february 1 everybody loves me but you Picked up The Angel on the Roof., a collection of stories by Russell Banks. I stumbled across some of his other books years ago: Continental Drift and The Book of Jamaica were revelations: The first truly adult books I "got," which should explain a bit about how young I was when reading them. (I'd tried Updike's Rabbit books earlier on, and got lost as to the point.) Some books you just have to experience when you're in the right place to read them, and Banks hit me at just the right time. This was pre-The Sweet Hereafter and pre-Atom Egoyan's dark, disturbing filmic version of the book, and nobody really knew who he was; I saw more Russell Baker than Russell Banks on the shelves.
I got my Sweet Hereafter book autographed at the Boston Public Library when it came out, but never got around to reading it. And though I picked up Cloudsplitter, it never took, and I realized that he'd gone all literary and respectable on me (and not a little belly-button-staring, which is an euphemism a friend and I made up for "literary" fiction in which nothing happens, there's just a lot of staring out of windows and useless inaction that somehow is "deep"). So I didn't have much hope for this collection. He's lived up to form in the belly-button area, but some of the stories are moving and disturbing despite their soft plots.
But it was the introduction that sank its teeth into me, and it is that voice in the introduction that will likely keep me reading further. He talks a lot about the stories his parents told him about their lives prior to his birth, and he notes that they often have little to do with reality. This jibes solidly with what I've been exploring recently, the "myths" we learn about our childhood, our parents' childhood. A lot of it makes sense until you examine it with the lens of an adult -- we all have the "myth" of our birth, for example. Under a microscope, many of them reveal more than we ever were expected to know. All of that leads up to my wanting to print my favorite quote from Banks's introduction. He says: "One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, I hope that you will love me for no good reason." Indeed. He goes on: "But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another -- to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends and to strangers. Especially to strangers, who have neither good nor bad reasons to love us. And it's why we tell each other stories that we pray will be transformed in the telling by that angel on the roof, made believable and about us all, no matter who we are to one another and who we are not."
Earlier this evening, while tidying up a room in my apartment, I was moving some books and out came a pamphlet from the late 1970s entitled Your Dieting Atlas: Charting Your Course To Successful Weight Loss. The cover is like a road map of a relatively unpopulated area, but full of "towns" like "Sweet Tooth" and "Waist-Land." I know for a fact this was my mother's, and at some point that it came into my possession is no major surprise. Weight issues may be genetic, but they're certainly more easily passed down through behavior. I flipped it open, wondering if I should just toss it out, and found on the inside front cover a few numbers clearly in mom's handwriting:
Date Calories
5-21-79 760
5-22-79 680
5-23-79 613
5-24-79 857
5-25-79 802
5-26-79 882And there it stops. Just a few numbers, even fewer words and I had to have a sit down on the edge of the bed, getting a picture more invented, yet more clear, than anything mom has ever told me about Life In Those Days. Primarily because I've traveled down those dreadful roads; secondarily because the numbers make me wince: They're starvation numbers. Later it came to mind that in 1979 I was almost ten, my brother almost eight. A person working full time, with a ten and eight year old, trying to slim down on starvation numbers. It hurt in a dull, but persistent way, and I thought: She was in her thirties, older than me, but not by much. I looked closer at the numbers and I can almost hear my own thoughts in their progression -- like a weight scientist I can hear the psychology. She starts out religious on Monday, feels great about it, euphoric and sails into Tuesday and Wednesday. After three days she's already fatiguing, and shoots up -- relatively -- just after her lowest day. Guilty, she drops a little back into Thursday, then gives up by Friday, going up yet again. A week in the life, ending with something along the lines of "I suck, I can't even get down to 500 calories a day. I suck, I'm fat, I'm trapped. Let's eat." Of course, I don't know these things. It's a myth I've made up, supported by bare facts. But I can't throw away the pamphlet now. What I'm wondering is if I should show it to her, and if upon seeing it we would have anything to say except: "I know."
Mom is one of the few people I know who has always loved me for no good reason.
