October 17, 2019 • 41 mins
Imagine a privileged New England family living by the sea, with a glamorous, wild mother who has a long affair with her husband’s best friend, and makes her daughter — Adrienne — her ally.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Blink
and you'll miss your treasure. Blink again, and you'll realize
that the truth you thought was safely hidden has materialized,
some ungainly part of it revealed under new conditions. We
all know the adage that one lie begets the next deception.
(00:24):
Takes commitment, vigilance, and a very good memory. To keep
the truth buried, you must tend to it for years
and years. My job was to pile on sand, fistfuls, shovelfuls, bucketfuls,
whatever the moment necessitated, in effort to keep my mother's
secret buried. That's Adrian Roder reading from her just released
(00:49):
memoir Wild Game, My Mother, Her Lover and Me. Adrian's
is a story of being coerced, seduced into the keeping
of a powerful and day injurious secret. What happens when
a child is brought into her mother's private world, When
a daughter is given access to her mother's innermost life
(01:10):
in exchange for absolute loyalty and fidelity. I'm Danny Shapiro,
and this is family secrets. The secrets that are kept
from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
secrets we keep from ourselves. Well. I was born in
(01:37):
New York City, but when I was very young, my
parents divorced and we moved from New York, my brother
and I we moved from New York to Massachusetts. And
I would say that Cape Cod has always felt like
the home base for me. I go over that bridge
and I have sort of a have lost dog reaction
to the briny air and everything else. I really feel
(01:58):
home there. So just describe Cape Cod more for somebody
who's never been there. Cape Cod it is um just
one of the most beautiful slices of the country. But
Cape Cud to me, it's um. It's a very sensuous place.
It's um. I think of the sand and the seafood
(02:19):
and what's below the water. I spent so much of
my childhood in boats, sort of varying across the harbor
from one of our houses or my mother's house, but
we'd go fishing and clamming, and it just really sort
of where most of my happy memories are. Remember the
big T shirt in the early seventies was happiness is
low Tide on Cape Cod, and we all believe that
(02:42):
that's what we did. Early in the book, you describe
in a way the first secret I would say, which
is I don't know if you would characterized exactly as
the secret, but um, the loss of your brother. I
don't actually remember either of my parents sitting down and
telling me that I had a brother and his what
his name was, and how he died. So I do
(03:03):
remember coming upon it a bit as a secret, and
yet there were photos of him around, and there were
um items of his in our home, and I think
it was probably just a very painful thing from my
parents to talk about. This idea of secrets that aren't
completely buried, but that we also don't fully know about
(03:23):
runs throughout Adrian's story. These secrets exist in the landscape
that we can apprehend but aren't really supposed to touch upon.
As a child, she was always aware of a core
sadness that her mother carried, a sorrow that floated in
the very air of her childhood homes. Adrian is one
of three children. Her oldest brother died at two and
(03:45):
a half by choking on a piece of meat. Her
mother was already pregnant at the time with Adrian's second brother,
and then there was Adrian, born four years later on
her eldest late brother's birthday, So throughout her childhood, Adrian's
birthday always came with a whiff of sadness. She tried,
(04:07):
as children do, to assemble the bits of information she could,
while feeling that somehow the loss of her brother had
something to do with her. I'm always struck by the
stories that we make up as children, especially in the
absence of knowledge or you know, where there's some sense
(04:29):
that their sadness we don't understand, or there's an absence
we don't understand, or there's some story that we don't know,
and it's just human nature as children to make up
stories to take the place of those stories, and they're
almost never good. I think those kinds of stories kind
of boomerang back on the child as this is my
(04:50):
fault or you take it on absolutely, And honestly, I
think we do that as adults too. I mean, I
think it's also much about, you know, our own lens
or our own feelings. So you say hello to someone
and they don't return it, and you make up a
story for why they didn't do it, rather than oh,
she didn't hear me, or you know. I think, I mean,
I think it's something we all have to be careful
(05:11):
of but as children certainly, I mean, there's so much
for trying to figure out right, and it's so confusing,
and also people aren't always being straightforward with you. Adrian's
parents split up when she's eight years old. Her mother
is already years deep into a relationship with a man
who's also married, and it takes some time and some
(05:32):
doing to extricate themselves from their spouses so they can
find their way toward each other. But then, just before
they marry, her soon to be husband has a series
of four profoundly debilitating strokes. So life for Adrian's mother
suddenly looks very different from what she had thought it
would be. Instead of this beautiful romance, now she has
(05:56):
an ailing husband, and Adrian is thrust into the role
of the adult, waking her mother each morning. For carpool,
describe a little bit the the home in Chestnut Hill.
So you move from more more modest circumstances into from
completely modest circumstances. I mean, I shared a bedroom with
(06:16):
my brother. You know, I could, I'm sure, although I
haven't been there in years, reach across and touch him,
you know, if I needed our twin beds weren't that
far apart, and we moved into this mansion in Chestnut Hill,
which had seventeen bedrooms and nine bathrooms and was just
simply the most enormous thing I'd ever seen in my life. Um,
(06:40):
And the story we were told, which I think is
probably true, but I don't know, is that. You know,
my stepfather had been trying to sort of sell it
or get rid of it for years, and quite simply,
no one wanted a house that big. So in the
end we rented many of the rooms on the top floor.
I mean it was during the seventies. Just heating the
thing I can't even imagine. But no, my I mean
(07:02):
I actually could do my gymnastic routine in my bedroom,
you know, cartwheel, cartwheel back in spring. Um, it was enormous,
and it was scary. I mean it was actually really
scary in the beginning. Um, My brother was on a
different floor than I was, on a different end of
the house. My mother was down a very long corridor. Um.
You know, you know New York apartments, you can kind
(07:24):
of shouting, anyone will come. We lived in Chestnut Hill
and we would go to the cape. My mom had
a tiny cottage on the Cape Um where we would go.
My father would also come up from New York and
rent a house and spend summers on the Cape. So
we spent July with my mother's in August with my father,
and we would also shuttle back to New York or
Connecticut to visit my father on a lot of weekends.
(07:47):
Into this world comes this man who in your book
you refer to as Ben. So the story really begins
on August night on Cape cod In and I was
fourteen years old and I was you know, it was
(08:08):
a late it was late at night. I was sound
asleep um in my own bedroom, and at some point
in time the door opened and my mother came in
and she said Rennie, which is my nickname. She said, Rennie,
wake up, and I so remember not wanting to wake up.
I was sort of half thinking about a boy I
had been kissing earlier on the Bay beach Um and
(08:28):
I rolled away and she said Ben South or just
kissed me. And of course with that, my eyes popped
open because Ben South there was my stepfather's best friend.
And Ben South was married, which you know, of course
my mother was married too, but they were a couple
friends and you know, I didn't know them well, but
I knew them. I knew who they were. And what
(08:50):
I didn't know was that evening would mark the beginning
of just an epic extramarital love affair that my mother
brought me along on. But at the time it was
so thrilling and so seductive and so magical. I just
adored my mother, and I recognized it even in that moment,
(09:13):
the moment it happened, as um, one of those moments
that everything changes. So I had gone to bed as
my mother's daughter, and I woke up as her best
friend and confidante and sort of co conspirator. And it
was just it was like some you know, mother daughter
version of Thelma and Louise, Like I was the girl
(09:35):
behind the wheel of the getaway car, just waiting for
her to fly into the car and for me to
jump on the guess. I mean, it was just it
was so exciting at first. Earlier that evening, the house
is filled with what seems a happy, boozy cacophony of
drinks and food. Adrian's mother, whose name is Malibar, is
(09:57):
a romantic figure. Malibar. She was born in Bombay and
named after Malabar Hill. She's a glamorous, beautiful woman who
was both in control and out of control of everything
all at once, making food, entertaining, pouring drinks. This is
not the sad Malabar sleeping through carpool, but quite another. Well,
(10:20):
I mean, Malabar very much lives up to this grand
name of hers. I mean, she was incredibly glamorous, She
was charismatic. She also happened to be just an astonishing cook.
So she had studied at La cordon Bleu, she worked
in the test kitchen of Time Life Foods of the World,
(10:41):
and she had had a food column for the Boston
Globe my whole childhood. And she would throw these fabulous
parties and make these fabulous meals. She was clearly, you know,
a narcissist and clearly had dubious maternal instincts. But she
also was loving and fun, which makes it complicated too.
(11:02):
She wasn't you know, There was nothing Mummy dearest about her.
It wasn't She wasn't mean. Adrian stepfather Charles, who has
now paralyzed on his right side, is in high contrast
to his old friend, the hale and healthy Ben Souther.
If my stepfather Charles was all in his head. Ben
(11:22):
was incredibly physical. I mean he was also successful businessman
and all those things, and very smart. But what you
really noticed about Ben was, you know, he had to
be doing something. He had to be building something. He
had to be fishing, he had to be hunting, he
had to be pulling a boat in or out of
the water. He was just always going, and he loved life,
(11:44):
and he was very enthusiastically and energetically engaged with whatever
he was doing, whereas Charles would rather be reading a
lovely book and have some quiet. What do you think
your mother was thinking when she first came into your
room and said Ben's south or kissed me? Um, do
(12:05):
you think was she bursting with the need to tell someone?
This is like the big question of all times, Like
what was she thinking? And I I'm guessing she'd had
way too much to drink. I'm guessing she was incredibly excited.
It's also within the realm of possibility that perhaps something
(12:28):
had happened a little bit earlier, or she knew a
little bit more than I knew, and was planning ahead
and knew that she needed my help. I mean, that's
sort of more calculating than I've ever thought about it before.
But that's certainly something my mother might have done. But
it's interesting because of course it was you know, it's
my childhood, so it seemed normal to me. It didn't
(12:51):
seem you know. Of course, now I'm just appalled by it,
and especially because I have a daughter who will be
fourteen years old when this book comes out, just fourteen,
and I look at her and I think, is there
any moment that I can imagine, imagine involving her in
(13:12):
something like this, And of course the answer is just no.
But it's it's it's heightened my curiosity about why she
did what she did because it seems so much worse
now that I have my own child than it ever
did before. Because as I said it, you know, it
was somewhat exciting and thrilling at the time. Um, but
it's it just seems terrible to me now. Well, as
(13:34):
you say, I think our childhoods, we normalize our childhood.
It's whatever they are, they're they're the world that we know.
And so aside from being sort of thrilling and being
you know, charged with being complicit in something that felt exciting, um,
it also I would imagine it felt like, oh, well,
maybe this is what happens, and you know, maybe parents,
maybe parents can find these kinds of things in their children. Well,
(13:56):
it also just it made me feel very special and
close to her. And one of the things about my
mother was, you know, you could be on her good
side or her bad side, you could be in or out.
And I think in that way, um, my brother and
I were always in some kind of competition, not as overtly,
not necessarily so overtly, but in some way just to
(14:18):
sort of receive her favor and her good wishes. That
was just a small bit of sunshine and love. Definitely
was a pie in our case. I mean, there was
only so much and we we battled for it, and
sometimes he was ahead and sometimes I was ahead, and
this certainly put me ahead for a while. We're going
(14:40):
to take a quick break. So then what happens, How
does this kind of proceed? Your mother and Ben and
you're being being part of their affair or helping them
to go off together, covering for them. So, um, my
(15:01):
mother quickly set up a ruse for the affair because
it involved I mean, it was an affair that was
carried out in plain sight. These were two couple friends.
So my mother, as a said, was just a brilliant
cook and Ben was a recreational hunter and fisherman. And
so the idea that they had was to make a
(15:22):
wild game cookbook together and this was met with delight
from all parties. The spouses were into it too. It
just seemed like great fun. And so, you know, Ben
and Lily, his wife, would show up at least monthly
with some big hunk of meat um bore or deer
or venison, you know, not always big. One time brought
(15:45):
a squirrel that they'd hit on the way, and my
mother would transform it. I mean, she just would transform
these meats into you know, her beautiful delicacies, and we'd
have these feasts. And my role um at the end
of these evenings, and there had been a lot of
alcohol consumed, was to suggest a walk or a constitutional
(16:05):
as my mother called it. And you know, the whole time,
we all knew that the spouses wouldn't come. They were
both in frail health. So my stepfather had had his strokes.
Then's wife, Lily was a cancer survivor. Um, no one
was in good health, and so I would suggest a
walk and we would merrily swing out the door and
(16:26):
go up the road. We were often sing um okaka
Katie and I see the moon, and the moon sees me.
And then at some point we would turn off. My
mother had a second property that was just a small
house that she sometimes rented and um but was often unoccupied.
And I would peel off and they would go visit,
(16:48):
and I would wait for them on a rock down
at the bay beach below. The houses were at the
edge of the property, and and it was, you know,
I was what was to suspect. I was like a
teenage chaperone. I mean, you wouldn't suspect if you who
your husband or your wife was going off with um
a fourteen year old president on fifteen and sixteen and seventeen.
(17:10):
Because it went on for a while. As it went on,
did your feelings shifted all? I didn't get in touch
with guilt, if that's what you're asking, which I'm not
sure it is, but um, I know. I mean mostly
I was so happy to see my mother happy. And
also I sort of bought hook line and sinker a
(17:33):
story that I was told, which was essentially that no
one meant for this to happen, like they fell in love,
and who can help that this was not planned, This
was not intended. They fell madly in love, and that
that they would no sooner. Above all, they did not
(17:53):
want to hurt their spouses. They loved their spouses. They
did not wish to hurt these people. And to that end,
they sort of presented it to me almost as they
were sacrificing. So rather than leave these people and run
off together, which is what they'd love to do, they
were gonna um do the noble thing and stick to
their marital vows and wait till death do this part.
(18:16):
And I think they always hoped that they would be
together someday. But that was that was the story I
was told, and for certainly the first several years I
bought it the whole. Charles dies five years into Malibar
and Ben's affair, and when he dies, Malibar is not
by his side. This is the first time that Adrian,
(18:38):
who is now a sophomore in college, experiences a real
pang of consciousness and awakening. She feels terrible that after
being so good to them, they meaning Adrian and her mother,
had not been as good to him. This haunted her
for a long time. It still haunts her. Charles had
spent a lot of time in the hospital when he
(18:59):
had HISS, and he was not heroic about it. He
let us know how scary he found it, how much
he hated to be there, and so when he was
in the hospital, and especially this is the adult me talking.
You know, if we're my husband, if it were someone
I loved, a friend, you know, I would want to
be there, and we weren't there. So then what happens
(19:19):
after Charles's death. My mother had a very hard time
for you know, a period of time. And I think
also you know, she was still in love with Ben,
but I think it also unmoored her because now the
situation wasn't balanced. Suddenly she was the third wheel. Were
they going to continue this sort of friendship, which they
(19:39):
kind of did, and how to keep the whole charade
afloat with this new situation. I had confided in different
people along the way, and um, what I will say
is that holding these secrets was so high stakes and
lying was so exhausting. But the secret itself, like the
(20:02):
the outcome if it were discovered, was so significant that
I was terrified. So the first time I told someone
was before my stepfather died, and it was, you know,
my childhood best friend, and I think she was the
very first person I told. And then, you know, a
couple of years later, she started going out with my
(20:23):
brother and suddenly he knew, and then my father my
mother found out that my brother's girlfriend knew, and then
she blamed my brother, and you know, I mean, it
was just that type of situation was sort of happening
and ripe and terrified me. So when I was in college,
Um did it lose some of its power? It did,
(20:46):
but then I would get pulled back in at different moments,
so you know, I wouldn't really think about it much.
I would, you know, I even consciously remember thinking, I'm
getting away from this. I am moving away from this.
I'm gonna live my own life. I'm doing my own thing.
When you say it was terrifying, you know, in that
sort of house of cards kind of way, what was
(21:08):
what was most terrifying about it? What would have been
the worst outcome if that secret had come out? I
think what I felt was that I had huge abandonment fears,
and I think I felt that, um, I could very easily,
she could cut me loose somehow, I don't you know.
(21:29):
That was certainly how I experienced it, Like the fear
was so enormous. Um and I think, you know, I
was whatever combination of nature and nurture. I think by
nature I was a people pleaser and by nurture because
(21:50):
of my parents divorce, you know, I just did have
those early childhood abandonment issues. So you know, I was
a barnicle. My mother was the rock. I mean I
really clung to her starting from when I was quite young.
And so the idea that she might think I had
betrayed her secret, I mean, it just nothing could seem worse. Yeah,
(22:13):
that's so, That's so powerful and so amazing because it
really was always all about the two of you, Yes,
I mean, it wasn't about other people finding out. It
wasn't about consequences of other people finding out. Really, it
was about that primary relationship, all about the two of us.
As an antidote to her own neediness and feeling like
a third wheel with the Suzers, Malibar does what only
(22:36):
a good narcissist could. She devises a plan to have
a really big, festive family joint vacation with the Suzers.
She rents a beautiful house on Harbor Island in the Bahamas.
The Souzers aren't close with their grown children, and so
the idea is that if Ben sees Malibar in that
happy family environment, he'll see how delightful it can be,
(22:58):
and then they'll be able to continue you as they
had been. So Ben and Lily's two kids arrive, and
Adrian's brother arrives with her best friend who is now
his girlfriend. A whole collision of people come and was
in this collision, another stunning layer develops. Adrian falls in
love with Ben Souther's son Jack. We're going to pause
(23:23):
for a moment. We're back. So Adrian and Jack Saucer,
the son of Ben Southerer, enter into a serious romantic relationship.
(23:46):
I actually think this is almost embarrassing. I actually think
we have sort of outsmart at them that they don't
know about this, that we are having a secret relationship,
Like I've out Malabard Malabar and I am for three
or four months. Jack and I see each other. Jack
lives in San Diego, California. I am in college in
(24:09):
New York. He's ten years older. Um, and we sort
of do this, you know, covert back and forth trips
Um to see each other, and we really do fall
in love. And all the while I am not telling
him that my mother and his father are involved in
a love affair. I was a player in her show,
(24:31):
and some part of me I took it on, and
you know, that was really a corrupting moment. The part
about about then keeping the secret from Jack, about keeping
the secret and from from Maliba, well they I think
they obviously probably knew all along, and they found out
very quickly. So I wasn't so worried about keeping the
(24:52):
secret from Malabar. I think keeping um the truth about
our family's situation from Jack as we got more and
more serious than I moved in with him, and um,
you know, despite the fact that I was only twenty
three and I had never been marriage minded in my life,
you know, all of a sudden, I found myself engaged
(25:13):
and we are sort of headed towards this alter and
I had, you know, in sort of a lame way.
And I should add that Jack does not remember it
the same way. But I, you know, I have lots
of journals to corroborate things that I did. You know,
I did always sort of tell me not I've got
this secret that you know, probably you don't want to know,
but let me know. And he didn't want to know.
(25:33):
He was sort of a verse to, um, you know,
things that might be traumatic, as some people are. Sometimes
in life, it seems there are dance steps we simply
begin to take as if they'd been choreographed, especially for us,
moves that would seem unthinkable, except that what we've really
(25:55):
entered into is history on repeat. As Ben and Malabar
continue their years long love affair, Adrian and Jack begin
to plan their own wedding. So you and Jack Mary
before we get married. Um, and just a few months
before we get married, the unthinkable happens and Lily finds
(26:19):
out about everything. And how does that happen? I believe
that Ben thought she was depressed, because I think we
all thought Lily knew all along. I think we all
just you couldn't be in a room with all this chemistry,
with all this energy, this charged particles that just flew
(26:41):
between Ben and Malibar and not think that something was
going on, because it seemed like everyone thought that something
was going on, And it seemed it just seemed all
of us that she must know. And so I think
Ben decided to tell her simply to reassure her that
now that Charles was gone, he wasn't actually going to
(27:03):
leave her and just run off with my mother. He
wanted to reassure her that no, he would be you know,
yes he was in love with Malibar, but no, he
would be, you know, a dutiful husband. And she shocked
everyone by um rather than being some sort of guilted flower, saying,
(27:23):
you know, the hell this is going to keep going.
And she pretty much told Ben that his name would
be mud in their community, and he was a very
popular person in their community of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and that
it was going to stop immediately. And two my great
(27:44):
shock and my mother's even greater shock, Ben dropped her
like a hot potato immediately. And this was all perhaps
three or four months before we were to get married.
So we got a call Jack and I got a
call um in California from Lily. And one of the
(28:06):
things about Lily was part of her cancer treatment involved
radiation pellets in her chest from long ago, so her
vocal cord was atrophying at the same time as Ben
was becoming deaf. So it was just this torturous situation
of she couldn't speak, he couldn't hear, and she got
on the phone to start to tell her son Jack
(28:26):
what had happened, and she couldn't say it. So then
Ben got on the phone, and of course I perked up,
because this was this moment I'd sort of been fearful
of and expecting or not expecting, you know, since I'd
gotten together with Jack. Was you know, how was he
going to feel when he found out that his father
loved my mother and was going to leave his mother
(28:47):
and so on, and and yet, as I was overhearing
this booming voice on this phone, it was not the
conversation that I was expecting. And Ben was apologizing for
all the things he had done wrong and how what
a horrible mistake this relationship was and all of this,
and I just, I mean, it was one of the
most surreal conversations. And of course immediately I started to
(29:12):
wonder if Malibar knew yet, like if she already knew,
or that they'd called us for a first or had
he already called and broken it off with her, and
so almost I mean, that's one of the things that
I remember so clearly. It's just how quickly I went
from my own concerns to hers. I mean, just there
(29:32):
was such a blurring of boundaries in our relationship. So
Adrian and Jack's wedding becomes you guessed it about Malabar,
and Malabar's one last great opportunity to show Ben Sauzer
just what he's missing. How could it not, Jackson, My
wedding becomes this incredibly monumentally important day for my mother,
(29:57):
and so my wedding is totally usurped because it's it's
her big day. It's the last chance she might be
able to see Ben and change his mind. Um. And
so all of a sudden, you know, even though the
truth has come out, nothing has changed, because we're worried
about her dress, we're thinking about the menu according to
(30:20):
like his his deduction were you know, it's it's all
going in that same vein. And so all that happens,
and there is some kind of reconnection at the wedding.
Despite everyone agreeing that there would be no dancing between them,
there was a dance between my mother and Ben at
this wedding, and you know, it was electric and it
(30:41):
was just it just everything happened, um. And there's a
photo of them together that you know, it wasn't a
picture of me and my groom on my mother's entryway
hall afterwards, it was a picture of her and Ben.
Did Jack feel um the traitor, upset that you had
kept that secret from him? He didn't. I mean, I
(31:06):
think probably over the years he probably has come to
feel that more that way, He's not said that to me.
I mean, at the time, he was so angry at
his father and at my mother, and especially just enraged
that they would involve me as a child and sort
of how confusing that was for me. And he believed
(31:26):
that more than I believed, because I felt like I
felt I should you know, he must be angry. But
I also think I felt hugely relieved, because I think
the problem with keeping a secret is, of course you're
never fully seen or known, right, And I think my
deep hope at that moment was that he would, you know,
(31:51):
see me for all the flaws, for what I had
done on every level, and then actually still want to
know me and want to be in this real relationship
with me. And I think instead what happened was there
was very little examination of my culpability or involvement, and
a lot of just you know, they were horrible people,
which you know, I think he still believes to this
(32:13):
day and in his mind they were, and that's fine.
But I don't think we ever reflected on what it
meant that we'd probably been in a relationship for two
years at that point and you know, I had, I
had put my mother ahead of him. There's so many
interesting things about that, because one thing that strikes me is,
you know, there's a limit to how much rage anyone
(32:37):
can feel it at any given moment, or how many
people you can can be mad at, you know, in
a given moment. And it sounds like he was full
up with you know, his father and your mother, very possibly,
but also that that would be a very kind of
compassionate and kind of normal response to think you were
(32:57):
a child. No, you're not a child anymore, but you
were a child. The person who made this choice was
a child, or didn't even make the choice. The person
that was you know, kind of co opted and brought
into the situation was a child. And I think, I mean,
you know, if this was someone else, I think I'd
have much more compassion. We're always hardest on ourselves, of course, um,
(33:18):
but I think you know, in all my relationships since then.
I mean, I just I feel like there's been such
a a pivot in my life from that moment of
wanting to become, you know, fully a truth teller, fully
being seen. I mean, I would rather anyone who loves
me knows, you know, every flaw and bad thought and
(33:43):
unkind thing I might do and still love me, rather
than some polished version that's simply not true. A huge pivot.
I find this extraordinarily moving, because that's what can happen
when secrets are finally aired out right. Adrian goes from
keeping a secret for the better part of a lifetime
(34:05):
to wanting to be seen and known and feeling the
power and grace in being seen and known. Though this process,
like many journeys to a kind of grace, does not
happen overnight. Adrian experiences a huge and profound depression shortly
after she and Jack Mary. She enters into a state
(34:27):
of despair for several years and hits a bottom from
which she begins to realize that she needs to change
in order to have a more fully authentic life. I
wasn't living my own life, right, I mean, I just
hadn't been since I was fourteen. I had put my
mother's life so far ahead of my own and really
(34:48):
unthinking Lee, so I kind of woke up um and
and was so. I mean, I don't know who I
would have been had I had she not had this affair.
I don't know what I would have done at school,
or who I would be with or so on. There's
no question in my mind that I wouldn't have been
married in this certain career, living with this certain person
(35:11):
in this town, you know, in San Diego. It just
it's um. But yeah, it was all of it. It
was the tornado, It was this perfect storm um and
then you know, I don't know what other biochemical reasons,
but it was devastating and it was I really had
to call on my way out of it for several years.
And I truly feel for people who experienced depression with
(35:34):
any kind of regularity because I was so scared of
it for so many years. I mean, I remember just thinking,
am I going to be someone who fights depression all
their life? And I and I haven't. It was Carl
Young who once described secrets as psychic poison, and another
favorite quote of mine, this one from the Gospel of St.
(35:55):
Thomas in the Gnostic Gospels. If you bring forth what
is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you. I
think there are moments in our lives that are ultimately
great turning points, great reckonings, if we allow them to be.
(36:16):
Adrian and Jack's marriage doesn't last. Really, how could it?
Burdened by so many secrets and silences, such wild and
impossible history. Adrian puts herself together again and becomes a strong, compassionate,
highly attuned, confident woman. She holds a series of high
profile jobs in publishing. She marries a wonderful man and
(36:39):
has two children, a daughter and a son. In the meantime,
Malabar and Ben had moved on to each other. It
was in that Lily died, and almost immediately they were
back together. Ben moved in within a couple of months,
and they were married nine months later. And then you know,
(37:01):
they went on to have an almost twenty year marriage.
U Ben died six years ago at the age of
so you know it. It was scandalous, but it was
also lasting. So you alluded to this a little bit before.
But so I'm wondering I guess I always wonder about
(37:21):
the lasting impact of secrets, just in terms of your
daughter being fourteen or will be fourteen at the time
your book comes out. And I know I've had that
experience any number of times in my son's life where
I'll see him at a certain age and I'll realize
that what was done to me at that age or
(37:43):
the way that I was treated at that age in
my own life was just so incomprehensible to me. So
here you are, and you know, you have this long, stable,
happy marriage, you have these two beautiful kids, you have
several wonderful careers, um and now you've you've made you
(38:03):
a piece of work out of this. Where does all
this kind of how does it sit with you? Not
that I ever thought I would be doing this kind
of thing to my children, but I think keeping it
in the front of my mind and my heart is
what makes me aware of of not wanting to go there,
of not wanting to repeat these mistakes that my parents made.
(38:25):
I do not want a parent as I was parented,
and that's that. I love both my parents, I really do,
but they just they made some incredible mistakes. And my
mother in particular and there's a history of it in
our family. Your mother, as you said, is pretty far
along in her decline, and you have very much been
(38:49):
there for her during these years. Do you feel it's
very clear that you love her? Do you feel that
you've forgiven her? I'm not angry with her. I'm I mean,
she's such a different person right now that it's sort
of as if I'm not having the conversation with her
other than by myself. I truly believe that she was
(39:14):
a better mother than her mother was to her. I
don't honestly know the answer. I mean, I think I
have only because I don't feel anger or upset. I
feel curiosity and wanting to understand and not wanting to
replicate um and but at different points in time, I've
felt all of the above. I feel like most of
(39:35):
what I learned from my mother was sort of in
opposition to what she meant to teach me, or at
least she was not wise in terms of her lessons,
and most of how I want to be as in
reaction to who she was many things to Adrian Rodur.
(40:00):
Her memoir Wild Game, My Mother, Her Lover and Me
has just been released. You can find out more about
Adrian at Adrian Rodur dot com. Family Secrets is an
I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagin is the supervising producer,
Lowell Brolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is
the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
(40:23):
like to share, you can get in touch with us
at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and
you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami
Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny
Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
(40:54):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Blink
and you'll miss your treasure. Blink again, and you'll realize
that the truth you thought was safely hidden has materialized,
some ungainly part of it revealed under new conditions. We
all know the adage that one lie begets the next deception.
(00:24):
Takes commitment, vigilance, and a very good memory. To keep
the truth buried, you must tend to it for years
and years. My job was to pile on sand, fistfuls, shovelfuls, bucketfuls,
whatever the moment necessitated, in effort to keep my mother's
secret buried. That's Adrian Roder reading from her just released
(00:49):
memoir Wild Game, My Mother, Her Lover and Me. Adrian's
is a story of being coerced, seduced into the keeping
of a powerful and day injurious secret. What happens when
a child is brought into her mother's private world, When
a daughter is given access to her mother's innermost life
(01:10):
in exchange for absolute loyalty and fidelity. I'm Danny Shapiro,
and this is family secrets. The secrets that are kept
from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
secrets we keep from ourselves. Well. I was born in
(01:37):
New York City, but when I was very young, my
parents divorced and we moved from New York, my brother
and I we moved from New York to Massachusetts. And
I would say that Cape Cod has always felt like
the home base for me. I go over that bridge
and I have sort of a have lost dog reaction
to the briny air and everything else. I really feel
(01:58):
home there. So just describe Cape Cod more for somebody
who's never been there. Cape Cod it is um just
one of the most beautiful slices of the country. But
Cape Cud to me, it's um. It's a very sensuous place.
It's um. I think of the sand and the seafood
(02:19):
and what's below the water. I spent so much of
my childhood in boats, sort of varying across the harbor
from one of our houses or my mother's house, but
we'd go fishing and clamming, and it just really sort
of where most of my happy memories are. Remember the
big T shirt in the early seventies was happiness is
low Tide on Cape Cod, and we all believe that
(02:42):
that's what we did. Early in the book, you describe
in a way the first secret I would say, which
is I don't know if you would characterized exactly as
the secret, but um, the loss of your brother. I
don't actually remember either of my parents sitting down and
telling me that I had a brother and his what
his name was, and how he died. So I do
(03:03):
remember coming upon it a bit as a secret, and
yet there were photos of him around, and there were
um items of his in our home, and I think
it was probably just a very painful thing from my
parents to talk about. This idea of secrets that aren't
completely buried, but that we also don't fully know about
(03:23):
runs throughout Adrian's story. These secrets exist in the landscape
that we can apprehend but aren't really supposed to touch upon.
As a child, she was always aware of a core
sadness that her mother carried, a sorrow that floated in
the very air of her childhood homes. Adrian is one
of three children. Her oldest brother died at two and
(03:45):
a half by choking on a piece of meat. Her
mother was already pregnant at the time with Adrian's second brother,
and then there was Adrian, born four years later on
her eldest late brother's birthday, So throughout her childhood, Adrian's
birthday always came with a whiff of sadness. She tried,
(04:07):
as children do, to assemble the bits of information she could,
while feeling that somehow the loss of her brother had
something to do with her. I'm always struck by the
stories that we make up as children, especially in the
absence of knowledge or you know, where there's some sense
(04:29):
that their sadness we don't understand, or there's an absence
we don't understand, or there's some story that we don't know,
and it's just human nature as children to make up
stories to take the place of those stories, and they're
almost never good. I think those kinds of stories kind
of boomerang back on the child as this is my
(04:50):
fault or you take it on absolutely, And honestly, I
think we do that as adults too. I mean, I
think it's also much about, you know, our own lens
or our own feelings. So you say hello to someone
and they don't return it, and you make up a
story for why they didn't do it, rather than oh,
she didn't hear me, or you know. I think, I mean,
I think it's something we all have to be careful
(05:11):
of but as children certainly, I mean, there's so much
for trying to figure out right, and it's so confusing,
and also people aren't always being straightforward with you. Adrian's
parents split up when she's eight years old. Her mother
is already years deep into a relationship with a man
who's also married, and it takes some time and some
(05:32):
doing to extricate themselves from their spouses so they can
find their way toward each other. But then, just before
they marry, her soon to be husband has a series
of four profoundly debilitating strokes. So life for Adrian's mother
suddenly looks very different from what she had thought it
would be. Instead of this beautiful romance, now she has
(05:56):
an ailing husband, and Adrian is thrust into the role
of the adult, waking her mother each morning. For carpool,
describe a little bit the the home in Chestnut Hill.
So you move from more more modest circumstances into from
completely modest circumstances. I mean, I shared a bedroom with
(06:16):
my brother. You know, I could, I'm sure, although I
haven't been there in years, reach across and touch him,
you know, if I needed our twin beds weren't that
far apart, and we moved into this mansion in Chestnut Hill,
which had seventeen bedrooms and nine bathrooms and was just
simply the most enormous thing I'd ever seen in my life. Um,
(06:40):
And the story we were told, which I think is
probably true, but I don't know, is that. You know,
my stepfather had been trying to sort of sell it
or get rid of it for years, and quite simply,
no one wanted a house that big. So in the
end we rented many of the rooms on the top floor.
I mean it was during the seventies. Just heating the
thing I can't even imagine. But no, my I mean
(07:02):
I actually could do my gymnastic routine in my bedroom,
you know, cartwheel, cartwheel back in spring. Um, it was enormous,
and it was scary. I mean it was actually really
scary in the beginning. Um, My brother was on a
different floor than I was, on a different end of
the house. My mother was down a very long corridor. Um.
You know, you know New York apartments, you can kind
(07:24):
of shouting, anyone will come. We lived in Chestnut Hill
and we would go to the cape. My mom had
a tiny cottage on the Cape Um where we would go.
My father would also come up from New York and
rent a house and spend summers on the Cape. So
we spent July with my mother's in August with my father,
and we would also shuttle back to New York or
Connecticut to visit my father on a lot of weekends.
(07:47):
Into this world comes this man who in your book
you refer to as Ben. So the story really begins
on August night on Cape cod In and I was
fourteen years old and I was you know, it was
(08:08):
a late it was late at night. I was sound
asleep um in my own bedroom, and at some point
in time the door opened and my mother came in
and she said Rennie, which is my nickname. She said, Rennie,
wake up, and I so remember not wanting to wake up.
I was sort of half thinking about a boy I
had been kissing earlier on the Bay beach Um and
(08:28):
I rolled away and she said Ben South or just
kissed me. And of course with that, my eyes popped
open because Ben South there was my stepfather's best friend.
And Ben South was married, which you know, of course
my mother was married too, but they were a couple
friends and you know, I didn't know them well, but
I knew them. I knew who they were. And what
(08:50):
I didn't know was that evening would mark the beginning
of just an epic extramarital love affair that my mother
brought me along on. But at the time it was
so thrilling and so seductive and so magical. I just
adored my mother, and I recognized it even in that moment,
(09:13):
the moment it happened, as um, one of those moments
that everything changes. So I had gone to bed as
my mother's daughter, and I woke up as her best
friend and confidante and sort of co conspirator. And it
was just it was like some you know, mother daughter
version of Thelma and Louise, Like I was the girl
(09:35):
behind the wheel of the getaway car, just waiting for
her to fly into the car and for me to
jump on the guess. I mean, it was just it
was so exciting at first. Earlier that evening, the house
is filled with what seems a happy, boozy cacophony of
drinks and food. Adrian's mother, whose name is Malibar, is
(09:57):
a romantic figure. Malibar. She was born in Bombay and
named after Malabar Hill. She's a glamorous, beautiful woman who
was both in control and out of control of everything
all at once, making food, entertaining, pouring drinks. This is
not the sad Malabar sleeping through carpool, but quite another. Well,
(10:20):
I mean, Malabar very much lives up to this grand
name of hers. I mean, she was incredibly glamorous, She
was charismatic. She also happened to be just an astonishing cook.
So she had studied at La cordon Bleu, she worked
in the test kitchen of Time Life Foods of the World,
(10:41):
and she had had a food column for the Boston
Globe my whole childhood. And she would throw these fabulous
parties and make these fabulous meals. She was clearly, you know,
a narcissist and clearly had dubious maternal instincts. But she
also was loving and fun, which makes it complicated too.
(11:02):
She wasn't you know, There was nothing Mummy dearest about her.
It wasn't She wasn't mean. Adrian stepfather Charles, who has
now paralyzed on his right side, is in high contrast
to his old friend, the hale and healthy Ben Souther.
If my stepfather Charles was all in his head. Ben
(11:22):
was incredibly physical. I mean he was also successful businessman
and all those things, and very smart. But what you
really noticed about Ben was, you know, he had to
be doing something. He had to be building something. He
had to be fishing, he had to be hunting, he
had to be pulling a boat in or out of
the water. He was just always going, and he loved life,
(11:44):
and he was very enthusiastically and energetically engaged with whatever
he was doing, whereas Charles would rather be reading a
lovely book and have some quiet. What do you think
your mother was thinking when she first came into your
room and said Ben's south or kissed me? Um, do
(12:05):
you think was she bursting with the need to tell someone?
This is like the big question of all times, Like
what was she thinking? And I I'm guessing she'd had
way too much to drink. I'm guessing she was incredibly excited.
It's also within the realm of possibility that perhaps something
(12:28):
had happened a little bit earlier, or she knew a
little bit more than I knew, and was planning ahead
and knew that she needed my help. I mean, that's
sort of more calculating than I've ever thought about it before.
But that's certainly something my mother might have done. But
it's interesting because of course it was you know, it's
my childhood, so it seemed normal to me. It didn't
(12:51):
seem you know. Of course, now I'm just appalled by it,
and especially because I have a daughter who will be
fourteen years old when this book comes out, just fourteen,
and I look at her and I think, is there
any moment that I can imagine, imagine involving her in
(13:12):
something like this, And of course the answer is just no.
But it's it's it's heightened my curiosity about why she
did what she did because it seems so much worse
now that I have my own child than it ever
did before. Because as I said it, you know, it
was somewhat exciting and thrilling at the time. Um, but
it's it just seems terrible to me now. Well, as
(13:34):
you say, I think our childhoods, we normalize our childhood.
It's whatever they are, they're they're the world that we know.
And so aside from being sort of thrilling and being
you know, charged with being complicit in something that felt exciting, um,
it also I would imagine it felt like, oh, well,
maybe this is what happens, and you know, maybe parents,
maybe parents can find these kinds of things in their children. Well,
(13:56):
it also just it made me feel very special and
close to her. And one of the things about my
mother was, you know, you could be on her good
side or her bad side, you could be in or out.
And I think in that way, um, my brother and
I were always in some kind of competition, not as overtly,
not necessarily so overtly, but in some way just to
(14:18):
sort of receive her favor and her good wishes. That
was just a small bit of sunshine and love. Definitely
was a pie in our case. I mean, there was
only so much and we we battled for it, and
sometimes he was ahead and sometimes I was ahead, and
this certainly put me ahead for a while. We're going
(14:40):
to take a quick break. So then what happens, How
does this kind of proceed? Your mother and Ben and
you're being being part of their affair or helping them
to go off together, covering for them. So, um, my
(15:01):
mother quickly set up a ruse for the affair because
it involved I mean, it was an affair that was
carried out in plain sight. These were two couple friends.
So my mother, as a said, was just a brilliant
cook and Ben was a recreational hunter and fisherman. And
so the idea that they had was to make a
(15:22):
wild game cookbook together and this was met with delight
from all parties. The spouses were into it too. It
just seemed like great fun. And so, you know, Ben
and Lily, his wife, would show up at least monthly
with some big hunk of meat um bore or deer
or venison, you know, not always big. One time brought
(15:45):
a squirrel that they'd hit on the way, and my
mother would transform it. I mean, she just would transform
these meats into you know, her beautiful delicacies, and we'd
have these feasts. And my role um at the end
of these evenings, and there had been a lot of
alcohol consumed, was to suggest a walk or a constitutional
(16:05):
as my mother called it. And you know, the whole time,
we all knew that the spouses wouldn't come. They were
both in frail health. So my stepfather had had his strokes.
Then's wife, Lily was a cancer survivor. Um, no one
was in good health, and so I would suggest a
walk and we would merrily swing out the door and
(16:26):
go up the road. We were often sing um okaka
Katie and I see the moon, and the moon sees me.
And then at some point we would turn off. My
mother had a second property that was just a small
house that she sometimes rented and um but was often unoccupied.
And I would peel off and they would go visit,
(16:48):
and I would wait for them on a rock down
at the bay beach below. The houses were at the
edge of the property, and and it was, you know,
I was what was to suspect. I was like a
teenage chaperone. I mean, you wouldn't suspect if you who
your husband or your wife was going off with um
a fourteen year old president on fifteen and sixteen and seventeen.
(17:10):
Because it went on for a while. As it went on,
did your feelings shifted all? I didn't get in touch
with guilt, if that's what you're asking, which I'm not
sure it is, but um, I know. I mean mostly
I was so happy to see my mother happy. And
also I sort of bought hook line and sinker a
(17:33):
story that I was told, which was essentially that no
one meant for this to happen, like they fell in love,
and who can help that this was not planned, This
was not intended. They fell madly in love, and that
that they would no sooner. Above all, they did not
(17:53):
want to hurt their spouses. They loved their spouses. They
did not wish to hurt these people. And to that end,
they sort of presented it to me almost as they
were sacrificing. So rather than leave these people and run
off together, which is what they'd love to do, they
were gonna um do the noble thing and stick to
their marital vows and wait till death do this part.
(18:16):
And I think they always hoped that they would be
together someday. But that was that was the story I
was told, and for certainly the first several years I
bought it the whole. Charles dies five years into Malibar
and Ben's affair, and when he dies, Malibar is not
by his side. This is the first time that Adrian,
(18:38):
who is now a sophomore in college, experiences a real
pang of consciousness and awakening. She feels terrible that after
being so good to them, they meaning Adrian and her mother,
had not been as good to him. This haunted her
for a long time. It still haunts her. Charles had
spent a lot of time in the hospital when he
(18:59):
had HISS, and he was not heroic about it. He
let us know how scary he found it, how much
he hated to be there, and so when he was
in the hospital, and especially this is the adult me talking.
You know, if we're my husband, if it were someone
I loved, a friend, you know, I would want to
be there, and we weren't there. So then what happens
(19:19):
after Charles's death. My mother had a very hard time
for you know, a period of time. And I think
also you know, she was still in love with Ben,
but I think it also unmoored her because now the
situation wasn't balanced. Suddenly she was the third wheel. Were
they going to continue this sort of friendship, which they
(19:39):
kind of did, and how to keep the whole charade
afloat with this new situation. I had confided in different
people along the way, and um, what I will say
is that holding these secrets was so high stakes and
lying was so exhausting. But the secret itself, like the
(20:02):
the outcome if it were discovered, was so significant that
I was terrified. So the first time I told someone
was before my stepfather died, and it was, you know,
my childhood best friend, and I think she was the
very first person I told. And then, you know, a
couple of years later, she started going out with my
(20:23):
brother and suddenly he knew, and then my father my
mother found out that my brother's girlfriend knew, and then
she blamed my brother, and you know, I mean, it
was just that type of situation was sort of happening
and ripe and terrified me. So when I was in college,
Um did it lose some of its power? It did,
(20:46):
but then I would get pulled back in at different moments,
so you know, I wouldn't really think about it much.
I would, you know, I even consciously remember thinking, I'm
getting away from this. I am moving away from this.
I'm gonna live my own life. I'm doing my own thing.
When you say it was terrifying, you know, in that
sort of house of cards kind of way, what was
(21:08):
what was most terrifying about it? What would have been
the worst outcome if that secret had come out? I
think what I felt was that I had huge abandonment fears,
and I think I felt that, um, I could very easily,
she could cut me loose somehow, I don't you know.
(21:29):
That was certainly how I experienced it, Like the fear
was so enormous. Um and I think, you know, I
was whatever combination of nature and nurture. I think by
nature I was a people pleaser and by nurture because
(21:50):
of my parents divorce, you know, I just did have
those early childhood abandonment issues. So you know, I was
a barnicle. My mother was the rock. I mean I
really clung to her starting from when I was quite young.
And so the idea that she might think I had
betrayed her secret, I mean, it just nothing could seem worse. Yeah,
(22:13):
that's so, That's so powerful and so amazing because it
really was always all about the two of you, Yes,
I mean, it wasn't about other people finding out. It
wasn't about consequences of other people finding out. Really, it
was about that primary relationship, all about the two of us.
As an antidote to her own neediness and feeling like
a third wheel with the Suzers, Malibar does what only
(22:36):
a good narcissist could. She devises a plan to have
a really big, festive family joint vacation with the Suzers.
She rents a beautiful house on Harbor Island in the Bahamas.
The Souzers aren't close with their grown children, and so
the idea is that if Ben sees Malibar in that
happy family environment, he'll see how delightful it can be,
(22:58):
and then they'll be able to continue you as they
had been. So Ben and Lily's two kids arrive, and
Adrian's brother arrives with her best friend who is now
his girlfriend. A whole collision of people come and was
in this collision, another stunning layer develops. Adrian falls in
love with Ben Souther's son Jack. We're going to pause
(23:23):
for a moment. We're back. So Adrian and Jack Saucer,
the son of Ben Southerer, enter into a serious romantic relationship.
(23:46):
I actually think this is almost embarrassing. I actually think
we have sort of outsmart at them that they don't
know about this, that we are having a secret relationship,
Like I've out Malabard Malabar and I am for three
or four months. Jack and I see each other. Jack
lives in San Diego, California. I am in college in
(24:09):
New York. He's ten years older. Um, and we sort
of do this, you know, covert back and forth trips
Um to see each other, and we really do fall
in love. And all the while I am not telling
him that my mother and his father are involved in
a love affair. I was a player in her show,
(24:31):
and some part of me I took it on, and
you know, that was really a corrupting moment. The part
about about then keeping the secret from Jack, about keeping
the secret and from from Maliba, well they I think
they obviously probably knew all along, and they found out
very quickly. So I wasn't so worried about keeping the
(24:52):
secret from Malabar. I think keeping um the truth about
our family's situation from Jack as we got more and
more serious than I moved in with him, and um,
you know, despite the fact that I was only twenty
three and I had never been marriage minded in my life,
you know, all of a sudden, I found myself engaged
(25:13):
and we are sort of headed towards this alter and
I had, you know, in sort of a lame way.
And I should add that Jack does not remember it
the same way. But I, you know, I have lots
of journals to corroborate things that I did. You know,
I did always sort of tell me not I've got
this secret that you know, probably you don't want to know,
but let me know. And he didn't want to know.
(25:33):
He was sort of a verse to, um, you know,
things that might be traumatic, as some people are. Sometimes
in life, it seems there are dance steps we simply
begin to take as if they'd been choreographed, especially for us,
moves that would seem unthinkable, except that what we've really
(25:55):
entered into is history on repeat. As Ben and Malabar
continue their years long love affair, Adrian and Jack begin
to plan their own wedding. So you and Jack Mary
before we get married. Um, and just a few months
before we get married, the unthinkable happens and Lily finds
(26:19):
out about everything. And how does that happen? I believe
that Ben thought she was depressed, because I think we
all thought Lily knew all along. I think we all
just you couldn't be in a room with all this chemistry,
with all this energy, this charged particles that just flew
(26:41):
between Ben and Malibar and not think that something was
going on, because it seemed like everyone thought that something
was going on, And it seemed it just seemed all
of us that she must know. And so I think
Ben decided to tell her simply to reassure her that
now that Charles was gone, he wasn't actually going to
(27:03):
leave her and just run off with my mother. He
wanted to reassure her that no, he would be you know,
yes he was in love with Malibar, but no, he
would be, you know, a dutiful husband. And she shocked
everyone by um rather than being some sort of guilted flower, saying,
(27:23):
you know, the hell this is going to keep going.
And she pretty much told Ben that his name would
be mud in their community, and he was a very
popular person in their community of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and that
it was going to stop immediately. And two my great
(27:44):
shock and my mother's even greater shock, Ben dropped her
like a hot potato immediately. And this was all perhaps
three or four months before we were to get married.
So we got a call Jack and I got a
call um in California from Lily. And one of the
(28:06):
things about Lily was part of her cancer treatment involved
radiation pellets in her chest from long ago, so her
vocal cord was atrophying at the same time as Ben
was becoming deaf. So it was just this torturous situation
of she couldn't speak, he couldn't hear, and she got
on the phone to start to tell her son Jack
(28:26):
what had happened, and she couldn't say it. So then
Ben got on the phone, and of course I perked up,
because this was this moment I'd sort of been fearful
of and expecting or not expecting, you know, since I'd
gotten together with Jack. Was you know, how was he
going to feel when he found out that his father
loved my mother and was going to leave his mother
(28:47):
and so on, and and yet, as I was overhearing
this booming voice on this phone, it was not the
conversation that I was expecting. And Ben was apologizing for
all the things he had done wrong and how what
a horrible mistake this relationship was and all of this,
and I just, I mean, it was one of the
most surreal conversations. And of course immediately I started to
(29:12):
wonder if Malibar knew yet, like if she already knew,
or that they'd called us for a first or had
he already called and broken it off with her, and
so almost I mean, that's one of the things that
I remember so clearly. It's just how quickly I went
from my own concerns to hers. I mean, just there
(29:32):
was such a blurring of boundaries in our relationship. So
Adrian and Jack's wedding becomes you guessed it about Malabar,
and Malabar's one last great opportunity to show Ben Sauzer
just what he's missing. How could it not, Jackson, My
wedding becomes this incredibly monumentally important day for my mother,
(29:57):
and so my wedding is totally usurped because it's it's
her big day. It's the last chance she might be
able to see Ben and change his mind. Um. And
so all of a sudden, you know, even though the
truth has come out, nothing has changed, because we're worried
about her dress, we're thinking about the menu according to
(30:20):
like his his deduction were you know, it's it's all
going in that same vein. And so all that happens,
and there is some kind of reconnection at the wedding.
Despite everyone agreeing that there would be no dancing between them,
there was a dance between my mother and Ben at
this wedding, and you know, it was electric and it
(30:41):
was just it just everything happened, um. And there's a
photo of them together that you know, it wasn't a
picture of me and my groom on my mother's entryway
hall afterwards, it was a picture of her and Ben.
Did Jack feel um the traitor, upset that you had
kept that secret from him? He didn't. I mean, I
(31:06):
think probably over the years he probably has come to
feel that more that way, He's not said that to me.
I mean, at the time, he was so angry at
his father and at my mother, and especially just enraged
that they would involve me as a child and sort
of how confusing that was for me. And he believed
(31:26):
that more than I believed, because I felt like I
felt I should you know, he must be angry. But
I also think I felt hugely relieved, because I think
the problem with keeping a secret is, of course you're
never fully seen or known, right, And I think my
deep hope at that moment was that he would, you know,
(31:51):
see me for all the flaws, for what I had
done on every level, and then actually still want to
know me and want to be in this real relationship
with me. And I think instead what happened was there
was very little examination of my culpability or involvement, and
a lot of just you know, they were horrible people,
which you know, I think he still believes to this
(32:13):
day and in his mind they were, and that's fine.
But I don't think we ever reflected on what it
meant that we'd probably been in a relationship for two
years at that point and you know, I had, I
had put my mother ahead of him. There's so many
interesting things about that, because one thing that strikes me is,
you know, there's a limit to how much rage anyone
(32:37):
can feel it at any given moment, or how many
people you can can be mad at, you know, in
a given moment. And it sounds like he was full
up with you know, his father and your mother, very possibly,
but also that that would be a very kind of
compassionate and kind of normal response to think you were
(32:57):
a child. No, you're not a child anymore, but you
were a child. The person who made this choice was
a child, or didn't even make the choice. The person
that was you know, kind of co opted and brought
into the situation was a child. And I think, I mean,
you know, if this was someone else, I think I'd
have much more compassion. We're always hardest on ourselves, of course, um,
(33:18):
but I think you know, in all my relationships since then.
I mean, I just I feel like there's been such
a a pivot in my life from that moment of
wanting to become, you know, fully a truth teller, fully
being seen. I mean, I would rather anyone who loves
me knows, you know, every flaw and bad thought and
(33:43):
unkind thing I might do and still love me, rather
than some polished version that's simply not true. A huge pivot.
I find this extraordinarily moving, because that's what can happen
when secrets are finally aired out right. Adrian goes from
keeping a secret for the better part of a lifetime
(34:05):
to wanting to be seen and known and feeling the
power and grace in being seen and known. Though this process,
like many journeys to a kind of grace, does not
happen overnight. Adrian experiences a huge and profound depression shortly
after she and Jack Mary. She enters into a state
(34:27):
of despair for several years and hits a bottom from
which she begins to realize that she needs to change
in order to have a more fully authentic life. I
wasn't living my own life, right, I mean, I just
hadn't been since I was fourteen. I had put my
mother's life so far ahead of my own and really
(34:48):
unthinking Lee, so I kind of woke up um and
and was so. I mean, I don't know who I
would have been had I had she not had this affair.
I don't know what I would have done at school,
or who I would be with or so on. There's
no question in my mind that I wouldn't have been
married in this certain career, living with this certain person
(35:11):
in this town, you know, in San Diego. It just
it's um. But yeah, it was all of it. It
was the tornado, It was this perfect storm um and
then you know, I don't know what other biochemical reasons,
but it was devastating and it was I really had
to call on my way out of it for several years.
And I truly feel for people who experienced depression with
(35:34):
any kind of regularity because I was so scared of
it for so many years. I mean, I remember just thinking,
am I going to be someone who fights depression all
their life? And I and I haven't. It was Carl
Young who once described secrets as psychic poison, and another
favorite quote of mine, this one from the Gospel of St.
(35:55):
Thomas in the Gnostic Gospels. If you bring forth what
is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you. I
think there are moments in our lives that are ultimately
great turning points, great reckonings, if we allow them to be.
(36:16):
Adrian and Jack's marriage doesn't last. Really, how could it?
Burdened by so many secrets and silences, such wild and
impossible history. Adrian puts herself together again and becomes a strong, compassionate,
highly attuned, confident woman. She holds a series of high
profile jobs in publishing. She marries a wonderful man and
(36:39):
has two children, a daughter and a son. In the meantime,
Malabar and Ben had moved on to each other. It
was in that Lily died, and almost immediately they were
back together. Ben moved in within a couple of months,
and they were married nine months later. And then you know,
(37:01):
they went on to have an almost twenty year marriage.
U Ben died six years ago at the age of
so you know it. It was scandalous, but it was
also lasting. So you alluded to this a little bit before.
But so I'm wondering I guess I always wonder about
(37:21):
the lasting impact of secrets, just in terms of your
daughter being fourteen or will be fourteen at the time
your book comes out. And I know I've had that
experience any number of times in my son's life where
I'll see him at a certain age and I'll realize
that what was done to me at that age or
(37:43):
the way that I was treated at that age in
my own life was just so incomprehensible to me. So
here you are, and you know, you have this long, stable,
happy marriage, you have these two beautiful kids, you have
several wonderful careers, um and now you've you've made you
(38:03):
a piece of work out of this. Where does all
this kind of how does it sit with you? Not
that I ever thought I would be doing this kind
of thing to my children, but I think keeping it
in the front of my mind and my heart is
what makes me aware of of not wanting to go there,
of not wanting to repeat these mistakes that my parents made.
(38:25):
I do not want a parent as I was parented,
and that's that. I love both my parents, I really do,
but they just they made some incredible mistakes. And my
mother in particular and there's a history of it in
our family. Your mother, as you said, is pretty far
along in her decline, and you have very much been
(38:49):
there for her during these years. Do you feel it's
very clear that you love her? Do you feel that
you've forgiven her? I'm not angry with her. I'm I mean,
she's such a different person right now that it's sort
of as if I'm not having the conversation with her
other than by myself. I truly believe that she was
(39:14):
a better mother than her mother was to her. I
don't honestly know the answer. I mean, I think I
have only because I don't feel anger or upset. I
feel curiosity and wanting to understand and not wanting to
replicate um and but at different points in time, I've
felt all of the above. I feel like most of
(39:35):
what I learned from my mother was sort of in
opposition to what she meant to teach me, or at
least she was not wise in terms of her lessons,
and most of how I want to be as in
reaction to who she was many things to Adrian Rodur.
(40:00):
Her memoir Wild Game, My Mother, Her Lover and Me
has just been released. You can find out more about
Adrian at Adrian Rodur dot com. Family Secrets is an
I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagin is the supervising producer,
Lowell Brolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is
the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
(40:23):
like to share, you can get in touch with us
at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and
you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami
Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny
Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
(40:54):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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