The Distant Land of My Father (35 page)

When a small package arrived in February of 1948, the middle of my junior year, the familiar handwriting and Shanghai postmark and foreign stamps that nearly covered the box all seemed like a trick. My first thought was that it must have been sent years ago. Why would he send anything now? Did he even remember us?

But when I ripped open the brown paper, my hands shaking, I found a small card inside that wished me a happy seventeenth birthday.
To my dearest Anna,
it read.
With love from your Dad.

My mother wasn’t home—a blessing, I thought—and I opened the box quickly and found a pair of pearl earrings. I liked them as soon as I saw them; they were sophisticated and looked like jewelry that a college girl would wear. But it didn’t matter, and I didn’t waste time. I left the house and walked quickly to Monterey Road, then to Fair Oaks and then to Mission Avenue, straight to D & G Jewelers, where Mr. Vagnino, who had made my mother’s wedding ring and the gold locket that held my baby picture, looked at the earrings for a moment and sighed.

“They’re basically on the order of costume jewelry,” he said with a shrug. “No gold, fake pearls. But they look all right, don’t you think?”

I didn’t, and I happily sold the earrings to him for fifty cents. I told him they were a gift from a relative I didn’t like, and I begged him to promise not to tell my mother about our transaction. When he reluctantly agreed, I thanked him and hurried to Holy Family Church, where I gladly dropped my two quarters into the St. Vincent de Paul box by the door, happy to be rid of any trace of my father.

I didn’t tell my mother about the earrings or what I’d done with them, and although the guilt made me feel grimy and suspect, my stubbornness won out. A few weeks later when we were on our way to afternoon Mass, she pulled over several blocks before we’d reached the church. My stomach tightened. It was the middle of March, the third week of Lent, and as I prepared myself for the coming accusation, I told myself it was for the best. I’d confess to my mother and confess to Father Locatelli, and the matter would be closed.

“I have something to tell you,” my mother said, “and I might as well tell you now even though it won’t be final for another year.” She took a folded sheet of paper from her purse and held it out to me. “This is a conversation I never intended to have, Anna, and I’m sorry for my part in this. But it’s all I can do, after everything that’s happened.”

She was confessing, not accusing. Although what she said wasn’t what I had expected, I nodded as I unfolded the sheet of paper, for I already knew what it was. I’d heard bits and pieces of my mother’s conversation over the past month, and I’d taken several phone messages from Andrew Martin, my grandmother’s attorney. I was actually almost proud of myself for knowing, before I was told, that my mother was filing for divorce.

But I still wanted to see it in black and white. I looked carefully at the paper I held, at its formality and officialness and fact. It was dated that day, which explained my mother’s nicer-than-usual appearance—the midnight-blue suit, the cream-colored blouse, the white gloves, the hat—and her vagueness about her plans earlier that day.

Book 2783,
I read,
Page 335.
And then:

Genevieve Schoene, Plaintiff, vs. Joseph Schoene, Defendant.
                Interlocutory Judgment of Divorce
                                     
(Default)

It is adjudged that plainti
ff
is entitled to a divorce from defendant; that when one year shall have expired after the entry of this interlocutory judgment a final judgment dissolving the marriage between plainti
ff
and defendant be entered, and at that time the Court shall grant such other and further relief as may be necessary to complete disposition of this action. That plainti
ff
is awarded custody of the minor child with rights of reasonable visitation reserved to the defendant.

I refolded it and handed it to my mother. “Neat,” I said. “Congratulations.”

She started the car and said, “There’s no need for sarcasm.”

I stared out the window. “It’s not sarcasm,” I said. “I just have no idea what to say.”

“In a hundred years, I wouldn’t have dreamed that I’d be apart from your father.”

I nodded. “I just try not to think about him,” I said matter-of-factly. “There are lots of better things to pay attention to.”

In March of the next year, my senior year in high school, my mother requested that a final judgment be entered, which it was. The Final Judgment of Divorce arrived at our house by messenger. It was a strange day, for an hour after that news arrived, decidedly good news came in the mail: I’d been accepted as an entering freshman to the University of California at Los Angeles, my first choice, for the upcoming fall.

We celebrated that night with my grandmother, in the same way we’d celebrated all of our collective birthdays and special occasions: with a nice dinner out. That night we went to a new Italian restaurant in Hollywood, Miceli’s, where we sat upstairs at a carved wooden booth, the table covered with a red-and-white checked tablecloth. Bottles of Chianti and fake grapevines hung from the ceiling, and the walls were covered with painted murals of busty girls in off-the-shoulder blouses and full skirts frolicking in the Italian countryside. The whole place smelled like warm bread.

By the end of dinner, my mother’s food was almost untouched. She had been quiet, almost morose, and more worried than she had been in months. While I often found her behavior perplexing, this time it made no sense at all. I was growing annoyed with her. She should be happy, shouldn’t she? Or at least relieved?
Au contraire,
as my French teacher would say.

“Genevieve,” my grandmother finally said, “what is it that’s bothering you? Is this regret or worry or the flu or some combination?”

My mother’s cheeks flushed and she looked down at her uneaten meal. “There’s something else besides the divorce,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it more than we have to. It may not get the popular vote,” she added dryly, and glanced at me. I shrugged, my teenage shorthand for,
So what am I supposed to do?

My mother took a breath and said, “I’ve changed our name, Anna’s and mine. The spelling of it, I mean. I’ve thought about it for a long time. There’s no telling what he’s doing in Shanghai, what sort of trouble he might get into. I want to be apart from that. From who he is now. And so I’ve changed the legal spelling of our last name. It’s Shoen now, S-H-O-E-N. So it sounds the same, but we won’t be associated with him.”

I stared at her hard, not understanding what she said. “You changed my
name
? How can you change my name?”

“With a court order,” she answered easily, and she suddenly seemed relieved. “It’s quite simple actually. This was the right time to do it. You’re coming up on a new start, Anna, where no one will know you. So you won’t have to go around explaining to everyone. You’re still Anna Shoen. It’s only the spelling, and it’s only for practical reasons.” She took a long drink of water. She looked at my grandmother and me in turn, and she seemed more confident and sure of herself than she had in months. “In any case, it’s done.” She turned to me. “And you’ll just have to trust my judgment on this one. It’s for the best, I assure you.”

My grandmother shook her head. “Well, it sounds as though the matter’s settled, Anna. I’d suggest you learn to live with it.” Though her words were neutral enough, the flatness of her tone made it clear that my mother’s action had taken her by surprise, and that she was not impressed.

I graduated from South Pasadena High School in June of 1949, and in September, just before I started at UCLA, my mother received a hefty check from my father’s agent in New York, a man named James Rankin, whose name and handwriting I was to see for years, and whom I never met. I often tried to picture him, and usually came up with someone tall and thin, which was the way his name sounded to me. In his letter, Mr. Rankin explained that my father had asked him to express his sorrow in what had come to pass, but that he had also seen it as inevitable. My father fully understood my mother’s decision, Mr. Rankin said, and he would not shirk his financial responsibility. The substantial check that was enclosed would be the first of many.

That check seemed to represent some kind of permission for my mother, something to do with finality, and she reinvented herself yet again. The first thing she did was to buy our bungalow from my grandmother, a gesture that my grandmother insisted was completely unnecessary. But my mother would not be dissuaded. “I want to be able to call it my own,” she said. “I know it doesn’t make sense to you, and I know it seems unnecessary. But it’s important to me. I want to own this house.” My grandmother acquiesced. My mother’s only compromise was in the below-market price she paid for the house.

The second thing my mother did was to go shopping, and although the sight of her coming home every day with more and more packages was startling, I was glad to see it. In the three years since our trip to Shanghai, she had spent almost nothing on herself. Fashion had changed dramatically after the war, and my mother loved the new styles—tight waists and bodices, rounded hips, longer skirts. She bought afternoon dresses, and wool slacks, and cashmere sweaters, high heels and T-straps that made her look like a movie star. And a dinner dress with a tight bodice and long full skirt—the New Look, she explained proudly.

She was, once again, a master at adaptability. She cut her hair, a feather cut this time, a shorter style that framed her face. She began to spend more time dressing before she went out, even if she was just going to the market or shopping or on other errands. She always had to be prettier, with higher heels, more stylish hair, more beautifully manicured nails. I watched her transformation with equal parts admiration and awe.

When she helped me move into my small dormitory room, she was the one who turned heads, which was fine by me. The limelight was not something I sought. A colorful father and elegant mother had made me only too glad to be part of the background in public, a desire my mother didn’t understand. At the end of summer when she urged me to shop for new college clothes, my response was a disappointment to her, for the most she could talk me into was a plaid street dress, two pairs of shoes—loafers and saddle oxfords—a Pendleton fisherman’s knit sweater, and some gray flannel slacks that I loved and wore so much that she finally bought me a second pair, saying that at least this way I could get them cleaned. I did, however, agree to a trip to the beauty salon, where I had my shoulder-length hair cut in a chin-length bob, a style I liked for its practicality, its straightforwardness, and its simplicity.

The fact was that I couldn’t imagine I’d have time for fashion and elaborate hairstyles at college, for I planned to be disciplined and study hard. I would major in history, I thought, and I would take advantage of cultural opportunities and become sophisticated in the arts, like my grandmother. I would get a part-time job, so that I wouldn’t have to depend so much on my mother’s financial support. I would take care of myself.

But my program was short-lived, for in the fall of my freshman year I fell reluctantly in love with a boy named Jack Bradley. He ran on the cross-country team and on Saturdays he worked at Bullock’s Wilshire, where he sold women’s shoes and where I went every chance I got with no good reason other than the fact that I wanted to be near him. I would stand behind leather purses and handbags so that I could watch him unobserved. It seemed I couldn’t stay away from him, and my heart beat faster when he was near. He had a crooked smile and clear blue eyes that I was sure could never lie and that at times could focus on me so intently that I felt undone inside, or unlaced, as though just by looking at me he were gently taking me apart to see how I worked. He was dependable but not predictable, honest but also guarded. He was competitive in the extreme. When he was with friends, he was only too glad to turn everything into a contest: at the pool, who could hold their breath underwater the longest; at the beach, who could swim the furthest out. Who could name the song playing on the radio, who could rattle off state capitals, who knew the population of Los Angeles? He thrived on winning, and although track was his sport of choice, he was good at just about anything he tried—golf, tennis, baseball, even basketball, though he was only five-foot-nine. He was forthright and thorough and the most earnest person I had ever met. He was also orderly in the extreme, always on time, always organized. Even the way he ate was orderly, one thing at a time—salad, then potatoes, then meat, no mixing things up—and at the end of a meal his plate was always clean.