You Can Say You Knew Me When (19 page)

Research and development
: Every important project begins this way. And this project would certainly be important—once I figured out where it was headed. I believed this. I had to.

Lying in bed, listening to Woody sleep.

I am awake. I tread softly to the living room, I get stoned, I go online. I type
DON DREBINSKI
into a search engine. Nothing. I find a queer-history newsgroup and throw out a posting with his name in the subject line. I send an e-mail to San Francisco’s gay and lesbian archives. I find a site called Obits.com, but again, no Don—which is a relief. Don only just came alive for me; I’m not yet ready to bury him.

I spend hours in the glow of the monitor, working with a weak modem and an old computer. A night spent waiting for sites to load under these conditions is a night of anxiety: the blank page (the dread that it might stay blank forever); the random bits of graphics (popping up erratically, like a message being decoded); the frequent, maddening freezes. I hear the arguments I have made as to why the world should move slower, and I hear words like
upgrade
and
high-speed
blow right through these fixed thoughts. My skepticism about technology has been a dissent against greed, acquisition, a culture of convenience. But skepticism has slowed me down, almost, it seems, to a standstill.

I search the Web for Dean Foster, who has yet to surface. There’s a Dean Foster in southern Illinois whose home page shows a 10K running team: fit, pale-skinned adults, their racing numbers pinned to brightly colored tank tops. Not a swarthy Ficchino among them. I find the published medical papers of Dr. Dean Foster, hematologist, and briefly entertain the notion that Danny gave up his dreams of stardom and enrolled in med school, the better to theorize about autoimmune diseases crossing the blood-brain barrier. I scroll through foster-creations.com, homespun greeting cards out of Flagstaff: slow-loading images of watercolor cacti, desert flowers, coyote bones “in the style of Georgia O’Keefe, painted by the artist Ms. Dean-Marie Foster herself.”

And then. A movie database with a page on Dean Foster, actor. “No photo available.” His films begin in 1962 with
Surf’s Up in San Diego.

This has to be him.

Seven titles are listed in all, six more than my conversation with Nana has led me to expect. Three are in Italian. All are obscure. Beach movies, foreign films, exploitation flicks. A kitsch-film buff would cream.

The last film listed is
The Criminal Kick,
made in 1974. I click on the title, which takes me to Bellwether Pictures, the “Premier Distributor of 1960s Youth Explosion Films,” and its description of this movie:

I order a copy of
The Criminal Kick
, and a copy of
Surf’s Up in San Diego
, also distributed by Bellwether. I include a note asking if they have information on Dean Foster’s whereabouts. Their site is not equipped for online ordering, so I have to do this by fax, sending them my credit card number. If it was not five o’clock in the morning, if I was not, finally, bone tired, I would find this old technology charming.

The predawn sky is shading the windows pearl gray as I tread softly back to bed. Curled again next to Woody, I still cannot fall asleep.

The chronology, the database, the notion of a career spanning years: Dean Foster, actor—as opposed to Danny Ficchino, lost uncle—is coming into three dimensions for me. Not just a photograph, but real.

Maybe even alive.

I
heard from Bellwether Pictures a couple days later, but not about Dean Foster’s whereabouts. They sent a form letter telling me my credit card had been declined. In a bulging stack of mail on my desk, I found a notice from Visa informing me I was over my limit and past due.
All account activity has been suspended
.

I put in a call to my sister.

I found her in a subdued state. AJ was sleeping, Andy was online, and Nana had been moved to a clinic where she was undergoing physical therapy for her ankle. Deirdre was watching TV. “It’s me and Regis,” she said. “
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

“Who doesn’t?” I said, warming up.

“I thought Woody was gonna become an Internet millionaire and support you.”

“He’s working on it.” I paused, then forged ahead. “But meanwhile—”

“I know, your money. I’m sorry. Andy’s just figuring out how to move some stocks around. Plus, the Angry White Lady had all these medical bills. I wanted to fight her on it, but Andy said let’s settle and get it over with. We kinda went head-to-head.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to him?”

“I’ll handle it. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me.”

“I hear you. Let’s not fight, Jamie. I swear. You’ll get it. Any day now.”

I exhaled, willing myself to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’d heard me. She’d apologized. I guess I’d called her at the right moment—she was bundled up on the couch, the house quiet, the TV on low—a moment where her defenses were down. Or perhaps something was wrong?

Without much prompting she opened up: “It’s
so weird
not having Dad around. I got used to the whole routine. And now with Nana gone. It’s just…weird.” The job with Carly Fazio hadn’t come through. She was thinking about looking around for something else, but couldn’t get excited about it. “I don’t want to do anything, you know? It’s weird.”

“You sound depressed,” I offered.

“No, it’s not that. I just don’t have the energy or motivation or desire to do anything but sit around and watch TV.”

“Like I said…”

She sighed. Behind her I heard televised claps and cheers. I was about to suggest all the ways she might spend her newfound free time—learn a language, start a garden, go back to school—but just as quickly I stifled it. What stopped me were the twin images of me on my couch, numbly watching the world flash by in pace with my remote control, and of my sister, on hers, three thousand miles away, suspended in the same uninspired vortex. And then—I hadn’t planned on even talking about this, but suddenly it made sense—I mentioned the one thing that I had been motivated about lately: “Remember that box of stuff I took from the attic?”

I told her about finding Dean Foster on the movie database, about locating Ray Gladwell and going to meet her, about Dad’s letters. Deirdre listened as I read a section from the first one, full of lovey-dovey prose:
How I wish I could have woken up and seen your hair on my pillow.

“You’re shittin’ me,” she exclaimed. “That doesn’t sound like Dad at all.”

“In this other one he talks about going to a gay bar.”

“No way.”

I read the description of his night at the Who Cares? and the part about going to Christmas mass and getting mad at God for
making Don a queer
. “It’s so weird,” I said, using her favorite adjective. “He talks about homosexuality as something that was impossible to change. That’s more than I ever got from him.”

“He knew you couldn’t change, Jamie.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Remember when you had that radio story on—about that famous performer guy, the one who fell in love with a guy from, like, Holland or somewhere, and they couldn’t get married, and immigration deported the boyfriend? And you interviewed the guy’s mother, who was crying?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know the one.”

“We listened to it together. Me and Dad.”

“You told me
you
listened to it,” I said. “Not him.”

“I told you him, too.”

“I think I’d remember that.”

“Look, my point is, it was such a good report. Really sad, you know? I totally cried. And Dad was really quiet, and afterwards I said, you know, Jamie’s talented, don’t you think?”

“Let me guess. He said, ‘Talented, but queer!’”

She groaned. “Jamie—”

“I’m sorry, ‘Talented but
homosexual
.’”

“If you’re gonna be like that.”

“I can’t help it. It just gives me the creeps, my own father despising me.”

“He was proud of that radio show.”

Oh, please,
I almost said, but I bit my tongue.

“He said it was very professional and well written. And then we started reminiscing about when you were little and walked around all the time with your tape recorder and asked us questions. Do you remember when you interviewed everyone in the neighborhood about their opinions of
Xanadu?”

“I forgot about that.”

“We were laughing about it. And I said, ‘Dad, you should call Jamie and tell him you liked the report.’ And that’s when he said he knew you were never going to change, but he just wished it was different.”

My ability to absorb this information was lagging behind the speed at which she was talking. “He never called me. He never said anything about it.”

“I think he probably just forgot. If he hadn’t been losing it, I think he would have come around eventually.” She swallowed hard.

The sound of that gulp,
a lump in her throat,
threatened to trigger my own sentimental response, and this silenced me. I would not permit death to absolve him.

“Are you still there?” she asked.

“I’m gonna go.”

“Okay. I’ll keep an eye out for any more old stuff in the attic.” She added quickly, “Unless you’re still planning on coming back?”

“Maybe.” Another visit to New Jersey was suddenly the last thing in the world I wanted. Why was I letting myself wade into these troubled waters, where I was likely to flail, to sink, to drown? What the fuck was I doing, churning up my father’s past, my father who couldn’t bring himself to make a simple phone call to tell me he liked my radio show?

“One more thing,” she said. “Send Nana some flowers. Saturday is her eighty-fifth birthday.” Dee gave me the phone number and address of the clinic. Then she signed off with a plaintive “Love you” that left me dumbstruck and ashamed.

Floral delivery cost money. I considered borrowing from Woody—what’s another sixty dollars on a tab that had climbed past a thousand?—but I hesitated and then put it out of my mind. Saturday found me sitting at my desk, staring at the phone. Literally staring, as if the power of obligation would send it leaping from the cradle to my hand, the clinic’s number magically dialed. And then staring anywhere
but
: out the window, where a jasmine-covered metal fence was rattling in the wind, scattering white delicacies into the weeds; at last weekend’s
New York Times Magazine,
which featured an article about how young millionaires were spending their Internet riches (funding independent films and starting their own foundations and sponsoring eco-tourism to Third World countries—I thought of Rick and his Lonely Planet guides); at the list of Dean Fosters pushpinned to the corkboard, almost all of the entries now crossed out or marked up:
Disconnected. Wrong guy. Crazy guy with dog. Disconnected.

The phone number Deirdre provided went to the floor nurse at the clinic, who cooed in an Indian accent, “Oh, you want the birthday girl. We’ll get her on the phone there.”
On duh phun dair.
I heard in the background a sea of murmuring elderly voices out of which rumbled the intermittent wave of a single old man protesting. I readied myself for Nana. I was met instead by a brash staccato.

“Who is it? Tommy? We found your gloves.”

I swallowed, trying to moisten my suddenly arid tongue. “Aunt Katie. It’s Jamie.”

“Oh. She said a grandson. I thought for sure Tommy. He just left. Without his calfskin gloves.”

“I’m sorry I missed him.”

“Tommy, Mikey, Billy, Joanne. Deirdre. All the grandkids were here. Right, Mother?”
All of them except you!

Cordless phone in hand, I began to pace, desk to kitchen to couch to bedroom. “Did Nana have a nice party?”

“It was very special. Except for the shooting pain.”

“What happened?”

“The pain in her ankle, shooting up her leg. Half her body hurts.” Her voice veered away from the phone. “No, Ma, don’t do that. I’ll get it for you.” Back to me: “She’s not supposed to drink so much, but you know she loves her coffee. I’ll get it, Ma. No, it’s not Tommy. It’s Jimmy. From California. Hold on.”

A clumsy handoff, hard plastic clunking onto a tabletop, and then Nana’s strained “Hello?”

“Hi, Nana, it’s Jamie. Calling to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Well, thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for remembering.” Her voice was so dim the
shush
of my socks on the carpet nearly swallowed it up. I stopped pacing, slid down to the floor and crossed my legs.

“So how’s it going there?”

“As good as can be expected.” She told me who’d stopped by that day, repeating Aunt Katie’s list of names minus the underlying rancor. She told me about her gifts: the
lovely sweater,
the
beautiful scarf,
the
big bouquet of flowers.

“Did you get the flowers I sent?”

“No, these were from Tommy and Amy.”

“They were supposed to come today.”

I am a terrible person.

“They’re gonna give me the painkillers now,” she said, finishing off with another thank-you and a call-me-again. I let the conversation end without asking any of my stored-up questions about my father as a teenager, what he’d told her about his time in SF, why he returned to New York so quickly.

Aunt Katie was back in my ear. “She said you sent flowers? We didn’t get flowers.”

“A few days ago. Maybe they don’t deliver on weekends.”

“Because I don’t trust the nurses. There’s a couple of colored girls who would take them home for themselves. In a heartbeat.”

“Don’t get anyone fired until I check with the florist,” I pleaded, pacing again. Living room, kitchen, bathroom. A pause in front of the mirror to mouth “Help me.”

A change in subject was necessary. “Aunt Katie, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. When I was in New Jersey, I found some old stuff of Dad’s.”

“He never threw anything away.”

“I found some photographs from when he was a kid, and it turns out there were pictures of Uncle Angelo’s brother, Danny.”

No response. The crazy old man in the background let out a howl.

“Aunt Katie? Are you there?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I was wondering what happened to him. Danny.”

“Ugh,
that
one,” she sighed. More silence, and then, at last, an outburst so drenched in anger I swear I heard spittle strike the phone. “I’ll tell you what
didn’t
happen. He never came to our wedding. His own brother’s wedding, and he didn’t show. No respect.”

“Nana said that you all went to the movie premiere in Times Square.”

“Yes, we did, and we all paid for our tickets, too! But later, when it’s time for him to do the right thing and stand up for his brother, where is he?”

“He was in Los Angeles, right?”

“Broke his mother’s heart, I’ll tell you that. Angelo’s, too. His own brother’s wedding. That was the last straw.” Her voice narrowed and drilled into me. “You know, Jimmy, you remind me of him.”

“I do?”

“Same thing. Off to California and not a word to anyone else. And then he changed his name. Well, changing your name doesn’t mean you don’t have a family.”

“Wait a minute—I’ve been in touch. With Deirdre. We talk on the phone.”

“But not with your father.” She sucked in her breath, as if momentarily startled by her own directness, and then gathered herself, grave, resolute: “Not. With. Your. Father.”

So here it was, festering since our drive-by confrontation at the wake, splayed open at last.

“I stayed away because Dad and I had a falling out. Years ago. You know that, and you know why,” I said, my voice faltering in a throat now dry as hard cement.

“It’s always about you, isn’t it? About
your
problems. I’ll tell you what I told Danny Ficchino a long time ago, from my own lips to his ears: Certain things are unforgivable.” A pause. “What is it, Ma? No, don’t pay any attention. Yeah, it’s still Jimmy.” I listened, fuming, as she inserted herself into a transaction between Nana and a nurse, some necessary rearrangement of a wheelchair or a meal tray. Accents collided—Irish, Indian, New Jersey.

“Aunt Katie, let me finish.”

“Look, I don’t have time for this. Your grandmother wet herself.“

“What?”

“Plus we’re ringing up a bill. We pay for every call here, even incoming.”

She said good-bye and hung up.

The phone sat at rest for just a moment, then rang again.

“Yes?” I snarled, ready for round two.

But it was a different voice that greeted me, an entirely different voice: “The time is now.”

“Here, I found it,” Ian was saying. Our bodies were laid out in T formation on a densely peopled spread of park grass, his head on my stomach, his thick black hair like dog fur against the pale blue cotton of my T-shirt. Ian had surprised me by biking us to Washington Park, the heart of once-bohemian, now-touristy North Beach—an appropriate site, he said, for something he wanted to share with me about Jack Kerouac, something he’d stumbled upon in the pages of another book, Gore Vidal’s memoir,
Palimpsest,
which was propped up at that moment on Ian’s belly. My copy of
The Subterraneans
, which Ian had insisted I bring along, lay next to him.