Cybill Disobedience Part 1

Cybill Disobedience.

by Cybill Shepherd with Aimee Lee Ball.

Prologue.

Los Angeles, California, Oct. 30, 1999.

6:17 P.M.- In 123 minutes I'm appearing onstage in my cabaret act at the Cinegrill of the fabled old Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. However, right now I'm on the Hollywood freeway in b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic. At this pace, one inch every five minutes, I'll just make it at eight-thirty in the year 2004. In 123 minutes I'm appearing onstage in my cabaret act at the Cinegrill of the fabled old Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. However, right now I'm on the Hollywood freeway in b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic. At this pace, one inch every five minutes, I'll just make it at eight-thirty in the year 2004.

7:12 P.M.- Turning off Highland onto Hollywood Boulevard, we're rear-ended by a station wagon. Turning off Highland onto Hollywood Boulevard, we're rear-ended by a station wagon.

7:14 P.M.- I have no choice. Leaving my driver, Tom, to take care of that situation, I take off running, dragging behind me a rolling suitcase filled with my costume, makeup, and sheet music. I'm wearing a black leather cap, black high-tops, black jeans, and a bodywear top that I hadn't exactly planned on publicly displaying in an area of town where this kind of cleavage can either get you arrested or hired. Heading west toward Mann's Chinese Theatre, a greasy-looking wino calls out "C'mon, baby, gimme some of that!" Without breaking stride, I holler back, "Normally I would, but right now I don't have time." I have no choice. Leaving my driver, Tom, to take care of that situation, I take off running, dragging behind me a rolling suitcase filled with my costume, makeup, and sheet music. I'm wearing a black leather cap, black high-tops, black jeans, and a bodywear top that I hadn't exactly planned on publicly displaying in an area of town where this kind of cleavage can either get you arrested or hired. Heading west toward Mann's Chinese Theatre, a greasy-looking wino calls out "C'mon, baby, gimme some of that!" Without breaking stride, I holler back, "Normally I would, but right now I don't have time."

7:16 P.M.- Reaching the north corner of the intersection of Orange and Hollywood Boulevard, I look up and freeze in fear. My name is Reaching the north corner of the intersection of Orange and Hollywood Boulevard, I look up and freeze in fear. My name is not not on the marquee. This is not good. Could it be I'm here on the wrong night? I dart through traffic and leaping safely onto the far sidewalk, quickly glance down at my star on the Walk of Fame. I notice a wad of gum on it. I try to kick it off. Now I've got a glob of purple goo stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I yank off the shoe and hobble into the Roosevelt lobby. on the marquee. This is not good. Could it be I'm here on the wrong night? I dart through traffic and leaping safely onto the far sidewalk, quickly glance down at my star on the Walk of Fame. I notice a wad of gum on it. I try to kick it off. Now I've got a glob of purple goo stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I yank off the shoe and hobble into the Roosevelt lobby.

7:20 P.M.- To my enormous relief, I see a placard that says Cybill Shepherd To my enormous relief, I see a placard that says Cybill Shepherd is is performing here tonight. Carrying my shoe, dragging my suitcase, I hurtle across the lobby and pound on the elevator b.u.t.ton. The doors open almost immediately, but the elevator is full. I jam myself, my shoe, and my suitcase in anyway, gasping for breath. A woman behind me squeals, "Are you who I think you are?" performing here tonight. Carrying my shoe, dragging my suitcase, I hurtle across the lobby and pound on the elevator b.u.t.ton. The doors open almost immediately, but the elevator is full. I jam myself, my shoe, and my suitcase in anyway, gasping for breath. A woman behind me squeals, "Are you who I think you are?"

"I certainly hope so," I answer, trying to maintain some semblance of composure.

7:25 P.M.- My a.s.sistant, Jason, anxiously paces at the door of my fourth-floor dressing room as I rush in and begin frantically unpacking my bag. My a.s.sistant, Jason, anxiously paces at the door of my fourth-floor dressing room as I rush in and begin frantically unpacking my bag.

"Your hairdresser's stuck in traffic on the freeway," Jason says, taking in my disheveled appearance, trying hard to hide his horror. The eighteen-hour makeup that gives my face and arms a flawless resurfacing has leaked out over everything in my bag: brushes, rollers, makeup, hairspray. It's time for prayer, "Please G.o.d, let my hairdresser get here in the next five minutes."

7:29 P.M.- The stage manager knocks: "One hour, Cybill! Do you need anything?" I want to say yes, I need my hairdresser to be here. I need my makeup to be sc.r.a.ped out of the bottom of the bag, I need my sheet music to be dried out, but I can't say any of that because my cell phone is ringing. The stage manager knocks: "One hour, Cybill! Do you need anything?" I want to say yes, I need my hairdresser to be here. I need my makeup to be sc.r.a.ped out of the bottom of the bag, I need my sheet music to be dried out, but I can't say any of that because my cell phone is ringing.

7:30 P.M.- It's my older daughter, Clementine, calling from the car. She and my younger daughter, Ariel, are stuck on yet another freeway taking our beloved black pug petunia to the vet. Obviously, Clementine and Ariel are going to be late for my show. I understand. They have their priorities too. It's my older daughter, Clementine, calling from the car. She and my younger daughter, Ariel, are stuck on yet another freeway taking our beloved black pug petunia to the vet. Obviously, Clementine and Ariel are going to be late for my show. I understand. They have their priorities too.

7:35 P.M.- My twelve-year-old son, Zachariah, rushes in from the adjoining room with a look of consternation. He has forgotten until this very moment that tonight is the biggest party of the year, thrown by his best friend. "Can you please take me right now, Mom?" Before I can answer, the doorbell rings. It's Cathy, my hairdresser. Right behind her is a woman I've never seen before, who grabs me by the arm and gushes: "Oh, Cybill, I can't wait for your book to come out. My marriage is falling apart, my kids are driving me crazy, and I'm premenopausal too. I take one look around me--at my pleading son, my ringing cell phone, the accoutrements of my soon-to-be onstage self strewn all over the floor, and my only thought is My twelve-year-old son, Zachariah, rushes in from the adjoining room with a look of consternation. He has forgotten until this very moment that tonight is the biggest party of the year, thrown by his best friend. "Can you please take me right now, Mom?" Before I can answer, the doorbell rings. It's Cathy, my hairdresser. Right behind her is a woman I've never seen before, who grabs me by the arm and gushes: "Oh, Cybill, I can't wait for your book to come out. My marriage is falling apart, my kids are driving me crazy, and I'm premenopausal too. I take one look around me--at my pleading son, my ringing cell phone, the accoutrements of my soon-to-be onstage self strewn all over the floor, and my only thought is But clearly I'm writing more of a How-Not-to book. But clearly I'm writing more of a How-Not-to book.

8:20 P.M.- "Mmmraahhh. Mmmmmmrraaahhhh." I'm vocalizing. While Cathy teases my hair, I console Clementine on the cell phone about the state of Petunia's kidneys, and the stage manager pops in with the ten-minute warning while I try to remember the lyrics to "The Lady Is a Tramp." "Mmmraahhh. Mmmmmmrraaahhhh." I'm vocalizing. While Cathy teases my hair, I console Clementine on the cell phone about the state of Petunia's kidneys, and the stage manager pops in with the ten-minute warning while I try to remember the lyrics to "The Lady Is a Tramp."

8:30 P.M.- "Please, Mom, can't you take me now," Zach implores as I slop on some makeup and throw on my clothes. "Please, Mom, can't you take me now," Zach implores as I slop on some makeup and throw on my clothes.

"I love you," I say, trying to remember the lyrics to "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show," "but Mom has to work now and I can't go anywhere except onstage in about thirty-eight seconds."

8:33 P.M.- Outside the door of the Cinegrill, the stage manager hands me my microphone as I slip into my shoes. I've mollified Zach. He's upstairs doing his homework. Petunia's kidneys have resumed functioning. And Clementine and Ariel are on the way. The band jumps into the intro of "That Old Black Magic" as the announcer intones, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... direct from polis.h.i.+ng her star on Hollywood Boulevard... Cybill Shepherd. Outside the door of the Cinegrill, the stage manager hands me my microphone as I slip into my shoes. I've mollified Zach. He's upstairs doing his homework. Petunia's kidneys have resumed functioning. And Clementine and Ariel are on the way. The band jumps into the intro of "That Old Black Magic" as the announcer intones, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... direct from polis.h.i.+ng her star on Hollywood Boulevard... Cybill Shepherd.

Chapter One.

"Who's the Fairest of Them All?"

PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER LIVED THROUGH AN EARTHQUAKE a.s.sume that one of its salient features is noise--the sounds of splintering gla.s.s, the symphony of physical destruction, the uncanny moaning of buildings as steel and wood and concrete are strained to some implausible degree. But that's quickly over. Far more shocking is the eerie quietude: the power failure that eliminates the humming of air-conditioning and refrigerators, the absence of music, the traffic that has come to a standstill. It's as if a mute b.u.t.ton has been pushed on the world. That's what it's like when a television series ends. The lights go out, the people scatter, the magic has died. And the Cybill show did not go gently. I did not go gently. a.s.sume that one of its salient features is noise--the sounds of splintering gla.s.s, the symphony of physical destruction, the uncanny moaning of buildings as steel and wood and concrete are strained to some implausible degree. But that's quickly over. Far more shocking is the eerie quietude: the power failure that eliminates the humming of air-conditioning and refrigerators, the absence of music, the traffic that has come to a standstill. It's as if a mute b.u.t.ton has been pushed on the world. That's what it's like when a television series ends. The lights go out, the people scatter, the magic has died. And the Cybill show did not go gently. I did not go gently.

Over a thirty-year career, I had died before--cacophonous, public, psychically b.l.o.o.d.y deaths engineered at the box office and hands of critics--but this demise was singularly painful. I'd given my name and much of my ident.i.ty to the series, blurring the line between real life and fiction, much more than is customary in television. (Murphy Brown was not called was not called Candice Candice, and the character didn't grow up with a wooden dummy for a brother.) Every door on our CBS soundstage had a plaque with CYBILL inscribed inside a blue chalk star, just like the one used under the opening t.i.tle that pans across the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Gunsmoke Gunsmoke was produced on that stage for eighteen years, but there was no trace of iconic piece of American television history in the wings. As I drove off the lot for the last time, I knew how quickly my presence would evaporate, how soon the studio maintenance department would remove those plaques and the billboard-size CYBILL on the side of the stage. was produced on that stage for eighteen years, but there was no trace of iconic piece of American television history in the wings. As I drove off the lot for the last time, I knew how quickly my presence would evaporate, how soon the studio maintenance department would remove those plaques and the billboard-size CYBILL on the side of the stage.

The eulogies were not kind. While the real reasons for the show's demise were never made public, I was accused of professional paranoia and megalomania, of being, as Lady Caroline Lamb famously said of Lord Byron, "mad, bad and dangerous to know." I was labeled a jealous egomaniac, a self-promoting b.i.t.c.h, and a few other well-chosen words whose invocation would have gotten my mouth washed out with Camay in my Memphis childhood. I preserved all the poison-pen notices as a record, hard evidence of what I had survived and the proof that I wasn't paranoid. I had clearly made people exceedingly angry, committed some unpardonable transgression. It was not the first time.

What got me in trouble, what has always gotten me in trouble, was disobedience. On the Cybill Cybill show, I had been 57 different kinds of disobedient. From the beginning, my strategy was to challenge--always with humor--the conventional wisdom about "appropriate" subjects for television audiences. I was the first baby boomer to have a prime-time hot flash, and we skewered the injustice of a culture that pretends women over forty are invisible. I persuaded the writers to incorporate ideas from my own odyssey of discovery, like cultivating a reverence for three symbolic states of a woman's life: maiden, mother, and crone. (Okay, okay, there's a brief cheerleader phase in there that can't be ignored.) I had the temerity to become a grandmother on American television, one experience not replicated in real life, but when my character cooed to her TV daughter, "And you even got married first!" it was a mocking reference to my own pregnancies before marriage. When my character's two ex-husbands happened to be in the living room just as her date showed up on the doorstep, art was mirroring my life, as it was in an episode about male impotence (delicately referred to on the show as "failing to perform"). show, I had been 57 different kinds of disobedient. From the beginning, my strategy was to challenge--always with humor--the conventional wisdom about "appropriate" subjects for television audiences. I was the first baby boomer to have a prime-time hot flash, and we skewered the injustice of a culture that pretends women over forty are invisible. I persuaded the writers to incorporate ideas from my own odyssey of discovery, like cultivating a reverence for three symbolic states of a woman's life: maiden, mother, and crone. (Okay, okay, there's a brief cheerleader phase in there that can't be ignored.) I had the temerity to become a grandmother on American television, one experience not replicated in real life, but when my character cooed to her TV daughter, "And you even got married first!" it was a mocking reference to my own pregnancies before marriage. When my character's two ex-husbands happened to be in the living room just as her date showed up on the doorstep, art was mirroring my life, as it was in an episode about male impotence (delicately referred to on the show as "failing to perform").

Strange to think that these themes were considered radical by network executives and reviewers, but women who represent the cultural gamut of sizes and ages aren't too welcome in any media. After nearly a decade of murmuring "I'm worth it" for L'Oreal, I was fired because my hair got too old--approximately as old as I was. It's okay for Robert Mitchum to get up early in the morning and look like Robert Mitchum, but it was not okay for me to wake up in the morning and look like Robert Mitchum. Fans are always asking why Bruce Willis and I don't reprise our Moonlighting Moonlighting roles for the big screen. The answer is: studio executives would consider me too old for him now. roles for the big screen. The answer is: studio executives would consider me too old for him now.

With few exceptions, American television has become the Bermuda Triangle for female over forty. There was a wide variety of middle-aged women on the air in 1998, and they were all gone by 1999. Not only Cybill Cybill, but Murphy Brown Murphy Brown, Ellen Ellen, Roseanne Roseanne, Grace Under Fire Grace Under Fire, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman all disappeared the same year. It's true that these shows had been around for a while and may have run their course, so this chorus of swsongs takes on a deeper significance when we see the replacements: all disappeared the same year. It's true that these shows had been around for a while and may have run their course, so this chorus of swsongs takes on a deeper significance when we see the replacements: Felicity Felicity, Darma & Greg Darma & Greg, Moesha Moesha, Ally McBeal Ally McBeal, Sabrina the Teenage Witch Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and those very skinny Friends Friends. No one over thirty need apply.

But I had defied convention beyond my approach to Cybill Cybill's subject matter. From the start, I let it be known that I wanted an ensemble cast, that everybody's part should be great. I meant me too. I wanted the star of this show to have funny dialogue, clever story lines, and interesting dilemmas, without dumbing or dulling down the other characters. In insisted on having the grown-up female friends.h.i.+p that was the centerpiece of the show, a relations.h.i.+p with a side-kick rich in outrageous comic potential perhaps last tapped when Lucy Ricardo got Ethel Mertz to work in the candy factory. But that show was called I Love Lucy I Love Lucy, not Lucy and Ethel Lucy and Ethel. When I acted as an advocate for my character, trying to take the show in certain directions and expressing concern that the humor had become predictable, my efforts were viewed as territorial, the demands of an overblown ego afraid of being overshadowed. Three of my producers left, all rancorously: one said he had failed to save me from myself; another called me insensitive, bordering on anti-Semitic (rather ignoring that his replacement was Jewish and that I have two half-Jewish children); the third was dragged from my presence screaming "I'm a better person that you are." The studio producing my show cut me off at the knees the minute I was off camera, arrogating my authority as executive producer. And my costar, handpicked for the role and richly rewarded for her good work with money and accolades, walked out on the rehearsal of the last episode.

It was a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k of a year. Ten days after filming the last episode of Cybill Cybill, I found myself in the hospital with a gut-wrenching pain. A doctor I'd never seen before was telling me that I needed emergency abdominal surgery and that the scar wouldn't be pretty. My intestines, it turned out, were twisted into something resembling fusilli marinara, and I can't help making metaphysical metaphors about the gut being the site of intuition, about literally going under the knife at the same time that I was being cut and killed off on CBS. As it happened, my worst turncoat was much closer at hand, and a few months later, with stunning surgical precision (last metaphor, I promise) I was eviscerated by the man I thought would be sharing my dotage and my denture cup at the Old Actors' Home. He was my lover, my friend, my colleague, and my supposed life partner. But he concluded his business with me, after making sure he was paid, and announced that our relations.h.i.+p was over. In the blink of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, he was gone.

THE LONGEST, DEEPEST STREAK OF DISOBEDIENCE in my life has been about s.e.x. Although the strictures of southern womanhood were honed to a fine edge in my family and I followed some of them flawlessly, I never observed the s.e.xual canons. I did exactly as I pleased, and what pleased me was s.e.x--early with a man I naively thought would be the love of my life, later with a dispensable succession of partners. s.e.x became politicized and endorsed by my generation, made safe with the advent of the Pill, even though such behavior was still a moral issue for lots of people, including my parents. I was a very, very bad girl, living out the epiphany of the 1970s for women: that s.e.x and love aren't necessarily the same thing. in my life has been about s.e.x. Although the strictures of southern womanhood were honed to a fine edge in my family and I followed some of them flawlessly, I never observed the s.e.xual canons. I did exactly as I pleased, and what pleased me was s.e.x--early with a man I naively thought would be the love of my life, later with a dispensable succession of partners. s.e.x became politicized and endorsed by my generation, made safe with the advent of the Pill, even though such behavior was still a moral issue for lots of people, including my parents. I was a very, very bad girl, living out the epiphany of the 1970s for women: that s.e.x and love aren't necessarily the same thing.

I don't know if I've accrued more than my fair share of lost loves, but I'm something of a haunted person from the damage. Many times I was confused about the men I slept with, not knowing for sure whether I was genuinely attracted to them, or if the impetus was their attraction to me. I had to be kicked in the head by a few mules; now I've given up riding. In one of life&rquo;s little full circles, I have become a creature of the s.e.xually retrograde 1990s, just as I was of the s.e.xually voracious 1960s. Society has been reindoctrinated to idealize monogamy and all the other virtues our mothers preached, but these days I'm sleeping alone. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, put on blue eye shadow, and try to learn country line dancing in front of the TV. At least there are other people on the video.

Not until now have I realized how supremely important it was for me to confront and embrace my lifelong sense of profound loneliness, to stop making choices based on avoiding that demon. There's loneliness in being the child of parents whose own problems divert their attention, as mine did. Now that a grown daughter has already left the nest and her younger siblings have their wings spread, I'm facing down the devil once again, wondering what will be next? Is it okay for a woman to be alone? Is monogamy necessary? Will I only feel safe with a partner if there's a clearly delineated "yours", "mine", and "ours"? Can I trust someone who doesn't have as much to lose as I do? And who would that person be?

Three decades ago I fell in love with a married man who turned his life inside out because of me. He would be one of the most significant people in my life, a mentor and lifelong friend, but I was deemed a "home wrecker", someone who showed up unbidden with self-aggrandizing motives that bordered on the immoral and violated cultural bylaws. Forever after, it seemed, I was slated to be the bad girl. People said, "She has no right to_____," and fill in the blank. I decided I had to trust myself, which has led to some ungainly ups and downs. I've had two failed marriages and a few real-life soap operas. There are people in Hollywood who won't return my calls or run screaming from the room at the mention of my name. I've been in a few films that could serve as paradigms of the form, and more than I care to count of the straight-to-video kind.

I can't escape the conviction that fate has something to do with appearance, with the perception of personality or merit based on veneer. I earned by living on my looks for a long time, and it taught me that the accident of beauty incurs resentment --why should something that requires no effort or skill be rewarded? People seldom let their envy show so blatantly as a teaching a.s.sistant in an English cla.s.s who once gave me a C for a poem that her supervisor later upgraded to an A+. At eighteen my looks were as close to perfect as they would ever be, but I was deeply insecure because I knew that appearance const.i.tuted my sole value, and eighteen is ephemeral.

Sometimes I wore my looks like a mantle with a certain degree of discomfort. People, especially men people, happily inconvenience themselves for a woman so marked, but she'll pay one way or another. I always knew that the power I gleaned from beauty dwarfed any other kind of achievement. No matter how hard I worked, I was credited only for the one thing that was effortless. The looks I was born with meant that I never lacked s.e.xual partners but also meant that I could rarely discern who really cared about me. I learned from Yeats: "Only G.o.d, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair."

The vain, murderously envious queen in Snow White Snow White poisons the young beauty but still doesn't feel safe when told that her rival is dead. She continues to look in the mirror, asking, "Who's the fairest of them all?" I grew up with this fairy tale and with the presumption of female envy. My mother absorbed this common cultural belief and pa.s.sed it on to me, but I'd like to think that I've protected my daughters from it. When I look at my eldest now, I know absolutely who the fresh young beauty is, without begrudging her the role. I've already played it, and I'd prefer not to play the evil queen, in life anyway. poisons the young beauty but still doesn't feel safe when told that her rival is dead. She continues to look in the mirror, asking, "Who's the fairest of them all?" I grew up with this fairy tale and with the presumption of female envy. My mother absorbed this common cultural belief and pa.s.sed it on to me, but I'd like to think that I've protected my daughters from it. When I look at my eldest now, I know absolutely who the fresh young beauty is, without begrudging her the role. I've already played it, and I'd prefer not to play the evil queen, in life anyway.

THERE'S A DIXIE CHICKS SONG WITH A WISE AND placating lyric that goes, "You gotta make big mistakes." I've made my share, and I ask for no jeremiads. I've been blessed with success in public life. Early on I fed readily and greedily off the seductive culture of narcissism and celebrity wors.h.i.+p that abandons and replaces its acolytes at warp speed. Sometimes I've failed to hold myself accountable. Now I'm looking at my own trajectory, hoping to discern Cybill the Good and Cybill the Bad, trying to understand in order to be understood. I want to figure out how I became one of the Furies --me, the same person voted Most Cooperative at Camp Pickwick in 1959. placating lyric that goes, "You gotta make big mistakes." I've made my share, and I ask for no jeremiads. I've been blessed with success in public life. Early on I fed readily and greedily off the seductive culture of narcissism and celebrity wors.h.i.+p that abandons and replaces its acolytes at warp speed. Sometimes I've failed to hold myself accountable. Now I'm looking at my own trajectory, hoping to discern Cybill the Good and Cybill the Bad, trying to understand in order to be understood. I want to figure out how I became one of the Furies --me, the same person voted Most Cooperative at Camp Pickwick in 1959.

Some people have asked why I'd subject myself to the scrutiny of public confession when there are so many reasons not to; it's painful, I'm too young, I will be harshly judged. But events of the last year, symbolized by the not-so-pretty scar that means I've worn my last bikini, have forced me to realize that there are no guarantees about our time on the planet. Last year I went on Good Morning America Good Morning America, discussing menopause and a recently published list of s.e.x symbols over the age of fifty. Just shy of my fiftieth birthday at the time, I didn't qualify, but if I'm not on the list next year, I'm coming after them. (h.e.l.l, if Judge Judy can make the cut, I'd better be included.) Just before we went "live" with the interview, Diane Sawyer leaned over to me and said, "If you had to choose one song to sum up your whole life, what would it be?" I frantically mused for just an instant before the song popped into my mind: "For all we know, this may only be a dream; we come and go, like a ripple in a stream..."

So I'd like to tell my story now. I've actually been doing autobiography in front of the public for along time, but the standards of memoir are daunting. Memory is revisionist and selective by nature, and it is tempting to edit out the nasty, unflattering, what-was-I-thinking parts. "Tell it all Mom," my elder daughter advised me. (h.e.l.l, no, I'd end up in jail.) I've given sobriquet to a few key players who don't deserve to have their names spelled right. This is how I remember it. And if my mother objects to any reminiscence in these pages... it didn't happen.

Chapter Two.

"Stay Puuuuure Vanilla"

THERE IS AN IMAGE ENGRAVED IN MY MEMORY VIVID enough to evoke a smell (the red vinyl of a well-used armchair) and a sound (the flick of a cigarette holder against a metal ashtray): it's the image of a twelve-year-old me, gangly and no longer a towhead, much to the chagrin of my mother, who seemed to greet the natural darkening of my blonde hair as a dereliction of filial duty. Also to her dismay, I was utterly contemptuous of most girlish playthings but fanatically preoccupied with horses. The school librarian looked squint-eyed at me for years, suspecting I'd stolen a copy of enough to evoke a smell (the red vinyl of a well-used armchair) and a sound (the flick of a cigarette holder against a metal ashtray): it's the image of a twelve-year-old me, gangly and no longer a towhead, much to the chagrin of my mother, who seemed to greet the natural darkening of my blonde hair as a dereliction of filial duty. Also to her dismay, I was utterly contemptuous of most girlish playthings but fanatically preoccupied with horses. The school librarian looked squint-eyed at me for years, suspecting I'd stolen a copy of Olympic Horseman Olympic Horseman (I had), and I saved up the nickels allocated for orange Creamsicles to buy miniature plastic horses and Black Stallion books at the Poplar Plaza Shopping Center. At times I morphed into equine behavior myself, cantering around the house with a jump rope in my mouth and a bath mat belted on as a saddle. I would make a steeplechase out of the hedges separating the yards on our street and neigh in response to questions. But owning a horse was an extravagance far beyond the middle-cla.s.s means of my parents, for whom canned asparagus const.i.tuted a luxury. The necessary deep pockets were worn by my grandfather. (I had), and I saved up the nickels allocated for orange Creamsicles to buy miniature plastic horses and Black Stallion books at the Poplar Plaza Shopping Center. At times I morphed into equine behavior myself, cantering around the house with a jump rope in my mouth and a bath mat belted on as a saddle. I would make a steeplechase out of the hedges separating the yards on our street and neigh in response to questions. But owning a horse was an extravagance far beyond the middle-cla.s.s means of my parents, for whom canned asparagus const.i.tuted a luxury. The necessary deep pockets were worn by my grandfather.

We called him Da-Dee (accent on the second syllable), and my grandmother was always Moma, resistant to the notion of being "Grandma" and relegating her ownr to the more formal "Mother." Outside of the family, they were Cy and Tommy, both nicknamed for their fathers. Norville Shapleigh "Cy" Shobe, the son of Missouri poultry farmers, was an electronics wizard, just a boy when he made front-page news in Kansas City by a.s.sembling the first homemade radio in the state-- strangers from half a dozen counties drove right up to the porch in four-wheeled surreys to hear the raspy wonder of it. When the family moved to Arkansas, he fell in love with fifteen-year-old Gladys "Tommy" Toler, whose father owned a dry goods store, and married her within the year. (At the time, the term child bride child bride was more custom than pejorative.) To the newlyweds, Memphis was The City, where the delta was said to begin in the gilded lobby of the Peabody Hotel, and it was the only place for a young man with prospects. was more custom than pejorative.) To the newlyweds, Memphis was The City, where the delta was said to begin in the gilded lobby of the Peabody Hotel, and it was the only place for a young man with prospects.

My grandfather was named for the hardware store where his father earned the money for the chicken farm, and it was with a letter of introduction from Mr. Shapleigh that he got a job interview in Memphis at Orgil Brothers Hardware, agreeing to be a salesman only if they would agree to sell radios. From there he started his own business distributing wholesale appliances, and it provided well: in 1950, the year I was born, Shobe, Inc., grossed $5 million, a fortune half a century ago. (The company logo, a rooster boasting "We're crowin' because we're growin'," was immortalized in various shades of red stained gla.s.s on the porch door of my grandparents' house.) It was this honeypot that could yield the horse and riding lessons I wanted. "You go on into the sitting room," Moma told me in a conspiratorial whisper, "and love up on Da-Dee's neck. He'll give you anything you want."

My grandfather was a lank and looming man, the angular contours of his body seeking out the familiar dents and curves of the red easy chair that served as his sanctum sanctorum in the second-floor study. His cherished pastimes were shooting and flying, and he sat beneath a gun rack and a pilots' flight map of the United States. There were hints of tobacco and chicoried coffee in his clothes as I climbed onto his lap, ludicrously big for such an a.s.signment, and nuzzled against his neck with my request. At first he responded with a low growl, more theatrical than alarming, to my "pretty please with sugar on top," and his right had tapped ashes off the Camel in its crystalline holder. Then the tiny pings stopped, and his muscular hands tightened around my skinny arms. He wouldn't answer, and he wouldn't let go. He held me down on this lap, his body stiffening. In some inchoate way, I knew to run from such an encounter, although I didn't recognize that it represented an exchange of money for feminine charms and wouldn't know until much later what such a transaction was called. All thoughts of a horse vaporized as I managed to wriggle out of his grasp. I ran from the room, his m.u.f.fled laughter mocking my retreat.

Love up on Da-Dee's neck. More than any other fillip of memory, those words summon up the paramount message and mandate of my childhood: I was pretty, and my looks were a kind of currency. n.o.body would care what I did, what I said, what I read, but beauty had magical powers, a kind of legerdemain especially effective with men. It was like being taught double-entry bookkeeping. At that moment I was to hug my grandfather not because it was good to express affection but because I had blonde and blue-eyed a.s.sets that might get me a horse.

Rather ironic, considering that I was not even supposed to be a girl. My mother had miscarried twice in the four years since my sister was born (christened Gladys, for Moma, but called Terry). Her unexpected pregnancy was ascribed with a sacred duty to provide my father with a son, but it was deemed a washout the moment the doctor peered at me and said, "It's a girl." (When her did produce a male heir four years later, she triumphed in a rare practical joke on my father, bringing my brother, Bill, home from the hospital with a pink ribbon Scotch-taped to his bald head-- small "up yours" to the intimation that boys were better than girls.) Perhaps I sensed in vitro that my gender would come as a major disappointment to my family. I was in no hurry to enter the world and literally backed in, rear first (never the smallest part of my anatomy). "You were easy to deal with," Mother told me, "until you were born." She had gone to the Methodist Hospital when her water broke, naturally expecting contractions to start. When nothing much happened, she summoned my father from the clouds of cigar smoke in the waiting room and, in true iron b.u.t.terfly spirit, went to have her hair washed and set at Gould's Beauty Parlor. She had just ordered mint tea and selected a pleasing tangerine frost for her nails when my position in the womb, called a frank breech, became apparent and progressed to a harrowing labor, for which Mother has yet to forgive me. I was born with a birth defect, a nerve tumor on the back of my neck that had to be removed. (Ironic that someone who would earn a living projecting an image of female flawlessness would get the first of a lifetime of scars before even leaving the hospital.) I remained "Girl Shepherd" for several days while my family debated what to call this female child, finally justifying my presence by combining the names of my grandfather (Cy) and father (Bill).

Well before I could have articulated it, I was instinctively aware of my a.s.signment in the family: to be perfect. If I couldn't be a boy, at least I could be the uber-female: pert, polite, charming, compliant, and above all, lovely to look at. (It was implicit that my sister was excused from this commission, being bigger, brawnier, and brunette.) Certainly I was not to say or do anything controversial or unladylike. "Siboney," my grandmother would intone, making a pet name out of the unofficial national anthem of Cuba where my grandparents often vacationed. "Don't go too far to the left or too far to the right. Stay in the middle of the road. Stay puuuuure vanilla." I wore white cotton gloves with smocked floral dresses. Against my vehement protests, my hair was tortured into a frightening ma.s.s of deep-fried curls, which was considered more feminine than my straight hair with the recalcitrant wave in back. My G.o.dmother, Marie Hay, asked me to select my silver pattern ("Chantilly") when I was ten, and I learned to dance by standing on my father's black and white wing tips, swaying to "Just the Way You Look Tonight" while my mother primped for an evening out. There was a limited choice of destinies for a girl like me, with the distinct suggestion that life's ultimate achievement was to be anointed the Maid of Cotton, fetching symbol of Memphis's most important industry, or (spoken in reverential hushed tones) Miss America, a possibility that might have justified being born female.

All of which conflicted with my natural inclinations. I jumped from the highest branch of trees, hiked the old s.h.i.+loh military trail, and used a key worn on a lanyard around the neck to tighten metal skates, which left me with perennially bleeding elbows and knees. I declined to brush my hair until compelled to do so, and wore the same pair of tattered overalls until they disappeared from my closet (my mother quietly consigned them to incineration). To avoid getting dressed, I streaked naked next door and sat on the neighbors' porch swing until my mother by a.s.sembling what I thought to be a decorous outfit: a pink dress with puffed sleeves and my favorite red sneakers. "Look Shep," she called to my father, as if I had placed a lampshade on my head, "she picked this out herself." My grandfather would grasp my hands with unedited distaste for my gnawed cuticlaying, "You can always tell a lady by her nails." I rejected all dolls, especially the busty new Barbies coveted by my prep.u.b.escent crowd, all of us still wearing Fruit Of The Loom T-s.h.i.+rts over flat chests, and when my brother got electric trains (derisively telling me, "That's for boys"). I sulked for weeks and contemplated various means of derailment. (He also got a cross-country turnpike set, a Rin Tin Tin badge, and a Fort Apache. I got talc.u.m powder and a bath mitt).

The tomboy temperament that vexed my mother helped forge a bond with my father, even after my brother came along. He endorsed my interest in sports, didn't think it was weird to toss a football with me on the front lawn, gave me a baseball glove, and shared the sacrament of rubbing the leather with oil and shaping it by letting it spend the night cupping a ball. He even exulted when I beat the c.r.a.p out of a bully named Chris Crump (as much c.r.a.p as a whiffle bat could extract), for holding my little brother's hand in an anthill. In those years when I was a surrogate son, my father let me accompany him on Sat.u.r.days to the warehouse he ran for Da-Dee, when it was quiet enough to roll a secretary's swivel chair up and down the aisles. He taught me to swim by buckling on an orange Mae West and dropping me off the end of the pier at my grandparents' summer home.

For the great French writer Marcel Proust, the door of memory was opened by the taste of a Madeleine cookie. For me, it's Dr Pepper: one sip, and I am returned to that summer house on a slender tributary of the Tennessee River in Alabama called Shoals Creek. It was built in the 1930s as a hunting lodge on a remote promontory near a forest of cedar, pine, and burr oak, but the original owner felt too isolated and sold the five-acre property to my grandfather for the 1950 bargain price of $35,000. As a toddler who couldn't p.r.o.nounce the letter l l, I called it the "yake house," and the moniker stuck with the whole family. On the four-hour drive from Memphis, we stopped at filling stations with green jars of sour pickles for sale by the cash register. (I could make a pickle last all day. The goal was to suck out the insides but maintain the outer sh.e.l.l so you could blow it up like a balloon, make it breathe. I'd find the jettisoned ends of pickles under my sister's bed). Da-Dee arrived in a style more befitting the lord of the manor, landing his own twin-engine Beechcraft Bonanza on an airstrip across the creek and announcing his presence by buzzing the house from the air so that Moma would be waiting on the tarmac when he touched down.

In the early summer mornings, before the humidity would slap down like a biblical plague, Da-Dee and I got up before the others to sit in penumbral shadow on the long screened porch and watch the choppy surface of the water become streaked with first light, which looked like thousands of glittering broken mirrors, so bright that we had to squint. We'd wad up some day-old bread, stick the gummy ball on a hook and line at the end of a cane fis.h.i.+ng pole, then plop into the reclining chairs on the pier and wait for the bite of catfish and bream and c.r.a.ppie (a delicacy not yet appreciated by chic chefs). I was the only one in the family with enough guts to eat calves brains and eggs with Da-Dee. There was a huge black cauldron in a tarp-covered clearing near the house for deep-frying fish and hush puppies, the crisp puffs of cornmeal meant to placate dogs driven mad by cooking smells but appropriated by smart humans. Moma kept baby goats, which ate up the shrubbery, and peac.o.c.ks whose shrill reveille I learned to imitate with ear-splitting accuracy, and hens that roosted in the trees at night, but these were more pets than livestock. Dinner was often an anonymous quail or duck shot by Da-Dee (there were usually a few vanquished carca.s.ses hanging in the kitchen), and we never sat down to a summer meal that didn't include tomatoes, often fried green matoes, even at breakfast. I took the red paisley bandannas that served as napkins and made streamers for my bike or slings for a fake broken arm.

It was there at Shoals Creek that my grandfather seemed most content, only vaguely morose. He would lapse into a private reverie, occasionally broken with an enigmatic aphorism ("Everything's gonna be all right") said as much to himself as to anyone else. I never considered his taciturn manner an indication of a dissatisfied soul-- he had every conceivable creature comfort and was coddled by the sort of wife who put the cuff links in his s.h.i.+rt every day. Years later my father told me that he imagined the wistful cast in Da-Dee's eye was a woman named Daisy, ensconced in a downtown Memphis apartment with my grandfather's name on the lease. When Moma found prima facie evidence of the affair, she sent his suitcase to the Peabody Hotel, then thought better of it. I heard that she threatened to study taxidermy and mount the stuffed and formaldehyded bodies of Da-Dee and his mistress alongside the deer head over the ma.s.sive stone fireplace at the yake house. Daisy disappeared, as did a certain kick-a.s.s vigor in my grandfather's spirit. He mentioned her name in the narcotic musings of his deathbed, when I guess he felt he had nothing left to lose or hide.

Moma was not about to abdicate from the perquisites of an indulgent marriage, exemplified by more than a hundred pairs of shoes filling three closets--a tottering chronicle of fas.h.i.+on victimization that ranged from d.u.c.h.ess-of-Windsor bejeweled to Chiquita-banana tacky. Years later I learned about one source of her shoe fetish: back home for a visit, I was exploring the Memphis Yacht Club, the hyperbolic term for what was then a series of wooden boathouses strung together with steel cable and wired with yellow lights to keep the bugs away. I was shocked to see a sailboat tacking back and forth across the Mississippi River. Sailing on the Mississippi? What kind of nutcase would try that? There's a constant traffic of enormous barges, several cit blocks long, that move huge amounts of water out of their way, and it takes these behemoths thirty minutes to stop, often sucking smaller vessels into their wake like helpless anchovies. The current runs strong only one way over treacherous whirlpools, and the depths of the muddy water can be deceptive. So it was axiomatic that n.o.body would try to navigate the river without a least one engine. The mad sailor turned out to be a devilishly handsome silver fox named Smith. When I reported our meeting to Moma, she got a dreamy look in her eyes and said, "Oh, that's Smitty from the Julius Lewis Department Store. I must have bought fifty pairs of shoes from that man."

Most of her wardrobe came, apparently without erotic subtext, from The Helen Shop: sherbet-colored chiffon sheaths for charity b.a.l.l.s, pearl-b.u.t.toned cashmere cardigans, scarves to match every outfit, a prized chinchilla stole--all supported by a long-line girdle that redistributed a thickish waist from bust line to just above the knees. There was one set of noises when she was putting it on and another when she was desperately pulling it off, the indicia of zippers and garters pressed into flesh like thumbprints in yeast dough. In one of her closets were two tan leather suitcases with yellow knit bows on the handles, kept packed at all times in case Da-Dee had an urge to fly off for a "rendezvous," one of the parties held by the Sportsmen Pilots a.s.sociation all over the country, with buffet tables set up right in the hangar. I got taken along once as a teenager, and the gin and tonics started before the propellers stopped spinning.

Like me, Moma had been something of a jock, a predilection uncommon to her generation, until a heart attack in her forties curtailed all sports but golf. I liked to play with her trophies from country club tournaments, topped with tiny gold-plated figurines of st.u.r.dy women swinging drivers over their heads. Ldies' Day at the clubhouse was the only time I saw my grandmother in pants, the kind of clothes I appreciated. She hated the female liturgy of the beauty parlor, preferring her own Aqua Net, and claimed she owed her baby pink complexion to a nightly smear of Lady Esther cold cream--once a week she left it on all day long, walking around the house with a greasy mask. Years before, according to the fas.h.i.+on of the times, she had plucked out her eyebrows and had to draw them back on. I would watch her apply the Max Factor brownish-black eyebrow pencil as we sang a duet of "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know," with me doing the harmony part. Moma loved music more than anything, and growing up she taught herself to play the church organ. I never visited her house that she didn't sit down either at her organ or her piano to accompany us kids singing the gospel hymns of her childhood. A few years after my grandmother's death, my mother came across a note scrawled on a yellow legal pad concerning Moma's only regret: that she hadn't "followed up and done something with her music." She was always urging me to do what she called those "sweet songs" like "Michael Row the Boat Ash.o.r.e," and at her insistence I sang it as my talent portion of the Miss Teenage Memphis Pageant.

Moma grew up in the small rural town of Carlyle, Arkansas. The churchyard was kept at full occupancy by the influenza epidemic of 1918, which claimed her mother when Moma was only seven. Startled by an unusual thump coming from the parlor where the body was laid out, she refused to accept that the window had slammed shut, believing that the coffin had been tumbled off a table by ghosts, and engendering a fear of spectral spirits that was not completely dissipated in adulthood. The care of three younger siblings fell to this child, with devastating consequences: baby sister Edith crawled too near a fireplace, and her leg was so severely burned that it was amputated above the knee. As a child I was fascinated by her prosthesis and was always trying to get a peek of it or her without it. But Great-Aunt Edith never let her false leg keep her down. She became a graceful dancer, married Saul Byarly, who printed the Arkansas Gazette Arkansas Gazette, and had four impressively achieving children: an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and a chief nurse in cardiovascular surgery.

As adolescent lady of the house, Moma enjoyed certain benefits along with the burdens, partnering her widowed father at every rural s.h.i.+ndig. When her position was subsumed by a stepmother, she began a rebellion of such ornery defiance that she once ate an entire s.h.i.+pment of green bananas meant for the store and was sent to live in a Little Rock boardinghouse owned by a family friend. With only one line left on her dance card at the DeMoolay Young Men's Organization, she caught the eye of a hulking blond boy with elephantine ears and a killer smile, two years older and ready for a wife. Perhaps she saw marriage to a clever and ambitious fly-boy as her ticket to ride. Moma and Da-Dee crisscrossed every square mile of the delta in his plane, which was red canvas covered with two open-air c.o.c.kpits. Having baby Patricia Cornelia Shobe didn't much crimp their style, my mother was often left on the farm with grandparents who doted on her, waiting for her parents to swoop down in a cleared field and pick her up. I have a photograph of Patty, Tommy, and Cy when my mother was a toddler; they look like the American dream, an enviable portrait worthy of a cereal box or a postage stamp.

The custodial grandmother, Clara Shobe, was known as Ma-Maw. Every Sunday morning she chose the plumpest chicken in the yard, casually wringing its neck for dinner, and the storm cellar was lined with Mason jars of her bread-and-b.u.t.ter pickles and Prohibition "home brew." My grandfather, the electronics wizard, made sure they had the first telephone in those parts and installed a gas range, but Ma-Maw preferred the old wooove and wouldn't let him remove it. With their only son gone, the older couple adopted a series of orphans who helped satisfy my mother's endless yearning for siblings. On summer nights, she caught lightning bugs in a canning jar and put their illuminated tails on the boys' model planes.

Patty Shobe was not destined for animal husbandry but for husbandry of another kind. In 1943, she was engaged to an air force bombardier who was the scion of a prominent Memphis banking family. Like all the young ladies in the area, she dug a pretty dress out of the cedar closet and went to help entertain the servicemen at the Millington Naval Air Station, where her father was serving as head flight instructor. A handsome young cadet saw her swaying to Glenn Miller and asked her to dance. He was William Jennings Shepherd from Buckingham Courthouse, Virginia. (The town took the name of its most prestigious edifice, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson, but was so small that it reported only two surnames to the census: Spencer and Shepherd.) "Do you know Cy Shobe?" Patty asked her dance partner. "He's my father."

"Oh, c'mon," Shep answered. "I've had five girls tell me that tonight." Apparently my grandfather's name was invoked to ensure proper behavior from any man dancing with his "daughter."

Bill Shepherd's mother and grandmother had died on the same day, both from cervical cancer, surely evoking disturbing feelings about female fragility and creating a powerful urge for someone to ply the womanly arts in his life, to do the caretaking. He proposed to Patty on their third date, saying he urgently needed an answer before being a.s.signed overseas. When she accepted, the two of them made an appointment to see her former fiancee's father at the bank, carrying a Dear John letter to be forwarded. Her guilt at writing "I'm sorry I've fallen in love with someone else" was compounded when she was told the bombardier had just been shot down over Germany and was a prisoner of war. My father never did get s.h.i.+pped out; the POW returned a war hero and married a childhood friend of Mother's. More than fifty years later, this woman sometimes encounters my mother in Memphis and sighs, "You know, Patty, he's still in love with you."

It was simply taken for granted that my father would go to work at Shobe, Inc. (his only experience had been on a high school football field and in the c.o.c.kpit of a pilot trainer), but that opportunity dissolved into a cla.s.sic scenario of the son-in-law who feels gotten for cheap. Dinnertime at my house was often punctuated by his tirades about Shobe stinginess, despite his ascension from warehouse stock boy to executive vice president. "n.o.body's told the son of a b.i.t.c.h that the slaves were freed a hundred years ago," he railed. "How's it fair that he lives so high on the hog while we eat chitlins?"

My parents must have been salivating when they went to Little Rock to help settle the estate of Da-Dee's Aunt Diloma, one of the first women in Arkansas to work for the phone company. Jilted by her fiancee, she lived with d.i.c.kensian eccentricity: she continued in her job for half a century, a stylish woman in cinch waisted suits and a Gibson--girl pompadour (her fifty year employee pin is still hanging from my mother's charm bracelet), but she talked to cows and secreted money in mattresses and walls. Da-Dee got most of the cash, plus a fortune in AT&T stock, hidden in burlap tobacco sacks, and my parents hoped some of the windfall might trickle down to them. The Shobes denied themselves little but acted as if gifts to their only child and grandchildren were debts to be grudgingly paid. Maybe they couldn't forget that in Memphis, unless your money came from King Cotton, you weren't rich, just nouveau. Maybe the Depression mentality endemic to their geration had ripened into a canon about the perversity of the universe, which holds that good luck is transient and bad times last forever. Maybe it was just a p.i.s.sing contest between my father and grandfather. But the Shobes had little talent for sharing.

Most of my childhood was spent in a one-story brick house on Highland Park Place (you could stand at the front door and see straight through to the backyard) with a fake fireplace mantel, plastic violets in a vase, and a mechanical bird that sang in a cage (a gift from my grandmother). One of the few genuine furnis.h.i.+ngs was a leather top table that became a disaster of watermarks from c.o.c.ktail gla.s.ses. My mother pasted S&H green stamps into books and redeemed them at the catalog store on Union Street for a prized lamp with a silk shade. I took a cold bath on nights when my sister's rank as firstborn gave her priority and there wasn't enough hot water to fill the tub a second time. Neither was there money for the piano lessons I wanted, much less the instrument itself. So I borrowed my grandmother's old ukulele and songbook I found in her attic and taught myself everything from "In the Evening by the Moonlight" to "Ja Da." Whenever my parents had guests, they insisted I entertain. When I finished my songs everyone always seemed slightly underwhelmed. This definitely eroded my confidence, but nothing, it seemed, would ever stop me from singing: It was something I just had to do, like walking or breathing.

My grandparents, by sharp contrast, had a piano and organ in each of their three homes (Memphis, Shoals Creek, and Fort Lauderdale, including one painted Moma's favorite cherry red. (My mother detested the color, and after my grandmother's death, I was given the red organ on the condition that I have it refinished. When I was ten, we got a tabletop keyboard with a fake wood veneer and a songbook showing how to push preset "chord b.u.t.tons. The spine of the book was permanently opened to the two melodies that got played ten times a day: "On Top of Old Smokey" for Terry, "Liebenstraum" for me. (When I first saw the t.i.tle of the song, I thought it was an ode to Liederkranz, the stinky cheese my mother loved but my father banned from the house.) Less than a mile but light years away was my grandparents' elegant three-story Tudor house on East Drive, with an S for Shobe on the awnings, harlequin print drapes at the windows, jewel-toned Oriental carpets, and crystal chandeliers. The silverware was gold- plated, and the furniture was made of rich woods, rather too grandly ornate and ostentatious for my tastes (then or now) but substantial in a way that represented money. Visiting was entry to Valhalla, seductive but tenuous. They financed what they considered good for business or social standing, like members.h.i.+p for my family at the Chickasaw Country Club, even though the monthly dues took food off our table. As a child, I gorged on several grilled cheese sandwiches a day at the poolside cafe and an astonis.h.i.+ng tomato ice cream in the dining room, and I stood under the shower in the ladies' locker room for an hour at a time, never running out of hot water as I did at home.

The family business being appliances, my grandparents bragged that they had a television in every room, even the bathroom (competing in entertainment value with a book called Jokes for the John Jokes for the John that lived on top of the wicker hamper). My parents did achieve some permanent prestige on Highland Park Place with the first TV on our block (perpetually tuned to wrestling or that lived on top of the wicker hamper). My parents did achieve some permanent prestige on Highland Park Place with the first TV on our block (perpetually tuned to wrestling or Dragnet) Dragnet) and the first air conditioner (installed in my parents' bedroom, where all of us gathered when the August heat sucked the breath out of our own rooms). We partic.i.p.ated in the careless abundance of my grandparents' lives, like the wondrous fruit ambrosia with marshmallows, coconut, and pecans, or the three kinds of turkey dressing and cavalcade of pies at Thanksgiving. and the first air conditioner (installed in my parents' bedroom, where all of us gathered when the August heat sucked the breath out of our own rooms). We partic.i.p.ated in the careless abundance of my grandparents' lives, like the wondrous fruit ambrosia with marshmallows, coconut, and pecans, or the three kinds of turkey dressing and cavalcade of pies at Thanksgiving.

Perhapss only the disparity with my grandparents' groaning table, but I never felt that there was enough to eat at home, with only rare trips to those exotic pleasure palaces: the Joy Young Chop Suey restaurant and Pappy's Lobster Shack. What we never ran out of was pickles, pork rinds, and canned Vienna sausages, and we ate a lot of "falling off the stool" eggs (soft-boiled and mashed with b.u.t.ter), so named because my brother fell backward off the stool the first time Mother made them. About once a month my grandmother would take me to the "curb market," where local farmers brought their produce to town. She'd buy a big bag of wild greens called "polk salad," which she described as a spring tonic (the digestive equivalent of spring cleaning), and we got thinly sliced ham sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise from a large man with the improbable name of Mr. Ham.

My mother had a taste for sophisticated foods like artichokes that weren't popular in the South, but these were so expensive that she examined our plates for microscopic edible morsels possibly overlooked. ('You haven't cleaned that leaf," she'd say. "Do you know how much it cost?") I scrounged food with the thrift and cunning of the Artful Dodger, stealing from my brother's dish when he looked the other way and licking the pots and pans before was.h.i.+ng them.

Half a mile away, in the home of my best friend Jane Howard, there was a ubiquitous earthenware crock of homemade pimento cheese, and okra stewed with tomatoes, and endless rashers of bacon for breakfast--only part of the salvation she provided in my life. Jane and I bonded in the fifth grade when, as teacher's pet, she was given the honored responsibility of collecting the girls' purses after lunch, to be stowed in a closet during recess--a pile of child-size pastel plastics and black patent leather. She needed an a.s.sistant and chose me. Very soon we discovered our mutual pa.s.sion for reading everything from the Nancy Drew mysteries to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Jane and I defied the carefully delineated description for southern female adolescence. "Those girls have too much fun," a neighbor observed to my mother. (Jane continued this pattern with my children, whom she taught to burp on cue, her theory being that there are some things in life you just need to know.) I was awed by her ability to shoplift licorice by stuffing a huge wad of it in her mouth, and when she failed to grasp the concept of grapefruit segmenting in home ec., she glued her botched slices back together, to the outrage of Mrs. Kernodel. We played soldiers in the musty third-floor attic of my grandparents' house with German military memorabilia--some of the men who trained under Da-Dee have brought the souvenirs back at the end of the war. We joined the Brownies, thinking that we were going to whittle and tie knots and light campfires, but the troop leader thought it more valuable to learn proper place settings, and her idea of an interesting craft project was waterproofing paper bags from the Piggly-Wiggly grocery with sh.e.l.lac so we could sit on the ground without sullying our uniforms.

I got admonished and ousted by parents and teachers for a lot of Jane-inspired misconduct (the only time I got sent to the princ.i.p.al's office was after Jane double-dog-dared me to slide down the school banister), but she often got away clean and had an enviable ability to defy grown-up rules and without seeming insolent. My mother once tried to enlist her in clearing the detritus of an evening at home--the empty bottles of Wild 'Turkey left like deflowered vases on the windowsill, the stale stubs of cigarettes heaped so high in ceramic ashtrays that they'd spill on the way to the trash can. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Shepherd," Jane said, "but I didn't make this mess and I'm not cleaning it up."

At eleven o'clock every day, ed vases r had a Coca-Cola, which I sometimes prepared to her specifications: the ice-cold soda had to be poured like beer down the side of a tall gla.s.s to preserve every bit of carbonation. There were slightly different regulations for c.o.c.ktails: I was taught to select the highball gla.s.s (squat but not too squat), measure out a jigger of Scotch and fill the gla.s.s with ice, leaving just a little room for water. I never saw Mother drink a beer, but once when I knocked someone else's beer off a tray, my mother said, "That's the best thing you can spill because the smell doesn't stay in the carpet." (I still say that but have no idea if it's true.) In my family, the happy hour began before noon on weekends with b.l.o.o.d.y Marys, by sundown on the average weekday. Drinking was a subject of unabashed levity, without menacing undercurrents. There was a gag clock at the lake house bearing the epigram NO DRINKS BEFORE 5, the punch line being fives at every point on the dial, and c.o.c.ktail napkins imprinted with whimsical instructions on "How to Recover from a Hangover." Da-Dee had a full bar in the room back behind his office, a dimly lit tabernacle to the manly creeds of liquor and c.o.c.ksmans.h.i.+p, with a plaque praising "men who come together and find contentment before capacity." I liked to sneak up onto the tall bar stools and touch the beer mugs that had naked ladies as handles.

Da-Dee's drinking followed a predictable and not very alarming pattern, winding down to sullen solitude. Moma just tried to keep up with him. One night at the lake house when I awakened to hear virulent cursing, my sister informed me it was a bogeyman from the bottom of the lake (she had recently been impressed by readings about the Loch Ness monster). But the disturbance was just Moma, roaring drunk and attempting to move a sofa upstairs by herself. She