Jeanne Chiang

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WHEN I WAS 25, MY MOTHER MARRIED CHARLES PARLIN, SR. I was a recent immigrant with a good academic record and no money. So toward  the end of high school (I graduated in 1967) I was advised by a Chinese friend of my mother to attend Mr Parlin’s  Sunday school class if I wanted his help to pay for college.

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Mom and I were brought to meet Mr.Parlin in the front yard at 123 Hillside Avenue, in front of the renovated garage where Herbert, his chauffeur lived. Actually I already had a scholarship to Mount Holyoke. I guess Mom was prudent and wanted back up funding.  I remember his terminology, that he would help us make up “the dollar gap”. 

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After that Charlie and the boys (Chris,Robbie and Timmy) began to pick me up on Sundays to go to church. Strangely enough Dad wasn’t really there much of the time. Often someone substituted for him. After Sunday school I joined Miriam for church service. But Herbert brought her, not Charlie. By then she was nearly blind.

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I knew Miriam much earlier when she was still functioning and drove me in her mauve Studebaker Avanti to visit Camilla in South Jersey. Somehow she knew Mom wanted me to learn to play the piano. Harold’s church had a white upright piano she wanted to give me. She had it shipped up and sent a blind piano tuner to make it work. A schoolmate of mine gave me free piano lessons. After a few months Miriam brought Dad to my apartment to listen to me play Fur Elise. Poor Dad was falling asleep. I guess he wanted to support Miriam in her projects, of which I was one.

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I must have been in college when Miriam died. My mother mentioned her passing and I felt sad because of the time we had spent together. But I heard nothing further about the Parlin family until my junior year abroad (1970) when Dad came through Munich, and took me and Christina Cerna to dinner. I had no idea who she was but I played my role of the well behaved young girl whom he sponsored. Later in the year when Mom traveled with me and my German boyfriend, Walter she went out one evening to dinner in Geneva with Dad. I was oblivious to any significance since my mind was totally wrapped up with Mom’s disapproval of Walter. 

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I graduated and started working in Boston(1971). I think they came to visit once. Mom was very embarrassed because my studio apartment was in a bad part of town, dirty and smelled strongly of my cat’s litter box. I really was not a model daughter but I don’t think we were thinking in that direction.

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I hardly saw my mother in the years I spent at Columbia (1972–1979) No visits from her or Dad. When she moved to Connecticutt with her company (1973)I saw her even less. Marie Jeanne says she first met  Dad in Paris in 1973. When Laurent was born in 1975, she came to the US. That was when Dad proposed. She says at Vincent’s suggestion my mother wrote a letter to each of Dad’s children, Charlie, Camilla and Blackie asking their approval. And that each of them wrote a letter back. I have no recollection of any of this and find no letters in her papers. Blackie also does not remember this. What I remember was a midday dinner at the Hillside Avenue house  to which the whole family was invited. Mom and I were  also there though I had no idea at the time why. Nancy cooked. At  the end of the dinner, Dad sprang on the family that he intended to marry Mom. It was supposed to be a little surprise/joke that Dad was playing on the family. I remember Joan was there in a green wool suit. And in the chatter before dinner she told of a story in the news about  a murder where a dead body was found in the chimney. I thought it was a rather gruesome tale to be discussing before dinner. I was surprised because I had the impression she was a fun but rather proper lady.

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I don’t know which version is more accurate, but I came to know a Dad who was capable of such pranks. 

How were we,a couple of Chinese immigrants,going to  integrate into this large white family? I am told Mom asked him how I should address him. He said “Dad”. Since I never knew my father, he thought he was not replacing anyone.  I should just think of him as my Dad. 

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I thought that was okay. I must have reserved a measure of love for a father, that I had no one to give to. I was content to let Dad  reside in that space. I doubt I loved him as I imagine a person does one’s own father. I can’t really imagine since I never experienced it.  I was prepared to watch and see how things developed.

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During the 5 years they had with each other, we came to spend more and more time together. They came to visit us with increasing frequency. I think we provided a place for them to go and be at ease, to be taken care of and be entertained. He had a large family, but we formed a small maneuverable family four-some. In between we also took some short trips with Charlie and Joan. The six of us made a “jolly” team. 

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We also visited them at Silver Bay. There we learned 5pm was happy hour. Dad always had a gimlet   —   a martini that was made with a pickled onion instead of an olive. We learned Dad loved kumquats. Stuart found him jars of kumquats in sugar syrup that he liked to “pop” into his mouth. 

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At Silver Bay, we were his little family. Everyone else had houses of their own. Grand children often walked by the “Big House”. Dad usually went onto the deck outside his “Chalet” to wave at them. They always waved back, but my mother often commented that Dad hoped they would stop by to visit him. Maybe everyone found him too intimidating. 

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My mother spent her morning in the 0ld kitchen. She appreciated its size and all the old, specialized cooking utensils that Nancy had accumulated. No doubt many cooks today would have no idea how their were used and would not find them at Williams Sonoma. After a morning of reading the paper, and doing his work, he sat with us  for lunch in the room attached to the kitchen that contained a Franklin Stove, a simple table and chairs. There Dad told and retold his stories about his many trips across the Atlantic ;his representation of the composer and pianist Rachmaninov; his firm’s investigation into a young Russian woman who claimed she was the Princess Anastasia; and some of the students his Epworth Fund had supported. He was amused that while many of them presented dissertations in volumes, one Indian woman presented one that was only 2 pages. But that one led to a patent. 

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Dad took his role as my father seriously. He tried to provide some comfort and guidance to me, his new, and now youngest daughter. Before they married, he had given Epworth Fund grants to complement my scholarships from Mount Holyoke and Columbia University. But my life seemed to have stalled while I wondered what to do next, after graduate school. He pulled me aside without my mother, to tell of a young doctor he knew, whose career also seemed to stall at one point. He said the young man was a gifted doctor, but he could not go on, because he was so anxious about the life and death decisions he had to make about patients. Dad told me I was okay, just a little nervous about life. It is ironic that this did not then spur me on to become a doctor, but I did later become a doctor. 

The week before he died, they were visiting us in Washington DC. We had a particularly enjoyable time, and as I looked ahead I could see even more visits and our relationship growing. Stuart had a very demanding case, so the 3 of us went about. The evening before they were to go back to New York, we went out to dinner at a neighborhood restaurant with pretensions. There was actually a violinist who went around the tables playing classical pieces. Ignorant as I was of the Law, he tried to explain to me the meaning of “sovereign immunity”. After dinner we walked home laughing raucously about something. 

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The next morning I took them to the train station and I watched him walk down the Quai wearing a tan raincoat and a brown hat. I felt love for him, and looked forward to seeing him again. I expected to see him again. I knew he was going home to have a cystoscopy which we all thought was funny because he was clearly uncomfortable about it. It was going to be a precedure “down there”. I am not sure it was absolutely necessary, whether an elevated PSA or symptoms or just his age caused his doctor to refer him to a urologist. I am sure the thinking in those days was different than now. We teased him, though gently. He was not the sort of person you would put on the spot about “things down there”. We enjoyed his discomfort because he was formal, and  it was “down there” and everything “down there” was funny.

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Little did we know, this would kill him.

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I was awakened by a phone call from my mother. She sounded stunned and slow moving as she said “Dad died”. I thought she was joking, but not funny. I had just seen him on Wednesday. How could he be dead on Saturday? Even now as I recount this, it is incomprehensible that I will not see him anymore. I had just felt prepared to attach to him further, and I lost him. 

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