Before There Was by Teresa Miller

The following is an excerpt from Teresa Miller’s Means of Transit, published by The It’s not that my memories are all that tricky. There’s just this wildness, a reckless University of Oklahoma Press in 2008. It is reprinted here with permission from the notion of eternity, that comes from conjuring up old dilemmas. author. So suffice it to say, that despite our differences, Grandma and I knew how to watch television together. In fact one of my grandmother’s ongoing concerns was I grew up wanting to be a dramatic actress—emphasis on dramatic—because that her other grandchildren, in “normal” family situations, didn’t get to watch I spent my formative years in front of the television, mesmerized by such high- television often enough. powered, Kleenex-laden shows as Queen for a Day, The Secret Storm and The Edge We even enjoyed the advertisements, which gave us time to connect the of Night. My father and grandparents were wonderfully progressive in that way, storylines to our own lives, and we did it in perpetuity. Grandma, as she was allowing my brother and me full access to uncensored TV. Not that they were quick to explain, would forever understand Constance Mackenzie—nothing was negligent. They just felt that life itself had already placed too many restrictions worse than having an ungrateful child or grandchild. And I could always relate on us. to Allison’s frustration with small-town life. I wanted to get out of Peyton Place/ Tahlequah, too. The only series ever off limits at Grandma Crane’s house was The Waltons. As much as we identified with our favorite stars, we tried not to blur the often Grandma believed that we were such a quirky family ourselves that tuning in to fuzzy distinctions between television and real life. Thanks to our favorite fan the well-balanced Walton clan might give us unrealistic expectations—and put magazines, Photoplay and Modern Screen, we understood Allison’s coma was undue pressure on our more eccentric relatives. She caught me mid-show one induced, not by a tragic accident, but by Mia Farrow’s own indecision about Teresa Miller (left) brother Mark (right). night, just as John Boy was telling his own grandmother that he wanted to be a whether or not to leave the series and marry Frank Sinatra. Frank, Grandma writer. Dutifully I switched channels to The Mod Squad, and Grandma smiled emphasized, was old enough to be Mia’s father, her grandfather even if we’d Miller’s dangling silver “ear bobs,” offsetting her deceptively soft cheeks, rouged with relief as I focused instead on a drug shakedown. been living in some backward country. This Hollywood tryst became Grandma’s to fullness. I also had a description ready for Sally, if we ever needed to report her. “That’s more like it,” I could imagine her saying, as she pulled up a chair and lifelong grievance. After Peyton Place was cancelled, after the couple’s divorce, Even though she wore a pink, heart-shaped locket, her face was a clenched brown watched with me. she would interrupt a new generation of TV characters to remind me how an fist, exploding through layers of bubbles. But I’m leaping ahead of myself here and a little desperately, for I know full well “unnatural romance” had ruined one of the finest shows on television—“and all Fortunately Sally never followed through with her threats against us, partly that The Waltons didn’t impact our relationship until later—after Peyton Place had for nothing!” because we’d slip into the spare bedroom to call Grandma Miller. A diminutive been cancelled and we’d struggled through Alison MacKenzie’s lingering coma. But Grandma had more significant breaches of nature on her mind than woman of Scottish-Cherokee descent—she was just under five feet—Grandma May-December romances. My mother’s untimely death was the backstory Miller would always phone right back, while we listened in on the extension, and that informed most of our conversations. Even idle remarks about the weather tell Sally, “If you persist in yelling at the children, I’m going to have to shoot you.” inevitably reminded us that my mother, age twenty-seven, had died on an Grandma Miller had her own kind of pioneer eloquence, but throughout these unseasonably cold November day giving birth to my brother, Mark. That was exchanges, I longed for my mother’s voice in the conversational lapses, fantasizing our family’s ongoing cliffhanger, because Grandma, who’d survived the Great that she might have suggested macaroni and cheese for dinner or reminded us to Depression and who was struggling through a personal one, refused to equivocate put on clean socks for the church picnic. I watched for her most often on Monday with me. My mother was irreplaceable, and she was forever cautioning me to afternoons, when I’d grow anxious about the impending darkness and wonder ration my expectations. who’d be sitting beside me later at the Rexall counter. Since Mother was so vague My early need for embellishment scared Grandma and also put her at odds with to me, even the drugstore shadows had begun to look familiar, and I was routinely my father, an only child who’d always been comforted by what his parents referred startled when they darted past us. to as play pretties, the southern term for toys they hoped would “take his mind Though my father had mother-proofed our house, so that no pictures of off things.” A lawyer born into a family of lawyers, he’d refused to exercise his her remained, my grandparents Crane displayed numerous photos of her— legal options and investigate the suspicious circumstances surrounding Mother’s her long dark hair swept back Hollywood style, suggesting to me at first that fatal C-section—“so we can move on with our lives.” And he’d been even more I was the daughter of a generation of women, those dated fashion models that adamant about not wanting to arbitrate the loss with me. His opinion, which were so recognizable in Grandma’s Montgomery Ward catalogues and Good became a family edict, was that at two I couldn’t process death and should be Housekeeping magazines. It wasn’t until later that I became convinced I was the told—simply—that Jean Crane Miller had left for parts unknown and would not child of actress Jeanne Crain, whom I’d seen so often on the Late Show. be returning to us. I was too young to read and catch spelling distinctions—Crain with an i. I Subsequently my father, Wesley, found consolation in a succession of play heard the name in my heart—in a household that never enforced bedtime and that pretties who called him “Wes” and led him through multiple marriages. A answered painful questions by turning up the volume on the television. I’d caught short, charming man, diminished as much by circumstance as stature, he became similar programs more than once with Sally—glamorous young woman abandons known as the Tahlequah Mickey Rooney and was just as gregarious. In between family for a life of fame and fortune, only to regret her decision later and return to marriages, he coped with grief—and two small children—by keeping us on a her loved ones with open arms. fixed social agenda, at least in the evenings. We spent Wednesday nights and Except that my mother was dead—as in forever. When I was six, cutting out a weekends with Grandma and Grandpa Crane, Tuesday and Sunday nights construction paper Valentine for my on-screen mother, Grandma Crane took me with his parents, Monday nights with the soda jerk at the local Rexall store and for a long drive and told me the truth that was to become the bond between us. Thursday nights with the family of our state representative, who’d been elected to Grandma and I were almost always on the road after that, and her car—she more responsibility than he anticipated. never drove any make but Buick—became our unlikely sanctuary, where we’d We also grew up with an assortment of housekeepers who were responsible both been indiscreet while admiring the hills in the distance. Grandma had for the day watch, and one of them—we’ll call her Sally—first introduced me admitted she could no longer cry, and I had storied. Storying was Grandma’s to afternoon soap operas. In between episodes, which often brought us both word for my tendency—not to lie—but to narrate myself through the gaps in life. to tears, Sally would indulge in prolonged bubble baths, barricading herself in “You don’t want to keep storying to yourself, Sister,” she told me, her eyes locking the bathroom. If we disturbed her by requesting, say, Kool-Aid refills, she’d with mine in the rearview mirror and sparing me as much directness as possible. bellow, “I’ll box your jaws” with the same Broderick Crawford-like authority we “This Jeanne Crain you keep seeing on television is no relation of ours.” witnessed on Highway Patrol. And that was it. There were no previews with organ music cluing us in to what Highway Patrol and Dragnet, televised in black and white, had already made might happen next, only the quiet understanding that this loss, this hurt was to such a profound impression on me that, even before I started school, I began be continued. fixating on “distinguishing characteristics” in case any of us—besides Mother— ever went missing. I always looked for the colors in us, and I still recall our Teresa Miller is a writer based in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She is the author of the novel family in that way—my father’s red ties, accenting his dark Cherokee undertones; Remnants of Glory and host of the televesion program Writing Out Loud. Grandma Crane’s navy sweaters, steadying her anxious blue eyes; and Grandma