When everyone woke up, we had Christmas at our house—just like all the other Jews in Beverly Hills. We even drank eggnog. And when the living room floor was covered in wrapping paper and my brother and sister were playing with their new toys and my mother was dabbing her new rose water on her wrists, my father put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
“Mission accomplished,” he said.
I remember that Christmas as part of the time when my father’s behavior was what people referred to as eccentric, unconventional. Or less generously, unreliable. But also lovable. I remember he had time to coach Little League. He wasn’t the robot in the suit and tie my friends’ fathers were. I didn’t know then why he had so much spare time. Or why my mother was always so tired. When I figured that out, his eccentric behavior became a lot less endearing. But until then, it made him seem special to me. Different from the other fathers. It was almost like he knew something important that they didn’t.
Like the day we caught the fish. I’ve never known what to do with that memory. Mostly I’ve spent my life wishing it would go away. But it doesn’t. That day will always keep me from hating him as completely as I want to.
I was seven, Hannah was five, Ben had barely been born—to us he was inconsequential. We hadn’t yet realized the world had just changed radically. But we knew Mom was exhausted. Pop was in a good mood, so he took Hannah and me to the Santa Monica pier for a whole afternoon to get us out of her hair. We rode the merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel and ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and then Pop rented a fishing rod and Hannah and I took turns holding it and being bored and complaining. Until one of us got a bite. Which one of us that was, depends on who you ask and who’s telling the fish story.
I don’t think either of us actually expected to catch anything. And neither of us knew what to do. It was our first fishing expedition. Our family wasn’t big on nature activities. No fishing, no camping, no hiking. Sometimes we barbecued. And then ate outside. Hannah and I were in way over our heads.
We gripped the rod with twenty white knuckles—like we were fighting a marlin or a whale.
“Gently, gently. You have to use a light touch,” Pop said like he knew what he was doing. He took the cheap little rod from us and started turning the reel, letting out more line before he realized he was turning it the wrong way. Any fish with half a brain should’ve been able to free itself by then, but something was still thrashing around under the blue-black surface.
A group of easily impressed city folk was beginning to gather, oohing and ahhing and cheering my father on as he performed what was apparently a Herculean task. Hannah and I stood by his side beaming. For once it was our father who mattered, who was important and admired. It was a feeling of elation I will never forget. And it was extremely short-lived. None of my Cub Scout badges had prepared me for the bleeding, bug-eyed, flailing trophy my father held up for the cheering crowd.
“Neat-o,” Hannah said, sticking her finger through the gaping hole the hook had torn in the fish’s lip.
“Stop!” I screamed. “You’re hurting him!” I pushed her and she stumbled backward.
“Put him down!” I yelled at my father.
“Calm down, Greyson,” my father said, laying the fish down on the pier where it flopped around frantically. “Fish don’t feel pain.”
Hannah wiggled her bloody fish finger in my face. “Yeah, stupid, everybody knows that.”
My father raised one eyebrow at her. “That’s enough, Hannah.”
I squatted down next to the fish. I was starting to cry and my tears were dripping on him. “Look at him. He can’t breathe.”
My father sighed heavily, then started looking around. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t move.”
Hannah squatted next to me. “He’s not going to be breathing when we eat him either,” she said and poked it.
“I said stop it! And we’re not eating him.”
“He’s my fish too,” she whined. “I caught him just as much as you did.”
“Well, I wish we hadn’t caught him,” I said, feeling a mixture of nausea, panic, and anger.
“Fine, I’ll cook my half and you throw your half back.”
“Go ahead and try.” I shoved her hard and she fell back onto her butt.
She just sat there for a minute. Then her eyes teared up and her chin started to tremble. “You got my shorts all wet … my bottom’s all wet.”
And then a shadow blocked the sun and I looked up and saw my father standing over me with a janitor’s bucket.
“Go get some water. I’ll take the hook out.”
“Water?” I asked lamely.
“Salt water,” he said, pointing to the seafood restaurant at the end of the pier that kept live lobsters in a tank.
“Hurry,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “I don’t think our friend here has much time.”
I sprinted down the pier and asked a man who was wearing black rubber boots and an apron that looked like my yellow rain slicker to fill my bucket. I could hardly lift it, but I made it back and Pop scooped up my wounded fish and dropped him in. I felt like I could breathe again too.
But when a feathery cloud of blood began to trail through the water from the hole in the fish’s lip, I started to cry. “Oh God, Pop, look what we did to him. He wasn’t doing anything except swimming around in the ocean and we … we tore a hole in him.” I was sobbing and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t ever remember being so sad or feeling such regret over something I had done.
My father pulled me to him and hugged me hard.
“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart.”
“No, he’s gonna die and it’s going to be my fault.” I could hardly breathe, I was crying so hard.
“Greyson’s a sissy,” Hannah teased. “A boy crying about a stupid fish. I’m going to tell everybody you cried about a stupid fish. Right after I cook it.”
Pop turned to her. “That is enough, young lady. Not one more word out of you. Do you understand me?”
I’d never heard him yell at Hannah, not like that. Her chin quivered and she started to cry.
“Well, do you?” my father asked.
“You said not one more word,” my sister said in a tiny whisper.
“Alright,” my father said, stepping between my sister and me. “Whaddya say we put our friend back where he belongs?”
Hannah and I nodded silently and followed my father to the edge of the pier where he handed me the bucket.
“I’m really sorry,” I whispered. “I hope you feel better.” I dumped the fish and water over the side and watched until the splash disappeared and there was only the slosh of the blue-green water on the mossy leg of the pier. Then Pop reached into his pocket and pulled out two nickels and told Hannah to buy us a couple of snow cones from the cart nearby.
When she was out of earshot, he held my arms tight so I was looking right at him—so tight it almost hurt. “I don’t know if you’re going to understand this, Greyson, but I’m going to tell you anyway. You should never be afraid to cry.”
“But boys—” I started to say.
“No, not just because it’s okay for boys to cry too. But because, Greyson, you are very lucky. Not everyone can feel things as deeply as you. Most people, their feelings are … bland, tasteless. They’ll never understand what it’s like to read a poem and feel almost like they’re flying, or to see a bleeding fish and feel grief that shatters their heart. It’s not a weakness, Grey. It’s what I love about you most.” Then he hugged me. Hard. And I’m not sure, but he might have been crying.
That short, unsullied time when I simply thought he was special has a sense of place and a smell all its own. It is a tiny shred of my father that, like a child’s blanket, I am both attached to and embarrassed by. And that I would be devastated to lose.
I suppose that irretrievable time is as much a piece of me as it is of him.
New York, 1994. “Mind if I sit and talk with you for a few minutes?”
The voice, with its heavy outer-borough accent, is at once cheerful and timid. I look up from my tray of uneaten, inedible food—colorless, tasteless, but unfortunately not odorless. I did not realize I was staring down at it; do not know for how long I’ve been sitting here alone at this lunch table.
The young woman stands next to the orange plastic chair beside me waiting for permission. She is dressed neatly in cheap clothing—the kind secretaries and receptionists who earn next to nothing buy at Kmart and J. C. Penney in order to achieve the look of an acceptable professional. The poor woman’s facsimile of her boss. This woman’s slacks and matching blazer are gray polyester and her blouse is made of some kind of shiny, no doubt highly flammable acetate. She is clutching a clipboard to her chest. She takes a step toward me and I can hear her polyester-covered thighs rub together. I wait for her to finally get up the nerve to “axe” me a question.
“I’m Yolanda,” she says, offering me her hand. I make a good faith effort to raise mine, but it is just too heavy. So she pulls out the chair and sits down.
“I’m Yolanda,” she says again. “I’m a nursing student here and I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes.”
A nursing student? I look around to see if there is any real staff person who can help me get rid of this well-meaning pain in the ass.
“Mr. Todd? Can I get you something?” Yolanda asks, trying to meet my eyes.
“No, I’m just very tired today.”
“Oh, well, this won’t take long.”
“What won’t?”
“Well, as you may or may not know,” Yolanda says, sounding like a telemarketer, “this is a teaching hospital and part of our training as nursing students involves interacting with the patients and learning how to take a proper history.”
I look at Yolanda again and instantly know her history. She’s from one of the boroughs, first in her family to graduate college. City, Brooklyn, maybe Hunter. She’s probably first generation—Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. Something like that.
She must have done well to get in here. Competitive program. Her parents must be over the moon. Father probably drives a cab. A cab with Yolanda’s picture and the Virgin Mary stuck to the dashboard. Mother probably waits tables or cleans houses or works as a seamstress at a dry cleaners.
“I’ll talk to you,” I say.
“Thank you, Mr. Todd,” Yolanda says, smiling. She sits ready with her pad and pen. “Just tell me your story.”
“My story?”
“How you got here, when you first became ill.”
“But Yolanda,” I say, truly disappointed at having to disappoint her, “I haven’t a fucking clue.”
FOURTH
Florence says things go best when I am relaxed. When I close my eyes and breathe deeply. When I remember something good. Something happy. So I am trying. To remember. What came before. But I have run out of Christmases and fishing trips. That well was shallow and ran dry quickly. Almost as soon as it saw me coming to take a drink. But there are other things. They come in different flavors—some are whole, some are just bits and pieces, some are bright, shining flashes. And some of the most vivid are also the most joyous and exhilarating. And yes, I suppose I could use those. But I am ashamed of them. Because they are not my wedding day or the day Willa was born. They come easily, and when they do, I feel a rush of guilt and shame that my happiest memories were moments of pure narcissism. Before I knew that was a bad thing.
Los Angeles, 1974. The awards were over and all bets were off. The sweet smell of anticipation and optimism that filled the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the beginning of the Oscar ceremonies had turned fetid with the stench of disappointment and resentment the moment the few became winners and the many became bitter. And after sitting through three and a half hours of acceptance speeches for Best Achievement in Sound Editing, five full-length musical numbers to remind us of the nominees for Best Original Song, and the annual memorial montage, all three thousand attendees wanted to be first out the door.
But how long it took to exit the overcrowded, poorly designed auditorium was largely dependent on the relative weight you carried in the industry. Nominees in the documentary and animated short subject categories usually got out just after the janitorial staff.
“Jesus Christ, these people are savages,” Ellen said, watching one A-list actress nearly decapitate little Tatum O’Neal as she leapfrogged over three rows of seats. We’d been caught in the bottleneck for twenty minutes when an enormous Inuit dressed impeccably in a Christian Dior tuxedo appeared—deus ex machina—in front of us.
“Mr. and Mrs. Todd?”
“Yes, and you are …”
“Hugo. Angela invites you to come with me.”
Angela Glass was my client—brilliant, neurotic, innovative, visionary, high-maintenance. Actually, that description only narrowed the field of my client list by half. Physically, Angela was a tiny woman, but tonight she’d become a heavyweight. She’d won big. And I was her agent, which meant over the course of this three-hour ceremony, I had become the holder of the keys to the castle. In fact, I now held a lot of keys to a lot of castles. It was my turn to jump to the head of the line. And so the incensed crowd shut up and parted like the Red Sea when they saw the Inuit bodyguard escorting the newly minted A-list agent and his beautiful wife. We were whisked out of the building and into Angela’s waiting double-stretch limousine.
Hugo opened the door for us and a huge white cloud erupted from the car. Inside the limo visibility was near zero. Ellen doubled over coughing. She grabbed my arm with one hand and bunched up her Valentino with the other to keep it from dragging on the asphalt while she hacked up a lung.
Shit. Water. “Hugo, could you—”
Suddenly, there was a miniature bottle of Perrier in my hand. Ellen downed it in one go, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and fixed her smudged mascara. She looked at me with a wide grin.
“I just got so totally high.”
She slid her arm through mine. “Shall we?”
Someone—couldn’t see who—slid over and made room for us. Then a pair of tanned, sinewy arms came shooting through the white cloud.
“Grey! Ellie!”
The rest of Angela dove across the lap of our movie’s nonwinning Best Supporting Actor nominee. He was bent over, snorting lines when we got in, and didn’t look up even when he slid over to make room for us. Ellen braced herself just as Angela threw an arm around each of our necks, squeezing us into her sweaty armpits.
“Thank God you’re here! I couldn’t do this without you two. Can you believe this fucking night? We fucking did it, Greyson.”
“You did, Angela. You made a great picture. Against all odds.”
“Bullshit. I’d be nowhere if it weren’t for you and you know it. Right, Ellen? You know I’m right, Barry. He’s not an agent, he’s a fuckin’ alchemist. You know I never wanted you for this picture, right?” she said to Diego Lazarus, who’d just won for Best Director.
“He convinced me. It was all Greyson. He said you were the only guy out there with balls big enough to do this script justice.”
Diego put his hands together in prayer and bowed his head in humble Hollywood thanks. Angela turned back to Barry.
“Grey’s a genius, Barry. You better fuckin’ make him a partner before someone else does,” Angela yelled into my boss’s face.
“I’m not arguing, Ange,” Barry said through tightly closed lips. A couple of seconds went by and we all watched Barry’s chest expand and his eyes bug out. Then he let go and a blast of white smoke exploded out of his mouth.
“You did good, Greyson, real fuckin’ good. We’ll talk business tomorrow.”
The Inuit bent down and stuck his head inside the car.
“Angela?”
She looked at him blankly. “Oh shit, of course. Grey, give Hugo your car keys.”
“What? Give who …”
“Hugo. Give him your keys. He’s going to drive your car home.”<
br />
“Ange, that’s not nec—”
“Oh cut the shit Grey. Come on, we’re gonna be late to our own goddamn party.”
Our goddamn party was being hosted by Sydney Freeman, president of production for New Vision Pictures and the guy who’d gotten us greenlit. I liked him, which of course made me instantly suspicious of him. I handed the keys to my brand new Jaguar to an Eskimo I’d known for twenty minutes, and before I could close the door, “Band on the Run” was blasting from the tape deck and the limo driver was screeching out of the parking lot.
The inside of the limo had the square footage of a small apartment. There were at least a dozen of us seated elbow to elbow.
Angela intercepted one of the lacquered trays that were being passed around.
“Line?” she offered as if she were holding a plate of pigs in a blanket.
The long, evenly spaced white stripes were elegant, almost graceful against the black background.
“Maybe later,” I said.
“Ellen?”
“Thanks, not just yet, Ange.”
“Something else? Pot? Ludes? A little Valium?”
No doubt she’d ingested them all before breakfast. Twice. And I was tempted. But I knew better. From experience. A couple of lines would lead to a half dozen more and a dozen more after that. After that, I wouldn’t need the coke to get high. Once my switch had been flipped, I’d stay up for days, overflow with creative brilliance, share with my colleagues in the middle of the night, spend forty or fifty grand like it was nothing. Eventually, the inevitable would come. And how bad was a matter of how high I’d been and for how long. The higher the high, the bigger the crash. So, I passed on the coke. Ellen jumped in.
“How ’bout a drink?”
Thank God for my wife.
“Booze it is!” Angela clapped her hands, relieved we’d finally agreed to consume something at least vaguely mood-altering.
“Somebody get the Todds a couple of vodka tonics!” she screamed over the din.
Ellen smiled and squeezed my hand. I fell back against the leather seat and let my head loll from side to side. She leaned in, still grinning, and kissed me, and then laughed into my open mouth.
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