Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: episode contains descriptions of sexual assault. Listener discretion as advised.
Speaker 1: The morning after I confronted my grandfather, I was home
Speaker 1: alone at my parents house, standing in the kitchen. Early
Speaker 1: summer light streamed in through the window over the sink.
Speaker 1: I could see the old tire swing, its rope now free,
Speaker 1: and then starting to rap. The phone rang. There were
Speaker 1: no words when I picked up, only his labor breathing.
Speaker 1: He'd done this before, calling the house and just breathing
Speaker 1: when he heard me pick up. Hello, I said hello.
Speaker 1: I was ready to hang up, but this time he spoke.
Speaker 1: I'm an old man, he said, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: dead soon. I need your forgiveness to go to heaven.
Speaker 1: Do you forgive me? I remember the phone ringing. I
Speaker 1: remember the light through the window and the black plastic
Speaker 1: receiver smooth in my palm. I remember the sound of
Speaker 1: his voice wavery and grap and old, and the way
Speaker 1: my skin pricked and my heart started to hear it.
Speaker 1: I remember his question, I have no memory of how
Speaker 1: I answered him. That's Alex Marzano Lesnovitch. They are a memorist,
Speaker 1: author of the lambeda award winning the Fact of a
Speaker 1: Body and assistant professor at Bowdon College. Alex's story is
Speaker 1: a braided one, each strand weaving around the other to
Speaker 1: make something stronger than its parts, a strength that comes
Speaker 1: from looking closely, even when looking is scary, especially when
Speaker 1: looking is scary. I'd call this a story that is
Speaker 1: the triumph of spirit and intellect over silence and secrets.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I grew up
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. It was a bedroom community for New York.
Speaker 1: All around us there were these these markers of people
Speaker 1: trying to make a new story over the one that
Speaker 1: they had grown up in, over the one they had
Speaker 1: left behind. So I remember when my parents brought home
Speaker 1: matching cadillacs. We had this house that was kind of
Speaker 1: falling down around us that they forever rebuilding. They had
Speaker 1: bought it really cheaply when the family who had lived
Speaker 1: in it prior had moved out, and they had moved
Speaker 1: out because the rumor had it of an accompted murder.
Speaker 1: We moved in and they sat about trying to remake it,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, I think trying to remake it in ways
Speaker 1: that sometimes looked older. So my father, for example, had
Speaker 1: these Victorian flourishes added to the house, to the woodwork,
Speaker 1: even though they weren't part of it originally. And so
Speaker 1: it was this landscape of remaking, a reinvention of the
Speaker 1: idea that it was possible to reinvent oneself and get
Speaker 1: away from the past. And that was a really heavy
Speaker 1: and beautiful idea as a kid, right like you're living
Speaker 1: in some ways in a grand story. There were always
Speaker 1: living in a mythology of like the big house and
Speaker 1: the big family and the big parties, and there was
Speaker 1: real beauty to that, and there was real complexity. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of these Victorian flourishes and the
Speaker 1: idea of remaking a house but remaking it to look
Speaker 1: older rather than classically remaking a house to modernize it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like somehow that feels very metaphorical in terms
Speaker 1: of your story itself, because it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: somehow attaching pieces of history or I'm just sort of
Speaker 1: picturing it like a Wes Anderson movie. I mean, I
Speaker 1: gotta say it felt very left Anderson. And when I
Speaker 1: look at it now and then remember when they were
Speaker 1: redoing the hallway, for example, they had all us kids
Speaker 1: pick out things that were important to us and place
Speaker 1: them in the framework of the house, and then we
Speaker 1: would work with boarded back up. So it was all
Speaker 1: with this idea of we will live, and we will
Speaker 1: live through history. We will be a story in the future.
Speaker 1: There will be some family down the line that uncovers
Speaker 1: us and wonders about who we are. If there is,
Speaker 1: they may be a bit sad to discover my goofy
Speaker 1: ring that was my prized possession of. Could there possibly
Speaker 1: be a more apt and beautiful metaphor than a child's
Speaker 1: goofy ring? A prized possession buried into the framework of
Speaker 1: the house. Alex's family's home contains many secrets that are
Speaker 1: quite the opposite of childhood innocence. Many years later, Alex
Speaker 1: and their mother have a conversation when there's a good
Speaker 1: chance the house is going to be raised torn down
Speaker 1: to make way for a new development. Alex says they'd
Speaker 1: like to drive the bulldozer, and their mother says, no,
Speaker 1: I get to do that. Tell me about your mother,
Speaker 1: the mother that you grew up with, not your mother today.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have so much respect for everything she
Speaker 1: pulls off. Her parents didn't want her to go to college.
Speaker 1: They didn't feel a woman had to go to college,
Speaker 1: so she would sneak out to go to college, even
Speaker 1: though she was living with them. She went to college secretly.
Speaker 1: They didn't even know until unmost she graduated. She'd almost
Speaker 1: graduated when they found out. And she continued this kind
Speaker 1: of determination. I think my my love of words and
Speaker 1: my love of stories comes from her. She taught me
Speaker 1: to read well before I went to kindergarten, you know,
Speaker 1: well before we were learning to read a bit of
Speaker 1: a I think we're both quite stubborn and so um.
Speaker 1: I apparently didn't speak to her the first day of
Speaker 1: kindergarten because I came home very upset that she had
Speaker 1: never told me that there were capital letters. She only
Speaker 1: taught me the lower case letters, and I was so upset.
Speaker 1: Aar and I said, you never told me there were
Speaker 1: big ones. But I think that way she made it fun,
Speaker 1: you know, she made learning a real adventure for us,
Speaker 1: and UM, I suspect she was quite bored at home
Speaker 1: with us a bit. She loved it. But also when
Speaker 1: I look back now, I sort of sense a mind
Speaker 1: straining for like wanting to be out in the world
Speaker 1: tackling things, because she did teach us so much and
Speaker 1: also had some fun with her power as someone who
Speaker 1: could teach us. So, for example, she taught us the
Speaker 1: word candy meant as a matter of definition, bananas dipped
Speaker 1: and playing yogurt, and so I vividly remember the first
Speaker 1: time I went to like a classmates house and the
Speaker 1: classmates mothers that, would you like some candy? And I
Speaker 1: was like, no, not really, I don't really like candy,
Speaker 1: and the expression on my classmates spaces, you know, and
Speaker 1: then realizing, oh, but that was that was quite a
Speaker 1: powerful moment because I realized, all right, like words or
Speaker 1: what we say they are, this is all a system
Speaker 1: of meaning that we are constantly making um. And then
Speaker 1: when I was I think about twelve, maybe younger, she
Speaker 1: went to law school and by that point there were
Speaker 1: four of us kids at home, and she went full
Speaker 1: time to law school during the day and brought us
Speaker 1: with her sometimes, and so I kind of grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, as a kid, the things that make impressions
Speaker 1: on you are not what would seem right size to
Speaker 1: an adult, but rather you know the things that that
Speaker 1: stand out is like themb text in your world or
Speaker 1: in your landscape, or shift your understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: And for me, it was a couple of things. Being
Speaker 1: at law school with her was the first time I
Speaker 1: ever saw a woman in a suit and understood that
Speaker 1: a woman could be a professor, that a woman could
Speaker 1: teach her, the woman could have this session of authority.
Speaker 1: It was also the first time I encountered macaroni and
Speaker 1: cheese the way the rest of the world, as the
Speaker 1: rest of the country makes it, and not the way
Speaker 1: my family makes it, which is a very distinctive way.
Speaker 1: And how's that after the banana dipped in yogurt? I
Speaker 1: need to know? You know, the way we grew up
Speaker 1: with mac and cheese was just like you make it
Speaker 1: so that the pasta is like fresh off the stove,
Speaker 1: and you dump it into a metal bowl, and my
Speaker 1: mom would yell, stir, and all as kids would like
Speaker 1: be positioned around the bowl, and one of us would
Speaker 1: dump in a load of shredded cheese, and another world
Speaker 1: would dump in some milk, and another would would would
Speaker 1: dump in a little bit of I can't believe it's
Speaker 1: not butter, and all you would do was just stir madly.
Speaker 1: And then mostly it was cheese. It was like almost
Speaker 1: equal parts macaroni and cheese. So it's just like a
Speaker 1: melted cheese extravagant that it was like goodlier than pizza.
Speaker 1: But it definitely wasn't that like creamy mac and cheese
Speaker 1: sauce the people make. So we got to the cafeteria
Speaker 1: and I just remember being stunned, just utterly done by
Speaker 1: whatever the substance was. So those two and then sitting
Speaker 1: in one of her law school classes and having a
Speaker 1: professor talk about a hypothetical and call it that a hypothetical,
Speaker 1: which is how law is taught, which is how you
Speaker 1: know I was taught, well, eventually when I went to
Speaker 1: law school, where you spin out a second alternate facts
Speaker 1: and you talk about the way president in case law
Speaker 1: could apply to those tacts. But I remember sitting in
Speaker 1: that classroom and feeling like, you know, they just said
Speaker 1: this fancy word, but I know what that is. That's
Speaker 1: a story hypothetical as a story, And so it was
Speaker 1: really the space of storytelling. And she would read to us,
Speaker 1: She read to us every every night, so many stories,
Speaker 1: and you know, gave me adult books the minute I
Speaker 1: expressed interest in something with chapters. You know, I think she, uh,
Speaker 1: she worked really hard to we make the word all
Speaker 1: that she wanted to be in a world of ideas
Speaker 1: and a world of words that she had been very
Speaker 1: forcefully told was not to be hers when she was
Speaker 1: a child and when she was a young adult. And
Speaker 1: so I think she really made the world she wanted
Speaker 1: to be in and made a world for herself to enter.
Speaker 1: And what about your father. My dad was a man
Speaker 1: of dreams. He wears his dreams on his sleeve. My
Speaker 1: mother wears her dreams more privately. I didn't talk about them,
Speaker 1: but my dad wears his dreams and his stories on
Speaker 1: his sleeve. He is a very enthusiastic man. He's always
Speaker 1: the life of the party, and um wants to be
Speaker 1: the center of attention. And he's very much a story teller.
Speaker 1: And um, he too was a lawyer, and he would
Speaker 1: often tell us stories about his childhood, whereas my mother
Speaker 1: never did. But he would always tell stories about his childhood,
Speaker 1: and he was always falling in love with something new,
Speaker 1: and very enthusiastic. I'm a very enthusiastic person. I would
Speaker 1: probably trace that back to him. So when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, when he fell in love with opera,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that he fell in love with opera,
Speaker 1: it was at suddenly he was periodically wearing a tux
Speaker 1: and there was opera always playing through the house, and
Speaker 1: there were posters about opera and whatnot. Then when he
Speaker 1: fell in love with country music, there was Garth Brooks
Speaker 1: all the time through the house, and he bought the
Speaker 1: tractor for the backyard, and all of a sudden he
Speaker 1: had big belt buckles and um, cowboy boots, even though
Speaker 1: we lived in New Jersey. Then Cole Porter and so
Speaker 1: literally a white dinner jacket, Cole Porter playing through the
Speaker 1: house at all times. And of course the cuisine would shift,
Speaker 1: the cuisine of the house would shift. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think it's like ideay invention and of chasing maybe multiple
Speaker 1: lives within a lifetime. We'll be right back within this
Speaker 1: family life filled with books and words and music and magic.
Speaker 1: Alex and their three siblings, the four of them form
Speaker 1: a neat and tidy family. Everything fits together snugly, exactly right.
Speaker 1: They sit around the dining room table, the six of them,
Speaker 1: a table built for a family exactly this size, no more,
Speaker 1: no fewer. But something shimmers in the air, something not
Speaker 1: quite right. Alex can't put their finger on it. It's
Speaker 1: just a feeling. But then one day, while they and
Speaker 1: their twin brother Andy are outside playing, Alex is witnessed
Speaker 1: to one of those indelible moments that shifts their understanding
Speaker 1: of their family. I think in child could be often
Speaker 1: remember those moments that shift our understanding of the world,
Speaker 1: that opened up a new layer. And for me, one
Speaker 1: of these moments was the house was built in such
Speaker 1: a way that there was a window in my parents
Speaker 1: bedroom that you could look out in their bedrooms in
Speaker 1: the second floor, and you could look at that window
Speaker 1: and you would see the whole landscape of the backyard.
Speaker 1: And there was a tire swing back in the yard
Speaker 1: hanging from this the old tree, and we would plan
Speaker 1: on it all the time. But there was this day
Speaker 1: when my brother flung himself through that tire swing and
Speaker 1: his body went limp because he was playing. I mean
Speaker 1: I was standing not far from him. I knew he
Speaker 1: was playing. That's what we were doing. He was just
Speaker 1: going to limp and play. But my mother came running
Speaker 1: from the house barefoot, her bathroom trailing behind, you know,
Speaker 1: the ties of her bathroom trailing behind her, just wailing,
Speaker 1: and my dad caught her. He caught her and then
Speaker 1: steadied her, and she kind of flung herself into his arms.
Speaker 1: And it made such an impression for so many reasons. One,
Speaker 1: I had really never seen my mother cry. My mother
Speaker 1: was always very composed, very controlled, very polished. And my
Speaker 1: father was the emotional one. I think now we would
Speaker 1: say that he was suffering from a pretty profound depression
Speaker 1: at the time, but he was the one who I
Speaker 1: was used to seeing pride. I had never seen her
Speaker 1: break apart that way. And of course there were things
Speaker 1: that I barely remembered but must have retained sort of
Speaker 1: an imprint on my memory of the fact that my
Speaker 1: brother had been very sick when we were growing up.
Speaker 1: He and I were born three months premature, and we
Speaker 1: were triplets, and my sister had died when we were
Speaker 1: several months old. And it was one of those things
Speaker 1: that exists in the shadow of your mind as a child,
Speaker 1: where sort of you know, but you don't know, but
Speaker 1: you know, but you don't know. But certainly no one
Speaker 1: ever ever ever spoke of it, nor did they speak
Speaker 1: of how sick my brother had been as a kid.
Speaker 1: He was in three commas before we were seven, And
Speaker 1: I do because I look back and think about it.
Speaker 1: There are all these moments where we would be sent
Speaker 1: off to relatives or someone would appear at the house
Speaker 1: to take care of us, and he would be off
Speaker 1: in the hospital. Again. They kept a bad pack for
Speaker 1: the hospital at all times, and there were just many
Speaker 1: moments when he was near death. But in that way
Speaker 1: that my family sort of approached anything difficult with always
Speaker 1: we would just never again speak avail. We would pretend
Speaker 1: that it never happened, so it would sort of all
Speaker 1: those incidents would kind of get It's not that they disappeared,
Speaker 1: but they sort of disappeared in the landscape of my memory,
Speaker 1: like they retained like this shadowy presence. And that moment
Speaker 1: when she came running, I think it's certainly looking back,
Speaker 1: the first time that I can recall realizing that they
Speaker 1: were grappling with grief. But on it was something that
Speaker 1: we never spoke about again. We never acknowledged, you know,
Speaker 1: what had just happened was weird, but you certainly couldn't
Speaker 1: say anything about it. But I think when I look
Speaker 1: back and I try to look for the traces of
Speaker 1: what made us right the way that I think often
Speaker 1: with memory are often telling a story about what made
Speaker 1: us what promis here. That's one of the places I
Speaker 1: see that trace of grief showing up. I see the
Speaker 1: residue of grief channel. Yeah, I'm so. I'm so interested
Speaker 1: in that liminal, shadowy place where the things that we
Speaker 1: know but can't allow ourselves to think live. And it's
Speaker 1: shortly after the moment where your mother comes running out
Speaker 1: of the house wailing that she actually tells you this
Speaker 1: one time about the third triplet, Jacqueline. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's the first time that you're given a name. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that really struck me is that
Speaker 1: you're right. I already knew you know that there was
Speaker 1: this strange chore feeling that someone was missing. And that
Speaker 1: speaks so much too, the ways that your family and
Speaker 1: so many families, in an attempt to just move on
Speaker 1: or have things be fine or better, will just push
Speaker 1: something into a corner or under the rug where it
Speaker 1: inevitably does not remain. I mean, eventually it does not remain,
Speaker 1: but that that moment really struck me that way, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think absolutely, it inevitably does not remain And I
Speaker 1: I think about that so often in teaching. I constantly
Speaker 1: tell my students to pay attention to what's emerging, to
Speaker 1: what's showing up, to what's poking through, to what's trying
Speaker 1: to materialize, trying to make it self known and bring
Speaker 1: itself into language. And I think we live in a
Speaker 1: society where that's also such a major aspect. You know,
Speaker 1: what is showing up that we don't talk about, what
Speaker 1: is showing up that we're trying to pretend isn't there,
Speaker 1: what wants to make itself known, And so much of
Speaker 1: life is negotiating what we're willing to acknowledge versus what
Speaker 1: lies beneath the surface. Yeah, I mean the tagline for
Speaker 1: this show is the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. Yes, well said, but there's another very
Speaker 1: different kind of massive secret also buried within the walls
Speaker 1: of the house. Alex's grandfather, their mother's father sexually molested
Speaker 1: both of them and their sister from the time they
Speaker 1: were three years old. You know, like so many families.
Speaker 1: Mine had a lot of hidden abuse in it. My
Speaker 1: earliest memory of my grandfather of using me, I think
Speaker 1: explace at age three. That's about what we can figure
Speaker 1: out from where I remember the objects in his house being.
Speaker 1: And it continued on until I was age eight, when
Speaker 1: my parents found out about it because my sister had something.
Speaker 1: She had money that they asked her work came from,
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, my grandpa gave it to me
Speaker 1: for sitting on his lap. And they started asking questions
Speaker 1: and realized that we were all being abused by him,
Speaker 1: All the assigned female births people in my family were
Speaker 1: being abused by him, public kids, but at every stage
Speaker 1: it was hidden, you know, the kids who were being abused.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about it with each other. My sister
Speaker 1: and I we shared a room, and we certainly we're
Speaker 1: in the room when the other one was being abused,
Speaker 1: and so we certainly knew about it, but we never
Speaker 1: spoke about it, at least not that I recall. I
Speaker 1: have pretty strong memories from that whole time period, and
Speaker 1: I don't recall us ever speaking of it. And when
Speaker 1: they found out about it, what they said was, you
Speaker 1: can never talk about this, And I think they believed
Speaker 1: that they were protecting us. I think they believed, you
Speaker 1: know what they what they tell me now is that
Speaker 1: they were told by a psychologist they consulted that maybe
Speaker 1: if they pretended that it had happened, it would go
Speaker 1: away for us. There's so much of that kind of
Speaker 1: well meaning but unbelievably poor, psychologically damaging advice that parents
Speaker 1: got from medical professionals at a certain time, and you know,
Speaker 1: in history that's not really that long ago. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: hear constantly how common that was. Um. I will say,
Speaker 1: the first five months of my book without in the world,
Speaker 1: I got at least three emails a day from people
Speaker 1: who have been abused. And I have never done a
Speaker 1: reading without having someone tell me their story afterwards. It's
Speaker 1: so common. It's just so incredibly common for queer people
Speaker 1: who had sometimes thought are targeted more, perhaps because they
Speaker 1: maybe perceived a difference of children or what have you.
Speaker 1: So it's just very very very common and very very
Speaker 1: common to have it be covered up. And I think
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that broke my heart
Speaker 1: most working on the book, but then also in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of its publication, was just how alone everyone feels
Speaker 1: with their secret, and yet how incredibly not alone everyone is,
Speaker 1: and that it's something that I deeply believe if we
Speaker 1: spoke about it more, the prevalence might decrease, right. I
Speaker 1: thinkfully believe that the only way to stop this inciety
Speaker 1: is to actually start talking about it. And so the
Speaker 1: secrecy hurts the people who've been through it, but also
Speaker 1: sort of keeps it going. That's been one of the
Speaker 1: big things I hold heavily in my heart. Alex is
Speaker 1: an adult attending a big family party when they overhear
Speaker 1: their father saying regarding their grandfather's abuse. Oh, Alex is
Speaker 1: the only one who remembers that. It's essentially a kind
Speaker 1: of gas lighting. Like if they're the only one who
Speaker 1: remembers it, then did it really happen? When there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that it happened. In fact, Alex has a
Speaker 1: memory of their grandfather saying to them on Halloween, I'm
Speaker 1: a witch and someday I'm gonna get you. There's so
Speaker 1: much in your story about the negation of the abuse
Speaker 1: and what it does to the memory. Part of why
Speaker 1: that scene with my father at the party was so
Speaker 1: striking was that no one had previously denied that the
Speaker 1: abuse happened, and it was a shock to hear him
Speaker 1: denying him. What was the timeline on that? How old
Speaker 1: were you when when I was in my twenties when
Speaker 1: that happened. So it went from silence and we're not
Speaker 1: going to talk about this, and grandfather is still going
Speaker 1: to be in our lives and we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of pave it over two then a kind of hunting. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, my family didn't deny that it happened. They
Speaker 1: just denied that it should hurt that it happened. They
Speaker 1: just denied that it should have any effect. Or it
Speaker 1: was very much if this bothers you, that is your problem,
Speaker 1: your fault. And so my father saying that the party
Speaker 1: was such an escalation of the denial where it was like, wait,
Speaker 1: now yours and either to even happened, how because he
Speaker 1: had abused my sisters as well as myself and also
Speaker 1: another cousin or I didn't know that at the time,
Speaker 1: there was enough of a chorus of voices that none
Speaker 1: of us had to doubt ourselves that it happened. And
Speaker 1: when I finally did confront him, my grandfather, when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, he immediately acknowledged that he had abused me,
Speaker 1: he just denied that it was a problem. Well, any
Speaker 1: any quite a matter of factly says it happened to
Speaker 1: me too. Yes, he did say that, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that was my family style was more to say, yes,
Speaker 1: it happened, but we don't need to talk about it,
Speaker 1: because it shouldn't affect you. If it affects you, It's
Speaker 1: essentially like this idea that to be affected by the
Speaker 1: past is a kind of weakness, that one should just
Speaker 1: be able to turn away from it and not be affected.
Speaker 1: I think the belief that if we don't think about
Speaker 1: the past, it will research itself, it will, it will
Speaker 1: resurf it um is one that is important to me.
Speaker 1: It's one that I grew up in trans and not
Speaker 1: transplan binary and a message constantly given to me by
Speaker 1: society is, oh my god, that's so new. How could
Speaker 1: you how could you demand to be recognized that way?
Speaker 1: How could you ask to be seen that way? That's
Speaker 1: so incredibly new? And I am so and who finds
Speaker 1: great solace in looking at history and being able to
Speaker 1: say super not new? Isn't actually way more true and
Speaker 1: way more real to have people have lived throughout time
Speaker 1: than any pretense of a very strict binary and similarly,
Speaker 1: the idea that if we turn away from whatever happened
Speaker 1: in the past just shows up again. I think all
Speaker 1: of my work is like this argument for complexity and
Speaker 1: acknowledging complexity and living in complexity, and also sort of
Speaker 1: continuity across time, that there really isn't a way to
Speaker 1: just put a firm break on the past and never
Speaker 1: talk about it. That our lives are continual stories. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment with more family secrets. When
Speaker 1: Alex is a law student studying at Harvard, during a
Speaker 1: summer internship at a law firm, they first come across
Speaker 1: the case of a man named Ricky Langley, a murderer
Speaker 1: and pedophile who is facing the death penalty for killing
Speaker 1: a six year old boy named Jeremy Gilroy m So
Speaker 1: Alex never works on Ricky's case, They've become consumed by
Speaker 1: it because when they watched the video and read the reports,
Speaker 1: they are shocked to realize that they, who are firmly
Speaker 1: opposed to capital punishment, want Ricky dead. What this about?
Speaker 1: Alex's journey to understand Rickie's history is part of the
Speaker 1: braid I mentioned earlier. Buried in Ricky's history are questions
Speaker 1: and answers to Alex's own. So was your decision to
Speaker 1: go to law school born at your mother's feet when
Speaker 1: you were twelve years old, sitting and watching her in
Speaker 1: law school? I wrote my application essay for herr Boss
Speaker 1: thing I didn't want to be a lawyer, and kudos
Speaker 1: to them for letting me in despite that fact, because
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was understand. I wrote it
Speaker 1: about wanting to understand why the definitalty was constitutional because
Speaker 1: it felt to me, you know, I'd read everything that
Speaker 1: I could at that age, and without more training, I
Speaker 1: had read what I could find, and to me, it
Speaker 1: seemed patently unconstitutional. And I was also didn't quite understand
Speaker 1: why sex offender registration was constitutional. It seems like essentially
Speaker 1: a second punishment, given that shaming as one of the
Speaker 1: oldest punishments, and that might appear to be sort of
Speaker 1: an odd thing for me to care about, given that
Speaker 1: I was abused, and one would think perhaps that I
Speaker 1: would just of course be in favor of sex offender
Speaker 1: registration and whatnot. But I think I was pretty acutely
Speaker 1: aware that so much of sexual abuse happens within families,
Speaker 1: and that offender red stories tend to leave out family
Speaker 1: driven abece, so it's more like an illusion of safety
Speaker 1: than an actual public mechanism for safety. And I was
Speaker 1: really curious why that was okay, why that was as okay?
Speaker 1: And so I went to law school for those reasons,
Speaker 1: but promptly also started taking writing classes at night, so
Speaker 1: I would go to law school during the day, and
Speaker 1: I was I was still closeted then as gay. So
Speaker 1: I've go to law school during the day, and one
Speaker 1: evening a week I would go to fiction classes, and
Speaker 1: one evening a week I would go to a queer
Speaker 1: meet up that was happening in Boston at the time.
Speaker 1: And both of those other lives were totally secret, no
Speaker 1: when I knew at law school knew about them. What
Speaker 1: was that like during that time? I mean, what did
Speaker 1: that feel like? That you were essentially dividing your life
Speaker 1: into pieces on a pie chart and and keeping secrets.
Speaker 1: That was the only way I knew, all right, I
Speaker 1: had grown up in secrets. I'd kept secrets. I've known
Speaker 1: I was trans since I was eight. You have a
Speaker 1: very cute memory of when I realized that, and I
Speaker 1: kept that secret hard back in law school. It actually
Speaker 1: felt very natural because it was what I was used
Speaker 1: to ill ta get a step. Further, I was really
Speaker 1: politically liberal, wasn't I am really politically liberal? And yet
Speaker 1: my first year I joined all the conservative organizations because
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't understand any of this, and
Speaker 1: so let me try to learn. So I was so closeted.
Speaker 1: I was just very, very very closet. I had this
Speaker 1: daytime life that was had nothing to do with who
Speaker 1: I really was, and then I would have this evening
Speaker 1: life that was where my heart laved and where I
Speaker 1: was trying on the idea of living with myself. So
Speaker 1: at what point when you're in law school do you
Speaker 1: come across the case of Ricky Langley. My first summer
Speaker 1: of law school, I took a internship helping to defend
Speaker 1: men accused of murder, mostly meant all the clients from them,
Speaker 1: and I came across the case on the third day
Speaker 1: of that internship when I was shown his confession with
Speaker 1: you tap in the interview for the job for the internship,
Speaker 1: they had asked me, well could you help defendive head
Speaker 1: of five? And I remember I was sitting in my
Speaker 1: law school dorm room, and you know that quality of
Speaker 1: where the air changes when it's one of those moments
Speaker 1: in your life where things collide and the quality of
Speaker 1: the air shifted. And I remember saying, yes, I can,
Speaker 1: and I truly believed, you know, And I was pretty
Speaker 1: intense person in my twenties, and I would say I
Speaker 1: truly believed that if I really opposed the death penalty,
Speaker 1: I had to be able to do this, that this
Speaker 1: was the ultimate test because of my past. It would
Speaker 1: it would sort of prove that I was so over
Speaker 1: my past that I could remain committed to my ideals.
Speaker 1: And so that was the first inkling. But then I
Speaker 1: got to the internship and they showed us his confession
Speaker 1: video tape, and I watched the video and he described
Speaker 1: doing something to children that my grandfather had done to me,
Speaker 1: like a very specific thing, and my body just totally
Speaker 1: launched me back into the past. That was kind of
Speaker 1: the moment where I realized that what I had believed
Speaker 1: about how we could just turn away from the past,
Speaker 1: how we could just deny it, was in fact not
Speaker 1: going to be true, and that I was going to
Speaker 1: have to find a different way through this story. My
Speaker 1: body just totally launched me back into the past. Anyone
Speaker 1: who has experienced trauma knows this feeling, expressed so beautifully
Speaker 1: by a previous guest on this podcast, Dr Bessel vander Kolk,
Speaker 1: author of the seminal book The Body Keeps the Score.
Speaker 1: Trauma lives in the body, and we now use the
Speaker 1: word trigger when we're triggered by something that stirs up
Speaker 1: that trauma. It's like a game of shoots and ladders
Speaker 1: were taken right back there. So you become deeply involved
Speaker 1: in Ricky's story and in the story of Jeremy Gilroy,
Speaker 1: the six year old boy that he that he killed.
Speaker 1: Was that clear to you that the story has become
Speaker 1: so intricately braided together psychologically, your story and Ricky's story
Speaker 1: and Jeremy's story and the other people who are connected
Speaker 1: to them. You know, there are some really breathtaking moments
Speaker 1: where it all feels like it's kind of in a
Speaker 1: concert somehow, that it's the way that you are coming
Speaker 1: to understand everything that you need to know. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate your word to us there, because he said in concert,
Speaker 1: and I know you mean like together, but at the
Speaker 1: same time that's sort of a musical metaphor, No, I
Speaker 1: actually meant. I meant it as a musical metaphor. Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 1: In terms of when I sort of got involved in
Speaker 1: his case, I think it's really important to note that
Speaker 1: I did not work on his case at all and
Speaker 1: was not part of it at all while I was
Speaker 1: doing the internship. Had I been involved in it, I
Speaker 1: never could have written the book. So what happened was
Speaker 1: that I was showing that video, not because I was
Speaker 1: going to be working on his case. The second trial
Speaker 1: had concluded by that point, and so I didn't have
Speaker 1: any interaction with his case for the rest of that
Speaker 1: summer until meeting him at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: which is a moment that's at the end of the book.
Speaker 1: And this very curious thing happened in those years where
Speaker 1: I actually couldn't remember the King needs met. For many years,
Speaker 1: I could not remember it. In those years. It was
Speaker 1: so intense that if I looked up the case online,
Speaker 1: I could read all about it and I would walk away,
Speaker 1: or I would put a print out or a paper down,
Speaker 1: and I would not be able just a moment later
Speaker 1: to tell you what the murderer's name was. I knew
Speaker 1: everything else about the case. All the details are in
Speaker 1: my mind, but I couldn't remember his name. A big
Speaker 1: part of why Alex can't remember Rickie's name is like
Speaker 1: that staticky reaction to trauma. As they read through eight
Speaker 1: thousand pages of court records, they're haunted by the gruesome
Speaker 1: details as a case, a six year old boy murdered
Speaker 1: and stuck in a closet, wrapped in a blue blanket,
Speaker 1: where he remained for days, a seaman stain on his shirt,
Speaker 1: a single pubic hair on his lip, a sock stuffed
Speaker 1: into his mouth, a videotaped confession. Over the course of
Speaker 1: the years, Alex studies Ricky's history, moving back and forth
Speaker 1: in time in order to understand, if not pinpoint where
Speaker 1: the story begins, both Zair's and Ricky Langley's. It's understanding
Speaker 1: thereafter not forgiveness. There is no place for the simple
Speaker 1: platitude of forgiveness. As they write from the transcripts and
Speaker 1: by visiting the places in Louisiana where events in the
Speaker 1: man's life took place, I have imagined his mother, his sisters,
Speaker 1: the little boy's mother, all the characters from the past,
Speaker 1: and I have driven the long, lonely road from New
Speaker 1: Orleans to the Louisiana State Penitentiary called Angola. I have
Speaker 1: sat across from this man, the murderer, in a visiting booth,
Speaker 1: and have looked into the same eyes that are on
Speaker 1: this tape. This tape brought me to re examine everything
Speaker 1: I believed, not only about the law, but my family
Speaker 1: and my past. In both your family story and your
Speaker 1: story and then Ricky Langley's story, there is this question
Speaker 1: of how far do we have to trace back? Where
Speaker 1: do we begin telling a story if we're really going
Speaker 1: to be telling it from its beginnings, if that's even possible.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm really interested in is how
Speaker 1: much where you start a story shapes what it's meaning is.
Speaker 1: And that comes up in my family right like I
Speaker 1: think you you interpret my family's actions and they're turning
Speaker 1: away from the abuse differently. If I begin the story
Speaker 1: shortly before the abuse, then sometimes it might be possible
Speaker 1: to judge my parents quite harshly for that. But if
Speaker 1: you tell a larger story about why they would feel
Speaker 1: so compelled to turn away from the past, and you
Speaker 1: start understanding that for them it was and st ordinary
Speaker 1: and out of grief and fear, among my brother's illnesses
Speaker 1: and the unknown nature of the future and the loss
Speaker 1: of my sister. I think it's possible to have more
Speaker 1: empathy for why it would be so important to them
Speaker 1: to rewrite the story of the past and pretend the
Speaker 1: past hadn't the harms of the past and the hearts
Speaker 1: that past hadn't happened. And similarly in the Langley case,
Speaker 1: I think we understand mack you Langley differently depending on
Speaker 1: where we start his story, and that that power of
Speaker 1: the storyteller to shape the story and what goes in
Speaker 1: and what gets left out is also of course a
Speaker 1: big thing in the the law. There's so much that ultimately
Speaker 1: is threaded through um your story that has to do
Speaker 1: with the question of forgiveness, the question of forgiveness in
Speaker 1: your family, with your parents, you with your grandfather, the
Speaker 1: question of this sort of extraordinary forgiveness that happens in
Speaker 1: in Ricky Langley's case, where Jeremy's mother, the mother of
Speaker 1: the boy that he murdered, is the one who appeals
Speaker 1: to the court to spare him the death penalty. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about what you learned about
Speaker 1: that there can be actions that may seem like on
Speaker 1: the surface that they would connote forgiveness, but that in
Speaker 1: fact don't require forgiveness. Yeah, I think forgiveness it's such
Speaker 1: a Oh, it's such a tricky idea. I really justlike
Speaker 1: the way to use it culturally. I think we use
Speaker 1: it to simplify. I think we use it to flatten.
Speaker 1: I think we often use it to a race. We
Speaker 1: often use it to shift the burden to the person
Speaker 1: who has been harmed and to say, oh, well, that
Speaker 1: person should just forgive. And I think it's really important
Speaker 1: that we know that Laurel I did not forgive, that
Speaker 1: that that her action she feels is not a matter
Speaker 1: or a forgiveness, that her action really is about not
Speaker 1: wanting him to die, but that that is not the
Speaker 1: same thing. And that is a more complicated position than
Speaker 1: we have cultural language for. And yet I personally believe
Speaker 1: probably a more honest position than we have cultural language for,
Speaker 1: and one that allows for recognition of the humanity of
Speaker 1: the person who did the harm without erasing the harm
Speaker 1: done to the person who was hurting. And we are
Speaker 1: not very good at duality in this society, at holding dualities,
Speaker 1: and that is one that I think is really important.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we as a society learn a better relationship.
Speaker 1: Two the harms of the past, one that makes more
Speaker 1: space for reckoning and more space for accountability and more
Speaker 1: space for complexity, and stops rushing to a simplified idea.
Speaker 1: Forgiveness that could have quite a lot of power, and
Speaker 1: could be quite beautiful, and could make space for everyone's
Speaker 1: humanity and reconciliation and whatnot, is instead now used as
Speaker 1: a weapon or a band aid. And that is kind
Speaker 1: of why I am so resistant to engaging with it.
Speaker 1: Let's close with a few more words from Alex. Here
Speaker 1: they stand at the cemetery where their grandparents are buried.
Speaker 1: My grandmother is buried next to a secret. My grandfather died,
Speaker 1: but the fact of who he was. I can't say
Speaker 1: that I forgive them, only that forgiveness is too simple
Speaker 1: a word. They helped make me. They did such harm.
Speaker 1: I have to go now. My voice sounds strange, tremulous
Speaker 1: in the quiet. I have always found the dead in
Speaker 1: the stories they leave behind, not in the stone cold
Speaker 1: fact of the grave. But I never got to say
Speaker 1: goodbye all my grandparents were alive, because every goodbye I
Speaker 1: ever said it was really just words that stood in
Speaker 1: place of all I couldn't say. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: finished telling the story there Now they know I am
Speaker 1: telling this story. I mean those words to be my
Speaker 1: last to them. But where there was silence, there will
Speaker 1: be speech that where there were secrets, I will make
Speaker 1: way for the complicated truth. Family Secret is a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Media. Dylan Fagin and Bethman Macaluso are
Speaker 1: the executive producers. Andrew Howard is our audio editor. If
Speaker 1: you have a secret you'd like to share, leave us
Speaker 1: a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming
Speaker 1: bonus episode. Our number is one Secret zero. That's secret
Speaker 1: and then the number zero. You can also find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Danny Writer, Facebook at facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at Fami Secret Spot.
Speaker 1: And if you want to know about my family Secret
Speaker 1: that inspired this podcast, check out my New York Times
Speaker 1: best selling memoir Inheritance. For more podcast asked for my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.