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Once, Dad had us come into the city and took us to the circus. A New York columnist, Radie Harris, who knew our family, was also there and was quoted as saying: "I remember sitting in a box at the circus a few months after "Mister Roberts" opened. Hank sat just to my right. With him were Jane and Peter, and not once during the entire performance did he say a word to either child. And either the children knew enough to say nothing, or they might have been too intimidated to speak. He didn't buy them hot dogs, cotton candy, or treat them to souvenirs. When the circus was over, they simply stood up and walked out. I felt sorry for all three of them."Then one day, when I'd just finished breakfast and was heading out the door to school, I saw that Mother was standing at the entrance to the living room. She motioned me to come to her. "Jane," she said, "if anyone tells you that your father and I are getting divorced, tell them you already know." That was it. And off to school I went. I had realized the year before that parents getting divorced didn't mean that you, the child, would fall through a crack in the floor and no one would ever look for you again. Some of my friends had divorced parents and seemed to have survived just fine. I do remember that day at school feeling a little out of body, as if I'd had some of the dentist's ether, but I also felt oddly important and deserving of special attention. Divorces were fairly uncommon in those days. A few days after "divorce" had been uttered (only to me, not to Peter) I was lying on Mother's bed with her and she asked if I wanted to see her scar from her recent kidney operation. I didn't really want to. But since she'd asked, I felt she needed to show it to me and that I shouldn't say no. She pulled up her satin pajama top and lowered the pants and there … oh, horror — that's why they were getting divorced! Who would want to live with someone who'd been cut in half and had a thick, wide pink scar that ran all around her waist? It was terrifying. "I've lost all my stomach muscle," she said sadly. "Doesn't that look awful?" What did she want me to say, that it wasn't bad? Or did she want me to agree with her? "And look at this," she said, showing me one of her breasts. The nipple was all distorted. I felt so bad for her — it must have hurt so much — but I also didn't want to be her daughter. I wanted to wake up and discover I was adopted. I wanted a mother who looked healthy and beautiful, at whom a father would want to look when she had no clothes on. Maybe then he'd want to stay at home. This was all her fault. I think it was around that time, maybe right there on that bed, that I vowed I would do whatever it took to be perfect so that a man would love me. Fifty-three years later, Pan told me that Mother had had a botched breast implant. I guess Mother had tried to be perfect, too. I will return to the sad topic of breast implants in act two. Howard Teichmann, who wrote my father's authorized biography, "My Life," wrote that when Dad told my mother he wanted a divorce, she said, "Well, all right, Hank. Good luck, Hank." In retrospect, Fonda says, "I've got to tell you she was absolutely wonderful…She accepted it. She was sympathetic. She couldn't have been more understanding." Yeah, sure. Mother was acting by the rules. If she could love the right way — selflessly, with understanding and no anger — perhaps Dad would come back to her. In private, though, she was disintegrating. She hacked off her hair with nail scissors and, while staying in a friend's New York apartment, walked the neighborhood in her nightgown. In those days, I too walked in my nightgown, but in my sleep, always propelled by the same nightmare: I was in the wrong room and desperately needed to get out, get back to where I was supposed to be. It was dark and cold and I never could find the door. In my sleep I would actually move large pieces of furniture around my bedroom trying to find the way out, and then, because it was futile, I would give up and get back in bed. The next morning the furniture would have to be moved back into place. It was a nightmare that stayed with me — albeit with variations on where I was trying to get to — until I married Ted Turner, when I was fifty-four. One of my most vivid memories of that time was sitting in silence at the dinner table in that spooky house on the hill — Peter, Grandma, Mother, and me. Through the window I could see the gray March landscape. Mother, at the head of the table, was crying silently into her food. It was spinach and Spam. We ate a lot of canned food in those days, as though the war and food rationing were still going on. I used to wonder about this, but now I know that Mother was terrified of running out of money and not receiving anything from Dad in the divorce. No one said anything about the fact that Mother was crying. Maybe we feared that if one of us put words to what we saw and heard, life would implode into an unfathomable sadness so heavy the air wouldn't bear it. Not even after we left the table was anything said. Grandma never took us aside to explain what was happening. Perhaps if "it" was not named, "it" would not exist. Peter and I went to our rooms as always, to do our homework. The dinner scene got buried in a graveyard somewhere next door to my heart, and the habit of not dealing with feelings became embedded in another generation. But life goes on, as life does — until it doesn't, especially when you're in the discovery mode of an eleven-year-old. That year I managed to take a horse over a four-foot jump for the first time and became obsessed with the card game canasta. And Brooke Hayward and I began a successful writing partnership that won us "Best Short Story" awards at Greenwich Academy. Within walking distance of the house was a riding stable — not the big one where Teddy Wahl broke my arm, but a small one with only an outdoor riding ring, where I often took jumping lessons on a borrowed white horse named Silver. My best friend, Diana Dunn, took lessons there, too. We both adored the teacher, a cozy Irishman named Mike Carroll. Next to being inside my cardboard "home" with my sister's saddle, this was where I most liked to be. Horses were my passion, my escape.