Start: Sept 2nd

Now: home late from a meeting, 2am, the message machine says the deadline for this article is October 1st, her 63rd birthday.

Then: her death day—2am—unable to raise her head from the hospital bed, her cheeks sunken, sallow, she hasn’t eaten solid food for three months ... I leave ...

Finally I get the family films from my father, .... I first see her sitting in a lounge chair: up state NY, a beach at a lake, swim suit, then in the water, in over her head.

... struggling for air she reaches for a hand, the nurses scramble ...

Next reel: Christmas morning, my sisters rush with excitement, sleepy, rubbing their eyes, they stumble, toys everywhere, Sue gets a doll bigger than she is, mom looks proud—the family is doing well, it seems they can buy just about anything; Lynn seems lost.

... scrambling for life the pump machine sucking, stat, I think she’s giving in ...

Easter: mom’s in powder blue, little white hat, Sue’s in a pink dress, kind of poofy, with little white gloves and a corsage that matches mom’s, mom is pregnant—Lynn, she’ll be coming soon.

... I know I should have stayed ‘til the end, but I couldn’t bear to watch ... I can’t sleep some nights—it plays in my head, over and over, I rebuild it, I imagine the scene, all the worse for not being there ... I torture myself watching her drown ...

This reel has me on it, my first day home from the hospital.

... for thirteen years I play that scene, tube down her throat, yellow, foamy fluid trickling into the collecting chamber, lungs filled, suction machine, pain, fear ...

Stop: what about that last minute reprieve, the euphoria, the creative surge and insight at the moment of death. I mean what the fuck, this is my construction, my mom, and she’s up and full of energy—dancing—suddenly in her mind, the greatest novel, her autobiography, her feelings, the pain and loneliness of trying to fit the mold, a Donna Reed clone: To be the Real Mrs Cleaver, an act of life.

The last reel is the first: it’s wedding day, 1954, the year Father Knows Best debuts and my father’s making movies. A film proof of the good life: 607 south Maple becomes 26 Prides Crossing; Springfield, USA is New City, NY. And we’re the perfect family—it’s all there, I have proof.

My father loved us, he wanted us to fit that mold, it’s what we wanted, what we were supposed to want: mom wanted to be Donna Reed, we all wanted Donna Reed; and I wanted to be Kitten, with my sisters Bud and Princess. We lived it for the camera. We knew what the camera was, what it offered, it was the great recorder, the objective eye; all we had to do is keep up the facade a little longer—just till the film ran out.

© 1994 Ken Marchionno

“The Real Mrs. Cleaver,” Framework, Los Angeles, California, Winter 1994 – 1995