Life
Modern Love Revenge: Joyce Maynard's Daughter Gets Her Turn To Speak
Coming to terms with my mother's decisions to write about her life—even when I am the lead player in the story.
Photograph of Joyce Maynard and her daughter Audrey Bethel at Maynard's book reading last month courtesy of Audrey Bethel.
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For most of us, sitting down with our Sunday New York Times is a relaxing experience. But for subjects of the "Modern Love" column, it can suddenly turn into a choke-on-my-scone nightmare. For those unlucky few, DoubleX launched Modern Love Revenge, a series of responses written by the subjects of Modern Love columns. Got a lead? E-mail us.
My mother, Joyce Maynard, writes for a living, so I have spent my life learning that an event recounted by one person might not sound like the same event when recounted by another person, even if she was there, and witnessed it, and was at the center of it. It can be frustrating for me to let my mother own her stories—and by proxy, the stories of the people close to her. Even if I can come to terms with her perspective, it doesn’t mean I want strangers to be reading her words and breathing their life into what she claims as truth. Especially when I am the subject.
This past July, my mom published a piece in the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column that stretched my ability to accept her profession. The final published piece was my mother’s story, told from her point of view, about her emotional response to a difficult situation. But it still felt like a personal invasion. It was titled “My Secret Left Me Unable To Help” and told the dilemma of a mother who was worried for her daughter’s well-being to the point that she decided to snoop around in that daughter’s private e-mail account. By prying, she did uncover details of the challenging situation that the daughter (me) was in—but she also realized that it was a problem she could not fix. The mother felt left out of her daughter’s life, she writes, in a moment when she wanted nothing more than to be there for her. And to top it off, now she had to live with the fact that she had done something she had vowed not to do: violated her daughter’s privacy.
That’s her story. Here’s mine. I was only 23 years old when I moved on my own to the Dominican Republic, so I don’t blame my mother for worrying. I didn’t really know anyone there when the plane landed. While interning at a nonprofit down there, I fell in love with an amazing young man, Johnny. We were responsible and got blood-tested early on, which led us to discover that Johnny was HIV positive.
Stunned by the magnitude of the situation we found ourselves in, Johnny and I turned inward and toward each other to cope. We focused intently on our immediate, daily-life tasks and chose not to tell people until we, ourselves, had made better sense of what was going on. Thoughts of mortality, access to health care, privilege, and justice were all swirling around in my head in a visceral way that made me ache all over and toss in bed. I was not in much communication with anyone in the States during that time, particularly not my mother, because I knew she would be able to use her maternal intuition to decipher trouble in my voice and even written words. Instead of reaching out to people, I was reading up on the latest medical research and trying to navigate treatment options in a region of little opportunity.
By the time she confessed to me that during that period of radio silence she had broken into my e-mail account, it was six years after the fact. I was offended, but forgave her before I even got mad about it. (Unlike her, I didn’t have the emotional baggage from a diary snoop that left me scarred.) For me, what was much harder was my mother deciding to write her viewpoint on an event that was so personal and life-changing for me. Over the years, my mother has often written works of nonfiction detailing my family’s life and times—but never had anything so intimate or inherently mine to tell been the topic of her writing.
Even though my crisis in the Dominican Republic happened years ago, the story resurfaced for my mother while she was on a writing retreat last spring. I suppose the time had ripened for my mother to deal with her unresolved feelings surrounding that era, and so she felt a great need to write about the intense feelings she had when worrying about me. That’s how she processes things as a writer, I suppose.
To my mother’s credit, she did communicate with me as soon as she had written the story to ask me to look it over:
Dear Aud, I have written an essay that I need to show you. An editor at the New York Times would like to publish it, but I will not do this unless you can feel alright about this. I am guessing that if you could have chosen, you would prefer to have a mother who did not, as I do, write about her life. Though of course, if that were the case, you would have a totally different mother. And be a different person yourself.
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Comments
This is a Surprise?
By: Nduffy1930 | Sat, 12/05/2009 - 21:52
Joyce Maynard has been exploiting those close to her for most of her professional life. It should be remembered that this professional life began in her teens, when she dragged her father's alcoholism out for public inspection so she could win a writing contest sponsored by a magazine. It continued in the column she wrote for many years for the New York TIMES, a column she stopped only when her kids reached puberty, and she realized that if she started using their sex lives for material she would probably be exposed as the user she always had been.
That Maynard was snooping around in her daughter's e-mail isn't terribly surprising. And it wasn't concern. It was the suspicion that the kid was holding out on her, probably something that Maynard could used to some sort of advantage. As it turns out, it was a doozy, and Maynard running true to form, used it big time. She'll probably want to turn it into a book now. Correction, she probably WILL turn it into a book now, with or without her daughter's cooperation.
I was amused when I discovered that the movie TO DIE FOR was based on a novel by Maynard. Superficially, it was a rip-off of the Pamela Smart case, but at heart, it was an unwitting self-portrait, a woman with a talent for using others to achieve her own ends and little or no compunction about doing it (fear of being CAUGHT, perhaps, but no moral qualms as such). Auto Roman a Clef, anyone?
Beautifully written essay
By: Susan415 | Sat, 12/05/2009 - 12:16
I'm referring to the original in Modern Love. I definitely understand how Audrey would feel hurt and violated by the breach of her privacy (my father once looked in my phone bill to call a friend of mine to ask her not to support my actions - and I thought that was the worst thing in the world). But the essay is so well done. It does focus on the mother's point of view, and doesn't pry too much into the daughter's presumed state of mind. And what Audrey says - that it wasn't such a dark and broken place, and she came out of it a stronger person - that actually showed in the subtext of the piece. On a closing note, I am familiar with Dr. Paul Farmer and his work in developing countries. Having read his book, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, I was convinced that he was doing tremendous work and had committed to support his charity, Partners in Health (http://www.pih.org). It was gratifying to see mention of its life-saving work.
Audrey
By: lovingfriend | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 20:37
I think this is complicated. Both Joyce and Audrey have the best intentions and love for each other. I know first hand as I have been friends with Audrey since we were in high school. Being an artist's daughter is not always easy, but being anyone's daughter isn't always easy.I think both stories were completely brave and I am so glad to have Audrey and Joyce in my life. X
What Damage?
By: Ankhorite | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 15:22
@Fitzpatrick: Are you kidding me? What damage? The complete loss of privacy; the loss of dignity; the loss of an ability to trust a parent with any intimate or painful issue; the loss of the ability to control your own public persona FOREVER (i.e., at thirty, Junior applies for a prestigious job, or runs for public office; anyone googling him finds out that at 10 months, he rubbed feces into his hair, which the prostituting parent felt compelled to share with her/his audience for money).
Why should everyone in the country be a permanent witness to the questions you asked your parents the day you learned about the birds and the bees? Or the day you shoplifted some gum in the check-out aisle? Or how, at age 14 or so, you made the decision between tampons and pads? Or whether and why your parents decided to circumcise you or not, and what the result looks like?
And that's just the least of it. I am APPALLED at the sort of thing family columnists think it's important, or edgy, or amusing, or exciting (read "profitable" for all four), to "share." Your child's life is not yours; you have no right to "share" it with a nation of strangers. Not for free, not for money, not for any reason. Just NOT.
Modern Love is supposed to be one-sided
By: robynella | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 13:23
While I understand your point of view, and I'm glad you got a chance to share your side of the story, surely you must see that your mother did a beautiful job of telling her story - and even including your point of view.
When I read your mother's essay, I cried, mostly in empathy for what you must have gone through during those long, uncertain months in Haiti. Reading your side of the story did not have the same affecting hold on me. It was only from your mother's voice that I got a sense of just how devastating Johnny's plight must have been for you.
Maybe your mother does not feel the same level of connection that you feel for Johnny, and this is what bothered you so much about her telling of the tale. But the deep level of concern and love she has for you broke my heart. You may not see yourself through her eyes, but her portrayal of you seemed to me to do justice to her observations about your inner turmoil and the experiences she admits that she could never really understand.
The Modern Love column is wonderful for the way it is allows people to reflect on their own obsessive love for one person, which sometimes causes them to act in selfish or wrong ways. This is what makes the column so compulsively read-able, and I for one hope that people do not soon stop sharing these personal experiences in print for the insight they give all of us into difficult and heartbreaking situations.
I believe this WAS your mom's story to tell, but that does not mean that you don't have one to tell, too. Maybe you should write your own column about your relationship with Johnny.
What damage?
By: Fitzpatrick | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 11:29
Exactly what damage are the children who are written about supposed to suffer? Any evidence?
Columnists' Families
By: Ankhorite | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 06:07
I find it unspeakably disloyal for any parent to make their living by exposing the lives of their children to the public, whether it's this writer's mother, or Dave Barry, or anyone else at all.
How is it different from subjecting your children to being in a reality tv show?
It isn't right, not for any reason, and it's certainly not right to do it for money.
Set aside the damage done them when they are adults with a publicized paper trail that goes back to their birth. What about the damage to the kids as they grow up knowing that anything they do or say in the presence of a parent may become fodder for tomorrow's fish wrap? And that the more painful and personal it is, the more likely Mommy or Daddy is to broadcast it?
Thank You!
By: charliewilder | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 02:50
Your clarity and insight as a counselor is much appreciated. To be the subject of someone else's story, especially when it's so detail oriented, is not an easy place to be.