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<\/a><\/p>\nThis is not the place to recount the amazing summer that followed. They traveled in a powder blue Studebaker President\u2014a rented 1925 model, provided for their journey by none other than Jane Fonda\u2014with a top speed of fifty miles an hour.\u00a0 The antique vehicle attracted attention wherever they went\u2014and the HANDS OFF OUR BODIES banner, the petition, and the numerous interviews they conducted along the way brought increasing attention to their cause. When Michelle and Dana stepped into president Carter\u2019s office for their allotted seven-minute audience, they presented him with eight and a half million signatures demanding repeal of the Hyde Amendment.\u00a0 Crazy good, just as Michelle had predicted.\u00a0 Two For the Road<\/em>, their jointly written account of their remarkable adventure, was published the following year\u2014and, I\u2019m happy to say, my film of the same name helped land me a Guggenheim.<\/p>\nDana was a writer, a rising star.\u00a0 Though I was unaware of this when we first met, it wasn\u2019t long before it came to light. \u00a0Centering <\/em>appeared when Dana was just twenty-four. Published by Sun and Moon Press, it attracted far more attention than is common for a small press. Her narrative explores parallel romances of two sisters.\u00a0 Gina, the older and bolder one, falls for Joey Markakis, a handsome, wild boy\u2014the high school troublemaker, who fashions his image after James Dean, but who turns out to be surprisingly shy and sexually inexperienced.\u00a0 Gayle, the younger sister, is attracted to Vicky, her pottery teacher, an introverted woman whose retiring nature stems from a childhood devastated by her sexually abusive father.\u00a0 Gayle and Vicky\u2019s relationship develops inadvertently during Gayle\u2019s ceramic classes.\u00a0 In a scene that points to the novel\u2019s title, Vicky blindfolds her students and invites them to center a lump of clay on their wheel and pull it into a simple bowl.\u00a0 Vicky presses her hands over Gayle\u2019s to steady her, but only briefly.\u00a0 Blindfolded, Gayle must feel the clay as an extension of her self, while at the same time gently coaxing the wobbling mass to rest at the very center of the revolving wheel\u2014a process of physical and mental concentration that only succeeds when the centering process itself becomes intuitive.\u00a0 The scene resonates through Dana\u2019s narrative, suggesting, as it does, that before Gayle can love or be loved, she must discover the deep and inexplicable connection between her senses and her Self.<\/p>\nBy contrast, Gina\u2019s romance with Markakis is urgent, impulsive, and comically catastrophic.\u00a0 She practically throws herself at him, begging for a ride on his Harley.\u00a0 They speed off together, her fingers digging into Joey\u2019s biker jacket, thighs throbbing with the humming engine.\u00a0 She closer her eyes and sees herself living in the movie of her imagination.\u00a0 They arrive at a secluded picnic area and begin tearing at one another\u2019s clothes.\u00a0 But things go badly.\u00a0 He smothers her with kisses but slices his lip on her earring.\u00a0 Then he struggles unsuccessfully to unfasten her bra.\u00a0 Their clumsy disrobing leaves the two of them waddling about with pants gathered around their ankles.\u00a0 Joey ejaculates before he can enter Gina and she bursts into tears, chastising herself for being an inept lover.\u00a0 Ashamed by what he sees as his abject failure, Joey invents the excuse that he was probably \u201call used up\u201d by wild debauchery the night before.\u00a0 Yet their shared humiliation binds them together as a couple.\u00a0 They fall into a masquerade of exaggerated displays of masculine & feminine behavior\u2014a development that Dana portrays with comic insight and underlying sympathy.<\/p>\n
Now that the HANDS OFF OUR BODIES project was completed and Two For the Road<\/em> was in print, I assumed that Dana would return to her own writing.<\/p>\nFollowing our splendid summer, Dana and Michelle moved to Key West where Dana worked on her novel and Michelle taught at a community college.\u00a0 By the time The Splintered Mirror<\/em> was published in1980, it had been almost three years since I\u2019d seen them. \u00a0I read Dana\u2019s new novel immediately.\u00a0 The frayed feelings of a family in Eugene, Oregon were depicted in riveting opening chapters.\u00a0 A father who taught pottery at the university\u2014passive and detached; the mother\u2014a child psychologist, restless and eager for a more fulfilling sexual and emotional life; and three children\u2014twin sisters and an older brother\u2014who we follow from their early teens into their twenties.\u00a0 After reading the first sixty pages, I was certain that Dana had written a worthy successor to Centering<\/em>\u2014but as I read on, the intricately tangled family alliances and tensions exploded, imploded<\/em> really, into something dark and violent. The father initiates an affair with a graduate student.\u00a0 He takes her to a friend\u2019s ski lodge, their first weekend alone, where a loose ski hurtles down the slope and crushes his testicles. The mother, desperate for pleasure, seduces a teenaged patient, and when the boy\u2019s parents discover something is amiss, the boy leaps off a highway overpass into the path of an onrushing semi-trailer.\u00a0 With the father and mother\u2019s lives in disarray, their son runs off to Portland where he takes to street hustling and dies of AIDS.\u00a0 In desperation, one of the twin sisters gets pregnant and forces her college boyfriend into a marriage that neither of them is prepared for.\u00a0 The child is born with Down\u2019s syndrome and she smothers it to death.\u00a0 When her husband realizes what she\u2019s done, he steals a friend\u2019s hunting rifle and attempts a murder\/suicide\u2014successfully killing himself but reducing her to a vegetative state.\u00a0 Only the second sister survives the carnage and\u2014at this point I sensed where the story was going\u2014she moves to San Francisco where she settles contentedly into a communal lesbian house.<\/p>\nFor all the violence set forth in Dana\u2019s narrative, it seemed to me that the most alarming act of immolation was how badly Dana abused her talent. \u00a0It was if a stranger had written The Splintered Mirror<\/em> in her stead.\u00a0 The reviews were harsh but not unfair.\u00a0 One critic likened it to \u201chorror porn\u201d and another, comparing it unfavorably to Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s Wise Blood<\/em>, described it as gothic narrative run amok.\u00a0 Mercifully, The Splintered Mirror<\/em> was not widely reviewed. \u201cNuclear Disaster,\u201d the review in Ms., <\/em>dismissed it in a single paragraph which closed by observing that \u201cMany readers who were charmed by Foley\u2019s debut novel\u2014her coming-of-age\/coming-out narrative, Centering<\/em>\u2014are likely to be turned off by this vicious, punitive assault on what Foley would like us to see as the destructive folly of heterosexual love.\u201d<\/p>\nEvery writer knows what Lord Byron meant when he once remarked to his friend John Murray that \u201ca savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author,\u201d yet, in truth, reviews do not kill.\u00a0 Like Prometheus, the ill-fated author is spared so that his torments may be renewed with each passing day.\u00a0 The scathing reviews of The Splintered Mirror<\/em> took their toll on Dana. \u00a0She drank heavily and numbed herself with Valium and Quaaludes.\u00a0 She spent days in bed dozing and chain smoking, followed by bursts of club-going when she disappeared for two or three days at a time.\u00a0 Michelle was patient and forgiving, but she was unable to arrest her partner\u2019s tailspin.\u00a0 In April, Dana flew to Oregon to spend two weeks with her married sister and her two nieces.\u00a0 The visit stretched to three weeks, then six and on into the summer.\u00a0 When Dana returned to Key West in September, Michelle had already packed her things and moved to New York.\u00a0 Dana closed up the house and returned to Oregon to reconstitute her life.<\/p>\nAll this I heard from Michelle in 1983 when I spotted her at intermission at an overwrought performance piece at The Kitchen.\u00a0 Our chance encounter allowed us to skip the remainder of the anemic show and to go off for a drink together.\u00a0 When our conversation turned to her rupture with Dana, Michelle was plainly uncomfortable. She recounted the awful months following the publication of The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, but with a taciturnity that derived from what I took to be her wish to protect her former soulmate\u2014as if the very act of relating Dana\u2019s desperate behavior had the power to inflict new damage.<\/p>\nI tried to rescue Michelle from her painful account.\u00a0 \u201cAnd what are you up to these days?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll laugh,\u201d she said, and her voice lightened at the change of subject.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m a graduate student at Columbia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, not funny ha-ha,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s more funny peculiar. I\u2019m in Women\u2019s and Gender Studies, so it\u2019s kind of like studying myself.\u00a0 I took this one course on Women, Activism, and Politics, and Two For the Road<\/em> is on the syllabus.\u00a0 They\u2019re using me as a TA, so my tuition is pretty much paid for.\u201d<\/p>\nWe were about to part when I asked her if she was seeing anyone.\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d she began, \u201chalf the lesbians in the program think I\u2019m a rock star.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going with the flow.\u201d \u00a0Then she added, \u201cPaul, everything that I\u2019ve said about how things ended with Dana\u2014it wasn\u2019t just her. \u00a0When the reviews of The Splintered Mirror<\/em> appeared, she was inconsolable.\u00a0 She felt she had nothing left to give and she pulled further and further away from me.\u00a0\u00a0 But the more she withdrew, the more I pressed her for more intimacy\u2014which only drove her deeper into herself.\u00a0 At the time, I believed I was trying to save her, but now I can see that I was acting out of fear that I would have to face life without her. I pushed and pushed until what I dreaded came true.\u00a0 She left me in order to save herself, to save both of us really.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t your fault,\u201d I said. \u201cDana couldn\u2019t handle the failure of The Splintered Mirror<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing you could have done.\u201d<\/p>\nShe took my face in her hands and looked me squarely in the eyes.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Paul, but it\u2019s more complicated.\u201d\u00a0 Then her voice shifted, as if she was thinking out loud.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve never been with someone, have you?\u00a0 What I mean is, maybe if you\u2019d been in love, really been involved with someone, you\u2019d understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under pressure, people occasionally misspeak, and I cared for her too deeply to hold her words against her.\u00a0 Still, what she said had a measure of truth.\u00a0 Settling into a lasting relationship has never been the lodestone for me that it is for so many people.\u00a0 The unarticulated expectations and needs that romantic involvement entails often leads people to cede more to their relationship than they realize.\u00a0 For some, partnering up provides ballast; it stabilizes restless spirits, keeping them grounded and secure\u2014and it insulates them from troubling solitude, from having to face themselves in the mirror.\u00a0 Typically, people believe that they are the better for it, but too often the assumed rewards of partnering become restrictive, the source of frustration and even bitterness.\u00a0 So Michelle may have been right\u2014I\u2019ve never made the leap that many others have made\u2014but being alone has never disquieted me. Without the chance to keep company with my own thoughts, I am lost.\u00a0 But there was nothing to be gained by saying all this to Michelle. We hugged and went our separate ways.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is only by the most unlikely turn of events that this account continues.\u00a0 Five years after my conversation with Michelle, I spent a month in Portland teaching a filmmaking workshop at Reed College.\u00a0 Before returning to New York, I drove out to Casa dos Hernanos, a farm table B & B that had been recommended to me, where I planned to spend the night. \u00a0My route took me over forested hills that yielded to lush green farms and vineyards.\u00a0 After forty minutes, I spotted the turnoff, a dirt road that ended at a sprawling shingled farmhouse that seemed to have survived unscathed from the 1920s or 30s.\u00a0 A large vegetable garden, perhaps a quarter-acre in size, sat by the east side of the house.\u00a0 Further back, I saw several outbuildings that I guessed housed chickens and other farm animals.\u00a0 It was mid-afternoon when I arrived and there was not a soul in sight. Clematis and wisteria sheathed the veranda\u2019s posts and spandrels so thoroughly that it seemed the fine old building might someday disappear beneath a thicket of flowering vines. I crossed the veranda and stepped into a front hallway lined with oak wainscoting.\u00a0 My eyes were just adjusting to the crepuscular interior when, from somewhere in the recesses of the house, a door slammed and a voice called out, \u201cComing! Coming!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A woman emerged at the far end of the dimly lit hall.\u00a0 As she approached I saw she wore overalls and was wiping her hands on a red bandana, but I could not make out her features.\u00a0 Then Dana Foley rushed up to hug me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey stranger!\u201d<\/p>\n
“Dana!\u00a0 You’re–“<\/p>\n
“The co-owner of Casa dos Hernanos. I saw your name on the reservation list and couldn’t wait to see you!”\u00a0 She darted into another room and returned with a tall glass of homemade iced tea for me.\u00a0 \u201cCome on, Paul, wipe that silly grin off your face and we\u2019ll walk and talk.\u201d\u00a0 She seized my free hand and led me outside.\u00a0 Tan and brimming with life, she exuded the same robust energy that I remembered from the days we had worked together.\u00a0 Her blonde pigtails were white now, but it seemed she had barely aged.<\/p>\n
She led me through the vegetable garden and enumerated the individual traits of her chickens.\u00a0 As our tour continued she filled me in on the origin of Casa dos Hernanos. She avoided any mention of Michelle or The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, beginning her account instead with her return to Oregon that April, when she moved in with her sister\u2019s family in Silverton, in the Upper Willamette Valley.\u00a0 Writing had been out of the question, and it was not in her nature to simply sit around the house, so she found work picking berry crops at a nearby farm.\u00a0 She\u2019d always enjoyed being outdoors, and the grueling labor calmed her. At first, farmers looked at her askance, accustomed as they were to hiring migrant Mexican workers.\u00a0 But Dana minded her own business; she worked hard and efficiently, and her little bit of college Spanish allowed her to engage in simple conversations with her fellow workers.<\/p>\nFor several weeks, she followed the harvests up and down the Willamette Valley until early July when she found herself picking Marionberries with Xiomara Paz, a striking twenty-two year old Mexican girl. They worked side by side, silently for the most part, yet slowly a friendship developed.\u00a0 It was uncanny, Dana told me, like living out Gayle and Vicky\u2019s evolving affection in Centering<\/em>. They took to spending lunch breaks tutoring one another in Spanish & English.\u00a0 Then, when the Marionberry harvest was over, they agreed to travel from job to job together, two friends who\u2019d become increasingly at ease with one another.<\/p>\nIn time, their language lessons led to shared confidences.\u00a0 When Dana revealed to Xiomara that she \u201cliked women,\u201d Xiomara told her that she liked women too.\u00a0 Then she leaned forward and kissed Dana full on the lips.\u00a0 In the early morning hours, after their first lovemaking, Dana asked Xiomara when she had first felt attracted to other women.\u00a0 \u201cYesterday,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you told me you liked women!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re a woman, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That fall, as they were beginning to envision a life together, a semi-trailer whose driver had drifted asleep at the wheel rammed head on into a pickup truck carrying migrant workers.\u00a0\u00a0 Among the fatalities was a young couple, distant relations of Xiomara, whose deaths orphaned two infant children.\u00a0 Xiomara took them in to live with her and Dana.\u00a0 As children of illegal aliens, they had no citizenship status, no proof of their existence, but a Portland immigration lawyer, succeeded in proving that the children had been born in Oregon and thus were entitled to full American citizenship, allowing Dana and Xiomara to adopt the two girls.\u00a0 Soon after, Dana borrowed money from her parents and bought a rambling 1920s farmhouse which, over several years, she and Xiomara transformed into their farm table B & B, Casa dos Hernanos.<\/p>\n
I was eager to meet Xiomara, but every Easter, Dana explained, Xiomara rented a van to take the children of migrant farmworkers camping at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge 250 miles to the east.\u00a0 I was happy for Dana.\u00a0 For all the changes in her life, she remained very much the person I\u2019d known some thirty years before.\u00a0 We talked for hours about the life she and Xiomara had built in Oregon.\u00a0 We talked about the inn and about their children, now grown and embarked on careers, and we talked about some of my recent films.\u00a0 We talked about many things, but there was no mention of Michelle or The Splintered Mirror<\/em>.\u00a0 In the late afternoon, Dana cut short our conversation in order to help out in the kitchen, but she promised to continue our conversation that evening.<\/p>\nI\u2019d just finished my meal when Dana came to my table and asked me to join her for another walk.\u00a0 She led me across the yard towards a stand of woods. Night was just settling over the countryside and when we entered the woods I could barely see, but Dana guided me along an invisible trail with complete ease.\u00a0 Ten minutes later, the path opened onto a meadow.\u00a0 It was dark now, but a strip of crescent moon set the meadow grasses shimmering in exquisite silver.\u00a0 \u201cI want to show you something,\u201d Dana said.\u00a0 She took my hand and led me to a gazebo, really just a roofed platform, set on the edge of a small pond.\u00a0 \u201cXiomara and I built this for Clara and Michelle,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cThe Tea House, we named it.\u00a0 The four of us used to camp here when the girls were young.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMichelle?\u201d\u00a0 It was the first time Dana had mentioned her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0 Her voice dropped, as if heedful of disturbing the pond\u2019s still surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe renamed the children when we adopted them, and this way I could keep something of her close by.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought of that memorable summer we spent together; the confidence and joy the two women exuded\u2014how people flocked to them, how our lives quickened with the project\u2019s unimagined success.\u00a0 Now, so many years later, on this tranquil, dark night, Michelle, her name mentioned at last, hovered like an apparition suspended between us.<\/p>\n
I broke the silence. \u201cI ran into Michelle several years ago and she talked about what happened after The Splintered Mirror<\/em> was published.\u00a0 But\u2014\u201c I wasn\u2019t sure how to proceed.<\/p>\n\u201cPaul, just say it!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what she told me didn\u2019t add up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dana picked up a stray branch and tossed it into the fire, sending off a shower of sparks.\u00a0 \u201cThose days are long past.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to mince words, Paul.\u00a0 It\u2019s okay\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said you were desperate, out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then she turned around and blamed herself, as if she was responsible for what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s true, too,\u201d Dana said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u2014\u201c I felt confused and uncomfortable, sorry the topic had even come up\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever happened, it\u2019s all over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, over.\u201d\u00a0 An instant later, Dana turned her back to me, wriggled out of her jeans, and plunged into the pond.\u00a0 I was too surprised to speak, which perhaps was why she did it.\u00a0 There would be no more talking about the past.<\/p>\n
Her dive carried her into shadows where I could barely make out her form.\u00a0 I stood and stretched, relieved that she\u2019d managed to break off our awkward conversation. A short while later, Dana emerged from the pond and patted herself dry with her flannel shirt.\u00a0 She slipped back into her jeans and spread her shirt on a log to dry.\u00a0 She sat on the gazebo platform, and when I joined her she grasped my hand.\u00a0 \u201cPaul,\u201d she began, \u201cyears ago when we all worked together you were like our brother.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want you to leave here with the wrong idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout The Splintered Mirror<\/em>.\u00a0 You\u2019ve read it, haven\u2019t you?<\/p>\nI felt more uncomfortable than ever.\u00a0 \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n
There was no point in equivocating.\u00a0 \u201cIt was disturbing,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re such a talented writer but\u2014I never imagined you\u2019d write something so dark, so cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dana released my hand and stepped away.\u00a0 When she spoke again, her bare back was turned to me, as if she meant to address the pond.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cJust a few days after we delivered the petition in Washington, Michelle asked me to read the journal she\u2019d kept during our cross-country trip.\u00a0 She\u2019d kept a journal for years, but I\u2019d never read a single word\u2014and now the pages I read just blew me away. I knew right then that her voice belonged in the book I was writing about our journey\u2014that we had to write it together. \u00a0It was a bolt from the blue, utterly unexpected. \u00a0I always believed that writing is something you do alone\u2014that was a given. Centering<\/em> came from a deep and precious solitude; it came from me<\/em>, just me. \u00a0But then Michelle wrote Two For the Road <\/em>with me, and it wasn\u2019t my voice alone, it was ours<\/em>, Michelle\u2019s and mine together. Two For the Road <\/em>brought us closer than ever.\u00a0 And\u2014I don\u2019t know how to put it\u2014it seemed like after that anything, everything, was possible.\u201d<\/p>\nDana turned and squatted by the fire.\u00a0 She grabbed a short branch and began poking at the embers.\u00a0 She lapsed into silence, and I wondered if I had missed her point. \u00a0She\u2019d told me that she didn\u2019t want me to leave with the wrong idea about The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, but instead she\u2019d chosed to speak about Two For the Road<\/em>. \u00a0Whatever she wanted me to know about The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, she\u2019d said nothing to enlighten me.<\/p>\nDana began kicking dirt on the fire.\u00a0 When the glowing embers were covered she filled a can with pond water and sprinkled it over the smoldering ashes.\u00a0\u00a0 Then she laced up her hiking boots and stomped on the mess until the fire was extinguished.\u00a0 \u201cI told you that there was a time when I thought that anything was possible for me and Michelle,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cBut it didn\u2019t work out that way.\u00a0 I was wrong to think it could.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said nothing, hoping that she would continue, but we set off through the dark woods in silence. Dana paused at the steps to the veranda.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Paul,\u201d she began.\u00a0 \u201cI wanted to explain something to you, but keeping a secret for so long, something happens.\u00a0 You guard<\/em> it out of habit, as if the secret itself needs protection.\u00a0 I had no idea I\u2019d ever see you again, and then you showed up at the Casa.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t talked about The Splintered Mirror<\/em> in years and maybe it\u2019s better to keep it that way.\u201d\u00a0 She turned and kissed my cheek, then disappeared into the darkness.<\/p>\nThe next morning Dana was waiting for me at the reception desk \u201cYour money\u2019s no good here, Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s no way to run a business,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd how much did you bill us for your work on Hands Off Our Bodies?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was different.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, this is different, too.\u201d\u00a0 She took my arm and led me to my car.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later I received this letter:<\/p>\n
Paul dear,<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I couldn<\/em>\u2019t tell you this at Casa dos Hernanos, and even now I feel that I<\/em>\u2019m violating a trust<\/em>\u2014but here goes. When we spoke at the Tea House, I told you how much Michelle meant to me, but of course you knew that.\u00a0 Everyone who knew us knew.\u00a0 It<\/em>\u2019s all there in Two For the Road<\/em>\u2014all we stood for, all we felt for one another.\u00a0 But what I wanted to tell you then, what pulled me up short, is that writing Two For the Road with Michelle shifted everything in a way I<\/em>\u2019d never imagined.\u00a0 I don<\/em>\u2019t know how to put it Paul, maybe it will sound crazy, but writing together went beyond love.\u00a0 It was a merging of our souls, a growing into something that was larger than either of us. \u00a0All through writing Two For the Road our spirits were careening with sheer delight, like Chaplin on roller skates. I wanted to live like that for the rest of our life together<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, Paul, I<\/em>\u2019m still not saying what I need to say.\u00a0 Maybe if I backtrack, or rather flash-forward, I can explain.\u00a0 When the reviews of The Splintered Mirror appeared I was devastated.\u00a0 I<\/em>\u2019d made a terrible mistake and everything came crashing down on me<\/em>\u2014but it isn<\/em>\u2019t what you think.\u00a0 What Michelle told you about my behavior was true.\u00a0 I was out of control<\/em>\u2014I<\/em>\u2019m lucky I survived. \u00a0I couldn<\/em>\u2019t believe how I was hurting Michelle, but I couldn<\/em>\u2019t stop myself. And I couldn<\/em>\u2019t bear to have Michelle hovering over me<\/em>\u2014eager to help, yes, but also hungry for my attention.\u00a0 She was suffocating me and I broke off from her.\u00a0 It was all I could do, the only chance either of us had to survive.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You know all this, Paul. It<\/em>\u2019s the story Michelle and I agreed to tell<\/em>\u2014and it<\/em>\u2019s true as far as it goes.\u00a0 So here<\/em>\u2019s where I have to backtrack.\u00a0 It was right after Two For the Road was published, when we settled in Key West and I began working on my novel. \u00a0But something unexpected happened.\u00a0 I felt that as though I was pulling me away from Michelle, that we were in danger of losing the incredible bond we<\/em>\u2019d had when we wrote Two For the Road together.\u00a0 And that<\/em>\u2019s when I knew that we had to write this novel together. \u00a0Michelle was dead set against it.\u00a0 She wasn<\/em>\u2019t a writer, she said: Two For the Road came directly from our daily experience<\/em>\u2014that was fine<\/em>\u2014but she<\/em>\u2019d never written a story and she<\/em>\u2019d never wanted to. \u00a0But I was determined<\/em>\u2014I harangued her until she gave in.\u00a0 Our plan was that we would write alternate sections and that Michelle was free to shape characters and events in whatever way seemed right for her.\u00a0 Our novel would be <\/em>\u201clike a splintered mirror,<\/em>\u201d she said.\u00a0 And that was it, just what I<\/em>\u2019d had in mind<\/em>\u2014a story broken into shards, like Frank and Jena<\/em>\u2019s fractured family.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wrote the first section<\/em>\u2014scenes that set up the family<\/em>\u2019s life in Eugene, with just the slightest hint of tension between Frank and Jena<\/em>\u2014and then I passed it on to Michelle.\u00a0 <\/em>\u201cThis is crazy,<\/em>\u201d she told me<\/em>\u2014she said it just about every day she wrote, but I could tell that she was gradually taking to it, allowing herself to write freely and unselfconsciously.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then one morning I woke up to find the house empty<\/em>\u2014and on the kitchen table Michelle had left sixty pages of manuscript.\u00a0 I read them through in a single sitting.\u00a0\u00a0 In ten pages she<\/em>\u2019d thrown Frank into his love affair with a graduate student, a passive, needy girl.\u00a0 Then Michelle sent them off to a ski lodge, which led to Frank<\/em>\u2019s accident.\u00a0 She completely galvanized the tensions that my chapters had set up.\u00a0 Frank<\/em>\u2019s desire, his need to do something daring<\/em>\u2014Michelle gave everything an edge.\u00a0 Characters and events became wilder, more feverish<\/em>\u2014as if she were tapping into Frank<\/em>\u2019s reckless longing.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We were writing together, creating something bigger than both of us. But it was more than that.\u00a0 Michelle had taken the story I<\/em>\u2019d imagined to another level.\u00a0 She transformed it into a savage nightmare.\u00a0 It was brilliant, and I knew right then that I had to step aside and let her write The Splintered Mirror on her own. Michelle kept saying it was crazy, but I didn<\/em>\u2019t see it that way.\u00a0 I urged her to put aside her fears and push forward.\u00a0\u00a0 And she did<\/em>\u2014she blew right past what I think Freud calls <\/em>\u201cthe watchman,<\/em>\u201d the guardian who ensures that \u00a0unruly unconscious impulses don<\/em>\u2019t storm into our lives. \u00a0She changed my characters into avatars of deep and dreaded drives, figures out of myth and tragedy<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That<\/em>\u2019s how it happened, Paul.\u00a0 Michelle wrote The Splintered Mirror, not me. \u00a0It was our secret.\u00a0 The book would appear under my name; but when the reviews came in with the praise I knew it would get, why then we<\/em>\u2019d reveal the truth and Michelle<\/em>\u2019s literary career would be launched.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, you know the rest. The reviewers were right<\/em>\u2014The Splintered Mirror was savage and remorseless. Why hadn<\/em>\u2019t I seen it? \u00a0It was my fault, Paul.\u00a0 I urged Michelle to do it, I cajoled her.\u00a0 What was I thinking?\u00a0\u00a0 I made Michelle write The Splintered Mirror<\/em>\u2014but after the reviews came out, it seemed that neither of us had written it.\u00a0 It wasn<\/em>\u2019t a story that I could have written, but it wasn<\/em>\u2019t Michelle<\/em>\u2019s either.\u00a0 It was<\/em>\u2014I don<\/em>\u2019t know how to say it<\/em>\u2014so extreme. Yet there it was, a total disaster.\u00a0 She wanted to reveal the truth of her authorship.\u00a0 She was clear that she had to do this, but I refused to let her. The Splintered Mirror came out of my fixation that we had to write together.\u00a0 The failure was mine and mine alone.<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So there you have it, Paul.\u00a0 Michelle and I have kept our secret all this time, but our suffering is long past.\u00a0 You can see that all is well in my life, and I think the same is true for Michelle.\u00a0 Our secret remains a secret, but now you are in on it and I know you will be worthy of my trust.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>Love,\u00a0 Dana<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Even after I read her letter, I could not wrap my head around it. \u00a0Dana\u2019s deception was unthinkable\u2014lies to friends, to her editor and publicists and, most important, to her readers. There are many ways of seeing what had happened, many overlapping understandings. The simplest and most obvious explanation was that Dana and Michelle had been caught up in a folie a deux<\/em> that skewed their judgment even as it elated them.\u00a0 The Splintered Mirror<\/em> was the ill-gotten product of their folly\u2014a frenzied, unhinged performance driven by Dana\u2019s determination to recapture the unsustainable excitement she and Michelle felt when they collaborated on Two For the Road<\/em>. \u00a0Dana believed that sharing her creative work with Michelle would bring their very beings into sync\u2014like that scene in Centering<\/em> when Vicky wraps her hands over Gayle\u2019s, her palms\u2019 warmth flowing into her; how she looks at her blindfolded student and then closes her own eyes, breathing slowly until she feels at one with Gayle; then she gently withdraws her steadying touch, allowing Gayle to feel the power of her own centered energy as she shapes the lump of clay, slowly, slowly into an open bowl.<\/p>\nImagine the outpouring of emotions as The Splintered Mirror <\/em>came into being! \u00a0For Dana and Michelle it must have marked a period of sustained elation, ecstasy even, of living in a waking dream\u2014yet the more they surrendered themselves to their undertaking, the more that dream became disfigured. With a lover\u2019s urgency, \u00a0Dana urged Michelle to pull out all the stops and write with abandon, wherever it led her.\u00a0 What Dana ignored was something she certainly knew: that unfettered writing is part of a larger process.\u00a0 An unbridled psyche may be the very font of creativity, but without a subsequent interval of reflection there is a danger that\u2014well, to put it simply, there is a danger that what a writer believes to be inspired writing may turn out to be The Splintered Mirror.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2014<\/em> 2003<\/p>\n*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n
2007<\/p>\n
Last week, I came upon the sad news that Michelle Russell died of breast cancer.\u00a0 Her obituary described a life of accomplishment.\u00a0 It mentioned, of course, her partnership with Dana as pro-choice activists, and her role in the writing of Two For the Road<\/em>\u2014but it also noted important contributions to woman\u2019s studies, as well as the enriching life she shared with her partner of thirty years.\u00a0 It was good to know that the disastrous release of The Splintered Mirror<\/em> and the unraveling of her relationship with Dana did not ruin her life any more than it ruined Dana\u2019s.\u00a0 On the contrary, the fevered process that engendered The Splintered Mirror<\/em> ultimately freed both women to live productive lives with enduring, loving relationships.<\/p>\nI\u2019d thought that Dana\u2019s account of how The Splintered Mirror<\/em> was written explained everything\u2014that, upsetting as it was, the reason for her falling-out with Michelle was plain enough. But Michelle\u2019s death has stirred up an uneasy sense that what I\u2019ve written up to now is incomplete.\u00a0 Dana and Michelle sought something impossible, a coalescing of their innermost beings, and it led to the debacle of The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, which led, in turn, to an abrupt rupture of their life together.\u00a0 This is true, but it does not account for what I now feel.<\/p>\nAll that I\u2019ve written so far has positioned me as an observer of Dana and Michelle\u2019s story\u2014but it is not so simple.\u00a0 I\u2019ve ignored the fact that I am part of the very story I\u2019ve been recounting.\u00a0 I recall Michelle\u2019s words: \u201cIf you\u2019d been in love. . . you\u2019d understand.\u201d\u00a0 At the time, I shrugged this off as her way of deflecting my questions about her contradictory account of her breakup with Dana.\u00a0 But now I wonder: why have I imagined that I am able to understand events in which one of the principals bluntly told me that I didn\u2019t understand?<\/p>\n
I recall a night at the very end of the HANDS OFF OUR BODIES cross-country journey.\u00a0 We had just arrived in New York, and Michelle and Dana were staying in the spare bedroom in my flat.\u00a0 It was a long and exhilarating day for them: several radio interviews followed by dinner with friends.\u00a0 When I heard them stumble in, I was in bed, half asleep, and didn\u2019t bother to greet them\u2014but from the commotion I heard in the hallway I knew they\u2019d been drinking. I was drifting off again when I was startled by sharp yelps.\u00a0 I propped myself up and listened.\u00a0 Some poor animal was in pain\u2014an injured dog, or perhaps a crazed stray cat mewling wildly on a nearby rooftop.\u00a0 I opened my window to scour the low rooftops, but it was silent by then and I saw nothing. \u00a0Perhaps if I peered out my living room window. . .\u00a0 As I stepped into the hallway, the distressing noise rose up again\u2014but now I realized that the cries issued from Dana and Michelle\u2019s room, their lovemaking.<\/p>\n
I am not a prude, but\u2014how can I say this?\u2014those sounds, their unbridled urgency, I\u2019d never imagined they might be produced by pleasure. The yelping changed to high-pitched squeals, while I stood in the hallway utterly transfixed.\u00a0 I listened until their sounds dissolved in laughter.\u00a0 Then, I heard the familiar murmur of Dana and Michelle\u2019s voices, as if their daemon selves had at last released them.<\/p>\n
This unforeseen moment awakened a longing that I had no idea resided within me.\u00a0 Not desire but rather a wish to experience something that unrestrained, that transformative.\u00a0 Was this what Michelle meant when she told me that I had never truly loved anyone, that I had never abandoned myself to another soul?\u00a0 In writing The Splintered Mirror<\/em>, Dana and Michelle had ventured beyond the boundaries of their separate identities into a fierce, instinctive and, yes, treacherous territory that I knew nothing about. Their wild lovemaking that so alarmed me now seems linked to the very forces that spawned\u00a0their novel.\u00a0 Earlier I commented that Dana and Michelle\u2019s yearning to come together in every aspect of their lives was unsustainable, and so it was, but to have lived just once, however briefly and recklessly, on those volatile terms seems, upon reflection, not an act of folly but rather the enacting of an abiding human wish: to merge our isolated self with a kindred spirit; to make whole what feels fragmented and incomplete; to mend the splintered pieces of our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019ll be crazy\u2014crazy good!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3469"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3630,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions\/3630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n