WEBVTT - Mermaid Manor 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:08.520 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. No 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:11.120 one live like family. We lie to each other all 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.760 the time. We'd love to keep each other at a distance, 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.079 to give ourselves some elbow room and the claustrophobic nuclear unit, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.480 to spare each other's steelers, to cut short of conversation 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.800 or to begin one, to ensure that the artichoke heart 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:27.720 softness of our insights is sealed safely off forever. As 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:29.880 I write this, my two toddlers are in the next room, 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:33.640 cheerfully bolting out some interminable preschool song and throwing stuffed 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.240 animals at each other. They're too young to ask me 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:38.920 about my missing father or my never spoken of mother, 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:41.559 or why I am the way I am. They're too 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.200 young to understand how much they don't know. Then again, 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:47.680 I haven't started lying to them yet. This is the 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:49.960 story of digging out the biggest lie I was ever told. 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:56.640 That's Liz Shire, book editor, product developer, an author of 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:01.080 the new memoir Never Simple. The graph to Lizz's book 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.560 from the poet Adrian Rich goes like this. When we 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.639 discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer, 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.560 it forces us to re examine the universe to question 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:16.800 the whole instinct and concept of trust for a while. 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.560 We are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge in 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.080 a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.640 of rain, in a world before kinship or naming or 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:33.840 tenderness exists. We are brought close to formlessness. This is 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.600 a story of lies, trust, and one woman's journey to 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.399 be brought back from that bleak, jutting ledge and make 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:55.600 herself whole. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.640 the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.480 keep from others, and this good we keep from ourselves. 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.520 I was born in New Yorkville, which is the very 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.640 far east neighborhood in New York City. It is basically 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.200 falling off into the East River. And when you here 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:20.480 grew up in New York City, I think a lot 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.160 of people think gossip Girl, and that really could not 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.119 have been further from the truth of my New York City. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.800 In the eighties and nineties, we were all very middle 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.800 class um, a kind of Manhattan that doesn't really so 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.040 much exist anymore. I lived with my mother. We lived 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:38.520 in a one bedroom apartment on eighty one Street, and 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.840 it was a very typical setup for the time, where 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.520 I lived in the bedroom and she had created out 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:48.760 of the hall closet a little nook for herself where 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.440 she had put a twin bed, and we lived there together. 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.160 And I did not know at the time that it 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.239 was unusual for a mother and daughter to share a 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.720 home with nobody else there. It wasn't really true of 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:00.960 other people. I know once I got out to school, 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.080 but as a small child, I didn't know any of 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.320 that yet. And so there we worked, just the two 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:09.280 of us together. Describe your mother for me. You know 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.559 your mother during your childhood. My mother was an incredibly 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.760 charming woman. She was brilliant. She had been an attorney 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.200 when very few women were attorneys. She was one of 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:21.640 the very few women in her law school class in 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.360 the early sixties. She went to n y U, and 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.920 her professors would have ladies Night the first Monday of 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:29.720 every month, and that was the one day that they 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.600 would call on the women in their classes. And this 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.240 was something I knew about her, even though she no 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.400 longer worked as a lawyer, she was retired, and because 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:40.800 I was so young, I didn't then know that people 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.800 don't generally retire in their late thirties. I didn't know 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:47.040 that there was something wrong with that statement. But she 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.520 could be enormously charming. She was a lot of fun. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.920 She told great stories with you know, the arms pinwheeling 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.000 to to gesture and illustrate what she was talking about. 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.680 She was a quite a smoker. She smoked between four 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.280 and six packs a day, depending on how stressed how 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.440 she was that particular week. Um. And so she had 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.080 this sort of deep throaty voice, in this deep chuffle 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:14.000 that she would illustrate her stories with. And she treated 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.839 everything else in our lives as sort of incidental to 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:18.760 the fact that we were going to have time together. 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.360 So she would just take me out of school on 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:23.560 a moment's notice it was a good sledding day in 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.080 the park, or if there was something good at the 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.800 map that she wanted to see when it wasn't too crowded. Um. 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:30.760 And she just was not interested in anything that would 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.719 get in her way. No, it doesn't sound like she 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:38.919 was very interested in rules. No, not particularly. And I 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.640 thought everything in our lives was normal until I got 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.680 to school and I started realizing that things and other 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.800 kids lives weren't quite the same. My mother did not 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.800 have a hold on her anger, and she had a 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.480 lot of anger. There was no logical chain between an 0:04:56.480 --> 0:04:59.599 occurrence and her reaction to the occurrence. So whether I 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.760 did some the really terrible and misbehaved, or whether I 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.000 left a water glass in the wrong place, you know, 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.680 sort of one time out of every ten, the rage 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.120 would come up, and it was like you know the 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.719 movie The Terminator, It was like talking to her there 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:13.640 with a red light would come on behind the eyes 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.680 and the screaming would begin, and I would either lock 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:19.960 myself in the bathroom or in the closet where just 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.600 sort of try to stay out of her reach. And 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.920 you could see, if you were dumb enough to get 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.200 close enough to see that there was just nobody driving 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.520 the bus there, that she was completely out of control. 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:35.360 And when the adrenaline wore off, then the self excoriation 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.200 would come in. Then she would say to the ground, 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:40.600 she would weep, what have I done to you? Why 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:42.640 do I treat you like this? I'm so terrible and 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:44.760 such a terrible mother. Um, And I would just try 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.960 to comfort her, because returning to that kind of normal 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.320 before the rage was the best we could do. What 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.840 did she actually look like when she would fly into 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:58.160 one of these rages. So my mother was a small 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:00.400 woman when she got pregnant with me. She didn't weigh 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:02.560 an hundred pounds, and she had a sort of perfect 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.400 blonde ploff if you can think of the seventies hair 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.400 hairstyle of the with a flip in the front um. 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.320 And when she got really angry, you know, her face 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.400 would turn red, the hair would flof up um and 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:19.080 the spit would start flying. She would she would lose 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.479 the ability to control her mouth or her body, and 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.440 she became huge to me in my eyes, Like you know, 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.039 was a very small child, and although she was not 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:33.680 a large person, she became like a giant. What did 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:38.599 you know about your father at that stage in your life? 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.919 What was the story about your father and where he was? 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:44.840 So I didn't know much when I was very young. 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:46.919 I didn't really have a firm grasp on the idea 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:48.800 that there was such a thing as a father. I 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:50.599 understood that there were men, we knew men, but I 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.480 didn't understand that there was, you know, at least a 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:58.440 man genetically related to each child. When I was very young, 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:00.800 she told me a story about my father that went 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.840 like this. My father was her second husband. She had 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:07.720 married someone read out of college. They had been married 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.040 for some time and divorced amicably, and because it was 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.080 a second marriage, they had a very small ceremony. She 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.160 had borrowed a pant suit from a friend, which she 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.520 returned after they were done. They were only married for 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.600 six months or so. He didn't have a living family, 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.000 that didn't have a lot of friends. And one night 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.480 he was driving and he got to a stop sign 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.520 and he stopped, and the driver behind him didn't, and 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.760 he died instantly. And she was in such a storm 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:41.120 of grief that she burned all his belongings, burned all 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.280 the pictures of him, burned all the evidence that he 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.600 had ever been there. And at the time, I believe 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.360 this because you believe what your parents tell you. It 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.440 wasn't until I was a little older that I started 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.600 to realize that that story was extremely convenient. It didn't 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.960 actually make any sense at all. It didn't fit together, 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.080 it didn't fit with our lives. You know, people and 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.960 just disappear off the planet, unable to be found, and 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.960 that it just wasn't incredible that nobody who had known 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:10.360 him was still alive or reachable, And so I thought, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.160 if she is lying about his death, it must be 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.400 that he's still alive. I couldn't imagine a reason why 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.200 he would have died one way, and she would tell 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.040 me a different way. So I assume that he was 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:23.640 somewhere still around. And so, you know, we would walk 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:25.360 around New York and I would just sort of look 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.280 at all the men who were, you know, roughly the 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:32.120 right age and blonde and might potentially look enough like us, 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.960 and thinking, is that you are you the one? I 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.320 thought that there must be some really romantic, adventurous story 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:40.200 as to why he was still alive, but nobody would 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.040 let me talk to him. Write that he was a 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:46.800 spy or you know, wrongfully imprisoned, or an astronaut abandoned 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:49.440 on a distant planet or something um. And then as 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:51.240 I got into middle school in high school and got 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.880 to be disaffected, I thought, maybe he's just married. But 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:57.400 I knew that I was being told something that was 0:08:57.480 --> 0:09:01.880 evidently untrue. I just didn't figure out why. Liz goes 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.640 to middle school at Hunter, an excellent, highly competitive public 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.120 school in Manhattan, and during this time, her mother's rage 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:13.440 escalates she's violent towards Liz, and Liz's sense that things 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.640 just don't add up about her father is really sinking in. 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:21.360 Liz grows more and more depressed. Her mother's volatility and 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.320 her father's elusiveness sit at the center of her middle 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.280 school years. I was kind of a weird kid that 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.400 was very socially awkward. I was depressed. I don't think 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.840 we knew at the time what depression looked like in 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.640 teenagers or young teenagers. Now, I think it would have 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:42.160 been diagnosed much earlier and probably treated. But I was super, 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.880 super unpopular. You know, there were bullies in my school 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.640 that made my life pretty hard, and I knew that 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.800 in a way, they were right that there was something 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:53.720 wrong with me. There was something wrong with my house. 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:55.920 And you know, every twelve or thirteen year old kid 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.720 thinks that, but in my case it was really true. 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.920 We were not living a normal life, um and I 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:04.440 took that very much to heart and thought it was 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:08.240 something integral to me. The fact that my father was 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:10.319 not there just really meant that there was no one 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.720 there to see us. We lived this life like a 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.240 panic room in the middle of this city of eight 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.160 and a half billion people. But there were no eyes 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:20.400 on us. No one knew what was happening in the apartment, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.480 door closed, and my mother was enormously protective. I was 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.160 not allowed to go to friends houses for the most part, 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.000 I was largely not allowed to leave the apartment without 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.800 her eyes on me or the eyes of friends parents 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.920 who she trusted, and so there was just no one, 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:38.040 no one to see what was happening. And so I 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.520 despaired because to me, there was something irretrievably wrong with 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:43.079 our lives, and there was no reason to think it 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.720 could ever get better. A lot of this came to 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.480 a head when I was about fifteen and I had, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.480 unbeknownst to my mother, started dating an older boy at 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.000 my high school. And he was a guitar player and 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.600 a baseball player, and you know, all those things that 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.400 are very very attractive to fifteen year old girls. And 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:04.280 my mother at that time, I don't remember what it was. 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:06.160 I think maybe she was taking a class. I knew 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.040 she was out one afternoon week And so, you know, 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:10.600 when you grew up in New York City, there's not 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.160 a lot of places to sneak away and make out 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.240 right because there's no basements, So there's no reddy couches 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.680 and there's no river banks, so there's no words, just 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:21.760 sort of sneak away. You really have to work at 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.880 it to find somewhere private. So I sneaked him into 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:27.280 my apartment and my mother came home early and caught us, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:33.680 and she went ballistic and ended up sending me to 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.040 my godparents house in New Jersey, where I stayed for 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.959 a couple of months until she calmed down. And that 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.839 was really this kind of oasis of time living with them, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:45.800 when I started to realize that other people do not 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:50.120 live on this sort of precipice of constant anger and 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:55.720 rage and sadness. Many people lived with an even kielan nows. 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:57.840 Many people never screamed at each other at all, which 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.480 was a totally novel concept. And even though I was 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.800 not living in my mother's house at the time, she 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:07.960 decided that I had to be tracked uh And so 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.120 she went to the principle of my teachers and she 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:12.320 had them all sit down together with the guidance counselor, 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:16.079 and she presented them with a plan for her unmarriageable daughter, 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:18.920 in which she was going to hire a Barnard student 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:20.840 to follow me in the streets. Should I ever come home, 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:22.840 I would not have access to the phone, of course, 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.679 the only plandlines at the time, and every time I 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:27.240 went to a class, I was going to have to 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:29.120 sign in, and we didn't do that at my school. 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.240 She required them to put together this whole system of 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.800 clipboards and signatures, and half the time they of course 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:38.319 forgot that that was supposed to happen at all. This 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.079 really moving thing happened on one day where I was 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:44.079 sitting in the hallway in a free period and my 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.120 most terrifying teacher came up to me, and I thought, 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.600 what have I done wrong? And she said so about 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:52.760 this signing in business? And I said yes, And she 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:56.719 said I want you to know that none of us 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.600 have seen you do anything wrong, and whatever happens, none 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:04.319 plus will. And that really blew me over because at 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.800 that moment I understood that when they sat in that 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.360 room Princilo in the guidance counselor, they weren't nodding along 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.280 going oh, yes, totally, you know, terrible out of control teenager. 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:17.679 What can we do to rein her back in? They 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:21.760 were thinking, this mother is crazy. And it was the 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.720 first time that I understood that people outside of our lives, 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.959 we're seeing that her behavior was completely out of the 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:33.079 realm of reason, and that her reactions could only kindly 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:37.600 be classified as only overreactions, and that someone actually saw 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.680 what was going on. So that was a really seminal 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:46.920 moment during those years. These seminal moments are so important 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:52.720 in our lives, the ones during which we're seen, recognized, witnessed. Thankfully, 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.520 now some eyes are on Liz and her mother, and 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.400 she no longer feels like the two of them are 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:02.240 entirely shrouded, their troubles invisible. Their dynamic has been so 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.200 deeply toxic, so much so that when her mother really 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.200 gets angry, she threatens Liz by telling her she's going 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.920 to put her beloved dog to sleep. But now, after 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.560 this encounter with her teachers at school, a bit of 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.440 life begins to dawn. Her teachers aren't out to get her, No, 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:23.560 they're actively protecting her. The years passed and Liz takes 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.280 off for college. She's still in touch with her mom, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.320 but she's trying to keep her distance. Then she's home 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.760 from school on vacation when the damn breaks yet again, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.080 this time with a number of surprising declarations, bombshells really 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:41.440 from her mother. I was home for fall break and 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:42.960 I was sort of sprawled on the couch in the 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:46.280 living room reading something, and she came in, you know, 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.320 wearing one of her crazy movemos. She by that time 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.920 rarely left the apartment and often rarely left her bedroom. 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:55.920 She was severely a grophobic. So she came and started 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.360 sidling with the door and absolutely very nervous, which is 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:03.120 definitely not hermilius. I mean, something was up. And she said, so, 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:05.120 you said you're going to try to get a learner's 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:09.120 permit while you're home from college. And if I'd gone 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:10.880 to college and found out the people outside New York 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:12.760 City drive and that was sonning to me. So I 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.440 was going to go do this thing. And I said, yeah, 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:17.720 that's that's right. And she said you're not going to 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:22.120 be able to do that and I said, okay, why 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.400 and she said, well, you don't have a birth certificate 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:26.040 and I said, oh, I can just get a copy. 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:28.240 And she said, no, no no, no, not, you don't have 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:30.920 a copy of your birth certificate. I never filed a 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.200 birth certificate for you. There's no record of your birth 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:38.000 at all. And I said, okay, why, and she then 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.600 came out with this life changing line, I was married 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.080 when you were born, but not to your father. And 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.840 it turns out all of this that I discovered over 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:52.520 that next twenty minutes or so, that the first part 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:54.760 of the story she told me was true. She was 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.880 married to this, by all accounts, very lovely man after college. 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.560 They were married for it or ten years, divorced and 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.320 went their separate ways. What I did not know was 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.360 that she had married a second man, a man named Meryl, 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.400 sometime after that, and in the car on the way 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.080 back from their wedding ceremony, he pulled the car over 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:15.440 to the side of the road and popped the hood 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.160 because the voices from the engine were talking to him 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.200 and he needed to answer them. So there were clearly 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:23.400 there was there was a lot going on with this man, 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:25.680 not the least of which was that he was beating 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:29.840 the crap out of my mother, and she ultimately left him. 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.000 She uh, you know, she would call the police, and 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.400 and it was the seventies, out of big domestic abuse 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.040 was even a term, and they would come and say, 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.680 you know, this is between a man and his wife, 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.800 and then they would leave again. And so she finally 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.280 left him up and she would call, she would refuse 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:46.640 to talk to him, and eventually he stopped calling. But 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.240 really the key point here is that they never divorced, 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:52.720 and so until he died when I was a junior, 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.880 a senior in high school, my mother was married to 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.920 a man I had never heard of. And looking back, 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.800 even at all of the kind of weird and crazy 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.359 things that happened, I think that's what strikes me as 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.880 the strangest. That she and I were living in this 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:13.320 like incredibly codependent, tiny, claustrophobic towsome and there was this 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:18.959 major thing about her that I didn't know. Twenty minutes, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.280 twenty minutes and a lifetime the information is on rushing 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.480 a torrent. Lizz's mom tells her the truth for the 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.119 first time, the truth of her father. He was this 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.600 beautiful man ten years younger than she was. He picked 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:35.680 her up in Central Park by asking for a piece 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.760 of her New York Times, a classic nineteen seventies pick 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.439 up if there ever was one. They embarked on a 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.680 love affair that lasted six months, maybe a year. They 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.840 were both fairly depressed. One day, she realized she hadn't 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.080 heard from him in a little while, so she called 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.679 his apartment and his ex wife picked up the phone. 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.760 The week before, he had jumped from the roof of 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.359 his building and fallen sixteen stories to the concrete below, 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:05.240 where died. And so my mother went into an even 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:10.399 greater depression. And after some months she stirred herself to 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:12.720 have a doctor so as that she was not feeling well, 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.160 and she was seeing the sort of daughtering old character 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.120 of the doctor. And he ransom blood tests and said, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:21.960 you have a tomer on your patuitary glance, and you 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.760 are dying. And so she and her grief kicked herself 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:26.680 up and gets on the plane and flies to California, 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.520 where her brother is living, who had married a woman 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.679 with the four young children who they were raising together. 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:35.920 And my aunt took one look at her when she 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:37.920 got off the plan and said, honey, you're not dying. 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.080 You are pregnant. And by that time she was almost 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:44.919 five months long, and there was nothing to do about it. 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.719 And her idea was that she would put me up 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:49.840 for adoption when I was born. She had never intended 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:51.960 to have children. She was alone. What it was not 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.360 not something she had intended to take on, and when 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.720 I was born, apparently I didn't cry, and she felt, well, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:01.800 even maybe it's quiet, I could just slit see along 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:05.600 this last And on day twelve she thought, maybe this 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:07.359 kid is mute. And she poked me with a diaper 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.360 band and it turned out of his and she decided 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:12.919 to keep me, and you know, being my mother, she 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.720 didn't name me for the first six months because there 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:17.639 was no need to distinguish me from anybody else. There 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:19.879 are only two of us in the apartments. That the 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:25.360 baby was enough, and so we went done, And so 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:29.119 they went on. Liz graduates from college and begins working 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.199 and publishing. She's living in New York City in a 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.920 relationship with a woman. She's making her way, but there's 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.879 always the specter of her mother, the possibility of a 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.480 phone call that will up end her hard one equilibrium. 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.040 Once Liz is at her job when she receives a 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.960 call from her mother and she's using what Liz describes 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:52.440 as her tranquilizer voice. Her mom tells Liz that she's 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.679 missing her own mother, who has been dead for forty years, 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.840 and that she has a brilliant idea she knows Liz 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.920 doesn't want to have children, her health. But maybe Liz 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:05.240 could give birth to a stillborn baby, Yes, stay with it, 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:09.120 a stillborn baby who could then be buried with her 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:11.879 long dead mother so that she wouldn't be lonely in 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:17.040 the cemetery. Imagine being on the receiving end of that 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.359 phone call, sitting in an office surrounded by coworkers, colleagues. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:24.679 Liz has been trying to understand her mother all her life. 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.680 Now she has to consider is her mother mentally ill, 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:37.000 heavily medicated, eccentric, dangerous, hurting all of the above. At 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.000 that stage, she was calling it a couple of times 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.159 a day. Probably she did not have bipolar disorder, but 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:44.960 she did have manic CASA. She would have swings where 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.600 these frequent calls would happen, and then if she took 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:52.359 enough tranquilizers, it would come out in situations where, just 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.840 as an example, she would decide that it was the 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.399 right thing for me to somehow orchestrate is still worth 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.520 And then I don't know what she thought we would do, 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:02.879 sneak into the graveyard in the middle of the n 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.399 I don't know which a logical chain there was, but 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:08.920 Danny I realized that it may sound change to say 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.639 this now. But I actually found those moments kind of validating, 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.960 because so often her behavior was just on the edge 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.960