Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm fairly certain that it was I who seduced him
Speaker 2: that afternoon, But would I have if he had not
Speaker 2: kissed me first? Am I as delusional as Humbered? Humbered?
Speaker 2: When he narrates Lolita was twelve at the time, it
Speaker 2: was she who seduced me. In both scenes from the memoir,
Speaker 2: Arnold is passive, either lost in thought or asleep when
Speaker 2: I appear like a nymph in the forest. There is
Speaker 2: empowerment in remembering oneself as his sexual aggressor, especially after
Speaker 2: modeling at Escapades. But I don't believe that was my
Speaker 2: motivation when I wrote this? Was I protecting Arnold? The
Speaker 2: statute of limitations had long ago past. Was I protecting
Speaker 2: my marriage? We had just celebrated our twenty seventh anniversary.
Speaker 1: That's Jill Cement, novelist, memoirist, professor of English at the
Speaker 1: University of Florida in Gainesville, an author of two memoirs,
Speaker 1: Half a Life and Consent, written more than twenty five
Speaker 1: years apart. These books are an extraordinary testament to the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from ourselves and the way the passage
Speaker 1: of time informs our memories and our understanding of the past.
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 yes, the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: I was born in Canada to a kind of middle
Speaker 2: clas last Jewish family. My father's parents were more educated
Speaker 2: than my mother's and were from a much higher class,
Speaker 2: and they got married under the circumstances that people get
Speaker 2: married under in those days. She wanted to get out
Speaker 2: of the house and not work for her father, and
Speaker 2: he was strange, and they got married. And so I
Speaker 2: grew up in this kind of milieu of you know,
Speaker 2: old Montreal, very very close knit Jewish community, almost deadly
Speaker 2: in its insularity. Then when I was about ten, we
Speaker 2: immigrated to the United States, to Los Angeles. We were
Speaker 2: able to immigrate because my grandfather had applied for the lottery.
Speaker 2: My father was ill prepared for it, he was autistic,
Speaker 2: and my mother was just dying to escape Montreal. So
Speaker 2: we came up there, and then, you know, my father
Speaker 2: couldn't adjust to immigration, my mother was thrilled to be
Speaker 2: in California. They eventually get divorced and we fall about
Speaker 2: three or four classes down to the lower class because
Speaker 2: I'm now the child of a single parent, and so
Speaker 2: I grew up, you know, from the age of fourteen on.
Speaker 2: I had a full time job and I helped support
Speaker 2: the family. And that's kind of my background. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was an unusual teenage shood because I had a
Speaker 2: full time job. I was rushed into adulthood very early.
Speaker 1: And this would have been when you moved with your
Speaker 1: family to LA This would have been in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: You know. I mean my parents got divorced when I
Speaker 2: was about fourteen, and so it'd have been like sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and so it sort of, you know, kind of went
Speaker 2: along with the late sixties and seventies, which was a
Speaker 2: sort of wild time, especially in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And do you have several brothers.
Speaker 2: I have three brothers. One is older than me and
Speaker 2: we're almost like twins. His name is Gary. And then
Speaker 2: I have a brother named James, who is five years
Speaker 2: younger than me. And then there was the family mistake. Scott.
Speaker 2: He was born just as my mother had saved up
Speaker 2: enough money to divorce my father, and we had been
Speaker 2: holding our breath for this moment of escape. And she
Speaker 2: finds out she's pregnant and that you gave us another
Speaker 2: two years. Under his strange authoritarianism, my father was sort
Speaker 2: of like if you've ever seen rain Man, the Dustin
Speaker 2: Hoffman character. He was able to kind of hold everything
Speaker 2: together when we were in Montreal because he had an
Speaker 2: extended family and everything was a routine. But once he
Speaker 2: got to California, the pressure of not having his routine
Speaker 2: just put him over the edge. And it was like
Speaker 2: living with somebody who was in world in a constant terror.
Speaker 2: If something was out of place and if money was spent,
Speaker 2: it was like a black cloud of worries and craziness.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, we all were very aware of it,
Speaker 2: and we all wanted to escape it. And my mom
Speaker 2: she was one of these women who you know, had
Speaker 2: never even paid a bill. She didn't learn any of
Speaker 2: those skills of how to survive. So when she wanted
Speaker 2: to leave my father, we really had to think about
Speaker 2: how we would survive. And my older brother and I
Speaker 2: need a commitment that we would help her because there
Speaker 2: was no other way. She wasn't prepared, as we weren't either,
Speaker 2: and we all sort of figured it out together.
Speaker 1: When it's time for high school, Jill goes about three
Speaker 1: days a week. Then on Friday mornings, she bore a
Speaker 1: flight to different spots around the country because she has
Speaker 1: a job, not a typical teenage job like bagging groceries
Speaker 1: or scooping ice cream. No, this is a marketing research job.
Speaker 1: Become was an emancipated miner, so she can sign contracts.
Speaker 1: She's helping to support her family. At the same time,
Speaker 1: she takes art classes on Monday nights because she's known
Speaker 1: since the age of three that this is what she
Speaker 1: wants to be. An artist.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted to be. That's why I wasn't
Speaker 2: too concerned about finishing high school. You know, I didn't
Speaker 2: see how that was going to really help me become
Speaker 2: an artist, which is insane because you know, the perspective
Speaker 2: of a fifteen year old is hardly to be agreed with.
Speaker 2: And that was a terrible student, and so it wasn't
Speaker 2: like such a loss. My brother, who also worked full
Speaker 2: time and did everything, managed to finish with straight a's
Speaker 2: and go on to college. So it had as much
Speaker 2: to do with my personality as it did with the circumstances.
Speaker 1: So tell me about at sixteen, you go to an
Speaker 1: art show, a gallery show, and are drawn to the
Speaker 1: work a particular work by an artist. Tell me about
Speaker 1: that moment.
Speaker 2: Well, actually he had the work in his wife's gallery
Speaker 2: right the Pajer. Arnold Meshi's had some artwork in a
Speaker 2: gallery and I had seen it in the window when
Speaker 2: I was driving by, was on Ventura Boulevard, and you know,
Speaker 2: I just had not seen that level of draftsmanship outside
Speaker 2: of museums. And I was just dumbstruck because I'd only
Speaker 2: seen that kind of like crappy art of seascapes, and
Speaker 2: you know, I just hadn't you know. I thought that
Speaker 2: was like living art, and then dead art was the
Speaker 2: art you saw in the museum. And suddenly I realized, no,
Speaker 2: there's an entire world of that outside, and I became
Speaker 2: riveted by it. And so I had my mom call
Speaker 2: the gallery and speak to Arnold's wife and see if
Speaker 2: he would teach a fourteen you know, at the time,
Speaker 2: I probably was sixteen, if I could go into a
Speaker 2: life drawing class. So I changed from a lesser teacher
Speaker 2: to him, and I started studying under Arnold.
Speaker 1: And these were existing classes, a group classes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were private classes. Mostly there were as older
Speaker 2: people in it. They were retirees, a few younger people,
Speaker 2: but he had a studio, a kind of classroom in
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills where he taught these classes near his studio.
Speaker 1: What comes to mind, like what language comes to mind
Speaker 1: when it comes to first being sort of under Arnold's
Speaker 1: tutelage and being part of these classes. What was he
Speaker 1: to you initially?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, first, he was the first real
Speaker 2: artist that I had encountered, and it was what I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. It's so confusing at that age. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I wanted to win his approval. I was
Speaker 2: enamored with him as a girl would have a crush
Speaker 2: on someone. I really felt incredibly grown up to be
Speaker 2: a part of a life drawing class where there was
Speaker 2: nudity and people talked openly about genitalia in the context
Speaker 2: of draftsmanship. It's pretty different than high school. And I
Speaker 2: mean I wanted to be an artist since I was
Speaker 2: like three years old. So it was this thing that
Speaker 2: I wanted and I suddenly had access to it, and
Speaker 2: it was thrilling. I was flirting with him and was trying,
Speaker 2: in my own clumsy, sixteen year old way to be seducted.
Speaker 2: I could see I was arresting his attention, and I
Speaker 2: approach him and I kiss him.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy. Jill is sixteen and Arnold is forty seven.
Speaker 1: This is the year she kisses him, at least that's
Speaker 1: how she chronicles it when she writes her first memoir,
Speaker 1: Half of Life, published in nineteen ninety six. That book
Speaker 1: exists as a sort of forensic evidence of what Jill
Speaker 1: believed and remembered at a certain time. But time moves forward,
Speaker 1: and with it, our perspectives, our memory are truths. Jill's
Speaker 1: new memoir, Consent, begins and ends with this very kiss.
Speaker 1: In Half a Life, the kiss is portrayed one way,
Speaker 1: and in Consent it's portrayed another way. Who really kissed
Speaker 1: who first? But long before she reflects on this, she
Speaker 1: lives this. Jill and Arnold have this meaningful kiss in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, but a relationship doesn't begin just yet. First,
Speaker 1: she goes to New York.
Speaker 2: I arrived there with one hundred and fifty dollars that
Speaker 2: I had saved up and the name of somebody where
Speaker 2: he had a crash pad where I and my brother
Speaker 2: could go and spend a couple of nights where we
Speaker 2: tried to figure out how to survive in New York.
Speaker 2: My brother was only going for a week to make
Speaker 2: sure I wasn't going to be killed. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: I started out there, and you know, it was an
Speaker 2: impossible thing to do. I mean, I ended up drifting
Speaker 2: off with a bunch of other runaways. And although I
Speaker 2: was not a runaway, it was the early seventies in
Speaker 2: New York City and it was you know, you can't
Speaker 2: become an artist that way, and that was the lesson
Speaker 2: I had to learn.
Speaker 1: And during those months, this memory of Arnold and Arnold's
Speaker 1: kind of presence for you lingered. We wrote back and forth.
Speaker 2: He wrote me letters not I mean they were letters
Speaker 2: that if somebody found them, it wouldn't look like we
Speaker 2: had kissed. They were the letters of a student to
Speaker 2: a professor and vice versa, and giving me advice on
Speaker 2: how to survive there. But he kept promising he was
Speaker 2: going to come to New York. I think that's why
Speaker 2: I hung on for four months, because he always went
Speaker 2: to New York as an artist. And then, you know,
Speaker 2: I went back to Los Angeles. I took a greyhound bus.
Speaker 2: My mother didn't even have enough money to send the airfare,
Speaker 2: so I went back on a greyhound bus, and you know,
Speaker 2: I was so depressed, and the only thing I would
Speaker 2: do is I would drive past this house. You know.
Speaker 2: I was love worn and I you know, and finally
Speaker 2: one day I just built up the nerve to just
Speaker 2: show up at his studio. And I had lost my virginity.
Speaker 2: That was a big thing. And I went to a
Speaker 2: studio and I tried to seduce him, which wasn't that hard.
Speaker 1: And that's how we began off Here, as Jill drives
Speaker 1: in circles past Arnold's house, imagining him with his wife
Speaker 1: of twenty five years and his two kids inside, there
Speaker 1: may also have been the specter of her own father,
Speaker 1: who was profoundly absent because of his autism, and then
Speaker 1: literally absent, just gone. So her feelings about Arnold would
Speaker 1: have been complicated. They're romantic and sexual, to be sure,
Speaker 1: but that longing she feels has many layers. It's shortly
Speaker 1: after her return to Los Angelus that their affair begins
Speaker 1: in earnest.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was so many things on the way
Speaker 2: in which one conceives of one's life. I think the
Speaker 2: yearning was simply I think I was just so curious
Speaker 2: to know what it would be like to be loved
Speaker 2: by an older man. I think that was my big curiosity,
Speaker 2: and I think that's what I sought out. And you know,
Speaker 2: not only was art Old an older man, but he
Speaker 2: was an artist. And you know, in those days, the
Speaker 2: only person who could anoint you an artist was a
Speaker 2: male artist. And you weren't going to be anointed by
Speaker 2: a woman. At that point. There were no women artists
Speaker 2: that you even saw. And so, you know, part of
Speaker 2: that whole patriarchal thing was so bred into us that
Speaker 2: the yearning to become successful only could be gotten through
Speaker 2: the approval of a man, and there was no other
Speaker 2: way in those days. Well, I came back from New York.
Speaker 2: I just turned seventeen. I came back, and so I
Speaker 2: started seeing him again a little bit before my eighteenth birthday,
Speaker 2: and we started seeing each other in an illicit affair,
Speaker 2: or as I put it in the book, I was
Speaker 2: going steady and he was having an affair. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was very open with My mother knew about it.
Speaker 2: And again it was the seventies. She was also dating
Speaker 2: a man named Arnold who was like ten years younger
Speaker 2: than her, and even though she was very upset about it.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a kind of laughter to it
Speaker 2: as well, because that was kind of funny. And then
Speaker 2: it was New Year's Eve and I just fell apart
Speaker 2: in New Year's Eve because you know, I was eighteen
Speaker 2: years old and I wanted to be on a date
Speaker 2: for New Year's Eve and he was married, and you know,
Speaker 2: at an adult party, and I just broke down and he,
Speaker 2: I don't know, he left his wife. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: such an unusual thing that happens. He left his wife.
Speaker 2: He left with just toothbrush, she left the house, all
Speaker 2: the money in the bank. We just started off together,
Speaker 2: and I guess I had just turned eighteen, and I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, at this point, I you know again, I
Speaker 2: had just gotten into cal Arts as a student and
Speaker 2: I got a scholarship and so I started my art
Speaker 2: school education and he kind of returned to painting, and
Speaker 2: so we started living together from that point forward. So
Speaker 2: he went he was with me all throughout college, and
Speaker 2: you know, it gave me obviously a very different version
Speaker 2: of college. But you know, he kind of went to
Speaker 2: college with me, and I think it revitalized him as
Speaker 2: well in one sense. When I was enamored of him
Speaker 2: as a seventeen year old girl and starting my affair,
Speaker 2: I thought of him as a famous, successful artist, looking
Speaker 2: back at it as a seventy one year old and
Speaker 2: seeing that this was a man in his late forties
Speaker 2: who hadn't succeeded as an artist in the way he
Speaker 2: wanted to, and that, you know, he was not what
Speaker 2: I thought he was. But because he wasn't what I
Speaker 2: thought he was, this all powerful man, I went from
Speaker 2: being enamored with him to seeing him as a vulnerable
Speaker 2: human being. And I think that's what was able to
Speaker 2: allow me to actually love him as opposed to always
Speaker 2: be under his thumb of power. It was that he
Speaker 2: wasn't the person I imagined him to be that allowed me
Speaker 2: to fall in love with him. And I think that's
Speaker 2: something that you know, when a young girl looks at
Speaker 2: a powerful matter, what they assume is a powerful man,
Speaker 2: and they don't see that, you know, all human beings
Speaker 2: are fallible and filled with doubt and remorse in all
Speaker 2: other emotions. And it was only as I started to
Speaker 2: learn who Ornold actually was just a human being, that
Speaker 2: I think the relationship went from what would be now
Speaker 2: kind of risky and grooming into something much more like
Speaker 2: any other marriage.
Speaker 1: And also likely the reason why the marriage lasted when
Speaker 1: it was a relationship early on, where his colleagues were
Speaker 1: literally placing bets on how long this was going to last.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: At what point did you make the switch from being
Speaker 1: an artist to becoming a writer and why?
Speaker 2: Why? Is the question that has plagued me my whole life.
Speaker 2: I have no idea, but I thought a great deal
Speaker 2: about it. I made the switch. I was in graduate
Speaker 2: school at Cal Arts. I had ten weeks left. I
Speaker 2: had finished my DCS, which was a film. I was
Speaker 2: going to become a kind of gudared like, you know, filmmaker,
Speaker 2: and that film really made me realize that I can't
Speaker 2: work with human beings, so that wasn't be a good
Speaker 2: profession for me, and so I decided, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I loved literature, and I just decided I would instead
Speaker 2: of making a film and having to spend all that
Speaker 2: money and work with people, I would just write my
Speaker 2: films down. And at the time, I honestly had probably
Speaker 2: never even written somebody a letter. I mean, I just
Speaker 2: was so dyslexic, and it was such a weird choice
Speaker 2: for me. Because I had. It wasn't like I had
Speaker 2: any talent at this, and you know, I just made
Speaker 2: this crazy decision. I dropped out of school. I sat down,
Speaker 2: and I spent the next literally four years, I mean,
Speaker 2: when I wasn't working, you know, practicing how to make
Speaker 2: a sentence, studying literature. Arnold as this great gift bought
Speaker 2: me the entire election of Norton Critical Edition, and I
Speaker 2: was able to read my you know, I read from
Speaker 2: gilganish for it and gave myself this huge education and
Speaker 2: you know, practice becoming a writer. And that's how I
Speaker 2: did it. And you know what, I had been able
Speaker 2: to do it without the supporter of somebody like Arnold?
Speaker 2: Probably not, but I you know, he was there and
Speaker 2: he encouraged me to take this crazy journey.
Speaker 1: Is there any part of you that feels like you
Speaker 1: made the switch because you didn't want to directly compete
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. I mean I had already left painting
Speaker 2: and drawing early, probably because I didn't want to compete
Speaker 2: with him, and I had gone into conceptual art, so
Speaker 2: I wasn't It wasn't like we were really overlapping in
Speaker 2: esthetics and craft. But I'm sure I went over to
Speaker 2: conceptual art, probably mostly because I was just enamored by
Speaker 2: the idea of the auvant garde. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: just like so big and I I think what happened
Speaker 2: is it became nauseous with the app on guard and
Speaker 2: it just seemed like such a it was so removed
Speaker 2: from everyday people. I just didn't want to make art
Speaker 2: for only wealthy people. So I didn't want to do
Speaker 2: that anymore. I probably would have returned to painting, because
Speaker 2: that is a history of something beyond that. But Arnold
Speaker 2: was there, and he was already painting, and I think
Speaker 2: that blocked that possible door. But I don't know if
Speaker 2: I would have taken it anyhow. We were an incredibly
Speaker 2: collaborative couple. He read every word that I wrote, and
Speaker 2: I remember when I wrote my first book, he told
Speaker 2: me to throw up the first fifty pages. I remember
Speaker 2: having like a complete like conniption fit and crying and
Speaker 2: tearing up paper and just you know, like as a
Speaker 2: lunatic would do in their twenties, filled with hormones and ambition,
Speaker 2: and you know, I would do the same thing to
Speaker 2: his work. So it's you know, I would go in
Speaker 2: and tell him this was horrible. That was we just
Speaker 2: did it. We just were like completely, we collaborate. I
Speaker 2: think one of the reasons that I never felt such
Speaker 2: a great desire to return into painting was that I
Speaker 2: kind of got to paint through him. And you know,
Speaker 2: he had written some novels himself, and I think he
Speaker 2: got to become a writer through me. And you know,
Speaker 2: it was one of these marriages that were very much
Speaker 2: involved in each other's work in a good way.
Speaker 1: I think we'll be back in a moment with more
Speaker 1: family secrets. When Jill is twenty nine and Arnold is sixty,
Speaker 1: he's made a painting that a gallery owner in New
Speaker 1: York expresses interest in. But the gallery owner is on
Speaker 1: the fence because she hasn't actually seen it, only slides.
Speaker 1: So Jill encourages Arnold to roll up the painting and
Speaker 1: they traveled to New York.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the gallery didn't realize how old Arnold was. They
Speaker 2: thought he was a kid, and so when they saw
Speaker 2: his age, you know, they lost interest in wanting to
Speaker 2: invest in somebody who's sixty, who really doesn't have the
Speaker 2: long term investment range that you are looking for. And
Speaker 2: so I convinced him to go over to the East Village,
Speaker 2: which I had heard was kind of like a new
Speaker 2: art scene, and you know, he stumbled into this gallery
Speaker 2: with these young, amazing curators and he began a career
Speaker 2: as an East Village artist. And you know, at the
Speaker 2: same time, I was just beginning, you know, to become
Speaker 2: a writer. So it was really I'd gotten an agent
Speaker 2: and I was starting. So it was a moment when
Speaker 2: we both moved to New York. Was the mid eighties,
Speaker 2: It was you know, New York was really on fire
Speaker 2: in terms of both literature and or something you don't
Speaker 2: feel today when you're in New York.
Speaker 1: Jill and Arnold spend the next twenty years living in
Speaker 1: New York. They continue to write and make art, and
Speaker 1: their relationship remains deeply collaborative, but Jill is becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: aware of their age gap, which during this time almost
Speaker 1: seems to widen. A once vital, vibrant middle aged man,
Speaker 1: Arnold is slowing down and becoming more physically vulnerable as
Speaker 1: he ages.
Speaker 2: New York is a difficult place for old people. One
Speaker 2: we lived in a five flight walk home, which became
Speaker 2: the subject of one of my books because it was
Speaker 2: insurmountable you know, it's an old person. If you end
Speaker 2: up in a walk up, you are as trapped there
Speaker 2: as you would be on the Kansas farm in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere, you know, unable to drive. I mean,
Speaker 2: so I knew as he was hitting eighty, I had
Speaker 2: to come up with another plan. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I ended up applying for teaching jobs and came down
Speaker 2: here to Florida. But again, you know now that I'm
Speaker 2: entering the age that Arnold had entered when I started
Speaker 2: to notice an age, And now I'm in that place.
Speaker 2: There are moments when I think about what I asked
Speaker 2: him to do when he was in his seventies, like
Speaker 2: travel with backpacks around Malaysia. We went around the world
Speaker 2: to these remote islands. He just you know, tried to
Speaker 2: keep up with me. And at seventy I realized, oh
Speaker 2: my god. Like I remember when we would get to
Speaker 2: New York. We had a place in New York, and
Speaker 2: we would arrive and we'd have all these we had
Speaker 2: the dog and all the suitcases, and I would throw
Speaker 2: them down and I'd say, come on, let's take a
Speaker 2: long walk. And he would say, oh, honey, I want
Speaker 2: to lie down. I'm really tired. And I'd say, come on,
Speaker 2: you only live one and I'd like force this old
Speaker 2: man to walk around. So it's kind of an interesting
Speaker 2: It's now I think about our relationship and I really
Speaker 2: think about what it would have been like to be
Speaker 2: here with such energy, you know, asking you to live
Speaker 2: a life of somebody who's twenty five years younger, thirty
Speaker 2: years younger.
Speaker 1: Does that fall for you in some way into the
Speaker 1: category of a secret that you were keeping from yourself
Speaker 1: during that time, which was that he really was, that
Speaker 1: you were asking of him something that was almost impossible
Speaker 1: for him to do, or that you know that he
Speaker 1: was getting old. I mean, he had this.
Speaker 2: Vibrancy he did. He had a vibrancy in the end.
Speaker 1: And he was he never stopped working, and you know
Speaker 1: this was not you know, sometimes people will say to
Speaker 1: artists and writers, people who have regular jobs will talk
Speaker 1: about retirement and kind of ask you when you're going
Speaker 1: to retire, And you know, I think for artists and
Speaker 1: writers we look at that question like never, never, with
Speaker 1: some notable exceptions. But you know, he wasn't going to retire,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't going to stop his work, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to go gently, But was there a sense
Speaker 1: on your part. Was there an awareness at that time
Speaker 1: or is the awareness more what you have in retrospect.
Speaker 2: Only in retrospect you can see it when you went
Speaker 2: on with people. There's no way to understand what it's
Speaker 2: like to be in a body that suddenly feels finite
Speaker 2: after having spent your life in the body that seemed infinite.
Speaker 2: I think it's a secret everybody holds from themselves, like
Speaker 2: he that's you know. I think the secret we all
Speaker 2: hold from ourselves is that we're not going to die,
Speaker 2: or you know, that's our secret is that we think
Speaker 2: we're immortal. And until you understand that, and you only
Speaker 2: understand it as you start to see your generation end
Speaker 2: that you know, I think that, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: it's the biggest secret we all keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: Now, Jill's fifty and Arnold is eighty, and an extraordinary
Speaker 1: thing happens. Arnold has a moment, a big moment as
Speaker 1: an artist, and it begins with Jill sending away for
Speaker 1: his FBI files. He makes art out of those files,
Speaker 1: an illuminated manuscript, and has a one man show. This
Speaker 1: late success makes it more palatable when Jill wants them
Speaker 1: to move to Florida, where she gets a teaching job,
Speaker 1: Florida being an easier place to be old.
Speaker 2: At that time, almost all the old lefties were sending
Speaker 2: away for their files. It was I remember Grace Paley
Speaker 2: came as a visiting writer, and I was trying to
Speaker 2: show her alligators, because you can see alligators from my backyard,
Speaker 2: and she wasn't interested. She was much more interested in
Speaker 2: Arnold's FBI files because she had just sent away for hers,
Speaker 2: and so it was kind of like this kind of
Speaker 2: crazy time. So he may have sent away for it,
Speaker 2: but he got discouraged about what he could do with them,
Speaker 2: and I encouraged him to keep going. So I feel
Speaker 2: responsible for those. It's an amazing series and he I mean,
Speaker 2: I think one reason he was able to leave New
Speaker 2: York without feeling like he was leaving the art world
Speaker 2: for swamp was because he had this very big show.
Speaker 2: And you know, we never really left New York because
Speaker 2: we got a place in Brooklyn a few years later
Speaker 2: and we started. We spent six months there in six
Speaker 2: months here, so he was in New York I would
Speaker 2: say until really until he was in his nineties. We
Speaker 2: were back and forth.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Over the course of their long
Speaker 1: marriage that began so improbably Arnold and Jill's mother become
Speaker 1: good friends their contemporaries. After all, Arnold is exactly Jill's
Speaker 1: father's age and her mom is six years younger. And
Speaker 1: then it comes to pass that both Arnold and Jill's
Speaker 1: mother are diagnosed with the same very aggressive cancer, acute
Speaker 1: maalloyd leukemia.
Speaker 2: Obviously, when I first started seeing him, my mother was
Speaker 2: horrified and I was so ordering, so you know, strong headed.
Speaker 2: There was nothing she could do to stop me. But
Speaker 2: as any mother I think would be scared for their
Speaker 2: daughter to be dating a married man thirty years older
Speaker 2: than her. But they ended up becoming good friends. He
Speaker 2: was the longest standing mayor in my family, so he
Speaker 2: became the head of the Hushold until my mother finally
Speaker 2: married again. And I think they worked in their own way.
Speaker 2: They were very good friends. They talked a lot, and
Speaker 2: I think that one of the reasons that I went
Speaker 2: and got Arnold as a partner was to give my
Speaker 2: family a male figure that was competent in there and
Speaker 2: someone that we could rely on. I think people make
Speaker 2: those choices all the time in marriage. There was a
Speaker 2: really interesting article that somebody had written when consent came out.
Speaker 2: She was a Muslim who had been set up in
Speaker 2: an arranged marriage when she was eighteen, and she compares
Speaker 2: my story with her own, and there are so many similarities,
Speaker 2: the idea of pleasing the family, of of it being
Speaker 2: a family decision. It was very really amazing article because
Speaker 2: you realize that even though we have these contemporary marriages
Speaker 2: where we think we're making these choices as individuals for love, etc.
Speaker 2: You know, if you look at the larger context of
Speaker 2: our lives, you know we're not that different than the
Speaker 2: old arranged marriages. You know, you marry a family, you
Speaker 2: don't just marry a human being. And I think that
Speaker 2: was very enlightening to me.
Speaker 1: And again, that's not something that you ever would have
Speaker 1: entertained consciously, not a million years. Not only would you
Speaker 1: not have entertained it consciously, but you would have been
Speaker 1: sort of appalled at that idea.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Arnold is ninety three when he passes away, Jill is
Speaker 1: sixty three.
Speaker 2: I knew my whole life that he would die before me,
Speaker 2: unless I was in an accident or something horrifying befell me.
Speaker 2: So I knew that I was going to go through this,
Speaker 2: and it was something that I had really thought about
Speaker 2: how I would manage this, and so in a certain sense,
Speaker 2: not that I was prepared, but I think people who
Speaker 2: take their loved ones through a long illness or case
Speaker 2: just old age, I think that you go through your
Speaker 2: mourning before the person dies a lot. You know, in
Speaker 2: many ways, his death was a relief, you know, because
Speaker 2: it was getting harder and harder to take care of him.
Speaker 2: And I think that kind of relief is not uncommon
Speaker 2: for anyone who's been a caregiver. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: suddenly I found myself at sixty three, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to realize what I had feared my whole life. And
Speaker 2: it was very different than I thought it was going
Speaker 2: to be. I mean, it was sadder and less sad.
Speaker 2: I had listened to many widows and the one thing
Speaker 2: I took away from all their comments was if they
Speaker 2: lost their husbands early enough, meaning in their sixties, they
Speaker 2: regretted not trying to seek out love again, and I
Speaker 2: was determined not to do that. So I sought out
Speaker 2: love again. And you know, I guess I feel like
Speaker 2: I was kind of prepared for his death in a
Speaker 2: way that very few people get to be And you know,
Speaker 2: taking him to death was really truly one of the
Speaker 2: most extraordinary things I've ever I can imagine a human
Speaker 2: being can do. When I was starting consent and my
Speaker 2: husband was dead and the Me Too movement had made
Speaker 2: me think it would have been an impossible affair to
Speaker 2: have today, so I thought, let's try and revisit it
Speaker 2: from today's perspective. And as I did, I started to
Speaker 2: realize that he's the one who actually kissed me. First.
Speaker 2: He drew me to him and he kissed me. And
Speaker 2: I know that's true in terms of memory, because that's
Speaker 2: what I fantasized about for months afterwards. It was so
Speaker 2: thrilling to me when I was in New York and
Speaker 2: having a miserable time, that kiss was something that really
Speaker 2: extended past a regular memory. And so, you know, when
Speaker 2: I originally wrote Half a Life, I don't really know
Speaker 2: why I felt compelled to tell it in that one way.
Speaker 2: I think I thought I was telling the truth. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of times memories are so vague, and
Speaker 2: so sometimes when you're writing, the truth about a memory
Speaker 2: is not so much accuracy, but what you're trying to portray.
Speaker 2: You know, when you recreate scenes from your childhood and
Speaker 2: you put in dialogue, it's not real. It's not that
Speaker 2: you actually have some sort of, you know, amazing memory
Speaker 2: that you can actually do all those things. What you're
Speaker 2: doing is you're groping through a vague memory and you're
Speaker 2: trying to make it sound true to your understanding of
Speaker 2: that memory. So I think when I started the first memoir,
Speaker 2: my understanding of that kiss was I really wanted it.
Speaker 2: That's a truth. And so when I was writing it
Speaker 2: this time, I thought that that's what inspired the whole book.
Speaker 2: I thought, WHOA, I didn't tell the truth, and why
Speaker 2: wouldn't I have done that? I mean, nobody was condemning
Speaker 2: our marriage at that point. We've been married for twenty
Speaker 2: five years. It was more like I wanted in one
Speaker 2: draft to tell the truth as I remembered it then,
Speaker 2: and in the second raft. I mean, maybe I'm delusional now.
Speaker 2: I mean part of me thinks said, if I should
Speaker 2: live to be ninety, god forbid, I can still write
Speaker 2: Heavens forbid. Okay, And I were to approach this book again,
Speaker 2: I may not revisit the kiss, but I certainly would
Speaker 2: revisit the end of the book and what it was
Speaker 2: like to be married to a man thirty years older,
Speaker 2: because I have a feeling that when I live through
Speaker 2: the next twenty years, I'll have a very different perspective
Speaker 2: on that part of the book, right.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've often said to students that I
Speaker 1: think of really interesting life's work as a writer would
Speaker 1: be to write the same memoir every decade.
Speaker 2: Then, you know, that's what I had always planned. When
Speaker 2: I finished Half a Life. I remember telling my editor,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to revisit this again because it's
Speaker 2: more interesting to keep revisiting the same thing to kind
Speaker 2: of go on. But I never had an angle on it.
Speaker 2: You know, It's one thing to have an idea, but
Speaker 2: you know what would make me tell the story differently?
Speaker 2: And finally, you know, between my husband's death and the
Speaker 2: me to movement, I had that angle, And that's how
Speaker 2: why I ended up doing the book. Did Arnold cross
Speaker 2: the line by kissing the sixteen year old air and
Speaker 2: looking down her blouse and telling her I wish you
Speaker 2: were older? Yeah, he crossed the law of lines, Okay,
Speaker 2: but they were lines that at that moment in my life,
Speaker 2: I wanted him to cross, to go back, and to
Speaker 2: look at it from another perspective. It leaves a kind
Speaker 2: of sword life. But I can tell you that as
Speaker 2: someone who lived through it, it never felt sword. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase that's floating through my mind right now
Speaker 1: that I learned in the last bunch of years. It's
Speaker 1: it's sort of an ethical term, but retrospective moral judgment.
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting term.
Speaker 1: How do you define it judging the past by the
Speaker 1: standards of the present. I mean, there's a moment in
Speaker 1: there's a moment in consent where you write there are
Speaker 1: two voices in every memoir, old and young, and you know,
Speaker 1: you go on to talk about you know, like the
Speaker 1: young voice is a simple trick that you wrote about
Speaker 1: in Half a Life. I took self reflection out of
Speaker 1: the equation. The young voice doesn't reflect, it reacts. There's
Speaker 1: the self that is almost sort of reaching out a
Speaker 1: hand the present self, or from the platform of the
Speaker 1: present to that younger self. But I'm thinking, like the
Speaker 1: question of I guess it has to do with the
Speaker 1: question of judgment. And one of the things that I
Speaker 1: thought was so beautiful and consent is that even though
Speaker 1: it is clear eyed, and you're kind of unblinking when
Speaker 1: you're looking at that time through this lens. But the
Speaker 1: layers in which if you're judging, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: society's judging, like present society judging, not the Jill who
Speaker 1: lived through this long and beautiful and complicated and rich
Speaker 1: marriage with this man.
Speaker 2: However, there is a judgmental quality that came for me
Speaker 2: because I've also been teaching the the past forty years.
Speaker 2: And if you think I haven't gone across the same
Speaker 2: situation as a professor that I experienced as a young girl,
Speaker 2: I mean I've had to stand up for young women.
Speaker 2: The culture of men and women sleeping together professors with students,
Speaker 2: as everyone knows, was really prevalent, and even you know today,
Speaker 2: as I taught and we start taking these sexual harassment tests.
Speaker 2: As I was taking one one year, I thought, WHOA,
Speaker 2: what if it just changed the name from the Dalling
Speaker 2: and Sam to Arnold and Jill. And that's another reason
Speaker 2: that I started to think about it. I guess I
Speaker 2: wanted to approach the story with no judgment because I
Speaker 2: had no ranker. I had a lovely marriage, so I
Speaker 2: wanted to approach it without that kind of contemporary judgment.
Speaker 2: But it's impossible to because now I am a woman
Speaker 2: alive at this particular time. It was a very complex
Speaker 2: thing to try and do because there is judgment in it,
Speaker 2: and then there is forgiveness or acceptance. I think that
Speaker 2: human relationships are really complex. I mean, I wrote this
Speaker 2: in the book. I really believe that the way a
Speaker 2: story ends changes the way you see the beginning. Had
Speaker 2: Arnold not left his wife, had he been a cruel person.
Speaker 2: And remember, it's not like I was some kind of
Speaker 2: great judge of character that I chose a good man. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was a child. I had no idea what I
Speaker 2: was choosing. I got lucky, and so I am able
Speaker 2: to look at this long relationship without bitterness. But I
Speaker 2: don't know if that would be true if it had
Speaker 2: ended up in a different way. I guess what I'm
Speaker 2: saying is that I think that there is no consistent
Speaker 2: truth in life. They did a survey with fourteen hundred
Speaker 2: women and they were fourteen years old, and they took
Speaker 2: the Brigsmeyer test, and they interviewed people who knew them
Speaker 2: to get certain personality types, and they found all those
Speaker 2: women again at seventy eight the ones who were alive,
Speaker 2: and they retook those tests, and it turned out their
Speaker 2: personality and nothing in common with the personalities of their youth.
Speaker 2: People are in constant flux and change, and I think
Speaker 2: that that's as much of a truth as trying to
Speaker 2: find that nugget of truth that therapy promises us or
Speaker 2: somewhere inside of us, which I don't believe. I believe
Speaker 2: that you know the truth is shifting, and that's part
Speaker 2: of what that constant change in terms of who you
Speaker 2: are and how you see life as kind of the
Speaker 2: most exciting part of life.
Speaker 1: Here's Jill reading one last passage from her Searching and
Speaker 1: Fearless memoir Consent.
Speaker 2: Had Arnold lived to read the page's I am now writing,
Speaker 2: what would he have made of them? But in the
Speaker 2: last memoir you said you wrote that you kissed me.
Speaker 2: That was a reconsideration. I would have said, all art
Speaker 2: is a reconsideration, he would have said. Had Arnold experienced
Speaker 2: the sea change of the meat too error, would he
Speaker 2: have come to believe that he had crossed the line
Speaker 2: when he first kissed me? Does the story's ending excuse
Speaker 2: its beginning? Does a kiss in one moment mean something else?
Speaker 2: Entirely five decades later, Can the love that starts with
Speaker 2: such an asymmetrical balance of power ever write itself? Family
Speaker 2: Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is the
Speaker 2: story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
Speaker 2: you have a family secret you'd like to share, please
Speaker 2: leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
Speaker 2: an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Speaker 2: Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 2: me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like
Speaker 2: to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.