2016: Reading The Great Dethriffe 40 Years Later

    Dad was a journalist first and foremost, even when writing his three books of fiction. P.S Wilkinson, The Great Dethriffe and Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes were all thinly veiled accounts of his life, his relationships, his thoughts and feelings about the times in which he lived. Friends, family members and neighbors would pick up these books and read them the way I imagine celebrities thumb through People Magazine, half in hope and half in dread of finding themselves within the pages.

   My sister and I appear in The Great Dethriffe as Syd and Ashbel. In the book George Dethriffe and Alice live in Winander, CT ( a name Dad probably dug out of a book of William Wordsworth poetry to double for the gated village of Tuxedo Park, NY) . To take a break from an argument with Alice (Mom) , George (Dad) visits his children's bedroom in to look in on them and what follows is straight out of family lore :

   Ashbel lay curled up tightly, his mouth open, one delicate hand beneath his cheek. Syd, in her bed, lay arms and legs outstretched like a free-fall parachutist.
   What do they dream about I wonder? Once, when Ashbel was a little over two, I heard him speak just one word in his sleep. He said, "Truck!" and, oh God, I hoped he was dreaming of the most glorious truck there ever was. Ten huge wheels with chromium rims on either side, a high crimson cab with air horns sprouting like rococo angels' trumpets from its peak, a trailer of silver with bright lights for its trim, lights along that trailer like a midnight passing train.
   "Truck!" said my son and the wind rushed out of his throat like tumbleweed across a darkened interstate.
   I have never heard Sydney speak in her dreams. She, like her mother, holds it in.

I've been told "truck" is the first word I ever said. That description of my sister --holding it in --may be the only true fiction here. I don't believe my sister has any issues with communicating her feelings.

  Published in 1972, The Great Dethriffe can be read as a fictionalized account of the events that led to my mother and father's marriage and divorce, a subject neither ever wanted to discuss much with me. George Dethriffe and his wife Alice fell madly in love --"Marriage at first sight"--but five years later, the passion is gone. They are both cell mates in a marriage. Alfred Moulton, his best friend, is a writer who, early in the book, tries to convince Dethriffe he shouldn't marry Alice.

  "Does she love you, really?"
  "Yes," he said. "Yes."
  "More than she loves herself? Don't forget, Alice Townsend looks out for herself. And you have every right to be just as selfish as she is."
  "Well, I'm not sure how true that is," George said. "But, like I keep trying to tell you, you just don't know Alice!"
  "I'm just worried you're going to marry her for all the wrong reasons. I'm worried that you're getting married because you think it's time to get married." I turned back from the bar and sat down in my leather chair again. "You feel you're old enough, and you haven't got anything better to do, and so you're going to marry Alice Townsend. All I'm trying to suggest is that you still have time to get out of it if you want to."
  "But I don't want to," George insisted.
  "Alright., here's another idea. Why don't you, instead of getting married next month, why don't you take Alice with you and go off somewhere and live together. Hell, go someplace where no one knows you're not married. Try it out before you make it legal. I just have the feeling that you're getting married out of some misguided sense of responsibility."

Author photo and description which always bothered my sister and me. The "child" is our half-sister Amanda.

  And it was somewhere here, about 107 pages into The Great Dethriffe, that I realized Alfred Moulton and George Dethriffe were the same person. Quite the revelation for me! Alfred speaks in the voice of my father after his divorce, trying to look out for his younger version. I'm sure, in real life, both his friends and his brother, Saint, tried to talk Dad out of getting married five year after graduating from college. Here, the case for and against the marriage is made over the course of pages and pages of text, from the Kennedy administration through the start of Nixon's first term.
  My parents's marriage lasted fewer than four years. One day Dad left the three of us in the house in Tuxedo Park and moved into a small New York City apartment.


    It took me a moment to start the cold engine, and then I backed the car up and turned it around. Just before I left, I looked back in the rear-view mirror at the kitchen. Alice  had come to the door and was watching me. And I'm not entirely sure this is true because it seems so patently absurd, but I think...I think, that as I left, I saw her wave.

 Dad apparently led the life of a bachelor before his Mexican divorce went through, while my mom moved with us to Aiken, South Carolina.
  Dad died in 2009. I'll never be able to talk to him again and ask the thousands of questions that have come up as I've written this blog. But I can open his books and spend hours in his presence, making these very personal connections with him.

Happy Birthday/Mother's Day Mom!

1963 This is the first year I haven't sent Mom a birthday/mother's day card. Mother's Day always falls on or around her May 9th birthday.

1965
I would be calling today to tell her the whippet Gryffor is doing much better with the medication we're giving him. The kids are both playing in a baseball league. I'm heading off to France this week and my wife's decorating business seems poised for lift off.

1971 And I'd say how much I miss her and love her. And I promise to visit this Summer and bring her grandchildren. And yes, they eat too much junk food. Love you Mom.

The Inheritance That Barks

Whippets are strange looking dogs. They look like some kind of genetic experiment combining dogs and deer. They're dogalopes.

When we first met the two whippets Mom adopted from rescue shelters, my wife and I thought they were kind of creepy.Gryffor and Pippi took over the couches and beds. They napped all day. They were far too skinny. What's there to love except bones covered in thin hairs?

And yet Mom did love them. Maybe not more than all of her grandchildren. But ranked together, they would come somewhere in the middle of a personal poll.

Every time I visited Mom, we'd take these eerily quiet dogs out for walks. They had their own way of communicating with each other. They'd weave back and forth, tangling the leashes. I kept my eyes open for squirrels so I'd be ready for them to leap out of my clutches. They knocked down Mom a few times chasing squirrels. Another reason I wasn't much of a fan.

But Mom loved their sweet disposition. She was heartbroken when Pippi died, and she needed to make sure Gryffor would have a home if things didn't pan out for her. So, after checking with my sisters, I told Mom we'd take Gryffor. In Mom's final days, Gryffor seemed to sense what was going on. I thought this photo spoke for all of us.

After Mom passed away I drove home with Gryffor. Two boys silently riding home with heavy hearts. When we got home, I walked Gryffor straight through our house to the backyard. He nearly chased down one of our cats. There would be an adjustment period.

And during that period I learned whippets are really quite wonderful dogs. During the day, they want to be near the action--near the family--but they don't need to be in the middle of the action. At night they are hot water bottles... leaping into any bed they can find to snuggle up against anybody. Gryffor seemed to be happy to be part of this young family.

We'd take him for walks. Just picking up the leash makes him do a happy dance to the door. We'd watch him get his "whippet" out by dashing at full speed from one end of the backyard to the other. And we'd catch him sitting under the kitchen table waiting for scraps to fall. Every time I'd get home from work, Gryffor would be there, tail wagging at a furious pace.

Now, after a wet and cold winter, Gryffor isn't doing so well. He's twelve years old after all. That's somewhere near life expectancy for a whippet. His back legs tremble all the time. It's such a common sight among old whippets, dog people refer to it as "the back end going". We've added medicine to his diet and that seems to help. We've laid down rugs so his back legs aren't skating along the wood floors. We still take him for walks but they are shorter and more patient.

There's yet another sad day in the forecast. A day when, once again, we will have to say goodbye

For more on Mom: http://saintbryantv.blogspot.com/2011/01/phoebe-miller-bryan-1938-2010.html

Phoebe Miller Bryan 1938-2010

In her final days, my mother was surrounded by three generations of family who filled her small house with love, laughter and many, many tears.
Her adult life wasn't easy, which must have seemed incredibly unfair to the little girl inside. That girl had a mostly idyllic childhood in Camden, South Carolina.
Her father owned and trained Elkridge, one of the greatest steeple chasers in racing history.

My mom could do anything she wanted in Camden.
She won ribbons riding horses
She won trophies playing tennis.
She danced with beaus at cotillions
She lived in a huge house called Cool Springs.
She attended private schools with the town's richest children.
There was just one problem.
One day the money was gone.

What happened to the money isn't so clear but soon, it became obvious that the Millers would have to pull all their children out of their private schools. Mom would no longer go to school with the friends she met at horse shows, the dances and the tennis courts.
Perhaps not a big deal in a northern city, but in a small Southern town, it made all the difference.
On the public school bus, this little blond girl must have been steaming. It wasn't her fault the family had run out of money so why should she suffer?
When the bus stopped in front of her new school, Mom stepped down and began running. She ran past her brother and sister and raced down the street. She ran past the shops and past the library. She ran right up to the door of the private school, took a breath and swung the door open. There was nobody in the hallways so she walked straight back into her old classroom. She sat down at her old desk. She stared hard at the teacher just daring her to say something.
Nobody did.
Mom got to finish that school year at the private school

For Mom, money would always be an issue. Even after a divorce settlement considered generous by her own lawyer, she lived , in the best of times, paycheck to paycheck.
Lansing and I would live with our Dad in a New England saltbox with a swimming pool in a big backyard.
Then we'd live with Mom in small rental home with an old dodge dart in the driveway. There, in Sparks, Nevada, we qualified for a program that let us buy school lunches for 35 cents.

In our teens, we went to boarding schools with children whose families were among the richest in the nation.
Then we'd spend summers eating peanut butter sandwiches and working minimum wage jobs at casinos or restaurants.
(We had it easy compared to the miracle of our family, my sister Alyssa.)
Throughout it all, even in the worst of times, Mom had pluck.
After her memorial service, I visited her musty basement. In the corner I found an old Wilson tennis racket. On the handle she had stenciled two words.
CONCENTRATE.
ATTACK.

The little girl inside ,who could do anything she tried, would speak to her now and then.
After decades breathing in second hand smoke while dealing cards at Circus Circus,
Mom quit that miserable job and went back to school.
She graduated from the University of Nevada.
She bought a house across the street from campus.
That steel magnolia quality saw her through several bouts with cancer.
She fought even after her body gave out.
My God, she was so angry at her legs when they wouldn't let her get out of bed.
And I believe that spirit lives on.
Not just in the little house where tenants swear they hear someone playing a piano.
But in my own daughter, a competitive ball of fire named for the town my mom always thought of as home.
The night mom died, Camden says someone was in her room.
I'd like to think it was mom delivering two words of advice:
CONCENTRATE.
ATTACK.
I love you Mom and miss you more than I ever would have dreamed.