In Spite of Everything by Susan Gregory Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

to dig one? I don’t know. I know that I couldn’t wait for that trip. Could. Not.
Wait
. I could not believe that my notoriously gonzo, smart, funny, ice-climbing dad had selected
me
to take on the most serious expedition he had ever conceived. It meant, in my mind, that I not only had the right stuff; I must have
more
of the right stuff than anyone else he knew. He invited
me
. My father, who was so extraordinary, saw something extraordinary in
me
. Not only that, but he saw that we shared the
same
extraordinary traits. Dad and
me
.
    Now, in one sense, it was true: We were both pretty curious (dilettantish), determined (obdurate), and fond of a good laugh. Whether such traits are in fact extraordinary is arguable, and in any case that wasn’t the issue for me as a kid. Simply, my father saw what I was; my mom just couldn’t. Though I know that she loved me, her way of looking at the world was so fundamentally different from mine that we were rarely able to pull off a successful noncognitive transmission. Also, perhaps because I was a girl, as well the namesake of six generations of esteemed Susan Gregorys, she became increasingly distraught as she perceived that with every year, I was failing more and more to fall in line with “the women of our family.” Classic bluestocking ladies, the matriarchs in my lineage conformed not to the Hestia or Demeter archetype but to the Emily Dickinson profile, preferring to choose their own society—a society most often restricted to books and a select group of people who liked to talk about books. That I liked a lot of other things besides books confounded my mother. When I was young, this frustrated her to the extent that her normally weird but loving nicknames for me—“pickle-ator-pumpkin” and “magic muffin”—were often supplanted with “miserable failure,” among others. I now know that she didn’t mean it, but at the time, such characterizations made me feel very bad about who, in fact, I was.
    My dad, however, gave genuine thought to my ideas and observations, literally snorted milk out his nose laughing at my jokes, took actual pleasure in my company. I sensed that my dad didn’t love me just because, as my father, he kind of had to; he actually
liked
me. Even as a little kid, I was aware that he did not react this way to everyone. A telltale polite, resigned smile crept across his lips wheneverhe was faced with an encounter it became clear he would have to endure, or if someone made a joke he did not find funny. Ian, for example, was often forced to regard Dad’s portrait in blasé tolerance. It was heartbreaking: Ian adored Dad the way a puppy loves his boy. He bounded around, frantically working every angle he could think of to get Dad’s attention, to mimic Dad’s humor. But, as often happens when people get increasingly anxious to please, Ian would overdo it, and that, for Dad—master of the fun and the easy—was an instant deal-breaker. Dad would simply give Ian the smile and move on to the next activity. Once, after a particularly furious bid to get Dad to laugh, Ian exploded. “How come every time
Suze
says something, you think it’s so funny, but every time
I
say something, you don’t?” Dad calmly scooped ice cream into a bowl. “Well, Ian,” he said,
“vive la différence.”
    It wasn’t fair, Dad’s treatment of Ian, and I didn’t get anything out of feeling favored. Then again, Ian was, without question, Mom’s darling, and I was inextricably bound to Dad, largely because I needed his protection. Around the time I turned ten, our household became tense, forbidding. My mother had started teaching at Stanford, and the commute from Berkeley was a killer. She wanted to move to Palo Alto. Dad did not. That was all my brother and I knew, factually speaking, but it was clear that Dad was grumbly. A lot more grumbly. His grit and gonzoism began to morph into fierce rigidity and unaccountable black moods. But so far as his interactions with