Stories We Tell Page #6

and then I think I went up

for the opening night.

I guess Harry

would have been there.

But he wasn't sleeping with her

that night, "cause I was.

It's funny, isn't it, though?

At that party, a couple of women

came up to me

and started hectoring me

about how badly I treated Diane.

"You really put her down

an awful lot, you know. "

I was quite stunned.

Nobody before had ever...

come right out and said that.

I think certainly I began to think

through this conversation,

"Yeah, they're probably right.

"I am an awful person

for putting her down,

"and if she lacks confidence,

it may well be

"because of some things

that I have said in the past. "

And suddenly I thought,

"I wonder if they knew about it. "

Diane had probably

talked to them about it,

that she was thinking

of leaving me,

"cause I was not much good

for her confidence.

And maybe they were

sort of half warning me

what was going on.

Before she went

back to Toronto,

I asked her to move to Montreal

and to bring her kids here.

It was complex and difficult.

She had this passionate attachment

to her kids and to her husband,

and she also had

this attachment to me,

and I had an attachment

which was completely crazy.

I was besotted,

just utterly besotted,

and she was so full of life,

and you

just wanted to be there.

You just wanted to be there.

I mean, it was wild.

How it would had been

had we been living together,

I really have no idea.

You don't know what kind

of clashes can...

can develop,

although I suspect

that it would have been okay.

I know it would have been okay.

Both of us, both Harry and I,

met a person who was

bored with her life

as it currently was

and wanted something

more exciting.

Did she talk at all

about her first marriage?

I don't remember any of the detail,

except that it was very acrimonious

and exceedingly difficult,

and her great distress

over losing the kids.

Can you tell the story

of Mom's relationship

with your dad?

They were married,

and I don't know how deep

her feelings were for him,

but his feelings were deep,

and it's awful to be

in a relationship

where one person

loves the other

much more than

the other person loves them,

and in every relationship,

I think one person loves

the other person more,

but, hopefully, it's close,

and, hopefully, it goes

up and down a little bit,

but it seems to me

you never can both equally love

each other the same amount.

It's unfortunate,

but it's just a fact of life.

George was the kind of guy

that Mom's parents

would have been very happy with.

He had money,

and he had a good job.

So my sense has always been

that she married him early,

and she married him

because he was the kind of person

she was supposed to marry.

I think

my dad was really controlling,

and Mom wanted

to get out from underneath that.

She was always trying

to get out from under anything

that she felt controlled her

or made her feel like her life

was very regulated.

We all feel that way.

I feel that way

every garbage day.

Every time I have

to take out the garbage,

it's just like, "Oh, my God. "

It makes you realize

you're just marking time,

and it's just one

of those things that...

In fact, I make my boyfriend

take the garbage out now.

Then I don't have to think about it.

The trigger,

the thing that compelled her

to leave then and there,

was that I think

she really fell in love,

and maybe realized

for the first time in her life

what her life could be.

I think she saved herself.

I think she grabbed

on to a life buoy.

I think she made a choice to live.

I really, really do.

And that was with Michael.

She left my dad

in the middle of a fight,

threw her wedding ring

in the snow,

walked out, and then came back

the next day to get us,

and my dad had

changed all the locks.

From misbehavin",

I'm in the red

Hardly surprising,

I'll never be wed

Instead I'm misbehavin',

saving my revenue

Ultimately, George

got custody of the kids,

and that was unheard of

in the '60s,

and it was front-page news.

And it was apparently

the first time in Canada

that a woman

had ever lost custody of the kids,

and it was because

she left for another man,

and she wasn't "ladylike. "

# Ramifications for massive nations

# Involve taxation

and then frustration

# What is an honest girl to do?

# I'm in a stew

# I walk the streets

to balance the sheets

# My books are neat

and on the beat again

# I'm misbehavin'

to pay my IOUs

I missed that line.

I remember all of a sudden

my mom not being around,

and I can remember

adults crying,

and I couldn't believe

adults would be crying.

Seeing my mom with her knees

pulled up to her chest,

just rocking back and forth.

I knew as a child,

"The worst thing has happened.

"I'm not sure what it is,

but the worst thing is happening. "

And I knew that there

were other people

who were gonna decide

what happened to me

and what happened to my mom.

I had no control.

We were never asked,

"cause had we been asked,

we would have said,

"We want to live with our mom. "

For sure, both of us would have.

At that age,

that's what you want.

We'd have visitation

with my mom once a month,

but we lived with my dad,

and there were

a couple of caregivers.

One of them was an older woman

who was physically abusive.

A successive step-mother

who abused us.

You can keep this in, too.

I don't care.

I remember when Mom

used to drive us home,

when she'd say good-bye

to us all the time,

she would cry and cry.

And I remember years later

reminiscing back on that,

how she would cry and cry,

and we'd be crying,

and we'd have to say good-bye

and go into the house,

and it was like,

we didn't want to leave,

"cause we wanted to be with her.

But I would think

that would just eat away at you

every day of your life, right,

that you missed

so many moments with your kids.

And that's the happy stuff, right?

You missed the happy stuff, but...

into that that you'd miss...

that she would

have found out ultimately

that she not only missed that,

but she wasn't there to pr...

She wasn't there

to protect them.

It's really bad being a parent.

Stupid.

'Cause you're really, you know...

You really, uh...

The thought

of your kid getting hurt

and you not being there

to protect them...

you know that's gonna happen,

but Mom must have thought,

"What did I do wrong

that led to this?"

So I think the impact

must have been terrible

and must have made her

sad all the time, right?

And maybe that's also what

I sort of pieced together in...

in making this assumption

that she was just keeping busy

to forget the pain.

Did you get a sense

that she felt guilty

about the loss of her kids?

Yes.

Oh, yes.

I think that it lodged a certain level

of insecurity into her,

which I think had

some bearing on her decision

not to come live with me.

I can't imagine

that she didn't struggle with it,

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