I do not know my two step-nieces very well. I spent some time with them here or there years ago. We all got along well enough, but there was never time for us to establish any kind of rapport. So it was strange when one of them appeared in my dream last night, bringing back what few memories I have of both her and her older sister.
In the dream I noticed that S., the younger of the two, was coming out of a classroom at a public school near where I live. That’s the school where I go to vote. All I know of the building’s interior is the large room where the voting booths are, and the hallway leading to it. Last time I was there I noticed a performance hall and a stage. I don’t remember noticing that before. It’s interesting how these transient places slowly, with years, begin to seem necessary and demanding of attention.
In the dream S. emerged from one of the smaller classrooms which I have passed on my way to the voting room. She pretended not to see me, but she did a good enough job of it that I actually thought she either did not recognize me or even notice my presence. She went to her locker. A boy stood next to her. I approached her just to say hi. She smiled a bit and said she knew I was there, and that she intentionally did not say anything. She was nice about it, even embarrassed, but I took the hint and politely said goodbye.
All I think I know of S. comes from the only conversation she and I ever had with no one else around. This was outside the house in Pembroke Pines, where I made conversation with her as she tooled around on her bicycle. She made some suggestion that she was not ok with the family arrangement. I think she was 13 or 14 at the time and I remember being surprised at how such a young person could deliver such caustic comments.
It felt like none of my business, but I knew the broad arc of the story. S.’s biological mother and father divorced, and her father married my sister. That’s how I inherited two teenage step-nieces. On the surface I had every impression that the biological mother was both reviled and even feared. For about a year that woman lived in a house right across the street, intentionally moving into that place to (I guess) creep out my sister and her husband. As far as I know there was never any altercation or encounter that came about as a result of this proximity, but it was no doubt uncomfortable as hell for my sister and her husband to have the husband’s ex-wife living right across the street.
Contrary to appearances the feeling I got from S. was not so much that she wanted her “real” mother back but that she was irritated and offended at having been instructed not to have any contact with her mother. That cutting of ties may have been part of the divorce settlement, though if that was true you’d think there might have been a rider in the settlement directing that the ex-wife would not be allowed to move into a house right across the street.
I came away from that conversation with S. feeling a little soiled, like I’d intruded on extended family gossip that was not mine to be known. And S.’s youth made me feel lingering dismay for the situation.
S. was the quieter of the two sisters. J. was no loudmouth by any stretch but she was more the extrovert of the 2. I remember us getting along well enough that we watched movies together and talked about them. At the time I was all into Woody Allen films, and I remember narrating through parts of one of his films about the allusions to and influence of Fellini, among other things. Funny to think about now because I don’t think I could deliver such a lecture now. Still, whatever you can say about the scandals and his general weirdness you can’t deny that when he is at the top of his game his films are masterful, albeit with the lurking presence of ludicrousness wobbling at the base of every word. I found the Soon-Yi thing to be a little weird but hey, they’re still together. I would see them walking around 5th Avenue and 70-something street, where they used to live. I lived over on York and 78th. I couldn’t say why but I took some sort of comfort in seeing them together, even if the tabloids screamed that the basis of their relationship was both unnatural and socially forced.
But that sort of thing is easy for me or any outsider to say. I don’t think there is a formula for predicting what couples will stay together and who will crash. And why does Mia Farrow get such a free pass in all this? Maybe she doesn’t. It could certainly be lost on me what kind of blowback she gets for her handling of all things Dylan and the others. I think she planted memories in him, and I am hardly alone in that assessment, not that that makes me right (or wrong).
After J. and I watched a Woody Allen movie or two my sister entered the room. J. was positively bragging about the relatively highbrow cultural conversation we’d been having, conversation in which Woody Allen’s cinematography served mostly as a touchpoint for broader thoughts about color balance, sound, cinematic allusions, etc. I felt like the smart one. Unlike most places in my life being smart felt like a positive.
