The Known, the Secret, the Forgotten Read online

  poppies

  I GREW UP IN SAN FRANCISCO. AT POINT REYES IN THE SPRINGTIME the poppies and lupines bloomed alone the coastline. A brilliance of orange and purple cascading down the hillside to the national seashore. I went there many times with my parents and a blanket, a picnic and the newspaper. We would eat, read, sleep and walk. Sometimes we would hike up from the beach to the headlands. The beauty was spectacular—the flowers, ocean, sky and sun. The vista was so vast that at times I felt I could see the curve of the earth where the ocean met the sky.

  As a child, these outings often occasioned questions to my father about existence and belief.

  “Daddy, doesn’t it seem like this incredible scene just can’t be random?”

  “It is very beautiful but it’s random.”

  “Why? How do you know?”

  “I believe in evolution.”

  “There’s no reason that it should be so beautiful unless it was designed to be that way.”

  “Well, I think it’s possible that it just evolved into this. We are lucky that we are here to enjoy it.”

  My father’s wealth of knowledge was comforting and made me feel safe. These conversations, however, left me uneasy. I liked neither the questions nor the answers. I kept looking for something else.

  velvet cap

  BY THE TIME WE REACHED THE FERRY LANDING WHERE WE would cross the Sound to the magical island, my excitement was so great I felt short of breath. Monty also knew where we were and started to leap across me from window to window, panting and sniffing the cool sweet air off the Sound. The captain of the eight-car ferry always blew his horn to greet us for our arrival in August. We got out of the car, and I leaned over the side railing, staring into the deep sapphire blue water. After crossing the half mile of Sound, we backed up a steep hill and then set forth on the last leg of our journey across the island. While the pressure in my chest made me long to drive faster, my father drove across the island unusually slowly. One reason was that the two-lane road was narrow and there were hairpin turns, and another was that there were deer.

  “Daddy, can’t we go a little faster?”

  “No.”

  There was something poignant in the way he said “no” that made it clear there was more to it than the deer and the narrow road. I came to understand that he wanted to savor the end of our pilgrimage like a small, rare, delicious chocolate truffle. With the inevitable arrival in paradise being imminent, the pleasure was so intense that prolonging the journey only heightened the experience. There were three stop signs in the five miles from the west side of the island to the east. Sometimes the road was straight and flat and sometimes it twisted up and down like a roller coaster. In some places sunlight flooded the road and in others it dappled the leaves in the dense forest. There was Douglas fir, cedar, hemlock, alder and maple and a vast undergrowth of huckleberry and salal. The scent of pitch from the towering Douglas fir and the deep aroma of moss and ferns were intoxicating.

  The last turn took us onto a mile of dirt road, dust billowing out behind the car, obscuring any definition of the landscape behind. My father drove this last mile even slower. Monty was ready to jump out the window. Before us the trees were majestic—often five feet wide at the base and towering a hundred feet or more toward the heavens. The last few turns were the tightest and my father crept around them, honking to make sure there was no harm coming our way. And then at last the turn down the driveway opening out on the white house and the Sound beyond.

  Finally the car doors opened and Monty raced into the tall grass of the orchard, jumping and rolling in delight. We always walked to the front of the house before unloading the car, taking in the beautiful vista of a still Sound and the peninsula beyond. Herons cruised at the shoreline and seal heads bobbed up and down. It was quiet and magical. Standing by my father, I turned to see his expression of solemn homage. It was here he could write. For me it was an enchanted world where I felt exquisitely and mysteriously connected with the essence of life.

  The nights were what brought me closest to spiritual reckoning and wondering about Providence. Far from any city, the night sky looked like a black velvet cap—plush soft nap with twinkling stars like sequins. Shooting stars like thread across the bias. The Big Dipper was over the house, Orion’s Belt over the Sound. It was looking up that made me think there might be some majestic something else out there beyond our humble existence.

  “How far does the sky go?”

  “What do you mean, sweetie?”

  “I mean, where does it stop?”

  “It doesn’t. It’s infinite.”

  I directed my gaze downward and leveled my eyes into my father’s. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up; I could not understand the concept of an infinite sky.

  I was eight years old, sitting on my father’s lap in front of the white house, perched above the Sound. The water was still except for the small lapping waves at the shoreline. Other than the occasional squawk of a blue heron, the night was silent. Dark and moonless. My eyes turned upward into the black vaulted space above. “How do you know?”

  “That’s what the scientists have figured out.”

  “Daddy, is there a God?”

  “Some people think there is and others don’t.”

  “Well is there or isn’t there a God?”

  “Like I said, sweetie, some people think there is and others don’t.”

  “What do you think, Daddy?”

  “I don’t think there is a God.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I don’t.”

  “But if you don’t know, why do you think there isn’t one?”

  My father tenderly put his arm around me. “Well, that is what belief is all about. Some people believe in things even when there is no proof that what they believe in is true, and others believe in things that can be known. I am a doctor and I think about things in terms of science and medicine.”

  “Daddy, do you believe in heaven?”

  “No. I have seen many dead bodies and I think when you are dead that is the end of existence.”

  “But what if there was a spirit of a person that left the body when it died?”

  “Well, I don’t believe in that.”

  “But you don’t know that it isn’t true!”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “When I look into the sky, it looks like the inside of a velvet cap and there must be another side to it. I think the scientists should figure out how to get there.”

  “Sweetie, it’s getting cold and I think it’s time to go inside and go to bed.”

  We walked around to the back of the house so my father could take stock of the “velvet cap” in the open area by the orchard away from the towering firs. Staring up, we walked through the dry grass, looking north along the island’s perimeter toward the Olympic Mountains. Shooting stars crisscrossed the inky sky.

  “Look, Daddy, there is the Big Dipper!”

  “Yes, and the north star. In 1958 your mother and I saw Sputnik from this very spot. Sputnik was a satellite launched into orbit around the Earth by the Soviet Union.”

  I was more preoccupied with the thought that I was standing so close to my father and could feel his warmth and hear his breath. I felt both flushed and chilly. It seemed so intimate. As my father was teaching me about Sputnik, a cool, dry breeze swept up off the slough near the beach, passing over us like a wave. There was something distinct in the air and my father stopped speaking. Above the slough, yellow and green light started to move and take shape like a giant wall of slow, undulating curtains. I stopped breathing and felt again flushed and chilly. I had never seen anything like it. It was fantastic and I blinked my eyes several times to make sure it really was there.

  “Look at that! Isn’t that marvelous! That’s the northern lights, or aurora borealis. It’s where the solar wind plays with the Earth’s electromagnetic field. It is rare to see it.”

  “Daddy, doesn’t this make you think there is a God?”r />
  “No.”

  I wished I hadn’t asked.

  “But I do think I see what you mean that the sky looks like a wonderful velvet cap. But I am very cold now and I think we have had enough discussion for tonight.”

  The shimmering veil of light had vanished into the night sky. I have never seen it again.

  blue door

  GRASPING WHAT MY PARENTS DID FOR A LIVING WAS A CHALLENGE for a long time. My parents, both psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, had their offices in our home. There were five floors from the street level of the garage and wine cellar and sixty-three steps to climb to reach the locked wrought-iron gate and the main entrance. Like a castle. Patients climbed the first seventeen steps to the first turn, where there was a blue door. My parents buzzed in their patients through this entry. The waiting room was immediately to the left of another flight of internal stairs. If they were going to see my father, he would walk out of his office and stand at the top of the stairs, the noise of double doors opening alerting the patient in the waiting room that he was ready. My mother would buzz again for her patients, who would climb the same steps to my father’s office and then at the landing open the orange door of a two-person elevator. From there the patient traveled past the fourth floor of our house where the living room, kitchen and dining room were and finally to the top floor where my mother’s office and our bedrooms were. Separating the house from her office was a three-inch-thick solid oak door.

  My parents’ bedroom was directly above the dining room. Both rooms were rounded and together projected out from the main structure like a turret. From one of the casement windows in the bedroom, one could see the San Francisco Bay in the distance as well as across an outdoor courtyard into the window of my mother’s office and to the chair in which she sat. A window shade was pulled up from the bottom just high enough to cover her head. Occasionally the shade was not raised high enough and I could see the top of her head as she sat with her patients.

  My father’s office was more hidden. Originally his office had been two smaller servants’ quarters and as such was more removed from the main living area of the house. Walking past the blue door and up another flight of external stairs one could see the large curtained windows of his office, but they were set back beyond bush and tree plantings. My father’s office had one other window that looked directly out on the final run of stairs to the gate and front door of our house. My father sat in a chair that was directly across from that little window, which had a curtain transparent enough to allow him to make out shape and movement on the steps yet appeared opaque from the outside. There was one other important place in our castle for viewing my father’s office. Just past the elevator landing by my father’s office, one could pass through a door into the basement of the main house. Elevated above the floor of the basement was a three-foot-high storage area. At one end of the space was a small opening with wood lattice across it, which looked directly out at the door to my father’s office. But I did not have all this information for a long time.

  This architectural maze made the experience of my parents’ livelihood into a profoundly intriguing mystery of endless interest to me. As a little girl, I heard the sounds of the excursions in the elevator and the opening and closing of doors every fifty minutes. But I never saw anyone nor did I hear any voice. Once at the dinner table I asked what a patient was and my mother responded that patients were people who had problems and came to see my parents to help them solve their problems. Not long after, I was returning from the market with my mother and I saw a woman coming out of the blue door. When I inquired, my mother told me that this was one of my father’s patients. And then in my six-year-old mind it became clear what was going on: patients were invisible. They came to their appointments in some form like a ghost and my parents made them visible. That explained the silence as the invisible patients made their excursions in the elevator and then seeing the person walking down the steps from the blue door.

  Several years later while rummaging around in the basement, I heard the sound of doors opening. I rushed over to the small, latticed sash that offered a view of my father’s office door. Indeed, the double doors of my father’s office were both ajar. My heart was pounding. I felt I had discovered an illicit treasure. By then I had realized that patients were visible both coming and going. Perhaps because I felt guilty about my spying, I was often mixed up as to the times that my parents’ patients came and went and so missed sighting them. I had fantasies of a patient seeing me and reporting me to my parents. I imagined my mother’s indignation and my father’s disappointment that I could be so morally bankrupt.

  My father wrote in the morning and then saw five patients after lunch, from 1:30 to 6:20, with ten-minute breaks between them. My mother saw patients all day starting at 8:10 (9:00, 9:50, 10:40, 11:30). Her breaks were the couple of minutes it took for one patient to leave by the elevator and the next to take the elevator up. At 12:20 she joined my father for lunch and then went back at 1:20, ending her day at 6:20.

  A devotee of the book Harriet the Spy, I carried around a notebook and pencil to document my discoveries. For a long time my experience as a spy primarily consisted of lying under my parents’ bed waiting for a glimpse of my mother’s Ferragamo shoes or the housekeeper’s sandals. Now as a thirteen-year-old sitting in the darkened area of the basement by the latticed opening, I waited to see patients. It was thrilling and made me feel short of breath. I took notes on attire, guessing at age and profession. My mother’s patients were often older men with corduroy jackets. My father often saw young attractive women who wore perfume. I kept notes of the days and times they came, noticing that sometimes they came more than once a week. It often felt furtive. I needed to be out of the basement and back up in my room before my mother’s break, as she would invariably check in on me in the minute or so she had free. And before my father’s break, when he passed through the door by the elevator, along the basement hallway and then up a flight of stairs to the kitchen. He might notice the door slightly open and discover me.

  I wondered about the patients’ lives, imagined what their problems might be. One of my journal entries read:

  4:40. Patient to see my mother. Male. Maybe 40–50. Wearing a wedding ring. Hair black, messy, gray short beard. Brown sweater, no jacket, brown corduroy pants and laced tan leather shoes. Impression: Looks sad. Maybe a professor or an architect. His wife works, and does not want children. This makes him sad. He loves her but really wants children. He’s an only child.

  My parents never discovered my spying. But shortly before I stopped my undercover reconnaissance, I was startled to recognize a famous pop singer coming up the stairs with her guitar to see my father. She had been an idol of mine and I could hardly believe that I had seen her from just a few feet away, let alone then listened to her sing and play guitar from within my father’s office. The exquisite pleasure of the discovery was intoxicating. The subsequent guilt, however, was even more overwhelming and I forever abandoned my post at the latticed sash.

  wine

  JUST AS WITH CHESS, TENNIS AND ORIENTAL RUGS, MY FATHER became fascinated by and passionate about wine in the late 1950s. He bought books such as The Noble Grapes and the Great Wines of France and signed up for the local wine shop’s newsletters. Very pleased by the fact that the cool air in the small, high-ceilinged storeroom off our one-car garage was the perfect temperature for storing wine, he had a wine cellar built. Mr. Gudmanson, who did all the fine cabinetry work in our house, fashioned beautiful slatted redwood wine boxes. Enough to hold twenty-five cases of wine, most of which my father bought from two California wine importers: Connoisseur Wine Imports and Kermit Lynch. The door to the wine cellar was kept locked. To camouflage the door and the riches within, my father hung a flattened Beacon Movers garment box on a hook driven into the concrete wall. In the wine cellar, my father kept a hammer and crowbar to open the wooden crates of wine, thermometers, and pens and red tags to label a bottle of each case for easy identification of
the wine in their wooden cribs. My father bought most of the wine between 1958 and 1969, and much of it was Bordeaux. The frequency and size of the deliveries began to make my mother fret that he was spending too much money on wine and that they could not possibly consume so much in their lifetime. My father responded to her concerns by scheduling the deliveries to arrive while my mother was seeing patients, and no one went in that room without my father.

  When my father died, there were twenty or so bottles, and when my mother died five years later, there were but a few of those left, which were drunk in the last few days before my parents’ house on Jackson Street was packed up.

  I had been in the wine cellar maybe a handful of times, usually before a big dinner party when I helped my father carry up the bottles that would be served. It was a production to get into the cellar with the cardboard and the locked door. Once inside, the shadowy light of the bare bulb shining through the slatted wood boxes gave the little cool, high-ceilinged room an aura of mysterious secrecy. I often felt that I shouldn’t say anything about what I saw in there. After my parents were both dead, the castle was sold. Once the movers drove away with all of my parents’ things, I went down to the garage. The cardboard was gone and the door unlocked. I went in; the air felt particularly cold, and my sweater thin. The empty wooden crates made me sad. I don’t quite know why I went down, but once there I gathered the tools and the thermometers, and just as I was about to leave, I saw something red out of the corner of my eye. There, tucked off to the side, was a large pile of red tags, each with my father’s writing. Forty tags. Among them were the familiar names of the marvelous wines served at my parents’ dinner parties:

  Pichon-Longueville Lalande ’59

  Cos D’Estournel ’59

  Pichon-Longueville Baron ’59

  Calon-Ségur ’61