WEBVTT - Daddy Will Never Read Vogue 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.759 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:12.160 I Lived, shadowed by an uncertainty about my parents' marriage 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.960 and a sense of some fundamental instability lurking just beneath 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:21.200 the surface. Lynn and Dick were held up as a 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:25.040 model couple by many of their friends, and were profiled 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:30.080 as such in several newspaper pieces, celebrated especially for the 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:35.519 ways my father made my mother's business success possible. They 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:40.960 complimented each other well, my father the extravagant romantic, my 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:43.000 mother the cool realist. 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:45.240 As my father would. 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.680 Give disquisitions on a new play, will whoop excitedly with 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:51.920 his buddies as they watched a sports game, my mother 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.800 would break in to someone everyone firmly to the dinner table. 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:01.200 If my father luxuriated in meandering after her conversations that 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:05.119 continued even after coffee and dessert, it was my mother 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:09.160 who reminded everyone how late it was and briskly ushered 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:10.680 guests out the door. 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:19.760 That's Priscilla Gilman, writer, former professor of English and author 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:24.440 of the recent memoir The Critic's Daughter. Priscilla's story glitters 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:28.640 on the surface. A rarefied New York City childhood, highly 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.920 successful parents who were at the epicenter of literary life, 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:37.880 a world of intellectual stimulation and famous friends. But beneath 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:43.199 that shiny exterior was a darker, harder truth. Things were very, 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.480 very unhappy in the Gilman household, and Priscilla, as a 0:01:47.480 --> 0:02:03.520 young child, absorbed it all. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.560 is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.320 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:17.880 keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood. 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:20.880 Three Central Park Wests. 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:25.400 That was an incredible historic building on Central Park West 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.680 in ninety third Street, inhabited by a slew of people 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.680 we would now consider luminaries, lots of PBS producers and 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:35.320 artists and therapists. 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.720 It was rent controlled. My parents paid about one hundred 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:40.320 and forty one hundred and fifty dollars. 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:44.400 A month, and we were on the Central Park West. 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.720 Literally my bedroom looked out onto the park, huge three 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.400 bedroom apartment. Paint was peeling, the tubs were chipped, but 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.560 we didn't care because we were living in this kind 0:02:55.600 --> 0:03:00.320 of almost sesame street world. And I say that street 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:02.720 began in nineteen sixty nine. I was born in nineteen 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.760 seventy and the Upper West Side in the seventies. It 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:11.120 wasn't all that safe. It certainly wasn't upscale, but it 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:16.320 was filled with academics and artists and writers and actors 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:20.080 and interesting people who were at the center of intellectual 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:21.200 and artistic culture. 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:23.960 It's so amazing to hear you say that that New 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.560 York is a disappeared New York now. 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:33.040 Absolutely, And when I think back on my childhood, there's 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:38.360 this kind of wistfulness for that feeling of vibrancy and 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:44.440 artistic secundity, and the sense that any night some person 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.520 could come over to my parents' apartment bearing a magical 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:54.440 story or an exciting idea that they were developing a 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.640 project that they wanted to work on, that they wanted 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.520 advice from my mother on or my father. And there 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.920 was just this continual sense of discovery and excitement and 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:06.560 wonder in my childhood. 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.120 So you and your mother and your father and your 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.880 younger sister, Claire lived at three three three until you 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:17.560 were about. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.680 How old, until I was eight, And when I was eight, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.280 in nineteen seventy eight, they bought their first apartment in 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.880 New York City. They bought forty four West seventy seventh Street. 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:31.680 It's across the street from the Museum of National History, 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.000 and I think they bought the apartment for about one 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:39.120 hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it was a thirty 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.680 two hundred square foot apartment with the living room and 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:47.520 my father's office fronting onto the Natural History Museum. We 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:49.800 looked out over it because we were on the tenth floor. 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.680 And I think the year that we bought that apartment, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.000 there was a drug rehab facility on the block. There 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.800 was a neighborhood Block Association. It was just sort of 0:04:57.839 --> 0:04:59.360 starting to get cleaned up. 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:00.840 But we in a couple of. 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.080 Years Columbus Avenue exploded and became one of the sheekest 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:05.760 parts of the city. 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.600 Tell me about the mother of your childhood. 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:13.240 So my mother, Lynn Nesbitt, had moved to New York 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.000 City in her early twenties from the Midwest as kind 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.560 of the wide eyed girl. She used to listen to 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:20.240 the radio when she was a kid, and there was 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.600 a show called Grand Central Station, Crossroads. 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.799 Of a Thousand Lives, and she listened to that and said, 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:29.799 I want to be in that place. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.160 I want to be in New York City, meeting exciting 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.760 people and doing exciting things. And she worked her way 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.839 up from being an assistant at a women's magazine to 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.200 being the assistant to a literary agent. And when she 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.040 was working for that literary agent, she got a manuscript 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.640 from a Harvard medical student named Michael Crichton, and it 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.640 was called The Andromeda Strain, and she signed him as 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:57.560 a client and soon began representing everybody from Tom Wolf 0:05:57.640 --> 0:05:58.280 to Hunter S. 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.320 Thompson Cairo. She represented Tony Morrison. 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:04.760 Tony's first book was published in the year I was born, 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:10.360 The Bluest Eye, and Rice and Beaty, just a flew of. 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.360 And high Low and everything in between. 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.080 So your mother was already successful. She was doing very 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:19.400 well as a literary agent by the time you were born. 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.120 Yes, yeah, she was. She married my father when she 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.159 was twenty seven. She had three miscarriages before I was born. 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.919 She had to have surgery on her uterus, one of 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.800 the first to kind of a pioneering surgery, and she 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.159 was able to get pregnant and carry the baby to term, 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.440 and she had me and my sister within fourteen. 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:38.440 Months of each other. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.680 And so she was in her early thirties, two young children, 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:46.080 a vice president at ICM International Creative Management in the 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:51.159 literary department, representing a ton of incredible authors. 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:53.320 And how about your father. 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.719 So he in the sixties when he met my mom. 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:00.680 I believe he was working at newswol when he met 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.120 my mom. He was the theater critic, the staff theater 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.640 critic for Newsweek in an office. Another example of how 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.560 we've lost a lot in our culture. I don't think 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.480 it's a staff theater critic in Newsweek anymore. And in 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:15.520 nineteen sixty seven he was hired to teach at the 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.800 l School of Drama. And in the sixties and the 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:24.280 seventies he mainly taught dramaturgy or dramatic criticism, but he 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:28.960 also did teach playwrights. He taught actors. Meryl Streep was 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.440 one of his most beloved students. He taught Henry Winkler, 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:36.760 Wendy Wasserstein, Sigourney Weaver, a whole bunch of performers, writers, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.520 directors at the l School of Drama. So he was 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.400 up there two nights a week. He would stay in 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.240 a hotel in New Haven when we were in the city, 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:47.840 and then we had a country house in western Connecticut 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.000 where we spent our weekends. My father was a very 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:56.400 powerful formidical critic. He also wrote literary criticism. He had 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.880 been the editor of The New Republic's literary section at 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.640 one point, and he was known in public as being 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:08.280 tough and difficult to please and rigorous and almost fear 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.800 inducing because of how honest and how ostensibly harsh she 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:15.480 could be in some of his reviews. But in his 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:20.960 personal life he was warm and congenial and playful and affectionate, 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:22.320 and he. 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.120 Had grown up in Flatbush, Brooklyn. 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:28.120 Was very sort of down to earth and loved sports 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.920 and loved deli food. My mother, who came from the Midwest, 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.680 was a cooler customer. I would just describe my mother as, 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.360 although she was author's advocates, she was nurturing talent. She 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.280 was supporting people through their dark moments when they doubted 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.280 if they could write, or they doubted if they could produce. 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.760 She's just a cooler, more rational person than my father. 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.600 My father, even as he was that rigorous critic, he 0:08:55.720 --> 0:09:01.560 was essentially a romantic and idealist somebody who loved musical 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:07.200 theater passionately. My mother was just more. She was very 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.800 hard working, She was very competent. She worked incredibly hard 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:16.560 and kept her cool in very difficult, tough situations. My 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:20.559 father was more insecure. My father struggled with writer's block, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:25.120 and he smoked compulsively, and I could tell as a 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:30.360 young child that he was self medicating with cigarettes. He 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:34.040 could get irritable, he could get depressed if he wasn't. 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:34.960 Producing enough writing. 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:38.680 And my mother was very good at sort of laying 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:40.839 down the law and saying, Okay, you're going in your 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.040 office now, and you're going to come out in two hours, 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:45.040 and you're going to give me some pages. She was 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:46.800 very good at pushing him. 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.280 And my mother is a rock solid person. 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.280 She was then, she is now. You can always count 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.600 on her in a crisis. In Joan Divien's The Year 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.800 of Magical Thinking, my mother appears in one of the 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.760 opening of that book as the first person Joan calls 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.640 when John dies. My mother was both John and Joan's 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.200 literary agent. And I don't think it's an accident that 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.240 she called my mother. Yes she was a very close friend, 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.439 and yes she was the agent. But Joan also knew 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:16.520 my mother is the person you call when you're in 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:17.680 an emergency situation. 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:19.160 She's going to take care of things. 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:23.160 And she's not going to cry in a way that 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:25.880 she's not going to be able to manage herself. My 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.320 father was more vulnerable emotionally than my mother. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:35.920 Yeah, you write that even though your father cultivated the 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:40.679 pristine and protected sanctity of your childhood, even though he 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.320 was the one you'd go to for reassurance when you 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:48.440 had to worry, you never felt entirely secure about your father. 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.280 It seems like your mother was certainly much more disciplined 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:54.079 than your father. 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.880 Absolutely, my father, he always had this cough that worried me. 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.600 The kids would try to get him to quit smoking, 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.040 and he would get very angry and say, no, I'm fine. 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.559 My parents live until their nineties, and they my father smoked. 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.840 I'll quit when I'm older. So I always worried about 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:12.480 his health in that way. It just didn't like the 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.160 way that cough sounded. I also always worried about his 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:20.640 mood because I could see I didn't know what to 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.400 label it. I didn't know what to call it. Today, 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.679 we would say that he was suffering from untreated depression. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.319 He would get into kind of quiet and dark moods 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:36.520 or sometimes not often, but sometimes he would get irritable. 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:37.480 He had a temper. 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.560 He could get angry, particularly at my sister, who was 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.880 just a little bit more of a difficult child. If 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.400 she would spill her milk, he might get angry, or 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:48.800 she would complain, or she would talk back, and he 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:53.000 would get angry. And so I just always felt when 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.480 I entered a room my father's face lit up. When 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.359 I was with him, he was calmer, he was happier, 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.040 and he seemed more secure. 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:06.719 So from a very young age. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.319 I sensed that I was almost what we would call 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.599 today like I was my father's prozac. 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:13.720 In a way, helping him manage. 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:19.600 His moods, which is a tremendous responsibility for an eight nine. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:20.080 Ten year old. 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.400 Yeah, and you know, one of the things that strikes 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.240 me so much about your story is that there are 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.079 some bigger secrets in it. But the secrets in it 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:32.920 really have to do with what is left unexpressed, what 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.560 is left unspoken, which is a more subtle kind of 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.160 secret keeping. Right like you were, you were as a 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:45.160 member of your family who was really never going to 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:48.520 say anything that was going to rock the boat for 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:49.200 any of them. 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.680 Absolutely, I viewed myself as my sister's protector. I was 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.360 only fourteen months older than Claire, but she was fragile. 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.080 She would cry when my parents would go out and 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.000 they would go away, and I would be comforting her. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.760 She didn't have the filter that I had in terms 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.040 of if she was upset or we would be taking 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:08.920 a trip, she'd say. 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.000 We have to stop the car. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty. 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.319 And I really admire her ability to advocate for her 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.160 needs and to say how she was feeling. But because 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:23.200 she did that so openly, it almost hardened me in 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.600 my role of being Okay, my parents need one child 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.040 who's easy. My parents need one child who's not going 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.080 to complain. My parents need one child who's just going 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:35.680 to be that boy and happy child. And I was 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.640 born that way. I should say, you know, it's important 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:41.000 to say that my parents cast me. 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:41.480 In this role. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.000 But the role wasn't a stretch, right. I didn't cry 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:46.760 when I was a baby. Everybody always talked about that. 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:47.800 In the family lore. 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.960 My sister was very difficult. She didn't sleep through the night. 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.559 My parents were at their wits end. Claire would have tantrums, 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.440 and everybody from our babysitters to my brother from my 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.120 father's first marriage talk about how all little easy Persula. 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:03.959 She was always so sweet and easy and she never cried. 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.600 And I took that role seriously, and I love what 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.280 you say about It was almost like I couldn't voice 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:20.560 any feelings of worry or dissatisfaction, or this is hard 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.880 for me, anything like that. I had to keep those 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.240 things even from myself. I know you do talk often 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:29.920 in this podcast about these different types of secrets. 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:31.640 And I was almost keeping it from myself. 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:36.680 How hard this was at times for me to always 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:38.000 have to play that role of the good girl. 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.000 Priscilla is ten years old. The tensions between her parents 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:48.720 have been mounting. They aren't getting along even when they 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.440 go on vacation together. Priscilla wonders what do they do 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.200 while they're away. They really don't have much in common, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:59.600 but one thing has been clear. They've promised Priscilla and 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.720 Claire that no matter what, they'll never get a divorce. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.760 But then one October night in nineteen eighty, Priscilla hears 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.560 her parents arguing in the kitchen and it's filled with 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:14.520 a sense of doom. This foreboding feeling is born out 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.120 when her parents sit their daughters down at the kitchen 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.320 table and announce that they're going to have a trial separation. 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:26.400 I remember my sister got worried and thought it had 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.440 something to do with court or the legal system, you know, 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.360 when daddy's going on trial. What my mother said, No, no, no, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.840 we're going to be living in separate places. And when 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.600 Claire started to look upset, she reassured her and she said, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.160 you know, it's just kind of like an experiment. We're 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.680 just trying it out seeing And I knew in that 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.360 instant that it was not an experiment, it was not 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.200 a trial. That what I had most dreaded for a 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:56.600 long time was going to happen. And I will say 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.520 also that you know, this is nineteen eighty starting to 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.160 enter the era where more and more people that would 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.480 have stayed married ten twenty years ago are splitting up. 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.280 And a number of their friends, couples that we used 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:13.760 to hang out with, had split up. And so this 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.440 is one of the reasons why Claire and I start 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:17.760 asking them, right. 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:19.960 Are you going to split up? And then they would 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:20.760 have these kind. 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.680 Of fiery arguments where they would yell at each other, 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:28.080 and after those arguments, we would ask them and I think, 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:29.880 you know one thing that I do want to say 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:31.880 about their marriage. 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.680 They had two major things in common. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.600 One, their children. They adored their children, They loved being parents. 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.840 I could tell that they were in very invested in 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.360 the family and the larger family unit, bringing the grandparents together. 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.800 My mother loved my brother from my father's first marriage. 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.280 And I think my mother appreciated what a wonderful father 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.520 my father was, and even Crtic allows and have this 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:00.320 major career because he loved taking care of us, playing 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.400 with us, and reading to us and doing all those 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.520 things that she wasn't that interested in doing with us. 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.560 And at the same time, they were both passionate about 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:13.520 art and literature and that a life devoted. 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:14.800 To the arts could be meaningful. 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:20.640 They had both broken from their families of origin. Both 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.720 sets of grandparents were Republican. Both sets of grandparents had 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:29.679 businessman or lawyer right paternal figures, and my parents bonded 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.280 I think over that yet we're both escaping from the 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.679 oppressiveness of for my mother small town Illinois, from my 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.960 father Russian Jewish immigrant parents living in Flatbush and saying 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.320 a critic, how can you make money being a grip 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.119 that doesn't that's not a job, right, And they believed 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:46.960 in each other's work. 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:50.399 My mother thought my father was a genius. My dad 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:52.080 was wholly. 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:55.120 Admiring of my mother, supportive of her having a major career. 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:57.400 Not that many men were at that time. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.959 So my father being sort of ahead of his time 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.720 and taking on more of the child rearing and just 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:05.800 caring for us and supporting her. 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:07.280 I think that's what held them together. 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:12.840 But their personalities were not compatible ultimately, And when my 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:17.720 mother announces this, I knew not only that this was 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.159 going to be irrevocable, that they were going to split, 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.560 and not just separate the divorce. I knew that my 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.119 father did not want this, because I could. 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:28.720 Always sense from a very young age. 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:33.760 That my father loved my mother far more than my 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.600 mother loved my father, if she really loved him at all. 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:39.600 I knew she revered. 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.320 Him intellectually, but I never saw any physical affection between 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.720 the two of them, And I did feel often as 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.800 a little girl my father wanting my mother's approval and 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:53.440 my mother not giving him the affection that I could 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:54.560 sense that he wanted. 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.679 And that night, when you leave the kitchen, you go 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.920 into your father's study and he tells you as much 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:05.600 he's crying, and he tells you, I don't want this. 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.240 He says, I don't want this. I don't want to 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.760 lose our family. I went after him. My mother took 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.000 Claire back to bed, and I could have gone to bed, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.280 but I felt I need to go check on my father. 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.040 I need to go see if he's okay. And he 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.440 was crying, and I'd almost never seen him cry, and 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.080 I'd seen tears in his eyes and like sentimental moments 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:33.240 and movies maybe, and he was heaving with crying, and 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.520 immediately I was just hugging him, and I was trying 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.480 not to cry myself because I didn't want to make 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.960 it worse for him. But that wasn't a revelation to me. 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.359 When he said that, exactly as you said, Danny, I knew. 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.280 I mean, I went there and I had it confirmed. 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:50.000 My father did not want this. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.600 My mother wanted this, and I could tell from the 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:53.440 expression in her. 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.159 Face that she was out. There was no chance that 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:58.560 he was going to be able to convince her. 0:19:59.119 --> 0:19:59.840 And for a couple of. 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.600 Mon he did try, and it was very painful to 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:08.280 watch his fumbling around trying to praise her, and he'd say, oh, 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:11.879 you know, I've smoked only ten cigarettes today, right, or 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.480 I'm not going to bet on sports anymore, or any 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:16.960 of these things that had bothered her or have been 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.320 issues I knew as a little child. 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.639 Those were cosmetic things like that's not what it really was. 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:24.240 It was something deeper. 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:29.959 There was some deeper fault line between them. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:40.000 We'll be right back when Priscilla's parents separate. The change 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:43.080 is jarring for the whole family. The life and home 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:45.679 they all once shared is now fractured. 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.359 So, you know, we had moved into this really grand 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:56.280 apartment two years earlier, and my father had had this 0:20:56.359 --> 0:21:00.160 incredible office with this huge white desk that looked like 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.000 a president could sit behind it, and all of a sudden, 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.240 he doesn't have a home at all. We're not told 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.040 where he's staying. He moves out in January, and I assumed, 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.640 you know, he's basically what we would today call kout surfing, 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:17.879 staying with different people friends for us, students, former students, 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:20.840 and my sister and I are only able to see 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.080 him for a quick lunch or a quick dinner at 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:28.080 a neighborhood restaurant maybe once or twice a week, and 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:33.760 he is alternately kind of shaky emotionally, like as soon 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:35.879 as he would see us, he would look like he 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.600 was about to cry, or he would get irritable because 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:42.840 he would say, girls, you have to split a dish, 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:44.840 and Claire would say, no, I want more food. 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.320 That's not enough food. I want more, and he would 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:50.679 get annoyed, and so I would be sort of kicking her, 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:52.000 trying to get her to stop. 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.440 And then I would notice that my father was taking 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.240 the containers in the McDonald so that have like the 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.040 packets of salt and pepper. 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:01.880 Or the ketchup packets and the mustard. 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:06.280 Packets and pouring them into his shoulder bag or sugar right, 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:08.720 and I'm thinking he can't even afford a box of sugar. 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:12.280 And meanwhile, my mother's career is going better than ever. 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:16.520 She's doing a lot of business in California. We go 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:19.400 and we stay for the summer in Brentwood, in Joan 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:21.720 Diddy and in John Vanna's house, and we're going to 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.600 all these movie premieres, and she's getting even more glamorous. 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:30.000 My mother seems free, my mother seems lighter, she seems happier, 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:35.879 and my father is overcome by this profound depression he'd 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.800 always teetered on the verge of falling into that. One night, 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.280 my father had come back to the apartment. My mom 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:46.600 was in California on business, and she allowed my father 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:48.200 to come into the apartment and stay with us, so 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.160 we would have a couple of nights with him. And 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:55.159 we're playing a game with Claire, and Claire spills her 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.280