The Known, the Secret, the Forgotten Read online

  the known,

  the secret,

  the forgotten

  A MEMOIR

  JOAN WHEELIS

  FOR NWG

  Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language,the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved,ghost, come back again.

  —THOMAS WOLFE, Look Homeward, Angel

  CONTENTS

  Destiny

  Daisies Won’t Tell

  Deer

  Time

  Fire

  Car Games

  Poppies

  Velvet Cap

  Blue Door

  Wine

  The Round Room

  The Napoleon

  Legacy

  House in Pisa

  Poker

  Dogfight

  Caped Devil

  Blue Angels

  Easter

  Loss

  Fire 2

  The Dove

  The Office

  Thoughts

  Fire 3

  The Last Letter

  Last Rites

  The Log

  The Audograph

  String of All Sizes

  Love

  Goodbyes

  Rain

  Last Cut

  Mosquito Destroyer

  Economy of Motion

  The Log, Part 2

  Spirit

  Christmas

  The Pin

  Gift

  Acknowledgments

  the known,

  the secret,

  the forgotten

  destiny

  I WAS THE MUCH-WANTED DAUGHTER OF TWO PHYSICIANS who trained in psychiatry and practiced psychoanalysis. They were as different from one another as they were similar.

  My mother grew up in Vienna, Austria, and my father in Marion, Louisiana. They were both born in 1915 and their birthdays were twelve days apart. They liked to muse that their respective fathers had fought against each other in World War I.

  My father grew up in poverty, my mother in privilege. They met in Massachusetts in 1951. They were both married at the time and my father had two small children. Their illicit love affair was passionate and tormented. It took a long time for them to find their way to one another. Guilt, uncertainty and sadness gripped the beginning of their marriage. I was told that my birth fundamentally changed that.

  My parents are both dead, yet their lives are very much within me. Time and memory rushing in like waves on distant shores. Pulling shells and stones and crabs out to sea and then tossing them back to shore again. Loudly and then softly. Inexorably.

  My son likes to remind me that he and I are all that is left of my parents. The threads of connection, heritage, legacy. The burdens too. This book is dedicated to him.

  daisies won’t tell

  IN MY HOUSE IN PUGET SOUND IS A LINEN DOILY, WITH A SCALLOPED edge, hand-embroidered flowers, and the words “Daisies Won’t Tell.” My father’s mother, Olive, made it and my father gave it to me. It hangs in the old white house on the wall paneled with Philippine mahogany, once a sea of dark green wallpaper with pink flamingos. The framed doily has not been there long. It moved with me, folded up, from apartment to apartment, and when I had the money, I took it to be properly framed. The framer was unimpressed with the grayed piece of cloth with its irregular shape and slanted hand stitching. He didn’t say so, but I could tell by the way he spoke of the expenses involved in framing it, especially the archival glass he thought was a waste of money. I didn’t bother to explain to him why it mattered.

  In 1908, Anita Owen wrote a song called “Daisies Won’t Tell.” My grandmother married my grandfather on June 19 of the same year. A love song in the form of a waltz, it became a best seller. Sung by Manuel Romain, it was released as a record in 1910.

  There is a sweet old story you have heard before

  Here among the daisies let me tell it o’er—

  Only say you love me

  For I love you well.

  Answer with a kiss, dear.

  Daisies never tell!

  Daisies won’t tell, dear.

  Come, kiss me—do!

  Tell me you love me.

  Say you’ll be true

  And I will promise always to be tender

  And faithful, sweetheart, to thee!

  My father was born October 23, 1915. In 1916 a photograph was taken of him sitting in his father’s lap, his older sister, June, sitting on his father’s right knee and my grandmother standing behind the three. Behind her is a hearth and, draped over the mantel, the doily with a clock set at ten minutes past eleven.

  I can only imagine that my grandparents had heard the love song, maybe even danced to it. It caught the fancy of the young couple, and my grandmother decided to make the doily with its wreath of daisies and the pithy phrase. During the war my grandparents and their two children moved to army camps in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. In 1919 they moved back to Marion, Louisiana. When my grandfather contracted tuberculosis, they moved to San Antonio, Texas, for the drier climate believed to be beneficial for convalescence. My grandfather died in 1925. My father went to college in Austin, ran a theatre in town for a few years and then left Texas to attend the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1936. I do not know when my father took possession of the doily. Perhaps it was after my grandmother died at age one hundred in 1990, a few months after I was married.

  Each time I stand in front of the framed doily and look at the century-old photo of my father, I feel a connection to those frozen in time. It is strange and jarring. I feel vitally linked to the past. Time collapses. Fanciful thoughts cross my mind that with the doily, the photo and the right incantation I might step into the past and be with those pictured by the hearth. Or perhaps I could pull them out of the photograph to be with me in the present. Spirits standing with me looking at the doily on the wall.

  deer

  I HAD A FRIEND FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WHO TOLD ME that he felt himself to be a part of the soft, deep paths of Douglas fir needles, Oregon grape and salal, the frigid waters of Puget Sound with its seals, seaweed, salmon and jellyfish, the beach with the sand dollars, herons, ospreys and kingfishers. Once when we went swimming together in the cold, clear water in the late afternoon sun, he said, “Swimming here I can feel the spirit of the Sound. We are part of the earth where time and memory settle.” He quoted T. S. Eliot: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

  He lived each day as part of the earth he so deeply loved. He died a very old man playing with his grandchildren. We held his memorial service in the woods where the air was moist and rich with the scent of evergreens.

  His grandson and I were setting up plastic chairs for the guests when a buck with a huge rack walked by. Slowly, stately, just a few feet away. He seemed to come from nowhere, paused, turned to look at us and then vanished silently into the dense brush as suddenly as he had appeared.

  “Do you think that was Grandpa?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  One could hardly say otherwise at a moment like that to a ten-year-old boy, but there was no need to dissemble. We create stories to live by.

  time

  When winter sags the burdened roof,

  When pistol shot is snap of frozen branch,

  When, under daggered eaves,

  Snow moths gnawing at the darkened pane

  Whisper at retreating dreams—

  —ALLEN WHEELIS

  fire

  IT IS DUSK. I’M DRIVING TO OUR HOUSE ON THE ISLAND WHERE I have spent time all the summ
ers of my life. A beautiful, special place that holds long, happy memories. The familiar curves, the rich scent of fern, and moss, cedar and fir; I know the road so well, its final bend, the mailboxes. I turn down the driveway.

  The gate is locked and I sense that something is wrong. Terribly wrong. I can’t see the white house. I fumble through the handful of keys to the property to unlock the gate. This is unnecessary as I can just walk around the fence, but my agitation forces me into ritual.

  My God, the house is gone! The ground is black. I get back in the car and drive down the driveway. The split towering firs on either side of the house are gone too. My father’s study, the barn, the old apple and pear orchard—all gone. Nothing but black earth. I’m sweating and crying. Impulsively I call out, “Mummy?! Daddy?!” frantically realizing that their ashes must be gone too. Their ashes were in the house in two wooden boxes in cobalt blue bags. I am running around looking for something, anything to help me. I feel desperate and my efforts are futile. I run toward the neighboring house. I find that the fire’s path has stopped and the woods are again verdant. Suddenly I notice the blue bags on the side of the path. I check. The boxes are still intact with the ashes. I can’t believe it. I’m relieved. I haven’t lost them.

  Night is falling, fast. I feel cold, and my mind is furtively trying to make sense of the devastation and the curious preservation of my parents’ ashes. How did this happen? Who took the ashes out of the house? Did the fire start within the old walls or from outside? A careless match on the parched grass? An electrical fire? Did someone start it? Did I?

  The dream is repetitive. I wake up with a start each time, disoriented with questions about what matters. I want to dream the sequel but I don’t. I want to know what happens next. Do I rebuild the house? The barn and study? Replant the orchard? Do I take the blue bags of ashes with me or toss them into the evening breeze to drift over that charred earth? Do I walk away and start over? Am I trying to reckon with the gift of having and the tragedy of loss or the curse of having and the relief of loss? Is it a sign that what matters will always stay intact but I must brace myself for adversity, sadness, uncertainty and doubt before I can secure it?

  The feeling is urgent and pressing.

  car games

  EACH SUMMER MY FAMILY DROVE FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO Puget Sound to vacation for the month of August. When school let out in June, I made a wall calendar of the days until August, crossing them off with a thick black marker. I used to hang the makeshift calendar in a prominent position in my room, hoping that its visibility with the sinister black X’s might change my parents’ mind as to when we would leave. It never worked.

  A week before departing we began preparations. Special foods and wine were packed, along with clothes, books, puzzles and the occasional bowl or cooking pot from the basement. The day before, my mother prepared sandwiches, boiled eggs, washed grapes, froze freezer packs, and made a thermos of coffee to be ready early the next morning.

  These preparations seemed endless and increased the sense of an epic journey about to begin. The night before we left, all the suitcases, boxes and bags were brought down to the garage. My father considered the space of the trunk and then like a chess player strategically planned his moves. A small suitcase with the necessary items for the first night in a motel was made easily accessible. As well as his black leather briefcase containing a clipboard with a dozen or more pages of Crane’s Distaff Linen bond stationery, his fountain pen and a bottle of blue-black ink. Just in case he might be inspired in the motel to capture his musings for his next novel. The AAA maps and travel books, newly ordered each year, were put in the glove compartment.

  My first memories of this trip were in a blue Buick Skylark. It took twenty-one hours to drive before Interstate 5 was completed; the journey to our summer home spanned two days and one night in Grants Pass, Oregon.

  We left San Francisco early in the morning when it was still dark and cold, but by ten the sun was already high in Northern California and the highway shimmered from the heat rising off the asphalt. The Buick was without air-conditioning. At times we were at a complete standstill. The windows were rolled down, letting in the swirling dust and sultry hot air as backhoes and tractors crisscrossed the road before us. The smell of tar was smoky and sweet. My father drove the entire eight hundred miles himself while my mother sat at his side, feeding him cucumber and ham sandwiches, almonds, cookies, fruit and coffee, entertaining him with conversation to keep him mentally occupied and alert. I sat with my dog, Monty, in the back seat. I couldn’t read because I became carsick looking down at a book, and I couldn’t talk with my parents because they seemed too far away and it was too noisy from the wind and road construction. I couldn’t sleep after the sun reached its zenith because it was too sunny and hot to get comfortable. And while I looked forward all year to this pilgrimage north, it was an agonizingly uncomfortable journey. I never complained openly. For a while I would ask how much farther we had to go, but my father had little tolerance for these questions. After I asked a few times, he stopped answering and suggested that I could study the map if I wanted further information as to our progress. Even with the company of my beloved dog, and a myriad of games counting blue cars, red trucks, black cows or “For Sale” signs, which helped ease the tedium, there was little sustained solace.

  My father was unsympathetic to my discomfort. His message was that all good things in life require sacrifice. Anything short of stoic tolerance was regarded as weakness of character and failure of will. So I talked to myself and daydreamed about the magical island in Puget Sound to which we were heading.

  The summer of my twelfth birthday was a particularly trying one. Adolescent longings for independence and romantic connection were stirring like water about to boil. Patience was low and emotional lability on the rise. I felt like a trapped wild animal in the back seat with too little room even to pace. I didn’t want to eat, sleep or play with my dog. I was too old for my counting games and I had no desire to talk with my parents. Defiantly I turned my back on them and stared out the back window. We were in Northern California. It was midafternoon and the temperature was over 100 degrees. The road construction was winding down and the highway speed was picking up. I stared into each car we passed, searching for distraction. A Volvo with two kayaks on a rack and a couple engaged in lively conversation, a red Mustang convertible towing a boat with a gray-haired man in a seersucker suit. Having become fascinated with Harriet the Spy and the art of investigation, I tried to imagine who these people were and what their lives were like. I was relieved for the new mental stimulation. Then we passed an 18-wheeler. The driver had an easy view into the back window of our Buick. I heard a horn and instinctually turned my gaze up into the cab. A handsome man with a broad smile pulled his horn again and turned on his running lights. He waved and I waved back. And I caught his eye; it was all I needed to send me off into a stirring romantic fantasy. I was excited and felt a foreign and intoxicating sense of power. Had I charmed him to show off? Emboldened by this experience, I now waved and smiled promiscuously. Finally, I had found a solution for my restless boredom.

  No sooner had the realization and discovery taken hold, however, than I felt my father’s large hand on my back. His gentle but authoritative voice called me, “Joan! Joan!”

  “What?”

  “Please turn around and face forward so I can talk to you.” I didn’t want to but his commanding voice subdued my rebellious ardor. I turned around. My father began speaking. “I noticed you were waving out the back window. It looks like it is fun for you.”

  Expecting criticism, I felt surprise and pleasure by his comment. “Yes, Daddy. The truck driver pulled his horn and turned on his lights and waved at me!”

  “I don’t want you to do that anymore.”

  “Why not?” I was miffed.

  “Because you are acting falsely.”

  What was he talking about? “No, I’m not!”

  He ignored my outburst and went on. “
You are ignoring the context of your behavior. You are in a car and protected by glass and your parents from a real engagement. It creates an illusion of power and intimacy. You are acting in an overly familiar way with a stranger. You would not do that if you were on the street walking and he appeared. There, you would be diffident and circumspect because there are consequences of behavior that would be on your mind. He might misread your intentions. And you must always be accountable for your behavior and not pretend to be something you are not. Otherwise it is self-deception.”

  I had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about, but I knew for sure that the pleasure I felt but a few minutes before was gone. It was gone like air out of a popped balloon and I would no longer be waving out the back window.

  A year before my father died, he published his last book, The Way We Are, dedicating it to me. He wrote in the introduction, “[I]n the evolution from animal life to human life, along with the gain in knowledge and awareness, we have gained also the ability to deceive ourselves. We arrange not to know our nature not to see what we are up to. Our self-deceptions are so dense, piled on so thick, like layers of paint on a canvas already painted, layer after layer, laid on from school and pulpit and lectern and TV and Internet, that it is all but impossible to break through, to get a clear view of what we really are” (p. 16).

  When I had finished reading the book, I commented to him, “You’ve been working on these ideas a long time.”

  “Well, I suppose I have.”

  “Forty years! Remember the trucker who honked and waved at me? And how you lectured me about the perils of self-deception?”

  “I most certainly do remember.”

  “I really had no idea what you were talking about then.”

  “Well, clearly, you do now. And in case you forget, you have an entire book to remind you!”