My Mother, Part 4

So since they’ve gotten a good reception, one more blog about my mother...

She was a supreme and wily entertainer who hosted large dinners at our home at least once a month, bridge games twice weekly, and cocktail parties whenever the urge hit her. She had a large contingent of friends, almost all of whom were Europeans, and freely admitted that she always invited the people she distrusted most because she thought it wise to keep the pyromaniac in the firehouse. She routinely made couscous for fifty people and strangely, considering her abhorrence of anything German (the war never completely left her), sauerkraut and sausages for a multitude.

My mom was a versatile cook but not always a good one. She authored lamb burgers from the leftovers of a leg of mutton, and the odor was so pungent I could smell it from the street. On lamb burger day, I’d bicycle past the house, and go to the local luncheon counter to have a grilled cheese sandwich. She also made poached eggs in aspic, a dish so repulsive I hid in my room whenever she prepared them for her guests, who pretended delight but left most of the treat in their plates. I remember the soft yellow yolk, once pierced, spreading through the aspic like gangrene. You had to be there.

 Once or twice a year, my parents would host a costume party and the cream of the Washington francophone society would show up with the women in some sort of déshabillé featuring deep cleavages, mesh stockings and split skirts. The men were less original, coming as tired pirates or soldiers. One time, a visiting French consul came as an American, wearing a cheap suit from Sears and size fourteen shoes.

Then there was a party with a French Revolution theme, and one handy man built and brought over a working guillotine. There were no safety mechanisms whatsoever; you pulled the lever and a ten-pound metal blade, sharp as a razor, came crashing down on the cutout for the victim’s neck. The partygoers used it to slice the baguettes.

The guests always drank prodigiously, and the day before a large party my father would go to Paul’s Liquors and buy cases of booze The invited generally arrived already tipsy from a cocktail party or two, and a dozen couples, in one evening’s time, would go through two cases of wine and one of hard liquor, as well as a bottle or two of after-dinner liqueurs. One of my mother’s better tricks was to serve a few bottles of good French wine at the start of the dinner, and then switch to cheap Gallo poured from crystal carafes for the main course. No one noticed the difference and if they did, they didn’t care.

My parents were not heavy drinkers but in retrospect it seems drunkenness and alcoholism were simply part of the environment.

On any given evening, the guests might include the French parish priest, a severe looking heavy drinker with wandering hands and a penchant for dirty jokes, and the head of the French news service, Agence France Presse, and his wife. The two detested each other and would get increasingly vituperative as the evening and drinking went on. I remember that one night, the man’s wife, tired of the abuse, stormed out of our house after dinner, climbed into their car, and drove it into a telephone pole. She was too drunk to be injured but the arrival and departure of the ambulance taking her to the hospital added a surreal element to the gathering. I was often drafted to prepare and serve drinks, and got pretty good at knowing who drank what, and when to water down the liquor…

The after-party discussions focused heavily on who was sleeping with whom. Was the French wife of a CIA officer really having trysts with the correspondent for Le Monde? And what about the pretty blonde teacher at the French lycée whom everyone knew was conducting a passionate affair with the owner of a local French restaurant? Strange, considering everyone thought he was a homosexual…

As in any society, information in this small circle of friends and acquaintances was a commodity, and my mother was an artful gossip. She loved nothing more than getting the goods on someone and parlaying her knowledge into negotiable form.  When the gossip was about her, which happened from time to time, she operated on the principle that there was no such thing as bad publicity.  This philosophy never seemed to harm the doyenne of the French community.

My Mother, Part 3

My mother was not an easy person to live with. Between the weight of her anxieties and panic attacks and the burdens of her expectations, I believe a good part of her life was steeped in frustrations and the belief that the world was not an equitable place.

She rarely discussed her thoughts on the matter, but there’s no doubt in my mind that her childhood years were unhappy ones dominated by a father and stepmother uninterested in their daughter’s life, and a child prodigy brother who garnered all of the family’s love and attention.  

She was sixteen when she ran away from home and married a North African Jewish doctor and film-maker. She had two girls within six years, and while in Algeria, ran away from her husband’s overbearing family. She would meet my father at the end of the war and, pregnant with me, return to Paris after the liberation.

There was a long and heart-breaking lawsuit over the custody of my half-sisters. My mom essentially got visiting rights. The girls could come to the apartment of her new family but rarely spent the night. Both my sisters held that my father was responsible for their mother’s divorce and, indirectly, for their own father’s death from cancer a few years later.

This would have strange ramifications. My oldest sister, Florence, was a carbon-copy of her mother: creative, impulsive, argumentative at times, and focused on success. She managed famous French singers, including Patrique, a rock star, and they had matching Porsches and mink coats. But the singer was an addict and neither of them bothered to pay their taxes, so he went to a Swiss rehab and the Porsches and fur coats were taken away. After this, Flo began to write and was soon the successful author of a half-dozen novels starring an ingénue—her—whose life is ruined by an evil mother—our mother. The books broke my mom’s heart. She could not understand the depth of her own daughter’s resentments, nor did she appreciate being portrayed as a post-war Cruella deVil. Reconciliations between her and Florence came and went. When my mom died, Flo left town to avoid going to the funeral.

I was shielded from this acrimony, but even as a kid I knew something was wrong.

Her disappointment in Florence’s action was offset by the pride she took in the achievements of her other daughter, Isabelle. Isa was the personification of steadfastness. Barely a child, she was accepted into the prestigious Paris Conservatory and, once there, she never left. She studied composition, and then taught it. She is today possibly the world’s best known and most prolific composer of operas for children—yes, there are such things—and well into her seventies continues to prosper. She met her husband-to-be when she was fourteen, married him five years later, and they recently celebrated their golden anniversary. Isa tried hard not to take sides in the internecine warfare between her mother and her older sister, and she suffered from it, being blamed and manhandled by both sides.

One of the reasons my mother accepted coming to America, I think, is that she truly believed it was the Promised Land, and in her mind, a lot of promises needed to be fulfilled. Promises and expectations were the same for her. It wasn’t necessarily clear who had promised what to whom, but it was obvious, for example, that her husband—my father—should have been a diplomat, perhaps even an ambassador. Her son—me—should have been one as well. Her paintings should have all sold at the last gallery showing. Indeed, whatever project she was involved in should have led to success. That it often did not was an affront. She took the failures of her expectations personally, and as she grew older, so did the resentments attendant to unrealized hopes.

Late in life a bitterness set in, and as I grow older, I find once again that I can mirror her thoughts. I have tried to build myself after my father’s image, but deep down, my mother rules. It has been revelatory, occasionally, to come to a complete stop of whatever I am doing or thinking and realize, ça, c’est Maman.    

At first this horrified me. I knew my mother well and her shortcomings were often more visible than her many assets.  Now, I’m not so sure. I think it took immense courage to come here to this baffling, faraway land and make a life among it friendly, baffling people.

And I can now understand her hurry to return to France as soon as my father retired, and trade a four bedroom house in Chevy Chase for a minuscule garret in Paris. She was going to prove that you can go home again.