stuttered, and then I cried about it afterward. At school I learned slowly, and aside from swimming, I wasn’t good at sports. Once, when I was three or four, and Daddy was recovering from the nervous breakdown after Peter was born—an expression in vogue at the time, which I believed meant a person got so nervous he fell down the stairs—Mommy asked if I would mind putting on my tutu and going upstairs to dance for him. It didn’t work. Nothing seemed to work. As ever, the tall man in the house whose long legs I had inherited never seemed to want to have much to do with me. Instead, he looked past me. He seemed to be seeking something he’d lost, Mommy maybe, or even his old self.
No: my only halfway decent talent was for loving people—Daddy, Mommy, Joey, Lucy, Chibie, Allie, Uncle Peter, Uncle Dutch, my dogs, and, no matter how damaging and wrong our interludes were, Billy.
I’d study the people around me for clues. Clues to figure out whom to emulate, how to dress, how to speak, how to act, how to dance. I’d grown up feeling unworthy and underloved. I wanted nothing more than to feel secure in myself—to feel that I was really good at something. Instead, I was shy, scared, wounded, frozen, a scratchy bundle of nerves, a walking pile of needs and conflicts. But my desire to hide met its match in an equally strong desire to be noticed, to be on top, to be wanted, connected, asked, begged, loved, admired.
Depression ran in the Simon family, and of his five siblings, Daddy was probably the one hit the hardest. He’d had his first depressive episode when he was a child, and over the years he’d managed to keep his demons at bay, but by the late 1940s, his mood swings and bad health had caught up with him. Like some time-bent sailor, he did what he could to steer a course through his own sadness, but the wheel escaped him and the waves began filling the boat, and by then he had lost the will, or ability, to bail water. Daddy was no longer the man he had once been—the brilliant, innovative publisher, the jovial participant in bridge, golf, and tennis matches, the host of glittering late-night dinner parties. Instead, following any number of heart attacks and ministrokes, Daddy had grown seriously ill, and despondent, the changes in him obvious to everybody and terrifying to me. But it still didn’t occur to me it could be in me too.
He seemed to recede. It was as if a sheet of glass now stood between him and the rest of the world. His illness disoriented him. Night turned into day turned into night again. He would pad around the house in his bathrobe, occasionally groaning, “Oh, how I suffer,” or “I hope you children won’t end up like me.” He would kiss me good night sometimes with the muffled words “Good morning.” Once, when I was doing my homework after school, Daddy appeared in my doorway in his by-now-familiar dressing gown. What was I doing up so late? he asked. On the way out, he turned off the overhead light to save electricity, not realizing I couldn’t do my homework in the dark.
By the late 1950s, Joey, Lucy, Peter, and I had become inured to this new Daddy, and knowing his odd behavior would embarrass my friends, I stopped inviting them over to the house. Fearing Daddy could disappear any second, I became frightened to love him, creating, once again, a perfect circuit of mutual rejection. Rather than sitting down and talking, we watched baseball games together on television, him beside me in his dressing gown, sighing, absently cracking his knuckles, his breath smelling of stale cigarette smoke. But instead of welcoming his attention, I was almost scared of him, as if I were breathing in a mixture of measles, pirates, and imminent death, all blended into one musky, terrifying presence named “Daddy.”
After dinner, as usual, he would retreat to his piano. Once music had been his joy, but by late ’58 or ’59, it was his only shelter. Joey, Lucy, and I would be upstairs in our
No: my only halfway decent talent was for loving people—Daddy, Mommy, Joey, Lucy, Chibie, Allie, Uncle Peter, Uncle Dutch, my dogs, and, no matter how damaging and wrong our interludes were, Billy.
I’d study the people around me for clues. Clues to figure out whom to emulate, how to dress, how to speak, how to act, how to dance. I’d grown up feeling unworthy and underloved. I wanted nothing more than to feel secure in myself—to feel that I was really good at something. Instead, I was shy, scared, wounded, frozen, a scratchy bundle of nerves, a walking pile of needs and conflicts. But my desire to hide met its match in an equally strong desire to be noticed, to be on top, to be wanted, connected, asked, begged, loved, admired.
Depression ran in the Simon family, and of his five siblings, Daddy was probably the one hit the hardest. He’d had his first depressive episode when he was a child, and over the years he’d managed to keep his demons at bay, but by the late 1940s, his mood swings and bad health had caught up with him. Like some time-bent sailor, he did what he could to steer a course through his own sadness, but the wheel escaped him and the waves began filling the boat, and by then he had lost the will, or ability, to bail water. Daddy was no longer the man he had once been—the brilliant, innovative publisher, the jovial participant in bridge, golf, and tennis matches, the host of glittering late-night dinner parties. Instead, following any number of heart attacks and ministrokes, Daddy had grown seriously ill, and despondent, the changes in him obvious to everybody and terrifying to me. But it still didn’t occur to me it could be in me too.
He seemed to recede. It was as if a sheet of glass now stood between him and the rest of the world. His illness disoriented him. Night turned into day turned into night again. He would pad around the house in his bathrobe, occasionally groaning, “Oh, how I suffer,” or “I hope you children won’t end up like me.” He would kiss me good night sometimes with the muffled words “Good morning.” Once, when I was doing my homework after school, Daddy appeared in my doorway in his by-now-familiar dressing gown. What was I doing up so late? he asked. On the way out, he turned off the overhead light to save electricity, not realizing I couldn’t do my homework in the dark.
By the late 1950s, Joey, Lucy, Peter, and I had become inured to this new Daddy, and knowing his odd behavior would embarrass my friends, I stopped inviting them over to the house. Fearing Daddy could disappear any second, I became frightened to love him, creating, once again, a perfect circuit of mutual rejection. Rather than sitting down and talking, we watched baseball games together on television, him beside me in his dressing gown, sighing, absently cracking his knuckles, his breath smelling of stale cigarette smoke. But instead of welcoming his attention, I was almost scared of him, as if I were breathing in a mixture of measles, pirates, and imminent death, all blended into one musky, terrifying presence named “Daddy.”
After dinner, as usual, he would retreat to his piano. Once music had been his joy, but by late ’58 or ’59, it was his only shelter. Joey, Lucy, and I would be upstairs in our
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