We'll Always Have Paris (16 page)

On the night of my final call, the phone rang about six times before Stella answered. When I asked her to put my father on the line, there was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, she spoke. “I can’t do that.”

“Is he sleeping?” I asked.

“He’s resting.”

“
Resting?
What do you mean? Is he…did he die?”

“I don’t like that word,” she said serenely.

“Stella!” I shouted. “Yes or no, is my father alive?”

“No.”

I collapsed to the ground, clutching the phone receiver, the cord stretched to its limit. Sitting on the floor, curled against my closet door, I asked when my father had passed away.

“This morning,” Stella said.

“This
morning
? Stella, it’s six at night. When did he die?”

“Around ten.”

“My father died
eight
hours
ago
? Why didn’t you call? Do my aunts know? Does my mother know?”

“I know. You know.”

“No one else knows? Is he…is he still…he’s not in the apartment still, is he?”

“Yes, he’s sitting in his rocking chair with the most glorious smile on his face,” Stella told me.

“He’s still in the rocking chair?”

“With the most glorious—”

“Okay, got it. I can’t believe you left him sitting dead in a rocking chair for eight hours.”

“I really don’t like that word,” Stella said. “His spirit has moved on.” The dog barked, recognizing its name.

“What are you doing?” My question was answered with silence. “Stella, are you still there?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“What are you doing? What have you been doing all day?”

“Painting the piano,” she said.

***

Our hotel room overlooked the Grand Canal and came with a balcony large enough to comfortably seat four people at the wrought iron table. “Can I sleep out here?” Katie asked as soon as she saw it.

“Absolutely not,” I replied. “You’ll roll off the side.”

“There’s a four-foot railing,” she reminded me, then shook it to show how sturdy it was. Pointing to the eight-inch tile lip, Katie assured me, “I couldn’t jump off this balcony, much less
roll
off it.” In the end, she won me over with persistent reason.

The following morning, she giddily regaled me with reports of a cruise ship blowing its horn at seven in the morning and birds squawking overhead as if to beckon her to wake “up, up, up!”

As we went downstairs for breakfast, Katie and I passed the painted piano again. “You’re not going to make me practice, are you?” Katie asked as she caught me looking at it a moment too long.

I smiled and assured her she had nothing to worry about. “I was just admiring the artist’s work.”

“Good,” Katie said brightly. “Let’s see what Italy has in store for us today.”

Venice was the brightest city I’d ever been to, partly because the ever-present water reflected the sun all day. And partly because none of the buildings were taller than four stories so the blue sky spread above us like a circus tent. Venetians were experts at accenting the natural aquatic tones with cerulean tile and colorful Murano glass.

Katie suggested we buy a
vaporetto
pass and hop off and explore whenever something looked interesting. We led each other down the winding alleys of stone buildings punctuated by small piazzas with churches, galleries, and pastry shops.

Katie remained enamored with the Venetian mode of transit, but soon found something she adored even more: birds. Birds were everywhere, especially in San Marco Square where, if people stood as still as a statue, pigeons would land on them.

Every day included a visit to San Marco Square because it was the focal point of the city. The large piazza was the site of the ancient, multi-domed basilica with a majestic blend of Byzantine, western European, and Islamic architecture. It was also the place to go to people-watch, grab a cup of coffee, or find an Internet café.

We attended free opera, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, and blew through our arts pass until we had nothing left to do but hang out at the beach. While we floated in neck-high water at Lido Beach, dark clouds moved in quickly and rain became hail within minutes. We raced out of the water and toward our towels, and Katie gasped as coin-size snowballs hit her. “What the heck is this?”

“Cover your head,” I warned as we continued running from the beach and toward the
vaporetto
stop. “It’s called hail.”

“Is it just in Italy?”

“No, we’ve got hail back home too,” I told her as ice pelted us.

“It hurts,” Katie said. I pulled her into a doorway, and we watched people running by us as if in an apocalyptic movie. Within a few minutes, our film transformed into a Fellini flick when an Italian man sauntered down the street singing that he had umbrellas for sale. People rushed past him, tossing money and grabbing their shields, yet the man remained unflappable, treating every transaction as if he were offering gelato to a toddler. He hadn’t a care in the world, and everyone around him had gone mad.

I purchased two umbrellas and hail nailed me several times. “
Grazie, signora
,” the man said, smiling broadly. “You have the most beautiful day.”

“He seems happy,” I said to Katie as the man walked away.

“What’s not to be happy about?” Katie said with a shrug. “An umbrella salesman in a hailstorm. Life is good.”

We made it to the
vaporetto
station a half hour later and squeezed on with other disappointed beach-goers on Lido Island. Passengers huddled inside the crowded waterbus as hail fell onto the deck like a meteor storm.

The hail stopped as abruptly as if someone had flipped a switch. Within a minute, the grey clouds pulled back like curtains and made way for a cluster of fresh white clouds backlit by sunshine. I’d never seen a sky that was both golden and gray, but the effect was magical. The cloud was rimmed in gold, and streams of light shot from behind it as if something otherworldly were occurring. A professional photographer could have snapped some great shots and sold them to Hallmark for religious greeting cards.

“Can we get hot chocolate?” Katie asked. “All I want to do is dry off, sit on our balcony, have a hot chocolate, and watch the boats go by.”

After several failed attempts to find hot chocolate, someone recommended we try the bar next to our hotel. It seemed odd that no restaurants offered this drink, but we figured, when in Venice, we would do as they said. Katie and I walked into the Cheers-style pub complete with a cast of characters much like the ones from the sitcom. Norm looked up from his station at the bar while Sam wiped down the countertops. “Have a seat,” the bartender said.

“Thanks, we just want to get a hot chocolate to go, please.”

Moments later, Sam appeared with a mug of hot chocolate and placed it on a table in front of Katie. I thanked him, but reminded him we’d asked for it to go.

“
To
go?
”

“Carry out,” I clarified. “You know, in a paper cup to take with us.”

He seemed genuinely offended that I would treat his drink like a common coffee from Starbucks. “No, you sit and drink here.”

“In a bar?” Katie said. “I’m eleven.”

Glancing back at the bartender, I told him we wanted to take the hot chocolate with us.

He scoffed. “In a cup made of paper?”

“Or Styrofoam, whatever you’ve got.”

“I only have real cups,” he sniffed. “You sit.”

I looked at Katie, soaked from seawater and rain, and knew she would quietly accept this bartender’s demand. I also understood her heart was set on her original plan. On one hand, it is important for children to understand that they can’t get everything they want. On the other, Katie was hardly at risk for becoming a spoiled teen. In fact, I sometimes worried she was so easy-going that she might not assert herself and advocate for her needs. The battle of the hot chocolate seemed so trivial and yet there was something compelling for each of us. For Katie, it was creating the perfect setting to enjoy her post-hailstorm drink. For me, it was showing my daughter that what she wanted was important, and that sometimes it is okay to push back a bit.

I mustered my courage and told Sam that I was going to take the hot chocolate to our hotel and return with his mug in an hour. “No, she drink here.”

Katie watched, wide-eyed. I saw her open her mouth to tell me it was okay, she’d drink the hot chocolate at the bar. I placed my hand on her shoulder to interrupt. “No, we’re going back to our hotel. We’re at the hotel right there. I promise I’ll come back with your cup.”

“No, you never come back,” he said walking towards us. “You steal my cup. Everybody steal, steal, steal from
taverna
.”

Backing up toward the door, I assured him we would return his cup. “Let me restore your faith in humanity. I promise you I will be back in an hour. I didn’t travel seven thousand miles to steal a mug.”

“If you don’t come back, you are thief!” He turned his head and peered at Katie. “You mama is thief if she don’t come back!”

“I promise you will have this cup back within an hour,” I said, slowly backing toward the door.

As the daylight hit us, Katie looked at me in shock. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I’m going to return it to him as soon as you’re finished. But don’t rush. When we get upstairs, really enjoy the hot chocolate.”

I knew that Americans have a reputation for having a sense of entitlement, and I struggled to stay on the right line while still making sure Katie and I had the best experience. Did she need to have her hot chocolate on the balcony? No. And had I made some missteps during our travels? Yes. Yet I could not imagine making another choice as I watched her sitting on the balcony against a backdrop of steel-colored clouds illuminated by the early evening sun. Katie closed her eyes and began sipping her hot chocolate. Birds squawked overhead and tourists chattered below. “Thank you, Mommy,” Katie said. “I would’ve drunk it there, but it’s better here.”

“Do you think that guy is going to drop dead from shock when we actually return the mug?” I asked Katie.

“
Mama
mia!
” Katie said, imitating Sam. “I cannot believe it, she no steal a my precious mug!”

I joined. “She even clean it for me! People, they are a good, after all.”

Still sitting on our balcony, I asked Katie, “You know what the best part of Italy has been so far?” She peered over her drink, her brows rising to coax me to continue. “Watching you drink that hot chocolate.”

***

“There’s no greater pleasure than watching your child enjoying food that you provided,” my father told me as we sat at Long John Silver’s near Merrick. We had driven to Long Island for my Aunt Rita and Uncle Arnold’s surprise anniversary party but were both too hungry to wait another two hours until dinner would be served.

“Yeah?” I asked, crunching a fried shrimp.

“You probably don’t get it at thirteen, but one day you’ll have a child and she’ll eat a shrimp and you’ll know exactly what I mean.”

“I understand what you mean,” I insisted, though it wasn’t quite true.

“Figures you would,” my father said, dragging a shrimp through tartar sauce. “You’re the only person who really gets me.”

I basked in my father’s appreciation of his complexity but soon remembered I really had no idea what he meant. I was having trouble grasping basic algebra in school. My father’s existential crisis was beyond me, but I dared not let on for fear of disappointing him. If the one person he thought truly understood him really didn’t, where would that leave him?

“Is that why you and Mom got divorced?” I asked. “Because she didn’t understand you?”

“What?”

“Aunt Rita and Uncle Arnold have been married twenty-five years. Is that because they understand each other and you and Mom don’t?”

“Maybe,” he said, sipping his Coke. He lit a smoke. “All marriages have a shelf life. Carol and I had six years of understanding each other well enough to be happy. Then we understood too much.”

I nodded as if this made perfect sense, but my parents actually seemed to understand and accept each other just fine. It was tough to imagine why they had divorced, though it was more difficult to picture them married. Years earlier, I stumbled across their wedding album buried deep in my mother’s closet. On the cover was a black-and-white photograph of the two holding hands, running down the steps of a church, their mouths agape in laughter. My mother’s veil and hair were in motion; specs of rice blurred in flight. When my mother found me looking at the photograph, she sat next to me. “We look so young.”

“You and Daddy were
married
?” I asked, the notion seeming absurd.

“You didn’t know that?”

“I thought you were just friends.”

“Now we’re just friends,” my mother explained. “But let me tell you, we wouldn’t have been if we had stayed married one more day.”

On the afternoon my father picked me up for my aunt and uncle’s anniversary party, my mother asked if she could get a ride to a wedding she was attending at the Carlyle Hotel near Central Park. She wore a form-fitting silk and sequined burgundy cocktail dress with heels that would be featured in the following month’s
Vanity
Fair
magazine. My mother brought her dress to her favorite hat shop for a perfect topper. When the milliner could not find the pillbox he envisioned for the outfit, he made one.

“No problem, Carol,” my father replied before asking for some Perrier water to pour in his car radiator. “That’s some get-up you’re wearing.”

As we neared the Carlyle, my mother spotted an army of limousines parked in front of the five-star hotel. Bentleys and Rolls Royces outnumbered the black stretch limos, none of which looked as though they’d ever seen a prom night. “You can drop me off on the corner,” my mother said.

“The corner?” my father asked.

“Yes, the corner will be fine,” my mother said as her throat tightened.

“I’m your chauffeur, not your pimp. I’m not dropping you off on a street corner; I’ll take you to the door,” he replied.