White Hot Grief Parade Page 13

  “I was cute.”

  Cute! We were getting somewhere!

  “I can see it: little tiny Cathy, all cute in her perfect dress with her beautiful Californian life, you must have great stories!”

  Mom kept her pace and her gaze straight ahead on the horizon. Her face did not change a bit. “I don’t,” she said.

  “You don’t what?”

  “I don’t have great stories.”

  “Oh,” I said, irritated that I had hit a wall. “Well, why not?”

  “I don’t really remember,” she answered.

  I was incredulous.

  “You don’t remember anything about your childhood?” I asked derisively.

  “Not really,” she said. “Just little things here and there. Like flashing snips of a film reel.”

  “Well, what about something from my childhood, then?”

  Mom looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, her voice a little stronger, “Do you remember your fourth birthday?”

  I did. For my fourth birthday, I had a classic gymnasium birthday party at local Los Angeles haunt Joey’s Gym—a morass of young adults in Lycra leading preschoolers through ball pits and zip lines. I wore a teal leotard, loving every second of my very first “public” birthday party.

  We talked about my birthday, and then my mother’s story began to trickle in.

  When my mother was nearly four years old, she had the first of what would be a lifetime of imaginative bursts. She envisioned a colorful cake for her birthday—with all the colors, lights, and sounds of a carnival carousel. This “carousel cake” was dreamed about, hoped for, and wished upon stars for, taking shape in her little mind.

  At long last, the day arrived. When the song began and the cake came out, Cathy’s heart leapt, then instantly broke. The cake placed before her had a crude collection of cheap straws and animal crackers, all supposedly meant to represent a carousel. She had never been more devastated in all her life, and without meaning to, Cathy broke down into fat, silent tears.

  Cathy’s mother feigned amusement at Cathy’s tears for the guests, but after the guests left, the floodgates holding back her fury broke. She railed at Cathy for being “difficult.” Cathy was silent and still as her mother punished her, then finally asked the real matter of her upset. “It was just not how I saw it in my imagination,” Cathy had said. It was not that she was ungrateful. It had nothing to do with being spoiled. Cathy had a fantasy in her head she desperately wanted to be real.

  “Ungrateful girl,” her mother hissed, and Cathy was sent to bed.

  My mother was the daughter of Colleen Mary Malloy, an up-and-coming mezzo-soprano with the Los Angeles Opera. A local beauty, Colleen was the eldest of five in the Irish Catholic Malloy family. She had always been prone to bouts of temper, drama, and fly-in-the-face rebellion. Perhaps that is why she married Delalberto Noriega, who was home from the army, and serving as an airplane mechanic—a man cursed with the worst last name and cultural makeup possible in 1940s Southern California.

  Against her parents’ wishes, Colleen temporarily abandoned her opera ambitions when she married Delalberto (the Malloys, in fact, refused to attend the wedding). But she went about rebelliously playing house regardless (though whether she did so out of cultural pressure, dissidence, or fear I suppose no one will ever know).

  They lived in a house in Norwalk, California, with a white-picket fence and a large backyard. During that time, Delalberto was called to Alaska to work on a building project, leaving Colleen to take care of their two young children—my mother Catherine and her older brother Charlie—on her own.

  One day, a traveling Jewel Tea salesman knocked on their door. Not just a humble salesman, this Jewel Tea man had a vast knowledge of opera and seduction. Colleen was smitten. Before long, she piled her children in the car in the middle of the night and they woke up the next morning in Texas, hoping to start a new life with the Jewel Tea salesman who was surprised to see that their affair had inspired such a drastic action.

  It would be the first of many troubles.

  By the time Delalberto returned to Los Angeles, Colleen had too— without the Jewel Tea salesman, but with one foot out the door and asking for a divorce.

  In those days, it was almost unheard of in California for children of divorce to be awarded to anyone but the mother’s care, so at four and five years old, off Cathy and Charlie went with their impulsive mother, to what would become a series of apartments, co-ops, opera digs, boyfriends’ houses, and strangers’ spare rooms.

  “You would think that having a beautiful opera diva for a mother would be magical,” Mom once told me. “But it wasn’t.”

  Mom would never go into too much detail about that part of her life. She could not remember. Or would not. Perhaps a bit of both. A blank darkness had blocked a great deal of it out.

  Because life with her mother was terrifying.

  Charlie was always Colleen’s “little man,” but Cathy only seemed to evoke jealousy from Colleen, despite showing many signs of having inherited her mother’s artistic gifts. Still, both children were left largely neglected.

  There aren’t many photographs of Charlie and Cathy from that time. The ones that do exist of these “Irish twins” are startling: two smiling, bright-eyed children, desperately close and marked with a unique beauty that came from the collision of their parents’ ethnic backgrounds. They are also gaunt. Not the lean, appealing Californian postwar look of scrawny youths in a constant state of growth. No. These children are starving, their flesh too flimsy for their frames, their bones sticking out unnaturally. Colleen did not have food in the house. She often forgot to feed them. So they went unfed.

  Radical characters in the shape of friends, artistic colleagues, lovers, and everything in between flew in and out of their various homes, staying long into the night and sometimes into the following morning. One day, after months of strange behavior and tented outfits, nine-year-old Cathy returned from school to find her mother gone, informed she would return in a couple of days. It was not until years later that Cathy would realize her mother had given birth to the love child of an Algerian baritone she had met at the Golden Earring—a wild bohemian haunt in Los Angeles where 1950s opera wannabes would go and perform to feel important.

  Colleen had given the baby up at the hospital before casually returning home as if nothing had happened.

  Every few weeks, there was a new male companion, far too many of whom—or so I have deduced from scraps of what Cathy has told me over the years—did unnamable things to Colleen’s young daughter.

  In 1961, at eleven and twelve years old, Cathy and Charlie were asked to testify against their mother in a precedent-setting trial that would decisively take away Colleen’s custody rights and attracted a great deal of local attention. Full custody was awarded to their father Delalberto Noriega, who had remarried a wonderful woman named Florence; both of them had been fighting for Delaberto’s kids for years.

  Cathy and Charlie never saw their mother again.20

  “Want to do this again tomorrow?” Mom asked as we made our way up the path to our front door.

  “Sure,” I nodded.

  We would not do it every day.

  It would not be easy. But each walk was a few steps closer to growing closer.

  20 Before this case, sole paternal custody had never before been awarded to the father in California.

  Green Grow the Lilacs or,

  A Brief Non Sequitur of Vital Import

  Where most families might have friendly game night gathered casually around a Trivial Pursuit board, or outwit one another about history or sports trivia, the Silbers had an ongoing Theater Factoid Quiz Bowl. My father, a man with a seemingly infallible knowledge of everything, served as Alex Trebek-style Quiz Master extraordinaire.

  “Which Academy Award-winning actress originated the role of Sally Bowles in London?”

  “Judi Dench!” we would yell in unison.

  “Bonus question: in which theate
r?”

  “The Palace!”

  We would read plays, devour films, documentaries, and, of course, sing along to musicals in the car.

  When I was twelve, my very first truly meaningful theatrical experience was playing Louise, daughter of the ne’er-do-well carnival barker Billy Bigelow, in a community theater production of Carousel. I became so enamored with the piece that Dad invested in a giant, encyclopedic Rodgers and Hammerstein coffee-table book. I quickly devoured every page.

  One day, my father said, “Isn’t it fascinating how the ’musicalization’ of a play can sometimes be nearly identical to the source material and how, for others, the musical might not resemble the play material at all, as with Oklahoma! and How Green is My Valley?”

  Record scratch.

  My father was never wrong. He was the Ken Jennings to my “Kid’s Week” Jeopardy! competitor. But today, I knew I had him.

  “But Dad,” I whispered. “Oklahoma isn’t based on How Green is My Valley. It’s based on Green Grow the Lilacs.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Oh?” he said.

  “Yes.” I replied.

  “I don’t think so . . . ” he hesitated.

  “I know so!” I exclaimed, running to grab the Rodgers and Hammerstein coffee-table book in victory. “You see?”

  Dad glanced the page over and nodded.

  “Well noted, Al,” he said, smiling. It was the first time anything like that had ever happened.

  “Green grow the lilacs” quickly became a family catchphrase, a joke we all merrily joined in on. It came to be a phrase synonymous with “nobody’s perfect.” Got the wrong apples at the grocery store? Ah well, green grow the lilacs. Bad parallel parking job? Green grow the lilacs.

  Two years later, Dad was driving along in the beat-up, silver, lateeighties Oldsmobile his father made him drive to and from all of their various property locations. He was listening to a local radio station which was holding a phone-in contest, offering an incredible prize for anyone who could answer three Broadway trivia questions: an all-expenses paid weekend in New York with two tickets to, of all things, Ragtime.

  Dad called in.

  He answered question one correctly. Question two? Not a problem. And then came question three: “On what play is the musical Oklahoma! based?”

  Dad grinned from ear to ear. “Green Grow the Lilacs!” he exclaimed.

  He won.

  That was how we all got to New York City to see the original cast of Ragtime on Broadway.

  He was magic that way.

  The Cat

  There are some things we just cannot explain.

  It was now late October, and it was unseasonably warm for Michigan. The trees, which should have been mostly bare by then, still glittered amber in the glow of the street lights set against the deep cobalt blue of the sky behind them, like pieces in a velvet jewel box. We could feel in our skin that the dew would be heavy in the morning.

  Kent and I were on The Walk. Silent and solemn, we strolled hand in hand along the curves and reaches of Fairway Drive, taking in the odd-ness of warmth in the evening sky, the strange intensity of the colors, and an unshakeable feeling that something was happening. There was mystery in the air; we could feel it in the light, humid breeze.

  Kent and I walked on, blanketing ourselves from the evening. Without discussing it, Kent began to sing—quiet and low, light but solid. His voice was distinctive; it cut through the dark as I linked on to the song, my own voice dancing on top and then below, weaving in the harmony that was our specialty.

  I’ll admit that at the time, I did not possess a particular faith. Prior to that evening, I had never given significant thought to what we’ll just call the world beyond. I was raised in a largely secular home. I had gone to Jewish preschool and kindergarten. I had played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof sophomore year of high school. I had read Macbeth, and I knew not to mess with the Ouija board. There was no one to pray to, there was no structured religion to comfort me but an inner self-reliant religion of the spirit. I believed in good and evil. I accepted that good and evil was just how the world worked. I was afraid of unknowns, but I believed everything happened for a reason, and that forces, invisible and unnamable, were at work in the universe.

  All at once, there was a gust of wind so strong I buried my face in Kent’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me, his own face shielded from the wind within the mass of my hair.

  When we looked up, there it was, plain as day.

  The cat before us was a silent ginger thing: collarless and almost impossibly orange with white markings on his face and paws and a bright white front that looked as if he were wearing a formal dress shirt. He—for you could just sense that it was a he—sat looking upward, paws together, his tail curled perfectly around his feet. One could not deny—no matter how many times you blinked or shook your head—that he was smiling.

  Kent and I stared in silence. We looked at the cat. Then at one another. Was this really happening?

  Kent crouched down and reached his hand out toward the cat. Psssst psst pssssst, he cooed, rubbing his fingers together, beckoning. The cat walked in a grand circle, making the dramatic entrance of a great actor perfectly catching his light. He approached and nuzzled lovingly into Kent’s outstretched hand. Kent smiled and scratched under the cat’s ginger jowls, much to their mutual pleasure.

  Soon the cat caught my eye and stopped. What? No nuzzling from you? his expression said. I hesitated, but leaned down and stroked the cat along the length of his back. He responded differently to my touch, twisting thoughtfully and placing his head in the crook of my elbow. The gesture startled me. I stood, and having seemingly satisfied the cat’s needs, quickly backed away and swiftly started making my way home. Kent rushed to catch up with me, taking my hand as we moved through the darkness.

  Suddenly, Kent stopped dead in his tracks. “Al . . . ” he whispered, looking over my shoulder. I turned.

  It was the cat. It was following us home.

  We opened the door to 1367, eyes locked on the cat. He hesitated only a moment before walking inside.

  “What’s going on?” said Mom, sensing something as she came upstairs to the foyer. Catching sight of the cat, she gasped.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  We made way for the cat as he slowly surveyed the entire house, placing his paw contemplatively upon the walls, nuzzling up against the corners, soaking the place in. He ran downstairs, then thundered upstairs to peak into the office, the bathroom, my bedroom. Finally, he stood before the entrance of the master bedroom. He stared through the door left ajar— absolutely still, not breathing, not twitching, frozen in a kind of resolve.

  He entered.

  He jumped up onto the Bed of Death, circled the side that days ago had been Michael’s, and settled into the spot, head down, eyes closed.

  The three of us had followed the cat throughout his house tour and now we lingered in the doorway, mouths agape.

  “Mike?” Kent said. It was as if the word fell out of his mouth without the will of the speaker.

  The cat opened his eyes, lifted his head, and stared directly at me.

  Suddenly he bolted beneath the bed, struggled with an invisible adversary, screeching, mewing, and without any warning, thundered down the stairs and out the still-open front door, never to be heard from again. Like a comet, one moment vivid and dazzling, the next vanished, away on its own journey through the endless dark unknown.

  The following night, I dreamed: Dad was back, and no one thought it was peculiar or remarkable but me. I made my way upstairs and a particularly well-fed, healthy-looking Dad was leaving the shower in his favorite green velour bathrobe. I did a double take, stopping him on the landing with sheer joy.

  “Dad,” I cried. “Oh Dad, you’re back!”

  “Hi, Al,” he said, smiling hugely, neither confirming nor denying my previous statement. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Oh, yes!” I could not stare at him
hard enough, could not suck in enough of his smell that was so pungent. Tears fill my eyes. “Papa, we’ve all missed you.”

  He nodded and, with only the slightest tinge of sadness, he gathered his green robe close around himself and moved to make his way up the stairs.

  “Wait! Dad!” I said. I had to know. “The cat.”

  He smiled.

  “The cat, Papa. Was—was that . . . ?”

  Dad came down a few steps and got as close to me as I could sense he was “allowed.” He laughed a little.

  “Of course,” he said, eyes sparkling, “but you knew that.”

  I nodded.

  “I knew you’d be afraid of a ghost or an angel, anything like that. I knew you would need to know that you had seen it, touched it. And I just had to make certain everything was OK.” He turned to go again.

  “Wait—Papa!” I cried, not wanting him to go just yet. “Please. What’s it like?”

  “Al . . . ” he sighed. “You know I can’t answer that.”

  I nodded again.

  He turned to go again, but stopped himself. Then, looking down at me, he said, “It’s everything you hope it is.”

  I woke in tears. Comforted, but certain of nothing. Certain only that we know nothing about the world beyond.

  So why not believe? Because it happens. These things do. Happen.

  The Bed of Death

  A week or so after the incident with the cat, Grey headed home for Thanksgiving, slated to return to his creative den (in our downstairs spare bedroom) as soon as possible to continue work on his theatrical set-design model for his college re-applications.

  As previously discussed, Lilly was the only one of us that returned to college that year, and, despite her frequent commutes up and down I-75 in her pale-blue Dodge caravan to visit “Cathy and the drop outs” at the House of Death, she had to spend some time at Oberlin—she had to make friends and make reeds and, to quote Grey, “do Oboe stuff.” As our sole remaining higher education ambassador, Kent, Grey and I mined her constantly for tales of college life—from bulk cooking for her campus commune, to her sudden and inexplicable joining of the Oberlin Aikido Club.21 Though Lilly insisted the Oberlin was like Interlochen for college students (even going so far as to call it “Oberlochen”) to us, Lilly’s Freshman year all sounded like some sort of Liberal Arts Safari, complete with tales of normal eighteen-year-old college students grazing and mating in their natural habitat.