WEBVTT - One Drop 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:08.639 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Two 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.080 months before my father died of prostate cancer, I learned 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.760 about a secret, But I've always said that there was 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.159 something about my family, or even many things that I 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.520 didn't know. As a child, when I was left to 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:24.360 love in the house, I would search through another's file, 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:29.800 cabinets and my father's study for elaboration, clarification, some proof 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:39.479 of what I couldn't exactly say. This is Bliss Broyard, 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:44.280 reading from her two eight memoir One Drop, My Father's 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:49.400 Hidden Life, a story of race and family secrets. When 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.080 you were a kid, did you snoop through your parents stuff? 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.240 I know I did. Most kids snoop go looking through 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.160 their parents things, trying to solve the mystery of these 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.600 adults who are so central to us and yet are 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.360 also so fundamentally unknowable. We kind of sense that our 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.240 parents have private lives outside of being just mom and dad, 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.800 and we want to find out about those lives. But 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.520 in families where there are secrets, I mean, big secrets, 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.800 this snooping is not so innocent. It kind of borders 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.800 on obsessive. I should know. When I was a kid, 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.360 whenever my parents would leave the house I would get 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.280 to work. I searched through my mother's drawers, my father's nightstand, 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:38.000 their cupboards and medicine cabinets. Like Bliss Broyard, if I 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:40.600 had been asked what I was looking for, I couldn't 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.560 have told you a clue. I guess a reason why 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:55.880 the pieces to my family just didn't add up. I'm 0:01:55.960 --> 0:02:00.200 Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, secrets that are 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.200 kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and secrets 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:12.480 we keep from ourselves. Bliss was raised in Southport, Connecticut, 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.359 a small town on the coast of the Long Island Sound, 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.520 with her mom, dad, and older brother Todd. I've been 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.640 to Southport a few times. It's a place that reeks 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:24.920 of money, so old it doesn't need to show off 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.600 worn oriental rugs and great great Grandma's silver service kind 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.399 of money. Southport is a place that feels orderly and elegant, 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:38.560 every detail perfection, as if dreamt up by Martha Stewart, who, 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:40.800 come to think of it, lived in the next town over. 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:47.520 So I'd love to start with you describing the landscape 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:52.520 of your childhood. A bit sure, um well I grew up. 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.119 I often described it as as kind of wasp. In Connecticut, 0:02:56.639 --> 0:03:00.160 um it was a wealthy so the wealthiest sect Lee 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.160 County in America at the time that I was growing 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:04.360 up in there in the nineteen seventies, Fairfeld County, and 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.480 it was virtually all white. I think I once looked 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.640 at the census and there was like four or five 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:13.840 people of color African Americans, but nobody in tam when 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.840 I asked the library, knew who those people were. So 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:18.600 they were if they were there at all, they were 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.440 not known kind of respective members of the community. There 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.680 were Jews and Catholics there, but there was an overriding 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.320 kind of wasp culture that everyone seemed to aspire to 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:34.920 belong to. My family, included the Broyard's, had a charmed life, 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.240 at least on the outside. When Bliss was growing up, 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.480 her father, Anatole, had become famous as a literary critic. 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:48.560 If that description sounds like an oxymoron, famous literary critic, well, 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:51.080 once upon a time, it was a real thing, and 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.880 Anatole Broyard was it. My father was an older dad. 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.800 He was forty when he married my mother. My mother 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:00.760 says that she know how old he was because he 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:03.480 looked very young. It's kind of secretive about his age. 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.680 So they met in Grand Village, and I think they 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.720 both really identified with the Grantch village of the nineteen 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.520 fifties or nine sixties, and the first got married and 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.520 we living there. They succumb self described bohemians. My father 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.600 was a writer. Um. He published a few things at 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:24.320 that points, particularly a story about the death of his 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.599 own father that had gotten a lot of attention and 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.880 had earned him a book deal for a novel that 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.400 he was forever working on trying to complete. My mother 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.839 was a modern dancer. She was also an orphaned. She'd 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:41.239 been orphaned tragically her father and then her mother died 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.279 about nine months later in a car accident where my 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.120 mother had been driving, and so she was pretty alone 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.680 in the world and traumatized really from what happened. Um 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:56.039 found met my father on a subway after dance class 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.919 in Manhattan, and she asked him out and where he 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.400 asked her out about there. Um, So they when they 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.240 got married and they had my brother, they moved out 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.480 to Connecticut. You know. My mother says it's because she 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.880 didn't really know how to raise a family in New 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.520 York City. She herself had grown up in Westchester, and 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:17.480 I think for both of my parents there was the 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.800 sense that their marriage and kind of domestic life through 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:24.880 that they sort of saved one another. My mother saved 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.520 my father bachelorhood, he would always say. And my father 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.400 kind of saved my mother from this sort of orphaned 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.839 world that she had found herself in when she was 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.400 twenty and they had bought a series of old antique 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.840 farmhouses in Connecticut and decorated them beautifully. My mother make 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:49.359 homemade mayonnaise and fresh bread and planted beautiful gardens. And 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:51.400 there was a lot about that childhood that was really 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:55.360 idyllic um. But there was also a lot where they 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.240 were living kind of beyond their means and living on 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:01.520 the edge and hiring to a life and they couldn't 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:05.800 quite afford and it created a lot of stress, certainly 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.800 in our household um and confusion, why do we live 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:15.200 in this beautiful, kind of impressive house but they trouble 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.680 paying for lunching to me like basic necessities sometimes And 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:20.840 were you aware of that as a child. I mean, 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.120 some families are or some parents are pretty good at 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:27.600 call it what you will, but you know, shielding or 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:34.520 hiding from their kids, that sense of financial instability or 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.479 things not being as they appear. I think I was 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.200 aware of it because I mean there would be fights 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:43.719 about money, certainly that I overheard, but also my parents 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.279 kept moving and they kept buying new homes, and I 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:49.880 think that I had the impression that, you know, if 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.120 we could get into a new house that was more 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:56.560 beautiful and it was a fresh start and decorated, you know, 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.480 in some other slightly different style, than they could be happier. 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:04.599 It's kind of this chasing after the new settings with 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:10.720 the hope of of making things calmer and happier. So 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.600 there seems to be like a kind of discontent always 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.120 with with that life was. I mean, at the same time, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.040 we did have, you know, we had a lot of coziness. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:19.920 My father was a real fu family man, and he 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:25.680 worked at tom like most men of that generation. So 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.360 Nfol Briard is a bit of a legend. He's the 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.440 chief book critic for the New York Times. He dictates 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:35.560 his reviews over the phone from home. Around Southport, everyone 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.440 knows who he is. Blizz describes him this way in 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.400 her memoir, My father was famous, at least among the 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.560 people I knew, not only for being a public intellectual 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.360 with a regular byline and the paper of record, but 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.239 for being successful at life, at parties at our house. 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.080 I'd watch the way he moved through people, laying his 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.840 hand on a shoulder, firmly gripping someone's arm, and how 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.040 they turned to him. Your face is lit and expectant, 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:04.720 as if he held a fistful of fairy dust over 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.320 their heads, And he'd offer a word or two, nothing much, 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:12.200 but with a subtext that declared, all right, we fantastic 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.320 you and me. Isn't this world great? So he was 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:20.440 also a really charismatic figure. He was very handsome and 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.640 very graceful, a great athlete, of great dancer, and kind 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.360 of a lot of fun um and a really quite 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.280 a dear, generous friend. He was a friend of his 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.560 describing I think this was really true. He was a 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.480 kind of master at impression management when he really worked 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:38.280 hard to make people like him. But it didn't kind 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.520 of come off as a manipulative or inauthentic, at least 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.680 to my eyes or to his friendsise Um. You know, 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:46.920 maybe from the far somebody would have seen it differently. 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.920 But he was very likable in many ways, and he 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:51.480 had a lot of friends, a lot of people who 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:56.000 were quite loyal to him. But beneath all this, something 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.400 else is going on. Even within all the literary fame 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.880 and country coziness, the Broyards are kind of on their own. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:09.000 There's no extended family around. Sandy is an orphan and anatole. Well, 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.840 he has family, but they seem to have been excommunicated. 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.480 He has a mother and two sisters living in New 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.880 York City, just a short train ride away, but they 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.079 never come to visit. Bliss and Todd grow up not 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:27.280 knowing them. We're going to pause for a moment for 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:35.400 a word from our sponsor. One night, anatole's temper flares 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:40.640 over a bologna sandwich. You heard that right. I'll let 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:45.240 Bliss tell it. It was Mother's Day, and um, he 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.839 had gotten my mother these lovely Tiffany earrings. But the 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.040 moment that he was trying to present them, she was 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.800 cooking dinner and kind of didn't turn around quickly. And 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.000 after he lost his temper abruptly, and then the night 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.520 was a ruined and um, I went to bed, and 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:01.120 she woke me up in the middle of the night 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.840 alarmed because he couldn't find his blowny for his sandwich 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.480 that he ate nightly, and then when I went downstairs, 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:12.320 he had ripped all of the condiments and the shelves 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:15.360 off the door of the fridge, so our whole kitchen 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:21.480 floor was scattered with bottles and Nanna's um And he 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.560 was really shocking and seemed quite out of character. I've 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.440 never seen my father really lose control like that. And 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.200 that's when I learned my mother. I said, what happened? 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:32.600 You know, what's wrong with him? And she said, well, 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.559 you know, his mother died, and I think he feels guilty. 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.320 And this was the first I'd heard that my grandmother 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:43.480 had died, who had only met once in my life, 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:46.360 you know, when I was six when she died, and 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.040 she had died back in September. She's been dead for 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.680 nine months, but it was never even mentioned or discussed, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:55.880 or if there was a service, I wasn't concluded. And 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.000 so that really hit me hard because I just felt 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:00.640 that not only was my I thought, you know, my 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:06.760 father had lost his mother and was presumably grieving over that, 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.719 but I was also so excluded from the whole experience, 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.280 and I didn't have a right to his family in 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.240 any way. They didn't belong to me. They only belonged 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:20.200 to him, which was felt very hurtful. Yeah. Yeah, And 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.360 it also speaks to that unknowability, like how is it 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:28.240 possible for you, know, you're a kid and your your 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.640 father has lost his mother and you don't know that, 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:34.400 you know, it makes you wonder if you just aren't 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.400 sensitive or paying attention or self absorbed. I mean I 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.240 was twelve or something, so I'm sure I was self absorbed, 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:43.480 But you know, I thought of myself as close with 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.720 my father. He was very affectionate, and he was he 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.560 waited a long time to have children. He really loved kids, 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:53.480 and so he seemed really very interested in my life 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.240 and my brother's life and our life when our friends 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.240 came around, and he was a very engaged father by 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.880 today's stand words are back then, and so the fact 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.200 that I hadn't noticed that he had lost his own 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.680 parents and that had perhaps been grieving over that made 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.760 you feel that I m didn't know my dad or 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:15.120 we weren't as close as I thought. If blisses, aunts, 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:17.439 or grandmother were a part of her imagination at all 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:21.120 when she was a kid, they were shadowy, mysterious figures 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.840 covering on the periphery. I mean, my one aunt would 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.480 call the house sometimes and she didn't feel as cut 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:29.760 off limits to me as my other aunt did. But 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.160 I after my father died, I found a note from 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.559 my grandmother to my father that was really heart wrenching 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:38.880 because something like, you know, I'm turning seventy two and 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.439 I'm not a young woman anymore, and I just want 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:44.360 to meet my grandchildren for once in my life. And 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:46.760 then when I looked at the dates. The following week, 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.920 my father brought my my grandmother, his mother, out to 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.240 Connecticut and brought her to lunch the country club, like 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.720 just as is to say, like I'm not keeping you apart, 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.120 and there's nothing wrong going on here, and you're welcome 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.360 to come. But she, of course, she once she came, 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.480 she calm. That was it. She never came back. It 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:10.320 was the only time they ever met her. Listen Todd 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.480 attend great private schools. The family spends summers on Martha's Vineyard. 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.480 They play tennis, hang out at the yacht club. They're close, 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:23.360 and yet Anatole's pensiont for control continues to exert itself 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.520 in all sorts of ways. Because here's the thing, you 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.720 can't control life. You can try. You can eat the 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.480 same bologna sandwich every night, you can perfect your back hand, 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.839 you can keep your family at bay. But ultimately, no 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.080 matter how masterful you are at it, life will have 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:48.480 its way. Life always does. And let's not forget that 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.160 Anatole Broyard is first and foremost a writer. He's been 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.640 trying to write a novel forever and he can't. He 0:13:55.840 --> 0:14:00.240 just can't. A friend told me very poignant story. They 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.280 went and had like a little self created writing retreat 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.760 together and after the first morning they have shared their 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.200 work over lunch, and this friend said, that's great, Anatole, 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:12.160 keep going. And then my dad came down the next 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.800 day and it was basically the same couple of paragraphs 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.360 but with a comma changed here and there, and you know, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:19.720 and he said, okay, yeah, I keep going. And it 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.320 just went on like that for the week. And finally, 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:23.760 at the end of his life, I think when you 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:26.160 you know, when he realized his life actually had a deadline. 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:32.520 He was surliberated to create both a memoir that I 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.240 became a book called When Kraftco Was the Rage, and 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.000 also he was writing about illness um and he found 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:43.480 a way to kind of write about himself honestly. When 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.400 Bliss is in her early twenties, Anatole is diagnosed with 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.400 prostate cancer, and just before her twenty four birthday, it's 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.000 clear that he has very little time left. One afternoon, 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.600 Sandy tells Bliss and Todd in front of Anatole that 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.640 their father has a secret, and she begs him to 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.520 tell it. So what happened is my father had gone 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.920 to couples therapy with my mother when he was it 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.880 was clear that like western medicine had done what it 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:14.000 could for his illness, and she was trying to get 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:16.600 them to do some alternative treatments and they were kind 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.520 of he was reposisting, and so they went to couple 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.280 of therapy and it turned into more conversation about how 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:27.280 he wanted to finish up his life, and this secret 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:31.040 came up, and the therapist had suggested that it would 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.960 be a kind of unburdening to tell his children finally, 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.720 something that my mother had been really after for him 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:39.680 to tell us for years. I think in the back 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.960 of my mother's mind too, she was going to include 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.800 his two sisters in his memorial service, and so we 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:48.280 were going to meet them, and I was going to 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:50.280 meet my cousins, and wouldn't it be better if my 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:56.760 father told us first. So she sort of sprung it 0:15:56.800 --> 0:16:00.040 on him to tell us, and he wasn't ready, and 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.440 he was having a hard day. Um, he was in 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:05.800 a lot of pain from his prostate cancer, which had 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.480 advanced at that point to his bones. And he said 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:10.880 that he wanted to get his vulnerabilities and orders. They 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:15.320 didn't get magnified during the discussion. Very kind of controlled 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:21.240 thing for him to say, very kind of typical way. 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.600 Imagine how amazing it would be to get your vulnerabilities 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.960 in order to line them up like good little soldiers, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:34.360 to wait until they're all perfectly aligned, and then and 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:42.560 only then. Oh wait, right, that's not how vulnerabilities work. Okay, 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.640 So Bliss and Todd can't imagine what the secret might be. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:51.160 Their father isn't talking, he's ordering his vulnerabilities. He's frail 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:55.720 and in ever worsening shape. Finally, when it seems the 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.480 end might be near, Sandy decides to tell her children 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.120 her self. He planted it back in the hospital to 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.320 the medical emergency, and he had to have an emergency 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.000 surgery that looked like he was going to die and 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:09.560 he was going to make it through the surgery, and 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.520 so my mom brought us outside Dana Farber Cancer Institute 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:15.159 in Boston and said, look, I'm going to tell you 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:21.239 what the secret is. Your father's are black. And my 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.720 brother and I laughed, you know, we just know that's it, 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.560 that's the big secret, because we had been talking, you know, 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:29.760 the last couple of weeks. What do you think, what 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.200 do you think it is like somebody get murdered, just rape. 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:35.840 You know, we just thought incest. We knew there was 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.040 something had to do with this family, but we really 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.320 went down what we seemed like much darker channels. So 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:43.720 this seems like not a very big deal and kind 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.000 of a relief, and we remember we joked about it. 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.879 But over time, after Anatole's death, the magnitude of the 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.399 secret and what it really means for Bliss starts to 0:17:54.480 --> 0:18:00.360 slowly reveal itself. But I think then a few months 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.639 later at the memorial service and I met my aunt Shirley, 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.200 who I had never met before, and her son Frank, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.280 and UM saw my other aunt Loraine for the first time, 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:14.280 and you know, twenty years or something, the secret started 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.080 to take on more import and I started to really 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.040 have a lot of questions. Why was it a secret? 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:21.440 What did it mean to him? What does it mean 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.600 to me? And I told my best friend from growing 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.199 up from Martha's Vineyard, I pointed out my yes, and 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.080 I said, you know those are my aunts, the big 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.239 secrets that my father was black, and I didn't know. 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.320 She said, you didn't know. I knew? He said, why, 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.560 like you knew all of these years? She said, yeah. 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.440 I mean I thought like everybody knew of my parents knew, 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:41.199 and their friends. I just thought that you've heard not 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:44.879 to talk about it. That was very odd because I 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.520 had been sort of made complicit in the secret that 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:53.159 I wasn't even really aware of. This is something I 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.840 think a lot about in any number of the conversations 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.080 I've had for this podcast. The notion that not me 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.439 it was a secret kept, but then in fact that 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:06.439 secret was hiding in plain sight. Well, that keeps on 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.960 coming up again and again, especially when it relates to 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:14.480 paternity or ethnic or racial background. I mean, this was 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:18.199 definitely true for me when I first wrote something on 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.600 Facebook about my discovery about my dad, kind of announcing 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.320 the subject of my new book, The wife of my 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:29.560 ninth grade English teacher posted a comment hashtag always wondered. 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:37.160 She said, really always wondered? Had everybody always wondered? Except 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.640 for me? In your book you talk about dancing, right, 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.760 and you're a really good dancer, and you come home 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.440 one night and you say to your father, Um, it 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:50.639 was like the ultimate compliment somebody said to you know, 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:52.960 like you you dance like a black girl, you know, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.000 like and I mean he doesn't really register it, and 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:58.760 you don't really register it. Um. I think he took 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.320 it as a compliment too, you know, right, like that 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:06.080 he wanted that bro right. Yeah. I think for me too, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:09.240 I felt very exposed, um, with this idea of this 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:11.920 knowledge that a lot of people knew something about me 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:14.159 that I didn't know myself. You know, it makes you 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:17.040 feel like you have a sign on your back or something. Um. 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:20.159 And I made me feel sort of stupid and uh. 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.000 And I even had some you know, strangers when I 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.800 was giving readings like how could you not know? Um, 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.760 didn't you look at your father and wonder? And I 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.720 talked to people whose parents have come out or UM 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:35.040 later in life, And I think that a partly, I 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.520 think it's the self absorption of the child, Like, yes, 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.640 we're trying to figure out our parents, but we're more 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.200 focused probably in figuring out ourselves, and we don't quite 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.600 see the connection, you know. Um, But also I just didn't. 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:50.680 I wasn't suspicious that my parents, you know, we're keeping 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:52.879 a secret. You've sort of been involved with them in 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:56.560 a way so intimately, like it seemed um hard to 0:20:57.560 --> 0:20:59.600 It just wasn't one of the things that I wondered about. 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.119 You know. Well, it's there's almost a kind of implicit 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.399 pact or you know, something unspoken between parents and children, 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:08.679 which is the parents are not going to lie to 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:13.920 their children or withhold significant aspects of their identity. But 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.119 I think it's just about impossible for a child to 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.200 bring forth any kind of conscious knowledge in that situation. 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:34.439 We're going to pause for a moment. Secrets have other impacts, 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.760 other effects. They form the inner lives of the people 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.080 who live and breathe the atmosphere of that secret. In Bliss, 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:47.800 his father's case, keeping his blackness a secret by keeping 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:52.000 his family of origin at bay, had the unintended consequence 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.760 of making his daughter feel like she could be rejected too, 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.280 for reasons she didn't understand there was always a kind 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.359 of fragility in a way to our family, and I 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:08.800 was like wary of things where somebody might be cast out. 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:11.800 I think probably because I knew that my father had 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:17.120 rejected his family of origin, so that unconditional bonds that 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.439 was supposed to exist in families did not seem certain 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.080 for me. And there was a kind of, you know, 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:28.280 an active role on my part to keep my father engaged, 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:32.359 because he could go off and forgot about us like 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:38.000 he had forgotten about his, his parents and his sisters. Um. 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.400 So for me, even though I felt quite loved and secure, 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:47.080 on one hand, I also understood that we were together 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.240 because we wanted to be together, not out of kind 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:54.320 of obligation or duty. That family was kind construction, um 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:56.879 and I felt that they need to sort of continually 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:02.200 keep us together no way. And another consequence, when a 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:05.679 secret does get pushed out into the open, it leaves 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:09.200 the inheritors of that secret with a lot of catching 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:17.119 up to do. List goes to the library, actually goes 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:19.360 to the library, if you can imagine such a thing, 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:24.720 and skulks around shamefully trying to look up information about passing, 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:28.080 as if she were trying to, I don't know, check 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:31.560 out some porn. I didn't know anything about the phenomenon 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:34.960 of racial passing when I discovered it happening in my 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:39.720 own life and family. UM, So I did go to 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:42.000 the library. Back then there was no internet, so I 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:45.320 couldn't look it up online. UM. And I did feel 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:50.320 I did feel very kind of secretive myself and like 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.360 a little ashamed to be, partly because it seems strange 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:55.520 to go to a library to look up something that 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:59.040