Lady Parts (8 page)

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m in Atlanta,” I said unapologetically. “I just got my hair done and it looks fabulous.”

“Atlanta?” she asked, surprised.

“Yup, Atlanta. Flew here this morning. I know it’s crazy.” I was laughing now. “But that’s the way it is. That’s who I am. I fly to Atlanta to get my hair cut.”

“Well, I can’t wait to see the new you.”

“Fabulous,” I said. “And I can’t wait to show you.”

Christmas Eve, 1959

“‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Let your heart be light …’”

Mommy is singing. She is getting dressed for a party she is about to throw for twenty guests. We are in her bedroom. She wears only pantyhose and high heels as she wiggles around her room. I am lying on her bed, watching her. I’m twelve.

“Andrea, pass me my bra, sweetheart.”

She continues singing.

“‘From now on, our troubles will be out of sight …’”

Mommy studies herself in the full-length mirror.

“My breasts look great,” she says. “They are definitely my best feature.”

I feel shy. Something about watching my mother parade around topless feels inappropriate, and yet I can’t keep my
eyes off her body. I ask my mom a question, but she doesn’t respond. She’s busy looking at herself. She turns sideways and holds in her stomach.

“Sybil Martin,” she says out loud, “you are one classy lady.”

“Mommy, can I ask you something? Mommy, are you listening?”

“Honey, go fix me another drink, and we’ll talk about anything you want. V.O. Manhattan in a snifter, shaken not stirred. Oh, what am I saying, you know how to make it. Hurry, the party starts at seven.”

My mother would have been eighty-five years old today if she had lived past her seventieth birthday. My mother died from a very painful lung cancer in January 1993. I’m not sure to this day that I mourned her death properly. I have an idea of how children should behave when one of their parents dies. And my behaviour was nowhere near what my expectations were. I have learned since my mom’s death that everyone mourns differently, and that there should be no judgment on the way someone mourns. But I still can’t forgive myself. I still feel I have done something wrong.

“What is the matter with you, Andrea, curled up in a ball? You’re a moody one. Life is too short to spend feeling sorry for yourself. What did you want to ask me?”

“Nothing, Mommy.”

I hear the doorbell ring. Oh no, the guests are starting to arrive.

“Andrea, honey, can you answer the door? Show them to the bar, and bring me my drink. Your mother’s going to make an entrance tonight. We don’t live in a two-storey house with a winding staircase for nothing.”

My mom’s name was Sybil. Sybil Angel Manougian. Isn’t that exotic? Just like my mother. She was born to Angel Stepanian and Arax Manougian in Portland, Maine, in 1922. She grew up with three brothers and one sister in poverty in a three-room flat in the immigrant section of downtown Portland. The children shared one bed, the house was seldom heated, and rats lived in the walls. Sybil and her sister, Dorothy, had the daily task of walking to the corner bakery, where, with a few pennies, they bought
day-old bread for the family. Arax, their father, was born a Christian Armenian in Van, Turkey. In 1918, fleeing persecution and massacre, he left his homeland and arrived in Portland. He could not support his family with the few dollars he received each week as a neighbourhood barber, and his growing alcoholism eventually prevented him from providing for them at all. Angel, his wife, who was fifteen when Arax sent for her from Armenia to marry him, was a child herself, spoke no English, and had no knowledge as to how to raise five children on her own. When my mom was seventeen, she met my dad, John Papazian Martin, who was seven years her senior.

She quit high school at the insistence of her father, who believed that my dad would provide for her and rescue her from a life of poverty. My dad and mom got married in
1944, at the height of the Second World War. They moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was stationed with the air force. My mom was lonely and isolated, miles away from her family and friends. Her dreams of being a singer and living a creative life were no longer a reality. Her job now was to be a good wife.

Mommy is trying on many outfits for the party. She takes out a turquoise kimono and holds it in front of her.

“Look at this. The drycleaners shrunk it. They may adore me like all my homosexual friends do, but they don’t know how to run a business. They should go back to hairdressing, where everyone was happy. Now go get ready.”

“I am ready,” I say.

“What do you mean, that’s what you’re wearing? You look like a waif. Okay, you know what? I’m too old to argue. It’s your body. You have to live with it.”

She picks out a pretty black sparkly sweater and a black sparkly skirt to wear. “Zip me up, sweetheart.”

“Mommy, can I stay at Daddy’s tonight? I don’t want to go to the party.”

“No, you are not going out on Christmas Eve with your father and that woman. You will see him tomorrow. As long as we are both alive, your father will come here every holiday and carve the family turkey. We may not be together, but he’s the best thing that ever happened to this family. He’s not good enough for me, but he’s still your father.”

Mommy hands me her lipstick, then continues singing.

“‘Christmas comes but once a year.’”

“Come over here, Andrea. Help Mommy with her makeup and we’ll practise our duet.”

My grandfather was correct: my dad did provide for my mom. After the war, they settled back again in Portland. By then my dad had worked his way up from being a stock boy in a grocery store to owning one. I don’t think my mom and dad were ever in love. He was both charmed and annoyed at her vivaciousness and flair, and at the same time took great satisfaction in providing for her. My mom had enormous respect for my dad’s business savvy but felt constrained in her role as a housewife. In 1947, I was born. My mom was twenty-four years old. My sister, Marcia, was born two and half years later, and eight years after Marcia, my brother, Peter, was born.

Marcia (
left
), me (
centre
), Peter (
right
)

My dad’s businesses were flourishing—now three grocery stores and a restaurant—but my mom felt increasingly trapped. She wanted to work. He didn’t want her to be away from the house and the family. Eventually, she convinced him to allow her to take art classes. A few years later, she became instrumental in nurturing and developing the careers of many young artists in Maine. She named one of my dad’s restaurants, The Art Gallery, and hung paintings by emerging Maine artists on every wall. She was responsible for the sale of hundreds of paintings, though she never received an agent’s commission. She was proud of her accomplishments and soon became a respected and beloved figure in Maine’s art community. When I was twelve, my parents separated, but they were never legally divorced. After my mom’s death, my dad would remarry, but while my mom was alive, my dad and she remained a constant presence in each other’s lives.

“Look at you, Andrea. You’re Mommy’s little doll. The little doll I never had growing up. And then I had you. My own real dolly. I used to dress you like a little princess. I’d iron your little socks, and your ribbons, and your underpants. Then I’d put you in a carriage and show you off to all the neighbours, and if they wanted to touch you, I’d say, ‘No, get away, that’s my doll.’”

I like it when my mommy tells me stories about when I was a little girl. I wish she would keep talking, but she stops.

“Okay, you know what? I don’t have time to be sad. Being
depressed is not at all becoming for a Martin. It’s Christmas Eve. People are counting on us to be the life of the party. Jesus died for our sins; it’s the least we can do.”

My mother
was
the life of the party. She was the original Auntie Mame. Everyone loved being around her. She would hold court, captivating her audience with a great story in her dramatically raspy voice, then laughing infectiously. She loved to entertain. My friends adored her. My husband adored her. My kids adored her. She was a true original, a life force, uninhibited, gregarious, flirtatious, and fun. “Bob,” she would say, looking up at my husband as she sat perched in her favourite chair, “hand me my crossword puzzle and my drink and come over here.”

“Yes, Sybil.”

“I love you, you know that, but our Andrea, she doesn’t know how to treat a man.”

Mom would never back down from a heated conversation. Her word was the last one. Dynamic, she oozed personality, like a movie star from the ’40s. She was Bette Davis, traipsing around the room, delivering a soliloquy, gesticulating with one hand and holding a Manhattan in the other.

We were at a family dinner party at Marty and Nancy Short’s home in the late ’80s. Marty’s sister, Nora, was there with her husband, Ralph, who was reserved and introverted. Nora and my mom were like two peas in a pod, outgoing
and loud, and they loved their cocktails. They had been laughing together for hours. Mom stood up in the middle of the dinner and made a toast. “To Nora, my friend,” she said, holding up her glass and sounding like Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard.
“Nora, darling, we have
got
to find you a man.” She then sat down, continued pontificating, and was oblivious to the rest of the table’s stunned silence.

“Go put on your prettiest party dress for Mommy and a great big smile. Smile. I know there’s a smile. I love you. Listen, sweetheart, tonight it would really mean a lot to Mommy if you didn’t call her Mommy. Call me Sybil. Okay? Especially in front of the general. Let me hear you say it. ‘Sybil.’”

“Sybil.”

“That’s right. I love you. How do I look?”

“Pretty, Mommy.”

“Well, then, let us go.”

Mom was visiting me and my sons in Pacific Palisades in 1992. She was noticeably tired, resting more than usual and staying in bed past her standard 6 a.m. wake-up, when the typical routine would have been to put on her exercise clothes, sip a cup of strong black coffee, and do sit-ups and leg raises in her room. She no longer had interest in cooking for us, something she had always taken great pride in. With
her endless energy, she had always been able to outrun her grandsons, but now instead she slept on the couch for hours every day. She returned to Portland, where her doctor delivered the devastating news. She had lung cancer and a year to live. She was sixty-nine years old. She had not smoked for over forty years and was a specimen of good health.

Over the next year, I travelled often from Los Angeles to Maine to be with my mom. I read books by Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as I tried to make peace with this incomprehensible disease. I joined a meditation group. I took massage classes so I could learn how to touch her and alleviate some of her pain. I knit blankets for her, socks for her, anything I could to comfort my mother.

Mom was very sick with only a few weeks to live the last time I visited her. She was in agony from the cancer, which had spread to the lining of the pleura. Every breath she took was torture. She had a morphine drip implanted and a nurse stayed with her round the clock.

We were in her bedroom. She was sitting in a chair and I was sitting on the floor by her side. “Mommy, would you like me to massage your feet?” I asked.