There was a group of people on the island that had held musical evenings/get-togethers for everyone in the neighborhood from the time I was a baby. Every Sunday night, we'd go to the home of the B. family, have drinks and snacks (plenty of wine for the adults, as I recall), and sing, with a few prominent musicians among us accompanying the music. Sometimes there were 30 or 40 people there at a time. The B. family was extremely musical, with R., the mom, a very steady piano accompanist and good sight-reader; H., the dad, an excellent accordionist (no, really!) and strong singer; and two of the sons, S. and J., classical/folk guitarists and excellent vocalists. Some of my favorite early memories were of showing up for the evening, starting with a few hymns (like "Day is Dying In the West", just as the sun was sinking over the water), then progressing to folks tunes and sometimes to Beatles songs or (if J. the guitarist was there --- he'd moved to Brazil and the music there had really been important for him) gorgeous South American music. When I was very young, I'd be asleep by the end of the evening, but still marinating in that wonderful music.
These summer Sunday musicales went on from before I was born and are still going on, I believe. However, my family's attendance dropped off gradually as my brothers and I went to college, although we'd still go back sometimes, in dribs and drabs, and have a great time. These reunions were always wonderful, although as time went on and I learned more about my mother's extracurricular activities over the years, H. (the father of this family) figured quite prominently. H., probably about 15 years my mother's senior, began an affair with my mom when I was two (1968) which continued, on an off, until the late 90s. A Harvard professor with a lot of reason to travel for conferences, he had several European mistresses as well. But somehow, the entire B. family knew only about his affair with my mom, and resented her for it, although with various levels of politesse. Even H.'s wife R. was very civil to my mom. But the knowledge was there, so there was no putting that genie back in its bottle.
So our periodic visits back to these evening musicales went well, until about 2000 or thereabouts. Both my mother and H. seemed to be drinking even more than usual, for some reason; perhaps the unspoken layer behind the polite exteriors was becoming more difficult to manage. My mom, perhaps somewhat understandably, had grown tired of being blamed for all of H.'s philandering, because in reality she had represented only a fraction of it over the years. H. himself, well over 80, was just growing a bit senile, plain and simple. Neither of them could hold their liquor as well as they had in the past --- that much was certain.
People would come and go from the living room, where the music was happening, into the kitchen for snacks, or out on the deck if they wanted to have a conversation without disturbing the music. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't seen my mom in 20 or 30 minutes. I checked all around the compound and finally found her outside, away from the house, having an extremely animated conversation with J. (the guitarist, son of H.) and a few others. As I walked up to them in the moonlight, I saw her standing there as someone else was speaking. Then, gradually, without her realizing what was happening, she...fell...backward into a bush, without so much as as a stumble or a yip. When she hit the ground, she seemed extremely surprised and laughed nervously. I helped her up. This should have been our cue to leave, but instead...
Later, back in the kitchen, her conversation with J. continued. I was increasingly embarassed to see that she was not just flirting with him, but really coming on to him, almost unaware that not only were there other people in the room, but that *I* was standing right next to her. He'd had a few too, and was as sweet and courteous as he could be in rebuffing her, but it was just beyond ugly. He kept looking at me with a sort of "help me" look in his eye. Eventually he found some excuse to go back into the living room, leaving quickly, with an almost haunted look on his face. This 40-ish guy, 30+ years her junior, son of my mother's man-on-the-side over several decades, who *knew* about the affair but just wanted everyone to still all get along as friends and let bygones be bygones, was obviously beyond horrified at her behaviour.
Later, when I drove her back to the house, she fell on her way to bed, hit her head on the dresser, and left a puddle of piss on the floor. Yes, she'd always been self-absorbed, but at least in the past she'd always been dignified (in my company, anyway). What a shame that the relationship the B. family and mine had enjoyed over decades, that so many family members on both sides had fought to maintain even in the face of H. and mom's affair, had to end in such a way. I'm sure the B. family would have any of us back any time, but that's only because they're so excrutiatingly generous and polite. I'm not sure I could or would go back, at this point. The maintenance of the relationship between the two families was based so much on tact and restraint, over a span of decades. She torpedoed all of those efforts in a single night of unseemly drinking and deeply inappropriate, unwelcome leering.
The next morning, as I should have expected, she complained about her throbbing head and the small laceration at her temple. All well and good, I suppose, but she also should have been apologizing to me, taking a good, long look at her behaviour, and even considering how to apologize to J. Not surprisingly, none were forthcoming.
UPDATE, 12/07: In talking with my brother M. recently, he said he had a conversation with J. after the incident (without knowledge of the incident). J. told M. "your mother is a bad "viaje'" (which is "trip" in Spanish)...he was being pretty diplomatic, it seems, given the circumstances. J. didn't tell M. about the incident, showing a lot of restraint; M. learned about the incident from my blog. How many other fun episodes have we all missed along the way?
2 comments:
So much of this blog makes me think. Not everything about our mutual experiences is on point, but sometimes a sliver of what I read, gets me thinking.
I was looking for the entry about how your mother, Elise, banked on her looks and her charm and her intelligence and wit for so many years - and now that they are in short supply, her "public" has evaporated. Difference in my case is that my mother was an actress; she spent tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgeries in the 80s, while I worked my student jobs and took scholarships at my boarding school and at college. When I was in high school, she was married to her 2nd husband and was not my custodial parent - no obligation to pay anything for me then, and no obligation to pay anything after I was 18. (To help pay anything for college would have been helping out my father, her enemy, who had sole custody.)
I'm actually not sure of the logistics in retrospect - let me just say that when it comes to the divorce of my parents, when you say "scorched earth policy" - that is about right.
My thing was that my mother always flirted with my boyfriends. She would always come right out and say "when you decide to marry a girl, they say you should always look at the mother first!" It was very weird, I remember my boyfriends looking alternately like: "who's talking marriage?!" and at my mom like they hoped to God I would NOT be anything like her. (That part was kind of funny, and I always had to explain it later: "my mom's an actress.")
She really always believed she was the Belle of the Ball, the one that everyone wanted to have at their parties. The one everyone was envious of.
I remember episodes where she would actively start looking up high school chums from 50 years earlier, old suburban neighbors from 30 years earlier. She just wanted to always compare how much more she had than what they had, she thought she was such a success.
I feel bad for you, Elise, putting myself in your shoes with your mom falling apart at a party, and you being left feeling like YOU can't look these people in the eye again. I completely relate (hence my story about my wedding - my mom passing out in the ladies' room with my bridesmaids frantically trying to keep her from me).
That same night, I remember her asking the young doctor who had called in the "inhaler" prescription (and indeed, taken a taxi to pick it up), to hold her hand in the ladies' room.
**shaking head now with embarrassing memory**
I think the hardest part of it, Maria, was that this family was quite formative for me as a musician --- I spent scores of hours in their home over the years, listening to and making music, from my earliest days.
Now (in 2012) the oldest generation of that family have passed on.
Fortunately, J. (the transient object of my mother's would-be drunken affections that night) has gotten back in touch with me from his home in Brazil, and we've started to heal that rift. A wonderful thing, as he was one of my first and most important music mentors!
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