IMAGINARY INTERVIEW/CHARACTERS
FROM TAKING THE TUMBLE
Eve Dew Crook
Last night, in a lucid dream, I
interviewed Cyn Westland’s mother (Anwyn) and my heroine’s father (Davis),
recently divorced, as well as her father’s new ladylove, Tirah. We were seated
in the living room of Anwyn’s penthouse. Davis and Tirah shared the couch, and
through the room’s huge picture window the view of Central Park 20 stories
below. Anwyn and I sat opposite each other on plush chairs surrounding the
coffee table. From the corner of my eye I could see the park’s trees, their
bare branches covered with a light sprinkling of snow. Across the park stood
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we could just make out the twinkling lights
of its handsomely decorated Christmas tree in the museum’s roof garden.
Cyn and Mac were away on a book
tour to promote his graphic novel, “Wild Adventures in Heroic Stupidity—The
Tall Tale of Oxy Moron,” so I started the interview.
Me: Cynwyd is a most unusual
name. How did you come to choose it?
Davis: I visited a marvelous
collection of post-Impressionist art in a suburb of Philadelphia, Bala Cynwyd,
and the name stuck with me. It had a lovely sound.
Anwyn: Of course I knew it
belonged to a Welsh saint, so I went along.
Me: But did you know if it was
female?
Tirah (with a rich laugh): That language is so unpronounceable, who would
know the difference? Anwyn scowls. Davis
looks fondly indulgent. Interviewer struggles to hide a giggle.
Me: I’ve heard Cyn claim that you
were very harsh with her when she grew up.
Davis: Nonsense. I just held her
to some standards. We need to set the barrier high, or we’ll end up a nation of
ignoramuses.
Me: How did you feel about that, Anwyn?”
Anwyn: There were times when I
thought he was too severe,” (she takes a
sip of her wine), but to be truthful, I was too full of my own concerns to
contradict Davis.
Me: That’s very candid of you.
Anwyn (defensively): Well, I’m in therapy now. I’m learning to face the
reality of my behavior.
Me: And you, Tirah? Have you any
feelings on the matter?
Tirah: I believe in having
standards and goals to live up to. But I believe in women, and men, facing
their responsibilities.
Me: Can you expound on that?
Tirah: As I told Cynwyd, women
have the responsibility of teaching men that they can’t get away with
everything. For example, if Cyn felt her father was too harsh, she should have
stood up to him and told him so. A definition for being too harsh needs to be
clarified, brought into the open. People must learn to go beyond their
prejudices and establish genuine communication.
Me: That’s not easy.
Tirah: No, but for education to
succeed, for genuine learning to take hold, it must be done.
Anwyn (looking bewildered): It isn’t always possible to express one’s
feelings in a way that can be understood by the other person. It’s too easy to
be angry rather than reasonable.
Davis (leaning back and listening): I’ll let you ladies hack it out. I
see you both want to dissect me.
Laughter bursts out among all four of us.
Me: Well, I’ll focus on you for a
moment, Davis. Your choices are certainly eclectic. Your fiancée is an
imposing, dark-haired, highly intelligent career woman, while your former wife
is a petite, angelic, unprofessional female. Yet they both found you appealing.
Davis (shifting a bit uncomfortably): I believe in the philosophy of the
trend-setting anthropologist, Margaret Mead. After her researches in Samoa, she
returned to lecture, among other things, on the need for marriage to be serial.
The first marriage, if I may paraphrase my understanding of her words, is for
bearing children, and each party should concentrate on finding the best mate to
achieve that goal. But when the children leave the nest, the parents should be
free to pursue a partner who more closely fulfills their ideal of a life
shared, of common interests and tastes, and a desire to be with this person
forever more, as the old saying goes.
Me: And you, Tirah?
Tirah: Oh, I agree. Strongly.
There is the right mate for youth, and the right mate for maturity.
Me: Before I close this
interview, what do you think of the United States?
Tirah: It is a country both
wonderful and exasperating.
Me: Can you enlarge on that?
Tirah: No. I promised Davis I
would stay away from politics.
(Interview terminates 7 a.m. as the alarm goes off.)
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