Wild Game My Mother, Her Lover, and Me - Adrienne Brodeur Page 0,16

married Charles did not encourage familial proximity or interaction. Neither Peter’s bedroom nor mine—nor any of the other fifteen bedrooms in the house—was close enough to the family room to allow us to overhear the mumble of our parents’ conversations, let alone fall asleep to those distant vibrations. The house was so big that there weren’t even distinct smells associated with particular rooms, like cinnamon sugar in the kitchen after our mother perfected her doughnut recipe or the smoke of old fires in the den. Sounds and smells—just about everything, really—disappeared into the vastness.

There was also the fact that 100 Essex had been on the market since the day we arrived, lending a feeling of impermanence to our living situation. The house was impossible to heat in those energy-lean years and even more impossible to sell; the only legitimate offer had come from the Unification Church, aka the Moonies, but accepting a bid that would damage Charles’s family’s name wasn’t an option. What would the neighbors think? So my mother and stepfather did what WASPs have done for generations: they lived off the vapors of family wealth, maintained appearances, and drank copiously.

A day in our life at the time went something like this: Charles shuffled off each morning to work at the investment banking and brokerage firm that his grandfather had founded and that bore his family’s name. He disliked this job, but luckily for him, his passion for archaeology offered solace from this stultifying fate. Starting in the tenth grade, my brother attended a different New England prep school than I did. Peter went to Roxbury Latin, an independent, all-boys school, and I went to Milton Academy, an institution with a stately campus featuring sprawling green lawns, well-kept grounds, and imposing red-brick buildings and whose motto was “Dare to be true.” And our mother filled her days with . . . well, I was never quite sure with what. She might have been puttering around that enormous residence trying to figure out how to fit in with the country-club set or how to jump-start a new career after having jettisoned the old. Or perhaps she was simply wondering if it had all been a huge mistake.

During the school year, Peter and I ate dinner together at the kitchen table every evening at around six o’clock, right as Malabar and Charles commenced their leisurely cocktail hour. The ritual began with a lively discussion of what they wanted to drink, bourbon or scotch. This was not a decision to be made lightly because it was an evening-long commitment. If they chose bourbon, bourbon it would be, not just for that first drink or two—on the rocks with a splash—but also for their Manhattans, their power pack and its dividend. Very occasionally, rum or rye might make an appearance. But never vodka, or at least never at night (the clear spirit did sometimes find its way into a bloody mary at brunch). And absolutely never gin, which Malabar detested with a passion because her mother, Vivian, had administered it to her starting when she was twelve as a tonic to relieve menstrual cramps. And although Malabar never forgave her mother for eliminating a perfectly good spirit from her cocktail repertoire, she administered the same home remedy to me, creating an association between gin and menstruation that I have not been able to shake to this day.

Once they’d landed on what to drink, Malabar would retrieve the appropriate glassware—tumblers or highballs—and Charles would pour. Then, their moods brightening with anticipation, they’d retreat to the library, where they’d sit on plush sofas, an antique end table dotted with coasters between them. The accumulation of all these cocktail conversations added up to their life together.

* * *

Starting in 1980, my mother’s affair eclipsed nearly everything else in her life. She was radiant and hot with it, blinded for a time. She still did what she could for Charles—hosted dinner parties, accompanied him to events, orchestrated family gatherings—but she could not get enough of Ben Souther.

“Rennie, I’ve never felt so alive in my life,” she confided giddily one day. We were in her bathroom, she sitting on a stool, me standing behind her, my gloved hands applying henna conditioner to her hair. The concoction, just brewed, was the consistency of mud and smelled like wet hay.

“Tell me what it’s like,” I said, even though we’d had this conversation before and I’d witnessed firsthand how the volatile forces of passion and infidelity had given my mother exuberance.