And there’s another little shift here, inside you, a little shift where it feels, physically, like the amount of air in your lungs is now just over capacity, that someone’s inside your head with a flail, that if you were to loosen your jaw, which is currently clenched as though wired shut, packs of rabid hyenas would fly out. To say that these feelings and thoughts are a shock is not strong enough, and at first you simply shake, not knowing what to do with it, but soon enough you understand that it has to come out, you are sure that if you let it out it will be gone, and so you turn to me, because I am the one who is there, and you do manage not to scream — you can see that I am still only a six-year-old, just as I was the day before — but you say, with an intensity that I know means you are screaming in your mind, Your father is not who you think he is!
Why Does Your Mother Have So Many Problems?
Your theater company thrives. You have a big hit with a show called Why Does My Mother Have So Many Problems?
An excerpt:
The set consists of three bare walls and a small, worn floral sofa in the center with an ancient standing lamp on one side. Suspended from the rafters in front of the two side walls, facing each other, are two massive frames. The frame on the left features a Chuck Close — sized portrait of me; the frame on the right holds a mirror. Ben is seated on the sofa, reading; Betsy is stage left, looking into the mirror.
BETSY: I’ve been thinking of redecorating.
BEN: (takes a beat) I think that’s a really good idea.
BETSY: What do you think about a sectional sofa?
BEN looks up at the audience, deadpan.
BETSY: (still looking deeply into the mirror, which of course reflects both herself and the portrait of her mother) My mother has so many problems.
That guy who did Titanic buys the rights to make it into a movie. There’s talk of Julia Roberts playing me; ludicrous, but I guess Catherine Deneuve wouldn’t be able to play young me. Either way, the movie never comes to be. Still, it doesn’t matter, the movie rights buy you and Benjamin a beautiful house on the lake with a view of the Chicago skyline.
— Mom, surely you know that James Cameron is not going to buy the rights to an absurdist play.
— Absurdist? Who’s James Cameron? Do you want a lake house or not?
— Okay, yes, sure, why not.
You’re way too old to have kids of your own now, so you adopt a fourteen-year-old girl, Maritza, but you’re in way over your head on that one. You would have done better to take home a boy. Ordinary fourteen-year-old girls are tough, and this one’s been in foster care for too long; thankfully she’s not on drugs, like a lot of them, but she’s got more than enough on her plate without that, she’s just pissed at the world, and the world has given her reason to be; you do whatever possible to help her, send her to an excellent private school, ask her what she’s interested in, with the idea that you’ll help nurture those interests, but right now she’s interested in one thing, a sixteen-year-old boy. This is an area of expertise, an area you’re sure you could help her with — you were fourteen once, you know this and that about boys — but you’re not getting through to her, because she’s fourteen. You don’t understand, old lady! she screams. I don’t know what it was like back when you were fourteen or if you were ever really fourteen but you have no idea what it’s like, old lady. She only calls you “old lady,” refuses to call you by your name, and “Mom” will never be an option; this was the first thing she told you when she walked through the door and so far she’s sticking to it.
You cry to Benjamin about this every night. Maritza’s right. What was I thinking? you sob, she’s half Puerto Rican and half black and half Portuguese and what do I know about any of that? I should have thought about all that! I thought we could just love her! He’s very sweet. He doesn’t have too many ideas about what to do, either, but he promises you’ll get through it together, swears that all she needs is time and patience; she’s been horribly neglected and god knows what else for years; she has no reason to think we’re any different from anyone else. But we are, aren’t we? you ask him, and he says Sure we are, of course we are, but you’re not totally sure, maybe you’re fundamentally part of the problem, that you’re part of the universe that allowed this to happen to her in the first place, and he’s not totally sure either, but you wonder what you could do to change that, not just with Maritza but maybe at the theater, initiate some community arts programs, get underserved kids involved in some way.
— This is getting a little closer, Mom, but I think there’s a missed opportunity here. I think your story is still more interesting than mine.
— And whose fault is that?
— Why does something always have to be someone’s fault?
— How could anything not be someone’s fault?
— You’re missing my point.
— Can’t some things just be what they are?
— What?
— Look, I can’t help it if you think I’m more interesting than you. But honestly, Betsy, would you ever have wanted to be inside my head?
— I feel a little bit like I’m inside your head now, which is why I’m only writing this about an hour at a time.
— Right, and you don’t know the half of it.
It’s 1968!
New York is harder than you thought it would be. You’re not sorry you decided to come, not one bit, but you hadn’t given much thought to the single mom thing, to the single thing. The single thing is not your thing, and it never was your thing, and so you head into dating as full-on as you do everything else. You meet several more men through Carolina, a few more through other friends. Not one man who meets you isn’t interested. That is never the problem. All men who meet you are interested. But you need only one, ideally one who is everything Fred isn’t. So after a number of uninspiring dates you settle on Stan, a nice Jewish man, an attorney at an entertainment law firm, works in the city, lives in a big stone house in Westchester. He’s got two sons, my age and younger, thankfully they have a mother already, one they live with. You and Stan spend a great deal of time together; he’s not the first person you sleep with after the split, but he is the first to sleep over, and you’re not quite sure how to handle this. You’re not ready for is-this-my-new-daddy-type questions. So you have him leave before I get up in the morning; this goes on for a good while. Stan is gaga for you. He doesn’t spill the L word too soon, doesn’t want to scare you off, but this forty-two-year-old man with gray in his eyebrows can barely hold it in, says he’s sure now that light didn’t exist before you, tells you to pick out any star in the sky you fancy and he’ll make it yours, that you are the most captivating creature he’s ever laid eyes on and that he can’t imagine what he did right to get to be with you, but that he is grateful. Fred never said thing one like that; he was kind, but his compliments were mild, like the fluff from a dandelion; Dinner was delicious! about a pork chop you laid in a pan and salted, Mommy’s such a good seamstress! about the woolen coat you made for me. Without a doubt, he found you exceptionally beautiful, he just wasn’t inclined to say it out loud very often. But Stan’s boyish admiration isn’t quite on the mark either; it’s harder to hear about your immeasurable beauty than you imagined; turns out it’s nearly unbearable because you know it isn’t true. Or worse, even if it is true now, you know that one day you’ll be old and wrinkled and measurably less beautiful, and you care, and you’re going to hell for it. Around the five-month mark, you’re stripping the bed to do laundry and discover, written in red Magic Marker on your pillow, STAN LOVES LOIS inside a big red heart. It’s meant to be a romantic surprise, of course, but what it really is, is the sign you needed to be sure that Lois does not love Stan. Making matters worse, you are in no financial position to throw out a perfectly good pillow, which is exactly what you’d do if you could. Some nerve he has, not thinking of that. You turn it over and put a new pillowcase right on it and that’s the end of that. You will break it off tonight, and Stan will be crushed, but soon enough he’ll find another woman to put on a pedestal and then divorce again, though he doesn’t know this now. And it’s no concern of yours.