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D R A M A_ Q U E E N

This won't hurt a bit! Ever been brought to tears while lying on your back with your legs open in front of a stange doctor? Share your tales of gynecological woe in Drama Queen for a Day contest.

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T A B L E_ T A L K

Do you help your kid with assignments and school projects? Weigh in on covert homeschooling in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

The worst trip ever
By Susan McCarthy
A sweaty cross-country trek in a 1937 Plymouth with two cranky siblings, a kangaroo rat in a box and a pogo stick turns into family legend
(10/20/98)

Beautiful Dreamer
By Lisa Kleinman
Babies No. 1 and 2 had to suffer through less-than-perfect strollers. But baby No. 3 will have the ideal ride -- that is, if there is a baby No. 3
(10/19/98)

Turtle time
By Anne Lamott
Salon welcomes back Anne Lamott after a six-month hiatus, and she announces she has overcome Linda Tripp, an expanding waistline and her compulsion to keep writing books
(10/15/98)

Time For One Thing: Acupuncture
By Lisa Moskowitz
My muscles relax. My eyes close. There is no real pain, just the apprehension of pain
(10/14/98)

Wild Things: Strange brew
By Polly Shulman
Love and art are the twin redeemers for the hipster heroes and heroines of Francesca Lia Block's young adult novels
(10/13/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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MOMMY'S LITTLE ACCESSORY | PAGE 1, 2
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Was your mother aware of how unhappy you were when you were growing up?

She was not aware of me at all, except on the surface. If I looked like a reasonably well-put-together accessory then I could be acknowledged as that. But what went on inside me or what I needed or felt or suffered was potentially terribly distressing to her. So she had to shut that out, like a horse with blinders, so that she could look straight ahead to do her work.

You write that you fell in love with tap dancing and horseback riding. But all of these things were taken away from you. Why did your mother deprive you of the things that made you happy?

Horseback riding made you messy and smelly -- you could rip your clothes and it wasn't controllable. Since the surface was everything, controlling that surface was important.

So where did you find comfort?

In my imagination. In my peculiar set of superstitions. In fairy tales. In Greek mythology. I loved those stories. It was another kind of social order; you could fly and overcome the forces of darkness and get your way.

As a child you would go to sleep at night and make up your own stories. Do you think this was the birth of yourself as writer?

I first tried to be visual in my expression by drawing pictures. But my mother would look at my drawings and correct them -- she'd say, "That's no way to draw a face! This is how you do it." And she would deface my picture. So I quickly found a way to find my own place, which was with words. But it was my second choice.

After your parents separated when you were 3 years old, your father, whom you described as a Cary Grant look-alike, would visit often. Did you feel loved by him?

I don't know I could ever have defined it as that. I felt he at least talked to me. I never had conversations with my mother. But when he came to visit we interacted. However superficial it might have been, it was the concentrated gaze of an adult who wasn't getting paid to do it. He seemed to be amused by my ability with words. And that gave me an enormous sense of power. I could make him laugh.

Your parents, even though they separated and eventually divorced, seemed to have a particular connection with each other that no one else was able to supplant.

It was very odd, because why on earth they married was unfathomable. But even more unfathomable is what kept them together for so long since they were so ill-matched. But the fact is, my father remained extremely good-looking, which for my mother was magical, seductive and had enduring power. He was impressed that other people were impressed by her. His connection to her became a feather in his cap.

Did your mother ever give her heart truly to somebody?

No. I may be selling her short but it seemed she needed so much to defend herself against the fear that was in her heart. She didn't believe in therapy. She was against it in the same way she was against feminism and civil rights -- she thought it was a sign of weakness. She thought we should be able to solve our own problems.

When was the height of your mother's fame?

She got a lot of press in the '30s. In the war years and right after, she began to be bigger and bigger. By the '50s she was up there in this rarefied group of designers whose clothes and workmanship qualified as couture. It lasted until the early '60s, at which point there was another revolution in clothes. She was dressing older women at that point rather than young girls and we had the explosion of Twiggy and the silhouettes of Courreges, which looked rather little girlish. And my mother never adapted to that. She always had the glamorous grownup as her model.

You wrote that the first time you saw your mother pinning a dress up you got very upset. Was that a little like seeing the "man behind the curtain" in the Wizard of Oz?

I did not expect things to look so grubby. She was on her knees on a cement floor -- this is what housekeepers and cleaners did. It was not a position I could ever imagine her in. And yet there she was, pinning fabric with total concentration as if it were something wonderful. Of course, there is a secret grubbiness to art. The hard work that goes with making art is not something we imagine. That's what they said about Fred Astaire -- it was effortless, as if the dance was created whole. But the amount of work that went into a Fred Astaire dance was never seen. And that was the idea. It must look perfect. It must look as if it came from divine inspiration without the dreadful details of daily living and struggle.

In fairy tales, the fairy godmother touches Cinderella with a wand and suddenly she is gorgeous and is wearing the most beautiful dress in the world, which came from air. That's how I thought dresses were made.

You wrote that she was unable to change with the times, like choosing not to design pantsuits. Was that because these clothes were unattractive to her?

She did want to do some of that but her partners talked her out of it.

Your mother was a determined career woman. Yet, as you write in the book, she deferred to her business partners to the point that she didn't even realize that they were cheating on the firm's income taxes.

She was a conventional, feminine person and liked being thought of that way. She liked having men do things for her -- perform duties, be responsible, be adoring. She thought that somehow her talent was a block to these things, that it made her less feminine, so she made up for it by being naive about money and business, whether it was her brother who gave her bad advice or her partners who she entrusted with her own destiny, her finances and her talent.

Yet she always made sure she had beautiful things -- like the time she bought herself a diamond and ruby bracelet during the Depression. Was she proud of her success or disappointed and angry that as a woman, she had to take care of herself?

Both. She never acknowledged that what she had achieved was a kind of feminist ideal. There was a scene in one of my books where she was lunching with women friends and they played this game of putting their new acquisitions on the table. Each one would admire the new acquisition of the other. And I said to her, "Does it not strike you that when this ritual occurs that you are the only one at the table who has earned these pieces for herself?"

She laughed and said she was aware of that but then added, "I have been cursed with talent and therefore don't have a man who will love me enough to give me things." I was stunned by that.

How did she feel about the emerging women's movement in the '60s?

She did not consider herself a feminist and had no sympathy for the struggles of women. And when feminism, or women's liberation as she persisted in calling it, was in the news, she got angry and would say, "I made it on my own. I didn't need a movement. I didn't need to be shrill and strident and demanding. I was just really good and I got to be where I am by doing my work extraordinarily well and people appreciated it."

It was a messy movement. It exposed people's lives, their unhappiness, their inequality. It disrupted the surface of things.

She disapproved of people being open about things she felt should remain undisclosed.

What was your mother's relationship to your writing?

She didn't acknowledge my writing. I had some success as a reporter and editor before I wrote fiction. She questioned me closely on how I got this particular job as an editor for a magazine. I was very young for the title and salary. She was for a moment quite competitive, which was a shock, because it never occurred to me that I was boasting that I had bested her -- only that it was so wonderful for me.

Was she afraid of you surpassing her?

I wondered if she was competitive with me because I was not feeling competitive with her. I had gone so far away from anything remotely connected to her turf that I felt I had eliminated the possibility of her putting me down, and then there it was. I was surprised by that.

What about when you started to be well-known for your fiction?

It was a peculiar moment because her career was winding down. She had mixed feelings about it. She began to be pleased because she could ride on a coattail. My first novel, "Such Good Friends," was published in 1970. And coincidentally, that was the year her company went out of business.

Was she happy for you?

When the book became a movie and a bestseller, she was pleased. When my second book came out and got what she thought was a favorable review in the New York Times, she said she wanted to give me a party, which was remarkable -- it was the first time she ever addressed me as a separate person.

So how did you learn to forge an identity separate from simply being your mother's daughter?

By becoming a writer. Having that much control over yourself and over your material is amazingly empowering.

What is your relationship to fashion today?

I'm very attracted to clothes. I dress well. And yet, I'm not really taken with the current scene in fashion. Most of it is for the camera and the publicity and not for its wearability. There are a couple of designers I think are terrifically talented. Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gaultier. I like the fact that they play with the vocabulary of clothes. I like their wit. I think my mother would have admired them too.

Did your mother exhibit wit in her designs?

Rarely, but she did sometimes use an unexpected color lining or a fur collar that ended up not being attached to a jacket. I never thought she had a sense of humor about anything. And yet, there's that. And I say, well, here's something that she did that went beyond just trying to look pretty.

At the end of your book you describe your mother's whistle, which she would occasionally unleash on unsuspecting taxi drivers, as "tremulous, lyrical and achingly sweet."

She had this spectacular, surprising aspect of her, which gave me great pleasure.

How do you feel now about your mother's success, her talents, her extraordinariness?

I'm grateful for it. I've come to the point where I realize it is a source of inspiration for me despite all my struggles against it. I'm grateful to have reached this awareness. It inspires my work, my life, my ability to survive losses and setbacks.

Your mother was a survivor -- she was born as her mother died giving birth to her; she survived bad marriages and multiple abortions, including one that was self-induced with a knitting needle. And she was a woman who built a successful career during the Depression. Was this her lasting legacy to you -- this gift of knowing how to survive?

There's a grace in watching a swan but knowing the furious struggle of the swan's legs below the water. The struggle is never visible, and is an unattractive process. Yet they achieve spectacular beauty, an unearthly grace, almost like an epiphany.
SALON | Oct. 21, 1998

Dayna Macy is a regular contributor to Salon. Her previous articles include "Creating a Life."