Not long ago in a dream, I called my mother at her South Bend home though it’s been thirty years since she lived there and twenty since she lived anywhere. Her phone number came back to me intact in that dream: 219-233-9966. At least that’s what I think it was – the call worked in the dream at least. I don’t recall what we talked about, probably not Flannery O’Connor or being dead. Being in proximity to fame never meant much to her. And death was a subject she liked to avoid while she was alive. I think it might be impolite to talk with her about death now, as it’s not subject to break the ice with someone you haven’t spoken with for decades.
I likely told her I missed her, which is true, as I miss a lot of people who used to populate my address book, when I still used one. Still, if we meet again, I will ask her about what she was doing in Flannery O’Connor’s address book. I think I know the answer but I’d like to be sure. To quote the Misfit from O’Connor’s famous story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” quite out of context and inappropriately, "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known . . . [I]f I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now."
Maybe I’m being overly dramatic but I would like to know for certain what my mother was doing in Flannery O’Connor’s address book. And more importantly, whether there was any follow up after O’Connor jotteed it down.
I found out about my mother’s (brief) association with Flannery O’Connor when I received an email from someone who was writing about O’Connor’s address book. She had tracked me down because she too wanted to know why my mother’s name and address appeared in the book. This would have been in 1949 when O’Connor lived in NYC for six months after leaving Yaddo, where my mother would be in residence the following year. O’Connor spent those six months at the YWCA on Lexington Ave, and I imagine they must have met at some literary soiree.
What surprised me more than seeing my mother’s address in O’Connor’s handwriting was finding my grandmother’s address below it: Ida Gottlieb, 25 Kentucky St, Long Beach, NY. This made complete sense to me despite my surprise. I have inherited a gregarious streak from both my parents – they both enjoyed the company of others, as do I. After five minutes of chatting with O’Connor, my mother likely invited her to visit my grandmother’s beach house on Long Island where I later spent most of my summers as a child. O’Connor wasn’t famous yet – my mother was just being generous to a fellow short story writer. I imagine O’Connor, who had lived in rural Georgia most of her life, telling my mother that the city didn’t agree with her and my mother issuing an invitation to visit the beach to get away.
My grandmother’s beach house was a haven for a lot of writers and artists in those days, mostly my mother’s friends. I’m not sure that my grandmother would have completely approved of all of my mother’s artistic friends, but she would have at least tolerated them and been hospitable, almost like the Yankee version of one of O’Connor’s characters.
I remember my mother reading Flannery O’Connor’s collected letters, The Habit of Being, and passing them on to me in 1984. I brought that book and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children with me that summer to the Albee Foundation in Montauk, Long Island, where I had a residency and wrote almost nothing salvageable. Mostly, I biked around Montauk with dogs nipping at my heels to the docks where I bought lobster rolls and mourned a bad breakup. Edward Albee delivered our mail everyday. “How is your writing going?” he would ask and I would lie and tell him it was going well. It’s funny how the fact that Edward Albee delivered my mail every day has never struck me as something noteworthy. But it’s not. Not really. Just as my mother never thought it was worth mentioning to me that she had crossed paths with Flannery O’Connor, it didn’t matter to me that I had crossed paths with Edward Albee. What mattered to her, and to me finally, were not the famous writers either of us had met, but their words and our words. That’s why my mother never mentioned to me that she had known O’Connor. And nowhere in O’Connor’s letters (that I’ve seen — I haven’t read all her letters) did O’Connor mention my mother, not that I was looking for any. But what difference would it have made if I had discovered mention of my mother? All that mattered really was the mail that Edward Albee delivered to me regularly and the answer to his seemingly routine question. If he asked me now, I wouldn’t lie. I’d say, “It’s going okay, Mr. Albee, but the real question is, ‘why did we ever get rid of my grandmother’s beach house?’”
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