White Hot Grief Parade Page 20

  God, I loved the theater.

  God, I missed my dad.

  “Are you an actor?” I asked Emma, and her bright red lips revealed her braces as she smiled broadly. Her dad smiled, too.

  “Tell her,” he said, nudging her arm.

  “I want to be,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “I—” she hesitated. “I hope to be.”

  They smiled at each other before looking back to me.

  A hand from beyond this world placed itself upon my heart and stopped it for a moment.

  It was my dad. He was there, reminding me about the lobby of Ragtime.

  Emma: fourteen years old, just like I had been. A young girl whose father longed to do “more of this”— just as I know my father longed to make every possible memory with me while we still had time.

  I wanted to tell Emma and her father everything. I wanted to tell them to travel, to watch all the movies, to take all the walks, and say all the things. I wanted to tell them to make every memory possible, to make every one count, because we never know when the chance might be taken from us.

  But I didn’t say any of that. I knew what I was supposed to say. My dad’s hand was holding my heart from the other side of the Great Beyond and he was giving me my cue, not that I needed it. It was time to pass the baton. I knew my line.

  Emma’s face looked up at me: the face of a young actress, standing beside her father, who was looking up at a woman she had just seen perform on Broadway. Emma wanted to act.

  “You will,” I said, perfectly on cue.

  And then I cried. The circle had been completed and my dad was there—I felt him.

  Emma and her dad walked away that night, likely not realizing the gift they gave me. As I walked toward the subway on Fifty-fifth Street, I desperately wanted to call my dad up to tell him that I met “us” tonight. That Judy Kaye’s prophecy had come true. That I had “done it,” and in a manner more meaningful than could ever be imagined.

  I couldn’t call Dad, but I did the next best thing. I called Judy Kaye.

  New Year: The Last Hurrah

  Deep in the shadows of old Jerusalem, the ancient Jews fought against oppression. They joined together, rose up, and defeated the oppressors who had outlawed their faith and desecrated their holy temple.

  In the ruins of their newly won city, the Jewish people stood in the silence and agreed: they had to cleanse and rededicate the temple. They would reignite the menorah—a beacon of light that would burn all day and all night—as a symbol of their fortitude and their faith.

  Olive oil was required to keep the menorah ablaze within the temple. But when the Jews returned to their oil supply, the Talmud says, they found that there was only enough oil to burn for a single day. They would need eight days to prepare a new supply of oil; the light in the temple would be doused long before then.

  But a miracle happened. The oil in the temple lasted eight incredible days: exactly the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. Thus, Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights came to be.

  Beyond all reason or logic, hope—like the light in the ancient temple of Jerusalem—is inextinguishable. In the darkest and most desperate hours, when we mine ourselves for more than we ever could conceive was possible, the fuel for hope is there. So that we may continue on.

  Hope may be fragile, but it is there, just like the light.

  Sometimes blazing, sometimes merely a tender, trembling flicker that, regardless, cannot be extinguished, that flame winking. So our ancient ancestors have taught us. So we continue to learn again and again as time churns ever onward.

  Hope accompanies all new beginnings.

  And all new years.

  On December 21, the winter solstice and darkest day of the year, we hatched a plan to take place ten days later on New Year’s Eve to escort us all from 2001 into 2002.

  It was the winter solstice, and our corner of the planet may have been at the very furthest distance from the sun, but it was only going to get brighter, bit by painstaking bit, from this point onward. It was on that day that it came to us in a flash: the idea for the Great Party. The most concentrated endeavor we could, or indeed would, ever create together. An idea born, in every way, out of darkness.

  We had discussed spending New Year’s Eve together previously; we had made some sketchy plans, thought about dinner reservations and the like, but as Kent and I spoke (on two different phones in 1367) with Grey in Madison, Wisconsin, four days before Christmas, the great New Year’s Eve plan was born.

  “A Great Party!” Grey announced. “Jay Gatsby style . . . ”

  A Great Party on December 31, we thought, of F. Scott Fitzgerald proportions. It would be the only way to cleanse us.

  Just like that, it was absolutely settled.

  Sometimes we simply must surrender. The act of letting go unleashes a kind of fathomless healing power.

  Sometimes, if we are lucky and have our eyes fully open, our minds act like the shutter of a camera—capturing a moment perfectly from the just-right angle in the just-right light.

  Sometimes, we just have to trust and practice a little serenity.

  And sometimes you just have to pause and say, to heck with all that, it is time for fancy steak. Filet mignon, to be exact (or, as Lilly calls it, “cute meat,” taken from the literal French) because that is how this New Year’s Eve party was going to roll. Well, actually, that was how Grey rolls, and the rest of us obviously jump on that medium rare bandwagon because cute beef is delicious. There we were with a cute, expensive cut of beef and an even more a-cute hunger.

  But you don’t just stir-fry that cute meat up with wok veggies! No! Très mauvais! Grey marinated our cute meat for two days. You need to infuse. You need to create some irresistible juices. You need to sear that cute meat after stuffing it with an entire clove of garlic. You need to prepare a homemade Béarnaise sauce, two starter courses, and three finishers to accompany it. That’s right, six courses. Because we could. Because why not go out with a bang?

  After all, Great Parties are all about letting go and about creating perfect moments captured in perfect lighting while donning a black tie. There is a whole lot of serenity that comes in the form of champagne and very strong gin and tonics. And steak. Really expensive, delicious steak.

  How do you do all of this, you ask? Well, because you know that your friend Grey is excessively cultured, Kent has an (admittedly peculiar) adoration of Martha Stewart-like household preparations, Catherine has the finest clothes available in the state out in the garage, Lilly is a musical genius, and you are driving.

  And because, dammit, we were all crazy like that.

  We were desperately crazy.

  We liked it that way.

  Grey was the undisputed mastermind behind the menu.

  “Slice the pears,” Grey ordered Lilly.

  “What am I, a surgeon?” she said, her perfectly made-up eyebrow a wry question mark.

  We were all in black tie (arranged by Mom of course) but Lilly was wearing one of Mom’s many Alice in Wonderland pinafores as an apron. Mom had fetched theater-themed aprons for all— Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Everyone wore one, including Kent, who looked positively dashing as Drake from Annie.

  We had all just completed what we would dub that night as Petit Noel—though there was nothing petit about our Noel, for we went all out purchasing and making gifts for one another in far greater excess than any of us did for our families on real Noel. The living room looked like Santa’s North Pole workshop had been blown up in the middle of this suburban Detroit House of Death. This crew wasn’t going out with a bang but with a nuclear explosion, and the wrapping-paper massacre in our living room was evidence of that.

  Our New Year’s Eve version of Petit Noel had exploded beneath our glittering tree and was complete around 9 p.m., far too late to begin cooking despite the pre-preparations already in place for our six-course feast. Pears sautéed in balsamic and butter with Gorgonzola sprinkles wer
e first, and all of us were tending to our various jobs to get ready for the assembly line of tasks ahead.

  Mom lit candles and made the salad (there is no better salad maker on earth). Lilly and I assisted Grey with the homemade Béarnaise that would accompany the filet mignon we were now taking out of the marinating bags from the refrigerator, allowing the meat to get to room temperature before it was cooked. We shared oven mitts and sharp knives, moving around one another in the open kitchen in a very tipsy-on-life-at-a-wedding manner as we clinked glasses and stirred sauce.

  “I’m playing DJ,” Lilly said. “I think it’s time for some George and Ira.”

  “Great idea,” agreed Cathy from the living room. She was already vacuuming up Petit Noel in her ball gown, preparing an improvised dance floor.

  We poured cocktails as the Gershwins serenaded us from the stereo. The ladies danced in the living room before Grey’s shriek called us back to the kitchen.

  “Girls!” he cried, “I need you! Perfect full-cloves-of-garlic-needing-to-be-inserted-into-the-steak needs you!”

  We were on it.

  At last the food was perfect, the aprons hung, the table set, the candles lit, and all that remained to be done was to savor every scrap of it before midnight.

  The moment hung suspended in the air: the five of us stood around the table and stared at one another, smiling. We had really done it—out-done it, truth be told.

  “Boys,” Cathy said with a smile, looking to Grey and Kent, who promptly made their way to Cathy’s chair, pulled it out and helped sit her down in the gown as if they were experts. They did the same for Lilly and me, then took their own seats themselves.

  We lifted our champagne flutes by their stems.

  “Here’s to us!” Kent said, somehow encompassing everything in those three little words.

  “To us!” we said together.

  And with that, the feast began.

  There was the smoking of cigars (even by my mother) and of “manly pipes” received at Petit Noel, which Grey and Kent puffed away at in their matching corduroy jackets.

  There was running around barefoot in the front yard and street. And there were leftover fireworks from some Fourth of July that we had found in the laundry room. There was the throwing of an odd Israeli bottle of wine that Albert and Edna had re-gifted us into the River Rogue behind the house. There was singing (of course) and sidesplitting, migraine-inducing laughter. The music blared from a stereo that lived within the antique Italian bureau in the center of the upstairs living room.

  It was a much-needed New Year and new beginning. We were dressed in black tie and 1367 was dressed in magic.

  The open presents and dirty dishes lay in neat and not-so-neat piles, respectively. The drinks flowed as freely as our laughter. The air sang— it was all twinkling lights and rich fabrics, glorious music, full voices, champagne bubbles, and a slowly ticking clock, nearer and nearer to the appointed hour.

  We felt relieved.

  We felt powerful.

  We felt like dancing.

  So we did.

  Then the countdown began. As the clock struck its chimes, the world moved slowly, each second’s passing prolonged, as if through water, so one might better see the details of each infinitesimal millionth of a moment.

  We would continue to gather in this manner for annual Great Parties at the New Year, for years. Until every last one of us was a grown adult, with jobs and lives scattered to every corner of the planet. Someday all of this would be like a dream—one so clear and real you could just swear it had really happened, only to wake and forget by midmorning.

  Every year was a little bit different, but every year was the same—the five of us gathered to celebrate our joys and share our sorrows together.

  First, Lilly—faithful Lilly. She will live and love greatly. At the banquet of life, Lilly will return for thirds, having most likely licked her plate. Lilly will end up in Santiago, Chile, as the principle oboist with their National Orchestra. She will visit in every city you shall ever live in and you will travel and work and weep and laugh together. You will share many adventures (such as getting robbed on a night train in Italy, and Lilly teaching you music for your very first West End audition that shall become your professional debut). You will, oddly, never see the house she grew up in. But you will always be one another’s number one. No matter if you live across the planet (which you shall) no matter what the high or the low, the glittering success or terrible agony.

  Then Grey—glorious Grey, with his tender heart, talent, humor, and white-hot mind. In a few short weeks, Grey shall indeed be in Australia, beginning a new life on the other side of the world. He will become exactly the great and important Broadway designer you all know he is destined to become. You will share long talks well into the night and no one will listen with more attentiveness, nor absorb your own love with more ferocity. One day, you both end up in the very same place, holding one another’s hands as you move through your lives and parallel careers.

  And of course: Mom. The greatest lover of life you have ever—and shall ever—meet. She will never be the same. But her ability to find joy in the darkest of corners, her optimism, spirit, and genuine joy in life, shall continue to rock you to your core as you grow older. And in the days to come, the collection of days in which all of your own theatrical dreams come true, she will be there to share it—every last scrap of it—with you.

  And then Kent. His eyes say it all—he adores you. Your eyes say it in return. You have never felt such love. From where you stand you can smell his musk, and are filled instantaneously with a feeling of wonder. He will stay, for years. And he will hold you and stand by you and you will grow up together. You will give to one another and advance through this crucial time in both of your lives. Forgive yourself. And never forget him. You know it now more than ever: no one could have done it but him.

  And me . . .

  The clock had struck.

  Champagne flowed and, in the distance people, sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

  So small a moment is the ticking of a clock. One moment goes by. The present is now the past. The moment to follow, and everything, every single moment ahead, the future.

  It was many things, but most of all, it was, at last, tomorrow.

  The Morning After

  Oh God,” Kent groaned, so hungover he was blind.

  “Oh God,” replied Grey. “Even my face is curled in the fetal position.”

  They were nursing feeble bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios, pawing each O into their mouth individually, with the grace and elegance of hungover bears. The boys could not believe how magnificently, blackout drunk they had gotten last night.

  Last summer, when we were all working at Interlochen in our various crappy jobs, perhaps these two created a document entitled “The Pact of Inebriation,” inciting both of them to remain as drunk (on vintage Riojas) as (il)legally possible throughout July and August. They took it very seriously. Now? Right now they were uncertain if there was any meaningful way to measure hungover-ness on a historical level, but wondered if someone might want to call the Guinness Book.

  This was the morning of January 1, 2002.

  “If I can get more than halfway up those stairs by noon, then today counts as a win,” said Grey, the cogs of his usually nimble mind crustily stumbling along, “Good lord, I can’t even form a lucid bitchy riposte.” They were certain they had drunk more than they ever had in the past, probably more than anyone has, ever.

  “I did not so much bruise my brain as I smashed the absolute bejeezus out of it,” Kent wailed, clutching his head. “Did you dare me to chug a flower vase?”

  “No,” replied Grey, “you dared yourself. I just watched.”

  They were one step short of waking face down in a Jacuzzi in Morocco with a bunch of inexplicable bruises, an inch away from a few counts of indecent exposure screwing up their attempts at college reacceptance, one negligible level below having a mysterious tattoo.

  “I feel like H
elena Bonham Carter looks when she dresses herself,” said Grey. He was on the verge of weeping.

  Mom, Lilly, and I looked at the boys, arms crossed in amusement. We were tired, but otherwise fine (whatever “fine” means).

  It was not until that morning, beholding this carnage that was this disparate collection of people that I realized it: whom we align ourselves with is the paramount consideration of life. We must choose wisely. Despite the hangovers, here were the most uniquely remarkable people I would ever come to know, who saw their friend and her mother through the very worst days of their lives and did it with compassion, dignity, and most remarkably, humor. Kent, Grey, and Lilly would be inextricable from the narrative evermore, no matter where life took us.

  So the five of us chuckled to ourselves, handed out aspirins and glasses of water, and got on with our day. Indeed, all our days. One baby step at a time.

  Epilogue

  Idon’t know how to begin this coda.

  I wasn’t even sure if I should write this coda.

  Sometimes in life we entertain, other times we share, inform, revel, reflect. And rarely, we risk revealing a crack in the door enclosing the “other things.” The things that cannot always be seen, or held in your hand, or observed in words. The unutterables. The deeply felt.

  The loss of my father—Mike to some, Mikey to others, Papa to me— has been the defining mythology of my entire adult life.

  Sometimes my inner ocean still swells about it.

  When I think back on that time, I recall that for some of it, I was asleep.

  That’s alright.

  Perhaps that’s how it is with pain: it is like hibernation, a chrysalis of sorts forms around us while we heal. Or transform. Or both.

  That is not shameful, not weak. It is necessary.

  But I have torn away the barriers of that sleep. I am now awake.

  After all this time I have come to realize that I, just like every human being, have had many identities and “lives.” Yet all of our many identities reside at the same geographical “address,” represented somewhat feebly by our physical bodies. Cells turns over, but memories remain.