the blueshift journal

We should have anticipated the media storm that arrived after the woman who birthed us passed on. Throughout the years, she’d begrudgingly confessed being at Woodstock, following The Dead, sleeping with Jaggar and briefly becoming his muse. She knew all about free love while my sister and I grew up terrified of herpes and AIDS. We bugged her constantly about what her life was like in the sixties. She claimed it didn’t matter; we were here and it was now.

 

“Live in the present,” she said.

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So our mother wrote, I drew, and Stacy directed movies. When Mother died, her real life antics were unleashed and the friend requests on Facebook became a stigmata that bled. A pathetic group of looky-loos glimpsed our mother’s clunky drunk she-couldn’t-have-meant-it death and worried over us. They claimed they wanted to share their mourning through Twitter because they “knew” her.

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“Who knows anyone?” I begged.

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As a family, we encouraged each other’s art but never stared at it too closely. In college, I avoided classes that taught her most famous book. I was proud not to have read anything of hers, but when the memoir came out, I gaped at the reviews. While the levee that was my mother’s past shattered and the well of scandal continued to cascade through the web and newsprint, I rejoined AA to remain calm.

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I located the advance reading copy sent out ages ago and found time to read it. The roaring lioness had released pages of contrary laments. It was unsettling to discover not just my neighbors knew I drank too much while fighting my ex too often. Mother wrote I reminded her of her own failed youth. Near the middle, I found, “Had it been apparent sooner, I never would have been a parent.” She went on to say if it had been a year or two later, my sister and I never would have been born.

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I ask Stacy about this. She chastises me. “Didn’t you know?”

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“Know what?”

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“When she marched on Washington, she was all about Roe.”

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Nine months later, my second major show opens in her hometown. The local alternative rag sends a reporter. During the interview, I shrug and assure the journalist who grins with glistening Crest whitened teeth that no, it wasn’t great being a daughter of a novelist. He presses for a quote. I say my mother’s suicide sobered me one minute and drove me to noontime gin the next.

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He nods as he jots.

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“There’s such a creepy fascination with the dead.” I cross my arms. “Look at you, you’ve asked six questions about my mother and not once have you asked why this painting done mostly in blue is titled, Buffalo Bled.”

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“Why is it?” His interest isn’t there; I’m wondering where mine is.

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I shake my head. Because rust belts are depressing. So is trying to live up to the public’s expectations. “It just is.”