Anyone who has been reading this blog for at least six months, has seen the name Joyce Maynard pop up here, from time to time. I have been following Joyce's career--for better or for worse; for both of us--ever since that pivotal Sunday in 1972, when she published, as the cover story of The New York Times Magazine, her essay, "An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back On Life," which sent me into a tailspin of resentment, (as it did many of my age, though I did not realize it, at the time!!!!!!!!) over not only Joyce's perceptions, which were substantially different from mine, but that it ought to have been I who was published. But, that was then, this is now. Whenever a Joyce Maynard piece comes along, I not only find myself more accepting and agreeable toward it, I view it with a world weary, "What's she up to now?"
Well, darlings, lately Joyce has been up to, and saying, a lot! Mostly about J.D.Salinger, in light of how pigs like David Edelstein deal with the horrible situation he put her through, viewing she, not JDS, as the abuser.. And, while I have not seen the film yet, I plan to, and look forward to hearing Joyce on camera.
One person Joyce hasn't spoken much about is her older sister, Rona. For three quarters of the time that I have been reading Joyce, I have pictured Rona as simply an older version of her sister. On the basis of one sentence in "Looking Back--A Chronicle Of Growing Up Old In The Sixties," (1973) my soul perception of Rona Maynard has been of some Joan Baez wannabe still hanging out in Harvard Square, with a guitar. Which, four decades later, you can see is not true.
Amidst all the talk about Joyce and Salinger that has emerged in the past week--some by Joyce, herself--I was intrigued by a re-examination of Katha Pollitt's original 1998 review of Joyce's memoir of that year, "At Home In The World." I still have my first edition copy, with the original cover, signed by Joyce. In that review, Pollitt describes Joyce's mother, Fredells, and her approaches to child rearing, at least with her younger daughter, as "a psychiatrist's nightmare." (And when a later edition of the book was issued,with an almost underage looking Joyce cuddled in a chair, while Fredelle hovers over her, this almost seemed to confirm that idea!!!!!!!) If I were Joyce Maynard, I would be more disturbed by this than anything said about a relationship with Salinger. Taking pot shots at a parent? If it had been mine, I never would have allowed it!!!!!!!!!!!
Which begs me to ask the question--Are all mothers a psychiatrist's nightmare? Pollitt goes on to catalog Fredelle's frustrations, suggesting that Joyce's child rearing, right up to her almost encouraging Joyce to take up with Salinger, was the manifestation of everything she (Fredelle) was frustrated with, about herself!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is that true, I wonder, of all mothers?????????? Mine had plenty to be frustrated about. The way I understand it, the story goes like this--my mother, a career oriented youth, graduated from Muhlenberg Hospital Nursing School, Plainfield, New Jersey, in the early Thirties. She worked as a nurse there, where she met a young intern, from South Jersey, Alfred Scaccia. Around 1938, (so I guess) they were married, and, in May of 1939, a child was conceived. But, in between conception and birth, Alfred developed an inoperable (especially in those days) brain tumor; by the time the child was born, he had died, and my mother, at the young age of 25, was a widow. She and her husband had bought a house in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where he was preparing to start a practice, and she to begin life as a doctor's wife. When the dust settled, after the tragedy, she and her parents, living n Highland Park, bought a house in that town--166 North Tenth Avenue. It was a two family house, then.--her parents lived upstairs, my mother and her daughter, down. She raised the child as a single parent, being fortunate enough to have my grandmother at home to look after this daughter during the day, while she worked for a pediatrician in Plainfield, Frederick W. Lathrop.
And that is how things pretty much went, until 1947, when, on November 26 of that year, my mother married the man who became my father.
How heartbreaking and frustrating it had to have been, to have faced so much, at such a young age. To make matters worse, Dr. Scaccia was a Roman Catholic, which my mother was not. Which did not quite make her parents happy. Even worse, when it came time to bury the good doctor, he could not be laid to rest in the Catholic section of the cemetery--because his wife was a non-Catholic, who had not yet finished her conversion instructions. Which she never did. And which left her with a profound distaste for Roman Catholicism.
So, what did she do? She married a Catholic again!!!!!!!!!! In 1947, because of my mother, my parents could not be wed at the altar; it had to be done, stage right, in the sacristy!!!!!!!!!!! She also married into a heavily--because of the Irishness--Catholic family, where the daughters, unlike my mother, were uneducated, and whose husbands were distinctly more blue collar than my father and his brothers, (all of whom went to Fordham University!!!!!!!!) which made for a great deal of social class division within our family. The blue collar factions tried to Lord things over the white collar ones.
When my parents married, they were well into their thirties. By the time I was born, in November of 1954, my mother had just turned forty; a shocking age, at that time, for a woman to have a baby. Add to this, my myriad of health problems--premature birth, epilepsy, and a ventricular defect in the heart! How frustrated and anxious my parents must have been! All parents make mistakes, and there have been some I was quick to lay the blame for on them. But, when I can look back over the spectrum of time that produced them, I can have less resentment than I did, and more of an appreciation for what was going on. Things that might have seemed important to me (and might have been dealt with, had I been
in better health) were jettisoned, because my parents' sole priority was keeping me alive!!!!!!!!!! After May 10, 1966, when I had my open heart surgery, I asked my parents what would have happened if I hadn't had the surgery. My mother said my body would have given out, and I would have died, at the age of 14!!!!!!!!!!! And here I am, 44 years later!
Just as Joyce and Rona do not mention one another too often, I hardly share this part of my story. I should mention that my mother and Alfred Scaccia's child, who was named Beverly Ann, I consider as much a sibling had we been born of the same set of parents (It was not till I was almost ten years old that I learned, or understood, we were not of the same father. And that her name was Beverly Ann, not, as I had known from birth, Penny. It was only in my forties, thanks to my niece, Penny's daughter, that I discovered the sad story of how this came about. While my mother was pregnant, and Alfred still alive, he remarked, at one point, "That child is like a lost penny to me. So, in memoriam, my mothr nicknamed her Penny. As most, to this day, still call her.) And I have more connection to her than some of my more low class relations, who treated me rather shoddily during that painful transition from adolescence to adulthood. For, if there was anything more to frustrate my mother, how about this--I turned out to be gay!!!!!!!!!!!!
My mother's death came at a rather early point in my life. I was 24, but a rather immature young adult, still living at home, still finding my way. She had been a smoker since I could recall, so that she died from lung cancer was no real surprise; I just thought she would have had some more time. But, to this day, I have to wonder, how much did the frustrations of her life, which she had to deal with, have in beating her down????????????
So, to a large extent, I can sort of understand the whole Joyce and Rona thing! When I read some of Rona's stuff, it seems they know each is out there, and is fine with things as they are. They will never play Blanche and Jane Hudson; they don't strike me as actress-y enough. They may never form a sister singing group. But there is a part of me who would just love to see them decked out in sexy Santa suits, hats included, arms entwined, legs kicking, singing the following words--
"Lord help the Mister,
Who comes between me and my Sister!
And Lord help the Sister,
Who comes between me and my Man!!!!!!!!!"
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