ARMOUR

Late afternoon after I finished editing a writer’s pages, resting on my bed while charging up the phone, I watched a replay of Anderson Cooper talking to Stephen Colbert reflecting on boyhood and loss.

“So,” Anderson said, “the greatest gift is to exist. Even when the thing you love most has been lost. You find how deep love can go.” He has this silken smile. “And all that mishigas,” he said.

"I love that you know Yiddish," I laughed and pushed an imaginary flight of gold dust across the glass face of my cell phone.

When Stephen asked what Anderson wished, Anderson said, "I wish, actually, that I had a scar." Then they spoke of writers they loved.

“Jon Stewart,” one of them said, “is Mark Twain for the digital age.”

They spoke of Fran Lebowitz. I wanted to leap in. “I know her too, we like each other very much!”

“And Vonnegut,” Anderson said.

“Yes!” I so wanted to tell them my Vonnegut story.

But now Stephen was speaking of losing his brothers and his Dad when he was about ten. “My mother had 11 children,” he said. “In a way, she started her own theater.”

Anderson had lost his half-brother. The line I will treasure forever is: “They hang like the moon in your mind.” Either Stephen or Anderson might have said that.

Today's finest poets survive not by attachments to Royal courts, but by talk shows, interviews with the best of each other, and visits to my Sunday Zoom meeting. The moon hangs in our minds on the best nights. I wonder if the networks know they are serving us, often with the fine, deeply loved theater of our time. These are my companions. Around the dark blue velvet chair, where I sit, I view hallucinations of my own grand- and great grandchildren, who light up the moon and swing by my balcony, rather like characters in a commercial who fly high on a rope over a rainbow. Late night TV, you know, is Oz.

Just now, a friend dropped by, masked, with something for us to eat. We sat far apart across from each other with the big coffee table in the middle. My custom now is to set plates with forks, knives, and napkins out on the other side of the table for Anderson and Rachel Maddow. This is my intriguing new life. It has a plan, a pattern, so I don’t miss the old patterns or places or lost people quite so much.

“You know,” I said to my friend, “if you put on a hypnotic deep stare at the faces in the TV, you can believe they do see you. This way I have real conversations. Lawrence O'Donnell is great company too. When Rachel's love, Susan, was attacked by covid-19, her intimate expressions brought me to tears.

Talking to these intense personalities on TV is one thing, but each attempt I make to join up with the faces on my Zoom gatherings misses a beat.

“You forgot to unmute yourself!”

“We can hear you, but you can't hear us!”

“I know,” I shout.

Fictional reality is not new to me. As a child, my room was my theater; I had marionettes swinging on a bar by a small stage. An old hatbox of my grandmother's held their feathered hats, cloaks, and jewelry. With a white theater I painted with gold curves, friends would each choose a character to play. There were masses of hats and costumes. I was never neat. But everything provided amusement and action for my friends who wanted to put on a show rather than ride horses. Tarquin Olivier, Danny Selznick, Lupita Kohner, Connie Stothart (whose father wrote the music for The Wizard of Oz)…they were all there. Perched in a small rocker by the stage was a Knight in Shining Armour (about three feet high with his heavy mask, which usually sat upon his knee.) Leaning against his armour was a long sword in its scabbard. I called him Tyrone, named for Tyrone Power, the star who gave the knight to my mother after she painted his portrait.

And now, 70 years later, he’s sitting next to the piano across from my drawing easel. Life is a circle.

Slowly during this evening as I watched Rachel with tears and looked at Anderson’s tender concern, I spoke to my friend about loss. I feel a rise of my spirit in my ability to act out a reality I wish to select for the moment. I choose “actors” to dine with because I have only two people in reality who can visit. And I feel more at ease with friends I’ve never met. As I listen to their stories, they often bring me back to the heart of my own life, my own experience as an American journalist on the radio. This feeling had faded during the colorful adventures I had overseas, a time when I focused on the busy life with my romantic Englishman. (As gleaming and overwhelming in his presence as Tyrone the Knight.) A total distraction. I look back now; we were glamorous claimants, again under the tarnishing armour. Our consciousness of family we’d left behind slammed firm under the helmet with it screwed on a metal visor; you could see only a narrow view when the visor was down. I wore the visor down during these years. My view was a kaleidoscope of color, fashion, music, astonishing lovemaking, and feeling very beautiful.

However, seeing Rachel struggle this evening, her honesty, make-up off as she spoke and wept for her concerns for Susan, her lover, I saw her for real. And I told my friend about Stephen’s and Anderson’s losses. “They were only ten years old. Imagine,” I was tearing up now, “how hard it is when you’re only ten.”

“You okay?” my friend asked.

“I think my children were that age when they were rescued from chaos by their father and his new wife,” I said.

“Let me get you some tea. You’ve never talked about this.”

I try not to look back and see what happened when. I made amends for all the stepfathers. The one who disappeared. The boyfriend who’s gang stole all the silver when I was off on a travel assignment--my son and his buddies got the silver back. And the one who stole the car. I began to place the pieces together. No matter how long ago it was, you want to run back and change the story.

I had not been able to pay the rent. I'd missed a deadline on a Cosmo article. The children's Nanny hadn't been paid in awhile. I knew I’d do better in New York where my parents were. A friend said I could get a room in Chelsea (I think I've told that story. You will find out!) So I just up and went to New York. The unforgivable part is branded on my heart and scarred on my soul forever. Anderson said something about wanting a scar--I know what he means. I cannot have too many scars.

After my friend went home, I looked up the date. It was 1968. So my son had been ten and my daughter was eight. I could see them so clearly. Looking way up to our little house. The sea was only a block or so away. My children used to walk with their best friends to school up the street, the responsible Friday newspaper they put together tucked under their arms. Now I could see those two little people being told Mom had “just moved.” Up and disappeared.

Odd how the truth does turn up, long after it's not clear how much use that can be; and, then, how much the impact of its arrival can cost. Whimsy helps when reality is still too tough to deal with. So, you write, and you find One More Story you've been too scared to tell.

Armour

By Jill Schary Robinson