We'll Always Have Paris (27 page)

Soon, Katie and I were sitting at an outdoor café eating cheese-covered pancakes and listening to a musician play accordion while he floated down the canal in a one-man boat.

***

That evening, Katie and I were reading in Vondelpark when an absolutely baked Rastafarian stopped a police officer to ask for directions to the Red Light District, though he couldn’t remember the name of the area where prostitutes stood on display in store windows.

Katie looked up from her book to watch the interaction.

“A lady friend for the night,” Rasta John asked, snapping his fingers to jog his memory. The officer smiled and pointed the man in the right direction.

“Is
anything
illegal here?” Katie asked, laughing.

The following afternoon, after visiting the Rijksmuseum, an enormous fairy-tale castle filled with artwork, we headed toward the Van Gogh Museum. Between the two sites was an enormous reflecting pool; at its base, orange and white letters stretched nearly eighty feet spelling “I amsterdam.” In the pool were sculptures that looked like oversized construction nails covered in colorful aluminum foil. Pink nails intertwined then rounded to look like wedding rings; green ones stood erect, wrapped around one another. Musicians and acrobats performed in front of the Amsterdam sign.

Vincent Van Gogh had been my favorite artist for as long as I can remember, so the half-hour wait huddled under our umbrella was well worth it for me. Katie, who has loved rainy days since she was a toddler, had only one complaint: I made her dress for the weather.

The multistory Van Gogh Museum was filled with two hundred of the artist’s paintings, including his thickly coated swirls of evening sky. As expected, we saw paintings of purple lilies and yellow sunflowers. The permanent exhibit included Van Gogh self-portraits and landscapes with rolling hills. Though I always loved his paintings, I quickly learned that I knew very little about Van Gogh’s work. I hadn’t known how influenced he had been by Japanese art and what an impressive collection of prints he created. Many of his pieces had a distinctly Asian feel, like his wood bridge in the rain and almond tree blossoms. He told his brother Theo that he felt happier when he envisioned himself in Japan, a sentiment he expressed best in a self-portrait where he is Asian and surrounded by Japanese imagery.

Before Katie and I had left for Amsterdam, my friend Jonathan told me he saw a documentary suggesting Van Gogh didn’t commit suicide but was accidentally shot by a boy from the village. In order to protect the child from prosecution, Van Gogh used his final moments of life to set the stage to appear as if he killed himself. I asked one of the docents if there was any validity to this claim.

“All claims have validity,” he replied in perfect English. “If someone believes something, there is truth to it regardless of whether or not the facts support it.” Katie and I glanced at each other, trying not to giggle. “The noble Vincent cover-up is a good story, but there is no way for me to confirm it personally because I was not there,” he said. As he looked away, Katie pinched her index finger and thumb together and held an imaginary joint to her lips. She mouthed,
stoned
.

The following day was a drizzly one. Katie and I trekked to the Rembrandt House where we shamefully admitted to one another that we were much more interested in the flea market outside. “Let’s go inside and give this a fair shake, then we can reward ourselves with a walk around the merchant tents,” I suggested.

“Okay, it’s pretty small,” Katie said, craning her neck to look at the Dutch master’s home. “On the way here, we passed a thrift shop called Out of the Closet. Can we go there too?”

“The place that does free HIV testing?”

“They had some really cool stuff in the window.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

Katie smiled. “I’ve never done anything as hipster as thrifting in Amsterdam. I probably won’t ever again.”

“You peaked at sixteen years old. That’s harsh.”

After our breeze through the Rembrandt House, we walked through rows of vendors, a few who were selling pot lollipops, teabags, and accessories. “I’ve got to take a picture of this,” Katie said.

“No Instagram,” I said, reminding her that my liberal view of pot smoking wasn’t widely shared and that most of her friends’ parents would not appreciate the ganja posts. When Katie began high school, I told her that, in my opinion, smoking pot and drinking alcohol were essentially the same, though neither was a good choice for someone her age.

At the cannabis booth, a mother with a stroller put space cakes in her basket and asked questions about their potency. “Eat half then wait about an hour,” said the seller, who looked eerily similar to Doc Brown in
Back
to
the
Future
. “If you don’t feel anything, eat the other half,” he advised. I listened with rapt attention, fascinated by the normalcy of their interaction.

“Are you going to try a space cake?” Katie asked.

“Absolutely not,” I replied.

“Why not?” Katie asked. “It’s Amsterdam.” I laughed, dismissing the idea, and walked to the next booth. I bought a new wallet and a killer pair of pink suede boots. Soon, as if by gravitational pull, we had circled around back to the guy with the space cakes.

Maybe
just
a
bite
for
dessert
. I paid the man five euros and tucked the cake in my purse.

***

On our final day in Amsterdam, Katie and I spotted a used vinyl shop called Second Life Music, so cool they didn’t open their doors until one in the afternoon. The small store looked like my Aunt Rita’s attic with its unfinished wooden beams and weathered loft area. I was taken back to my childhood when my father regularly rifled through used record shops searching for his music. When he found an album featuring one of his songs, he pulled it out proudly and showed everyone in the shop.

Okay, I’m ready for this
, I said silently, bracing myself. “Let’s look for my dad’s song,” I suggested to Katie.

“Why don’t we ask the guy who works here?”

“No,” I answered too quickly. “Let’s just search on our own.”

“Should I check under ‘C’ for Coburn?” Katie asked.

“Look for the Mighty Sparrow,” I told her, settling in for a long scavenger hunt like the ones in New York with my father.

“
This
Mighty Sparrow?” Katie asked, lifting an album that read
Sparrow
Meets
the
Dragon
. A picture of the black singer wearing a gold tuxedo jacket was set against an orange background on the left side; Byron Lee, the leader of the Dragonaires, held an electric guitar in front of an aqua backdrop on the right half.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, flipping the album cover to read the song list. “You found it, Katie!”

The shop owner turned his head.

Katie was as giddy as I. “It was right there in front,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t even have to look for it.”

“Thank you, Katie!” I said, pulling her in for a tight hug.

“Can we play this?” she asked the record shop owner. “‘Only a Fool.’”

“Why not?” he replied, switching on the turntable.

I laughed, realizing that my daughter had a much easier time with the same request I had made thirty-five years earlier.

I longed to have my father with us at Second Life, to hear his voice regaling the shop owner with the story behind the record. The two were of the same ilk, the storeowner only a few years younger than my father would have been. I could easily picture them reminiscing about music of the seventies and wondering when it had all turned to crap.

I could feel my heart beating through to my fingertips as I asked the man if he knew the song.

“Know the song?” he answered, somewhat incredulous. Setting the needle on the track, he snorted a laugh. “Everyone knows this song.” A smile spread across my face.

After a few seconds of crackling, I heard the Mighty Sparrow’s voice singing my father’s lyric. The shop owner started singing along, not missing a word. His friend, who had been sitting at a small table outside, drifted in and joined.

Katie turned to me in amazement. It was one thing to see a gold record hanging on our wall at home, but an entirely different experience to hear strangers singing words my father had written.

They
know
it
, Katie mouthed.

“Every single word,” I whispered.

When the song ended, the shop owner lifted the record from the turntable and asked if I wanted to buy it.

“Absolutely,” I said. “My father wrote this song.”

He looked at the label. “Your father is the Mighty Sparrow?” he asked, skeptical because of our different skin tones.

“No, the Mighty Sparrow performed the song,” I explained. “My father wrote the words.”

The shop owner looked at the record label. “It says here the Mighty Sparrow wrote the music and lyrics.”

“That was a problem,” I said with a tight smile.

He reached for a thick white book and dropped it onto the counter.

“Is that, like, the music Bible?” Katie asked the man.

“Yes,” he replied seriously, not looking up from the pages as he flipped through for what seemed an eternity. “Here it is. ‘Only a Fool.’ Is your father S. Coburn or N. Bergen?”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until that moment. I exhaled audibly. “S. Coburn.”

“It’s a very nice song,” the man’s friend said.

The shop owner nodded and placed the record in a plastic bag. “Tell your father that people in Holland still love his song.”

An awkward silence hung between us. “I wish I could,” I finally replied.

“Ah, he is dead?” his friend asked.

I nodded to confirm.

“That’s too bad,” the man said.

I looked at the bag with my father’s record the same way a widow might view her beloved’s ashes after cremation.
Is
this
all
that’s left?
I wondered.
Forty-nine years of life and all that remains is a vinyl record.
My inventory of my father now consisted of a few photos, a gold record, a silver ring, a handwritten letter, and now an album plucked from a record shop in Amsterdam.

As if reading my mind, the shop owner gave me a sympathetic smile. “Your father may be gone, but his song still fills people with happiness…love,” he said. The man pointed to the words painted on his storefront window. “His music, it is a second life.”

I smiled, imagining my father’s reaction to the music shop owner’s philosophy. If my dad were with us, he’d hold out a hand, the gimme-five gesture, and say, “Right on, man. I always told her music is eternal.” I was sorry he wasn’t with us. At the same time, my sadness was diminished by a sense that my father was very much with Katie and me. And always would be.

***

That night, we had two boxes to check: a canal tour of Amsterdam and washing our clothes. I voted to do laundry then reward ourselves with the boat ride, but Katie suggested that since we were already out, it would be more efficient to cruise the canals first.

The combination of rain falling on the glass top of the boat and the purring of its engine had a lulling effect on Katie, who fell asleep halfway through our tour. I sat in the back with her as our fellow passengers toasted Amsterdam with large plastic cups of Heineken. Looking at my watch, I realized we would be back in our hotel in about an hour and decided to have a few bites of the space cake in my purse. I figured it would be like having a glass of wine, something to give me a light buzz for a night of laundry and packing suitcases.

As the boat pulled into the dock, I felt zero effect from the space cake, so I took a few more bites and put the rest back in my purse. Katie opened her eyes, disappointed that she had missed the ride.

Suddenly, my lips felt very warm.

What
are
lips
anyway?
I pondered this deep thought.
They’re just fleshy mouth gates that serve no real biological purpose.

Uh
oh.

I wasn’t nervous because of my dopey musing about lips. I was concerned because it had been exactly one hour since I cautiously nibbled Doc Brown’s organic baked goods. In another sixty minutes, I would be hit by a second wave of space cake—and that was a troubling thought.

As we walked back to the hotel, I took some comfort in the fact that I felt fairly grounded, though definitely a bit gigglier and more thirsty than usual.

In the laundry room of the hotel, however, it was an entirely different story. I stared at the washing machine and panicked at the realization that I had no idea how to use it. Worse, I was in no condition to figure it out.

Katie noticed my expression and began trying to decipher what the buttons meant. Thankfully, she figured it out fairly quickly, but not before I began feeling suffocated by the size of the room. “I’m getting claustrophobic, Katie. Let’s get out of here.”

She scrunched her mouth to the side. “Hang on and let me put the money in the machine.”

“Let’s just wait until we get to Paris to do laundry. This place is giving me the creeps.”

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

Oh
God, what kind of mother am I? This was so stupid.

“I’m fine, just fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said, pushing euro coins into the machine slot. “You just seem a little…I don’t know, weird.”

Act
normal. Breathe deeply and act natural
. “No, everything is fine. Perfect and fine. Let’s get back to our room!”

When it was time for Katie and me to head downstairs to move the wash into the dryer, I was panicking inside but could still fake semi-normalcy. But a half hour later, when our clothes were dry, the full effect of the space cake kicked in, and I was experiencing something far different than I had ever felt before. It was a forceful current of anxiety that pulled me under and would not let go.