consequences he foresaw if he “gave us over” to Missy.

  He decided to sell the house and send us to Vermont, to the Putney School, a boarding school that Mother had learned about years earlier. Missy was appalled. In a series of letters, Dad tried to explain to Ira, who was now in a public service job in New Orleans, why he was sending us away to school despite Missy’s “kind offer” to harbor us.

  These letters have always struck me as remarkably obfuscatory; he clearly wanted to keep his feelings from his brother-in-law. The letters are also remarkable for the formality of style, so very different from Mother’s free flow of thought.

  July 28, 1942

  Dear Ira:

  It was good of you to phone last night.

  I want to reassure you on one point. MBS is one of the most generous and thoughtful people I ever knew. Her motives are always unimpeachable; her desire to be helpful can never be questioned.

  Were this all, I should have no hesitancy in saying that my mind would be free of the concern over the welfare of the children during my enforced inactivity for the coming year. But, simultaneously, she is the victim of a tremendous drive which manifests itself in an unpredictable fashion; her highly neurotic reactions to situations, especially as concerns the children, charges the atmosphere with a kind of electric hecticity that results in an unevenness of routine, to say nothing of the basic unevenness in the degree and manifestations of devotion toward one as contrasted with the other. In this connection, I want to emphasize “manifestations,” because, in the last analysis, it is natural for a person to feel more affection and sympathy toward T or K; and it would be unnatural for us to expect M or anyone else to feel essentially the same toward both. However, it is against the demonstration of any difference in feeling that I object.

  There may also be a hangover from our differences in relations to E’s illness; but I won’t go into that now, and I have never discussed that subject with her since that fateful conference last August.

  I am determined to become well, even if I become broke in the process.

  The other side of the coin: Missy writes to Dad.

  Dear Eddie:

  I hope your convalescence will be less tedious and swifter than you anticipate. Since I realize that my personality does produce conflicts, it seems the better part of wisdom to remove it. If you want me at any time or if I can be of any use to you or the children, remember I am standing by.

  Affectionately,

  May

  Both of these letters are extraordinarily disingenuous. Dad never felt that Missy’s generosity was authentic, and I often heard him rail against her motives. There is a story that she offered to adopt me at one point, which left Dad apoplectic. As for Missy, she always felt that Dad was an unfeeling man and that only she could take proper care of us.

  Yet what strikes me most, every time I read these letters, is a recurrent fear of mine that Dad did indeed feel differently toward Tony than toward me. In fact, I never believed that he loved me, or thought me as smart or as diligent or as “important” as Tony. When he shouted at me or reprimanded me (“Don’t run so fast!” “Can’t you sit still?” “How many times do I have to tell you?”), I was sure he was doing it with more passion or with a greater degree of anger than with Tony.

  Perhaps he would have been shocked to hear that I felt singled out. Perhaps it was simply my own miserable self-doubt and insecurity that painted this portrait. Perhaps Dad loved us both equally, or came to love us both equally.

  Or none of the above. Children’s feelings about parents are complex, and I do not pretend to be so “analyzed” that I can ever totally sort mine out. For years, I had very angry feelings toward Dad. I believed that he had taken Mother away from me—on purpose.

  Missy did favor some of her grandchildren over others and was not able—or willing—to hide it. When cousins and grandchildren assembled for the holidays, she sometimes gave gifts to one or another of us that were radically different in value. She saw no harm in this. She showered affection on me openly. And I responded with delight. Tony, who could never bring himself to offer Missy the unfettered “I love you” that she required, was treated to a different level of affection: reasonable, but not unconditional. Of course, her love for me was not really unconditional. As I grew and (at a late age) finally pulled myself from the relationship, I realized that my grandmother needed my complete and undivided attention. She did not want to let me go. Ever.

  Was Tony wise to cut himself off from her right at the beginning? Or was he unable to control how
he behaved? Until I began to reflect on our past, I did not think deeply about how my brother might have felt being the odd man out. I had assumed that he was glad not to be at Missy’s beck and call, pleased to be free to remain shut up in our room, reading a good book, while I went into the living room to listen to the piano or into her bedroom to chat with her and answer whatever probing questions she had. When Missy said, “A penny for your thoughts,” it wasn’t a casual statement. She was perfectly willing to pay—in candy, money, a movie, a new coat or sled—as long as I was willing to tell her what I was thinking about.

  But did Tony feel slighted? Was his withdrawal actually not a welcome release but the reaction of a hurt little boy? What, in short, if he was showing not insensitivity to Missy but a great deal of sensitivity?

  Back in 1942, there were no such questions, no such thoughts. What I know now is that, despite Missy’s firm grasp on me—and the battles it caused with Dad—I came through my childhood as well as I did because Missy cared and took care of me.

  In 1942, however, Tony and I mourned the loss of our White Plains home. Someday, we knew, when we were grown, we would buy the house at 250 Rosedale Avenue—and live there happily ever after.

  IF TUBERCULOSIS WAS DAD’S WORST NEWS, the most severe blow to Tony and me was that, for the second year in a row, a parent was ill and would leave us. And we would leave him. Who knew what might follow?

  Anna told us not to show our grief: “Your father needs all the sympathy he can get.” It was the only bad advice she ever gave me. In retrospect, it seems to me that we needed all the sympathy we could get. At the ages of seven and nine, we had already lost our mother to a mysterious death, our father was ill and going away, our home was being sold, and we were being sent two hundred miles away to a place we’d never heard of, to be taken care of by people who were total strangers.