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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: I Lived, shadowed by an uncertainty about my parents' marriage

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Speaker 2: and a sense of some fundamental instability lurking just beneath

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Speaker 2: the surface. Lynn and Dick were held up as a

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Speaker 2: model couple by many of their friends, and were profiled

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Speaker 2: as such in several newspaper pieces, celebrated especially for the

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Speaker 2: ways my father made my mother's business success possible. They

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Speaker 2: complimented each other well, my father the extravagant romantic, my

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Speaker 2: mother the cool realist.

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Speaker 1: As my father would.

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Speaker 2: Give disquisitions on a new play, will whoop excitedly with

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Speaker 2: his buddies as they watched a sports game, my mother

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Speaker 2: would break in to someone everyone firmly to the dinner table.

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Speaker 2: If my father luxuriated in meandering after her conversations that

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Speaker 2: continued even after coffee and dessert, it was my mother

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Speaker 2: who reminded everyone how late it was and briskly ushered

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Speaker 2: guests out the door.

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Speaker 3: That's Priscilla Gilman, writer, former professor of English and author

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Speaker 3: of the recent memoir The Critic's Daughter. Priscilla's story glitters

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Speaker 3: on the surface. A rarefied New York City childhood, highly

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Speaker 3: successful parents who were at the epicenter of literary life,

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Speaker 3: a world of intellectual stimulation and famous friends. But beneath

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Speaker 3: that shiny exterior was a darker, harder truth. Things were very,

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Speaker 3: very unhappy in the Gilman household, and Priscilla, as a

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Speaker 3: young child, absorbed it all. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this

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Speaker 3: is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,

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Speaker 3: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we

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Speaker 3: keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.

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Speaker 1: Three Central Park Wests.

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Speaker 2: That was an incredible historic building on Central Park West

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Speaker 2: in ninety third Street, inhabited by a slew of people

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Speaker 2: we would now consider luminaries, lots of PBS producers and

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Speaker 2: artists and therapists.

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Speaker 1: It was rent controlled. My parents paid about one hundred

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Speaker 1: and forty one hundred and fifty dollars.

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Speaker 2: A month, and we were on the Central Park West.

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Speaker 2: Literally my bedroom looked out onto the park, huge three

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Speaker 2: bedroom apartment. Paint was peeling, the tubs were chipped, but

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Speaker 2: we didn't care because we were living in this kind

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Speaker 2: of almost sesame street world. And I say that street

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Speaker 2: began in nineteen sixty nine. I was born in nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventy and the Upper West Side in the seventies. It

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Speaker 2: wasn't all that safe. It certainly wasn't upscale, but it

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Speaker 2: was filled with academics and artists and writers and actors

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Speaker 2: and interesting people who were at the center of intellectual

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Speaker 2: and artistic culture.

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Speaker 3: It's so amazing to hear you say that that New

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Speaker 3: York is a disappeared New York now.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, And when I think back on my childhood, there's

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Speaker 2: this kind of wistfulness for that feeling of vibrancy and

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Speaker 2: artistic secundity, and the sense that any night some person

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Speaker 2: could come over to my parents' apartment bearing a magical

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Speaker 2: story or an exciting idea that they were developing a

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Speaker 2: project that they wanted to work on, that they wanted

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Speaker 2: advice from my mother on or my father. And there

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Speaker 2: was just this continual sense of discovery and excitement and

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Speaker 2: wonder in my childhood.

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Speaker 3: So you and your mother and your father and your

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Speaker 3: younger sister, Claire lived at three three three until you

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Speaker 3: were about.

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Speaker 2: How old, until I was eight, And when I was eight,

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight, they bought their first apartment in

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Speaker 2: New York City. They bought forty four West seventy seventh Street.

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Speaker 2: It's across the street from the Museum of National History,

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Speaker 2: and I think they bought the apartment for about one

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Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it was a thirty

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Speaker 2: two hundred square foot apartment with the living room and

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Speaker 2: my father's office fronting onto the Natural History Museum. We

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Speaker 2: looked out over it because we were on the tenth floor.

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Speaker 2: And I think the year that we bought that apartment,

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Speaker 2: there was a drug rehab facility on the block. There

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Speaker 2: was a neighborhood Block Association. It was just sort of

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Speaker 2: starting to get cleaned up.

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Speaker 1: But we in a couple of.

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Speaker 2: Years Columbus Avenue exploded and became one of the sheekest

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Speaker 2: parts of the city.

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Speaker 4: Tell me about the mother of your childhood.

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Speaker 2: So my mother, Lynn Nesbitt, had moved to New York

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Speaker 2: City in her early twenties from the Midwest as kind

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Speaker 2: of the wide eyed girl. She used to listen to

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Speaker 2: the radio when she was a kid, and there was

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Speaker 2: a show called Grand Central Station, Crossroads.

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Speaker 1: Of a Thousand Lives, and she listened to that and said,

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Speaker 1: I want to be in that place.

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Speaker 2: I want to be in New York City, meeting exciting

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Speaker 2: people and doing exciting things. And she worked her way

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Speaker 2: up from being an assistant at a women's magazine to

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Speaker 2: being the assistant to a literary agent. And when she

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Speaker 2: was working for that literary agent, she got a manuscript

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Speaker 2: from a Harvard medical student named Michael Crichton, and it

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Speaker 2: was called The Andromeda Strain, and she signed him as

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Speaker 2: a client and soon began representing everybody from Tom Wolf

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Speaker 2: to Hunter S.

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Speaker 1: Thompson Cairo. She represented Tony Morrison.

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Speaker 2: Tony's first book was published in the year I was born,

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Speaker 2: The Bluest Eye, and Rice and Beaty, just a flew of.

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Speaker 1: And high Low and everything in between.

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Speaker 3: So your mother was already successful. She was doing very

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Speaker 3: well as a literary agent by the time you were born.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, she was. She married my father when she

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Speaker 2: was twenty seven. She had three miscarriages before I was born.

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Speaker 2: She had to have surgery on her uterus, one of

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Speaker 2: the first to kind of a pioneering surgery, and she

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Speaker 2: was able to get pregnant and carry the baby to term,

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Speaker 2: and she had me and my sister within fourteen.

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Speaker 1: Months of each other.

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Speaker 2: And so she was in her early thirties, two young children,

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Speaker 2: a vice president at ICM International Creative Management in the

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Speaker 2: literary department, representing a ton of incredible authors.

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Speaker 4: And how about your father.

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Speaker 2: So he in the sixties when he met my mom.

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Speaker 2: I believe he was working at newswol when he met

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Speaker 2: my mom. He was the theater critic, the staff theater

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Speaker 2: critic for Newsweek in an office. Another example of how

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Speaker 2: we've lost a lot in our culture. I don't think

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Speaker 2: it's a staff theater critic in Newsweek anymore. And in

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven he was hired to teach at the

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Speaker 2: l School of Drama. And in the sixties and the

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Speaker 2: seventies he mainly taught dramaturgy or dramatic criticism, but he

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Speaker 2: also did teach playwrights. He taught actors. Meryl Streep was

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Speaker 2: one of his most beloved students. He taught Henry Winkler,

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Speaker 2: Wendy Wasserstein, Sigourney Weaver, a whole bunch of performers, writers,

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Speaker 2: directors at the l School of Drama. So he was

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Speaker 2: up there two nights a week. He would stay in

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Speaker 2: a hotel in New Haven when we were in the city,

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Speaker 2: and then we had a country house in western Connecticut

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Speaker 2: where we spent our weekends. My father was a very

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Speaker 2: powerful formidical critic. He also wrote literary criticism. He had

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Speaker 2: been the editor of The New Republic's literary section at

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Speaker 2: one point, and he was known in public as being

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Speaker 2: tough and difficult to please and rigorous and almost fear

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Speaker 2: inducing because of how honest and how ostensibly harsh she

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Speaker 2: could be in some of his reviews. But in his

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Speaker 2: personal life he was warm and congenial and playful and affectionate,

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Speaker 2: and he.

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Speaker 1: Had grown up in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

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Speaker 2: Was very sort of down to earth and loved sports

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Speaker 2: and loved deli food. My mother, who came from the Midwest,

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Speaker 2: was a cooler customer. I would just describe my mother as,

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Speaker 2: although she was author's advocates, she was nurturing talent. She

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Speaker 2: was supporting people through their dark moments when they doubted

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Speaker 2: if they could write, or they doubted if they could produce.

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Speaker 2: She's just a cooler, more rational person than my father.

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Speaker 2: My father, even as he was that rigorous critic, he

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Speaker 2: was essentially a romantic and idealist somebody who loved musical

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Speaker 2: theater passionately. My mother was just more. She was very

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Speaker 2: hard working, She was very competent. She worked incredibly hard

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Speaker 2: and kept her cool in very difficult, tough situations. My

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Speaker 2: father was more insecure. My father struggled with writer's block,

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Speaker 2: and he smoked compulsively, and I could tell as a

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Speaker 2: young child that he was self medicating with cigarettes. He

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Speaker 2: could get irritable, he could get depressed if he wasn't.

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Speaker 1: Producing enough writing.

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Speaker 2: And my mother was very good at sort of laying

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Speaker 2: down the law and saying, Okay, you're going in your

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Speaker 2: office now, and you're going to come out in two hours,

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Speaker 2: and you're going to give me some pages. She was

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Speaker 2: very good at pushing him.

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Speaker 1: And my mother is a rock solid person.

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Speaker 2: She was then, she is now. You can always count

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Speaker 2: on her in a crisis. In Joan Divien's The Year

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Speaker 2: of Magical Thinking, my mother appears in one of the

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Speaker 2: opening of that book as the first person Joan calls

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Speaker 2: when John dies. My mother was both John and Joan's

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Speaker 2: literary agent. And I don't think it's an accident that

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Speaker 2: she called my mother. Yes she was a very close friend,

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Speaker 2: and yes she was the agent. But Joan also knew

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Speaker 2: my mother is the person you call when you're in

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Speaker 2: an emergency situation.

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Speaker 1: She's going to take care of things.

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Speaker 2: And she's not going to cry in a way that

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Speaker 2: she's not going to be able to manage herself. My

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Speaker 2: father was more vulnerable emotionally than my mother.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you write that even though your father cultivated the

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Speaker 3: pristine and protected sanctity of your childhood, even though he

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Speaker 3: was the one you'd go to for reassurance when you

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Speaker 3: had to worry, you never felt entirely secure about your father.

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Speaker 3: It seems like your mother was certainly much more disciplined

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Speaker 3: than your father.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, my father, he always had this cough that worried me.

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Speaker 2: The kids would try to get him to quit smoking,

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Speaker 2: and he would get very angry and say, no, I'm fine.

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Speaker 2: My parents live until their nineties, and they my father smoked.

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Speaker 2: I'll quit when I'm older. So I always worried about

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Speaker 2: his health in that way. It just didn't like the

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Speaker 2: way that cough sounded. I also always worried about his

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Speaker 2: mood because I could see I didn't know what to

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Speaker 2: label it. I didn't know what to call it. Today,

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Speaker 2: we would say that he was suffering from untreated depression.

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Speaker 2: He would get into kind of quiet and dark moods

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Speaker 2: or sometimes not often, but sometimes he would get irritable.

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Speaker 1: He had a temper.

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Speaker 2: He could get angry, particularly at my sister, who was

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Speaker 2: just a little bit more of a difficult child. If

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Speaker 2: she would spill her milk, he might get angry, or

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Speaker 2: she would complain, or she would talk back, and he

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Speaker 2: would get angry. And so I just always felt when

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Speaker 2: I entered a room my father's face lit up. When

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Speaker 2: I was with him, he was calmer, he was happier,

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Speaker 2: and he seemed more secure.

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Speaker 1: So from a very young age.

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Speaker 2: I sensed that I was almost what we would call

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Speaker 2: today like I was my father's prozac.

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Speaker 1: In a way, helping him manage.

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Speaker 3: His moods, which is a tremendous responsibility for an eight nine.

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Speaker 4: Ten year old.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that strikes

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Speaker 3: me so much about your story is that there are

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Speaker 3: some bigger secrets in it. But the secrets in it

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Speaker 3: really have to do with what is left unexpressed, what

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Speaker 3: is left unspoken, which is a more subtle kind of

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Speaker 3: secret keeping. Right like you were, you were as a

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Speaker 3: member of your family who was really never going to

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Speaker 3: say anything that was going to rock the boat for

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Speaker 3: any of them.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, I viewed myself as my sister's protector. I was

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Speaker 2: only fourteen months older than Claire, but she was fragile.

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Speaker 2: She would cry when my parents would go out and

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Speaker 2: they would go away, and I would be comforting her.

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Speaker 2: She didn't have the filter that I had in terms

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Speaker 2: of if she was upset or we would be taking

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Speaker 2: a trip, she'd say.

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Speaker 1: We have to stop the car. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty.

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Speaker 2: And I really admire her ability to advocate for her

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Speaker 2: needs and to say how she was feeling. But because

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Speaker 2: she did that so openly, it almost hardened me in

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Speaker 2: my role of being Okay, my parents need one child

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Speaker 2: who's easy. My parents need one child who's not going

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Speaker 2: to complain. My parents need one child who's just going

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Speaker 2: to be that boy and happy child. And I was

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Speaker 2: born that way. I should say, you know, it's important

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Speaker 2: to say that my parents cast me.

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Speaker 1: In this role.

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Speaker 2: But the role wasn't a stretch, right. I didn't cry

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Speaker 2: when I was a baby. Everybody always talked about that.

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Speaker 1: In the family lore.

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Speaker 2: My sister was very difficult. She didn't sleep through the night.

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Speaker 2: My parents were at their wits end. Claire would have tantrums,

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Speaker 2: and everybody from our babysitters to my brother from my

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Speaker 2: father's first marriage talk about how all little easy Persula.

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Speaker 2: She was always so sweet and easy and she never cried.

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Speaker 2: And I took that role seriously, and I love what

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Speaker 2: you say about It was almost like I couldn't voice

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Speaker 2: any feelings of worry or dissatisfaction, or this is hard

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Speaker 2: for me, anything like that. I had to keep those

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Speaker 2: things even from myself. I know you do talk often

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Speaker 2: in this podcast about these different types of secrets.

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Speaker 1: And I was almost keeping it from myself.

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Speaker 2: How hard this was at times for me to always

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Speaker 2: have to play that role of the good girl.

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Speaker 3: Priscilla is ten years old. The tensions between her parents

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Speaker 3: have been mounting. They aren't getting along even when they

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Speaker 3: go on vacation together. Priscilla wonders what do they do

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Speaker 3: while they're away. They really don't have much in common,

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Speaker 3: but one thing has been clear. They've promised Priscilla and

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Speaker 3: Claire that no matter what, they'll never get a divorce.

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Speaker 3: But then one October night in nineteen eighty, Priscilla hears

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Speaker 3: her parents arguing in the kitchen and it's filled with

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Speaker 3: a sense of doom. This foreboding feeling is born out

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Speaker 3: when her parents sit their daughters down at the kitchen

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Speaker 3: table and announce that they're going to have a trial separation.

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Speaker 2: I remember my sister got worried and thought it had

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Speaker 2: something to do with court or the legal system, you know,

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Speaker 2: when daddy's going on trial. What my mother said, No, no, no,

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Speaker 2: we're going to be living in separate places. And when

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Speaker 2: Claire started to look upset, she reassured her and she said,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's just kind of like an experiment. We're

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Speaker 2: just trying it out seeing And I knew in that

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Speaker 2: instant that it was not an experiment, it was not

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Speaker 2: a trial. That what I had most dreaded for a

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Speaker 2: long time was going to happen. And I will say

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Speaker 2: also that you know, this is nineteen eighty starting to

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Speaker 2: enter the era where more and more people that would

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Speaker 2: have stayed married ten twenty years ago are splitting up.

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Speaker 2: And a number of their friends, couples that we used

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Speaker 2: to hang out with, had split up. And so this

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Speaker 2: is one of the reasons why Claire and I start

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Speaker 2: asking them, right.

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Speaker 1: Are you going to split up? And then they would

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Speaker 1: have these kind.

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Speaker 2: Of fiery arguments where they would yell at each other,

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Speaker 2: and after those arguments, we would ask them and I think,

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Speaker 2: you know one thing that I do want to say

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Speaker 2: about their marriage.

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Speaker 1: They had two major things in common.

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Speaker 2: One, their children. They adored their children, They loved being parents.

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Speaker 2: I could tell that they were in very invested in

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Speaker 2: the family and the larger family unit, bringing the grandparents together.

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Speaker 2: My mother loved my brother from my father's first marriage.

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Speaker 2: And I think my mother appreciated what a wonderful father

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Speaker 2: my father was, and even Crtic allows and have this

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Speaker 2: major career because he loved taking care of us, playing

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Speaker 2: with us, and reading to us and doing all those

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Speaker 2: things that she wasn't that interested in doing with us.

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Speaker 2: And at the same time, they were both passionate about

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Speaker 2: art and literature and that a life devoted.

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Speaker 1: To the arts could be meaningful.

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Speaker 2: They had both broken from their families of origin. Both

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Speaker 2: sets of grandparents were Republican. Both sets of grandparents had

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Speaker 2: businessman or lawyer right paternal figures, and my parents bonded

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Speaker 2: I think over that yet we're both escaping from the

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Speaker 2: oppressiveness of for my mother small town Illinois, from my

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Speaker 2: father Russian Jewish immigrant parents living in Flatbush and saying

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Speaker 2: a critic, how can you make money being a grip

305
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Speaker 2: that doesn't that's not a job, right, And they believed

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Speaker 2: in each other's work.

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Speaker 1: My mother thought my father was a genius. My dad

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Speaker 1: was wholly.

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Speaker 2: Admiring of my mother, supportive of her having a major career.

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Speaker 1: Not that many men were at that time.

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Speaker 2: So my father being sort of ahead of his time

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Speaker 2: and taking on more of the child rearing and just

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Speaker 2: caring for us and supporting her.

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Speaker 1: I think that's what held them together.

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Speaker 2: But their personalities were not compatible ultimately, And when my

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Speaker 2: mother announces this, I knew not only that this was

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Speaker 2: going to be irrevocable, that they were going to split,

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Speaker 2: and not just separate the divorce. I knew that my

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Speaker 2: father did not want this, because I could.

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Speaker 1: Always sense from a very young age.

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Speaker 2: That my father loved my mother far more than my

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Speaker 2: mother loved my father, if she really loved him at all.

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Speaker 1: I knew she revered.

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Speaker 2: Him intellectually, but I never saw any physical affection between

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Speaker 2: the two of them, And I did feel often as

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Speaker 2: a little girl my father wanting my mother's approval and

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Speaker 2: my mother not giving him the affection that I could

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Speaker 2: sense that he wanted.

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Speaker 3: And that night, when you leave the kitchen, you go

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Speaker 3: into your father's study and he tells you as much

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Speaker 3: he's crying, and he tells you, I don't want this.

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Speaker 2: He says, I don't want this. I don't want to

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Speaker 2: lose our family. I went after him. My mother took

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Speaker 2: Claire back to bed, and I could have gone to bed,

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Speaker 2: but I felt I need to go check on my father.

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Speaker 2: I need to go see if he's okay. And he

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Speaker 2: was crying, and I'd almost never seen him cry, and

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Speaker 2: I'd seen tears in his eyes and like sentimental moments

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Speaker 2: and movies maybe, and he was heaving with crying, and

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Speaker 2: immediately I was just hugging him, and I was trying

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Speaker 2: not to cry myself because I didn't want to make

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Speaker 2: it worse for him. But that wasn't a revelation to me.

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Speaker 2: When he said that, exactly as you said, Danny, I knew.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I went there and I had it confirmed.

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Speaker 2: My father did not want this.

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Speaker 1: My mother wanted this, and I could tell from the

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Speaker 1: expression in her.

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Speaker 2: Face that she was out. There was no chance that

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Speaker 2: he was going to be able to convince her.

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Speaker 1: And for a couple of.

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Speaker 2: Mon he did try, and it was very painful to

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Speaker 2: watch his fumbling around trying to praise her, and he'd say, oh,

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Speaker 2: you know, I've smoked only ten cigarettes today, right, or

354
00:20:11,960 --> 00:20:14,480
Speaker 2: I'm not going to bet on sports anymore, or any

355
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Speaker 2: of these things that had bothered her or have been

356
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Speaker 2: issues I knew as a little child.

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Speaker 1: Those were cosmetic things like that's not what it really was.

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Speaker 1: It was something deeper.

359
00:20:24,440 --> 00:20:29,959
Speaker 2: There was some deeper fault line between them.

360
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Speaker 3: We'll be right back when Priscilla's parents separate. The change

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00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:43,080
Speaker 3: is jarring for the whole family. The life and home

362
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Speaker 3: they all once shared is now fractured.

363
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Speaker 2: So, you know, we had moved into this really grand

364
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Speaker 2: apartment two years earlier, and my father had had this

365
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Speaker 2: incredible office with this huge white desk that looked like

366
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Speaker 2: a president could sit behind it, and all of a sudden,

367
00:21:03,320 --> 00:21:06,240
Speaker 2: he doesn't have a home at all. We're not told

368
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Speaker 2: where he's staying. He moves out in January, and I assumed,

369
00:21:10,080 --> 00:21:12,640
Speaker 2: you know, he's basically what we would today call kout surfing,

370
00:21:12,720 --> 00:21:17,879
Speaker 2: staying with different people friends for us, students, former students,

371
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Speaker 2: and my sister and I are only able to see

372
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Speaker 2: him for a quick lunch or a quick dinner at

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Speaker 2: a neighborhood restaurant maybe once or twice a week, and

374
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Speaker 2: he is alternately kind of shaky emotionally, like as soon

375
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Speaker 2: as he would see us, he would look like he

376
00:21:35,960 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 2: was about to cry, or he would get irritable because

377
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Speaker 2: he would say, girls, you have to split a dish,

378
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Speaker 2: and Claire would say, no, I want more food.

379
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Speaker 1: That's not enough food. I want more, and he would

380
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Speaker 1: get annoyed, and so I would be sort of kicking her,

381
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Speaker 1: trying to get her to stop.

382
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Speaker 2: And then I would notice that my father was taking

383
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Speaker 2: the containers in the McDonald so that have like the

384
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Speaker 2: packets of salt and pepper.

385
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Speaker 1: Or the ketchup packets and the mustard.

386
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Speaker 2: Packets and pouring them into his shoulder bag or sugar right,

387
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Speaker 2: and I'm thinking he can't even afford a box of sugar.

388
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Speaker 2: And meanwhile, my mother's career is going better than ever.

389
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Speaker 2: She's doing a lot of business in California. We go

390
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Speaker 2: and we stay for the summer in Brentwood, in Joan

391
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Speaker 2: Diddy and in John Vanna's house, and we're going to

392
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Speaker 2: all these movie premieres, and she's getting even more glamorous.

393
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Speaker 2: My mother seems free, my mother seems lighter, she seems happier,

394
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Speaker 2: and my father is overcome by this profound depression he'd

395
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Speaker 2: always teetered on the verge of falling into that. One night,

396
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,280
Speaker 2: my father had come back to the apartment. My mom

397
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:46,600
Speaker 2: was in California on business, and she allowed my father

398
00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:48,200
Speaker 2: to come into the apartment and stay with us, so

399
00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:51,160
Speaker 2: we would have a couple of nights with him. And

400
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:55,159
Speaker 2: we're playing a game with Claire, and Claire spills her

401
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 2: juice and my father had been warning her, you know,

402
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:00,240
Speaker 2: watch out for that glass, you know, don't but it's

403
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,000
Speaker 2: so near the board, and it spills, and he yells

404
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:07,159
Speaker 2: at her, and she starts crying, and he gets up

405
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 2: and he stalks out, and he walks back into the

406
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 2: room that had once been his office, and I comfort

407
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:16,320
Speaker 2: her and I go after him, and he's immediately contrite.

408
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 2: And he always was about his temper. He didn't think

409
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 2: it was a good thing. He never felt justified and raging.

410
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 2: He was always immediately apologetic. And he just looks absolutely distraught,

411
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 2: and he says, you know that I love you girls

412
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:35,000
Speaker 2: more than anything in the world, right, and I'm so sorry.

413
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:36,880
Speaker 2: You know that I didn't mean to get that angry,

414
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,160
Speaker 2: and you know it bothered me because I told her

415
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 2: not to do it.

416
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Speaker 5: So he's basically apologizing and then he looks out into

417
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Speaker 5: space and he says, you know, sometimes I think I

418
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:50,399
Speaker 5: kill myself if it wasn't for you girls.

419
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Speaker 2: And that's a moment where it just clicks in me.

420
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Speaker 2: You know, you could describe that as a secret that

421
00:23:58,119 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 2: I kind of perceived, but I didn't really know it

422
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 2: for sure until that night. My father's survival is my responsibility,

423
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:11,679
Speaker 2: and I am the most important thing to him, and

424
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 2: I have to do everything in my power to keep

425
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:14,800
Speaker 2: him alive.

426
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Speaker 4: You're in fifth.

427
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: Grade, yep, I'm in fifth grade.

428
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Speaker 4: You are in fifth grade.

429
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Speaker 3: I'm curious, Priscilla, like, what did it feel like that

430
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:31,560
Speaker 3: huge effort to push away everything that felt dangerous or

431
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:34,679
Speaker 3: you know that felt like a live wire. There was

432
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:36,399
Speaker 3: such vigilance on your part.

433
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 1: Vigilance is a great word.

434
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Speaker 2: It's something that I think we don't even often recognize

435
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 2: in ourselves until we're through it. I mean, it's something

436
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 2: that becomes so habitual that you don't even notice that

437
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,919
Speaker 2: you are constantly on the alert. Like I have this

438
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:58,240
Speaker 2: preternatural ability as a very young child, the sense when

439
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 2: my father's mood was going dark, when Claire was about

440
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 2: to lose it and have a tantrum and I think

441
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 2: what gets you through it is feeling this is my role,

442
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 2: Like this is what it's like to be alive. I

443
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 2: don't know if that makes sense, but you know, it's like,

444
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 2: this is what it means to be a human. I've

445
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 2: been assigned this role and it's what makes life meaningful

446
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 2: for me. Like these are my people, these are the

447
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 2: people I love. I am blessed by having a steadier

448
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,640
Speaker 2: temperament than they have. I am not as prone to crying,

449
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 2: I am not as vulnerable to moods. You know, I'm

450
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,200
Speaker 2: just lucky that I'm born with this temperament where I'm

451
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 2: more buoyant. I'm generally an optimistic person. This is true,

452
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 2: and this has been true throughout my life. I'm not

453
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 2: prone to darkness. It's easy for me to spot if

454
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 2: somebody's feeling left out, if somebody's feeling afraid of and

455
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 2: I'll go in and I'll make them feel better. And

456
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 2: I think you know that ability has served me very well.

457
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 2: But it is can be very, very exhausting. And I

458
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 2: remember coming back from meals with my dad where I'd think, okay,

459
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 2: I got a ninety eight on the math quitz.

460
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell him that and I'm going to

461
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 1: tell him.

462
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 2: About the play and how I got this part, and

463
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell him, you know, about this

464
00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 2: this mean girls school, because I don't want him to

465
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 2: worry about me. So I'm just going to tell him

466
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 2: all these good things. And I'd almost make a list

467
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:23,159
Speaker 2: in my mind of all the things I was going

468
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 2: to tell him, and then i'd come home and I

469
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 2: remember just sometimes going into my room and just lying

470
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:35,360
Speaker 2: on the bed and just feeling completely exhausted, like emptied.

471
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 2: And one of the ways that I could say, maybe

472
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,440
Speaker 2: this was, you know, a form of rejuvenation and also distraction.

473
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,879
Speaker 2: But as I'm getting a little bit older, my father

474
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 2: didn't allow us to watch any TV except PBS, and

475
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 2: then he allowed us, in a weird exception, to watch

476
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 2: The Hardy Boys and Nancy Droop, And all of a sudden,

477
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 2: my dad's out of the house, and Claire and I

478
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 2: are like, let's watch Love Both, Let's watch Fantasy Isisland,

479
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:03,639
Speaker 2: and let's start watching all these fun things that our

480
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 2: father didn't let us do. And I thought, at one

481
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 2: point it's almost like sort of papering over the loss

482
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 2: with these fun you know, and I'm entering adolescents. Let's

483
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 2: go to the Love's drug Store and buy some Bonnie

484
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 2: Bell lipsmackers.

485
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 1: We couldn't tell Daddy about that. I genuinely enjoyed these things.

486
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 2: And you know, I liked going to Canal Jean and

487
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 2: buying an overcoat and thinking Daddy wouldn't want to see

488
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 2: my McJagger button, you know, because he doesn't approve of McJagger,

489
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 2: and cultivating my new kind of adolescent fun life as

490
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 2: a distraction from and something that could be just sort

491
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 2: of more mindless. Because when I'm with my father, and

492
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 2: you know, to a certain extent, with my sister and

493
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,680
Speaker 2: with my mom, I'm curating myself around my mom. I'm

494
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:49,360
Speaker 2: not telling my mom.

495
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: How depressed my dad is.

496
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 2: I'm not telling my mom I'm sad that I missed

497
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 2: my father. I'm pretending with everyone, and I'm pretending to

498
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 2: myself that I'm okay because I need to be okay

499
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 2: because other people are not okay, and I need to

500
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:07,920
Speaker 2: help them because I'm more.

501
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 1: Okay than they are.

502
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 2: I guess was another way that I would think about it. Right,

503
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:12,880
Speaker 2: what do I have to complain.

504
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:15,360
Speaker 1: About my poor father? He doesn't even have a bedroom.

505
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 3: Right, there's this list that you include in your book

506
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 3: that's really just heart wrenching. And it's from a diary

507
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 3: that you kept in middle school. And here's a page

508
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 3: from that diary. Things not to do when I'm with daddy.

509
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 3: One don't cry. Two, don't complain, Three, don't be difficult.

510
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 3: Four don't tell him anything but good news. Five don't

511
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 3: mention mommy, and six don't expect him to be the

512
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 3: daddy of old.

513
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

514
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 2: When I found that, I have no memory of writing

515
00:28:54,960 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 2: that none, It just hit me like, Wow, that's a

516
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 2: little girl trying to podify rules for herself in a way,

517
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 2: trying to give myself structure, almost like if I write

518
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 2: it down, it'll remind me, but also it maybe gives

519
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 2: me more of a sense of control.

520
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: Over what I felt I needed to do in an

521
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 1: uncontrollable situation.

522
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 3: Around the time Priscilla writes this list in her diary,

523
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 3: she discovers a letter It's just sitting there out in

524
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 3: the open, written by her father to his first wife esther.

525
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 3: The letter contains some really unsettling and disturbing imagery and language.

526
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 3: How does a child process something like this? Though Priscilla

527
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 3: has made a habit out of caretaking, protecting the minds

528
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 3: and hearts of everyone around her. In this case, she's

529
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 3: so perturbed and in many ways scared by what she

530
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 3: reads in the letter that she unc characteristically doesn't keep

531
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 3: the secret.

532
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 4: She tells her mom about the letter.

533
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 2: I don't remember how soon after my mother came back

534
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 2: that I told her. I know that I told her

535
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 2: when Claire was not around, because I knew it would

536
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 2: worry Claire and it would upset Claire. And it was

537
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 2: a letter that shocked me, not only in terms of

538
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,239
Speaker 2: its graphic details. My father we would now call had

539
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 2: BDSM tendencies, wanted to be dominated, was submissive, was asking esther.

540
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 2: And I'd only met esther once or twice, like she

541
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 2: was my brother's mother, and I adored my brother twelve

542
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,360
Speaker 2: years older though, so he didn't really live with us

543
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 2: growing up.

544
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 1: I didn't really know Esther.

545
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 2: It freaked me out that my father was writing to

546
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 2: esther and asking her to be sexually involved with him

547
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 2: like that in and of itself felt really weird to me.

548
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 2: And then the details of what he was asking her

549
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 2: to do also kind of shocked me, And I think

550
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 2: it unsettled me so much much that I felt I

551
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 2: have to see if my mother understands this at all,

552
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 2: Like I did not know how to make sense of it.

553
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 2: Why is he reaching back out to esther. It hasn't

554
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 2: been with esther in years. Why is he asking esther

555
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,280
Speaker 2: to do these things? And I think, to me, you know,

556
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 2: as a ten year old, asking to be dominated.

557
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 1: Felt to me like a cry for help.

558
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 2: And I thought, this is not something that I can

559
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 2: handle on my own, like, I need to tell my

560
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: mom about this. And the biggest surprise of all was

561
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 2: that my mom was not at all surprised by it.

562
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: Now. I was expecting her to say, what he's what

563
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: is he saying?

564
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that sounds crazy, And She's like, oh, oh.

565
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 1: Wow, wow, wow. Yeah.

566
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 2: You know, I've been trying to protect you girls from

567
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 2: stuff like this for years. And I just looked at

568
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:53,959
Speaker 2: her and I'm like what, and she says, yeah. You know,

569
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 2: he had all these pornographic magazines, and he had this

570
00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 2: dash of pictures. And I would sometimes find that under

571
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 2: the cushions of the sofa, you and Claire would have

572
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 2: just been there like a minute before, and I'd worry,

573
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, you know, your grandparents are going to

574
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 2: find them, You're going to find them. I've been protecting

575
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 2: you girls from uears, and she was angry at him.

576
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 2: I could tell that he'd left this out and that

577
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 2: I'd been exposed to it, and I'm.

578
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: Just very calm. While she was talking, I sat.

579
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 2: There and I just sort of listened, And when I

580
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 2: told her, I didn't present it in an emotionally overwhelmed way.

581
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 2: I just said, Mommy, I found this letter and I'm

582
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 2: wondering what you think about it, and I sort of

583
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 2: just tried to describe it, trying to summarize it to her.

584
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: And then she said, you.

585
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 2: Know, I never did any of those things with him

586
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 2: that he was asking esther to do, and so I

587
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 2: think that it suddenly clicked in her head. She's like,

588
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 2: is my daughter going to start thinking that like that

589
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 2: was our sexual relationship, And so she felt she had

590
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 2: to tell me that, and then we both agreed were

591
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 2: never going to tell anyone else that Claire.

592
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: Would get extremely upset and not be able to handle it.

593
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 2: And very shortly after this, my mother initiated a conversation

594
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 2: with me in which she told me that my father

595
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 2: had had multiple affairs during their marriage, that some of

596
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 2: the affairs had been with.

597
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:15,720
Speaker 1: His students, graduate students.

598
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 2: Was very upsetting to me that he'd had affairs, and

599
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 2: especially with students. I remember thinking that is disgusting and vile.

600
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 2: And I even though I knew that a lot of

601
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,719
Speaker 2: my parents' friends and had affairs, I was aghast at that.

602
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 2: But I remember thinking even more when my mother said,

603
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 2: and you know, in a way, the affairs were sort

604
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 2: of a relief for me because these women were sort

605
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 2: of taking him off my hands.

606
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 3: The thing that's so striking, Priscilla is that this confiding

607
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 3: in you, ten year old you, your father making that

608
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 3: statement about you know, if it wasn't for you girls,

609
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 3: I would kill myself. Your mother telling you, you know,

610
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 3: even oh, I didn't do those things with him, and

611
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 3: he had affairs, the kind of turning you into each

612
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 3: of them in very different ways, but into their confidante.

613
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, and confidant is a great word, because I

614
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 2: think one of the reasons why, as my mother is

615
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 2: telling me all these things, I'm not more upset is

616
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 2: that I was kind of flattered that she was telling

617
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 2: me that she was confiding in me, and she was

618
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 2: singling me out as the mature child. You know, you're

619
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 2: so strong, and you're so mature, and you're so smart.

620
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 2: She would always say to me things like you can

621
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 2: handle things, and it made me feel proud, and it

622
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 2: made me feel closer to my mother, because as a

623
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,760
Speaker 2: young child, I had been much closer to my father,

624
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 2: partly because he was around more, but also because we're

625
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 2: just more alike and was genuinely invested in this world

626
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,879
Speaker 2: of childhood that my sister and I created and cultivated,

627
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 2: and my mother was felt more adult. And now in

628
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 2: this moment, it was more like we were on the

629
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 2: same not the same level, but we.

630
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: Were closer to each other. She was sharing her own

631
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: vulnerability with me, and that felt good because I felt.

632
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,359
Speaker 2: I understand my mother better and I still to this

633
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 2: day am grateful for that in the sense that it

634
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 2: might sound odd, but she trusted me, and she felt

635
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 2: that she wanted me to understand why she had ended

636
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 2: the marriage. And you know, I remember talking about this

637
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:37,879
Speaker 2: with a great family friend when I was growing up,

638
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 2: and she loved both of my parents and she understood

639
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 2: both of them, and she's someone that I could always

640
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 2: speak to who wouldn't come down on one side or

641
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:45,439
Speaker 2: the other.

642
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:47,399
Speaker 1: And I remember her saying to me you know, when

643
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:49,879
Speaker 1: is the right time to find this kind of stuff out.

644
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 2: Whatever time it is, it's never the right time to

645
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 2: find it out.

646
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: And I do feel that my mother was genuinely not

647
00:35:58,360 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: just venting to me.

648
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 2: She was trying to help me, in a way make

649
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 2: sense of what had happened. Why had this seemingly perfect

650
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 2: family broken. Why was my father, who was this sort

651
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 2: of magical childlike being, and I mean childlike in both

652
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 2: the senses of being vulnerable, but also in the sense

653
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 2: of being adventurous and playful and delightful to be around

654
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 2: and a joy to have.

655
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: How why had he been expelled? And I think she

656
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: probably felt Prisolla doesn't get.

657
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 2: It at all, and I want her to understand.

658
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 3: So each time your mother disclosed more difficult and damning

659
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 3: things about your father, she tells you not to share

660
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 3: it with Claire and what struck me there, And she

661
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,439
Speaker 3: says to you that she's tired of deception and she's

662
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 3: tired of secrets. But at the same time, she is

663
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 3: asking you to keep a secret.

664
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 2: Yes, and she didn't say this explicitly, But I also felt,

665
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 2: I can't talk about this with my grandparents. I can't

666
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,399
Speaker 2: talk about this with my babysitters. I can't talk about

667
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 2: this with my friends. This is like loaded dangerous information.

668
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

669
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 3: It's a hot July night in nineteen eighty one and

670
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 3: the family's getting together for Claire's birthday. They're having dinner

671
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 3: at a restaurant followed by a Broadway musical. At the time,

672
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 3: Priscilla's parents are deep into their bitter divorce negotiations, and

673
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 3: animosity is palpable, but they try to keep it together

674
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 3: for their girls, try being the operative word.

675
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 2: So he rushes in, and I'm starting to get really worried,

676
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 2: and I see him and he was sweating, but I

677
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 2: could see that he had dressed in his nicest clothes,

678
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 2: and he was not typically a particularly natty fellow, so

679
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 2: I was sort of touched by seeing that he had this.

680
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 2: He was dressed up, and he was rushing in, and

681
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 2: he went to sit down in a chair and he

682
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 2: missed the chair and he fell on the floor, and

683
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 2: Claire exclaimed, and the waiters are rushing over, and I'm

684
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 2: just thinking, oh my gosh, this has gone from bad

685
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 2: to worse.

686
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: And he's sprawled on the.

687
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 2: Floor and he's quickly getting up, and we're trying to

688
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,880
Speaker 2: and I start nattering on the way I do about

689
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 2: all these good things and not wanting this to turn

690
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 2: into a scene. Of course, it was imprinted in my

691
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 2: brain as one of the most painful scenes of my childhood.

692
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 2: And you know, we had to get through the dinner

693
00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:59,839
Speaker 2: because we had we were going to see Barnum on Broadway.

694
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 2: That moment that was exceptionally poignant, and I could see

695
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 2: my mother just looking irritated and almost contemptuous, like, oh,

696
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 2: of course, right, he's late.

697
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 1: And then he falls on the floor.

698
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 2: And then we're sitting in the musical and there is

699
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 2: a love song and I start to hear something and

700
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 2: I look and my father is crying, and he's trying

701
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 2: to stifle it. And I can tell he doesn't want

702
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:29,360
Speaker 2: anyone to notice it, and I make noise, I rustle

703
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 2: my program, and.

704
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: I pile up my sweater so that i'm.

705
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,640
Speaker 2: Not he doesn't worry that I'm seeing him, and I'm

706
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 2: trying to protect him from what I know will be

707
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 2: my mother's contempt for you know, what she might call

708
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,800
Speaker 2: or think of this is kind of sloppy sentimentality. I'm protecting

709
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 2: him from her judgment, and I'm protecting him from knowing

710
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 2: that I know. And I think that's similar to you know,

711
00:39:57,160 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 2: the letter. I never told him that I found that letter,

712
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 2: never told him, never told him that I'd heard all

713
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 2: these things about what he.

714
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: Did during the marriage.

715
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:09,279
Speaker 2: Never ever told him, but he knew he had affairs,

716
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:11,479
Speaker 2: any of them.

717
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 4: Again, you're you're in sixth grade. It's so young.

718
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:15,919
Speaker 3: I kept on as I was, as I was reading

719
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 3: your book, thinking, oh, surely by now she's you know,

720
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,320
Speaker 3: a sophomore in high school. Like, No, this is all

721
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 3: happening to a very a very young person.

722
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 4: And you had to be so careful.

723
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 3: You would hide any interest in popular culture or fashion,

724
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,400
Speaker 3: you would hide your body, and you're beginning to enter puberty,

725
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 3: and you know, just wear the baggiest clothes you possibly could,

726
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 3: and you know, so careful to just not rock his

727
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 3: world in any way.

728
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: Yep.

729
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 2: It was certainly at this point that there was no

730
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 2: hope that they were going to get back together, and

731
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 2: that my father was asking for money for my mom

732
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 2: really unusual and shamed in my mother's eyes, Like why

733
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 2: would a man ask a woman for money?

734
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: Like there was something very shameful about that.

735
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 3: Your mother never sees how your father is living during

736
00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 3: this whole period of time.

737
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,399
Speaker 4: She never picks you up there. She doesn't want to know.

738
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: Nope, And I don't want her to know.

739
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,760
Speaker 2: And I think maybe I should have told her, because

740
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 2: then maybe she would have been more willing to.

741
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: Give him the money.

742
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 2: He did start to have apartments that we could sleep

743
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 2: over in, you know, the first one there was no furniture.

744
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 2: There was a room that we could sleep in, but

745
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 2: he couldn't afford to buy us beds, and so we

746
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 2: could sleep in sleeping bags on the floor. And I

747
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 2: remember my back just killing and just not wanting to

748
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 2: say anything. And you know, Claire and I going to

749
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 2: this series of temporary crash pads or sublets that he had,

750
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 2: and how dingy they were, and how almost unsafe some

751
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 2: of them felt in the lobbies, you know, this was

752
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,640
Speaker 2: still the early eighties on some of these side streets,

753
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 2: and just feeling I don't want my mother to know.

754
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:06,640
Speaker 2: I don't want my mother to look down on my father.

755
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 2: And my father never spoke about my mother to us ever.

756
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 2: If it came up in conversation, if we slipped and

757
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 2: brought her up, he would always look stricken and so

758
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:18,759
Speaker 2: I would really.

759
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: Try not to talk about her.

760
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 2: And because it was New York City, we were able

761
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 2: to go by ourselves.

762
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: We didn't need to.

763
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,239
Speaker 2: Be dropped off or picked up because we'd walk, you know,

764
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 2: five blocks here, take the bus. I mean we were

765
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 2: taking the bus when we were eight and seven years old.

766
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 2: Talk about young out on their own in the big city.

767
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 2: So she didn't need to. But I could have asked

768
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 2: her to, and she would have. But I didn't want

769
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 2: her to know. I didn't want to expose my father

770
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 2: to her judgment, and I didn't want her to feel guilty.

771
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: I was protecting her too. I didn't want her to

772
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: feel guilty.

773
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 3: It's interesting that your father never spoke of her, but

774
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:06,120
Speaker 3: she did speak of your father, yes, around this time.

775
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 3: Alice Miller's seminal book about surviving narcissistic parents, The Drama

776
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 3: of the Gifted Child, has recently been published. Priscilla's mother

777
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,880
Speaker 3: gobbles it up along with millions of other readers, and

778
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 3: she uses what she learns or thinks she learns about

779
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 3: narcissism to pit Priscilla against her father, saying that he

780
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 3: doesn't really love her because he's a narcissist and what

781
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 3: he loves is the false self Priscilla has created for him.

782
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 3: But what Priscilla's mother doesn't realize is that she too

783
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 3: has been exhibiting narcissistic behavior by asking Priscilla to create

784
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 3: and maintain a false self for her as well.

785
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 2: I think that book. We really cannot overstate what an

786
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 2: explosion that book made. And I remember friends of hers

787
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 2: calling to ask if she'd read it and talking about

788
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 2: it with all these friends, and she showed me some

789
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 2: passages in the book, and she did it in a

790
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 2: very loving, protective way, like, oh my gosh, this must

791
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 2: have been so hard for you, and it's a lot

792
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 2: of pressure to have to have a false self and

793
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 2: all of this, and she's doing it in a way

794
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 2: where it's like a light bulb moment for her.

795
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 1: And my father was not a narcissist, he really was not.

796
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:19,760
Speaker 1: She got it wrong.

797
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 2: She was wrong, and Alice Miller in a way got

798
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,040
Speaker 2: him wrong about that, in the sense that the dynamic

799
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:28,439
Speaker 2: that had been set up for me as a kid

800
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:30,760
Speaker 2: was almost like what we would call a codependent dynamic,

801
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 2: where I was a parentified child that was taking care

802
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 2: of my parents' needs.

803
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: Both my mother and my father and.

804
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:39,439
Speaker 2: That's what she didn't see in that moment, Like I'm

805
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,280
Speaker 2: telling you something very disturbing, Isn't that in a way

806
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 2: implying that I have to have a false self in

807
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,919
Speaker 2: this moment because I love my father. I adore my father,

808
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,719
Speaker 2: and our love was real. But I'm not going to

809
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 2: cry about it in front of you when you're saying

810
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 2: this to me. But I think that it was a

811
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 2: moment where she was kind of thinking, oh, that's why

812
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 2: I was so tired during my marriage to him, because

813
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 2: it was really about her experience of him.

814
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: And she was wrong about that too, in the sense

815
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a narcissist.

816
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:11,319
Speaker 2: It was more of a co dependency dynamic where he

817
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 2: was insecure and she was a nurturer and a fixer

818
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 2: and a solver, and she was taking care of him.

819
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: That's exhausting for the code dependent.

820
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 2: But I feel like that's what she was thinking, Oh, wow,

821
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 2: life bulb moment, Now I get it. That's why I

822
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 2: felt so tired when I was married to him, because

823
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:31,839
Speaker 2: he was so insecure and he was and also, you know,

824
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:36,480
Speaker 2: it occurs to me now. She was probably still trying

825
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 2: to assuage her feelings of guilt about ending the marriage.

826
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 2: And I think on a deep level, looking back, she

827
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 2: did love my father. I mean, I've had so many

828
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 2: family friends, family members tell me, you know, there was

829
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 2: a love between them.

830
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: It wasn't a romantic love on her part, but there

831
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: was love.

832
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 2: And I think she was still struggling with that guilt

833
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 2: of breaking family and plunging this man into a deep despair, and.

834
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 1: So it probably slaged her guilt to think, oh, you know,

835
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: he didn't really love me. He was loving my false self,

836
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:18,879
Speaker 1: you see. And then she was extrapolating from that and saying, oh, wow,

837
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:20,200
Speaker 1: I felt a lot of pressure.

838
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:24,480
Speaker 2: Priscilla must have felt that too, And I don't want

839
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 2: her to make the same mistake I did. I don't

840
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 2: want her to end up with a very insecure, dependent

841
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:31,480
Speaker 2: man having to be stroking your ego and taking care

842
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 2: of them all the time.

843
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 3: Another way Priscilla indirectly takes care of her parents is

844
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 3: by excelling academically. She knows this will make both her

845
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 3: parents happy and even unite them in some way, since

846
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 3: education is one of the few values they share. They

847
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 3: don't want her to become an actress or a writer. No,

848
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 3: they want her to be a scholar, so that's the

849
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 3: path she takes. She even hears her mom and dad

850
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:03,240
Speaker 3: using friendly voices with one another, a rare occurrence these days,

851
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 3: when they're discussing her report card. Now flash forward a

852
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 3: few years to nineteen eighty six. Priscilla's father has just

853
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:16,280
Speaker 3: published his book, Faith, Sex Mystery. The book is dedicated

854
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 3: to Priscilla and her sister Claire, but they don't read it.

855
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 3: Often children of writers don't as a way to protect themselves.

856
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 3: But try as they might, the girls cannot be completely

857
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 3: shielded from the book or its contents. One day, they're

858
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:34,720
Speaker 3: on a flight together reading magazines. Claire is reading Vogue

859
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 3: and in it there's a piece called Spiritual strip Tease.

860
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 4: The piece is a.

861
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 3: Takedown of their father's book. In the piece, the critic

862
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 3: writes about masochistic fantasies, and it's just this horrifying download

863
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 3: of information for the girls, even for Priscilla, who knew

864
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 3: more than her sister did about their dad, but not

865
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 3: this much. After Claire reads the piece, she wordlessly passes

866
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,799
Speaker 3: it to Priscilla. Here they were just thinking, they were

867
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 3: casually reading Vogue, and then just like that, secrets about

868
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 3: their father are uncovered.

869
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 2: And I remember it had Cindy Crawford on the cover.

870
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 2: It was it was our fun plane reading.

871
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 1: You know.

872
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 2: It was like the last place that you would ever

873
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:18,799
Speaker 2: think that you would find something like this.

874
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: And you know the book.

875
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 2: It was reviewed on the front cover of the New

876
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 2: York Times Book Review, he was on NPR with Terry Gross.

877
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:28,479
Speaker 1: It was everywhere. But this was like a place where

878
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: we thought maybe we'd be spared, maybe we wouldn't have

879
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:32,560
Speaker 1: to be dealing with it.

880
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 2: And it quoted extensively and in a sort of disingenuous way,

881
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 2: the worst passages as far as Claire would have been concerned, right,

882
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 2: because she knew something about it having some masochism stuff

883
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:49,280
Speaker 2: in it, but not really and she hadn't read that letter,

884
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 2: and we'd never filled her in along the way, and

885
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 2: she's reading this quote and it's just horrifying. And I

886
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 2: remember also we're both thinking, oh god, this is a

887
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 2: really bad review.

888
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: This is going to upset him.

889
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 2: It's not fun to see be taken down in print.

890
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 2: That review is still it haunts me. I ripped out

891
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 2: the page and I bawled it up, and that I said, Declara, Oh, well,

892
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 2: don't worry you know Daddie will never Readvoke, and there

893
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 2: wasn't the internet then, so if he didn't have a

894
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 2: physical copy of but he's never going to see this,

895
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 2: He's never going.

896
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: To hear about this.

897
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 3: So and yet another way of kind of just burying

898
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 3: something or absolutely protecting him and keeping it a secret.

899
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:36,800
Speaker 2: Yes, six months later, he meets Yasico. I get into

900
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,359
Speaker 2: Yale early that fall of eighty seven, and then I'm

901
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 2: at Yale with him. I can have lunch with him

902
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 2: or dinner with him every week. And he's doing wonderfully

903
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 2: because he finally finds his permanent home on one hundred

904
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 2: and eighth Street near Columbia. He's able to buy an apartment.

905
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 2: Everything is going really well, and he's able to be

906
00:49:55,719 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 2: very strong and supportive and wonderful for me.

907
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: When I'm a student talk about my papers.

908
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 2: We have these delightful lunches and dinners, and everything is good.

909
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 3: I guess a blessing during that early time is that

910
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,399
Speaker 3: your father was in a much better place in his life.

911
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 3: He had met and fallen in love with Yosco. It

912
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 3: was complicated, she was married to somebody else, had a

913
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 3: job as a professor there, so this was a hard

914
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 3: won relationship, but a real you know, a real love story.

915
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, genuine joy and happiness and you know, being

916
00:50:33,080 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 3: with his soulmate. So there was a period of time

917
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:38,719
Speaker 3: there where you were worrying about other things, but you

918
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 3: weren't worrying about your father.

919
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: Yes.

920
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 3: Though Priscilla is having tremendous academic success at Yale, at

921
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:52,240
Speaker 3: some point her nerves are afraid. She's suffering on mental

922
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:57,399
Speaker 3: and physical overload. For once, she cannot perform perfectly, so

923
00:50:57,440 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 3: she steps away and takes an academic leave.

924
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:02,560
Speaker 1: I needed to hit pause.

925
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 2: I started having a lot of health problems when I

926
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 2: was in high school, like sinus infections that I just

927
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 2: couldn't get rid of, strepped throat, all sorts of sort

928
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 2: of upper respiratory stuff, and also aching stuff in my body.

929
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 2: After my first year at Yale, I was in an

930
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 2: honors program. I won the prize as the best student

931
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:24,880
Speaker 2: in this program, and I remember, you know, getting this

932
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 2: letter that said that I won the prize and feeling, oh,

933
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:29,360
Speaker 2: my parents are going to be so thrilled about this,

934
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 2: and every grade that I got back it was good,

935
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 2: and every paper that I got back, Oh, I'm going

936
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 2: to mimeograph this and give it to my parents and

937
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:38,759
Speaker 2: this is going to make them happy, and I just

938
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 2: remember feeling empty inside. In that summer between what would

939
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 2: have been freshman and sophomore year, I went back to

940
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:47,520
Speaker 2: school for my sophomore year. I was there for a

941
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 2: few weeks. I got sick again. I was exhausted, and

942
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 2: I felt listless in my studies, and I said, I've

943
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:59,799
Speaker 2: got to take some time off. And I think that

944
00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 2: was so the first moment where I stepped off that

945
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 2: you know, good girl fast track, because part of being

946
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 2: the good girl in my family was being precocious. That

947
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 2: was part of the legend around me and the family

948
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 2: that I read when I was three that.

949
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,920
Speaker 1: I got into Yale early admission that I was moving

950
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 1: along in a smooth.

951
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:22,480
Speaker 2: Trajectory of success. And I was like no, And I

952
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 2: was terrified to tell my parents, and they both actually

953
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 2: took it really, really well. And that was the first

954
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 2: indication it's okay to say I have needs, it's okay

955
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:35,439
Speaker 2: to say I need to slow down. And I went

956
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 2: into Fordian analysis, and I.

957
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: Think it was, you know, all of the residue of

958
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:42,400
Speaker 1: the split catching up with me.

959
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 2: The problem was that the analyst that I went to

960
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 2: was my mother's analyst.

961
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 3: Yes, you heard that right, her mother's analyst. And it

962
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 3: isn't just that doctor T is her mother's analyst, but

963
00:52:56,800 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 3: also that Priscilla ends up knowing a lot about doctor.

964
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 3: His wife is ill with cancer, and Priscilla, in what

965
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 3: Freud might have had a field day analyzing, feels she

966
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 3: needs to take care of him. And most amazingly, he

967
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 3: regularly calls her by the wrong name, and she doesn't

968
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,320
Speaker 3: correct him because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings.

969
00:53:19,760 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 2: He was such a kind, wonderful, wise man, and there

970
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 2: was a lot that he told me that I held

971
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 2: on to. He was the first person to say you

972
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,399
Speaker 2: are going to be a writer, and not an academic writer.

973
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:32,440
Speaker 2: His wife was dying. His wife lived in Florida.

974
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:34,600
Speaker 1: He was kind of flying up to do his sessions

975
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:38,200
Speaker 1: near Grand Central. He created a lot of famous writers.

976
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 2: My mother sends a number of people to him, And

977
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 2: I just knew he was like this wonderful.

978
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: Man, and I just found myself thinking.

979
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:47,719
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, I don't want him to know that

980
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 2: I'd noticed that he fell asleep. I mean, isn't it

981
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:51,840
Speaker 2: a repeat of this what I did with my dad?

982
00:53:51,920 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 2: It's crazy.

983
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:56,040
Speaker 4: Did that occur to you at the time, No, definitely not.

984
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 3: But Priscilla actually does get the help she needs from

985
00:54:02,200 --> 00:54:04,880
Speaker 3: this doctor, and her time off from school turns.

986
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 4: Out to be very restorative. She goes back to.

987
00:54:07,239 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 3: Yale feeling much better. But the reprieve from worrying about

988
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,120
Speaker 3: her father is brief. That worry returns.

989
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 2: I guess we could say it's almost like a return

990
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 2: to having to worry about him. Is when in nineteen

991
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 2: ninety two, the summer I graduated from Yale. In nineteen

992
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:27,160
Speaker 2: ninety three, he marries also go in Japan and they're

993
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 2: going to have another wedding in New York, so we

994
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 2: didn't go to Japan for that little wedding.

995
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:32,360
Speaker 1: He has a very severe heart.

996
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 2: Attack in Japan and they make him quit smoking, which

997
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:39,840
Speaker 2: is a good thing. But for a while it was

998
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 2: not looking good and he was not in good health.

999
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 2: But ultimately it becomes a positive because he's becoming healthier.

1000
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: He's going to lose weight, he's going to stop eating

1001
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: so unhealthily.

1002
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:52,640
Speaker 2: He never took care of himself, he never exercised. He

1003
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 2: ate red meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and bacon

1004
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:55,760
Speaker 2: bits in between.

1005
00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 3: Positive changes are happening for Priscilla as well. She's just

1006
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:04,840
Speaker 3: finished her undergraduate degree and she decides to pursue a

1007
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 3: doctorate in English literature. During this time, she also meets

1008
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 3: and falls in love with a man named Richard. They

1009
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,880
Speaker 3: get engaged and eventually marry, but as time moves forward,

1010
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:19,800
Speaker 3: her worry about her father continues to underscore her life.

1011
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:23,799
Speaker 2: So in nineteen ninety seven, when he went in to

1012
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 2: do his chock up on his heart, they took an

1013
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 2: X ray. I was in graduate school and they found

1014
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 2: that he had terminal lung cancer. I just turned twenty seven,

1015
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:37,840
Speaker 2: I had been married for two years. My mother in

1016
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 2: law had died of cancer the year before, and my

1017
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:42,560
Speaker 2: father is.

1018
00:55:42,560 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 1: Given seven months to live.

1019
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 2: At this point, in that moment, when we get this

1020
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:52,640
Speaker 2: news that he has lung cancer that has metastasized to

1021
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:55,359
Speaker 2: his brain, we thought, oh, he quit, he quit five

1022
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 2: years earlier, but it was too late.

1023
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:00,560
Speaker 1: And those cigarettes that I always feared would kill him,

1024
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:02,080
Speaker 1: we're going to kill him.

1025
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:06,839
Speaker 3: And when you tell your mother that that he has

1026
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:11,719
Speaker 3: terminal cancer, her response is a last dick, never took

1027
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 3: care of himself.

1028
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, she's sort of like it was expected

1029
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 2: in a way, for her and for me.

1030
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: I mean, we just always had this feeling.

1031
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:24,880
Speaker 2: But he had this nonchalance because his parents both lived

1032
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:27,280
Speaker 2: well into their nineties. There was no cancer in the family,

1033
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 2: and he was one of those people who just banked

1034
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:34,839
Speaker 2: on his good genes. And you know, he basically did

1035
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:37,200
Speaker 2: everything a person could do if they want to get

1036
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:37,760
Speaker 2: a heart attack.

1037
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 1: But it's still, even though.

1038
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 2: I had always feared it, it still felt unreal when

1039
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:44,280
Speaker 2: it actually happened.

1040
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:46,439
Speaker 1: And at this time, Danny, you know, when.

1041
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,720
Speaker 2: We talk about secrets, I thought my father was seventy

1042
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 2: two years old at this time. My sister and I

1043
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:54,839
Speaker 2: went to a doctor's appointment with him a couple of

1044
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:58,040
Speaker 2: months after he was given this very grim prognosis, and

1045
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 2: this was like a second opinion doctor's appointment. It was

1046
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 2: sort of an intake appointment with an expert at Columbia Presbyterian.

1047
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,120
Speaker 2: And the doctor was just running through, you know, a

1048
00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 2: series of road questions and Claire and I are sitting

1049
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:12,399
Speaker 2: there listening attentively, and the doctor says, so how old

1050
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 2: are you in my father's causes and it's weird, and

1051
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:16,240
Speaker 2: his voice kind of cracks in a strange way, and

1052
00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 2: he says seventy four, and Clara and I look at

1053
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 2: each other and I'm like, And then later when we're home,

1054
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:26,080
Speaker 2: we go to Osico and we're worried because my father

1055
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 2: had lung cancer that was in the brain, and we think,

1056
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is a symptom that he's really adult,

1057
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:34,959
Speaker 2: that the cancer. You know, he's doing something to his brain.

1058
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: And we said, you know, he.

1059
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 2: Told me the doctor he was seventy four, and she says,

1060
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:41,840
Speaker 2: she looks at us calmly and says, he is seventy four.

1061
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: And it's clear that she doesn't want to talk about it.

1062
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: It's clear that she knows that we didn't know that.

1063
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 2: She's asserting that this is the case, and it's a

1064
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 2: secret that he had shared with her, and this is

1065
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:02,720
Speaker 2: very highly wrought secret. We call my mom, we called

1066
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 2: his friends. No one that we talked to knew this.

1067
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:09,120
Speaker 2: My father in nineteen twenty five was like a date

1068
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 2: that he would say all the time, and it was

1069
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 2: like who's do in America?

1070
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:17,200
Speaker 1: Richard Gilmot born nineteen twenty five. It was everywhere, and

1071
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 1: he would use it.

1072
00:58:18,120 --> 00:58:20,400
Speaker 2: He would refer to it frequently, and he had this

1073
00:58:20,520 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 2: whole thing about how he graduated from high school when

1074
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 2: he was sixteen.

1075
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 1: Because he was precocious.

1076
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 2: He went to college when he was sixteen, and you know,

1077
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 2: we made jokes about it.

1078
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 1: We're like, well, if you're going to lop ears off

1079
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 1: your age, why only do two?

1080
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 2: Right?

1081
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:37,560
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you go for five or eight or ten?

1082
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:41,000
Speaker 2: And we never mentioned it to him, We never acknowledged

1083
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 2: to him that we noticed it. He didn't seem aware

1084
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 2: that he was outing it in front of us, probably

1085
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 2: because he was just in so much ear about his

1086
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 2: cancer and just focusing on the doctor and he just

1087
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 2: didn't think about it in that moment.

1088
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: But we never discussed it with him.

1089
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's unsurprising because it's a pattern.

1090
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:01,960
Speaker 4: You weren't going to start discussing those things at that

1091
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 4: late date.

1092
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.

1093
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 3: Despite the very grim prognosis, both Priscilla's life and her

1094
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 3: father's go on. Priscilla and her husband start a family.

1095
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,840
Speaker 3: She's hired as an assistant professor at Yale and eventually

1096
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:23,040
Speaker 3: moves to Vasser. She's thirty two years old, doing impressive

1097
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:25,520
Speaker 3: work she isn't even sure she wants to be doing,

1098
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 3: and is the mother of a three year old and

1099
00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 3: an infant and Priscilla's father. He surpasses every prediction and

1100
00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 3: statistic and lives with stage four cancer for another nine years,

1101
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 3: and more secrets keep tumbling out, this time in the

1102
00:59:41,600 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 3: form of a manuscript in which he describes his sexual escapades,

1103
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:50,120
Speaker 3: including sleeping with hundreds of women and several men.

1104
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 2: We were in Japan, staying in their apartment and my

1105
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:58,520
Speaker 2: father was in the hospital at this point, and Nikki,

1106
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 2: my brother, was sleep being in my father's office. And

1107
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:05,360
Speaker 2: one day he called me in and he said, and

1108
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 2: he was sort of gleefully swelling because my brother is gay,

1109
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 2: and you know, half of my parents' friends are gay,

1110
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 2: you know, And it was never a big deal. My

1111
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:15,640
Speaker 2: brother came out in nineteen seventy eight. It was all

1112
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:17,640
Speaker 2: completely fine. So there was no there would have been

1113
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 2: no reason for my father to hide this. Why would

1114
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 2: you have hidden this? Why is this something that's a secret.

1115
01:00:22,600 --> 01:00:24,800
Speaker 2: And Nicki says, look at this, you believe this, And

1116
01:00:24,840 --> 01:00:27,400
Speaker 2: we're looking at it, and we're thinking, who was it?

1117
01:00:27,720 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 1: Because my father was.

1118
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:30,360
Speaker 2: In the Marines in World War Two, he was on

1119
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 2: an island in the South Pacific. We're thinking, was it

1120
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 2: was it a marine?

1121
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: Was it w.

1122
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 2: Johnon my father had a famous story about W. A.

1123
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 1: Todden made a pass at him. I was like, maybe

1124
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:41,240
Speaker 1: he took W. A. Dodden up with that. You know,

1125
01:00:41,320 --> 01:00:43,120
Speaker 1: wasn't Harold Bronkey who.

1126
01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 2: Was famous his good friends and then died of age right,

1127
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 2: So we're thinking who could this have been? And I've

1128
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 2: since Stanni asked many close friends because no one knows.

1129
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:53,000
Speaker 1: We don't know.

1130
01:00:55,120 --> 01:00:59,240
Speaker 3: Priscilla's father dies at age eighty three. The Yale School

1131
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:03,200
Speaker 3: of Drama hosts memorial and prior to this, a package

1132
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:07,200
Speaker 3: arrives from Japan. It's from Yasica and it's addressed to

1133
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 3: both Priscilla and her sister Claire.

1134
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: It was a package of things that he had taken.

1135
01:01:13,360 --> 01:01:16,800
Speaker 2: So he ended up living permanently in Japan because he

1136
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:19,439
Speaker 2: also had better health insurance than he had and he

1137
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 2: was at home in a hospital bed the last few

1138
01:01:22,040 --> 01:01:25,080
Speaker 2: years of his life. So when they sold the apartment

1139
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 2: in New York and moved to Japan, he took what

1140
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 2: he could. And this was a manila envelope that's had

1141
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:37,080
Speaker 2: girls on it, and it was filled to bursting with

1142
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:39,959
Speaker 2: photographs of us that had you could see the tape

1143
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:43,080
Speaker 2: marks on the edges, and I remembered them hanging on

1144
01:01:43,240 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 2: walls of different apartments that he'd been in. It was

1145
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:50,439
Speaker 2: envelopes that had our hair in them that said girls hair,

1146
01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:56,640
Speaker 2: programs from plays and shows that I'd been in, notes

1147
01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:59,640
Speaker 2: that I'd written him over the years, because I would

1148
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:02,360
Speaker 2: often give him a note when I left after a

1149
01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 2: lunch or at dinner with him, saying you know, I

1150
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:06,880
Speaker 2: love you so much, Daddy, and don't worry, You're going

1151
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 2: to see us soon and all this, and it was

1152
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 2: just the evidence of our love for him, but also

1153
01:02:12,120 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 2: his love for us that he had kept everything. He

1154
01:02:15,400 --> 01:02:18,480
Speaker 2: had kept all this memorabilia, these tiny little.

1155
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: Notes, you know, on like almost like a post it

1156
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:22,040
Speaker 1: note size.

1157
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 2: And he had this poem that I had written when

1158
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 2: I was nine, called Loneliness in that envelope as well.

1159
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:31,240
Speaker 2: He also said, you know, this is the evidence of

1160
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:33,400
Speaker 2: your father's great.

1161
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: Love for you.

1162
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:37,640
Speaker 2: And maybe she said, Daddy's your daddy's great love for you.

1163
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 2: She always called him your daddy because that's what we

1164
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:41,080
Speaker 2: called him. We never called him father, we never called

1165
01:02:41,160 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 2: him dad.

1166
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:43,360
Speaker 1: We called him daddy always.

1167
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:50,840
Speaker 3: Sometime after her father's death, Priscilla asks her mother to

1168
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 3: put her reasons for marrying her father down in writing,

1169
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:59,280
Speaker 3: she yearns for clarity, if not closure, and Lynn sends

1170
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 3: Priscilla an which reads, why did I marry him? Well,

1171
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:07,600
Speaker 3: he had a brilliant and refined mind, which I respected

1172
01:03:07,640 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 3: and admired. I knew he'd be an excellent father for

1173
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 3: you girls. Basically he was a kind and ethical man.

1174
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 2: It was something that I had been waiting for forty

1175
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:20,480
Speaker 2: years for her to say to me.

1176
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:22,520
Speaker 1: And I knew.

1177
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 2: About the brilliant and refined mind. I knew she felt that,

1178
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 2: and I had been told in various ways that she

1179
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:32,240
Speaker 2: did think he would be an excellent father, although I

1180
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:35,360
Speaker 2: hadn't heard enough of that since they split, so that

1181
01:03:35,480 --> 01:03:36,120
Speaker 2: was important.

1182
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:40,720
Speaker 1: But basically he was a kind and ethical man.

1183
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 2: You know, I thought, thank you for finally acknowledging it.

1184
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:50,080
Speaker 2: It wasn't that I needed to hear it because I

1185
01:03:50,160 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 2: doubted it. I always knew my father was a basically

1186
01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:53,959
Speaker 2: kind and ethical man.

1187
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 1: And you know, I had.

1188
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:57,640
Speaker 2: Those moments when I was younger when I heard the

1189
01:03:57,640 --> 01:04:01,480
Speaker 2: secrets about his affairs with students, and I was absolutely

1190
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 2: disgusted and horrified by it. But as I grew and

1191
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 2: I came to understand the complexities of our parents that

1192
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 2: he was a human being, that he had failings, that

1193
01:04:14,960 --> 01:04:17,200
Speaker 2: he was in a terribly unhappy marriage to.

1194
01:04:17,120 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: Someone who didn't love him.

1195
01:04:19,480 --> 01:04:21,320
Speaker 2: And you know, another thing that my mother revealed to

1196
01:04:21,360 --> 01:04:23,960
Speaker 2: me when I was in college was that she had

1197
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:25,520
Speaker 2: never been in love with my father, and that she

1198
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:27,960
Speaker 2: had told my father that she wasn't in love with him,

1199
01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 2: and he had asked her to marry him anyway, and

1200
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:37,480
Speaker 2: he said, passion faiths, but companionship blasts. And when I

1201
01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:40,240
Speaker 2: figured that out, how terrible for my mother to be

1202
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 2: in a marriage to somebody she wasn't in love with.

1203
01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,080
Speaker 2: How terrible for my father to be in a marriage

1204
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 2: to someone he knew wasn't in love with him, and

1205
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 2: he was in love with her, and.

1206
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 1: He was medicating depression by smoking.

1207
01:04:54,040 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 2: He was medicating those feelings of inadequacy through affairs. You know,

1208
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 2: another thing that I think is important to say is

1209
01:05:02,680 --> 01:05:07,000
Speaker 2: that my father kept his sexuality secret from most people.

1210
01:05:07,520 --> 01:05:12,280
Speaker 2: And when he wrote that memoir where he acknowledged his sexuality,

1211
01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:14,280
Speaker 2: he wrote in the book about being unfaithful to his

1212
01:05:14,320 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 2: wives and how guilty he felt about it. He wrote

1213
01:05:16,560 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 2: about going to prostitutes to get them to do what

1214
01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:21,840
Speaker 2: the women his girlfriends and wives didn't want to do.

1215
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: I think that is what.

1216
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 2: Enabled him to find the woman that you described as

1217
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 2: his soulmate.

1218
01:05:27,800 --> 01:05:30,280
Speaker 1: He got over, to a large extent.

1219
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:35,600
Speaker 2: The shame and the guilt. He wasn't keeping secrets anymore.

1220
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 2: He was telling the truth in a book. Now, it

1221
01:05:38,560 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 2: wasn't the complete growth because he was still supposedly born

1222
01:05:42,080 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty five when that book came out, but

1223
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:47,919
Speaker 2: a lot of the secrets came into the light.

1224
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:50,480
Speaker 1: And I think that's.

1225
01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 2: What enabled him to get the confidence to be accepted

1226
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:58,680
Speaker 2: and to meet and share with the Ostigo because she

1227
01:05:58,760 --> 01:06:03,040
Speaker 2: knew all his secrets, she knew about his age, she

1228
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 2: knew about the men because that was a book he

1229
01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:08,600
Speaker 2: was working on, and she was helping him with us,

1230
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 2: and he wanted.

1231
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:10,560
Speaker 1: To publish that book.

1232
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:13,680
Speaker 2: If he had not gotten so sick, perhaps that would

1233
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:15,280
Speaker 2: have also been in a book that was published.

1234
01:06:16,040 --> 01:06:21,080
Speaker 3: And now it is right, that's right, that's right, in

1235
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:29,840
Speaker 3: the fullness of time, Yes, now it is right. Here's

1236
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:34,240
Speaker 3: Priscilla reading from her beautiful love letter to her complicated father.

1237
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:39,720
Speaker 3: In this moment, she's a frightened child, awakened by a thunderstorm,

1238
01:06:40,360 --> 01:06:41,920
Speaker 3: being offered a gift.

1239
01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:48,720
Speaker 2: My father didn't give me a hug and a kiss

1240
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:50,320
Speaker 2: and send me back to sleep.

1241
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:53,120
Speaker 1: He brought me to the window.

1242
01:06:54,280 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 2: In the face of the unexpected, the frightening, that disorienting.

1243
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:04,280
Speaker 2: He was a mad cap sportscaster, a wise stage and

1244
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:10,240
Speaker 2: a builient enthusiast. As one arm embraced me, the other

1245
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,360
Speaker 2: helped me face a world beyond him, a world of

1246
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:17,680
Speaker 2: challenge and intensity and wonder.

1247
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 3: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is

1248
01:07:29,640 --> 01:07:32,800
Speaker 3: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

1249
01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:36,080
Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

1250
01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:38,920
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

1251
01:07:38,920 --> 01:07:42,280
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

1252
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:46,560
Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

1253
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:51,440
Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd

1254
01:07:51,520 --> 01:07:53,960
Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

1255
01:07:54,360 --> 01:08:13,919
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

1256
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,559
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

1257
01:08:17,600 --> 01:08:18,559
Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.