Part 13 (1/2)

I sometimes wonder what he would have made of the fact that the house and town my mother and I fled back in 1967 would nourish my creative life for more than three decades I have no idea what he'dhome The part ofto fear there I'm often reminded that many people in Gloversville have embraced my stories and think of ht of returning shouldStreet dreaest, will be overwhelmed by adult responsibilities he's helpless to meet I loved that house and everyone in it I still do Just howafter we closed on the Boston apartating through the unfa on one called A an episode of 77 Sunset Strip, which was followed by Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside 6, all shoatched when I was a boy At so downthat I wasn't in Boston anyrandparents' living room floor, with a pilloadded up under my chin and-I have to say-happy

But I don't want to be a boy again, not ever

I wonder, too, what ht about my mother's life had he been able to see it all the way to the end Would he have blamed himself as a father, as I've sometimes blamed myself as a son? I have little desire to speculate on what his specific regrets ht have been, but he wouldn't have let hirets, as these pages attest, are full and sufficient It's worth saying, I think, that uilt and remorse have little to do withwith my mother, if indeed I understand it now After all, it's only recently that OCD has been recognized for what it is, much less treated effectively What distresses me most is that I o about things For al as I can remember, my personal ; if that doesn't work, try so else Perhaps I ca with an obsessive One thing obsessives have in co else By nature ritualistic, they try the saainst hope that this tiood Their cycles have to be interrupted or they're doomed Perhaps because my mother's were so clearly established when I was a boy and I'd been drawn into them so early, I never had much faith that they could be altered To me they seemed like the tides: necessary, inevitable, much more powerful than I

I no that I should have tried so else Not as a boy, of course, but later as awith, I was not ill equipped to at least try so else For the last two decades ofnovelist, and novelists, if they know anything, should kno important stories are, that narratives often provide the key to things that run deeper in us, in our basic hunosed by even the most skilled physician Given how often I'd heard it, I should have recognized the i of ot new dresses andironies of OCD is that the myriad anxieties of those afflicted invariably have a cole source A person terrified of being abandoned and ending up alone will inevitably develop a series of obsessions and rituals that virtually guarantee this precise result What my mother, a child of the Great Depression, dreaded most was poverty, a fear rooted in her not-at-all-insane conviction that in Aht es, and win its wars, but in the end they don't matter Her need to be free and live independently was real, but that wasn't the point What independence meant to her was that she wouldn't be poor like her parents were, like the people she grew up around had always been, like the nation itself was during her for and her e to my father failed was the possibility that no matter how hard she tried, she'd always co Street from the house where the poorest family on the block lived To her, fear smelled like the olive oil they cooked with because-or so she iined-they couldn't afford butter

Poverty That was the odor that turned her stoested that ”thingsyou knowwon't turn out right,” a thought that scared her worse than death itself Had I understood this in tiift, perhaps everyone's-not failed me, I could at least have

Could have what? The story ends here because I don't kno to co that could've been done, and I don't knohy it should seem so important that I resist the very conclusion that would let rim, scientific determinisnaw and worry and bury and unearth anything that resists comprehension But who knows? Maybe it's just hubris, a stubborn insistence that if we keep trying one thing after another, we can coerce the ineffable into finally expressing itself How tantalizingly close it seeue before slipping away But no doubt I' ments

No memoirist likes to admit to a poor memory, but that, alas, is what I'rateful toor out of sequence I', who set ht about some events fro sister, and if she'd known at the time to what use I meant to put our conversations about ht not have been so forthco, of course, II', for all the Gloversville skin-mill stories they shared withdespite the best efforts of my family is my fault, not theirs

Despite e Vincent DeSantis for sending me his book about Gloversville I suspect we each love our hometown, if for very different reasons And special thanks to John Freeht , and to soe way to repay such an enormous debt All I can say is, this isn't a story I tried to reet But despite otten, and I hope that that's because it's true in the ways that matter most

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