White Hot Grief Parade Read online

  You know what’s awesome? Irony. People my age learned what it means from Alanis Morissette, so our grasp is tenuous at best, but when it plays out over life and death situations it can get pretty trippy.

  Small, with large palms and fingers prone to swelling, nail beds like a child’s, dry cuticles, skin baby soft, and subtly expressive. They look as if they were created to work hard, to milk cows, to cook, freeze, and scrub. They are not long and lean; they are not what you see in magazines. They are the hands of a feminine warrior—the kind of hands jewelry looks out of place on, rings laugh, bracelets scoff, the hands are too humble, too common looking to support the grandiosity of adornment. When I look down at my hands, it is undeniable—I see her clumsily cutting onions; I see her coaxing immaculate, expressive birds out of marble; I see her wrinkles and age and know that “there is nothing wrong with that.”

  Oh, Edna, I did not know you, and there are terrorist cells more nurturing than you.

  But I have your hands.

  And that is the possibility of something.

  Funeral-ku Two

  4.

  Once the party’s done

  only a tank remains. Of

  unused oxygen.

  An Afterplay

  (The theater is dark. The play has been over for hours and yet AL sits alone in the middle of the hushed auditorium, thick with darkness. One can only make the proscenium out by the faintest lights from the street that cascade through and across the back walls. AL cannot move, the darkness within her as thorough as the darkness without, and she stares into the spaces where, only moments ago the seats were full; charged with laughter and compassion, with sorrow and song, with overflowing energy and rapt attention. Everyone has gone—on their trains, their buses, in their cars and away onto planes, and she thinks: there is nothing, no feeling in the world like sitting in an empty theater after a performance. It is almost as if you can convince yourself that it happened. You recall that just a moment ago there was a glint of magic in the air of this very room, and it was so recent a breath ago you can still feel the crackle of it in the air.

  But now it is gone. Just like that.

  Suddenly a door unhinges. If AL had the wherewithal to turn, she would, but before long she can smell who it is—that cologne, so specific and familiar. It is MIKE, the STAGE MANAGER, and he sits beside AL, settling there without a word. She sits that way for a long while before Mike speaks.)

  MIKE: Good show tonight. (He speaks below his breath, his voice slicing into the darkness.)

  AL: Yes.

  (MIKE sits up, and leans forward, running his hands over the wood and brass and velvet of the seats before settling his arms over the seatback and releasing a deep sigh. It’s the kind of sigh from a man who has not taken a good breath in a long while.)

  MIKE: You know this is my last show?

  AL: Yes.

  (AL keeps her eyes soft-focused on the emptiness before her, for if she does not, if she looks at him, or anywhere but straight ahead she will not be able to go on. MIKE nods and digs into his pocket. Then, reaching gently for her hand, he lifts and opens it, and deposits a ring of heavy keys inside.)

  MIKE: To the theater.

  AL: But what about the leading lady?

  MIKE: Oh, she’s here.

  AL: But I don’t know how to look after a theater.

  MIKE: You will have to learn.

  AL: All by myself?

  MIKE: You’ll learn.

  (MIKE touches her shoulder as he stands up, looking around. The light from the streets is beginning to flood the theater more intensely now, so that you can see his face illuminated as he inhales the scent of it all— the musk of everything—from the must and damp, to the sweat, and to the sheer electricity in the air before making his way up the center aisle, jumping onto the stage itself, and, looking to AL, taking a long bow before turning on his heel and walking off the stage toward the light pouring in from the world beyond. She is holding the keys to a darkened theater. And the leading lady cannot go on.)

  PART THREE:

  THE AFTERMATH

  Memories through Lenses

  In the spring of 2013, I made my Carnegie Hall debut in a very strange little operetta called Song of Norway. Ted Sperling conducted the Collegiate Chorale and the American Symphony Orchestra. The show was narrated by Jim Dale and the cast included Santino Fontana (a great old friend from Interlochen in 1999, as well as my brief tenure at University of Minnesota), Jason Danieley, and two-time Tony Award-winner Judy Kaye.

  The score is a beast, and, while it’s not exactly Wagner, everyone was singing at the very top of their game, like athletes preparing for the 2013 singing Olympics. The fourth-rate book was a specious biographical account of composer Edvard Grieg (Santino), his wife (me), his best friend (Jason), and an opera diva (Judy). It was set in Norway, and there was a perplexing plotline that contained magical trolls and the making of invisible cakes for the midsummer festival. I didn’t exactly follow this so-called “plot,” and I was in the damn thing, but suffice it to say, we all sounded terrific and Jim Dale filled all the plot holes with a heck of a lot of charm.

  I was very nervous, not only because it was a “big sing” but also because I was the least famous person in the cast and, above all, because I harbored a memory of Judy Kaye that was so important to me, I didn’t even begin to know how to behave in front of her.

  You know that feeling? When an artist’s music, writing, teachings, leadership, or public advocacy is so vital to your individual narrative that you feel as though you not only owe them an open letter and a thank you fruit basket, but in a strange way you feel as though you actually know them, when in fact you do not. They have palpably touched your life.

  One night, Jason, Judy and I were out promoting the concert performance at the Pierre (a fancy hotel in midtown Manhattan), performing for Queen Sonja of Norway (I know, I know, but this is real) and a room full of cultural attachés and Norwegian celebrants. Dressed in our finest and sitting in the kitchen (a scenario every actor is familiar with), the three of us prepared to sing for the Queen. Of Norway.

  I looked over at Judy and noticed her face betraying sadness; surrounded by the din of the kitchen, she rubbed her hands and stared off into the distance. The aura that was always around her now appeared to tremble, and I made my way over and asked what was on her mind.

  She smiled faintly. “My father recently died,” she replied. “I just . . . miss him.”

  My heart lurched. I had come to know this ache so well.

  In spending the last decade and change mitigating my own feelings on grief, I had come to learn so much about the greatest democracy in all of humanity: the Democracy of Loss. Despite time period, language, culture, age, social mores, or faith, the fear of losing someone you love has kept human beings up at night since we were cognizant enough to have thoughts.

  Grief is not a contest, and pain is relative. There is not a “better” kind of loss or a “better” time in someone’s life to lose a beloved—loss is loss—at any stage of one’s life, the loss is monumental, the pain indefatigable, and each stage comes with its own set of complexities. But what I know for certain is that we are all children, really, when our parents die, and sometimes the more difficult the relationship, the more exquisite the pain of their absence.

  All of this to say: that night, as I gazed upon two-time Tony-winner Judy Kaye—dressed in black tie and sitting in a kitchen about to sing for the Queen of Norway—I knew that despite her adulthood, her every success, her pain was one I knew.

  Profoundly.

  “I understand,” I said.

  In the faux silence of clanking dishes and Jason Danieley warming up gloriously in the background, I took her hand. I knew this was the moment to tell her.

  “You know,” I began, “one of the hardest things I learned when my own my father died, was the realization that every single person I ever met from that moment on, was never going to meet or know him. I found that so difficult.�
�

  “Indeed,” she nodded.

  “But it is magical little moments like this one, that prove that almost anything is possible. Because Judy? You have met my dad. You have met my mom, too, and me. We all met you in the lobby of Ragtime in 1998. It was during the winter BC/EFA collection and we bought a poster from you with a one-hundred-dollar bill, and you spoke to all of us.”

  Judy turned to me and stared. Her face went white. As a surge of memory flooded her, tears surfaced. She blinked.

  “I remember.” She gasped. “I remember you.”

  In 1998, the actors had gathered in the aisles and the lobby of Ford Center for the Performing Arts on Forty-second Street for the semiannual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS collection, and, as they did, my family approached Alex Strange (the original Little Boy), Stephen Sutcliffe (the original Mother’s Younger Brother) and most thrilling of all, the actress who originated the role of Emma Goldman: Tony winner Judy Kaye.

  My entire family was a puddle. We were in emotional pieces as we approached the trio; all holding red buckets and, what I found so remarkable (at fourteen and so Broadway-bitten) was that they were so normal! They were not gods or sorcerers, but real, breathing people. Real people in costume at the end of their “shift,” raising money coin by coin for AIDS. My mother proudly handed Judy Kaye a hundred-dollar bill; she gave it to her with both hands, like the exchange was a holy thing— which it was—as she purchased a poster signed by the entire company. (One that, to this day, hangs upon my wall.)

  I was speechless. So shy, and so emotionally decimated by Ragtime and by my first live Broadway experience that both Mom and I let Dad do the talking, for he was best at it. Dad had a way of humanizing everyone he met—making each person who crossed his path feel seen, respected, and understood, while also reminding everyone that we were all part of the human race. To this day, I never knew how he achieved that every single time he opened his mouth.

  Without warning Dad began to talk about me.

  Oh God, I thought. Oh no—don’t tell them about me! When you are fourteen, almost every single thing that happens to a person is beyond embarrassing, and, at the time, I thought I would shrivel up and die from the embarrassment of my dad telling this trio of Broadway actors that I had been in all the school plays, and that one day it was my dream (and his) that I would be up there telling important Broadway stories, just like them.

  There was a pause. Oh God, oh God, I thought. I assumed these actors were internally rolling their eyes, dismissing us utterly, having heard that speech from countless goober parents every day. In that pause I hoped the theater would open beneath my feet and swallow me whole (like Gandalf and the evil Balrog creature) to avoid having to endure a single millisecond more of the agony of my father’s belief and pride in all that I was becoming.

  But dismissal is not what happened.

  Judy Kaye turned from my dad and gazed at me, her look trenchant, thoughtful, as if she were surveying my destiny. After a moment of appraisal she replied, “You will.”

  Have you ever found yourself inside a moment that you know will define you? This was one of mine. When I die, in my autopsy, the medical examiner will remove my organs and see, sketched upon my heart, a fully documented account of that moment, for it is tattooed there. Every scrap of that memory shall be holy to me for all eternity.

  The Silbers left the theater that night and went into the streets of New York City, taking with them a poster and a memory that none of them would ever forget.

  I finished recounting the story to Judy as kitchen staff darted and swarmed and the event director informed us we had five minutes until show time.

  “I remember. I told you that you would, and you have,” Judy said, quite dazed with it all. “I remember. Your family was special; there was something about you. I guess you really never know who you are affecting —what ripples are caused by the slightest of things.” She thought for a moment, “And I remember him. Your dad. I remember. How remarkable to meet you like this in the present.”

  Your greatness is not what you have. It’s what you give.

  The Laugh

  The Funeral Reception of Doom did, eventually, end.

  As “the upstairs people” retreated, we closed the door on the last of their troops and began to take the upstairs—and subsequently the entire house—back. Those who remained spread their wings and (literally) danced in the yard. They dared to eat directly from the food table (and the fridge and the gift baskets). We sang show tunes while Aaron played around on my mother’s vintage Chickering piano. One might almost have thought we were—God forbid—celebrating.

  After an hour or so, the people who were still students at Interlochen had to return to campus and, as our own numbers dwindled, the remainder of our group (which included my mother’s friends, as well as a handful of mine who had gotten the entire weekend off from college). We piled provisions into the car, and headed over to the Steinmans’ house for what could only be described as an epic dessert wake. It was time to cut loose at our very own second funeral reception, which eliminated the crazy people and included everyone’s very favorite thing: dessert.16

  Fran Steinman had a glorious kitchen, the kind you picture all of the cooks on the Food Network having in their homes: two sinks, each with power hoses, state-of-the-art ovens, a giant Midwestern-sized refrigerator, plus immaculately arranged cupboards, majestic marble countertops, and pantries that exist only in the imaginations of the world’s greatest food artists.

  Fran expresses herself in food, and her outpouring of love for my father Michael and all things Silber was overwhelming. There were brownies and four different kind of cookies, hand-whipped cream, coffees, chocolates, and her prize-winning cheesecakes. But the pièce de résistance was a cherries jubilee. That’s right: flambé. Fran had prepared it expressly, as flambé had featured in the production of She Loves Me the Interlochen theater majors had all done nearly a year earlier. Now, as we all gathered in the kitchen around the flambé, everyone began to clap for the flaming dessert. We cheered, took plates, filled them to the brim with Fran’s confections, and retired to the cozy living room for an inordinate amount of sugar-fueled merriment.

  That evening at the Steinmans’ was the reception I will always choose to remember, when everyone relaxed and smiled and celebrated not only Michael Silber’s life, but life itself. It was friends gathered together from every corner of the country, eating delicious food, telling stories, recalling memories, and performing parlor tricks as only theater people can. If you had looked into the window of the Steinmans’ house that evening, you never would have guessed it was a funeral. It was exactly the kind of party Dad would have hosted.

  But that had to end too. After we helped Fran clean up and pack away the treats, everyone had to head back to their hotels, schools, or lives, and only a remaining few of us ambled back to 1367; full, and numb and literally everything in between.

  The remaining group gathered in the very seats the enemy forces had occupied hours earlier. After a while, we decided we needed real food. Mom made guacamole. Utilizing thirty or so avocados, she whipped up her killer recipe and put it in a giant salad bowl accompanied by two bags of donation tortilla chips someone had given us on the hand-painted Haitian coffee table my parents acquired in Port-au-Prince in the late 1970s.

  Besides Grey, Lilly, and Kent, only Jessica and Jeremey were to remain at 1367 for the night. Jeremey was oddly occupying the place with a sense of real ownership. At the time, he did know the place far better than anyone, after all. He belonged there.

  Jessica did too; she was mayor of our inner circle and my other dearest friend. The previous summer, we’d roomed together while working at camp and had driven to lakes for midnight swims, to the E-Z Mart for emergency popsicles, and to Honor, Michigan, to stare at the stars on the hood of her vintage pickup truck.

  We decided to take a walk on the unseasonably warm October evening. It smelled of first fires and Michigan musk, the kind of evening t
hat makes you think you are within the pages of a nostalgic novel. The sky was like a painting—deepest purple at the edges with a brick-colored moon, and dried leaves glittering like precious gold, amber, and ruby. In hindsight, I think Jessica was trying to give me permission to let go with her, to give me safe passage away from the public stage of grief and family and even our friends. But the truth was, even if I had wanted to let it go, I didn’t know how. Saying as much, she took my hand and we walked in silence before coming upon the local high school homecoming dance, which we promptly went to—for about twenty minutes—laughing our heads off at the oddity of it all before turning back.

  Last to arrive home were Grey, Kent, and Lilly. They’d dropped everyone off at their buses, airports, or various hotels.

  “We come bearing more food,” Grey droned. They entered holding enormous bags of food from their various drop-off points, though no bags were larger than the ones beneath their eyes. The boys withdrew to the kitchen to finish off some of the fancy 17 percent alcohol lager the German couple down the street had given us.

  Lilly was silent as she entered the front doorway and soundlessly removed her clogs. She sighed as she tucked her short hair behind each ear with her precise woodwind player’s fingers. She made her way up the three little steps from the entrance to the main living room. She looked exhaustedly over all of us looking exhaustedly back at her. No one spoke. It was hard to discern what Lilly was about to do.

  Then, in her own bewitching way, Lilly did something that in hindsight seems so bizarre, yet so achingly inevitable, it is a wonder we ever hesitated to wonder otherwise.

  She laughed.

  It started modestly—a little chortle in her distinctive way, all charm and delight and Virginian sunshine fed by exhaustion, sorrow, and utter disbelief at all that had transpired. The look on her face as the laughter escaped her open mouth was brighter than any sunlight, and it flooded through the living room, drenching us with its radiance. Lilly laughed and laughed, hysterically cackling into her hands until she ugly cried.