“No way,” was all Jennifer could say.
“Jjjjjhyes way,” I teased as we pried our way out of the car. Jennifer was rushed by the throng who shouted out praise in Italian and begged for her autograph. Paparazzi cameras flashed.
About an hour later we finally managed to reach our room. Inside the luxurious digs, Jennifer grabbed me in her arms and led me to the bed. But I stopped her. “I have to do one thing first.”
I called my dad.
One day, several months prior to Rome, we are in the outpatient area on the second floor at Saint John’s. Dad’s been home from the hospital for a week, but I still take him there every other day for either chemo or blood and platelet transfusions. Even though my father has lost twenty pounds, all of his hair, and most of his strength, he won’t allow his spirits to weaken. He brings the nurses candy, and they all fawn over him.
I hold it together like I never have before. I am normally someone whose emotions are so irrepressible, when it comes to crying I often don’t have a say in the matter. Once when I was watching The Price Is Right a woman whose bra strap stuck out from her sleeveless top won the big showcase, and as she jumped in excitement, her wig slid down, forcing her to adjust it on national television. I cried for ten minutes. But now I need to be strong for my father—as brave as he’s being. As he sits there, blood emptying from a hanging pouch into his veins, I ask, “Can I go to the cafeteria and get you anything?”
“Nah, I’m okay,” he answers.
“Come on, they’ve got some good-lookin’ desserts down there. How about some ice cream or chocolate cake?” The love-of-sweets gene runs deep in my family.
And then my dad looks up at me with, I swear, a twinkle in his eyes and a devilish, childlike smile—he looks like he’s about five years old. “I’ll have a strawberry ice cream cone.”
“Perfect. I’ll be right back.”
And that’s all it takes. I make it out to the hallway and walk slowly to the elevator, sobbing in soundless convulsions, nose dripping, eyes overflowing. I continue crying all the way down to the basement floor cafeteria. In the hallway, I pause to sit on a bench in front of a statue of a saint. I read the descriptive plaque beneath it: St. Dimpna, Patron Saint of Family Happiness. Sure.
I return to the transfusion room, having pulled myself together. I watch my father—my rock—eat a strawberry ice cream cone with one hand while the other stays motionless, red blood dripping into withered vein; I see the pink ice cream glistening on his upper lip and chin. And as I wipe his face, there in front of him for the first time, I start to weep.
Jennifer and I spent every morning in Rome together, falling again and again onto the floor through the crack in our pushed-together twin beds. We’d kiss good-bye with the windows wide open but the blinds still closed, just to make sure none of her fans, who were gathered in the streets below, repeatedly chanting her name, would spot us.
On her way out of the hotel lobby, Jennifer would stop to sign autographs, pose for pictures, accept gifts and flowers, then push through the crowd to her waiting limo, which would whisk her away to that day’s location. I sometimes joined her, but more often I wandered on my own, exploring. With exquisite shrines on just about every street corner and elaborate statues and fountains at each turn, the city transported me. I wandered from piazza to palazzo, sat in outdoor cafes in front of ancient monuments, and was mesmerized by backstreets, saints, cathedral bells, and painters working at easels. I never once stopped thinking of my father. I’d meditate and visualize him healthy and well; I’d visit churches and light candles for him.
At dusk I waited in our hotel room for Jennifer. The smell of tulips, roses, garlic, and burning myrrh filled the room from the streets, accompanied by shadows and light and the sound of honking horns and footsteps on cobblestone.
We dined in outdoor restaurants, sharing romantic dinners under twinkling white lights snaking through overhanging branches. We were always being watched, so in public we didn’t touch. But that only fueled our connection, intensified our desire, so by nightfall, when we returned to our hotel room and closed the blinds, allowing in only a sliver of moonlight, we held back nothing. Although Europe had always seemed far away and foreign, now it felt so familiar. And no matter how far from home I was, there was that same Moon, shining her light and grace down on us.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask my dad as he squirms with pain in his hospital bed.
“A gun,” he jokes, with as much strength as he can muster.
“Sorry, mine didn’t get through the metal detector downstairs. How about I read to you instead?”
“Sure.”
I’ve just been to the Bodhi Tree, where I bought several books about healing, about focus and will—about miracles.
My father is an artist. Although he stopped painting and sculpting early on in my life, reminders fill my parents’ house. Easels and palettes with crusty oil globs still smelling of color are tucked into closets; the dining room floor he carved and stained in an elaborate pattern remains; the table with a large sundial on top that he made is the centerpiece of the den, where the shutters with ancient Egyptian scenarios that he carved two decades earlier still cover the windows.
But by the time I reached my twenties, Dad was increasingly consumed by his business—the juvenile furniture manufacturing and distributing company he took over from his father—and he stopped painting, creating, or expressing. He was up at 5:00 a.m., out the door and to the office before 7:00; he returned home in time for dinner with the family, a nightly ritual consisting of my brother and me arguing, invariably ending with my father yelling, “Can’t I please have some quiet?” Then he’d head up to bed and stay there until the next day when he was off again to work. He had settled into a routine so precise that every morning before he left, he checked for five things: his upper shirt pocket for his glasses, his back pants pocket for his wallet, his front left pocket for his keys, right pocket for his lighter, and left jacket pocket for his cigarettes.
I decide to read to him from a book by Louise Hay called You Can Heal Your Life.
“Oh this is interesting, there’s a list of Probable Mental Patterns that cause specific illnesses. Should I see what mental pattern causes leukemia?”
“I’m not so sure I want to know,” my dad says. “Ah, why not, go ahead.”
I find leukemia and am stunned into silence.
“So?”
Those damn tears start to flow again. I turn away so he doesn’t see as they spill right onto the page.
“Come on, I can take it,” my dad prods.
I’m not so sure he can.
But I wipe my tears, pull myself together, then turn back to read the cause aloud to him.
“Leukemia: Brutally killing inspiration.’”
In Rome I wandered into almost every church. Surrounded by ancient paintings, mosaics, gold leaf, statues, and altars lit with candles placed by those asking for and receiving, I melted into God’s presence. I prayed that I would never do what my father had done. I vowed to continually nurture my creativity, to keep my inspiration alive and burning as brightly as the flame-lit altars.
On the day my father was to return to L.A. from Dallas I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and quietly tiptoed downstairs to a pay phone in the lobby of our hotel. With the time difference, my father would have just arrived home from the airport. Instead I heard my brother’s voice answer my parents’ phone. He hesitantly told me Dad had gone back to the hospital. On his return trip he felt so much pain in his legs that he had to ask for a wheelchair to transport him from the airplane’s gate. My father was a man who always had everything together, and when he didn’t, he had to appear as if he did. For him to ask for a wheelchair—this was serious.
I called the hospital.
“I’m coming home today,” I declared, when my mom answered the phone. I heard her hand the receiver over.
“No you are not,” my dad replied firmly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not
fine, you’re in the hospital—you had to get a wheelchair at the airport. That is not fine.”
“Look, I’m not going to die now. I promise. All you’ve been doing is taking care of me. Please, Hill, just stay and enjoy yourself. Honestly, that’s what would make me feel best.”
I hung up and walked back to our room. I climbed into bed, and as Jennifer took me in her arms I began to cry.
“Come on, Honey, let it all out,” she whispered, holding me safely.
And I did, sobbing for hours, finally releasing the torrents that had been stuck deep in my soul, gnawing at my skin.
There in a hotel room in Rome, I surrendered.
My mom works all day, then at about 5:00 comes to relieve me at the hospital. She tells me she does her crying at the office, slipping into the bathroom or taking a walk outside, and also at night, home alone in the bed she has been sharing with my father for forty years. Since I returned from Rome, I can no longer hold back.
“Dad, I’ve been trying to be all strong for you, but you know what?”
“What?”
“This sucks. Of course I’m a wreck—how could I not be? So from here on in, you’re just gonna have to deal with me crying.”
The tears fall now, with no restraint. My father sees and takes my hand.
“You know what?” he echoes my query, his voice shaky.
“What?”
“You’re right. This does suck.”
Then, for the first time since he got sick four years ago, my father starts to cry.
By the time we returned from Rome, Jennifer’s widower had already remarried. I knew because I watched the soap every afternoon, as soon as I came home from the hospital. It helped me unwind.
On the Fourth of July, Jennifer and I planned to go to a barbecue at a friend’s house. On the way, we stopped by the hospital to visit my dad. He cracked jokes, trying his damndest to be as charming as always, despite his pain. We all laughed and hugged; he shooed us out, encouraging us to go have some fun. Hours later, while at the barbecue, I received a call from my mother—my dad had taken a turn for the worse, and suddenly he was in and out of consciousness. We raced back to the hospital.
“You should gather the family,” the doctor informs us. It could be today or tomorrow.”
Doctors never use the words “die” or “death.” They talk around it. At this moment, I am grateful. Death is still a distant notion, vague and surreal.
We gather close friends and family—including my dad’s parents, who can’t fathom that they are going to outlive their sixty-four-year-old son. We hold a constant vigil at his bedside. My dad—the fighter, the trooper—remains feisty. The doctor’s prediction, “today or tomorrow,” does not arrive. One day, two days, three days, four.
Jennifer, who stays by my side all these days, walks with me down the third-floor hallway. We both need to take a breath. Her arm is around me; we’re not saying a word. Nothing makes a person more present than imminent death. As we stroll, we almost collide with a middle-aged woman on one of those hall walks that every visitor to the cancer ward takes at one time or another. She looks up, startled.
“Oh my God, it’s you.”
We stare at her, not understanding.
“Emily Stevenson. You’re alive.”
Before Jennifer can respond, the woman adds, “I mean I know you’re the actress and all, but, oh my God—my mother and I watched you every single day. She’s been sick for a long time now.”
It’s getting harder for me to breathe, almost suffocated by someone else’s pain on top of my own.
“I know this sounds crazy, but my mom isn’t doing so well. Maybe if you could come to her room and say hello, you know, show her you’re really alive, maybe it would help.”
“Of course, I’d be happy to,” Jennifer smiles compassionately.
We follow the woman with messy salt-and-pepper hair towards the room where her mother lies, dying. I wait outside the door and watch as Jennifer enters the room. I see the mother, tubes in her arms, oxygen mask on her face, lying motionless. I don’t hear what they say to each other, but I see my girlfriend take this woman’s hand in hers, and I see the life force returning. A glimmer comes to the woman’s eye, a smile on her dry, cracked lips. And then she gathers all the strength that’s in her, sits up, and hugs Jennifer. They hug for a long time.
On day five of our vigil, Jennifer has to leave to go to an important audition. Soon afterward she returns to the hospital, looking even more gorgeous than usual. She’s wearing a tight, short skirt, heels, a cleavage-revealing blouse, and her hair and makeup are impeccable.
My father, who has not spoken for days as he drifts between worlds, continually gasping what could be his last breath, notices her walk into the room. He slowly turns his head and through his partially opened eyes, gets a good look at Jennifer. Inspired by her beauty, he utters his final word before he dies an hour later.
My father just says, “WOW.”
1993
The World Wide Web is born. I do my first online chat in preparation for promoting the book I’ve recently sold, Girl Power. Only one other person is in the chat room and we both LOL over the fact.;)
Ten years after hanging out with Tom Hanks when my band Angel and the Reruns shot the film Bachelor Party with him, he stars in Philadelphia, for which he will win the Acadamy Award for best actor.
Michael Jackson is accused of child molestation but charges are dropped when a settlement agreement is reached. Good thing for him that’s over with.
A bomb goes off at the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. Good thing more people weren’t killed.
Weight loss advocate Susan Powter screams from infomercials and books to STOP THE INSANITY!
Twenty years ago I was given a free ticket to see what would be Barbra Streisand’s last concert, at a McGovern for President benefit. Now I am given another free ticket to the event of the year—her comeback performance on New Year’s Eve at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Too bad I’m still not really a fan of hers.
A star-studded year of friends: I spend Christmas Eve with Melissa Etheridge, who comes out at Clinton’s inaguration ball; k.d. lang, with Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal, comes to my house for dinner and sings her hit song “Constant Craving” in the hallway; and since my good friend’s boyfriend is John Cusack, I see him in bed one night wearing acne medicine.
To gather writing for Girl Power, I go to a teen girl wheelchair basketball game, an Indian reservation, a home for teen mothers, and weekly Riot Grrrl Meetings. “Revolution Girl-Style Now!”
LAPD raids the home of Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss, and Lorena Bobbitt cuts off her husband’s penis, while Janet Jackson scores a hit with “That’s the Way Love Goes.”
Vespas, Vespas, All Fall Down
What do you do when you’re on a self-imposed sabbatical from serial monogamy and meet the person you’ll probably spend the rest of your life with?
Run like hell.
That’s exactly what I did when I met Maxine.
When I was involved with Jennifer, my life became much like her soap opera. My father died from a dreaded disease; with no prior experience my mother was forced to take over the family business; my previous two girlfriends, Elizabeth and Katie, fell in love with each other; a close friend miscarried in her eighth month of pregnancy; my housemate, Ken, after a lengthy search, discovered that despite the fact that his birth mother had given him up for adoption in Brooklyn thirty years ago, the two of them had been living just one block from each other in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley until her death one month before he tracked down her identity; and Jennifer plummeted into a deep depression, which she had had previous bouts with during our relationship. Through arduous therapy sessions (mine, not Jennifer’s!), I came to realize I had developed a pattern. According to my therapist, darkness was seductive to me since I believed that my own light would nurture, enco
urage, inspire, and heal my mate, which, in turn, would make me worthy and necessary. That’ll be $3,755, please.
Then in a climactic episode, the night before Jennifer and I were to leave on a trip for my birthday—staying in intimate bed and breakfasts throughout New England to watch the leaves turn color—I went to sleep on “my” side of Jennifer’s bed and on “my” nightstand I found bobby pins. Jennifer, the soap opera actress, gave a Daytime Emmy-worthy performance, swearing she had no idea how they had gotten there. But I, the amateur detective, not only knew exactly how they had, but also whose they were. Come on, who the hell wears bobby pins?
We still went to see the leaves turn color except what turned the most throughout our trip was my stomach, especially when Jennifer would go off to make a “work” phone call. Yeah, to her bobby pin-wearing “agent” no doubt.
In a romantic bed and breakfast overlooking an orange-and-red maple forest, I decided that the best birthday gift I could give myself was a break from relationships. And more than just a commercial break—it was time for a hiatus.
I spent the first few months of my time off mostly in tears, mourning the loss of my father, of Jennifer, and of all my failed relationships. But by mid-spring I started getting into a groove and actually began to really enjoy my freedom. I was hanging out daily with Wendy and Lisa from Prince and the Revolution, having officially made the leap from fan to close friend (really this time!), and felt more creative than I had in years. I was feverishly working on my book Girl Power and, vowing not to squelch inspiration as my father had, I began to make visual art—found object assemblages—and showing and selling pieces in established galleries. I took all the energy I had been giving to my girlfriends and instead infused it into my work and my life.
Queen of the Oddballs Page 18