We'll Always Have Paris (26 page)

“I liked the pool with all those stuffed snakes coiled around the cabana.”

“And the Michelin Man standing in as lifeguard,” I added. “That was crazy. What do you think that was about?”

“What’s any of it
about
?” Katie said, the Euro-shrug now one of her natural gestures. “What did you like best?”

“I loved how sunlight pours into all of the windows of the house.” Katie nodded in agreement. “I guess what I enjoyed seeing most was his unfinished painting.”

“On the plywood?” Katie asked.

“It looks like he was starting to paint an angel. But you know Salvador Dalí would never paint
just
an angel. He must have had some crazy plan for it, but no one will ever know what it was.”

Our tour guide told us that the project was interrupted when Gala became deathly ill, and then the artist never had the heart to finish it.

“I loved it when that French lady started crying on our tour,” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “So French.”

In San Diego, when I was planning our visit to the Dalí Triangle, I wondered if two nights in Cadaqués would leave us with too little to do. As it turned out, both Katie and I agreed we could easily spend a month in the village. There were scenic walks to be taken, scuba diving to try, and endless street performers to watch. Plus the cafés and restaurants were always filled with people looking as if they were in no hurry to go anywhere at all.

***

We arrived in Flaça by train and took a taxi to the castle Dalí created for Gala as her private getaway in Púbol. To say he bought her a medieval castle would be just half the story. Dalí refurbished it to Gala’s every specification, regardless of how difficult. When she said she wanted a throne suspended in midair, he asked how high. He created art for her walls inside and landscaped her garden with a fountain made from twenty-seven busts of the German composer, Richard Wagner. As thanks, Gala told her husband that he was only allowed to visit her if he had received a written invitation because she might be entertaining one of her young lovers. Dalí didn’t mind though. He said he took masochistic delight in Gala’s request.

We were the only ones at the castle who weren’t part of an American tour group of seniors. Each was decked out in U.S. flag T-shirts and red-white-and-blue sequined sun visors to commemorate Independence Day back home. Together we looked at Gala’s dresses, furniture, and personal effects, but the most riveting part of the tour was listening to our guide, an art historian, share the love story of Salvador and Gala. “The French poet Paul Éluard, his wife Gala, and their daughter Cécile visited Dalí at his home in Cadaqués one summer, and by September, Gala had taken up with Salvador,” she said with an Eastern European accent.

“Really?” a matronly American woman asked, appalled.

Our guide smirked. “Yes, but Éluard was no stranger to Gala’s sexual proclivities. He had spent several years living in Paris with Gala and the surrealist Max Ernst in a
ménage à trois
.”

“Lord have mercy,” the woman gasped.

“Did Eduardo kick his butt?” an older man asked our tour guide.

Our tour guide raised her brows. “Did Éluard…?”

“Kick his butt for stealin’ his wife?” the man asked with a protective arm on his wife’s back.

“No, no, they all remained friends,” the guide replied, failing to hide her glee in scandalizing her audience. “It was a surprise to their friends, though, because Dalí’s only love until then had been a man.”

“Sweet baby Jesus,” a woman muttered. “I thought we were going to see melting clocks.”

“What became of Cécile?” I asked. “Did she stay in Cadaqués with Gala and Dalí?”

“No,” the tour guide replied without a smile. “Gala was, how you say, not a good mother.”

“So Gala left her husband
and
her daughter?”

“Yes,” the guide said, moving the group along to the crypt where Gala’s body was buried.

As we walked downstairs, I asked the guide how old Cécile was when her mother left her. “She was eleven,” the tour guide replied dismissively. Turning back to the group, she continued. “There is Gala’s leopard purse still sitting in their car. She died in Cadaqués, but Dalí knew she wanted to spend her last moments in Púbol so he put her body in the car and drove her here to her final resting spot.”

Back at the hotel in Barcelona that evening, I Googled Cécile Éluard and found a black-and-white photo of her as a little girl with a giant bow in her hair, looking down, unaware that her mother would leave her a few years later. Another website included reflections about her childhood home outside Paris, where murals by Max Ernst were later discovered beneath wallpaper. Cécile said she hated the house. On the outside, the home appeared normal, but inside it was a very different story with its surreal paintings of birds and other creatures.

“What happened to you, Cécile Éluard?” I asked the screen.

“Are we going to the Magic Fountain show?” Katie asked, pulling me back into reality.

Twenty minutes later, Katie and I joined hundreds of people on the steps leading to the Palau Nacional, the national museum, in Montjuïc Park and waited for the sky to dim from lavender to grape. We squeezed shoulder to shoulder, each step filled with tourists eagerly awaiting the show of lit fountains changing color to music. Finally, sprays of pink water pulsed into the sky as we listened to the music progress. Katie’s eyes lit up as she recognized the tune “Circle of Life” from
The
Lion
King
.

***

On the return trip from Spain, Katie and I spent a week with my mother in New York. We decided to see Stella, who was a live-in caretaker for an elderly woman in the building where my father died. I watched the familiar elevator door close and floors pass through the small glass window and wondered what had happened to Stella’s paintings on the walls of their Brooklyn Heights apartment. Had her mural been covered with wallpaper? Would anyone care if it were discovered?

Stella greeted us at the door wearing a sundress she fashioned by slitting open the bottom of a pillowcase and creating straps from fishing wire. She had always been a thin woman but now weighed less than ninety pounds. Religious music hummed from a small cassette player, and the smell of boiling vegetables filled the air. Her charge was sleeping in the bedroom, freshly showered and diapered.

Stella was on duty twenty-four hours a day and slept on a cot in the kitchen, where she tried to cozy the space with black-and-white photos of my father in the final stages of cancer. His arms are crossed over his chest as he stares into the camera, looking annoyed to be photographed.

“Was my father angry at me before he died?” I asked Stella.

“He was angry at everyone,” she said.

“So…yes?” I looked at the floor and noticed Stella had painted it white. “How do I get past that?”

“How do you pass Go?” Stella replied. “How do you collect $200?”

That evening, back at my mother’s apartment, I resumed my online search for Cécile Éluard. My mother popped her head in the door of the guest bedroom and scolded me for being on her computer. “Turn that thing off and put the cover over it before we all die from radiation sickness,” she demanded.

“Do you think Daddy was angry at me before he died?” I asked.

My mother sighed, having answered the question several times already over the years. “I think that is an easier question than the one you really want to ask,” she replied.

“And what question do I
really
want to ask, Dr. Freud?”

“Whether or not you’re angry at your father for abandoning you,” she said.

“
Abandoning
me?!” I snapped. “He died. It’s not like he left to join the circus. You can’t get angry with someone for dying.”

“Why not?” my mother asked.

“Because that would make me a complete jerk,” I said.

“It’s normal to feel abandoned,” she said.

“Will you stop using that word?! There’s a big difference between someone leaving and dying.”

“What’s the difference?” my mother asked.

“One is a choice and the other is just a raw deal,” I said.

“I meant what’s the difference to you, Jennifer?” my mother asked. “Regardless of how it happened, your father is no longer there for you, and I think it’s entirely reasonable for you to feel angry about that.”

Katie joined my mother in the doorway. Holding her phone up, she said she had found Gala’s daughter online.

“Cécile Éluard?” I asked eagerly.

“Yeah, there are lots of people online who also want to know what happened to her.”

“Do we know her?” my mother asked.

“No, she’s just…” I trailed off. “She’s Salvador Dalí’s stepdaughter. I’m just curious about how her life turned out.”

“I didn’t know he had children,” my mother said.

“And?” I asked Katie, sounding a bit more panicked than I meant to.

“She did great. It says she was an art dealer and a book dealer. She married a poet, and there’s a picture of her hanging out with Picasso and all of these big writers in Paris, and she looks really happy.”

My shoulders dropped with relief. Cécile’s rejection hadn’t ruined her, as I had feared. “Can you show me the picture, Katie?”

Katie began tapping as my mother and I flanked her, leaning in to get a look. “There she is,” Katie said, pointing to Cécile.

My mother gasped. “Look at that other woman in the middle. What a fabulous hat!”

“She’s smiling,” I said, squinting to see Cécile.
She’s all right
.

Six months after Katie and I returned from Spain, I told William I wanted to take another European adventure before our daughter left for college.

“She just started high school,” he reminded me.

“It’s going so fast, isn’t it?” I said. “We’re going to turn around and she’ll be gone.” My sadness over Katie’s inevitable flight from the nest now rivaled my fear of dying.

“So where will you two be off to next?” William asked.

“I was thinking Amsterdam,” I told him. “Then back to Paris.”

“When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow,” I shot. “But it’ll take about two years to save for a trip, so I figure we could take off right after her sophomore year.”

William nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me Amsterdam was on the itinerary. That’s going to be…” he drifted, unsure of the right words.

“A mixed bag,” I finished. My father loved Amsterdam, but it would be hard visiting and knowing I would never swap stories with him. Though he had been dead nearly thirty years, I still occasionally reached for the telephone to call him before realizing it was impossible.

New York was my father’s permanent address, but Amsterdam was where he felt most at home in the world. He had told me the city was so mellow that even the dogs didn’t bark. He also enjoyed the freedom to openly smoke pot. And he fondly recalled eating “space cakes” and listening to undiscovered bands at the Melkweg, a concert venue that had once been an abandoned dairy barn. What he loved most, however, was that the Dutch had embraced his song “Only a Fool” and catapulted it to the top of the music charts. Amsterdam was where my father felt most complete because his music career was a booming success. In the United States, he was a struggling musician with a few hits and more misses throughout the years. In Amsterdam, he had made it. It was a small pocket of the world where his dream had been realized.

As much as I wanted to see Amsterdam through my father’s eyes, I was also terrified. What if the city had changed entirely and lost its chill vibe? What if the Melkweg had been leveled to make way for a Walmart? Most frightening, what if too much time had passed and no one remembered my father’s music anymore? To be forgotten in Amsterdam would have been unbearable to him. I wasn’t sure I could withstand witnessing the death of his legacy.

In December of 1978, when I was twelve years old, my father had recently returned from Amsterdam after having spent several weeks on an unusual mission. That fall, his writing partner Norman had been leafing through
Cash
Box
magazine and noticed that “Only a Fool” was a huge hit in Holland. Not only had their song been a success for much of the year, it looked like it was on track to be one of the top sellers of the decade. But there was a problem. Neither Norman nor my father was given a writing credit. The performer, the Mighty Sparrow, was listed as the writer and composer, and my father and his friend were out in the cold. They didn’t know who made the mistake and didn’t really care, as long as the error was corrected. The bottom line was that there were royalties to claim. And the recognition would be validating for my father, whose confidence needed the boost even more than his bank account.

The pair scraped together the money to get my dad on a plane to set the record straight. He promised to return from Amsterdam with corrected paperwork, back payment, and two gold records: one for Norman, the other for himself.

Days after his return from Holland, my father and I were sitting in his car after our annual Cousins Club Chanukah party. He had picked up a new sweater overseas which was made from knotty wool and had leather patches on the elbows. My father also sported new hand-knit socks under his clogs. The awkward stitch told me a girlfriend made them.

My dad reached under the car seat and handed me a package wrapped in a brown grocery bag. This was his typical presentation of gifts from overseas, like European board games and exotic foods. He also frequently returned with albums by bands that were wildly popular in Finland or Norway. Inside this bag, however, was a gold record of “Only a Fool” encased in glass, listing my father and Norman as the lyricist and composer. My eyes popped.

“You got it!” I squealed.

Showing me the record, my father had a wide smile. “Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah. Happy life,” he said, handing it to me.

“For me?”

“My two greatest gifts should be together,” he said.

“Are you sure you want to give this away? You worked so hard for it.”

He laughed. “You got that right. I don’t know what was tougher, writing the song or dealing with the music industry. This business is a motherfucker.”

I nodded knowingly. “Is it real gold?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Is this the actual record? If we unframe it, would it play your song?”

“Are you crazed, JJ?!” he shouted. “Give it back to me. You can’t have it.” He grabbed the record from my hands.

“I didn’t say I was going to do it, I was just asking,” I cried.

“This is my life, do you understand?” he said. “You can’t take someone’s life and crack it open like a walnut.”

“I didn’t say I was going to,” I said, defending myself.

He looked at me appraisingly for a few seconds.

“I was just asking a question,” I pleaded.

“Okay, maybe I overreacted, but you have to promise me that if I give this to you, you’re never going to unframe it. It’s not the actual record; it’s just symbolic.”

“Okay, that’s all I wanted to know!”

“You’ll never take this apart, right?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Never,” I promised.

“Okay,” he said, handing back the record. “It’s yours. Take good care of it.”

***

Katie and I arrived in Amsterdam and immediately agreed it was the most beautiful place we had ever seen. Canals ringed and sliced through the city like the threads of a spider web. Lining the waterways were rows of narrow, two- and three-story homes with funky gables and brightly painted window frames. A few buildings had an art deco look, smooth stone inlaid thoughtfully into their façade. One brick townhome sported a giant marble bow.

The collection of bridges was equally eclectic. Some were classic stone arches. Another was a large white wooden bridge that looked as if it belonged in Nantucket. A bright orange, modern design was a cross between a sculpture and jungle gym. I couldn’t take pictures quickly enough to capture the charm of Amsterdam.

The city also had its own distinctive scent. “I’m not going to get a contact high, am I?” Katie joked, seeing a backpacker strolling by with a joint casually pinched between his fingers. Katie had always been like William—and never had I been more grateful than during her teen years. She knew how to have fun, but always kept her eyes on the prize of getting good grades and running well for her high school cross-country team. Getting high, by contact or otherwise, was not on the agenda.

“Sorry, you’re going to get totally baked from this,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Wait, really?”

“No, not really,” I assured her.

“Look, I don’t have any problem with other people smoking, I just don’t want their choices to affect my lungs or brain or anything,” Katie explained.

“Reasonable,” I said, smiling at just how much she reminded me of her father. “I promise you will not get a contact high here.”

What I could not guarantee, however, was that a bike wouldn’t hit us if we didn’t stop accidentally drifting into the cyclists’ lane of the sidewalk. The ringing of tin bike bells was the soundtrack of Amsterdam, with more people riding bicycles than I’d ever seen. Businessmen in suits pedaled by. Hipsters with shorts and wool hats rode bikes. We even saw a woman, who looked as if she was pushing ninety years old, riding a cruiser with a basket filled with fruits and vegetables.

It began to rain just as Katie and I found the Melkweg and ducked in for a drink in its café, the gateway to the concert venue. The space was like an unpretentious diner with black-and-white checkered floors and a long counter. A young woman with the look of a woodland fairy flitted over to our table with glass mugs, one filled with steeping mint leaves, the other with hot chocolate. She also placed down packets of small cookies that tasted like shortbread soaked in caramel. When Katie told the waitress the cookies were the best she’d ever eaten, the pixie brought a few more. For the next half hour, Katie unwrapped cookies and dipped them in her drink as raindrops tapped the window. Every so often, someone opened the door to the concert area and we were hit by a blast of music. “My father used to listen to bands in there,” I told Katie.

“I know,” she said. “Maybe he sat at this table beforehand and hung out with that guy.” Katie pointed to the manager wiping down the counter. “Are you going to ask if he’s heard of your dad’s song?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, my breath caught in my throat.

The manager noticed us staring and said hello in a Midwestern American accent. We chatted for a bit and I mentioned that the Melkweg was one of my father’s favorite spots to visit in Amsterdam.

The manager smiled politely. Katie looked at me expectantly.

“Do you know—” I began. “Do you know how we can get some more of these cookies?”

Katie knit her brows with confusion.

“You want more cookies?” the man asked.

I nodded.

“I guess we could sell you a package,” he said, walking toward the kitchen. Returning with a sleeve of a hundred cookies, he asked if four euros sounded fair.

“More than fair,” I replied, reaching for my wallet.

“I don’t get it,” Katie whispered when the manager was out of earshot. “Why didn’t you ask if he knows the song?”

“I’m not sure,” I told her. “I guess I was afraid he would say no. Amsterdam is perfect right now. I don’t want anything to change that.”

“Okay,” Katie returned. “Thanks for the cookies.”

A black man with a full, seventies-style afro entered carrying a guitar case plastered with stickers of bands from around the world. “Hey man,” he said to another worker in the café. “I’m playing tonight.” He nodded his chin toward the door.

“Right on,” the guy replied, leading him to the concert space.

Amsterdam felt like a magical place where there had never been anything but peace, love, and harmony. But the next day we would be given a heavy dose of reality, a reminder of the evil that had a stranglehold on Europe during World War II.

We visited the Anne Frank House, climbing the steep stairs that led to the secret annex where eight people hid from the Nazis for two years. Katie and I looked at the young girl’s diary, its cover the pattern of a tablecloth. Seeing her handwriting on the yellowed pages was painfully surreal. Bells from the church beside the house rang just as Anne Frank had described in her journal. I looked out the window at the homes across the canal and wondered who betrayed the people inside.

Video of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, the only survivor of the annex, played on television screens throughout the stark space. He spoke about how he first read his daughter’s journal after he returned from Auschwitz, and how stunned he was by the depth of her feelings and faith.

I glanced at Katie, who was now older than Anne Frank at the time she perished at Bergen-Belsen. I fought back tears thinking about all this child had endured before she ultimately succumbed to typhoid at the concentration camp. In her fifteen years, she spent two in a secret annex, then another two in concentration camps. In different circumstances, she would have had a very similar life to Katie’s, one filled with friends and school and travel.

With that realization, my head snapped back to the television monitor featuring Otto Frank talking about losing his family. As heartbroken as I felt, I couldn’t begin to imagine his pain.

A chaser of self-loathing quickly followed.

Why
have
you
wasted
so
much
time
and
energy
senselessly
worrying
about
death?
I thought.
Look
at
what
millions
of
people—Jews, minorities, gays, political dissenters, and the disabled—endured without the luxury of anxiety. These people had real problems. Harboring imaginary demons is ridiculously self-indulgent.

Then a kinder voice of reason chimed in.
Stop. Just let go and enjoy life.

Katie’s words returned me to the moment. “Anne Frank wrote in her diary that, despite everything, she never lost faith that people were basically good,” she shared. “That’s kinda beautiful,” Katie said.

“It is,” I replied.

I looked at the photo of Anne Frank with her full wedge of hair and impish grin, then took a mental snapshot of Katie in her sloppy bun and cut-off shorts.

“Are you ready to get going?” Katie asked.

“Sure,” I said, acutely aware that we had the freedom to make that choice. As we walked outside, I stopped for a moment to take in the feeling of the summer breeze on my face.