It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks: A memoir of a mother and daughter

The school wants me to see a psychiatrist. I prepare myself for what my mother will say because I’ve heard it my whole life: “You know what my mother always said to me? She said, ‘Where is it written you have to be happy. Show me where that is written.’ You know what a real problem is, Cathy? Cancer. That is a real problem. Stu Weiner has cancer. That is a real problem.” But she surprises me. “Well,” she says. “I have real problems, Cathy, I have to get a new secretary.”

There are a lot more customs than they let on about: Don’t drink or get high. Don’t go in the opposite sex’s dorm. Be happy and well adjusted. It is easy to be happy about all the customs because if you are not happy about the customs it means you do not have enough school spirit, which means you are a menace to the community. Which means you won’t get a star next to your name and you might have to be removed from the school community, in the middle of the night if necessary, like my last roommate, Theresa, or be held back a year in broad daylight, like Oscar. Oscar’s mother committed suicide when he was five and his father is a very busy Broadway producer. They live in the Dakota. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are his neighbors, but he hardly gets to see them anymore because he is away at school. Oscar has been a sophomore twice and is on his way to being a junior for the second time in a row. Oscar hardly ever has a star next to his name.

Another custom is that it is not against the customs to smoke cigarettes. This is a good custom.

A taxi picks me up Thursday afternoons and drives me to my psychiatrist’s red barn house. It feels like a house where a family eats dinner together and laughs so much peas and carrots come out of their noses. It looks like a house people can’t wait to come home to. I wish I lived in this house. “So why don’t we begin with your childhood,” she says warmly.

I talk for forty-five minutes. When I’m done she says, “Do you have a mother?”

“Do I have a mother?” I laugh out loud.

“Oh,” she says, “because you didn’t mention her once.” Our time is up.

My first weekend home my mother makes my favorite meal: shrimp ragout with green noodles. My sister, who is back from Colorado, is there and so are some of my mother’s friends. My mother says, “Well, Catherine, I think you are in terrific shape. I think that school is fabulous for you. Doesn’t Cathy seem like she is in great shape? Here’s to Buxton.” Everyone toasts me. I am beaming.

My sister follows me to the bathroom. As I pee she says, “I just had a fight with Mom.” My adrenaline is pumping. My mother has always liked my sister better. She is the one consulted on family matters, the one my mother talks to, the one my mother acknowledges as an equal. She is the one holding the map in the front seat, like an adult at fifteen, navigating our way across long car trips through France. I am the four-year-old sitting in the backseat bored out of my mind pretending to be a cat. Maybe my sister will finally move over in my mother’s mind and there will be room for me. “I told her she was going to lose you if she didn’t start giving you credit,” my sister continues. “It is so typical of her to give Bux-ton all the credit for how great you are.” She rips off a wad of toilet paper and hands it to me.

“But is that what she meant?” I ask, wiping myself. As usual everything has a deeper meaning to my sister and it went right over my head.

“ Of course it is,” she explains as she pees before letting me flush. “She never gets it. She has no boundaries. I told her, she better start paying attention or you will run away so far, so fast, she will never find you.” None of this ever occurred to me. But two days later, as I sit with my head pressed against the bus window on my way back to school, it is all I think about. I watch the black pavement accumulate into miles. The rhythmic pounding of the road under the wheels lulls me to sleep. I am gently traveling farther and farther away.

Almost half my life has passed without a father. The implications of this idea get bigger and bigger while my actual memories get smaller and smaller, until they just turn to dust and disperse in the atmosphere. I remember nothing that is not captured and secured firmly in place by a camera. I have a picture of my father and me fishing in Aspen that my sister took. We carry fishing poles and are wearing windbreakers. He has wading boots that go all the way up to his thighs. I don’t remember anything else about that day. Everything beyond the white borders of photographs is gone.

I am so desperate for memories, pictures I’m not even in become events in my life: my parents on a yacht traveling the Greek islands, the two of them in a restaurant in Europe smiling patiently as a waiter prepares something tableside. What my father smelled like, what his voice sounded like, what his hands felt like on my back—it is all gone. I walk through my life numb, barely feeling what is happening because it will all disappear anyway. I believe it is manipulative to miss him. He died a long time ago. It isn’t important anymore. I don’t tell anyone what I am feeling. I am fine. One Saturday night I see Interiors at the local movie theater. It is the best movie I have ever seen. It is everything I am inside. I start pretending I am being filmed. During filming I am not alone, which is good and I feel good because I am serving a purpose for the human race. I love the characters in depressing movies. I want to repay the favor.

I have a dream that I am alone. Everyone is gone and I am walking through an empty city. The psychiatrist interprets it as being about my father. She is so literal. It annoys me. I interrupt her and say, “Oh please spare me all the psychobabble mumbo jumbo. My father’s death had absolutely no effect on me.” I skip my next appointment.

I can devour Anna Karenina, Emma, Howards End, and War and Peace but I can’t find Czechoslovakia on a map. I remember concepts; ideas but not specifics. The SAT is my new enemy. I score badly enough to seem dumb but not badly enough for anyone to realize that I am just a person who tests badly. Multiple-choice test taking is a skill I don’t have. People much dumber than me score beautifully. I manage to get 300 more points than the 250 points they give you just for knowing how to fill in your name and social security number. A tutor is hired so I can get into a good college. At this point, getting into any college seems unlikely. I literally do not get into SUNY. I don’t think there is a single New York State resident with a pen who doesn’t get into SUNY. I go to a different high school every Saturday to retake the SAT until I get a decent score. The first time I say to myself, “This is the most important test of your life.” I score a combined eleven hundred. The next time I say, “This is the least important test of your life.” I score eleven hundred. The third time I try a more moderate approach: “This is a little bit important but not that important.” I score eleven hundred. The fourth time I go in high as a kite and make a design out of my answers. I still score eleven hundred.

I am the only one to graduate this so-called community with no college to go to. I throw all caution to the wind and don’t write the senior speech that everyone else is writing about how lost and selfish they were until they came to this school. My speech is called “This Year’s Armor,” and it is about how I am no longer going to dress myself in armor and be so tough all the time. It’s not true but I wish it were. It is about my mother. I do not want to be my mother. But I’m sure it’s too late. I already am her. I don’t get a star next to my name ever again.

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” my mother says.

“Do you really want to know?” I ask, knowing better. The plywood walls of the makeshift phone booth in the girl’s dorm are covered in scratches and messages and threats and phone numbers.

“Yes, I do,” she says.

“The psychiatrist thinks I have low self-esteem.”

“Low self-esteem. I don’t understand.”

“Well, I don’t think much of myself.”

“That’s ridiculous. You are bright and attractive. I don’t understand. What’s the matter with you?”

“She thinks it might have something to do with the summer you sent me away to live with Michael and Leslie because Daddy died and you couldn’t deal with me and I overheard them saying they didn’t want me either.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know why nobody wanted you, don’t you?”

“Actually, no.”

“Well I’ll tell you. Nobody wanted you because you were a pain in the ass.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“What?”

“You were always telling me I was a pain in the ass. It made me feel like…I was a pain in the ass.”

“You were. You were an absolute pain in the ass.”

I hang up and let some other girl call her mother.

After graduation my sister and I use part of our inheritance and go to the Bahamas. We sneak into corporate breakfasts because they are free and the pineapple is delicious. We eat dinner in the Howard Johnson’s because it is cheap. We order fried clams because we assume they are fresh. The last night of our vacation my sister reads all the fun facts on the sugar packets. Fun Fact #114 is: “Did you know all our clams are flash-frozen and flown in daily from our warehouse in Queens?” When I get back to New York my mother says she can call her friend and get me into Barnard.

“Who’s your friend?” I say.

“The president,” she answers.

I write an essay about how I had neglected to realize the importance of a women’s institution. Not a word of it is true. But I get in.

THE FINGER (#ulink_7dd23702-b16c-5c00-ab4e-920ab2311db9)

I choose premed as my college major. But after my first multiple-choice bio test (which reminds me a lot of the SAT) I realize I will never get into a medical school that is not in the Czech Republic because I don’t test well so I might as well have the career that I want as a weeping actress. My mother will be ashamed of me either way. I take an acting class and don’t tell anyone. The teacher says I am excellent. He says I am the only one in class who breathes like the character. People pretend to know what he is talking about but they don’t. I do. I want to use my life to breathe life into other people. I don’t want to breathe my own life.

My homework situation has lightened up considerably since dropping premed so I hang out with my sister every weekend doing massive amounts of cocaine. She works at Saturday Night Live. Everyone there does it. We stay up every weekend until dawn doing lines and talking about my mother. We pretty much blame her for everything. It’s so fun. We talk about how she never let us mourn for our fathers so we blame her for never getting over it. We confirm that she never has room for all of us in her heart at the same time so one of us is always out on her ass. Except my brother, who is a boy. He is always in favor because my mother feels the sorriest for him.

“It’s a man’s world, Cathy. Don’t you ever forget it, Cathy,” my sister says, rubbing her finger along her top gum.

“His father died, when he was six you know, boohoo,” I say sticking the straw deep into my nose.

We laugh and pretend to scream in her face. “Yes, we know! OUR FATHERS DIED TOO!” More lines. Then roleplaying.

I am my mother. “Well I think it’s very hard for a boy to lose his father.”

Then my sister is my mother and adds, “And the women in this family are just much stronger.” We laugh so hard we have tears pouring down our faces. We talk about how she always told my sister she was slow and me that I was a pain in the ass and now we have no choice but to wear those descriptions like dog tags around our necks. Nothing is our fault. We are simply a product of our upbringing! More lines. We agree that we will never amount to anything in her eyes if we are not widowed with children before the age of twenty-eight. And then we pretend to feel sad because my sister is thirty-one and already blew it. But it’s okay, we console each other, we can just do more lines. I go to every taping and the party after. I see Elvis Costello throw his guitar down on stage and change songs in the middle of the live show and throw everyone into a panic. Me and Gilda Radner throw up side by side in the bathroom at Gallagher’s. It is the best time of my life.

I want to be my sister. I try on all her clothes and pretend I live in her apartment. We do more and more and more and more lines. We have a blast. But when the drug wears off it is unbearable. I wish I could sleep; I wish I were dead. But I am wide awake, my skin is crawling and my loneliness has turned my heart into a scab the size of a baseball glove. I feel severed. My torso is lying useless on the couch that used to belong to my parents. My legs are somewhere in the bathroom. My sister and I are forging an alliance out of hatred. And the closer we get the farther out my mother gets tossed. “This is wrong,” I say. “Can’t we all just find a way to live together?” But then we burst out laughing. I need more drugs.

I have lost thirteen pounds. My mother hasn’t said anything. At night I see my boyfriend. I wear short shorts and high heels. I take the Seventh Avenue IRT from Cathedral Parkway and change at Times Square for the RR. I get off at Union Square and change for the L and walk to Avenue C. The later the better. My boyfriend is impressed with my street smarts. He should be. I am not afraid. I am too angry for any motherfucker to fuck with me. I defy them to fuck with me. I want them to fuck with me. This is my recurring fantasy: I will take the subway to my mother’s house and get in the bath in my old room and slit my wrists and die in the warm water and have her find me. But I am afraid it will hurt. What a pussy. What a fraud. I am never having children. What if they hate me a fraction of this?

I throw up all day. Vomiting causes the release of endorphins in the bloodstream. A surge of endorphins causes euphoria. No wonder I do it so often. Between self-imposed euphoria and cocaine I am okay. I arrive in a taxi across town one night clutching my $120 in cash, only to discover that I am cut off from my dealer. I plead with her. She says my sister doesn’t want me to buy anymore. I say, don’t you want me to buy anymore? I’m a really good customer, aren’t I? Yes, she says, you are. So sell me some, I say. She does. My sister reaches a bargain with the dealer: no more grams. From now on I have to buy half ounces. My sister thinks this will make it harder for me. But it doesn’t. I use my social security checks. They come on Fridays. My bathroom is covered with vomit. I’m sure it is a metaphor.

My mother agrees to come to therapy. I am dreading it, and I can’t wait. The truth will come out. That she never notices me. That I am a burden she doesn’t want to carry. That I had a chance to be light and happy and instead I am dark and miserable and should be flushed down the toilet along with my dinner. I have lost twenty-three and a half pounds. “Hey you!” I want to yell. “Your daughter is painfully thin. Did it occur to you that maybe it is because of something you did? Something you neglected?” I walk in the office and my mother is already there. She looks terrified. Her arms are crossed. I kiss her hello and she actually flinches. It is the saddest thing in the world. My psychiatrist says to my mother, “Thank you for coming.” My mother scrutinizes me and my carefully chosen ensemble. “Is that my sweater?” is all she says.

My oldest sister, Carly, is home for Christmas. While I am snorting up in my mother’s bathroom she tells me, “As long as you are throwing up and doing drugs I don’t feel comfortable engaging with you.” Leslie agrees. I look at them and see that they are fat. My brother, who is home too, takes me into my mother’s bathroom a couple of hours later and says, “Kid, they think you are headed for serious trouble.” I wait for the part about how he is worried but he says, “I told them you are a relatively smart girl and you’ll either figure it out…or you won’t.” And he leaves. I stare out the window at Washington Square Park and am thoroughly dissatisfied with my family. I go in the kitchen and slice myself a cucumber and start eating it with a pair of chopsticks and my mother, who has been glaring at me, says, “Are you going to throw that up?” I look at her with such disbelief and hatred and say, “No. Comments like that make me throw up. Not cucumbers.” And I go in her bathroom and throw up.

My friends at Barnard stop talking to me. They taught me how to vomit, they taught me how to dress, they drew up the plans for my renovation. They reinvented me. I am nothing without them