really began and being there brought them all into a time when the boys didn’t need naps, a place where the oven worked perfectly and a job where March oversaw the graphics end of Cantrell Sports, Inc.
Skiboarding had morphed into snowsurfing, and into snowboarding, a new sport that was bred almost simultaneously on both sides of the country—on the West Coast by Mike, and the East Coast by Jake Burton. Both were called visionaries, kindred in their love and creation of snowboards, who along with some other enthusiasts from surfing and skateboarding promoted and pushed the sport, met then raced each other at events in Colorado, Vermont, Lake Tahoe and Mt. Baker. The Entertainment and Sports Program Network desperately needed to fill twenty-four hours a day of air time and began to televise the meets and races on cable TV.
By the time the Cantrell boys were nine and ten, snowboarding parks were successful at some of the major ski areas and the family move to the Russian Hill came about because of an absurd need for a much larger tax write-off.
But the truth was: March loved the house from the first moment they walked inside. They were lucky to live in such a romantic, red-blooded city, and certain landmark homes were natural to that terrain. The classic old glorious houses she had driven past so many times began to sneak into her wildest dreams.
Like some foreshadowing of what was to come, over the years March had felt some odd sense of joy just sitting at the red light and merely looking at that same house. Living there would make life perfect.
It was a big beauty of a home on a famous corner near the crookedest street in the world, with views that went from foggy bridges and city lights, to glimmering water and all those blue skies. Wrapped in California stucco the color of butter, with a terracotta tiled roof and dark-timbered doors and window frames, it spoke of the homes on coastal hillsides along the Mediterranean and had once belonged to an infamous Spanish opera singer.
Shortly after they moved in, March redid the second floor master bedroom in Chinese red, because she’d read enough history of the place to believe the room needed color—passionate color. The night after painting the room red, she and Mike drank a rich bottle of Sonoma County cabernet, listened to Carmen, fed each other fruit and imported cheese and made love three times on a three-hundred-year-old antique silk rug.
Not long afterward March was sick every morning and sound asleep by seven o’clock every night, signs she knew all too well from her previous two pregnancies. Nine months and three days later, Molly was born, to the instant delight and future dismay of her two older brothers, Scott and Phillip.
One look at her and Mike had laughed—their own intimate joke—because their daughter had bright red hair. From that day on they always associated her with red, a color of high emotion. More often than not, Molly lived up to that association.
She came into the family like an earthquake, and shook it up, so different was she from Scott and Phillip. March could gauge her boys and understand when something was wrong, see trouble coming with a mother’s sharp and innately-tuned instinct.
But unlike the boys, Molly didn’t cling to March even as a toddler. The outside fascinated her. From the sight of her first butterfly to the crowds in Union Square during Christmas, Molly believed the whole wide world was all hers.
March had come from a family of three women and one lone male, her father, while Molly was born in a family of men, with March the only other woman. Instead of combining feminine forces, they were always at opposite sides, like knights on a jousting field and ready to knock the other one off the horse.
While March’s strength and control was the fulcrum on which the family pivoted, Molly was the family princess, with an amazing ability to get her way and make everyone circle around her like footmen.
March and women like her were products of a generation that straddled two feminine cultures, raised to be good girls, like their mothers, yet they ended up rallying for their independence and their individual rights in a society that, for all its touting of freedoms and liberties, was dismally patriarchal.
Most women back in the Sixties and Seventies had to have male co-signers for anything financial. Early in their marriage, when March called the credit card company, they wouldn’t talk to her, even though she made most of the income and paid the bills. They had to speak to Mister Cantrell.
But her daughter, Molly, was born into a world of men changed by women like March. Almost as if with that first breath of post-feminist air, Molly innately understood how to work inside her world, and it was very different from how March’s world worked.
Mother and daughter could look out the same window at completely different scenes. Mothering Molly was like some kind of grand game of Where’s Waldo. There was an undeniable sense of irony in that March had wanted a daughter so badly, only to give birth to a diva instead.
Beatrice’s only answer was, “You were a difficult child. She takes after you, dear. Your father and I always felt your name was perfect. March, in like a lion.”
“Daddy said that all the time. Funny I don’t feel like a lion.” March was exhausted. “Molly and I are polar opposites. My daughter is nothing like me.”
“She will be,” was all her mother had said.
Mike set her straight in terms more clear, the way men could see the world in black and white while women saw nothing but a confusing mass of passionate colors. “You are and always have been an independent woman and never afraid to tell the world what you think. Look, you’re a strong woman with strong emotions. Why on earth would you want a daughter who is any less?”
March was quiet for a long time, knowing he was right. “Because my life would be easier if she were a little more malleable.”
“And our marriage might have been calmer if you had been that way.”
She punched him in the arm. “You know you love to argue with me. Makes your life colorful and interesting.”
“So look at it this way, sunshine. Our little red Molly is the color in your day. She will never bore you. I was reading on the plane, a book about how we parents make the mistake of looking for pieces of ourselves in our kids. The psychologist said it’s natural, narcissistic and necessary, that we think if we can catch a glimpse of ourselves in our kids then perhaps we will understand how their minds work. But it’s a scientific fact that traits skip generations. So in the same way our own parents didn’t have a clue about us, neither do we about our own kids.”
“God cannot possibly be so cruel.” March sank down into a club chair, hugging its pillow to her chest. “And Mother Nature wouldn’t do that to another woman.”
“Women are toughest on other women. You’ve said that yourself. Motherhood is an emotional extreme for a woman…”
At that moment she wanted to zip his mouth shut. There was a man who couldn’t pick up his shoes, shirt, or tie, who regularly lost the remote control but like magic could always find her car keys, and he was suddenly quoting some new self-help book about the differences between women and men and telling her about motherhood? If only one of their babies had been born through his penis…
“…Manhood and womanhood are forced on us by chromosomal serendipity, but we actually choose to be parents. Fascinating stuff. Our choices become some of our biggest mistakes and the hardest to live down. Basically, the point this doctor made was: we can never live down our kids.” Mike took off his tie and hung it on the closet’s doorknob—the tie rack was a foot from his nose—then he kicked his shoes off near the bed and walked away from them.
