We'll Always Have Paris (18 page)

My father sighed, hoping his fuse hadn’t been too short. “Look, radiation feels like someone is putting out cigarettes all over my arms. Chemo makes me feel like the time I took off my gas mask in boot camp. Then I come home and vomit blood. One day soon, all of this will kill me. I am never going to see you graduate college, I’ll never walk you down the aisle, and I’ll never know your children, so asking how I feel isn’t really a conversation I want to get into.” He looked at me to gauge my reaction, which I quickly switched from horror to neutral. He lightened his delivery. “It would give me great pleasure to spend my remaining time with you talking about all the beautiful things in life. Cancer is boring the shit out of me.”

A long silence hung in the air. I realized I wasn’t one of those emotionally sturdy people who could hold it together during the tough spots, then go home and fall apart. There was no stepping on and off stage. Compartmentalization was a gift I did not possess. I was going to have to shut down completely so I could give my father what he needed.

I could practically hear the heavy creaking of each series of stage lights turning off, until the theater was completely dark.

“What sports season is this?” I managed.

“That’s my girl,” he said.

Aunt Rita returned, this time with a plate of macaroons, my father’s favorite.

“It’s baseball season, and I think the Brooklyn Dodgers have a real shot at the World Series this year,” he said.

“They left us in 1960, Shelly,” my aunt reminded him.

“It was fifty-seven and I’m making a point. You didn’t hear the first part of the conversation, so you don’t know what we’re talking about.”

She softened, remembering his condition. “I’m sorry, what was your point?”

If my father were healthy, his sister would have shot something back. With cancer, she pitied him and backed off.

“My point is that sometimes the real story sucks and you need to stick with the version that’s going to make you happy.”

***

Katie and I explored the museums and historic sites of Madrid, always gravitating back to Plaza Mayor to watch its street performers in the evening. The central plaza in the city, the courtyard walls were the color of sun-baked brick and eggnog. One wall was adorned with painted angels positioned between windows. At the center stood a bronze statue of King Philip III on his horse.

A chubby man played Beatles songs on the vibraphone, fluidly moving across the keys with two mallets in each hand. In another corner of the plaza, a guitar trio strummed fiery Flamenco tunes. Our favorite performer, however, was the baby panhandler. The character was half human, half doll, created by a man cutting a hole through a baby stroller and poking his head through it. His face was painted mime-white, and he wore a frilly pink baby bonnet. He fashioned an infant body from a doll and placed it under his real head. What defined his persona, however, was the kazoo-like gadget placed in his throat, which made him sound like he had a voice box used by larynx cancer patients. In perfect English, the baby whined, “Give me money. I need money.” Katie raised her eyebrows with horrified curiosity.

“Should we give it money?” she asked.

Encouraged by Katie’s inquiry, the baby began wailing, “Give me the money! Give it to me now. Whaaaaaa!”

“I feel like I’m being mugged by a munchkin,” I whispered.

The baby apparently had bionic hearing and began whining, “Stick ’em up and give me your money.” When Katie dropped a euro in the tip jar, the baby began singing that he liked money to the tune of Reel to Real’s “I Like to Move It.”

“This is so freaky I can’t stop watching,” Katie whispered, though not softly enough. The baby’s next verse was about how he is so freaky, freaky.

We ventured out of Madrid on a half-hour train ride for a visit to see the rolling hills of Toledo that inspired El Greco in the late sixteenth century. Katie and I had seen some of his stormy landscape series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and online, but after seeing the actual town, we concluded that the Spanish artist either painted exclusively during the rainy season or was severely depressed. In our eyes, Toledo was charming and bright. As we walked through the precariously slender streets, Katie and I imagined El Greco stepping across the cobblestones, down the path to his studio nestled at the bottom of a hill. This site was now converted to an El Greco museum, which housed Biblical scenes, self-portraits, and Toledo landscapes. Our museum guide mentioned that the artist sometimes inserted himself into the paintings, which sparked Katie’s interest in playing the El Greco version of Where’s Waldo.

We ambled down the streets of what was once the capital of Spain, noticing the unique blend of Arab, Jewish, Christian, and Roman architectural and artistic detail. It was the living embodiment of the bumper sticker that spells “Coexist” using symbols like the crescent and star of Islam, Star of David, and Christian cross. In El Greco’s day, Toledo seemed to have been a town of hippies with high-necked, frilly collars.

When we climbed to the top of the Alcázar to see the view of Toledo, Katie noted that the city resembled a pastel drawing with its dry, muted colors of nature. The hills varied in shades of hay, some fresh, some weathered. Gentle mounds were dotted with small bushes and trees, lining the pale river.

The following day, we hopped on a bus to see the ancient (but still functioning) Roman aqueduct, an enormous multi-level bridge of stone arches that stretches across the small city of Segovia.

Walking down a side street in Segovia, I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of a young accordion player, the spitting image of my father at twenty. He sat in front of a building that was painted royal blue on one side, white on the other. What made the image even more jarring was the fact that my father began his music career on the grinder, never having had any training in piano. The musician tipped his white straw hat as I dropped a euro in his case. As we continued walking, I heard the opening three notes of one of my father’s songs before it quickly transitioned to a different tune altogether. “Wonderful days, happy hours,” I said in amazement.

“I’m having a good time too,” Katie said.

“No, I mean that’s the song I thought that guy started to play,” I explained. “It was one of my father’s songs, his least favorite, but he used to quote it a lot when he was dying to remind us to focus on the good times.”

“How does it go?” Katie asked with a skip, then pointed to an ice cream shop to request a cone.

Most of my father’s songs were ballads with a folksy seventies vibe, but this had a distinctly sixties pop feel. I sang the chorus, then got to my father’s final wish. “When I’m gone, don’t bring me flowers. Just remember the better times—the wonderful days, the happy hours.”

Katie clapped. “I think you do that,” she said.

“Do I?”

I wanted to tell Katie that I wasn’t sure this was a good thing. It was just a silly lyric my father wrote in his youth, but a philosophy he clung to until the end. And I wasn’t sure I completely agreed with it any longer. I think we should remember the better times. I believe we should reminisce about the wonderful days and happy hours. But I also don’t think it’s healthy to ban flowers, symbolic or otherwise.

Asking someone to forgo mourning and accentuate the positive sounds noble. Doing so took its toll on me though. During my father’s illness, I did not shed a single tear, even when I was alone. In place of grieving, I developed trichotillomania, an obsessive-compulsive disorder similar to cutting. I pushed the lashes from the corner of my right eye into the eyeball, creating the slightest but most satisfying stabbing pain. Both psychotherapists I consulted told me I did this because there was something I didn’t want to see. Each said that the mutilation of one’s eyes was indicative of an unwillingness to look at something painful. They called it Oedipal, referring to the final scene of
Oedipus
Rex
when he gouges out his eyes. I called to cancel future appointments with them.

Even at my father’s funeral, I did not cry. Preparing that morning, my mother stepped lightly around our apartment searching for the right words. I carefully applied makeup and asked if I could borrow one of her fur hats because it went perfectly with my winter white ensemble. At the funeral home, I overheard someone whisper that my color choice was inappropriate for a funeral, and I wished I could muster up some feeling to respond. I desperately wanted to feel something, anything: hurt feelings, righteous indignation.

When I delivered my father’s eulogy, my voice never cracked. I comforted acquaintances as if it were my profession. While my Aunt Rita prepared her home for the seven-day
shiva
period of mourning, I informed the family that I would be hopping on a plane the following day and meeting my friends for spring break in Fort Lauderdale. There, I drank brightly colored drinks and tanned until my skin blistered and peeled.

In Segovia, Katie praised my ability to remember the wonderful days and happy hours, but I wanted to tell her that the day my father died, I lit a joint like it was a memorial candle and kept it burning for ten years straight, until the day I got pregnant with her.

There was a day I wrapped myself in a sleeping bag and snuck outside of my mother’s house during an ice storm so I could get high. I struggled to keep a flame lit in the fierce wind. For a moment, I wondered if I might have a drug problem. Then my lighter produced a steady torch and I took it as a sign that everything was fine. Years later, in San Diego, my friend and I dialed our connection who supplied us with pot every Friday night after work. He said he wouldn’t have anything for us until Sunday afternoon. Devastated at the idea of going through a weekend without the benefit of being high, my friend and I began calling everyone we knew, everyone we’d ever met, every long shot. In the end, we drove three hours to Los Angeles, arriving just shy of midnight. Had we made it minutes later, it would have been my first drug-free day in five years. Even on my wedding day, I snuck out during the reception and snuck a puff with a bridesmaid who kindly held back my veil so it wouldn’t catch ablaze.

I wanted to tell Katie that when my father died, I bought his brand of cigarettes at the airport before I flew home for his funeral. For three years, I smoked the cigarettes he couldn’t, then closed my eyes and smelled my fingers to remember him.

I wanted to tell Katie that I moved from New York to California so I wouldn’t have to see old haunts I had shared with my father, and yet he regularly visited me in my dreams. I wanted to tell her that there really was no way to escape pain, only ways to divert it.

One day, when she was old enough to process the information, I would share that my sole motivation for kicking my pot-smoking habit was the intense desire to do right by her, the baby growing inside me. The day I learned I was pregnant with her, I knew I had to kick my habit. More than I needed to tune out, I needed to tune in to motherhood. It was time to retire my bong and replace it with prenatal vitamins. Katie took pride in her achievements and would have likely felt satisfaction knowing she was a catalyst for change even before she was born. But I didn’t want her to feel she was responsible for saving me, then or ever. That was too heavy a responsibility for a child to carry.

Plus, we were spending a beautiful, sunny day in Segovia. Katie was enjoying a bubble-gum-flavored ice cream cone. When she smiled at me, it was with a set of metal braces. This was not the moment.

***

My friend Nancy sent me a message on Facebook with a reminder that I must locate the convent near Plaza Mayor where cloistered nuns bake and sell cookies. In an effort to find the place, I approached store owners, communicating in broken Spanish and charades. Like a nun, I knelt and made the cross on my forehead and chest the way Grandma Aggie had done at church. I reached into an imaginary oven, smelled my delicious cookies, and popped one in my mouth, exclaiming, “
Muy
bien
!
Deliciosa
!” No one had any idea what I was trying to say. The best I got was directions to a bakery. One kind shop owner thought I was praying for cookies and brought us into the back of his store to share his personal stash.

Katie used her middle school Spanish, asking people where the Catholic Sisters of Jesus lived. The merchants around Plaza Mayor looked at her as if she was insane and me worse for standing beside her nodding affirmatively.

Finally Katie told me she Googled it and found that we were looking for the Convento del Corpus Cristi. “Some guy blogged about it, follow me,” she said, leading me to the Mercado San Miguel, adjacent to the Plaza Mayor. “Facing the market, take the street running along the right side,” she advised as we walked. “Then after a half block, you will see a small plaza on the right called Plazuela del Conde de Miranda.” We looked to the right and sure enough, there it was. “Cross through the plaza and you will see a number three, then a wooden door to the right of it,” Katie said looking up. “There it is! And on the door, it should say ‘
Dulces
.’”

Katie and I scurried to the oversized carved wooden door, where there was an intercom with a button to ring for
Dulces
. We pressed the small white button on the brass plate and waited. Finally the intercom started crackling and an elderly woman’s voice greeted us in quick Spanish.

I had expected the cloistered cookie-baking nun to have a warm and inviting resonance, as if she were delighted by our arrival. Although I did not understand her words, it was clear this was not the case.

“
Dulces, por favor
,” Katie said. The woman groaned and rang the buzzer.

As we entered, we looked around the empty foyer. Katie noticed a paper sign with an arrow leading to the area where cookies were sold. Though the building was not air conditioned, the air was crisp and cold. Its thick stone walls were painted the color of mint toothpaste with small votives burning above parchment prints of Jesus and Mary. We walked down a corridor, then another. A sign directed us down yet another hallway and through a courtyard. I hoped I could remember my way out.