Her Last Death: A Memoir

Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.

Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she tells of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust, and to be a good mother to her own children.Her Last Deathis riveting, disarming and stunningly told."An emotional thriller...a disturbing story, yet at the end you might feel like cheering. It is a beautiful, beautiful book."

-- Frank McCourt, author ofAngela's AshesandTeacher ManThe phone shouldn't ring this early. When I answer, my aunt Irene rushes into the news. "Your mother's been in an accident. She's been in surgery all night. She's probably going to die."

This can't be true, of course. I'm waiting for the story. Irene will laugh her exasperated laugh and say my mother used to date the surgeon. Or she's already secured a better hospital room. But Irene says my mother's in a coma, and when she finishes that sentence, I stop moving around the kitchen and sit. She usually calls her sister Daphne, but she keeps saying "your mother." My mother had a head-on collision after a dinner party. I want to ask if she was sober. Irene probably asked the same question of the person who called to tell her.

"The police have a record this time," she says. "The hospital has a chart."

The adrenaline of true emergency goes through me, and I draw a blank. I keep thinking, "My mother had an accident," but the thought has nowhere to settle and stick.

"Susy?" my aunt says. She's worried for me.

If I speak, I'll say, "Do I have to go?" So I mustn't open my mouth. I try to think what other people say in this situation.

I'm afraid my mother will die. I'm afraid she won't.

In a house in Montana thousands of miles from my mother, I am thirty-seven, leading an unremarkable life. My mother lives in Barbados, where she stayed after her third husband died. I've never seen her house. She plays tennis and has houseguests, I hear, but we don't speak. Instead, I concentrate on the organic granola my two boys like, the seascape mural I'm about to paint on their bedroom wall. I preside over their school board and review movies for the paper. I send the photos of Halloween costumes and birthday parties to my father and stepmother. Last night, like most nights, my husband and I read books to each of the boys, crossing back and forth between their beds with kisses for them and patient hugs for their stuffed animals. This morning my husband will pack the lunch for our six-year-old, and I'll play with the two-year-old until his nap. We've just purchased this hundred-year-old house. On moving day I realized we would never invite my mother to see it. We live in sunny rooms messy with socks and books, a bathroom scattered with tub toys that are always drying, never dry. Christopher and I wonder before sleep at our boys' happiness and their invisible trust. Sometimes I'm jealous of them.

Over the years my aunt Irene and I have wearied together of the stories that start "Guess what Daphne did?" I tell a couple of them myself, rarely now but sometimes at a dinner party. My mother gave me cocaine! You wouldn't believe what she said to my new boyfriend! She had an affair with a mobster! These aren't stories I tell my children.

The boys' voices topple  more >>