The anger.
This was the second week of May, they had at last heard from their daughter, who was living with someone named Paul on a Greek island named Mykonos. (“Are you someone?” an autograph hound once asked Connie outside the Helen Hayes Theater on an opening night. When was the last time she and Jamie had attended an opening together? Where had her husband gone? “Are you someone?”) Sometimes when she called the studio from work, the phone rang and rang with no one there to answer it. And when she discreetly (she hoped) questioned him later about where he’d been on those particular days, he always had a ready reason for his absence: he’d been in the city ordering supplies (But can’t you order supplies on the phone? she thought) or having some prints made (Isn’t there a darkroom at the studio, darling?) or interviewing a model or seeing Lew Barker or etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was all the etceteras that bothered Connie. She wondered now if he went into the city at all on those days when he was away from the studio. Was he spending the time up here in the country instead, frolicking with Diana Blair?
Connie sometimes fantasized that she had a father who was kindly and understanding, generous to a fault, capable of discoursing on lofty subjects beyond her own ken or intelligence, warm and loving, offering advice untainted by prejudice, supportive and wise, entirely objective and uncensoring, a Judge Hardy (Harding?) who would call her into his study for a little chat before the fireplace. But Peter Harding, for all his nominal similarity to the character acted by Lewis Stone, whom she’d adored on the screens of countless movie theaters when she was a young girl (in those days, she had also loved Mickey Rooney with a passion beyond belief) was not the man to help her in the solution of anything more important than the pressing problem of the front doorbelclass="underline" “You should have had them put a little light on it,” he’d once said, “so your company can see it in the dark.”
She had longed in these past several months to be able to spill out to him her innumerable fears about Lissie traveling alone through God knew which foreign countries, the dark and forbidding prospect that her daughter might never again return home, the confusion she’d felt about Lissie’s inconsiderateness, the unthinkable possibility that she might be injured or even killed while she was thousands of miles away. But no. “She’ll call, don’t worry,” and then dismissal of his granddaughter, as though the offspring of offspring were of absolutely no earthly concern to a man who ran his life with all the stopwatch precision of a time-analyst.
Oh, how she longed to open her heart to him, reveal to him everything that was troubling her about her daughter — and her husband. Who else was there to tell? Her mother was more a child than Lissie was, and her sister in Los Angeles had never truly been a confidante. It seemed ironic to her that the one person she had always trusted completely, the one person with whom she had always felt safe in confiding anything at all, was now the one person she could not ask for advice. Had Jamie gone alone to Louisville last week, or had he taken a woman with him? Oh, God, she thought. Help me, she thought. Help me, Daddy. What should I do?
Sometimes she found herself trembling with impotent rage, feeling in those moments utterly female, helpless in the grip of a centuries-old conspiracy of bondage and servitude, realizing in a flash as terrifying as an ozone-stinking bolt of lightning just how dependent she was on this man to whom she was married. Perhaps her father was correct in never deigning to honor her own silly occupation, her fiddling with the handicapped, the exalted $16,000-a-year job that would, should Jamie ever leave her, pay for almost none of the things she now shared with him.
Shamed by a glimpse of this selfish person who was herself, revolted by her own lack of courage, disgusted by this quaking fragile view of herself as the end product of a civilization that asked its females to drink sperm and enjoy it besides, knowing she should say something, storm at Jamie, insist on knowing, demand apologies, exact penance, force him to kiss her ass and lick her shoes, reduce this... this... rotten son of a bitch — and the rage would rise again, overwhelming her with its force.
Holding back her tears, refusing to cry, afraid to challenge him, hating him and loving him at the same time, bewildered and helpless in her confusion, she thought I have to do something, I have to save it, and wished with all her heart that her daughter was here by her side, to help remind Jamie that there was something important here they had all shared together and lived together — instead of on Mykonos where the green hills were flecked with flowers and the air blew in fresh over the Aegean.
May 20, 1970
Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello! Hello!
Deep breathing and yoga in the first rays of the deep orange sun. A quick cool dip in crystal waters and a walk to town. An argument with some officials who thought I came illegally from Turkey, a brisk retaliation, and the day has begun. Morning tea sings to me a soft song, the second day of fasting.
Paul and I have found a house on Samos which suits our needs and now it’s time to live. A small ancient villa overlooking a beautiful beach, mountains, air, food and insects. Paul is a very dear person, and we are trying to live honestly.
We came here via Santorini which is supposed to be the Lost City of Atlantis. Vampire bats, strange superstitious people, and a volcano. Black sand and religious festivals and incredible stars. But here I am in my new home with Paul and many thoughts realized. I’m reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, and I would deeply appreciate it if at some point you could send me any more of his books you may find in the shops there. It is very warm here, now, and I do feel great. My Greek is improving “oreo” and I can handle any situation. Please write to me % Poste Restante, Kokkári, Samos, Greece. All my love to everyone.
Your loving daughter,
May 29, 1970
Dear Lissie:
I can’t pretend I’m thrilled. It is not enough to lie and to deceive and then apologize for it afterward. The moment we got an address for you, I wanted to fly over there and drag you home by the hair. Your mother advised me that this was not the right thing to do. You are, after all, eighteen years old, you will be nineteen in December. That is supposed to be an adult. But I’m still not sure I wasn’t right. I do not like your lying, I do not like your getting money from us under false pretenses, I do not like your dropping out of school, and I definitely do not like your living with someone we do not know. Don’t any of the kids today have last names? What is Paul’s last name? Who is he?
Are you deliberately trying to cause anxiety, Liss? Would it have been so difficult for you to drop at least a card between this letter and the one before it? To let us know whether or not you were still on Mykonos, still in good health, still alive, for God’s sake! Never mind, let it go. Mom says I shouldn’t express any anger in my letter to you. All right, I won’t express any anger.
We called your grandparents the moment we heard from you, and I expect you’ll be getting some mail from them shortly, if you haven’t already moved on from the address you gave us. A small ancient villa overlooking the beach sounds very nice. Please fill us in. How many rooms are there, what’s the layout, how much is it costing you a month, and so on? What time do you get up, what time do you eat, what do you eat, when do you swim (is it really warm enough there for swimming now), when do you go to sleep, and have you any plans for finding some sort of job while you’re there? Please tell us all, as we’d very much like to know.