Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton by Linda Gray Sexton

Author:Linda Gray Sexton [Sexton, Linda Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Death, Non-Fiction, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 0316782084
Google: GOzYAXF09JAC
Amazon: B004XMAUY2
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2011-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

THE AUTUMN OF my sophomore year at college Nana, widowed for almost fifteen years, accepted a marriage proposal; in a small local church in February of 1973 she married for the second time. I returned home for the weekend of the festivities to serve as her maid of honor. A few hours before we were due to leave for the church, Mother summoned me into the bathroom, where she was in the tub.

I averted my eyes from her naked body. She pulled the washcloth up over her breasts, as if sensing my repugnance, and lit a cigarette. She had balanced the dark green ashtray from beside her bed on the lip of the tub.

“I have to talk to you about Daddy and me,” she began, inhaling deeply.

I sat down on the toilet lid and waited.

“I’m going to ask Daddy for a divorce. Very soon.”

“You’re joking.”

She shook her head, put the cigarette in the ashtray, and began to soap her armpits. “As soon as Nana’s gone on her honeymoon.”

“But why now?” I was incredulous, angry, upset, scared, and sad. I couldn’t believe this was happening and I felt like crying, or shaking her. “After all this time?”

“Because when I tell him that our marriage is in trouble he tells me things like ‘the ice maker needs to be fixed.’ ”

I understood what she meant: Daddy wasn’t strong on talking things over. “But he loves you.”

“We don’t have a sex life, Linda.” She lay back and picked up her cigarette. Her wet fingers made a translucent mark on the filter paper.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to know anything about their sex life, much less get dragged into a discussion about it.

“I made my mind up about a month ago,” she went on, “but I didn’t want to ruin Nana’s wedding. I’ve got it all set up. I’ll tell him at a friend’s house, probably Fay and Bob Starmer’s, and then he can stay here for a little while. Joy will go live with Loring and Louise, and I’ll stay with friends until he can find a place of his own.”

I just stared at her: she sounded like a teenager planning a madcap midnight escape from a dormitory. I didn’t say anything but I thought to myself that she was getting crazy again. My mother needed my father. She needed the stability he provided and the freedom he gave her. Who else would put up with Mother? Who else would love her for her faults as well as her strengths? I had known for some time that she was dissatisfied with their sex life, but she’d always solved the problem before without resorting to losing her main caretaker. According to Joy, who was still living at home, the violence between my parents was as bad as ever, but somehow this didn’t seem enough of a departure from the status quo to warrant a divorce. After all, they had been violent together for years. Perhaps I was willing to accept their marriage, with

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