White Hot Grief Parade Page 15

We felt good.

  We felt great.

  We felt wonderful.

  Opa

  Everyone needs a place like Greek Islands Coney Restaurant.

  You know—a local joint that’s just the right balance between casual and quality so you never have to worry about whether the food is going to be any good or, critically, what you have to wear. A place where they know your family, your usual, and where “everybody knows your name.”

  Hand-painted murals grace the walls of Greek Islands. The first (in “section five”) is a copy of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel only God and Adam are reaching for a Coney dog. The other (which blazes just above the entrance) is of the Last Supper painted with Greek gods instead of Christian disciples. I knew every person that bused the tables, waited them, cooked the food, and ran the register. I knew the ins and outs of their lives. I knew the neon lights. I knew the menu backwards, and what was better on Tuesdays. Go get the Greek Islands Special Salad with the signature dressing but start with saganaki cheese. When they light the cheese on fire after smothering it in brandy, the waitress will yell “Opa!” before dousing the flame with a fresh lemon.

  Mere words fail to describe not just the love, but the enormity of time spent in GI from working there for years as a teenager to eating there every night we decided not to cook.

  What better place to eat immediately after a funeral? Sleepless, haggard, and unable to face opening the refrigerator full of goulash and leftover deli meat, the five of us piled into the Jeep and drove to Greek Islands. We ate slowly, silently, unable to quite tell our friends—behind the counter, at the register, busing the tables—why Michael was not with us, was no longer with us and why he would, in fact, never be with us again. Why he’d never again share the Special Salad or joke and laugh aloud with John (the owner), or smile at Shauna (the hostess), or ask if he could take an extra strawberry-flavored Dum Dum lollipop after paying the check to give to me.

  The place was quiet, for we had come after the dinner rush, and the warmth from the people and the kitchen—along with the bright neon lights that lined the ceiling—only served to emphasize the darkness both outside and within.

  We sat there prodding at our food in a state of awful quiet.

  Then, in a rush of lightning-quick burning grief, tears burst from within Catherine. The force of it was shocking, the kind that makes one choke. Catherine—in the same lavender coat she had worn over the lavender dress at the funeral—quickly caught herself, moisture leaking from her face, all of which was reined in with her left hand that glittered from her wedding ring in the impossibly cheery neon lights.

  We all looked at her, and Kent placed his hand gently atop her arm. We are here Cathy, the gesture said. We were. She nodded, and placed her hand on top of his own in gratitude. We returned to our food. But no one was hungry.

  Our GI family—Eleni the matron waitress consoled her children Paul and Theresa who had deduced what had happened in the distant corner over in section five, Mercury the bus boy, Tikko in the kitchen—glanced over. They all exchanged looks of disbelief. You could see their hearts sinking.

  That night, dinner was on the house.

  The Grandparental Gunfight

  (At rise: 1367, day. AL sits beneath a blanket. Her insides still not-quite-right after a few days of unexplained discomfort. She is in the downstairs living room curled around a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, trying to finish it as quickly as possible so as to give it to KENT, who is growing increasingly impatient in his wait to read it next. GREY (who has already finished Chamber of Secrets) enters from the front door and comes down the stairs, carrying today’s mail.)

  GREY: Mail call. This is for you.

  AL: For me?

  GREY: Why, yes.

  AL: What is it?

  GREY: It appears to be a letter. In olden times, they were apparently quite popular.

  (They gaze at it, suspicious.)

  AL: Right.

  GREY: So it’s mail. There is no return address.

  AL: (looking at the letter) I regret to inform you that it appears to be from my grandparents.

  GREY: Really? Huh. I don’t smell sulfur. How can you tell?

  AL: I can sense their presence with a dowsing rod.

  GREY: (epic eye roll) I don’t believe you.

  AL: Well, what can I tell you? I’m not Katie Couric. I don’t have any journalistic, magician-level integrity here. I’m a teenager.

  GREY: You’re also currently a college dropout.

  AL: Come to think of it, so are you, so why are you giving me shit?

  (GREY considers this a moment and moves on.)

  GREY: Anyway, I just think it is interesting that you knew it was from them before you even knew there was a letter. (Feeling it) My God, it weighs a ton.

  AL: Hm. (Feeling it) Maybe it is laden with guilt for me to bear for all time!

  GREY: Please, just open it.

  AL: Sure, happy to. But I feel obligated to warn you: opening this letter would redirect valuable energy from my efforts to not kill my grandparents.

  GREY: Al, it is genuinely my job to force you to do things.

  AL: It is?

  GREY: Yes. I mean, without me opening all of your mail, how would you know about all those trees planted in your Dad’s name in Israel?

  AL: I wouldn’t.

  GREY: But truly: I can barely justify my presence in your house as it is. I’ve been living in the guest room for over a month, we’ve all dropped out of school, and I’m pretty sure my parents think I’ve joined a cult.

  AL: This is a kind of cult.

  GREY: It is. (Serious voice now) But I mean it. Al, I’m not just here to distract and entertain and shoo away both the blues and Jehovah’s Witnesses. If I’m not here to help you face the hard things . . . then I’m just a college dropout living in your guest room. If I’m not holding your hand while it is hard—if you don’t allow me to hold your hand while it is hard—then I—I can’t . . .

  (GREY is uncharacteristically overcome—the raw emotion on his face is pure exposure, a badge that has let slip the kernel of his inner truth: the truth that GREY is the most sensitive and tender of them all—that GREY is more lost and misdirected and disillusioned than even AL or CATHERINE. They are all holding on to sanity by a thread.

  AL looks at GREY and nods “OK.” SHE opens the letter and reads it. As SHE pores over the pages, the room fills with soft, overcast, Michigan light, AL folds the pages, calmly places them back into the envelope and glances at GREY.)

  GREY: What is it?

  AL: We’ve been . . . disowned.

  (GREY stares—disbelief slapped across his face.)

  GREY: What does that mean?

  AL: I don’t really know. It says that financially and emotionally they want nothing more to do with us. Well, with me.

  (In a very peculiar way, this knowledge is a kind of relief.)

  AL: (continued). I suppose it means we are truly on our own.

  GREY. Can’t you fight them?

  AL. Fight them? How? In a cage match? I honestly wouldn’t know how. Anyway I hear Albert is a fear-biter.

  (GREY looks down at his hands. HE does not know what to say or do.)

  GREY. I’m . . . I’m so, so sorry Al.

  AL: Well what can I say, Grey? You can’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

  (AL rises with the letter in hand. It occurs to her that words have repercussions. Lesson learned.)

  AL: Well. If my absence doesn’t affect them, then my presence never did either. And vice versa, I suppose. Oh, the pride I might’ve given them. If only their love hadn’t been so conditional.

  (Little did THE SILBERS know: AL did not want their money, SHE wanted unconditional love. SHE wanted trust and respect and family. SHE wanted it less for herself, but for her father.)

  AL: Sometimes, our greatest accomplishment is just keeping our mouth shut.

  I didn’t do that. I spoke up. I said no. And I am not sorry. (She exhales.)
It’s OK. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

  GREY: Alsy, please—

  AL: No, Grey. They demanded my expulsion. They got it.

  (AL makes her way to the bedroom at the top of the stairs. In the days and years to come, she will not let those who abandoned her stop her from being generous, from having hope. She enters and closes the door quietly behind her.)

  The Obligatory Autumn-to-Winter Montage

  “What is this? Isolation therapy?”

  —What About Bob?

  The hideous death-beige carpet had been ripped up from the entire upstairs level, the hardwood floors revealed. The new sleigh bed had replaced the Bed of Death, and it felt as though 1367 beckoned us to brighten it in the wake of all that had transpired.

  We pushed all the furniture to the middle of each room on the upstairs level, covered the piles in tarps, and drove to Home Depot to pick out bright paints to adorn the top floor of the house with color and life. Dad’s old office was revamped into a theatrical guest room; we moved the vintage dark-wood desk all the way downstairs to the lowest level, replacing the table the computer awkwardly sat upon, and we painted it a deep royal purple to go with the copper crown molding. In my room, we took out my childhood desk and bookshelves, pared down my toy selection, and updated the formerly white walls to the adult “Rosalind Blue,” with a darker blue trim for the windows. The new master bedroom was, appropriately, the greatest transformation of all—three out of four walls covered in a peaceful, pastel sage green, while the central wall took on an elegant lavender.

  It only took us a few days to finish all three rooms. With the complete works of Simon and Garfunkel blazing on a CD player blaring from the hallway, Mom, Kent, and I donned smocks and took up our rollers. We painted and harmonized well into the wee hours of the morning, and, to this day, I cannot hear “The Sound of Silence” without keeping my nose alive for the smell of paint.

  Of course, eventually, everyone had to go back.

  Grey, Kent, and Lilly decided to leave in waves—the theory being that Mom and I should not be left in the House of Death alone together just yet.

  Lilly departed first. She was the only one of us who hadn’t dropped out of school, and so she had to return to classes and lessons and important grownup-to-be responsibilities. We understood, of course, but this new House of Death Family didn’t feel complete without her. She promised to return every few weeks, and she kept her word, driving the 144 miles up I-75 in that pale blue Dodge caravan over and over again all winter long.

  Grey—who had made up his mind to quit school three weeks into the semester at Cincinnati—needed to withdraw officially, and, a few days after Lilly left, he went back to campus to wrap up his affairs and pack his belongings. He then reported back to 1367 in an attempt to regroup, returning to his home in Wisconsin for the major holidays before reporting back to us for New Year.

  Kent stuck around, tending to Mom and me while the others were away. He received the flowers, organized the sympathy cards, arranged for people to come over and talk awkwardly in the living room, screened angry phone calls from the Silbers, and made sure everybody ate. He wanted to know we would be alright alone in our new silence before they could return. He headed back to the dairy farm in New Hampshire to give his two weeks’ notice, bid farewell to the goats (and presumably, Clibbs and Roderigo), and made his way back to Michigan as soon as he could. His “gap-year off for life experience” tending to goats at the dairy farm would now be traded for a gap-year of life experience tending to the Silber women in Detroit. Experiencing the realities of secondhand-grief.

  “I’ll write,” he promised, looking deep into me at the Detroit Wayne County Airport. He held my face in his hands, his long fingers caressing my cheeks tenderly, though his face remained stern. His eyes, usually an icy blue, looked warm now, and one could almost detect the evidence of the thaw along the rims of his lashes. (His stern New England upbringing prevented him from liquefying completely).

  “I’ll write back,” I replied, kissing him.

  He walked away, shoulders heavy, farm jacket on his back, hunter green satchel slung casually over his shoulder. Just before entering the brand-new, still foreign, eight-weeks-after-September-11-security-procedures gate, he stopped. He turned back, but he did not return for me—for one last word, look or kiss. Instead, he locked eyes with and then embraced my mother. They held one another there for a long time. I watched, mystified. To this day, neither has ever spoken about what they shared the morning Michael died. This embrace made clear that they had shared something sacred and terrible that only they would ever know. He turned his head, whispered something inaudibly into her ear, then quickly broke away. He kissed me again and ran to the gate, disappearing behind the security barricades and leaving Mom and me alone for the first time in this new part of our new lives.

  We stood there numbly, not knowing exactly what to do next.

  “What did he whisper to you?” I asked.

  “He said ‘I love you.’” She said it matter-of-factly, but the tension in her throat as she swallowed gave away how much it meant.

  Then she led the way back to the car that would return us to our first night alone in 1367.

  The next few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were a blur of readjustments as mom and I stared down the barrel of “the rest of our lives,” now without Kent and Grey (and sometimes Lilly) to ease the sorrow. But Kent stayed true to his promise to write and I lived for his letters.

  Follansbee Dairy Farm

  Sutton, New Hampshire

  November 7, 2001

  My Own,

  I’ve just told Mrs. F that I won’t be staying on past Thanksgiving. Their farm hand Anders laid it out pretty straight to me; on finding out that you were in Detroit, he said (in his broad, New Hampshire accent), “Then what the hell ah you doing he-ah?” We had a great conversation, really. If he would only take his own good advice, Anders would be a lot better off.

  Now we have something to look forward to. I found a calendar laying around which I now use to count down the days until I will see you next. Before the month is out, we’ll be together again.

  I’ve actually had a little bit more time the past four days. Time enough to take a bath at least, which is nice. And to do more reading. The days are so short that I’ve been getting off earlier. Also there’s less to do in the winter, which is one reason why I don’t feel so bad leaving. I certainly got the farm experience, and it did do some good. You just have to help me stay motivated, none of this waking at 11:00 every day stuff. There’s always more to read if I run out of things to do. And between reading, house fixing, exercise, love-making, “scene study at home,” I’m sure the time will be filled.

  Now comes the waiting. The days can’t possibly be short enough. But I’ll see you in my dreams.

  Always,

  Kent

  To distract me from a migraine, Mom ran a bath and read me the entire copy on a package of Epsom salts with total sincerity in a quiet, soothing voice.

  “So as you can see, Al, not only is this bag suitable for migraines, constipation, and fertilizer, but if you have any questions about what I’ve just read to you, all you have to do is call 1-800-777-3415 in what looks like Indianapolis, and they can answer your questions between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. eastern standard time. . .”

  In those days, we would talk in the bath a lot. I’d sit there covered in bubbles, and we’d chat. (It might sound odd, but it wasn’t. It felt bohemian and luxurious, like we were in Hollywood.)

  “How was it?” Mom asked one day when I alluded to the fact that Kent and I had, at long last, slept together. (The months preceding the act had been arduous. But the act was laden with the darkness that surrounded us, and not a reflection of our love for one another . . .)

  “Good.” I said shyly.

  She nodded but did not look at me. I glanced at her sideways, catching her face in an expression of concern that we’d never talked about sex until this very moment.
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br />   The only time either of my parents had ever broached the subject was when Dad drove me to Chicago to pick up Jeremey after Christmas two years earlier. He had brought it up gingerly, but then spoke of sex with great enthusiasm, not at all shy or squeamish or ashamed to be discussing it so openly with his sixteen-year-old daughter.

  “Hey, remember that massage someone gave you for Christmas a few weeks back?” he had said.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, uncertain of the terrifying direction in which this line of questioning was leading.

  “Well,” Dad said with a smile, “that was the second best feeling in the world!”

  Horror-struck (as well as suddenly and inexplicably overcome with a priggish, puritanical sense of utter indecency in addition to being completely mortified by his nonchalance), I alternated between covering my face and ears while I begged him to stop. My entreaties only resulted in the sound of my father’s uncontrollable, rolling laughter.

  “Come on, Al!” he said, his voice a pure cheer. “Lighten up! Trust me—the best is yet to come!”

  “Dad!” I howled. “Please stop or I will die.”

  Dad pressed a button that promptly auto-locked all the doors to the car. “No way!” His voice rang out again in a tone of such enjoyment I could have sworn he was recording the entire proceeding. “I like to shove my boots in, get my hands in the mud and get involved!”

  I weathered it as best I could.

  I did not want to grow up. Not because I just didn’t want to, but because it was yet another way I might burden my already burdened parents. I didn’t know I felt that way at the time, but I know it now.

  This not-growing-up feeling was baked into my family life. For example, we never discussed the fact that Santa Claus was not real. Mom and I still spoke about Santa as if he were coming to dinner like Elijah (or, say, an actual house guest). It was just a sort of blasé thing: Santa will be coming, naturally. We sort of knowingly talked around the subject during my teens, but we still never really discussed it. Part of me liked that. We were a magical family—and if we weren’t going to talk about Santa, then I certainly wasn’t going to talk to my parents about sex.