I Remember Nothing Read Online Free PDF Page A

told cheerful stories of what had happened in school that day. We played charades. My mother, once a camp counselor, would lead us in song. “Under the spreading chestnut tree,” we would sing,and we would spread our arms and bang our chests. Or we would sing, “The bells they all go tingalingaling,” and we’d clink our spoons against our glasses. We learned to believe in Lucy Stone, the New Deal, Norman Thomas, and Edward R. Murrow. We were taught that organized religion was the root of all evil and that Adlai Stevenson was God. We were indoctrinated in my mother’s rules: Never buy a red coat. Red meat keeps your hair from turning gray. You
can
leave the table but you
may not
leave the table. Girdles ruin your stomach muscles. The means and the end are the same.
    And there were stories, the stories we grew up on. How my parents met and fell in love. How they ran away from the camp where they were counselors and got married so they could sleep in the same tent. How my mother’s aunt Minnie became the first woman dentist in the history of the world. And finally—and this is where this is all leading—how my mother threw Lillian Ross out of our house.
    This was not just a story, it was a legend.
    It seemed that Lillian Ross had come to one of my parents’ parties. About once a year they had a big sit-down dinner for about forty people, with tables and chairs from Abbey Rents. They served their delicious food cooked by their longtime housekeeper, and my mother wore a Galanos dress bought for the occasion. All their friends were invited—Julius J. Epstein (
Casablanca
), Richard Maibaum (
The Big Clock
and, eventually, the Bond movies), Richard Breen (
Dragnet
),Charles Brackett (
Ninotchka, Sunset Boulevard
), and Albert Hackett and his wife, Frances Goodrich, who had the greatest credits of all (
The Thin Man, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Diary of Anne Frank
). I would stand on the second floor and look over the banister down at the parties, and listen to Herbie Baker (
The Girl Can’t Help It
) play the piano after dinner. Once I caught a glimpse of Shelley Winters, who was dating Liam O’Brien (
Young at Heart
), and once Marge and Gower Champion turned up. That was as starry as it ever got.
    One night, St. Clair McKelway was invited to one of my parents’ parties. McKelway was a well-known
New Yorker
magazine writer who’d written a couple of movies. He called beforehand to ask if he could bring a friend, Lillian Ross. Did my mother know who she was? he asked. My mother certainly knew who she was.
The New Yorker
arrived by mail every week. Along with the Sunday
New York Times
and
The Saturday Review of Literature
, it was required reading for the diaspora of smart people living in Hollywood; reading it made them feel they hadn’t lost a step, that they could move back east at a moment’s notice.
    Lillian Ross was young at the time, but she was already famous for her reporting in
The New Yorker
, and for her ability to make her subjects sound like fools. She had just published her devastating profile of Ernest Hemingway and was in Los Angeles reporting her piece on John Huston and the making of
The Red
Badge of Courage
. My mother told St. Clair McKelway that he was welcome to bring Lillian Ross to dinner but that Ross had to agree that the party would be off the record.
    So Lillian Ross came to the party. Before dinner, she asked my mother for a tour of the house. My mother showed her around, and at a certain point, Ross came upon a picture of my three sisters and me.
    “Are these your children?” she asked my mother.
    “Yes,” my mother said.
    “Do you ever see them?” Lillian Ross asked.
    That did it.
    My mother walked Lillian Ross downstairs and back to McKelway.
    “Out,” she said.
    And Lillian Ross and St. Clair McKelway left.
    That was the legend of my mother and Lillian Ross. My mother loved to tell it. It was practically a cowboy movie. We’d been raised to