Fiction Ruined My Family Read Free

based on her parents, Sara and Gerald Murphy. She’s the living continuation of the American social novel.” This was just a normal direction from my father, like “Don’t slouch at the dinner table .” I want you to pay attention to this woman tonight because she is the living continuation of THE American social novel. Okay, Dad. “Dorothy Parker was her nanny. Played on the beach in Antibes with Picasso.” All right, all right. I heard ya.
    In addition to socializing with the local literati, my parents also hosted a number of friends from St. Louis that summer—ironic since the reason we’d come here in the first place was to escape the old routines. One of the first people to visit was my father’s old friend Eileen Ellsworth, a divorcée with a six-year-old son, who came, too. Physically, Eileen was the exact opposite of my mother. Tall, brunette, olive-complected, leathery-looking. Like my mother, Eileen was a depressive. I never imagine tall people as prone to depression but she was that, a tall depressive. She was quick and theoretically funny. Her voice was deep and theatrical and I hated her. There wasn’t a story my father could tell too many times as far as Eileen was concerned. “Oh, that is wonderful, Steve,” she’d say, drying her eyes and fluffing her mane.
    Even at seven I understood that my mother was fighting this woman for my father, one beguiling depressive battling it out with another for the affection of a novelist. Classic stuff, been going on since the beginning of time. I had no idea why a woman who threatened my mother so completely, a woman I was sure was his mistress, had come to the East End of Long Island to stay with us. But, as always, manners were important; you wouldn’t want to offend your husband’s lover by insinuating she wasn’t welcome in your home.
    At cocktail hour the night Eileen Ellsworth arrived, my mother was in a T-shirt and dungarees, as she called them, sitting with my father in the living room. Eileen came down the stairs in a silky blouse and slacks. My mother said something about getting cleaned up and a few minutes later came down the stairs in a sexy shirt and a denim skirt, little heels. Eileen then said something about realizing it was too humid for a silk shirt and a few minutes later came down once again, trying to be nonchalant, in a dress and heels and lipstick. My father simply complimented every entrance with equal weight. “Eileen, you’re absolutely right. Let’s celebrate your arrival and get dressed up. Doris, che bella !” My mother laughed and went back up and descended the stairs again and she might as well have been carrying a gun the fight was so over. She busted out her Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, heels, coral lipstick, a little blue eye shadow. She had a sexy gap between her two front teeth, and she stuck out in all the right places, which seems even more impressive at five feet tall. Eileen Ellsworth and her son, Davey, went back to St. Louis a few days later. I never saw her again.
    It seemed like when you made a break from the past, people wanted to be a part of it, often people from your past. After Eileen came Aunt Carol and Uncle Tom, just as we were preparing for Hurricane Belle, our first hurricane, possibly our last if we moved back to St. Louis when the year was up like we were supposed to. Our electricity was already gone. We got one TV channel out of Rhode Island and when that went out we listened to the radio for reports. Our phone went dead sometime during the morning bluster. We filled the bathtubs with water. We lit the tall green candles on the long wood dining table. A hurricane was no impediment to Mom and Dad’s socializing. They got dressed up for Hurricane Belle. My mother put on a multicolored silk, floor-length muumuu—splashy orange, purple and pink, her hair in a short, late ’70s salt-and-pepper perm, lots of jewelry. Dad