Cooking as Fast as I Can (33 page)

Thatcher is our third born and resembles Zoran to a scary degree (meaning he also looks just like Jen), with the same handsome, well-proportioned features and sly smile. He's our resident wild man, who hates wearing shoes, shirts, or underwear. He was ahead of the crowd in developing his small motor skills, and he's good with his hands, a Lego-assembling genius. He's also got a big vocabulary, and for this reason is hugely entertaining. He uses his big words to try to reason and negotiate.

Nash, the baby of the family, is only three months younger, and Thatcher relates to him as if he were his twin. If he sees Nash is sad about something he'll try to cheer him up by saying, “But look at it this way!” or, “But look, this is why it's going to be so cool!”

Maybe it's always the role of the youngest, but Nash is a rascal. He's fantastically athletic, took to scooter riding, bike riding, and even surfing like he was born to it. He's the kind of boy who will be attracted to cliff diving as a profession. Like Zoran, he's a whiz at soccer, but he also possesses a huge imagination, and loves to play at sword fighting. (All the boys share a passion for this, and I had to get up to speed on the many types of fake blades.) We keep a well-stocked costume drawer, and some days, when Nash has disappeared into his world, he'll change costumes five times a day.

It was late April when my parents arrived in California to see their beloved grandchildren. I was coming apart. I'd stopped seeing Robin for therapy about six months after I began at Postino and hadn't seen anyone else since. I started seeing a new therapist, Judith. She was soft-spoken and very calm, with reddish-brown hair and a maternal quality to which I responded. As is usually the case with very good therapists, I didn't know much about her. Once she told me she loved to swim. We focused on issues stemming from my childhood abuse, which had been stirred up with the birth of my own children. I was beginning to exhibit signs of PTSD. Nightmares set in the house in Texarkana. Flashbacks to that day in the bathroom, seeing my dad poke his head through the door with that look of disgust, the likes of which I'd never seen before or since.

As our children grew, and Zoran and Caje, the two older boys, were starting to venture out in the world, going to preschool and play dates, I became obsessed with the idea that someone out there was abusing them. I'd begun to suffer panic attacks where I'd break into a sweat and start shaking and crying.

There's no telling what might trigger an attack. One time, one of the little guys was having a bad morning. When I left the house he was sobbing uncontrollably because he didn't like the shorts or socks or something he was wearing. A typical morning, nothing alarming.

But later that day I was driving and suddenly the image of him sobbing in anguish arose in my mind, and before I could remind myself that he'd been having a fit over some wardrobe issue, I connected his pain to my fear of someone hurting him, then hurting any of the boys. The terror bloomed in my
mind until I started crying. My heart was pounding so hard, my hands shaking so badly, I was forced to pull over.

During the first or second session with Judith, I mentioned that my parents were going to be in town. She knew I had some unresolved issues with them, how after the abuse had been discovered, it was never spoken of again. She wondered whether they would want to come in for a session.

Since the babies had been born and Jennifer and I hit the skids, I'd called my mom sometimes several times a week, crying, complaining, and asking her advice. From hotel rooms in Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, and New Orleans I would call her from my fetal position atop the six-hundred-thread-count duvet. She was fully up to speed on my despairing, self-medicating, minibar-raiding ways; on Jennifer's newfound devotion to yoga and head shaving. She knew about the exhausting arguments, the brutal silence and lazy, contemptuous sniping. She'd listened for hours. And she'd forgiven us for skipping Christmas because she possessed more empathy than a monastery full of monks.

When I asked her if she and Dad were up to joining me in therapy she said yes without a moment's hesitation. She knew that I'd never fully processed the abuse, that so much of my anxiety, my fierce determination to prove myself long after there was nothing left to prove, was born of that trauma. She felt, I think, some guilt. I wasn't the only one who had lived with it for forty years.

My mom and dad sat together on the couch in Judith's office. The room was bright in the afternoon sun, and I noticed, really noticed, maybe for the first time, how they'd aged. I smiled to myself, remembering when I returned from my internships in France, now a little over fifteen years ago, and I'd thought a little graying at the temples and bad posture
signified the beginning of old age. They were in their seventies now. My mom was still strong and hardy, with a thick head of cropped, gray-turning-white hair and a confident, white-toothed smile. My dad was stooped, softer, more vulnerable. He'd survived his cancer but it had taken a lot out of him.

Judith thanked them for coming, but her primary role was as witness. We cried easily, all of us. My mom, prepared as always, fished a packet of Kleenex from her purse. They reminded me of a few things: I hadn't known how old AH was, or how aghast and ashamed his parents had been. I told them that it had happened more than once. My dad struggled to explain his own actions, and the sheer effort he made broke my heart.

“I was just shocked,” he said, searching for words. “I didn't know what to do. Obviously, I handled it badly.”

He was an honest, old-fashioned gentleman, a modest man. He hadn't abandoned me. He was just stunned, and human, and victim of his own temperament, as we all are.

After we learned that his cancer had returned, something curious happened. Out of the blue, as though summoned by the universe to try to make amends, AH, having heard of my dad's plight, turned up on their doorstep at Swan Lake Drive. My mom offered him some coffee and they sat at the kitchen table with the floral tablecloth. He was a man in his fifties now, with a wife or ex-wife, I can't remember, a whole life lived. He said he was there to check on my dad, but my parents weren't having any polite southern time-passing chitchat.

They threw down. Reported on the therapy session, told him what a blow to our family his beastly behavior had been, how my life—even
though it looked so good from the outside—had been scarred by his abuse. They didn't mince words.

This middle-aged man, who had probably all but forgotten his crimes, apologized so hard he broke a sweat. Claimed he was full of shame and regret. My mom reminded him he easily could have served time.

It didn't matter to me what excuses he had. What touched me and partially healed me was that my parents, without any urging on my part, had called him to task. This couldn't have been easy for them. They are not the kind of people who enjoy confrontations, but they loved me enough to try to make it right.

On July 9, my parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary and I was determined to throw them a party they'd never forget. I wanted to have the biggest anniversary party Jackson, Mississippi, had ever seen. I wanted to invite everyone who'd ever been touched by their goodness and grace: my dad's former students and fellow teachers at Wingfield High, college friends from Millsap, and whatever old pals were still around from his days managing the Shamrock Inn. My mom's comrades in nursing, her nursing students, and leagues of grateful patients at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, her professors, advisers, and dorm roommates at the University of Alabama when she was there getting her PhD. All the crazy people who used to show up at our house for Thanksgiving. All my brothers and my friends who used to hang out drinking beer in the game room. The neighbors who put up with the Cora kids water-skiing around Swan Lake, flooding their lakeside lawns with our rooster tails. And, of course, their own tribe of close friends. It should tell you a
lot that they had more friends, good friends, than anyone I've ever known.

But my dad made it clear, through my mom, that he didn't want it. He was tired. Or, he knew in his bones it would be his last hurrah, and only wanted to be surrounded by his dearest friends and most cherished family. My mom should have realized something was up when I gave in without a fight.

I had other plans.

“Packages will arrive at the house,” I told my mom. “
Do not open anything until the party
.”

The day of the party the neighbors called my mom on her cell phone. The local florist had flowers for Spiro and Virginia Lee Cora, and didn't want to leave them on the front porch in the punishing July heat. I asked the neighbors if they could just take them, and they said they didn't have enough room for six dozen red roses.

Six dozen red roses, sent by Oprah. I had asked her for a signed picture for my parents for their fiftieth, and she'd also thought to send the roses. I was stunned with gratitude. I hadn't known that my mother, my dying father, and I needed such a grand gesture of kindness, but apparently we did, and I will always be grateful to Oprah for knowing just the right thing to do.

Barbra Streisand was one of my mom's favorites; she was just as nice as could be when I called her up and asked her to autograph a picture for my parents.

Steve Azar, a big country singer who hails from my dad's hometown of Greenville, recorded a special version of my dad's favorite song, “Ring of Fire,” dedicated to them on their anniversary.

Duff Goldman, host of Food Network's
Ace of Cakes
and also an accomplished illustrator, drew a portrait of my dad and sent it along.
Ace of Cakes
was one of my dad's favorite shows (after mine, he was always careful to say).

The Obamas sent a letter wishing them happy anniversary, ending their message with
We know how important love is
.

Through the Dream Foundation, a charity based in Santa Barbara that “makes dreams come true” for adults facing life-threatening illnesses, I arranged for a phone conversation between my dad and his favorite orator, Garrison Keillor.