Primal
Non-Fiction by Ronna Bloom
To think of my parents having sex does not disgust me. It makes me happy. To think they liked each other for a while, and had chemistry. For whatever my father was he was not a rapist. And my mother was exceedingly beautiful. I think they each fell in love with an idea and an image.
I look at a very small photo album of my father’s family, black and white snaps with crimped edges pressed into a 5 x 7 black book. They are pictures of his immediate family in the late forties, one sister and one brother, both older, and his parents, immigrants from Russia. My father, the baby of the family, was twelve in these pictures. I want to say “innocent” but I think innocence wore out quick where he was. In almost every picture they are riding horses. They especially like to pose with the horses rearing up on their hind legs, while they themselves look quite calm. Or else they’re standing with one foot up on the fender of a car and a cigarette dangling from their fingers or mouths. In my mother’s family of the same vintage, the men wore plus fours and carried golf clubs and the women held cocktail glasses. If my mother’s family was The Great Gatsby, my father’s was Rebel without a Cause.
When they met, he was an aggressive, ambitious, nineteen-year-old with no money, and she was dependent and spoiled. That word by her own admission. “I was spoiled,” she said recently. “But not spoiled rotten.” My father wanted to make it and did. By some accounts, he said “I want to have diamonds on my walls.”
I once saw a photo of them on a trip to California in the late sixties. He was in a black turtleneck with a nicely pointed chin. She was laughing with her mouth open. He might even have had his arm around her. I find the thought of them in love so poignant because I never saw it.
Except maybe once when my father woke from a nap on the floor, while my mother leaned over him. He reached up in his sleep-daze and put his hand on her left breast. I, at around twelve, was angry at everything and shouted at him. My mother glared at me and I saw that I had interrupted something precious. Roberta Flack was on the radio then Killing Me Softly. Was this love? It was desire at least. They were pulled toward each other. Mostly, I saw transactions, baking, cooking, cleaning, money, houses, and status. There was not much talking, but time spent in cars, and a big party at New Year’s Eve. Sometimes hysterical laughter. They were responsible and dutiful. They did not look inside, below or beneath, but there were nice clothes. I have several of my mother’s cashmere sweaters, and one of my father’s scarves.
My image of marriage came from what I saw: that it was like a series of jumps in a corral at an equestrian fair and you just had to keep going round and round clearing those jumps until you died. Thankfully they let themselves out of the corral sooner.
They are both happier now, cities apart, alive and in their late eighties. My mother has gone from elegance to sweatpants, and makes art at all hours of the day with enough brushes to clean the tails off of several horses. The paintings scream colour. They have no prettiness. They are not spoiled.
My father is with another now and they work at their legacy and travel as they keep to themselves. He has always wanted to be a good man, though I think he doesn’t know how. He asks questions like a street fighter who doesn’t stop until you say uncle. But because of that spirit, he has also always been excellent in a crisis.
To think of them having sex together is to imagine different creatures, as though they themselves were once horses or birds. »