{"id":159823,"date":"2022-05-26T10:53:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T14:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=159823"},"modified":"2022-05-31T12:03:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T16:03:54","slug":"the-family-is-finished-on-memory-betrayal-and-home-decor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/05\/26\/the-family-is-finished-on-memory-betrayal-and-home-decor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Family Is Finished: On Memory, Betrayal, and Home Decor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The author’s parents at his grandmother’s home, celebrating their engagement. (All photographs and videos courtesy of Menachem Kaiser.)<\/p><\/div>\n

A couple of years ago, I sent my parents a chapter from the manuscript of a memoir I\u2019d written. I couldn\u2019t not send it, though I waited\u2014partly out of cowardice and partly to prevent them from claiming a bigger editorial role than I could tolerate\u2014until the copyediting stage, when it was too late to make substantive changes. While working on the book I\u2019d been able to suppress any anxiety over what my family might think or feel about it, but once it was finished I remembered (you really do forget) that those it describes are not merely characters in a story but people in my life. And then, suddenly, everything I\u2019d written about them was available for preorder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The memoir, which sprang from my attempt to reclaim property owned by my great-grandfather in Poland, was hardly a lurid tell-all. On the contrary: it was polite, restrained. The chapter in question was really the only one I felt nervous about, because in it I mentioned a falling-out and subsequent legal fight among my father and his siblings. On first reading my parents were, as I\u2019d feared, hurt, embarrassed, betrayed, blindsided\u2014but after some difficult conversations, we agreed that I could address their concerns by deleting a couple of sentences, altering a handful of words, and changing the names of my uncle and aunt, a gesture my parents felt would go a long way in demonstrating that my intentions weren\u2019t to harm or disparage. This last request created an unexpected wrinkle\u2014in the event that anyone sued me for libel, I would no longer be able to invoke the standard defense that it was all true\u2014but I was fine with it, and the publisher\u2019s lawyers, given how vague my account of the dispute had now become, eventually gave the go-ahead. So my father\u2019s brother became \u201cHershel,\u201d his sister became \u201cLeah,\u201d peace was restored, and the knot in my stomach loosened. But a few months later when I received the galleys, my mother read the sensitive section in context and wondered if Leah might after all have preferred to appear under her real name. I said it wasn\u2019t too late to depseudonymize her if that was what she wanted, so my mother called Leah and read her the chapter over the phone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leah, my mother reported back, was livid. Beyond annoyed or disappointed\u2014she was furious, hoarse with anger. She doesn\u2019t understand, my mother said, why you even have to publish the book. The problem, it emerged, didn\u2019t have to do with how I\u2019d portrayed Leah, who was barely mentioned\u2014she got a couple of lines of dialogue and no description, as in literally not a single descriptive word\u2014but with how I\u2019d portrayed her mother, Bubby, my grandmother. Or more specifically\u2014because Bubby was also barely in the book\u2014how I\u2019d portrayed Bubby\u2019s sofa, and how that portayal, in turn, implicated Bubby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What it came down to was a throwaway line, a quip, in a paragraph describing the shiva after Bubby died, in 2005, while the family rift was still very much ongoing. The scene had stayed with me all these years, and I included it in the chapter because it was strange and tragic and funny, and so poignantly captured the tension between the siblings: three adult children, two of them not talking to the third, stuck on the same sofa for a full week as they received well-wishers. To quote the offending paragraph in full:<\/span><\/p>\n

When my grandmother died, my father, uncle, and aunt had to sit shiva together. They sat side by side on Bubby\u2019s green velvet sofa, minus the plastic cover (if Bubby weren\u2019t dead she\u2019d die) and minus the cushions\u2014those in mourning must sit low, close to the ground\u2014looking calm, projecting an air of composure and normalcy, but it was palpably abnormal and awkward: each sibling-faction was pretending the other didn\u2019t exist. My father sat in the middle with Hershel to his immediate left, but there might as well have been a hundred-foot wall separating them. The room, the crowd, the array of folding chairs, the conversation divided along this fault line. Visitors offered condolences twice. Once to Hershel, to whom they\u2019d relate a memory or sentiment about Bubby, then say the verse traditionally offered as a valediction to a mourner; and then slide over to my aunt and father, to whom they\u2019d repeat the memory or sentiment, and say the verse again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, Leah said, was a lie\u2014there had never been a plastic cover on that sofa, and my assertion that there had been was disrespectful, defamatory, a mockery, an insult to Bubby\u2019s memory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Really? I asked. This? Yes, this, my mother said. If you leave that line in, Leah might never speak to you again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I protested that I hadn\u2019t made it up, I really did remember a plastic cover on the green velvet sofa, and it wasn\u2019t some faint childhood memory\u2014I was twenty years old when Bubby died; I\u2019d lived nearly my entire life one block from her house, visiting often\u2014besides, this was my story, not Leah\u2019s. If she felt she had to set the record straight, let her write her own memoir, but in my memoir my memory is what matters. In any case, what I\u2019d written was at worst teasing; even if it wasn\u2019t true, it was hardly defamatory. These arguments fell on deaf ears. Leah insists there was no plastic cover, my mother said, that what you\u2019ve written is a lie\u2014there\u2019s nothing else to talk about, your memory is wrong, you have to take it out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ll admit that on the subject of Bubby\u2019s home decor, Leah had more credibility, or let\u2019s say a better vantage, than I did. As Bubby\u2019s youngest child, she had grown up in that house; indeed, she had been the one to inherit and to discard that very sofa. Her sheer conviction that the sofa had never been covered carried weight, no question. At the same time, confidence is hardly conclusive. People often misremember details they\u2019d swear to on their mother\u2019s grave. Plus, Leah was obviously invested in her conception of her mother as someone who wouldn\u2019t and didn\u2019t cover the sofa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, maybe my memory <\/span>was <\/span><\/i>wrong? It had been three years since I\u2019d written the first draft of that chapter, and after reading and rewriting it who knows how many times, I could no longer be totally sure whether I was remembering an actual plastic cover or merely my own description of it; past a certain point, the recalling and recording process grows more circular, the line between remembering and recounting more porous. It was not impossible that reading and rereading what I\u2019d written about Bubby\u2019s sofa had warped my memory of Bubby\u2019s sofa; maybe I\u2019d allowed what I hoped was the truth\u2014because clearly I liked the line, I thought it was funny\u2014to become what I remembered as the truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I called my eldest sister, Reva, who is nine years older than I am and whose memory of Bubby\u2019s home would presumably be that much more reliable. I asked if she could recall the green velvet sofa in Bubby\u2019s living room, and whether it was covered. Without hesitation Reva said it was. I asked if she was certain; she said she was 100 percent certain; I told her Leah was 100 percent certain that it wasn\u2019t covered; Reva did not waver.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother didn\u2019t outright reject my sister\u2019s claim but nonetheless insisted it was immaterial. Between Reva\u2019s memory and Leah\u2019s, my mother said, the latter is more authoritative. On this point I agreed. Yet even though, in a strict historical sense, one of them had to be wrong, both Leah and Reva were, I contended, solid witnesses. The real question at hand wasn\u2019t whether Bubby\u2019s sofa had been covered but whether I had sufficiently substantiated my claim that it had. My book wasn\u2019t journalism. A memoirist must be honest, of course: she should not fabricate, but nor should she be responsible for sifting through every competing version of events; while her story must be true, it need not and in fact cannot aspire to a purely objective truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leah was unpersuaded. To her this <\/span>was<\/span><\/i> a question of objective truth, of factual history: she believed (she would say she knew) that she was correct and that what I\u2019d written was an uncomplicated falsehood. I disagreed\u2014at the very least it was a complicated falsehood\u2014but I respected her stance. It was principled and antiwriterly and did not care for rhetorical contrivances, for distinctions between supposed types of truth. What\u2019s true is true.<\/span><\/p>\n

I set out to survey everyone else in the family. My thinking was that if some critical number remembered that the sofa was covered, then I could argue the case on Leah\u2019s terms, i.e., establish that what I remembered was (more) objectively true. But there was no consensus: no one seemed confident in either direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet something else emerged. Although no one could remember whether there was a plastic cover on the sofa, <\/span>everyone<\/span><\/i> remembered plastic covers on the dining room chairs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does that matter? asked my mother, advocating for Leah. You didn\u2019t write about chairs, you wrote about the sofa. Of course it matters, I said. This is not about the sofa per se, it\u2019s about Bubby, about whether or not what I wrote mischaracterizes her or, as Leah contends, defames her person. Now, given that there\u2019s unaminous agreement that Bubby covered the chairs\u2014not even Leah disputes this\u2014isn\u2019t it accurate, or at least not inaccurate, to say that Bubby was the sort of person who covered the furniture? No, my mother said, it\u2019s totally different. It\u2019s totally different? I asked. A sofa is not a chair, my mother said. But suppose, I said, that Bubby had in fact covered her sofa, and I wrote what I wrote but said, incorrectly, that the sofa was red rather than green. Would you then claim that what I\u2019d written was dishonest or misleading? Of course not\u2014getting an incidental detail wrong wouldn\u2019t negate the larger truth. It\u2019s not the same, my mother said, not at all the same, a difference of color is not a difference, but when it comes to slipcovers, a sofa is not a chair and a chair is not a sofa: what a covered sofa conveys is very different, i.e., the type of person who covers chairs is not or at least not necessarily the type who covers the sofa. The danger of a dining room chair getting dirty is much more pronounced. People don\u2019t eat on the sofa. Of course people eat on the sofa, I said. Well, my mother said, they\u2019re not supposed to.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next day, my mother emailed me an old photograph she\u2019d dug up. It was of her and my father, newly engaged, sitting on the green velvet sofa.\u00a0<\/span>There was no plastic cover. Case closed, my mother said. I won\u2019t dispute that it\u2019s telling, I replied, but by no means is this conclusive. Firstly, the seat cushions are not visible: the sofa was a chesterfield, a tricky shape as far as slipcovers are concerned, and it isn\u2019t at all impossible that only the cushions, not the back, were covered. Secondly, it might very well be the case that the sofa was <\/span>usually<\/span><\/i> covered but was uncovered on the day the photo was taken: if there was ever an occasion for a woman who covered her sofa to uncover her sofa it would be this one, i.e., welcoming her soon-to-be daughter-in-law into her home.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother, tireless, turned up more photographs:<\/span><\/p>\n

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The author’s mother in his grandmother’s living room, with his sister Batsheva and another relative.<\/p><\/div>\n

These were from Purim, 1986, from the seudah, easily the messiest, most rambunctious meal on the Jewish calendar\u2014everyone is in costume and doling out candy; it\u2019s a mitzvah to eat, a mitzvah to get drunk; there are a steady stream of guests, invited and otherwise, and constant eruptions of singing and dancing\u2014and they made clear that there was no plastic cover on any part of the sofa. And if the sofa wasn\u2019t covered on Purim, my mother contended, then it was never covered. I conceded that this argument, while not definitive, was pretty compelling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I then realized that I was sitting on potentially crucial evidence of my own. One of the more personal chapters in my book recounts the experience of watching, alone and then again with my family, a few hours\u2019 worth of previously neglected home videos I\u2019d had digitized from a box of Super 8s my mother had given me. With the sofa controversy in full bloom, I watched the footage a third time, scrutinizing the furniture for that telltale shine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The green velvet sofa itself made only a single appearance, at my parents\u2019 engagement party, and here, as in the photographs, it was not covered. But two other clips were, I thought, extremely relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first, a banal domestic scene, takes place in the living room of the house my grandparents lived in before moving to the one I remembered. My grandfather makes himself comfortable; my father, about eleven years old, plays the piano while Leah, nine years younger, runs around being adorable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n