by Steve Hely
“He was, absolutely. He taught me moral values and the importance of doing something greater than yourself. He wasn’t always talkative”—here the audience laughed on account of Ellen’s funny delivery—“but he taught me, really, through his actions, and how he was always there for us, always keeping our family together, and letting us know we were safe and loved.”
This was a high-impact statement. Even I needed a second. Oprah herself took a pause, a nodding pause, before continuing.
“Reading this book I thought, I for one have got to hear from this man, this father, who, in his own funny way—and it is a very funny book—but he, your dad, really teaches us what it means to be a father. So we’ve brought him here. Please welcome—Dennis Krapowski!”
A shot of the audience, with their eyes wide and suddenly expectant. You could see the wrinkles and the widening pupils.
Out came a sixty-something man with a broom-end mustache. He walked as though his hip was just a bit out of balance, with his eyes down as though following an invisible rehearsed line across the stage. But Oprah stood up and caught him and gave him a hug as he sat down, and so did Ellen. Inspired perhaps by the comfort of his plush chair—and they looked very comfortable indeed—he grinned up toward the back row of the audience.
“Thank you for being here—”
“Thank you, Oprah, me and all the guys—” The audience was already laughing because his Chicago accent was so thick.
“That is a Chicago accent!” said Oprah. “You heard it here, if you’re coming to town, get ready.” Everyone laughed.
“So Dennis, you and your wife knew that you could not have children of your own, and you decided to adopt.”
“Yeah, that’s right, and we went to the agencies, y’know, and there’s paperwork and all that. And then through a friend of ours we heard about this program, to adopt kids from Vietnam over there that needed homes. And I’d had buddies go over there, guys I went to high school with, and we’d seen it on TV, y’know, the tragedies there.” Da tra-jiddies dere. “And I mentioned it to my wife, and we thought it was something we could try.”
Oprah tapped his leg just lightly.
“Tell me this, Dennis, how did you raise such an amazing daughter?”
Everyone clapped and Oprah looked at them, nodding as though the crowd itself were a chorus of her own emotions.
“Well now, she did most of it herself! But we just—my wife and I decided we ought to raise her just like everybody else, and we were here in Chicago, so I took her to the Bears games when she was little, and taught her to eat sausages and all that, and we just tried to show her that you know we never thought of her as different or anything like that. As far as we were concerned, she was a hundred percent Krapowski, and that’s how we tried to raise her.”
Now picture me, sitting alone, crusts now accumulated in an open pizza box, but I’ve stopped eating. And this man, probably thirty-eight or thirty-nine inches on my screen, saying that. And a pause, the hush picked up perfectly by my speakers.
My eyes felt all salty and heavy.
“Dennis, in the book Ellen talks about how much of a Cubs fan you are, and how you try to get to as many games as possible.”
Dennis nodded. “Oh, yeah, I took her to a lot of games. I think she only came for the popcorn half the time!” Everyone except Oprah laughed.
“All of us here, after reading this book, thought, ‘We have got to do something for this man, who put up with all the crying, all the late nights, took her shopping for her prom dress for heaven’s sake, when your wife was in the hospital, this guy”— she pointed at him—“deserves something.”
The audience clapped eagerly. And I felt my mouth muscles smiling, almost against my will. The whole thing, the whole choreography, was so impossibly lame. But, hell, this guy did deserve something. He was terrific.
“So we asked a friend of ours, Mary Blazek, she’s the head of public relations for the Chicago Cubs, if she might not have something for you, too.”
A big-shouldered blonde lady in a Cubs jacket came out. My speakers picked up each happy gasp of realization from the audience as Mary Blazek handed Dennis an envelope.
“We just wanted to thank you for your support,” said Mary, “and for your daughter’s support, and for raising another generation of Cubs fans. And from the Chicago Cubs family to the Krapowski family, two generations of fans, here’s a little token of our appreciation.”
Dennis opened the envelope, and at just the moment he was figuring it out, Oprah said, “Season tickets, first row, right behind the dugout. You’re gonna be buying a lot of popcorn now Dennis!”
Dennis stood up and half hugged Mary Blazek, he was so happy. The crowd was losing it with righteous delight.
Here’s the thing about all this: later, over beers with Derek, I would describe the whole thing, in thick ironic tones. I would do an exaggerated, Chris Farley version of Dennis’s accent, and around the Colonial Boy I’d waddle as he had, like a dancing bear. I’d tell how the whole crowd of needy menopausal women had gone bonkers to see some schlub win a prize for being a good dad.
Derek and I would talk about how Ellen Krapowski must have seen what a marketable story she had, about her tragic Hmong past and her new life here in America, full of deep-dish pizza and baseball. She must’ve teamed up with some packager, who saw how her touching 190-page tribute would burn up the shelves on Father’s Day AND Mother’s Day. Some ghostwriter sanded down the edges and played up the prom dresses and popcorn.
But at that moment, as Dennis held those tickets—and he didn’t know what to do so he tried to shake Oprah’s hand, and she looked at the crowd with a “c’mon!” and then gave him a big hug, and then Dennis kissed Ellen on the forehead—my cheeks were wet. I was crying. I hadn’t cried since the days after Polly left, when I rolled around on a mattress like a helpless seal pup. But these tears were helpless in a different way, helpless in the way we all are before the purest, best things in the world. I was crying, full-on crying, tears streaming down my face like a sinner at a revival.
This woman, this somewhat doughy Asian woman, had told a story, a story about mothers and fathers and daughters that drew out the incredible, ordinary miracle of raising a child. How hard it was, how goofy your dad seems, how the whole thing is so human and messy until, years later, you can see how magical it was, how saintly your parents were, even as they wore their pants up to their rib cage and farted sometimes and snored like camels down the hall.
Above all, we could see it in front of us and we could tell it was true. We could feel the near-religious power of a true story.
Afraid almost, I panicked, turned off the TV, and went out to buy some beer without even putting on a jacket.
It only took a minute to pull it back together. I scoffed at how Oprah had stage-managed the whole thing, choreographed it all with Busby Berkeley precision, even Dennis’s clumsiness built in to the routine. I pictured the Cubs’ bosses, getting a call—probably on a special red phone they saved just for Oprah. And calculating how it would all play out, they’d jumped on it, seeing a brilliant PR opportunity and sending out their flack, Mary Blazek, who probably took a class on “Community-Corporate Interaction,” in business school and knows how to make her bosses look like good citizens and good neighbors.
The whole point of it after all, the timing, the staging, everything, was to sell—and this is a real list, I wrote down the commercials—Special K protein bars, Lumineers porcelain teeth veneers, Oscillococcinum flu medicine, Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza, Children’s Musinex, Walden Farms Chocolate Syrup, Oil of Olay, and the local news, which was of course itself just a minor-league version of Oprah. This human connection was just a ploy, a shameless effort to lock in eyeballs, and the sole end was to turn our affections into revenue for food conglomerates and manufacturers of toothpaste.
But they’d told a story, and they’d made me cry. They’d shaken me up in some deep human throb center. Possibly this is the “soul” ever
yone’s always talking about.
17
Listen, listen. Hey … everybody, listen, I’m gonna say some stuff. (to a stranger in a front table) You—no more chewing. Chew chew chew you’re like a squirrel. Or a beaver. A chewing beaver. Yes—thank you, shut him up. Hi, so listen. I’m Pete. Peter Tarslaw. I know some of you. Others, you know, whatever, we’re gonna become friends. I just, you know, the movingness of the occasion, and this is a wedding, and I thought what the hell I’ll give a speech. Keep it short, that’s the advice they give and I will. I’m a novelist, by the way.
Polly and I—Polly Pawson, you know her as “the bride” or “Polly”—we used to date. In college. And, you know what, it was the best. The best time for me. Honestly. Remember in college when you could still just make out? (Here Derek stands up and does a ‘cut it’ motion) No I won’t. You know, Polly, you’re beautiful. The black hair, and the skin—it works for you. And I’m happy you’re happy. James, you’re from Australia. But that’s okay, so are a lot of people. (Derek approaches, along a side wall) I can see you. Just because you’re not in my field of vision. I see motion. I’m like a dinosaur.
Hey, George. That’s George. George and I had a throwing contest earlier. I won handily. But he’s from a boomerang culture not a baseball culture, so. Also, obviously … you know.
And thank you to the Pawsons for footing the bill on all this.
Look, this wedding, it was honest. That’s the thing. You can feel the honest. And you know maybe Lincoln, probably his ghost was here. You two love each other. And I’m totally, one hundred percent happy about that without grudges.
So, I’d like to say, a toast. To honest (Derek now embracing me and whispering in my ear to stop) no, this, let me do this. To honest, and love. And Polly. You’re fucking the coolest. Seriously. Everybody knows it now.
—text of a speech I delivered at Polly Pawson’s wedding reception, as reconstructed from the memories of witnesses
Dignity. That was to be the watchword. At Polly’s wedding, I would ooze and secrete dignity out of my very pores.
Dignified behavior, what they used to call class, would be the most elegant revenge. Confidence and success would waft off me, the Australians would be shamed, the aunts would be admiring, the bridesmaids would be lustful. As her guests fluttered around the famous novelist who’d deigned to come, Polly would know I’d won.
A famous novelist such as myself couldn’t travel to his exgirlfriend’s wedding on the Chinatown bus, stinking as it does of cured ethnic delicacies and Brooklynism.
I had to take the Acela, because you can’t say just Amtrak with an air of cavalier detachment. I drank a Heineken—a dignified beer—from the café car.
I heard a man and a woman talking about a meeting they’d been to in Boston, presenting some marketing plans to a consulting company. I thought of how I’d weave that into an anecdote for deployment at the wedding, wrapping it in worldly irony like bacon around a date. Here we were going through the country of the Puritans, of Jonathan Edwards and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and they were talking about marketing, I’d say with a smile wise beyond my meager years.
God, I was going to kill at this wedding!
But the best thing of all was my genius wedding present. Every time I got bored acting like a famous novelist riding the train, I thought about it. By now it had probably arrived: the Oenophile Select Temperature-Controlled Dual-Zone 28-Bottle Wine Refrigerator.
The Oenophile Select Temperature-Controlled Dual-Zone 28-Bottle Wine Refrigerator wasn’t on Polly’s registry, so right there I was sending the message that the various tacky items she’d chosen herself were something of an embarrassment, and for their own good I’d had to use my own exquisite taste. It was also expensive, but it was the kind of thing where most people don’t really know how much it costs. Polly would wonder, but she’d think it beneath her dignity to go on the Internet and find out. At least for a few months, and then she’d crack, and find out. She’d learn the price, it would be less expensive than she thought, but still expensive, but she’d know she’d lost just by looking.
But the best part was she’d have this thing in her house, and it would never be full! Why would newlyweds James and Polly ever have twenty-eight bottles of wine? Gradually, Polly would start to think about this. She’d look at James, and wonder why he wasn’t the kind of guy who needed space for twenty-eight bottles of wine. And she’d think about me—her ex-boyfriend, the Famous Novelist, who must assume everybody needs space for twenty-eight bottles of wine. She’d realize she’d missed out on the Oenophile Select Temperature-Controlled Dual-Zone 28-Bottle Wine Refrigerator lifestyle that I would have provided.
At Penn Station in New York, Lucy joined me for the ride on to Washington. She looked weary from months of trying to save her job at Ortolan as the British guys slashed away. With battle-hardened dispassion she reported that last-quarter numbers were in, and sales had tapered off for The Tornado Ashes Club. Preston Brooks, that avuncular bastard-genius, was back on top with The Widow’s Breakfast, which apparently half the readers in the country had seen fit to stuff in a stocking.
But this fact did not in the least affect my efforts at dignity. In fact, by the time we were out of New York, I’d worked it into my whole Polly’s-wedding persona. It made perfect sense. Preston Brooks was a strictly commercial writer. But I, Pete Tarslaw, the famous novelist, was something much more. If I could pull it off without seeming obvious, I planned to suggest to the aunts and the bridesmaids that most great novelists weren’t fully appreciated in their own time.
While I was working all this out Lucy had fallen asleep on my shoulder, and drool was beginning to seep out.
As we were pulling into Baltimore, she jerked awake. Her cheek was all smooshed up from my jacket. The nap must’ve invigorated her, because now she was full of girl-going-to-awedding energy and she got chatty.
“Pete?”
“Mmm?” I said, practicing a sonorous Novelist’s Tone.
“Can I ask you something, honestly?”
“Of course.” The Famous Novelist is always honest.
“How do you feel about, you know, this? Polly getting married?”
Ordinarily I might’ve given Lucy a straight answer. But the wedding was less than fifteen hours away. So I turned to her, looked her in the eye, put on my Novelist face, and belted it out of the park.
I gave her an answer about how “people change,” and there are “always regrets, bittersweet regrets,” but that any kind of “real love matures” into a love that can be “happy in another’s happiness,” even if it’s not with you.
She so completely bought it that when I was done she rubbed my arm.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” she said, “because Polly actually asked me if I thought it was a good idea, to invite you.” She rubbed my arm again. “I told her I thought it was.”
If I’d been telling her the truth, of course, I would’ve told her I thought Polly was a vicious harridan and that while she may have thought she’d outwitted me by landing this James fellow, I’d proved myself the better con artist by writing a bestselling book, which was a hard scam to top, and that I was waiting with delicious anticipation to see Polly cringe in defeat on her own wedding day.
As Lucy and I went to sleep that night in the DC Radisson, I was sure that was how it would play out.
But the next morning I saw the Buddhist monks.
Lucy and I were sitting, in our wedding finery, on the shuttle bus Polly’s dad had hired to take guests from the hotel to the chapel. Then two Buddhist monks got on.
They both had shaved heads and glasses, and they wore orange robes the color of traffic cones. Lucy of course started talking to them, and it emerged that they were friends of James’s family from Australia and had come all this way to perform a blessing at the ceremony.
“This is our first time out of the monastery in three years,” one of them said to Lucy. “Tomorrow we are going to see the pandas at the National
Zoo!”
It began to dawn on me that this was not going to be the wedding I had anticipated. Because not even I believed I could impress Buddhist monks.
There was a lilt, a genuine happiness, in the voices of people walking up to the chapel. Women were snuggling up and tucking their hands into the pockets of men’s overcoats. Lucy tried to do this to me, but I shooed her away, as I didn’t want any potential hook-ups to think we were a couple.
The wedding was held in a simple clapboard chapel from the 1840s, plank boards and white pews. According to the program, this was the very chapel where Abraham Lincoln had gone to services with several freed slaves on the morning after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
I began to feel very itchy inside my sportcoat.
For ushers I’d expected a flop-haired, meathead band of James’s Australian Rules cronies. But, while Australian, they didn’t look meatheady at all. They were all thin. And clean-shaven. They had soft, cottony cheeks. They didn’t look like they’d been shooting dingoes. They looked like they might be in a glee club together. They weren’t eyeball-molesting bridesmaids. With gentle accents they were offering arms to old women.
Our usher was in fact a literally retarded kid—legitimate Down syndrome—who was taking his responsibilities very seriously.
“Bride or groom?” he asked Lucy.
“Bride,” she told him. “Are you by any chance James’s brother George?”
“Yeah, I’m George,” he said.
“I’m Lucy! Are you excited about your new sister-in-law, George?”
“Yeah, she’s a great sister-in-law,” George said. The Buddhist monks, already seated, looked back at us and smiled. Lucy turned to me with a “how great is that?” expression, and I fake-smiled as best I could.
“There’s James!” said George.