Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw Page A

“Don’t you understand?”
    In the face of my silence, Dr. Rokoko draws ruminatively on the tobacco-filled pipe that he hasn’t lit. He puffs and appears to be mulling over the story, evaluating it and me. “What am I supposed to do now?” he finally asks. “Applaud? Offer you a curtain call and a standing ovation?”
    “What am I supposed to do?” I shoot back. “Go ballistic so you’ll know what I’m like when I lose my temper?”
    “I’d rather that than listen to more glib BS. Save your anecdotes for talk shows. Were you breast-fed?”
    “Oh Jesus, spare me the psychobabble.”
    “I bet your mother’s milk dried up. You’re a very hungry man. That’s why you talk so much crap. You have a mania for force-feeding people because you weren’t fed.”
    I sigh and say nothing. I don’t care to add credence to his diagnosis by talking more. Still, I realize I can’t stay silent forever if I hope to avoid being hauled back into court. So in subsequent sessions, I narrate a highly selective account of my childhood. I concede that Dad’s dead, but don’t add that he was murdered by my brother. I describe Mom as a Penelope-like figure, struggling with three kids instead of a houseful of suitors, but I don’t acknowledge her seismic temper. I speak of Candy’s polio, and in a politically correct manner, I admit that Maury’s “an Aspie,” an example of neuro-diversity. But I don’t tell him how deeply this distressed me. I refer to our family as dysfunctional, but don’t reveal just how truly fucked up we were.
    Not long after I start in with Dr. Rokoko, I sign a contract to write my memoirs. Of course, this sounds very grand, the sort of preening star turn, the capstone for an actor that might come much later in his career. But the publisher has in mind a manuscript that’s less about me and more about my famous enemies and friends. The escapades of Lord this and Dame that, greenroom spats, sexual peccadilloes, a peek behind the arias.
    With the BBC negotiations still stalled, money is a major incentive for me. Still, my ambition is to produce an unimpeachably literary book, not a celebrity trash wallow. In the area of writing, I’m not an utter novice. I have the reputation of being a thoughtful actor, a serious interpreter of texts, and I’m often invited to judge publishing awards, appear on panels at the Edinburgh Festival and supply voice-overs for high-minded documentaries. BBC has presented several of my radio plays, and I have a file cabinet of scribblings for prospective film scripts.
    As I do with Dr. Rokoko, I start off going easy on family revelations and discussions of my low-rent upbringing. I leave it that I grew from nontheatrical roots. With a quote cadged from Cary Grant (né Archie Leach), I write, “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.” Then I cite Marlon Brando, who said, “When you are a child who is unwanted or unwelcome, and the essence of who you are seems to be unacceptable, you look for an identity that will be acceptable.” And what better identity to assume, I ask, than one created by Shakespeare, Shaw, or Strindberg?
    Aeschylus, whom I toil over every day, doesn’t come in for a mention. And at first Mom doesn’t come in for more than a cameo appearance. But gradually it feels like matricide to eliminate her from the memoir and she moves to center stage. After all, she was my original producer, my earliest director, and sternest ongoing critic. She groomed me for stardom not like a typical doting stage-door mother, but like one of those merciless Indian matriarchs who cripple their children to improve their begging prospects. She pulled my hair to stand me up straight. She pinched my legs so I’d stop fidgeting. She spit into a Kleenex and scrubbed my face clean. She smacked the crown of my head to smooth my cowlick. To hurry me up or slow me down, she cracked my arm like a whip.
    Paradoxically, as harsh