Mallory's Camera

I’m gonna toss the haunted diaries.

I read through a few of them yesterday.

I pride myself on having an excellent memory—Well. Except for those times when I can’t remember “Rokeby”—but I couldn’t remember ¾ of the things I was reading in those diaries.

Did they really happen to me? Well then, I was someone else.

###

Case in point: Many, many pages in 1983 were devoted to a love affair I had with someone named Kevin. It was very sexual. I devoted pages and pages not just to the kinky sex but also to the dozens of friends I do remember—Susan!—advising me against having kinky sex with Kevin.

Thing is I cannot remember Kevin.

I have indexed the mental database 20 different ways. Searched it & searched it. But there is no trace.

It’s not like the memory failures I associate with, say, dementia where some recollection batters like a frantic moth against the window that is one’s consciousness.

No, this was more as though some celestial editor had said, This character doesn’t work, and red-penciled Kevin out.

###

I don’t think much of anything I wrote before 1993 when I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop is any good.

It is self-expression, and as such, does satisfy the Malcolm Gladwell injunction that you must put in 10,000 hours of work in order to get really good at something.

But it’s not good writing in the sense that Clarion taught me to recognize good writing—as something that both expresses and communicates.

Do musicians record & save those endless hours they spend practicing scales?

Well. Those diaries were scales.

###

What I am going to keep is those hundreds of fictive pages scattered amongst the diaries. Some of that stuff is really quite good.

###

Anyway. Even though it is not quite seven in the morning, temps are well on their way to the 80° mark, so I better get out there & tromp while tromping can still be a thing.

The first three episodes of My Brilliant Friend: Season 3 are as excellent as Season 1 was.

It is 1968, and Sessantotto is erupting in the college towns of the North, Pisa, Bologna, Padua. In the South, recovery from the devastations of World War II are finally underway, and telephones and televisions are becoming common household appliances.

In the U.S., in Berkeley, I too was participating in political marches—against the Vietnam War, in favor of People’s Park.

Once I was babysitting Alicia and decided to take her to a protest.

We got tear-gassed—and I can remember dashing madly across Sproul Plaza pushing her stroller.

I didn’t have a clue about the things we were protesting against, of course.

It was just fun to be out on a sunny day with other people my age singing If I Had a Hammer and screaming, “Fuck the pigs!”

Better than the best rock concert you can possibly imagine.

###

Also started reading the novels.

Here’s a passage close to the beginning of Chapter 1:

Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don’t want to think about the rest. Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.

I can attest to the truth of that because I have very vivid memories of my childhood.

Most people don’t. Or claim not to.

But among the people who are unashamed to remember their childhoods, a certain mythology develops, their childhood memories are the Iliad or the Odyssey, and Ferrante captures that very, very well in the opening chapter of My Brilliant Friend. The HBO series captures it very, very well, too, and I think that’s what gives the series its extraordinary emotional punch.

###

Anyway, I really cannot surrender myself totally to My Brilliant Friend for another day because I simply have too much to do.

And one of those things is transcription.

Long-time readers may recall The Saga of the Diaries: How when I closed down the Monterey house, I took the 20 or so volumes of my paper journals and shut them up in a storage unit, and then, how in 2021, I finally became brave enough to fly to California and deal with that storage unit. I threw everything away! I loaded everything into a UHaul that Ichabod had specifically rented for a trip to the dump.

I felt a vast relief.

I was free of the past.

But then a weird thing happened: The UHaul got stolen.

And then an even weirder thing happened: Ichabod had packed some of his own things into that UHaul that had been in my storage unit, including his Stanford diploma, which he'd intended to take back up to Ukiah. And someone had found the Stanford diploma—along with my diaries!

They had been able to trace him through the diploma. And he, of course, knew where I was.

Here is what the diaries looked like when the person found them:



Clearly, my diaries are the malevolent Chuckie-doll of diaries!

Never mind that I hate them, and I hate the person who wrote them—they have a mind of their own, and they will not be rebuffed or ignored.

So, I will be transcribing them. Volume by volume. The contents of the volumes are in chronological order (of course.). But the volumes will not be in any particular order.



9 July¹

A peaceful moment between invasions…²

Sweet peas in the vase on my desk, Albioni on the stereo, a room w/a view. The view is of a garden, I planted the garden myself. A garden will teach you better how to cherish the small specifics than all the Zen review courses ever packaged.

Said goodbye to Michele³ a couple of nights ago w/something of a pang—certainly the closest thing to genuine emotion that I’ve felt in quite some time. Who knows when I’ll see her again… If I’ll see her again… My soul registers a real loss. From the first, I was extremely drawn to Michele far beyond what the social circumstances of our acquaintance were prepared to authorize. I have such little confidence these days in the drawing capacity of my own featured attractions, that I never speculated that the pull might be reciprocal. Michele was such an adventuresome soul, such a quintessentially free spirit: I celebrated the archetype in the many dreams of her I was always too busy-worked to remember once I had fully awakened from them.

She was (she is) one of those women who are beautiful w/out being the slightest bit pretty; her looks so different from the standardized surveys of female attractiveness that you had to be something of a standard deviate yourself to appreciate them. She reminded me of the heroine of the “French Lieutenant’s Woman”⁴—one of my favorite novels.

I liked her so much that the liking was awkward so that finally I avoided her as often as I sought her out. That constraint, at least, was reciprocal or so it seemed: however animated our banter and eye contact was around other people, a deux we were pointedly guarded. And it was only in parting—the hug she made me was one of great warmth, tenderness, and yes, some regret—that it occurred to me that Michele, too, might have been shielding herself from the intensity and ambivalence of the attraction.⁵

_______

¹ No idea what year this was. 1986? In the next entry in this volume I mention being pregnant, so it must have been 1986, and we were living on San Lorenzo Street in Berkeley, close to the Berkeley/Albany border.

² Note my peculiar love for ellipses back then. I suppose I thought they were evocative.

³ I have no idea who Michele was! I cannot remember her in the slightest.

⁴ Wait! What? The French Lieutenant’s Woman was one of my favorite novels in 1986? No-ooo-ooooooo!!!

⁵ Clearly this was a Sapphic attraction! Up until my first marriage, I was sexually active with men and women alike. Actually, preferred women sexually, but there was a certain something they lacked partner-wise, not enough polarity, I guess. Also, I very much preferred the dreamy, drifty, clandestine nature of my female dalliances to the brisk daylight and normality of same-sex couplings today. I suppose I’m the only person in the world who regrets that loss.

I did blissful nothing yesterday!

Blissful!

Well—not quite nothing. I toddled over to the Most Fabulous Garden Store in Dutchess County where I saw these fabulous canna lilies:



I spent three hours in the garden weeding and planting flowers in my pollinator swath. Behold my fabulous new salvia:



I think this salvia is a perennial. Think. Salvias are actually a bit AC/DC on the annual/perennial spectrum.

I also bought (and planted) some sky-blue pansies and some incipient snapdragons, and this of course was a waste of money because they will not survive the winter.

But like most things that will not survive the winter, they are very pretty…

Came home, read 100 pages of Intimate Lies, which is Sheilah Graham’s son’s deconstruction of the many ways his mother falsified the narrative of her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well-written book! Entertaining!

I did not Remunerate!

I think I needed not to Remunerate.

I’d been pushing myself very hard the previous two days.

I will Remunerate today.

###

Reading Sheilah Graham’s son’s book did make me realize one of the reasons I was in such a funky mood earlier this week.

I told Ichabod when I was talking to him on the phone that I was going to send him a copy of my travel insurance documents so that he will be able to access his (and RTT’s) billion-dollar payoff instantly when my plane crashes on the way to Italy.

“Do you have a will?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t have any assets. Making a will seems like a waste of time.”

And he began chastising me.

And I supposed I deserved to be chastised.

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “The only thing I have that might be of some value are my diaries. I’ve been keeping them for almost 60 years. And I write extensively about everything. Surely, they’re valuable as a historical document.”

“Yeah, you should do something with them,” said Ichabod. “I mean, I won’t have time to read them—”

THUNK.

###

My own mother was insane but a really, really good writer.

On those rare occasions when I found myself alone in her apartment, of course I would go through all her private papers and read anything that looked interesting.

She kept carbon copies of every letter she ever wrote to anyone!

Writing well was the family curse. Her two sisters, my evil Aunt Jane and my careless, cruel, self-involved Aunt Annie, were excellent writers, too.

But I’m the only one in the F2 generation that seems to have inherited the gene.

Anyway, after my mother died, I searched through all her papers, eagerly, desperately, trying to find something, anything, that might explain her to me.

But by then, she’d cleared out all her carbon copies.

I wondered why.

Of course, she was incredibly secretive because she confabulated so much. (She would have been incredibly pissed off to find me shuffling through her papers, but I mean, c’mon—how could I not?)

One document remained, and it was an essay she had written for some kind of class she took at San Francisco State University.

The essay was about the Greyhound bus ride she took from New York City to San Francisco in 1964 following a massive psychological collapse where she took to her bed for two weeks, hallucinated on the ceiling, and I had to feed her and change her (‘cause she insisted on peeing on herself.)

The usual cliches about Greyhound bus rides. The amusingly odd passengers, the panoramic unfolding of the scenery, blah blah blah.

But the funniest part of the essay was that I was apparently on this trip with her! Much of the essay was devoted to the contrast between the expansive, free-spirited, enlightened woman and her crabby, narrow-minded 12-year-old daughter.

I’m happy to report that I did see the light! Quite literally: It was a sunrise over Las Vegas. Mother and Daughter bonded. I think Daughter may even have murmured, Thank you.

Mother knows best!

###

Of course, I was never on any Greyhound bus ride with my mother in 1964.

So reading this essay made me very snarly indeed.

Fuckin’ liar, I thought.

Pathological lying was a characteristic my mother shared in common with Ben.

But since then, I’ve grown more charitable.

Maybe this was an attempt at fiction.

And even if it wasn’t—what does it matter if people falsify their own narratives?

Especially if their own narratives are all they really own?

###

Anyway, my feelings were dreadfully hurt when Ichabod said he wouldn’t have time to read my diaries.

I continue to think they have some objective worth.

But maybe, they don’t.

Maybe they’re sand paintings.

Whatever, the conversation did make me think that I should find a literary executor.

Two people come to mind.

I had totally forgotten about the time I gave Ben an ultimatum: See a therapist!

And for three months, he “saw” a therapist.

Her name was Dr. Melfi. Dedicated Sopranos fan that I am, you’d think that would have been a dead giveaway. But no-o-o-o, I was like one of those weighted-bottom, blow-up punching bags. Punch the clown! Punch it again! I always believed him.

Every week, he would confide the details of his latest session. A bit reluctantly—they were deeply private, deeply intimate, deeply transformative, after all, these forays into his personal archeology. He was beginning to see patterns.

“But why hasn’t Dr. Melfi sent me a bill?” I asked.

Because, of course, I was paying for the archeological expeditions.

First, she had sent me a bill. But she’d sent it to the wrong address.

Then she’d decided to bill me monthly.

Then she’d decided that Ben was such a unique and striking case that she’d decided not to bill me at all. “She wants to write a paper for a journal,” Ben explained. “About me.”

Well, of course, that was the giveaway. There’s no therapist on the face of the planet who wouldn’t bill a nominal amount. It's part of the therapy.

I think Dr. Melfi was my favorite of all Ben’s many confabulations.

Certainly, recalling their sessions together a dozen years or so after the fact, I found myself laughing merrily.

Though I don’t think laughed at the time.

###

I became reacquainted with Dr. Melfi because I did something last night that I almost never do: I read back over the years 2010, 2011, and 2012 in my own life.

Wow! I thought. From a pure writing point of view, this is very, very good! The absolute nadir of my life, of course. I’d lost a business, I’d lost a house, I was 3,500 miles away from anyone who cared whether I lived or died, and my husband had just walked out on me because I was no longer a viable meal ticket. I was a dead goldfish in a bowl of scummy water. From that point of view, it was terribly embarrassing and hard to read.

But I was writing like an angel.

Complete with great dialogue. And humor.

Even if I hadn’t been reading about myself, this was a page-turner.

It would take you exactly three months to edit this into a memoir, the dissociative Nanny function inside my brain informed me.

I even have the catchy title: Terroir and Jayne LeGro.

###

I do have to say that reacquainting myself with Ben’s asshole behavior left me with no interest whatsoever in attending his (ugh!) Celebration of Life.

Although if I don’t go, RTT will never speak to me again.

And it could be pretty amusing. Particularly if the X-girlfriends square off against each other: I was the one who understood his deep poetic nature the best! No, I was the one who understood his deep poetic nature the best!

I wonder if it’s too late to order a blowup swimming pool and a cubic half-ton of mud so the girls can wrestle.

###

In other news, Darryl’s OD turns out to be heroin-related rather than a suicide attempt.

No wonder he seemed depressed to me!

I’m very glad I informed Lew about the 100 or so morphine pills, and vials and vials of hydrocodone in Ben’s sickroom so that Lew could safely dispose of them. It would have been very bad indeed if these had fallen into Darryl’s hands.

###

Also, early autumn is all around me, as I run through the Vanderbilt estate:







And I found a fabulous dress for the (ugh) Celebration of Life. A Rachel Zoe. Rachel Zoe may be the world’s most obnoxious celebrity but she’s a good designer. I intend to glam the dress up with an enormous broad-brimmed hat, gold sandals, and AOC™ red lipstick. I will be the most beautiful person there and make many scathing remarks.

My revenue generation has fallen short of my goals but may still be sufficient unto my little gray mouse needs.

Here’s hoping.

It really is not possible to live out in the country without a car.

I’m still thinking brakes don’t suddenly go down to metal without warning, and that therefore the grating sound I heard driving back through the Catskills is somehow connected to the exhaust system, which should still be under labor warranty, but who fucking knows?

I’m still operating under the Big Black Cloud that descended upon me – ulp! – eight years ago when I lost my business, my house, my everything.

It has occurred to me, though, that I’m now past whatever dark stains blotched my credit report since credit reports, like skin cells, magically regenerate every seven years.

If I applied for a credit card, I’d probably get it.

And I probably should. Credit cards were made for putting the costs of car repairs on.



In other news, I watched the Anderson Cooper/Gloria Vanderbilt documentary Nothing Left Unsaid.

I was prepared to hate it. Gloria Fucking Vanderbilt! The name that crammed a million fat asses into overly tight designer jeans back in my salad days!

But, in fact, I liked it a lot.

She quotes Mary Gordon: A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe.

[Waving hand wildly] That would be me!

Although wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice and life that turns into a mythology practically the moment it's lived is not me.

I really liked the fact that Vanderbilt’s son, Anderson Cooper, was the person who was interviewing her.

My own kids are utterly uninterested in my life. They love me! Of that, I have no doubt, and Max, at least, is very conscientious about staying in contact with me. We have interesting conversations. But they’re never about my life.

Recently, Max was applying for some sort of… something.

You may consider discussing how your background, life or work experiences, culture, and perspectives would contribute to the diversity of the entering class. You may also describe any adversity that you have overcome, including discrimination, linguistic barriers, or a personal or family history of educational or socioeconomic disadvantage.

“So! Should I go for Deep Springs, growing up in a divorced home, or my relationship with Fletcher*** ?” Max asked me.

*** The privileged bosom pal of Max’s youth who fell into oxycontin abuse, deceit, and ruin, despite the many expensive rehabs his parents were able to place him in.

“You should write about none of those things,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Deep Springs these days is viewed as a bastion of male privilege, and lots of kids grow up in divorced homes. And though Fletcher was your close friend for a long time, ultimately, he passed out of your life.

“I think you should write about what you talked about a couple of weeks ago with your therapist – what we talked about on the phone. That there’s a history of undiagnosed mental illness on my side of the family, and the effects it had on me and subsequently on you. Intergenerational PTSD. That this legacy drew you to social work and ultimately into law school when you realized you wanted more agency.”

He liked the idea, so I emailed him about 20 pages from my journal – keyword: Mother.

But I doubt very much that he’s going to read them.

In fact, I doubt very much that either of my kids is ever going to read my journal, even after I’m dead.

Which makes me start wondering what I should do with my journal. For after I’m dead. Whether I should make any plans for it. I have been keeping it for more than 50 years. Maybe it has some kind of value as a historical document.