Too Soon to Say Goodbye

by Art Buchwald

  Beyond the general, I never experienced anti-Semitism, though France is rife with it. After all, they believe the Jews killed Christ. The reason I didn’t feel much of it, except from the general, is the French thought of me as an American, not someone of Jewish descent.

  My life in Paris centered around the European edition of the Herald Tribune. I landed my job in 1949, met my wife there, covered the world for the paper, and pretended to be Hemingway. In the beginning I sold myself as the food and wine critic, although I knew nothing about either. When the editor asked for my credentials, I replied, “I was a food taster in the Marine Corps.”

  I was arrested in 1958 when I ran through the streets of Paris with Beaux-Arts students wearing nothing but gold paint and a jockstrap. I was thrown in a jail cell at the Grand Palais. The students in the jail told the police I was a high official with the Marshall Plan, and if they didn’t let us go I would take their bicycles away from them.

  If you ask me to name my biggest moment in Paris, it was when four French generals staged a mutiny in Algiers against de Gaulle. At that time the Foreign Legion was made up of defrocked Nazis and storm troopers. De Gaulle had no regular troops in France, and the big fear was that the Foreign Legion from North Africa would overthrow the French government. The people were asked to drive or walk to Orly Airport and talk the Legion out of opposing de Gaulle.

  My friend, Alain Bernheim, said he wasn’t going because he didn’t speak German.

  I was on de Gaulle’s side against the traitors. But revolution or no revolution, the Herald Tribune had to print. The mutiny failed, and de Gaulle held a lifelong grudge against his generals.

  I invented myself as a journalistic Charlie Chaplin, and the more trouble I could get into, the happier I was. I made fun of the “International Set.” Thornton Wilder once told me in Saint Moritz, “Archie, these people need you more than you need them. You validate their existence.”

  During my fourteen years in Paris I reported from Hong Kong, Algiers, Russia, Italy, and the Arctic Circle. The Tribune paid my expenses, or I took a junket from a movie company. I adopted my son Joel while covering Moby Dick in Ireland, my daughter Connie in Spain when I covered The Pride and the Passion with Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Sophia Loren, and my daughter Jennifer in France, which I charged to Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper.

  I am coming to the story of how I met my wife.

  Ann McGarry was from Warren, Pennsylvania. She was the fashion coordinator at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas, and decided to go to Paris with a thousand dollars and a letter from Stanley Marcus to the couturier Pierre Balmain.

  When I met her, I had been dating a fashion writer from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Ann had come up to her room at the Plaza Athénée to meet a moneychanger who would convert dollars into francs at a black market rate.

  The next time I saw Ann was on the Champs Elysées at a café. I bought her a Pernod and she told me she lived with a French family in the Bastille area. She said they were away for the weekend.

  “Okay,” I said. “You can make dinner for me tomorrow night. I’ll bring the wine.”

  To show her I was a good guy I took her home in a taxi—which cost a bundle of francs.

  The next evening I showed up with a bottle of cheap Algerian red. We had dinner by candlelight. Then, thanks to the wine, we started grappling with each other on the couch. That night our friendship was consummated. We started dating, but the taxi meters kept cranking up. At the time I was living on the fifth floor of 24 rue Boccador, off Avenue George V, in a one-room studio. Irwin Shaw and Theodore White had large apartments on the other floors.

  The room next to mine was up for rent, and I talked Ann into moving in. My reasoning was that after we made love I would not have to send her home in a taxi.

  Ann moved in. Our rooms were connected by a balcony, and occasionally when she got mad and locked me out I went out onto the balcony in nothing but my boxer shorts and a top hat and read poetry to her. There was nothing she could do but let me in.

  We lived in sin for about a year, but then Ann started asking, “Isn’t there anything more?”

  I said, “What more can there be?”

  “I want to get married.”

  “But that would spoil all the fun,” I said.

  From then on she threatened to go home unless I became serious.

  I said, “I am serious, but no French priest wants to marry us because everyone thinks I killed Christ.”

  One night a few weeks later in a bar called Calvados, where our gang gathered after dinner, the subject of marriage came up again. Lena Horne said in front of everybody, “If you want to get married I know a priest in London who will do it.”

  I was trapped. I said, “I’ll go see him.” The gang bought Ann a bottle of Champagne.

  The next week I went to Westbury Cathedral in London and asked to see Father Kennedy. “Lena Horne sent me. She said you would marry my beloved and me.”

  “No problem.”

  “But there is a problem. My wife is Catholic and I am Jewish.”

  He replied, “No problem, as long as you are not a Protestant.”

  And so we lived happily ever after for forty years.

  After we got married, Ann and I found a beautiful apartment on the Quai d’Orsay and tried to make babies. In time we discovered we couldn’t produce an heir. So we decided to adopt one. I have wondered many times what it would be like if Ann were still alive while I’m in the hospice. Since she always blamed herself for anything that went wrong in our lives, I’m sure she would blame herself for the state I’m in now.

  In a weird way I’m glad I am going after her.

  Don’t Fail Me Now

  Another highlight was getting the National Hospice Award from the Hospice Foundation of America. They gave it to me because I had publicized the institution.

  My son, Joel, attended the awards dinner and spoke for me.

  On behalf of my father, thank you very much. I have to be honest with you, we didn’t want my father to go into a hospice at first. We were hoping he would stay on dialysis, but when he went off dialysis, it was his decision, and we came around to supporting him.

  No one wants to lose their loved one, but when my father chose to go into hospice he seemed relieved and happy that the decision had been made.

  In all the interviews and profiles, Dad has consistently talked about hospice and its purpose, which for him is to make dying respectable.

  Since my father is in such good shape mentally, there is a tremendous amount of laughter in the hospice. With so many people coming to see him, he jokes about charging $25 per visit and $30 for parking.

  It would not be as much fun for me to accept this award if Dad were not here. I promise that we will all send the message that when the time comes, hospice will be there for your loved ones.

  As weeks turned into months, I began to wonder why I was still alive, as did everyone else, including people who had written, called, or visited expecting that it would be our last contact.

  I asked Dr. Newman how I had become The Man Who Would Not Die.

  This is how he recalled the situation:

  After your leg amputation you seemed very sad, upset, and frustrated, which was understandable. I discussed with you the need for dialysis to do the work of your kidneys. If you didn’t have it, your situation was terminal.

  At first you resisted. You told me, “This is not me. This is not how I want to be.”

  Then you asked me what it was like to die from kidney failure. I said you will become uremic and go into a coma.

  You said, “That’s all right. It sounds good.”

  After the leg surgery you were transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

  While recuperating from losing your leg you told me you were very depressed and I said, “You have a right to be, but I want to make sure you’re not making decisions based on depression.”

  On January 15, 2006, you said to me, “I want out of here, nothi
ng is working and I don’t see any good coming of this. I’ve had a very good life and I just want to go out peacefully.”

  I spoke to the family and said I was acting according to your wishes. I arranged your transfer to the Washington Home and Hospice for supportive care and no further rehabilitation or dialysis. At that time your kidneys were not functioning. Gradually the kidneys began to rally and produce urine—good quality urine in good volume. The blood tests and urine tests showed improvement. It became clear that the insult to the kidneys caused by the angiogram dye was resolving and now you no longer have both acute and chronic kidney failure, but just chronic kidney disease. If there is no further injury to your kidneys you can have a reasonable life without dialysis.

  This was the best news I had received in this long medical saga. My kidneys did not let me down and did not fail me after all. If I could, I would give them a very gentle hug, as I don’t want to bruise them.

  16

  Sex and Lies

  You’re probably wondering if I give much thought to sex in the hospice. I have given it some thought, but not as much as I give to food.

  One Sunday I saw a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, and also a piece on 60 Minutes, about women who want children but not men. Because sperm banks are becoming more popular all the time, a man can now make a deposit at a sperm bank and the recipient can pick out what kind of baby she would like to have. (Baseball player, stand-up comedian, White House aide.) Sperm banks have become so sophisticated that mothers can select the color of their baby’s hair, eyes, and so on. When I saw both of these stories on Sunday, I decided it was a sign. Why not me? This would be a wonderful way to achieve immortality.

  The following Monday I called the sperm bank in California and asked where I could leave a deposit. They said, “We’re always open to new accounts. We will send you a specimen jar and put you in our computer. Then you tell us how many women you’ll allow to receive your donation. If, for example, you would like to make a lot of women happy, you would have to make more than one donation. The specimen will be frozen and good for six months.”

  This was a fantastic discovery, because before, I was under the impression I wouldn’t be able to leave anything behind. Since reading the article, I have been sitting here dreaming about the future little Arties and Arianas running around all over the place. I can follow them in my mind to school and even dream about them going to college. The boys will then be drafted by the Washington Redskins, and if it’s a girl, she’ll be a Redskin cheerleader.

  Believe it or not, the sperm banks pay for deposits in cash, but they don’t promise you a toaster like some other banks.

  Since it’s my deposit, I want my offspring to go to good schools. Not necessarily Ivy League colleges, but if it’s a boy, and he gets a football scholarship to USC, I think that’s nice. If it happens to be a girl, and she’s a champion tennis player for Sweet Briar, it is very exciting. My whole idea now is that I will not go without leaving something worthwhile for posterity. There are a lot of sperm banks in the country. I have even heard of drive-in branches.

  The other thing is, I keep looking at women and wondering which one of them I want to be the mother of my child.

  To make life easy for everybody, I’m putting up a web-site with all the relevant information on me. I do have faults, but I still think whatever they are can be overcome.

  I know this is going to produce a lot of interest from single women, but I don’t want them to get their hopes up. At my age I can only give twelve deposits a week.

  As long as I’m in a hospice, I might as well talk about sex. There isn’t much in the hospice and I can’t say I had a lot before I got here.

  I was fifteen years old when I lost my virginity to a chambermaid at the Hotel Nassau in Long Beach, Long Island, in 1941. I was a bellboy. Her name was Anna (I think). I only mention it because losing my virginity was a good thing, and since it happened I have never wanted to get even with Anna or any other woman.

  I believe in sex. I think it is good for you if you don’t hurt anybody else. I have been hurt, not by making love, but by rejection.

  Over the years I have collected rejections the way other men have collected baseball cards.

  “I don’t want to make love to you because it will hurt our friendship.”

  “You are just using me.”

  “I know what you are thinking, and the answer is no.”

  “I want to do it, but I don’t want to have a baby.”

  “My mother said if you don’t want to marry me I should keep my legs closed.”

  “I can’t give you what you want.”

  “Everyone says you sleep around.”

  “I’m not in love with you.”

  “If we made love and you didn’t call me the next morning I would die.”

  “I can’t do it in a car.”

  I have one of the great rejection collections of the world.

  I was introduced to the idea of sex when I was eleven years old. My unofficial tutor was a young man named Harold, the son of my first foster parents.

  I shared a room in the attic with an Irish maid named Celeste. Once or twice a week Harold, when drunk, came upstairs and got in bed with Celeste.

  They went at it, thrashing and moaning and saying things like, “Don’t stop” and “Now, now!”

  Two feet separated my bed from them, so while they were screwing, I was masturbating. Harold and Celeste would look at me and laugh. Harold said, “If you don’t tell my mother, I’ll buy you a present.”

  After that, when Harold came upstairs to bang Celeste, I whacked off and then got a baseball glove, or roller skates, or a stamp collection.

  My sister Doris asked me why Harold was giving me presents. I told her, “Because he likes me.”

  Once I was introduced to masturbation at the age of eleven, it became one of my favorite indoor and outdoor sports. While doing it I made “love” to my English teacher, a girl named Mitzi who worked in the dry cleaner’s down the block, and a slew of movie stars.

  Whenever I saw a movie at the Hollis Theater I went home and made love to the “actress of the week.” Like so many boys who grew up in the thirties, I had wet dreams about Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, and Mary Astor. For reasons I never understood, if you were caught masturbating you were punished. No one would believe me if I told them that the devil made me do it.

  When I was thirteen years old, I visited Billy Mahler at his fancy prep school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Coming home, my plan was to hitchhike back on U.S. 1. It was six o’clock in the evening. Cars kept whizzing by. Finally a man in a fancy Buick stopped for me. I remember every detail.

  He was wearing a checked sports jacket, a dark blue shirt, and a red striped tie. He asked me where I went to school and what my favorite sport was.

  Then he asked if I liked women. I said I did. He told me he was a traveling salesman and sold kitchenware and met a lot of women. As a matter of fact, he had just made love to a waitress in a Howard Johnson in Maryland the night before.

  He didn’t leave it at that. He told me what beautiful breasts she had and how she performed oral sex on him. While he gave me the details I could feel his hand on my crotch. He saw I had an erection.

  I was scared silly, but U.S. 1 saved me. It had traffic lights. When we stopped at a red light in New Brunswick, New Jersey, I jumped out of his car and ran into the bushes, where I hid for an hour.

  I never knew his name, but I have hated him all my life—and I avoid traveling on U.S. 1, although I never told anyone the reason why.

  I don’t want you to think I have only liked sex for sex’s sake. When I was married I tried to make babies, but to no avail. I would even rush home in the middle of the day, we would make love, but nothing would happen. I enjoyed sex in the afternoon, particularly since it was for a purpose.

  I remember my first real love mainly because she dumped me. Flossie Starling, a Southern magnolia, gave her heart to me and then took it away. I
t was the summer of 1942 at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire. She was a waitress and I was a bellboy. We pledged eternal love and did some very heavy petting after dark on the eighteenth hole of the golf course.

  Flossie went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I lied and told her I was going to Columbia. The summer whizzed by and I was sure our love was forever. Flossie promised she would wait for me until I finished “law” school.

  I wasn’t very happy to return to Forest Hills. My sisters and I lived in an upstairs three-room apartment. But we had no furniture, because we couldn’t afford any. I couldn’t let anyone upstairs. Neither could my sisters.

  I hated school. It is a crazy thing to say, but World War II saved me. I decided to run away and join the Marines. They had beautiful uniforms, and in the movies, when they weren’t fighting the Japs, the Marines were fighting U.S. dogface soldiers and sailors in bars.

  One Monday I left home quietly and headed south to say goodbye to Flossie in Greensboro. My family had no idea where I was going. All the way hitchhiking down to Greensboro, I dreamed of my farewell with Flossie: She would hold me in her arms and cry when she found out I was going to fight in the malaria-infested jungles of Guadalcanal.

  I arrived at Flossie’s dorm on Friday afternoon. When she came downstairs she failed to throw her arms around me. Instead, she asked angrily, “What are you doing here?”

  It turned out that Flossie had a boyfriend, a cadet at the Virginia Military Academy, with whom she had a date that night. Flossie didn’t know what to do with me, so she set me up with her roommate Sylvia.

  The four of us went out dancing and I had a terrible night. Sylvia didn’t care for me and I only had eyes for Flossie. The other three were furious when I didn’t have money to pay for food after the dance. They dropped me off at the YMCA and didn’t say good night.