ɫɫ��

More than 30 years previously, in the winter of 1992, I learned ��’d received an endorsement for “Marine Life,” my first book. It was, shockingly, from Alice Munro. She said, “Linda Svendsen’s stories are stunning — so easily embodying such terrific power. The last story left me shaking.”

That last story in this linked collection (unconsciously, but maybe also shamelessly modelled after Munro’s “Who Do You Think You Are?) is the one Andrea Robin Skinner refers to in her eventual letter to Alice in 1993 — there’s a screenshot in her Star essay.

It was Alice’s response to that particular story which empowered Andrea to share the secret that she’d kept for years: that her stepfather, Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, had abused her when she was nine and had continued these assaults, accompanied by threats, until she’d reached puberty. Munro’s husband was a pedophile.

I was astounded: by what had happened to her; by the silence of the family; by her courage in going to the Ontario Provincial Police and to court. Astounded by the support and love of her siblings. By the unconscionable, unreachable, unfathomable Alice.

��’d worked on the stories in “Marine Life” over fourteen years, off and on — starting in graduate school in 1978. When ��’d moved to New York, my own lower middle-class background as a youngest daughter with far older half-sisters and half-brother seemed exotic. And, I felt safely far away from my family. A continuation of being unseen and unheard which unleashed — something.

I could write the fictionalized truth of what ��’d lived because fiction felt far away from family in Canada. And physically, I was. I didn’t consider them reading it. They didn’t read books, really.

How does one live inside abuse?

In Andrea’s case, she told trusted others. Eventually, Andrea told Munro the truth. Munro left the marriage but ultimately returned, actually recommitted, to the perpetrator. Even after Andrea took Fremlin to court and won the case. Munro remained with him until he died. Andrea bore all of this.

In my case, the abuser is uncharged.

I wrote him into “White Shoulders,” as a husband — the story deals with a man who is sexually abusing his daughter. At a crucial moment, the protagonist chooses to collude in covering up the crime rather than to reveal what she’s found out. 

Andrea, in her essay for the Star, noted that Alice had asked her about this story, and in particular why the daughter wouldn’t have told her mother about the father’s crime. Having written that story, I so wish that I could have answered her.

I would have said: ”Alice, the daughter wanted to protect the mother at all costs.”

I would have said: ”Alice, the father would have punished the mother. And then the daughter. Most likely, both.”

I can’t figure out why Alice Munro couldn’t see that.

Andrea Robin Skinner has described, as have her siblings, the isolation imposed upon a child being sexually abused by a trusted older member of the extended family and the impact of the nonaction of others. It has something to do with the power of that kept knowledge — and understanding its dissemination could destroy an adult loved one. That’s what lived in me.

It’s like carrying a ticking bomb in your mouth.

Another long story short: my second oldest sister, now deceased, was pitted against her ex-husband for custody of her children. This was back in the 1960s, when I was thirteen. He claimed she was an unfit mother but I didn’t want her to lose her children.

I told her about him coming into my bedroom one early evening when I was reading in my bed and suddenly his penis was between me and the page. He asked me to touch it. In my surprise, I did. With my pointer finger. He was the adult. I didn’t even know what this was. This took five seconds, if that. He said, “Don’t tell anyone,” and he walked out, and I went back to reading, and the shame has lasted more than sixty years.

When I stopped talking, my sister said you have to tell our mother and stepfather.

I did.

They zeroed in on the information about my sister’s ex. They said I did the right thing by telling them. There were discussions about putting me on the stand and testifying. I was a stoic kid, I think. I wanted my sister to have her children back. I was also afraid that if she didn’t win custody, she might harm herself.

In the long run, though, it was decided that I wouldn’t be subpoenaed. The judge ruled against my sister. She only reconnected with her children in their late teens.

Another abuser — a different story. ��’d wondered how babies were made. He’d guided my 10-year-old hand over his penis, sheathed with a tissue, and provided show-and-tell. Did anyone ever talk to him about this after ��’d finally told them — around the time of my sister’s court case? I don’t think so.

Meanwhile, decades of Christmases in his presence. The self-consciousness of early puberty — turning ten and developing breasts — and having my nipples tweaked (“Titties!”) as I skirted him in hallways. Years of being deemed anti-social because when company came, I hid. A trip to an amusement park one summer and a much-anticipated ride: in those days, the child sat upfront, the adult behind — in the same bobsled. I remember sitting between his straddled legs. I remember the G-force pushing my body against his — and a useless fight to stay upright. About that actual ride — the wonder, thrills, surprise — I recall nothing.

Why didn’t I say anything? I can actually hear Alice in my head. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I didn’t want to kill anybody — because it was always life-and-death for that significant other. Or for their mental health. And then impactful upon children. Then, later, grandchildren. You can’t rob them of a beloved grandfather, uncle, cousin, et al. (Oh, how I have come to distrust the word beloved.)

I carried inconvenient knowledge. It threatened the family equilibrium.

Andrea lived this, too. In her ɫɫ�� Star essay she wrote, “I believe my mother answered her own question about the girl in the story. She didn’t tell her mother because she would rather die than risk her own mother’s rejection.”

***

After the sudden death of my mother in the early 1990s, I learned from that same vulnerable second-oldest sister that our stepfather had engaged in sexual relations with her for some time. This was deeply, wrenchingly, shocking. Yet. He’d taken me aside, when I was in my early twenties, to let me know his most vital physical needs were not being met. It didn’t occur to me to ever blame my sister for what had transpired: ��’d seen enough of his manipulation and rage under the roof he’d put over our bowed heads. I will never blame her.

Did I ever confront him? No. I was frightened of him into my forties.

But I avoided him. I was at a family Easter gathering when he limped in with his legendarily bad knee and exuberant greeting. Nobody had said he was coming. I was seven months pregnant with my second baby and my little toddler in hand. I didn’t want this person anywhere near my children — so, so, so precious — nor anywhere near me because I wasn’t sure what ��’d do. Afterwards, amongst both those who did — and didn’t — know what may have sent me out the door, I learned that ��’d ruined the occasion.

He’s dead now. His obituary highlighted community and career. The erasure of our family I take as success.

I’m 70 years old and still afraid to write about this. I am writing about it.

To give myself permission to write this, I convinced myself I had to read most of Alice Munro’s stories. I’m not sure why. So, as many readers divested themselves of Munro, I brought more of her into the house. ��’d first encountered her work in early 1975 in a Canadian Literature class taught by David Stouck at SFU. He was a huge fan of the shy, pleasant housewife and mother — I’m paraphrasing — from just over there, in North Vancouver. I read “Dance of the Happy Shades,” “Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You,” and “Lives of Girls and Women” — was wowed; in New York, at her 92nd Street Y reading with Marilynne Robinson, I brought Alice a bouquet because of persistent respect for the reversals in “The Beggar Maid” story. And then when my children arrived my connection to her work faltered — although you wouldn’t guess that given my tweet when she died last May. “I love you.” Or words to that effect. At the time, I meant it.

But then. Reading her many, many stories, in order, for the first time and rereading others: oh my God, the darkness.

I’ve written pages of speculation about Munro as embodied in her work — childhood trauma/survivor, unwilling parenthood, death of baby Catherine, sexual addiction, alcoholism, Garnet French’s initials in her story “Baptizing” are GF (Gerald Fremlin) — and I’ve cut them. Who cares what I think? What I did say, though, out loud: “I want to take a shower.”

A month ago I had the opportunity to meet Andrea over email. This was uplifting, spiritual — she’s a joy! She shared that my short story had “crash-landed into the deepest part” of her mother. And, as with so many of the different accounts, an unnerving detail was disclosed: that when Alice had talked with Andrea about the story, Fremlin had actually been present. Andrea said Alice wasn’t able to look at him. In my own prior reconstruction of this scene, Alice and Andrea had been alone and viable outreach was plausible.

But he was with them. When Alice asked Andrea, “Why wouldn’t the daughter tell her mother about sexual abuse?”, he was seated at that table.

I would have said: “Oh, Alice.” 

To this day, I’ve not found the courage to confront my abusers, either in court or over a very public coffee. I’ve spoken only in prose fiction — until now.

So we’ve come full circle. If Andrea’s conversation with her mother about “Marine Life” inspired/enabled/emboldened her to tell Alice the truth, then Andrea’s revelations about her mother — a writer, whom I respected so much, and that writer’s choices vis-à-vis her child, which I don’t condone and can’t understand — have freed me to finally, finally speak non-fiction. And, for that, I thank Andrea with all my heart.