“It was not cruelty but chaos”

“She could be funny, brilliant. Therefore, She wrote poetry. Similarly, She painted. However, And then, suddenly, she did not leave her room for a week. Furthermore, She was screaming, cried, drank. Nevertheless, »» – "it not cruelty but chaos"

The love story between Susan and Tom Hanks began in the early 1970s. Furthermore, The two actors in the making are theater students at the Sacrameto University. Moreover, Susan is lively, cultivated, fragile. Therefore, Tom is funny, ambitious, and dreams of a film career. Moreover, Les Tiereaux, crazy in love, married in 1978. Consequently, Two children will be born: Colin in 1977, then Elisabeth Ann in 1982. For example, While Tom continues “it not cruelty but chaos” small roles, Susan is lost in addictions. Therefore, Thanks to the series “Bosom Buddies”. Meanwhile, then to the film “Splash” in 1984, Tom became one of the mounting faces of American cinema. Moreover, But behind the scenes, his couple is beating the wing. In addition, When Tom is called to Hollywood, Susan decides to stay in Sacramento with the children. Furthermore, Family foundations are definitively cracking. Consequently, “It was a horribly painful moment, loaded with emotions, feelings of failure …”, explains Tom Hanks modestly. Furthermore, The couple officially separates and childcare is entrusted to their mother. Furthermore, Colin, a teenager, decides to go to live with relatives in Sacramento. Therefore, Elizabeth remains alone with Susan, who slowly sinks into madness.

She learns to silence her sufferings. In addition, to deal with the absence of her father absorbed by her career and with the failures of her mother sucked in by her pain. For example, “She could be funny, brilliant. She wrote poetry. She painted. And then, suddenly, she did not leave her room “it not cruelty but chaos” for a week. She was screaming, cried, drank. It was not cruelty. It was chaos. And I understood far too late that she was not going well. The year of his 14th birthday, yet another crisis, that of too much, turns his life rocking. That evening, his mother completely loses control. She attacks her daughter physically. pulled her by the hair and encloses her in the closet in front of her older brother, Colin, helpless. Horrified, he warns their father. Tom Hanks then initiates legal proceedings to obtain custody of his daughter. Faced with the gravity of the facts, the judge agreed and the teenager leaves Sacramento to join Los Angeles. “I experienced a sensory and cultural shock,” explains Elizabeth Ann. It is as if I had lived in a world in black. white and that, suddenly, I was projected in a pub for Pepsi. »»

"it not cruelty but chaos" – "it not cruelty but chaos"

“I “it not cruelty but chaos” did not look like a star child at all. I was like an immigrant in my own country. »»

The little girl in the countryside who grew up surrounded by horses does not understand the codes of the. megapol of cinema. Teens of his age speak of casting, looks, records. She only has one jeans, too short. “I did not look like a star child at all. I did not have a gap backpack, no makeup, no common reference. I was like an immigrant in my own country. This deep gap will later be its strength. But, at the moment, this dissonance is unbearable. “It was not so much the city that rejected me. it was the image I had of myself that stuck to nothing. The girl must also get used to a new home. His mother-in-law, actress and producer Rita Wilson, welcomes her like her own daughter.

“She gathered me gently, taught me what it was just a calm house. She has never tried to replace my mother, but she repaired everything. From her first summer with the Hanks. Elizabeth Ann received the visit “it not cruelty but chaos” of her mother, who obtained authorization to take her daughter to the road trip from west to east for the holidays. “At first it was horrible, we had nothing to say. My mother wanted me to go to my father. to have deprived her of her only source of income, her isolated mother allowances, she recalls. But little by little, we reappeared to communicate, and this trip remained engraved in my memory. It will be their last moment of intense intimacy: six years later, in 2002, Susan died, swept away by bone cancer.

"it not cruelty but chaos" – "it not cruelty but chaos"

“I trusted her,” said Tom Hanks. In its ability to confront reality ”

After studying letters at the Vassar College. Elizabeth Ann becomes a journalist and collaborates with prestigious titles like “Vanity Fair”, “The New York Times” or “Huffington Post”. For a long time, she dreams of writing on her country, her fractures. “I wanted to tell America, infrastructure in Texas, immigration to Arizona, the climate in Louisiana, democracy in Florida. I had in mind a large social fresco. But that didn’t interest publishers much. In any case, less than my status as a star child. »»

“it not cruelty but chaos”

In 2019. while she sorted with her brother, Colin, the affairs of their deceased mother, she discovered a red notebook: the diary of Susan. “When someone dies, it’s a double sorrow,” she says. There is what we lose, and what we find. This notebook was like a forgotten grenade in the boxes. Inside. Susan “it not cruelty but chaos” tells a dreadful childhood memory, a horror scene described with meticulousness: his father, the grandfather of Elizabeth, killing, raping, then eating a little girl named Natalie. She says: “I read these glazing words as if I heard them from my mother’s mouth. And it cut me off. I read, reread. Then I wondered: is it true? Was I raised by the daughter of a monster? No family name to identify the alleged victim, no date. Just these disorderly words in an old notebook.

In her car every night she rereads her mother’s poems

Elizabeth Ann shows the text to his father who. too, is in shock: “Susan never told me about her father,” confirms Tom Hanks. I have never met him or seen in the photo. It was like a shadow around her. This faceless maternal grandfather. Elizabeth Ann decides to find the trace of it, and above all to elucidate this appalling murder. Unless he got out of Susan’s delusional imagination. She has just found the angle of her book: a road trip. like that formerly undertaken with her mother, to investigate in the different cities where her grandfather, a former soldier, was positioned and take advantage of it to confront his memories and make them exist in the Patchwork of America. “My father had a dusty Ford transit in which “it not cruelty but chaos” he transported lots of business. I would never have thought he would become my traveling companion. would one day have such a place in my life. Father and daughter transform the van into a modest cocoon: a bed, a few shelves, a cooler. And baptize the van “Minnie”. “I trusted her,” said Tom Hanks. In its ability to confront reality. »»

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana. At each stage, the investigator-barouder questions: places, people, her memory. She visits plantations, lynching memorials, deserted districts, impersonal fast foods. From this alleged monstrous grandfather, no trace, no clue. In the car, every night, she rereads her mother’s poems. Some are absurd. Others disturbing. She inserts them into her book as if to rebuild a posthumous dialogue. “I needed it to exist as an artist. Not only as an executioner, she says. This book is also a way to give him back his voice. Even injured, even delusional. To protect the name of Hanks, Tom could have braked it. He let his daughter go to the end of his project. “The greatest proof of love that my father gave me is not to stop. He offered me this magnificent space of freedom. “it not cruelty but chaos” »»