By Scott Graber
It is Saturday, Feb. 21, and it’s warmer.
Several weeks ago we got snow — a full measure of light, powdery snow that kept us home, away from our church pews, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee rather than a hymnal.
But this morning I’ve been thinking about a movie, “Goodbye June” that featured Helen Mirren.
Some years ago my wife — a portrait artist with a loft in New England — routinely departed Port Royal for extended periods of solitary painting in the Berkshires. Initially I worried about these absences —was our marriage in trouble? Eventually I decided that Susan just needed a break from me and my needs.
In those days, I would come home after work — well maybe there would be a stop at Emily’s Bar on Port Republic Street — and then put a Lean Cuisine lasagna into the microwave.
I would pour a modest, responsible measure of Pinot into a glass I had appropriated from Air Afrique; then dial-in a murder mystery on television. This was how I came upon a British-made series called “Prime Suspect” and an actress named Helen Mirren.
Mirren played a detective named Jane Tennyson who worked in a police precinct where she was the only female officer. Yes, of course, there were female typists — but Tennyson was the only professional woman in a room full of men who clearly believed she was acting way beyond her gender-based short-comings.
She dealt with these men by being prepared; and intuitive; and confrontational — finally arresting the unlikely killer. Usually there was another suspect favored by the men; but Tennyson would insist they were pursuing the wrong man; eventually her instincts and tenacity paid off.
But the shouting and constant confrontation took their toll. Tennyson leaned into alcohol and cigarettes and breathtaking boldness to stay in the game. She began this series as borderline beautiful; but by the end she was hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked, ravaged.
Some nights ago I was delighted to see her again in “Goodbye June” wherein she plays an 80-year-old woman dying of stomach cancer.
Mirren is seen in the hospital surrounded by three daughters; a son; together with a chattering cohort of husbands and grandchildren; not to mention their ongoing, unresolved resentments.
One of the daughters is plain, one is beautiful and one is a fading, childless hippie who arrives with crystals, candles and incense.
One of these daughters is controlling; another resents that control; the third dwells in an alternative universe. How could, you ask, these three screeching banshees be the issue of the same saintly mother?
In an effort to understand this question I called on several friends asking them to explain why sibling relationships often come freighted with anger and resentment.
“It has a lot to do with birth order,” my neighbor said. “The first in line usually gets the attention, the love, and the second and third child get less. The plain daughter is bound to resent her beautiful sibling and wonder why she didn’t get her sister’s skin and nose. If one of the daughters has a handsome, kind husband the other daughter will wonder, ‘Why didn’t I meet that kind of man? But at the end of the day it comes down to love — how much love you get as a child.”
Most of those gathered round my hearth agreed that the almost constant delivery of care and touching inoculates the child — and that early inoculation lasts for a very long time.
But, of course, time and distance create their divisions.
June’s kids have found spouses; created their own families; sought comfort in a religious theology, a political theory, or a podcast “influencer.”
I have friends who say, “I love my brother but I can’t sit in the same room (with him) and listen to his Make America Great Again jibberish …”
June — as she slips away — calls the daughters to her bedside and tries to engineer a deathbed peace treaty which reminded me of my own mother’s death.
When mother was leaving this realm, I was with my brother and sister at her bedside. We were not fighting, although there were lingering disagreements, unresolved.
We had — thanks to a last minute gift of Scotch — been passing around a bottle of Dewar’s; talking in the semi-darkness; recounting our peripatetic, mostly happy childhoods thinking mother might still hear us.
Eventually the nurse came in the room, looked at each of us in turn, then said, “You know she passed 30 minutes ago.”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.