We were told she had a seizure disorder and needed to go on medication—but the medication didn’t work.
No one seemed to know how to help her. We tried everything: different medications, diets, specialists, hospitals. After what I had been through as a child, it was almost more than I could bear. I was the daughter of a mother who had kept me home mistakenly believing I was sick. Now I was the parent of a child who had a legitimate health concern, and no one knew how to help us. We were in and out of clinics and hospitals. My ob-gyn told me I was going through “every parent’s worst nightmare.” Through it all, I refused to let my daughter stay home from school. I needed her to get an education. I couldn’t let her miss out as I had done.
* * *
OVER TIME, MY MOTHER established a routine for herself at the shelter, one that she followed religiously. In the morning, she got up and got dressed, always in white. Then she went to Bergdorf Goodman’s to wash in the basins of the ladies’ room. If it rained or if it was cold, she visited the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, where she could listen to classical ballet music on headphones, the same symphonies she had played for me as a child. She had a watercolor set, and she liked to sit on a bench and paint pictures of flowers and animals. She went to church often, taking her place in one of the pews and listening to the sermon, or praying in front of a statue of her beloved Virgin Mary. And every single day, with ritualistic intensity, she went to the little park set in between the buildings on Fifty-eighth Street to pray. She believed the park was blessed, and that if she went there often enough, miracles would come to pass. She felt that her prayers would someday elevate the park to the level of a shrine for humanity.
I wanted so desperately to do what I could for my mother. I made sure she always had enough to eat, paying a local diner for her meals. I gave her money. I accepted her collect calls. I drove into the city to take her for lunch, even though it terrified me to leave Nicole alone with a babysitter. We’d always meet at a nearby café or diner—I avoided the Armory as much as I could; the building intimidated me. It was a vast Victorian redbrick building with crenellated towers and Gothic arches. To enter, you had to walk downstairs to a discreet darkened door, through an area stacked with garbage, and up a series of steep metal stairs.
Now that she was living at the shelter, her obsession with religion and astrology became even more pronounced. She spoke often about the planets, about their movements, how everything was predestined. She liked to talk about “the Father” and how important He was in her life. “The Father” was always telling her what to do, and she was determined to follow His instructions. Other times she would talk about “They.” “They want me to do this,” she’d say, or, “They said I should do that.” When I asked her whom she was talking about, she wouldn’t tell me.
“We’ll talk about it when the sun is shining,” she used to say.
She was constantly praying, constantly worried. Concerned that I was sick, that the children needed to go the doctor. I didn’t tell my mother about what was happening with Nicole’s health. I didn’t want her advice or to have her tell me that we needed a miracle.
After we finished eating, we’d say good-bye, and I’d get back in my car and drive to the suburbs to try to go on with my life.
* * *
MY FATHER NO LONGER considered my mother his problem. Since the divorce, they’d had very little contact. To my knowledge, he didn’t ever go to visit her during her time at the Armory, and he didn’t give her money. Malcolm Reybold, once the dashing man-about-town who had captured my mother’s heart, was in his seventies now and living back on Long Island.
He had already suffered multiple heart attacks when, in January of 1988, he had his fatal stroke. Jyl, Patricia, my mother, and I went to the funeral. My father and I had never been close; I knew my sisters felt the same way. At his open casket I wept, as much for the bond we’d never shared as for the man himself.
* * *
AT THE SHELTER, my mother kept to herself; she didn’t speak to the other women who lived there. I think she no longer wanted to be measured or judged by anyone’s standards. My mother living at the Armory wasn’t ideal for anyone, least of all her. But with the distance of time, I can see that the shelter gave her, if nothing else, a roof over her head and the anonymity she craved.
At the Armory, she had found, in her own way, a place to hide and some peace.
Then, one day, as she was sitting on the steps of her favorite park, on Fifty-eighth Street, dressed all in white, my mother looked up and saw a camera lens pointing in her direction. She heard the familiar sound of the shutter’s click, click, click.
She had been captured.
Part Two
AFTER
CHAPTER 17
In the supermarket parking lot, I finished reading the article about my mother with the photo of her sitting on the shelter steps. By the time I closed the magazine’s pages; I
