WEBVTT - Burning It Down 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.120 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning. 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:08.600 This episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discussion is advised. 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:11.600 If you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts, 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:22.239 please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at three. When 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:24.760 I tell my daughter about the fire, she looks at 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.960 the sun. I won't tell her that my mother, her grandmother, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:32.000 said it, just as when she asked how she died, 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.839 I won't tell her about the gun. I'll say simply, 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.559 she had a bad heart. This is the only jar 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.559 I'll offer. If you're reading this now, I'm sorry I 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:47.040 lied to you. You're only seven. I didn't want you 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:49.479 to know, before you had even fully landed on this 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:53.560 planet a grandmother had chosen to leave it. I didn't 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.200 want you to know that it was an option, it 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:58.880 was something in our blood. I didn't want you to 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.880 know that at one when I was your age, she 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.280 might considered, with one match to suit be fold me 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:10.360 us everything back into the universe, just as I didn't 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.080 want you to know at that moment that I too 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:24.959 had considered leaving. That's Nick Flynn, poet, memoirist, teacher, and 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.399 author of the recent memoir This is the night our 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:32.800 house will catch fire. Nick's story is like an intricate 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:37.120 piece of origami, secrets folded into secrets, folded into secrets, 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.919 until finally, over the course of a lifetime, a shape emerges. 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:47.720 It's tough and shocking and ultimately beautiful. This is one 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.280 man's journey to assemble the shards of memory into something 0:01:51.360 --> 0:02:06.000 whole and coherent, something he can live with. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.560 and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.280 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:24.600 secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.280 of your childhood. I grew up in a small town 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.000 in New England, in Massachusetts on the coast. For beautiful, 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:34.880 I mean I can see that I knew it was beautiful, 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:36.720 then I can still see it's beautiful, although I don't 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.399 go back very much. So. The ocean was a big 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.560 part of the Atlantic Ocean, and uh the beach and 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.600 even more specifically, salt marsh that the sort of body 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.840 is landform that separated the ocean from the mainland. I 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.920 spent a lot of time in the salt marshes, and 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.160 another part of the landscape was the woods behind my 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.440 grandmother's house. Those are sort of the main places. It 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:01.320 was a small town. It was a small town. It 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.760 didn't you know one street town called the center town, 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.000 the harbor, a lot of fishing boats in it. Um. Yeah, 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:09.400 I spent a lot of time in the harbor. So 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.320 you just went back and forth down the one street. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.400 And your family had deep roots in this town, right, Yeah, 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:19.680 deep roots. Yeah, it's funny when you say that, because 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.080 I don't think of them. There was a deep because 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.360 we felt like like interlopers or that we didn't belong 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.320 there in some way. I think as my mother broke 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.320 away from her family in some way, and we dropped 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:35.520 several class notches from her being raised probably upper class 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.680 down to like very working class poor by the time 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.520 I came along. But yeah, I know that her father 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.200 and grandfather at least grew up in the town or 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.320 had roots in the town. And then my father's also 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.200 his father grandfather, so I know it goes back at 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:53.560 least that far, you know, at least two or three generations. 0:03:54.880 --> 0:04:00.440 So tell me about the mother of your childhood. Describe 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.119 her for me what she was like. By the time 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.960 she was twenty, she had two kids, I was a 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.080 second child after you know, probably six months after I 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.480 was born, she left my father, which is a good thing, 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.799 a necessary thing, and then she was on her own. Really, 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.640 she had this wealthy father, but she didn't take any 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.160 help or get any help from him. She was kind 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:25.560 of on her own. But she stayed in the same 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.480 town that she grew up in and well that at 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:31.680 least the grandfather wasn't and her mother, I think mostly 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.440 just two, so she does some childcare. Like we often 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.240 stayed at her mother's house, at my grandmother's house. Because 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.559 my mother got three jobs, you know, three lousy jobs, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.880 as Philippine would say. She worked at a making donuts 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.320 at the supermarket, and she worked waiting tables and restaurants, 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:49.840 and eventually she got her more secure job, which was 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.520 a bank teller, and that gave us health insurance. So 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:55.080 she was young. She was very young and beautiful and 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.440 vivacious and fun, and she had a series of boyfriends 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.039 growing up. She had these, you know, men that would 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:03.520 sort of be in our life, and they'd usually be 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:05.000 in a life for like maybe a year or so, 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.800 or maybe a little bit longer, and you know, I 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:10.279 got to know each of these guys, and the guys 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.720 that she went with were for the most part kind 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.760 of great guys, um gentle. For the most part, that 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:17.800 wasn't like violence being brought into the house. And for 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:21.400 the most part, I say there was something. Yeah, what 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:25.560 was the reason behind the riffed with her father with 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:30.000 your grandfather? Well, you know, my mother married my father, 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:34.080 or got pregnant by my father. She was probably seventeen 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.839 and he was probably twenty seven, and he was pretty 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.719 clearly you know, for my grandfather to see he was 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.320 maybe not the right guy. He was on his way 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.160 to pretty serious alcoholism. He didn't really have a job. 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.800 He just sort of drifted around. One of the things 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:53.200 that he called himself a writer, which became a point 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:55.400 of contention in my family. When I started to call 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.240 myself a writer, it wasn't like a sign of something 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.960 noble to do, so it sort of met you are disreputable. 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:03.320 I think it was mostly that, and mostly that she 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:05.400 sort of and she was rebellious when she was young. 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.680 She was rebellious I think because the house she grew 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:09.560 up in was there was a lot of alcohol. There 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:11.880 was a lot of alcoholism. Her mother and her father 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.720 were both alcoholics. And even if they had money, so 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.920 there wasn't the consequences that come with alcoholism, you know, 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.039 certain consequences, But at a certain point, I think by 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:25.320 the time she was like fifteen or so, she was 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.160 just really rebellious and we kept getting kicked out of schools, 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:30.040 out of private schools, and it was just kind of 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.400 a little bit wild, and I think that he they 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:35.240 didn't have the tools as parents to deal with the 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:37.720 young woman and their pardon what they were doing to 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:43.160 adding to her her struggles. You know. It's interesting though, 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:46.800 because she does leave your father, and so if he's 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:50.719 the problem was sort of the last straw, then that's gone, 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:56.400 but her relationship with them never really improves. Yeah, there 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.800 was also I think by the time she was with 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.200 my father, around the same time my grandparents got divorced, 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.279 and so there was the grandmother who was Irish, the 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.440 grandfather who was you know, waspy English. He was the 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.680 one who had the money, and the grandmother, who is 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.480 the one who also helped raise us. She didn't have 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.240 much money then once they got divorced, and so I 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.360 think from the waspy side, it's a little incomprehensible to 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.280 some of my friends, and they just there's a thing 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:29.000 about like not supporting the children, like they have to 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.240 make it on their own, that they have to prove themselves, 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.120 or you know, not even to the point of just 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.760 offering her an education. You know, like I would think 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.679 that you would think she's twenty years old, just two kids, 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:42.520 like you just stepped in and say that we want 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.200 to put you through college or something, just do something 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:47.680 that would basically set her on the right track. They 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.120 just didn't do that. I don't It's a little bit 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.480 incomprehensible to me. My grandfather in some ways was the 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:56.160 strange in that way, Like I think he had a 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:59.760 strange relationship to money. He inherited his money and he 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:02.000 just went through it like in his life. He sort 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:05.320 of was nominally a businessman, but he just kind of 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:07.120 spent the money that he had, and I think he 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:09.840 felt like he hadn't earned it and so maybe his 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.920 kids should earn it. It's really hard for me to say, 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.920 tell me a little bit about your father. Well he 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.480 was I didn't know him growing up at all. He 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:23.480 left when I was six months old, or we left him. 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:25.880 And the stories I heard you just tell there was 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:27.800 bad blood, like if you brought him up. And I 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.640 began getting letters from him when I was fifteen or so, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.040 fourteen or fifteen, and he was in federal prison at 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.200 that point he'd gone to jail, but at this point 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:41.080 he was in federal prison for passing bad checks, robbing 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.240 banks with these bad checks across state lines. Was federal. 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:48.959 And he began writing me letters and the letters were, 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.400 you know, confusing, and my mother would give me the letters, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.040 but she was given some resentment like, you know, your 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:59.120 father's in prison, did this thing. Um, it was sort 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:01.560 of making a connection. But he's very um. You know, 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.160 if he had to diagnose him, probably know, narcissism would 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.079 probably be high on the on the list. He was 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.200 an alcoholic but also narcissistic. And so he really just 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.080 talked about himself in the letters, like he didn't seem 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:14.280 like he was really that interested in me my life, 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:16.160 and he was just sort of go on about himself, 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:18.880 you know. So the letters stopped he got out of prison. 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.160 You know, through some certain strange coincidences, I knew who 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:25.240 he was and where he was, you know, I document 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:27.400 that in one of my earlier books. And then at 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:29.880 a certain point I began after my mother died when 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.000 I was twenty two. I began working in homeless shelter, 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.040 and after I'd been there for three years, he showed 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.439 up at the homeless shelter. At that point he was homeless. 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:43.000 It was well into his alcoholism, and he was homeless 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:44.520 for about five years. And you know, he and I 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.000 were sort of wrestled in the homeless shelter for for 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.600 about three years until I finally got sober, and then 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.360 I left the shelter, and then a little while after that, 0:09:54.160 --> 0:10:00.880 we got him into housing, into a subsidized housing. We'll 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:12.720 be right back. When Nick is seven years old. His 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.200 house catches fire. That's how it's talked about. The house 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.839 catches fire, as if this is something that happens passively 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:26.040 all by itself. Nick writes quite a bit about cover stories. 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:30.200 He quotes another guest on this podcast, Dr Bessel vander Kolch, 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:35.400 from his seminal book on trauma, The Body keeps the score. Trauma, 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.960 by its nature, drives us to the edge of comprehension. 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.400 Sooner or later, most survivors come up with what many 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.480 of them call their cover story that offers some explanation 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:52.840 for their symptoms and behaviors for public consumption. These stories, however, 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:58.400 rarely capture the inner truth of the experience. It's enormously 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:03.920 difficult to organize ins traumatic experiences into a coherent account, 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.800 a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.160 The truth Nick will come to realize later, much later, 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:19.200 is that the fire didn't just happen. His mother said 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:23.960 it herself. Well, Nick and his brother were asleep upstairs. 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.880 The story of the fire is something I've been wrestling with. 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.320 That it happened, and it also it appears in every 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.520 book that I've written, actually is a there's a fire, 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.160 there's a house on fire. This's you know, it's it's 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.280 something that he sort of has always been hovering in 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.080 my subconscious and and I did, you know, like vessel 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.360 Vandicle and that really struck me, that passage from vessel Vandricle. 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.200 He's done a lot of work with with veterans with 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.800 post traumatic stress, and I really felt the thing that 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.439 had this book arise was this sort of moment of 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.480 sort of really seeing the fire for what it was 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:01.720 in a way as much as I could at that moment, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.640 which was that my mother had said it, and that 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.080 that was a really kind of a terrifying thing to do, 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.280 and I hadn't really felt the terror of it, or 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.920 the directicus of it, or the the layers the danger 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:15.480 of that until that moment. And it's strange to say 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:17.960 that what compelled me to see it, or what fortunate 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:19.520 to see it, was that my daughter turned the same 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:21.560 age I had bed and I sort of looked at 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:23.600 her when she was set and I was just like, well, 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.160 that's that's a really that's kind of a crazy thing 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:27.520 to do, to set a house on fire with a 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.040 kid in it. And it's a little embarrassing to say 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.600 because before that moment, before my daughter turned seven, you know, 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.240 in the beginning, when the house got fire, the story 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.480 for the family was that raccoons had knocked out her 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.680 botti over, we had a grill, the raccoons came knocked 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:45.960 to have bought you over, and the house got fire. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.760 And then several years later I interviewed her boyfriend at 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:51.240 the time, who was in the house of the night 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.520 at the fire, and he just laughed at the story 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:55.960 of the raccoon as he said, well, you know, the 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:57.880 raccoons did say your house on fire, your mother did. 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:00.800 And that was when I was about thirty five. Yeah, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:02.480 so it was more than several years later. It was 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.480 a whole lot of years later, right, so like a 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:09.000 lifetime later. Three years later, thirty years later. I lived 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.520 with this story of the of the raccoons for like 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.560 thirty years, and that seemed like a good story. It 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:16.560 made sense, you know. I didn't think about the fire 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:18.920 on a conscious level that much, because you know, there 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.320 was an accident. I reckon said the house on fire, Like, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.400 we escaped, my mother got the insurance money and got 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:25.800 the house fixed. It was it was kind of a 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.240 good thing. But then even after I heard the story 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.120 that she had set the house on fire, I still 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.040 held onto that thing that it was a good story that, 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:35.199 you know, because it worked out. We got the money 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:37.680 and we got the house fixed, and you know, my 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.839 mother was broke, she was young. Our house was really 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.160 not in good shape, and it became a little bit better. 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.280 I held onto that story until my daughter was the 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:50.319 same age I was, and then I was like, well, wait, 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:52.600 that's a strange thing for a parent to do. Like, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.679 you know, I don't know about you, but I had 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:56.440 no idea what it was to be a parent until 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.080 I became one. And then suddenly you're you know, one 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:01.000 day you're not a parent, the next day you are one. 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:03.640 And then you sort of figured out as you go along. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.400 And as she got to that age, the fire rose 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:11.120 up again in my subconscious it rose up. Remember what 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:15.400 I said about origami. When he's thirty five, Nick goes 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.240 on a pilgrimage of sorts, traveling the country to interview 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.560 each of his mother's ex boyfriends. He does this in 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.280 a journalistic way and actually decides to make a documentary 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.280 about it. This is his own way of giving himself 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.800 permission to dig deeper, show up on the front steps 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.560 of strangers, learn more about all he doesn't yet know. 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:40.480 It's like in a dream, when there's a door and 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:42.840 a dream you have the choice way to open it 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.920 or leave it closed, And you know, it just seems 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:47.960 if just to note to know what's beyond it, you 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:49.960 open the door, and it might be something that's you 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.240 don't want to see, or something that's somewhere terrifying. But 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.560 if you don't open the door, then you're you'll never know. So, 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.520 you know, when I was thirty five and I got 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.080 a notice, a friend of mine told me that there 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:03.960 was a organization in New York called The Kitchen, which 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:06.520 is a performance arts space, and they put out a 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:10.080 call to artists and writers who were not video we're 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.040 not filmmakers, and they would train you to how to 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:17.720 make films, how to make a videos, and they gave 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:19.600 you editing, and they gave you equipment, and you know, 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.040 you met and so I submitted a proposal. And the 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:25.040 proposal I submitted was that I would go track down 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.920 my mother's ex boyfriends. Which the reason I did that 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.560 was because it really seemed like it gave me the creeps. 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.800 It seemed like a really strange proposal. Just suddenly show up, 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.680 you know, suddenly you're seven, and now that these guys 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:38.880 are probably fifty or something, and now you're thirty five, 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.920 and like, hi, do you remember me? And I think 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:43.680 it was because of that they were such a strange 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.840 proposal that they let me in. I made the film, 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:48.920 and um, there's a documentary film. And I went and 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.320 found these men. He's like about a dozen men all 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.080 up and down the Eastern Seaboard down to Florida, from 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.400 Florida to almost to the Canadian border. And you know, 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.640 I rented cars and flew and didn't really relatively, you know, 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.160 maybe two week or a month long period. I just 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.320 canted all these interviews and then edited it into a film. 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.480 I decided to just steal it down just for to 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:11.760 make it more streamline to two questions. I just asked 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:13.840 them how they had met her and then how they 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.440 find out she had died, and that just sort of 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:18.640 was enough to get them going to tell the story 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.000 about what she was to do. And I remember them 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:22.960 all too like, they all like, you know, I could 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:25.280 even recognize them when I was with them. They were 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.480 like these father figures in my life growing up, this 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.800 rotating cast of father figures. So that's how I met 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:32.400 I call him Vernon in the book. His name is 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:34.120 in Vernon, but I called him Vernon in the book. 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.040 That's so how I met him. And he told the story, 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.560 the story being that it wasn't Raccoon's tipping over the habachi, 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.800 it was Nick's mother setting the house on fire to 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:51.600 be able to collect the insurance money. I sometimes wonder, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.760 you know, when it comes to being a writer and 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.480 digging into material, opening the door and not knowing what's 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.440 going to be on the other side of it, that 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.720 sometimes it feels like the writing, or the assignment or 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:11.159 the proposal, is the thing that gives you permission to 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.520 go ahead and do the thing that scares you, because 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.040 now it's work, now it's art, but it's something that 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.000 you actually really want to know, but you would never 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.080 just go do on your own. It has to have 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.800 a form and a shape. Are you thinking of inheritance? 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.040 I'm thinking of inheritance. I'm thinking of a piece I 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.600 wrote for The New Yorker many years ago when I 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.600 was just trying to understand my father better again after 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.760 his death, where I knew he had been married to 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.760 a woman who died shortly after they got married, and 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:42.879 I never knew anything about her, anything about it. It 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:47.560 was a subject that we never broached. And I pitched 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:49.600 it to The New Yorker and I got an assignment. 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:51.800 So I had to pick up the phone. I had 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:53.639 to get in the car, I had to go. I 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:57.040 had to find her family, and and my heart was 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.480 in my throat. I was absolutely terrified. I really wanted 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.639 to know. But the only way that I could bring 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:07.840 myself to push it, to push myself was to feel 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.640 like I had a purpose. Yeah, I mean, I think, 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.679 and there there is terror involved in it too. I mean, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.280 there are a couple of the men that I interviewed 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:18.919 that I that I tracked down. I had feared, like 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.640 my mother's second husband was a Vietnam VET and he 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.240 was just back in Vietnam at the time, and you know, 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.320 he was he was suffering from PTSD and he was 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:30.760 just a little bit scary, or you know, that's that's 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:32.679 sort of minimizing it. He was. He was a lot scary, 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:35.480 and he's also great. He was also a really great guy. 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.159 And so when I found him, it was frightening until 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.159 we actually were face to face, and then suddenly it 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:46.200 all melted away. I saw this, this human being. When 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:50.800 you're eighteen, your then girlfriend, who you referred to as 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.359 the initial oh, is looking for a pad of paper 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.840 to write something down on and she finds a pad 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.920 of paper and on it is in your mother's handwriting 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:06.800 is a suicide note. And it's written at some time earlier, 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.399 and it's not something that your mother carried through with. 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:14.200 She had not committed suicide at that time. But there's 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.159 this note and there's a really powerful moment where you 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:21.880 go outside and you burn it more fire, And how 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.280 does that then sort of play within you during this 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.720 period of time. I mean, you've you're in the midst 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.720 of your addiction, you're drinking really heavily. Is it something 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:35.639 that at that time stayed with you and haunted you? 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:37.879 Or did it burn up with the paper that you 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.040 set fire too? You know, I think I had a 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.760 sense at the time that you know, I could tell 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.040 you again, you can tell yourself a story. And the 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.720 story that I told myself is that when you know, 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.200 the Vietnam vette had left, had left our house, that 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.040 my mother fell into a depression. And that had been 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.320 probably two or three years before I found that note, 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.640 and so I didn't know how ng that. No, there 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:03.560 was like a yellow legal pad had been kicking around 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.440 the house and maybe just somehow surfaced. And I attributed 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.240 to that because she didn't seem in that state at 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.119 that time when I was eighteen, and so I really 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:15.560 was like, this is something that she went through and 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:17.240 I'm just gonna get rid of it. I'm just gonna 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:19.920 burn this, and that it was like a like a ritual. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:26.720 And I assumed in my teenage mind, my teenage cosmology, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.880 that by burning it it somehow would send it back 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.719 out into the universe, and it wouldn't be real. Somehow 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.679 that released the energy of it, and rather than just 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.480 deny it, just like exilely to a place of denial. 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.320 We you're just not going to think about this because 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.119 it's too much to think about. And so that's what 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:44.680 I did. And I did I think about it. Yeah, 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:46.320 I thought about it, you know, quite a bit. Like 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:48.400 when I after I got that note, I was eighteen, 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.800 and I decided not to go to college. I was 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:53.800 just gonna stay sort of closer to home to keep 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:55.879 an eye on my mother. And so I worked for 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:57.760 a couple of years and I ended up working for her, 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.560 her boyfriend at the time, it was a gangster. Worked 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.960 for those guys for about five years ago, but a 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:04.520 lot of it was to keep an eye of my mother. 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:06.600 And then I eventually did go to school. I eventually 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.800 did end up admitted to you mass Amherst, and it 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.320 just made sense to go. There was a couple years later, 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.840 I was like twenty. At that point, your mom was 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:20.439 she was home and tending bar and laundering money for 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:25.200