White Hot Grief Parade Read online

  Or the casual greeting of “Ahoy!”

  If someone asked how he felt about something, he might respond with: “There are two types of people in this world: those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t.”

  When someone was mean to me at school, he would quote Bob’s wisdom: “You know, I treat people as if they were telephones. If I meet somebody I think doesn’t like me I say to myself, I say, ‘Bob, this one is temporarily out of order.’ You know, don’t break the connection, just hang up and try again!”

  Therein lies the allure of What About Bob? Bob Wiley, it would seem, is oddly enlightened, and What About Bob? is oddly profound. With each re-viewing of this 90s comedy, I discovered another level of meaning, a deeper sense of universal profundity. This comic insanity mixed with penetrating insight is a quality only such genius clowns like Bill Murray seem to be capable of portraying: those rare comedians so in touch with life’s harsh truths, that they make it their mission to (brilliantly) cultivate laughter. And every time I watch Bob, I not only felt smarter or wiser, but I felt closer to my dad.

  About two-thirds of the way into the film, we find Bob sleeping over at the Marvins’ Lake Winnipesaukee home due to a torrential rainstorm. He shares a room with Siggy, Dr. Marvin’s eleven-year-old son. They lie there in their PJs, in angled twin beds, staring into the darkness. Siggy looks terrified:

  SIGGY: Bob?

  BOB: Yeah?

  SIGGY: Are you afraid of death?

  Bob is caught off guard. He is suddenly frightened, too—his eyes grow wide and searching, like a child trying to keep his cool.

  BOB: Yeah.

  (It’s a “yeah” as in a “Yeah, so?”—a way particular to children one-upping each other.)

  SIGGY: Me, too. And there’s no way out of it. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. It’s going to happen.

  (Siggy blinks; clearly the fear is very, very real.)

  SIGGY: And who cares if it’s tomorrow or eighty years? Much sooner in your case. Do you know how fast time goes? I was six, like, yesterday.

  BOB: Me, too.

  SIGGY: I’m going to die. You are going to die. What else is there to be afraid of?

  And so I think. I think about The Dying.

  In that moment, as I lie downstairs in ratty checkered pajamas beside Kent, that very scene from that very stupid, over-quoted, over-played, trivial and pathetically beloved movie is all I can think of.

  My dad is going to die.

  There is no way out of it.

  And who cares if it really is tomorrow or in eighty years?

  It is going to happen.

  And if he dies, I am very certain that I might die, too.

  Siggy is right; What else is there to be afraid of?

  1 I will do it.

  2 I’ve learned never to underestimate the devotion inspired by Tom Hanks.

  Al(ex(andra)) and Lilly

  I was ten years old the first time I went away to summer camp, and I remember many things about that summer. I remember the simultaneous terror and thrill of being truly on my own for the first time. I remember my Winnie-the-Pooh bedsheets, music everywhere, the glory of the lakes, the mysterious smells from Pinecrest cafeteria, and new friends from foreign places.

  I remember waking up one morning and realizing that I hadn’t thought about cancer in two weeks.

  But above all, I remember that on the first day my counselor asked all of us for our nicknames. I paused when it was my turn.

  Now, I love the name Alexandra. It’s a name with grandeur, with presence. But long names on little people seem to make people a little uneasy, because for the first ten years of my life, people kept calling me “Alex.” Don’t get me wrong—I’m not Alex-ist. Some of my best friends are called Alex. It’s just not me.

  This was my chance to pick the right name, wipe “Alex” clear off the face of the map, and become myself. And for me, the right name was “Al.” Maybe Al sounds more like a middle-aged plumber than a big-haired tenyear-old at her first theater camp. But what can I say; it felt right.

  “Hello, my name is Alexandra . . . but you can call me Al,” I said hesitantly, trying it out, my heart throbbing.

  Everyone smiled, and the counselor took down the name tag she had made for my closet and flipped it over, writing A-L in big block letters before refastening it to the door.

  I never looked back. I was Al for the whole of that summer, and it was magical. And when I came back the following summer—after a whole year of being “actually my name is . . . no, Alex is fine,” back home in Detroit—I walked into my cabin and there “AL” was, already on my closet.

  And then of course, there was Lilly.

  I can’t say that I remember the first time I ever met Lilly (Isn’t that how most friendships start?), but what I can say is that there never seemed to be a time at Interlochen when she wasn’t somewhere in the landscape. We both first attended Interlochen the summer we both turned eleven and, somewhere along the line, we crossed paths in a modern dance class. We were both badass little eleven-year-olds, prancing across the dance building on the banks of Green Lake, feeling our Martha Graham feelings in identical black unitards. Back then, I had no idea what Lilly would come to mean to me.

  Lilly’s full name is Lillian Townsend Copeland. (And no, she was not related to Aaron Copland, though she still enjoys referring to him as “Old Uncle Aaron.”3)

  We had both decided to upgrade from summer camp to yearlong enrollment at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. We were both overachievers—her in oboe, me in theater—and we shared a dorm suite in our senior year with two other theater majors, Cristina and Courtney. The four of us became the Four Amigos (T-shirts were made), but it was our reign as Possibly Interlochen’s Worst Ever Hall Assistants that bonded me and Lilly together for life.

  I’m not saying we were abysmal. I am merely saying that one could take a convicted arsonist, give him a pack of matches, escort him to the log cabin of his childhood nemesis, instruct him to “have a good time,” and the predictably charred evening would be preferable to having Lilly and me be responsible for you in high school.

  We were likely hall assistant candidates, I suppose: returning “lifers” who “bled blue”— terms used for students who had been at Interlochen as long as anyone could remember, and thus bled the uniform colors: light blue on top (with a visible collar), navy blue on the bottom (students became more and more creative with these uniform rules as the school year progressed).

  Our dormitory, known as Thor Johnson House or “TJ” for short, was charming it its way—a common area, two levels of dorm rooms above a basement designated for laundry and practice rooms. The walls were plastered with handmade posters for Sleeping Beauty, visual art showings, poetry readings, movie nights and, idiosyncratic Michigan-isms such as reminders to “Wear bright colors during hunting season!” TJ was connected to the campus cafeteria, thus constantly smelled of “cooking in bulk,” as well as of microwave popcorn, toast, laundry, hormones, and teenaged artistic ambition.

  As HAs, Lilly and I were supposed to make certain everyone was comfortable, felt at home, and had a place to talk if they needed to. That was the part we were good at—the social, caring big sister stuff! We could help plan a medium-sized hall party; we could make sure the Chinese piano major who doesn’t speak English gets everything she needs in order to find her way to class on Monday.4 We could help the girl who just moved from South Africa and was apart from her childhood boyfriend for the first time. That stuff.

  But we also had to attend HA meetings about house life, vote on house policies, make certain everyone in our hall attended the big school community meetings held every Thursday before lunch.

  We had to clean things and organize community service.

  We had to make sure everyone was present in a fire drill.

  We had to attend the fire drill.

  We had to have not pulled the fire alarm ourselves.

  We had to be good examples. We had to be
quiet. We had to obey the rules. We had to not have an illegal television (with a VHS player!) hiding in a giant Tupperware.

  We had to not get involved in the Great Paint Plot. But come on, who wouldn’t get involved with a Great Paint Plot?

  Our roommate Cristina and her friend Ellie from down the hall, in a flurry of senioritis, had decided to paint their naked torsos with red and turquoise tempera paint, walk around the entire dorm (during school hours, so even teachers and boys might see them), and videotape it.

  And who tagged along? Our entire dorm. And who videotaped it? Your friendly local HAs, Al and Lilly. And how does this videotape end? With our (incredibly cool, but also incredibly adult) dorm leader Angela, staring deadpan into the camera and simply saying, “No.” Then she looks at Cristina, Ellie, and our entire entourage and repeats, “No—no no no.” Then it cuts out.

  Oops.

  Five minutes after we were caught, we were back in our room, with the sun setting over Green Lake outside our window. Cristina and Ellie were wearing T-shirts and looks of mild shame; Courtney was crumpled in our womb chair in the corner, and Lilly and I were standing, military style, in front of Angela as she explained that she knew we had six weeks of senior year left but we all really need to get a grip on ourselves. “I love all of you so much but seriously. COME. ON.”

  We all nodded.

  She continued. “Additionally, Alexandra Michelle and Lillian Townsend, you are hall assistants! You are supposed to be leaders, set examples; you are supposed to be the first line of defense when all the parents paying thousands of dollars and visiting from Asia want to know where on earth they have sent their children.”

  She was right.

  Angela continued, “I can’t believe I am about to say this—I literally cannot believe I am about to say the following sentence—but please, please do not cover your naked bodies in paint, roam the public hallways during working (or nonworking) hours, and please, please do not videotape it.”

  We nodded again.

  “Angela?” Cristina said, lifting her head. “There is just something I want to get off my chest.”

  “Please say it is not your shirt.”

  “Yes! I mean no! I just—” Cristina said. “We’re sorry.”

  We really were.

  Some people might have been intimidated to share their dorm life with three boisterous theater majors, but not Lilly. Lilly was an honorary theater major: she had drama and flair, she was theatrical and powerful, and she loved it. Sure, sometimes she didn’t want to talk about Tennessee Williams anymore. Sure, she may have gotten irritated at Cristina and me doing vocal warm ups in our communal shower for the millionth time. Sure, she may have been on the brink of killing us all if she heard us talk about theater department politics one more time. And maybe sometimes she despaired of having to explain music major basics to us, like the time she had to explain to Courtney that the “beeping box” that so fascinated her was in fact a metronome.

  But if she ever truly contemplated roommate-icide, she never showed it. “Do your theater stuff,” she would say and just keep on making her reeds and doing her homework. More often than not, she’d join right in, picking out our outfits for auditions, expressing her monologue preferences, and, most memorably of all, helping me learn every single line and lyric as I prepared to play Amalia Balash in She Loves Me.

  “I think you need to be a little sobbier,” she’d said.

  “Lilly, if I got any ‘sobbier,’ I’d be Meg Ryan.”

  “Well, then sob away—you’d have a cute haircut and quite a career.”

  How we loved Lilly. How could we not? We loved her bewitching voice with the Southern drawl that only came out when she was exhausted. We loved the way she hated making reeds but dutifully made them anyway. We loved the short hair she sometimes wore in little pigtails that looked something like the sprigs on top of Pebbles’s head. When we asked her why she wore it that way, she replied, “Um . . . because I look cute.”

  In the first week of school, all auditions for the coming semester take place—theater majors audition for the first two shows of the season, voice majors get placed in their studios, dance majors are cast in the winter ballet, and the instrumentals audition the entire week for their chair in the orchestra.

  I suppose this is the point where I let you in on a little secret: Lilly is so insanely talented at the oboe, so gifted a musical artist, that some might call it unjust. To listen to Lilly play is like listening to a person sing— actually sing through their instrument, with all of the individuality and soulfulness of a raw, vital, pulsing human voice that manages to capture the beauty of existence just as film captures an image, or honey captures light.

  The only person who does not understand Lilly’s genius is Lilly. The day the chairs were posted, Lilly lay in, buried in her duvet, distraught that she had blown it—thus ruining her senior year, her chances at getting into college, and possibly her entire life.

  The rest of the suite woke up early to look at the posting for her— certain of her impending success. We screamed and celebrated in the main lobby, jumping up and down in characteristically un-music-major-like fashion. We flew upstairs, burst in, and jumped on Lilly screaming like the lunatics we were. “First chair, Lilly! First fucking chair!”

  Lilly sat up and rubbed her eyes, then beamed.

  So the Four Amigos had a lot of adventures that year at Interlochen, and together we all went to MORP5 on a great big yellow school bus: Cristina and I in vintage gowns, Lilly in an original dress my mom had designed, and the ever avant-garde Courtney in her own gown made of duct tape.

  But Lilly was something else.

  Virtuosic musical gift aside, Lilly is rife with what I like to call “goods.” I will now list them (because I love both Lilly and lists). It doesn’t take a genius to notice that Lillian Copeland has the biggest, most gorgeous hazel eyes you’ve ever seen. But let me tell you something else: this girl is compassionate, capable, and feisty. She looks right at you and waves sneakily with her oboe during the orchestral bow when you are standing and screaming for her solo. She doesn’t refer to her oboe as “the oboe,” but rather as “Oboe,” as if “Oboe” is his/her6 name. She is the just right amount of perfectionist and sees the great virtue in “being cute.” And yes, OK, fine: she has killer legs with perfect ankles that look amazing in heels.

  But, reader? Lilly is the kind of solid you only think is possible in pioneer women. With a sense of empathy so intuitive it makes you ache.

  She was my very closest friend. She was the only one I truly spoke with about my dad’s increasingly concerning illness when the going got tough. And it did get tough.

  Dad started out the year with his fifth round of regular chemo in the span of nine years. (If there is such a thing as “regular.”) He was in good shape overall. A bald head was the only giveaway of his illness. Otherwise, Dad was an ox—six foot three inches of pure, Herculean, I-have-cancer-but-remain-symptom-free-for-a-decade type of strength. No one saw the end coming. No one.

  That somehow made it all the more ruthless.

  3 Lilly’s version of Copeland has an E, Aaron, no E.

  4 Have I mentioned that the classrooms at Interlochen were in an actual forest?

  5 The Interlochen version of Prom. MORP is “Prom” backwards.

  6 I am not certain if Oboe has a gender.

  Kent

  The Night Before, I lie awake beside a sleeping Kent.

  Kent, who always smelled vaguely of the ocean.

  Kent, with his kiss deep and knowing.

  Kent, whose sacrifice still reverberates in my marrow.

  I hadn’t always loved Jensen Kent.

  In the beginning, we were just friends. First, because he was friendly, and second, because I was already dating a boy named Jeremey who was in every way my “motorcycle guy” and first rebellion.

  For you see, I never rebelled. I was a squeaky clean kid, terrified that any trespass into the gnarly world of adolescence migh
t only add further to the already crushing daily burdens endured by my parents. This took such things as “growing up” and “having needs” off the table of possible options. This was how such things as being publically shamed by my middle school art teacher, high school bullying, and, my favorite, hiding my menstrual period for a year, went largely un-discussed.

  Not that either one of my parents were in any way actually scary. I was merely scared of my own volition; a perfectionist almost crippled by the terror of error, for to disappoint—or, more crucially, to burden them further—would have been a weight too great to bear. I rigorously took on the task of providing my parents with a perfect child: a singular source of hope and joy and promise. It was in this internal atmosphere that I smothered myself, believing in my bones that any problem, mistake, even the tiniest of transgressions, was my contribution to not curing cancer.

  Driven by this crippling need I got straight As, excelled in my extracurricular activities, had a few virtuous friends, avoided growing up and all its curiosities, and frenetically overachieved. As the self-appointed hope, future, pleasure, reason, and shared source of my parents’ reason to keep fighting, I took it upon myself to provide my parents with every excessive joy and pride imaginable. There was no one else to share the task with, and I was operating in a vacuum of frantic desperation. I learned that no one asks if you are in pain or in trouble if you have a resume full of achievements. I was panic-stricken that the entire world would collapse if I did not succeed.

  When I did socialize, it was one-on-one or in intensely G-rated settings. Safe. Hermetically sealed. I needed to be in control of everything I could to avoid making mistakes. Because of that, I spent a great deal of time alone. I filled that empty space with achievement, creativity, books, ideas, and huge imaginative worlds that required no playmate.

  My parents wanted me to have as normal a childhood as possible. They kept me away from the bulk of my father’s health issues. Who could blame them? So, achieve I did. In my young mind, achievement was the only contribution I could offer to making Dad well again.