We'll Always Have Paris (15 page)

“The strike ends at different times for different destinations?” I asked. He confirmed with a nod. “What about Venice?”

“Seven,” he told me.

“Wait a minute,” the wife said, scrunching her mouth to the side unhappily. “If the strike is settled, why don’t you people get back to work?”

He shrugged. “This is Italian train strike.”

“A strike that ends in waves?” the woman from New York asked. “Who’s heard of such nonsense?”

I turned to Katie and said it looked as though we were getting another eight hours in Florence. “This is much better than being stuck in an unfamiliar place,” I said. “Let’s check our bags and spend the day in Florence.”

As we approached the baggage check area, a man pulled down a gate and hung a sign that read that, in solidarity with the train workers, they too were on strike. “Oh well, our suitcases have wheels; it won’t be too bad.”

Two blocks later, I changed my tune. “I have an idea,” I told Katie as I eyed a five-star hotel. “Follow me. No gypsies this time.”

“Ah
signora
, you need a room?” the older gentleman offered.

“We are leaving for Venice, but the train strike delayed our trip for eight hours,” I explained. “How much would you charge to leave my bags here for the day?”

“Ah yes!” he said. “Train strike. You leave bags here for day.”

“Thank you, but what is the fee for this?”

“
Bella
, no fee, you are guest of
Firenze
.”

“Right, but we’re not staying in
this
hotel,” I explained. “We are actually
leaving
.”

“I understand what you say, but you listen that I check you bags.”

“I should pay you though.”

“Pay me?!” he said, disgusted. “You are guest of
Firenze
, I no want money. I do good for you.
That
pay me.”

“Really?” I said.

“
Si
.”

“I can leave my bags here all day and you don’t want to charge me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I’d be happy to pay you.”

“Ahhh,” he sighed. “
Americana
, you are guest of
Firenze
. I do good for you. You no pay me; you only say ‘
grazie
.’”

“I just say ‘
grazie
’?”

“
Si, bella
.” He smiled as if gently coaxing a child into the sea. I could imagine him at the beach, standing waist-high in the water, holding out his arms for his baby granddaughter.
It’s okay, you safe with Papa.

My fingers unfurled from around my suitcase handle. “Okay,” I said, releasing the bag. “Katie, give this nice man your suitcase.”

He wrote our names on a tag he attached to the bags and rolled them into a room in the lobby. “
Ciao, belle
, I see you when you train go. Enjoy today in
Firenze
.”

“No money?”

“
Mama
mia!
”

I stood for a moment and inhaled deeply. Okay. “
Grazie
,” I said.

“
Si, buona, molto buona
,” he said. “Now go have nice day in
Firenze
.”

By the time our train reached Venice, it was eleven at night. The sky was the color of ink, blending seamlessly with the water. Spots of streetlamp light reflected on the still waters of the Grand Canal.

I looked at my notes and saw we could catch a
vaporetto
, a waterbus, to San Marco Square, then walk five blocks to our hotel. But with the Italian transit system on strike, nothing would go as planned.

Small clusters of passengers from the train were gathered around an American woman barking instructions. “If you can understand the words I am saying, come here and we will organize taxis,” she said.

Obediently, we joined the others gathered in a circle around the woman.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to a fellow traveler.

“The
vaporettos
are on strike till midnight,” a man said, not looking away from our fearless leader.

She continued, “All people who need to go to San Marco Square, stand here.” Katie and I joined this group. “Where are you people going?” the woman asked another family. They answered and she placed them in a different group.

“Do you work for the tourism commission?” I asked her, grateful that someone was in charge.

“I’m from L.A.,” she said, dismissing the question. “You’re in the San Marco Square group,” Hollywood told me. “Is that where you want to be?”

I nodded my head to confirm.

“Good, we’ll chat later. Right now, I’ve got thirty people I need to get into taxis.”

She
is
awesome
, Katie mouthed before yawning.

As we began walking onto the dock, a boat pulled in. The child who was asleep on my shoulder just a half hour earlier sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, arms spread wide with a maniacal smile. “Let me get this straight,” Katie began hopefully. “The taxis are boats?”

“Yes, and so are the buses. The only way to get around Venice is by boat.”

She squealed, jolting the other weary travelers. “Venice is the best city in the world!” The others smiled patiently at the excitement of this child.

As the boat began gliding over the canal, I tried to borrow some of Katie’s joie de vivre and think of a boat ride as the thrill of a lifetime. I looked down at the black water moving below, but I lost my balance and grabbed the side of the small boat, realizing that I was one sharp turn away from being shark bait. Or piranha bait. Or whatever sharp-toothed killer inhabited the waters of Venetian canals. “Katie, put your hands down. This isn’t a roller coaster,” I advised her.

“It’s so much better!”

Ten minutes later, we were checking in to our hotel, A Tribute to Music, a small building discreetly tucked into the bank of the Grand Canal. As we came through the doors, the concierge sang, “Ah,
belle
, you make it! So, so late; I pray for you.” He left the registration desk to greet us, his shoes clacking against the high gloss marble floors until he reached the red rug. The lobby was wallpapered ivory and gold; ornate mirrors hung beside golden angels.

“There was a train strike,” I explained.

“
Si
, I know the strike,” he said, nodding. “I help you with your bags. You are on the top floor. We walk.”

“Can we take the elevator?” I asked, yawning for effect.

“No elevator,” he said as he began rolling our bags toward the wide stairwell. “It is short steps.”

As Katie and I made it through the lobby and up the stairs, we admired the musical theme. Framed records, concert posters, and decorative instruments were mounted to the walls. On the landing of the second floor sat a dark wood baby grand piano with small flowers painted on it. I imagined the artist adorning it as I remembered the last time I thought about someone taking a paintbrush to a piano.

***

In the spring of my senior year in high school, my father and I had dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant, the one with the sloped floor and combative staff. After the waitress took our order, my father fidgeted with a daisy in the wine bottle on the table and told me that Stella was pregnant again.

“I didn’t realize you guys were…back together,” I said.

A few months earlier, my father had found an apartment in his building for Stella and six-year-old Leo. They would rent an apartment on the first floor while my father remained in his place on the sixth. As my father described it, he wanted to share the same roof, but not the same walls.

Stella had stopped painting and found a new art form, melting plastic into oddly shaped molds she created. She was now a devout believer in Christian Science and would never trust physicians or pharmaceuticals with the care of her body. But apparently toxic fumes from burning plastic were no problem. If the place accidentally caught fire, it was God’s will. Stella still wore plain white robes she fashioned from bed sheets, but grew out her hair and braided it Caribbean style. She adopted a Chihuahua she called Spirit and soon got him a playmate in the form of a blue parakeet that miraculously stayed perched atop the dog’s back despite his bouncy gait. When neighbors complained about the noise from Leo and the animals, Stella carpeted the place with wall-to-wall sleeping bags she bought at thrift stores.

“It was one night,” my father said, inhaling a cigarette and then coughing.

“And she’s keeping it?” I asked.

“What can you do?” my father asked with a shrug.

The waitress delivered our drinks. My father seemed unfazed by his own news, but perhaps it was because he had already absorbed the shock. When we were alone again, I whispered, “Haven’t you ever heard of birth control?”

“I always considered myself a lucky guy,” he shrugged.

“Why?”

He said nothing.

“Daddy, you should be the one telling
me
about birth control. I’m seventeen; you’re the grown-up!”

“You’re not having sex, are you?” He swatted the air to signal that, on second thought, he didn’t want the answer.

“With all the weed you two smoke, I’m surprised your sperm had the energy to make it to Stella’s fried eggs,” I snapped.

My father exhaled his cigarette. “Another thing, the doctor said he wants to run some tests.”

“Oh my God, you can’t let her go through with it if there’s something wrong with the baby. I don’t mean to sound cruel, but neither of you are good enough parents to raise a sick child.” I immediately regretted the comment. “I mean, you’re a great dad to me, but I’ve got Mom for the real stuff. What I mean is that you travel a lot and that leaves Leo and this new baby alone with Stella. Leo just got suspended from first grade for imitating a gorilla during his class photo. And he’s healthy.”

“The baby will be fine,” my father said.

“That remains to be seen.”

“The tests are for me,” my father said, stubbing out his cigarette.

“What kind of tests do they need to run on you?”

“The kind of tests he can bill my insurance for,” my father dismissed. “I’ve had this bronchitis for a few months and my doctor wants to test for cancer. It’s nothing to worry about, just routine testing to lubricate the medical machinery with insurance money.”

“They think you have cancer?! Why are you still smoking?”

“JJ, I am positive I don’t have cancer. I’m just telling you because I’ve been thinking. If I have cancer, I’m going to marry Stella so she and the kid…
kids
can get my Social Security benefits if I die.”

“So you
do
think it’s possible?” I asked.

“It’s a contingency plan, but I’ll tell you what’s more likely to happen: I’ll have cancer, marry her, then go into remission and be stuck with her forever.” He laughed. “That’d serve me right, wouldn’t it?”

He looked at my shocked expression and assured me that everything was going to be okay. “Come on, look at me,” he said. “Do I look like someone with cancer?”

He was right; he looked fine. He said doctors were always trying to find excuses to run expensive tests, but his physician was a good guy so he was going along for the ride. My father laughed and said he was really in it for the post-biopsy painkillers.

“Come on, JJ, don’t look so serious,” my father said. “A fortune-teller once told me I would die at eighty-six making love to a beautiful woman. That’s her story and I’m sticking to it.”

I reminded myself to breathe. I told myself to stop staring at him and take a bite of food or make some sort of move toward normalcy.

“Have I ever let you down, JJ?”

I shook my head.

“Then trust me,” he said. “This is a case of the doctor who cried cancer.”

He was dead twenty months later.

***

Eight weeks before he died, I sat with my father as he rested in his rocking chair, cheeks hollowed and his head bald. I was on winter break from college, and Stella had taken Leo and Baby Thor to visit her parents.

My father had lost so much weight from cancer treatments that he looked like a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The cartilage in his jaw had eroded, causing his face, from the bottom lip down, to shift. Mentally, though, nothing had changed. He told stories, albeit with some struggle, and held court as I looked out of his apartment window and noticed the first snow of winter glittering in the moonlight.

“So I come home from chemo last week and Stella’s painted the entire place white,” he began. He sounded like Rodney Dangerfield beginning a routine.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask about this,” I said, gesturing to our surroundings. Stella, now his wife and full-time caregiver, had painted the walls stark white with stenciled gold Bible passages in the style of the
Star
Wars
opening. All of the furniture had been painted white and the fabrics reupholstered in white. Even the hardwood floors were painted white. The only thing that remained dark was my father’s piano.

“Last week I get home from chemo and Stella is painting everything white, so I say to her, ‘Am I dead? Is this heaven?’ She tells me she thought the white would be soothing. I let her know that being able to breathe would be better. I have lung cancer, and she’s spreading noxious fumes over every surface. So guess what she says?”

“I…I’m not sure,” I said, uncertain of how to respond.

“She says, ‘Hang out for a little while longer so I can paint the piano.’ Can you believe it? She wanted to paint my piano.”

My father went on to tell Stella that she could paint the piano when he died. “I said, ‘I’ll be dead soon and you can paint the piano then.’” He laughed, though I wondered how he could joke about imminent death. I also laughed, half nervously and half obligatorily.

I told him what I instinctively knew he needed to hear. “I don’t know anyone else who could see the humor in this situation.”

“I’ve still got it, don’t I? My lungs have surrendered to the war I waged against them, but my mind is still intact, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

When he walked me to the elevator that night, we looked at each other and hugged longer than we ever had before. The elevator arrived with two people already inside. “Let it go,” my father instructed as I looked at the open door. As I let the door slide closed, the passengers sighed, annoyed that their ride to the lobby had been delayed.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“Back to college?”

“Don’t go anywhere. Just hang out with me for these last few weeks.”

I gulped. Six months earlier, I couldn’t wait to return to college, but now it all seemed so pointless. Soon my father would be dead, and in a hundred years, everyone I knew and loved would be gone anyway.

I had already asked my mother if I could skip the upcoming semester, but she would not allow it. There was no callousness in her decision. She knew there was nothing for a nineteen-year-old to gain from sitting in a cramped apartment in Brooklyn watching her father suffer through his final days of life. She also knew that I would likely remain shell-shocked for months, apply for a job at a grocery store near his apartment, and never return to college.

“I have to go,” I told my father. In the privacy of my thoughts, I shouted,
You
stay! Try Laetrile in Mexico. Go to that witch doctor Mom knows.
But the guilt of feeling anger at a dying man proved to be too much. I swallowed hard and apologized that I couldn’t fulfill his dying wish. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”

“So am I, JJ. I’m sorry that I have to go too.”

Instead of hugging me again, he held my hands tight. “You know, this cancer thing really takes a bad rap,” he said, his eyes glazed with tears. “If I were hit by a bus, we wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye. It’s better that we’re not caught off guard by death. A lot of people aren’t so lucky.” He forced a smile and pulled me in for a final hug. Afterward, I stepped into the elevator, and as the door slid across him like a theater curtain closing shut, he took a bow. That was the last time I saw him.

Two months later, I stood in my dorm room at the University of Michigan and called my father as I had nearly every day since my return to school. It was so easy to talk to him by phone because I could not see the physical toll of his degeneration. I told him about boyfriends, classes, and parties. He filled me in on his sons and Stella’s latest craziness. I had almost forgotten he was sick until my roommate gave me a phone message. “Your father called,” she said, choking back tears. “His voice sounds really, really bad.”