My Name Is Lucy Barton

11

Other than Jeremy, the only friend I had in the Village during this time in my life was a tall Swedish woman named Molla; she was at least ten years older than I, but she also had small children. She passed by our door one day with her kids on the way to the park, and she started talking to me right away about really personal things. Her mother had not treated her well, she said, and so when she had her first baby she became very sad, and her psychiatrist told her that she was feeling grief because of everything she had not received from her own mother, et cetera. I didn’t disbelieve her, but her story wasn’t what was interesting to me. It was her style, her forthright spilling out about things I didn’t know people spoke of. And she was not really interested in me, which was freeing. She liked me, she was nice to me, she was bossy and told me how to hold my babies and how to get them to the park, and so I liked her back. Mostly she was like watching a movie or something foreign, which of course she was. She made references to movies, and I never knew what she was talking about. She must have noticed this, and she was polite about it, or maybe she did not believe that I could have a blank face when she spoke of Bergman films or television shows from the sixties, or music too. I had no knowledge of popular knowledge, as I have said. At that time, I barely understood that about myself. My husband knew it about me, and would try to help me out if he was around, maybe saying, “Oh, my wife didn’t see a lot of movies growing up, don’t worry.” Or “My wife’s parents were strict and never let her watch television.” Not giving away my childhood of poverty, because even poor people had TVs. Who would have believed it?