MY MOTHER THE PSYCHIC ...
QUEEN BEE WILL SEE YOU NOW ...
Dear Diary,
This was 1973. Louisiana. In the restaurant.
Running a restaurant was some sort half thought out but life-long ambition my mother had. But getting this rundown restaurant in the southern swamps of Louisiana was the final destructive act which helped to finally undo an already fragile and dysfunctional family. Because it was a “family” business, it took time away from school for us. I was 16, my sister 15, and my younger sister was 12. This being more of a truck-stop than a restaurant, most customers were truckers, and assorted “rednecks”, not all but often men of the roguish sort. For my stepfather, this restaurant became a forlorn and thankless task keeping this failing business afloat. For my sisters and I, it was a distraction from what we should have been doing, namely school work. Worse yet, the endless stream of lewd and carnal men awakened both my sisters to their own desires and their education was the first victim, as was my own. We all stopped going to school.
But for my mother, this was the perfect platform. This was her stage. She was still an attractive and “bosomy” woman as they say. Her French accent was an additional asset. She didn’t see the roguish men for what they were. She just saw admirers.
For us, the place was just a rundown restaurant, with a truck repair garage next door, and car and truck parts everywhere.
But that’s not what she saw. She had talked lovingly and longingly about the “Moulin Rouge” years before. It has this mythic cultural status in Paris. In her head, I think that’s what she saw, or what it could become.
In many ways the life she really wanted was something like this:
She fancied herself to be the Queen Bee. She might even have seen the movie with Joan Crawford! (who reminds me of my mother!) not really understanding the dark implications! For a while, she kept trying to get us to call her “Queen Bee” but we demurred and ultimately never complied. I wish I had said yes instead and would have added “you sting like a bee as well”. Not a good idea.
For fans of Joan Crawford, I can’t do better than this fan description of this movie:
Our Joan is in top form as a wealthy and beauteous matriarch whose pathological control issues almost devastate her already-dysfunctional household. She moves from scene to scene, by turns charming and venomous, sporting gowns by Jean Louis and an eye-popping array of jewelry. Hardly pausing to spit out the scenery she has chewed, she then devours the supporting cast- with the honourable exceptions of Betsy Palmer as her high-strung sister-in-law, and King Kong's former sweetheart Fay Wray, who gives an effective cameo.The male leads are no match for Joan in the testosterone stakes, and the ingenue was obviously cast because she was almost pretty.
That restaurant enabled and empowered all her worst instincts. She was never in the kitchen cooking. Another cook was doing most of that work, and we just took up the slack, mostly short-order stuff, like burgers and fries. She would be in the dining room, at the front table, entertaining and receiving “guests”, the vast majority of them being truckers and roughnecks (oil rig workers). She always played the French coquette, complete with a French accent. She almost had style. Come on in … Bienvenu!
But one man came in the restaurant one day who was neither a truck driver nor a roughneck. His name was Kirby. That’s how striking this man was that I still remember his name, even though it’s been more than 45 years. He was manly, but not rough with a weather-beaten face like most of the other men there who worked out in the sun. He had a softer face under well-kept and well-combed thick white hair. Unlike most customers, he was well dressed, articulate, and didn’t seem roguish at all. He looked the part of the businessman that he was - or claimed to be.
My mother took to him immediately and made a bee-line for him. He seemed more sophisticated than most of the other regulars that came and went. She liked that because she certainly thought of herself, maybe by virtue of being French, that she was more sophisticated than most. But really, she wasn’t. All I ever saw her read was the National Enquirer, all about Bigfoot and UFOs. “Inquiring minds want to know” was their motto.
But who was this man Kirby? That his business was slightly shady became evident when one day he asked me to help move a truckload of wrapped car bumpers into a warehouse he had rented. Where they came from was a mystery, but it was a truckload's worth. Dozens and dozens of wrapped car bumpers to be sold somewhere, somehow. I didn’t ask; I just helped unload the truck and he even paid me.
He soon became a fixture at the restaurant, coming in late afternoons. There was an exotic sense about him. He cultivated a kind knowingness about him. What further attracted my mother, reader of the National Enquirer that she was, was the “esoteric” and “metaphysical” knowledge he was peddling. Nothing to do with Aristotle’s philosophy, and everything to do with subjects treated in the only thing she read, the National Enquirer, widely available at the supermarket checkout. Each screaming headline was crazier than the next, about talking dogs and barking kids.
Harmless as this paper seems to be, it has a nefarious side. The year before (in 1972), when still living in a trailer park in Georgia, my mother ran across a book offer in this “newspaper” advertising “MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!” and “SECRET METHOD TO SUCCESS NOW REVEALED IN THIS BOOK!” but best of all was this promise of “DOUBLE MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE!” She was completely entranced by it. What could go wrong?
She showed it to my stepfather who saw it for what it was, some sort of hidden scam, but could not tell exactly what. He called it, as the French do, “attrape nigaud” - which literally means “catch the simpleton”. He told her what he thought, but thought better to argue the point with her. You pick your battles carefully with my mother, and that was not a hill worth dying on.
My mother showed it to me and asked my opinion. I thought it was some sort of scam too, but didn’t really want to tell her that. I didn’t want to burst her bubble or want to argue with her either. There was surely a scam involved, but what? I already had skeptical tendencies, but just couldn’t be sure, so it was just safer to play along. And the allure of “DOUBLE YOU MONEY BACK - GUARANTEED!” just seemed too good to be true. I tried to reason it out logically. Either it works or it doesn’t. If it does, great; if it doesn’t, send the book back and get TWICE your money back! What could go wrong with that?
So my mother ordered the book. Over the next several days we thought about this book and fantasized about what sorts of dreams we might want to come true. I tried to think it through and wondered how on earth this could work. About a week passed, and the book finally arrived. We excitedly opened the package, and there was our secret to success finally revealed in this book! We began reading with eager anticipation. First, get out a pen, and start writing out what sorts of things you want. What are your dreams? Be bold! The book had all sorts of forms to fill out; all sorts of boxes to check; all sorts of procedures to follow, like lots and lots of positive thinking about becoming rich and successful, or whatever else we were hoping for. Maybe we even lit a candle and prayed for success, and checked more boxes in the book.
This probably took a week or more to finish. It all seemed a bit bizarre, but it was like having bought a lotto ticket. Lots of hopes followed by dashed expectations when you find out you don’t have the winning number. But at least you know your chances were slim to begin with and then you definitely find out if you have won or lost. Done. So, when would we find out? Well, the weeks followed, and of course, nothing spectacular happened. So it became evident all that scribbling was for naught. What about that DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK GUARANTEE? Would they make good on it? So eventually I started reading the procedure to get our money back, and I came to this line: “Return this book INTACT to the following address …”. So that’s how the scam worked! That book was anything but intact! We had written all over it! Checked boxes! Described our dreams … be bold! … everything we wanted … in detail! That’s what the book told us to do from the very first page! We did exactly what the book told us to do. And of course, the author counted on exactly that. So we didn’t even bother trying to get out money back. It was quite a simple but calculated scam. I would love to speak to its author if I could. Please - if you’re reading this - tell me, how do you feel about all that?
It was just 10 dollars. No telling how many people fell for that little scam. But that’s the audience for the National Enquirer. You wouldn’t find that ad in The Scientific American. Was it money well spent? Well, in a way it was. I must have learned a valuable lesson that day because I still remember this 47 years later! Read the fine print!
But had my mother learned a lesson? Sadly, no. This man, Kirby, was just a scam artist as well. He reawakened in her this desire to see into “the beyond” and rekindled her interest in all things “psychic”. I commend her for wanting to see “beyond” the surface of things, into the past and predict the future. But I recommend science over crystal balls.
Among other things, this Kirby fellow claimed to be a hypnotist. He was especially interested in “past lives” regression. Under hypnosis, some people claim to remember past lives, being nomadic souls traversing centuries. That was just catnip for my mother. Surely she was the queen of Sheba in a past life!
One evening, business was slow (which was increasingly more frequent. Men just drinking beers does not pay the bills). Kirby, my mother, and I were seated at a table and he offered to hypnotize me. I already knew this was never going to work. Some people are highly suggestible and easy to hypnotize. Others not. This trait comes on a spectrum and has been the subject of much research.
And for good reason, since this trait can be relevant to the reliability of a witness in a court proceeding. “Can you describe, in your own words, the huge fight you witnessed? Objection your honor … ‘leading the witness’ … suggesting it was a ‘huge fight’ when that has not been established!” That might lead someone to embellish the facts without realizing that he’s been slyly “suggested” to do so. Others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, are highly “counter-suggestive” persons who are very hard to hypnotize. These people tend to argue. Not surprisingly I was voted “Most likely to argue” in high school (in 1977), although I was also voted “most gullible”! (but that's another story).
I should have declined from the very start. But he had something to prove, and he wanted to prove it to my mother who was his ultimate target, and I was just a means to impress her, and seduce her, if he could. I felt obligated to “play along” and not disappoint him thereby disappointing my mother. And I never wanted to disappoint my mother, although I always did. He began with the standard stuff; your eyelids are getting heavier; droopier; you are getting sleeepy …. And as he talked, my head started drooping downward, and I was doing my level best to allow myself to be hypnotized. I really wanted to comply and not disappoint my mother who was watching attentively. His failure would be my fault. But, finally, after 15 minutes of this nonsense, I could stand it no more and I suddenly snapped out of it; raised my head, and said this was not working. I apologized, saying I was so sorry, and it was just my fault for not being a good enough candidate. And that was that. I think Kirby eventually got what he wanted.
But this failed demonstration did not deter my mother from pursuing her rekindled interest in ESP, clairvoyance, astral projection, Ouija board, and all the rest of it. Had she pursued that on her own and by herself, the embarrassment would have been hers alone. But as she got deeper and deeper into this thing, she became obsessed with proving to others that she had psychic abilities. She got the obligatory Ouija board and “impressed” her friends at the restaurant. It was easy for her (or anyone else) to just push that thing around but deny ever doing so. It was (to me) sad and embarrassing.
But it became pathetic when she enlisted - or rather coerced - the secret collusion of my sister (a year younger than me) in an effort to prove to her friends her various psychic abilities. My sister was about 15 at the time and had long been her confidant and simply did not know how to say no. She felt she had no choice but to be complicit in my mother’s deception, if for no other reason than to spare her the embarrassment of failing in front of her friends. My mother was a fraud, but my poor hapless sister also felt like a fraud for participating and enabling my mother’s deceit. But my sister wasn’t a fraud. She was merely being a loyal daughter.
Two final thoughts.
Hateful mothers is a common theme in literature and movies, especially in French Culture. A French friend here, being familiar with my little story, said my mother reminded him of a well-known character in French Literature, that many French students read (though I never did). Her nickname is Folcoche, a combination of "Folle" (=crazy) and "cochon" (pig). She's the subject of this book:
Vipère au poing by Hervé Bazin (Le Livre de Poche, 1972) First published in 1948, this book tells the ongoing struggle of Jean Rezeau and his brothers with their mother, a ruthless unloving woman. It is a cry of hatred and indignation, largely autobiographical, which granted Hervé Bazin a place among the Pantheon of great French authors.
The accompanying picture says it all:
This page is memorable in the book, saying “Folcoche Va crever …”. Folcoche is gravely ill. Some are singing these words. But it's ambiguous. On one reading, it's a prediction that the Folcoche will die. But with the right pause, it can also be read as an imperative, a command saying "die, Folcoche, die!" Ironically, when my mother was gravely ill, around 2009, that's exactly what my emotionally exhausted sister said and hoped for. My mother later died. My youngest sister told me this years later.
…
I could end on that sour note. But I’m ending this on an upbeat note instead. Mother’s day is coming soon, and some mothers are great! Loving mothers are also a frequent theme in popular culture and should be celebrated.
When we first arrived in the US we learned English by watching TV. Certain popular TV shows also became some of my favorites. I was 11 and fell in love with Star Trek because of two central male figures, Captain Kirk and the impeccably logical Mr. Spock. But I also came to love Leave it to Beaver - the most important reason was June Cleaver, the impeccably dressed and loving mother of the Cleaver family. She’s recognizable the world over. That’s her here:
We live in cynical times, and the “smart sophisticated set” sometimes like to make fun of shows like Leave it to Beaver, and they have to find something wrong with it in order to hate it. Some cultural critics have castigated the show as being “unrealistic”. True enough, she always had her pearl necklace, even when gardening!
Variety favorably compared the premiere episode with the classic Tom Sawyer and noted at the fourth season's opening that the show had "never been a yock show in the sense of generating big and sustained laughs, but it has consistently poured forth warmth, wit and wisdom without condescension or pretense." TV Guide dubbed the show "the sleeper of the 1957–58 season" and later noted that the show was "one of the most honest, most human and most satisfying situation comedies on TV". The New York Times, however, found the show was "too broad and artificial to be persuasive".
Yes, it was “idealistic”, but that’s exactly what kind of mother that my sisters and I wanted. That show was proof that a mother could be a nice mom. Whatever else can be said about that show she was a nice and loving mom. It might not make for great TV and great movies, but it makes for such a better life.
Doing a bit of research, much to my delight I discovered that the young boy, Tony Mathers who played “Beaver” really had a deep affection for Barbara Billingsley who played “June Cleaver” and they remained lifelong friends. She was a mentor and a second mother to him. After the show ended, he returned to school and graduated with a bachelor’s in Philosophy! And the older brother, Tony Dow, who played “Wally”, went on to become a sculptor who exhibited at the Louvres! Yes, that Louvres in Paris!
