Hollywood Animal (116 page)
Authors: Joe Eszterhas
“Thank you,” he said, “but raise it in yours. I can tell you now that when you told us you’d stop smoking and drinking, none of us believed you.”
· · ·
I rubbed Naomi’s feet and sang “Volare” for her. I sounded like a punk rocker imitating a karaoke-bar drunk imitating Johnny Cash. I sounded like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I sounded like Robert Evans!
To celebrate my second anniversary, we took the boys to an Amish restaurant where we ate country-fried chicken, drank lemonade, and watched the horse-and-buggies go by.
I watched an old Amish man in a straw hat walking to his buggy and when he got there he turned and looked right at me and smiled.
He looked just like my father.
I froze and he got into the buggy.
I turned away and there was Luke smiling and looking at me with my father’s slate-blue eyes.
I smiled back at Luke, ruffled his hair, and kissed his eyes.
“Why is Dada crying?” Joey asked.
“Allergies,” Naomi said.
We all went to the cemetery a week later, stood at my father’s and mother’s graves, and said the Lord’s Prayer. Even Luke jibber-jabbered along.
Then we stood there quietly for a long moment and I said in Hungarian to my father: “I love you, Pop.”
And: “Thanks for everything, Pop.”
And: “I forgive you, Pop.”
And: “I
think
.”
Driving away from the cemetery, I thought: You don’t belong here anyway, Pop, in the America that I love. You belong in that Jew-hating old country that you loved so much.
The next day I called the consulate of Hungary and asked them what it took to disinter a body here and send it to Hungary for reburial.
The fact that I was going to send my father’s body back to Hungary and doing what he wanted me to do … didn’t mean that
blood is thicker than spilled blood
.
But maybe it meant that love is more powerful than hate.
In my head I heard Father John Mundweil say to me: “You’re doing it because you love him and because you finally forgave him. Enough already! Forget about ambiguity! This isn’t one of your unsatisfying movie endings!”
Wherever my father was, he’d be with us in Luke’s slate-blue eyes. At the age of two, Luke was squat—with a fleshy torso and a bowling ball head. Naomi called him “Steffen” sometimes and he loved
hoadog
.
· · ·
Good morning, God. Praise the Lord!
And hearing me say that, some will agree with Mark Twain that God is the last refuge of scoundrels.
My response is that many critics referred to Twain as “the devil’s apprentice” and “the devil’s disciple.”
And what can the devil possibly know about God?
Or was Twain, too, talking about himself?
Ke sera sera, vatever vill be vill be!
my father sang to himself sometimes.
Life is strange!
… our wedding invitation said …
Life is amazing!
Thank you to
Sonny Mehta
Ed Victor
Peter Gethers
Paul Bogaards
Jeremy Baka
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409044574
Published by Hutchinson in 2004
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Copyright © Joe Eszterhas, 2004
Joe Eszterhas has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004
Hutchinson
The Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 09 180004 8 (Hardback)
ISBN 0 09 180009 9 (Trade Paperback)