“That’s new information,” he said.
“And yours?” I asked, hoping it was awful or boring.
“Gabriel,” he said.
Cool name, so I couldn’t say anything mean.
“Names say a lot about a person, before they’re even a person. We shouldn’t get named until we’re at least five,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, wanting him to go away. I felt like I was in a really bad made-for-TV movie and he was the annoying sidekick—the pimply, annoying kind.
“How come you have two last names?” he asked like he cared.
Ugh, he knew more about me than I wanted him to know.
“Some women don’t believe in losing their identity by using only a man’s last name for their child,” I answered.
“Are you one of those feminist types, too?” he asked, as if we were at a speed dating meet-n-greet. I didn’t bother to tell him about my penis envy and how I thought that canceled me out for the feminist label.
“I don’t know yet,” I lied. He knocked lightly at my aunt’s door. She didn’t answer.
“You’ve got a guest, all the way from the West,” he said, as if he was a radio announcer.
Aunt Helen was in bed with a quilt over her. Her hair was all white and fell past her shoulders. She looked a million years older.
“Vivien, come here,” she said as she stretched out thin, very veiny hands toward me. I hugged her bony body—what there was left to hug.
“You’ve got a choice; get sad or be okay with me,” she whispered in my ear so that the pimple-faced geeky college kid couldn’t hear. “Sit down, I have lots to tell you and I want to hear everything,” she added.
I didn’t look over at Gabriel as he slid a second chair over toward the bed, because I was trying to hide the fact that I was crying, which was really stupid and really impossible. I tried the ‘something’s in my eye’ routine. FYI, when you have to stop yourself from crying, there are only three things I know to do: pinch yourself really hard, force yourself to cough until you really cough, or picture something totally gross. So, I pinched my thigh while trying to cough, and pictured Gabriel pulling his pants down and mooning the nursing staff. Triple gross. Aunt Helen normally would have caught onto this, but she was too weak to notice. Ugh, reality!
There used to be a nursing home smack dab in the middle of Melrose Avenue in the heart of Hollywood (it would be like having one across from Macy’s in Manhattan or across from H&M on Newbury Street in Boston), and it used to make my skin crawl. I just don’t like the idea of aging while everyone else walks back and forth, shopping, eating and enjoying their lives. Awful, but what do I know? Maybe when I’m eighty, I won’t care.
“Gabriel, please hand me my bags,” Aunt Helen said. She had turned me on to using canvas shopping bags, instead of those plastic white bags—supermarket bags, way before that was in fashion. Because of her, I bought biodegradable poop bags.
“On the dresser,” she said, and Gabriel went over to it. There were two Trader Joe’s canvas bags, and Gabriel carried them over. Both were full. “Thank you so much, my friend,” she said, as her bird-like hands dumped the first bag on her quilt. There stood a stack of cloth patches that she had cut into at least two dozen odd letters, not yet formed into slogans.
Aunt Helen had grown up in Des Moines, Iowa, the eldest daughter of Slavic parents. She and my dad were the only ones left; like I said before, they had once been a family of five. They had grown up wearing handmade clothes (she had sewn most of them). The story goes that my dad had gotten a job on a farm a few miles from their home and had come home wearing Levi’s and a button-down shirt, and from then on, never wore handmade clothes again. My Aunt Helen, being the eldest, had continued their mother’s tradition of making quilts (everyone got a new quilt for the holidays). Cloth letters were applied across the quilts that said sweet things across them, but after college I had asked her if I could wear them as words on my jeans. I picked up a brownish-blue letter U. U for uterus, U for umbrella, and U for universe. Gabriel rushed over and plopped a pair of blue jeans, Levi’s, of course, in front of me, because she had pointed to the folded up pair on the dresser.
“Hope you’re still a size 6,” she said.
“Of course, because there’s no sugary, chemically processed crap in this body,” I answered.
She winked. I spread the jeans face down across the bed, grabbed the single letters, and formed the words ‘U MAKE U HAPPEN’. Gabriel, who was still hovering in the room, brought over a tiny pine box. Aunt Helen had gotten it from her mother as a child, it contained thread and needles.
“Your dad brings my food supply once a week,” she said, “Gabriel, will you see if they could serve us some organic apple juice and protein bars?”
Excellent, a reason to get him to leave her room.
“Sure, don’t worry, I know where your supply shelf is,” he said as he left.
Aunt Helen was still running her own ship, healthy foods and beverages (she had shown me the way).
“So, is dad dating somebody? I mean, he doesn’t want me to stay with him for longer than a few weeks,” I asked.
“He’s used to being alone. I don’t think he knows how to change his situation,” she said sadly.
My dad had collapsed (not physically) when my mother left him for the Panamanian would-be coffee bean grower. And then our dog died unexpectedly a week later. A heart attack. My mother had bought the half-Beagle mix in Prospect Park from some junkie for twenty bucks. He was only a year old. She and I named him, “Bridge”, after the Brooklyn Bridge. After both losses my Dad just continued to work. I was, at the time, in the world of high school; I entered it as a ‘misfit’ and graduated as one as well. I couldn’t think past my own needs, so I wasn’t able to help my father. And now I was back from Hollywood, and already I could feel that he hadn’t changed a thing—that he had stayed in that state of utter, sad abandonment.
“Vivien, I think your father needs a secret admirer. Even if it’s a ‘pretend’ one,” she said, as if she was scanning my worried mind.
“We’ll have to ‘trick’ him. Like Rachel, the girl in grade school with the ketchup period. Only we won’t let him find out that it’s fake,” I answered.
Rachel had actually wanted her period at eleven and had shown her mother a pair of bloody under pants. Her sister Lily fumed over all the special treatment Rachel got. I was invited to go with Rachel and her mother to witness the buying of her first box of maxi pads (extra thick). Pads? I never went that route because Paloma had said that when we got our periods, we had to use Tampax—that way we would be able to swim and wear white pants. I’ll admit I was jealous of Rachel; I tried to get my period by hitting my crotch every night with my hair brush. Month number three of Rachel’s period, her sister found a ketchup bottle behind the toilet. Rachel was grounded for lying (it was like a really bad after-school TV special).
“Yes, you must fool him. Please try,” Aunt Helen said.
“I will,” I replied, as I finished sewing the words cross the back thigh of my new Levis.
An elegant, short bobbed grey haired woman blurted out, “Have you seen Clarence?” Wow, she must have been near ninety and she had pale pink-colored lipstick on. She was perfect for a movie.
“He went to the store; he’ll be back soon,” Aunt Helen said, without glancing up. She was holding the Levi’s as I sewed.
“This is my niece, Vivien.”
The old broad slithered over and touched my face, with her long wrinkled fingers.
“Hello, sweetie, have you seen Clarence?” she asked me.
“My aunt said he went to the store,” I said.
“Shall I sing for you?” she asked. I peeked at Aunt Helen, who nodded.
“Yes,” I said, expecting show tunes, but she broke out in a very scratchy operatic voice. She was one of those people who didn’t make it big in the field of her dreams. She sang the beginning of the ‘Violetta Aria’ which I only recognized because
my Los Feliz neighbor L.J. used to blast it through his open windows every weekend. Of course, it was sung by the great Maria Callas.
“Where’s Clarence?” she asked, again.
“He’ll be back soon,” Aunt Helen replied. And then I got it, Clarence wasn’t coming back—he was dead. Why live in the ‘truth’ when the end was so near. She waltzed out of the open door. Clarence must have been a Mr. Darcy type man.
16
TRICK
Casablanca will always be one of the top ten favorite movies of my overworked, academic forever ‘single’ father—my beautiful father, who was so wrongly dumped and abandoned by my mother in a matter of days when I was fifteen. Okay, so I like the movie, but I hate the ending. Why the hell does Rick, the lead character (played by Humphrey Bogart), have to end up without Ilsa, the lead woman played by actress Ingrid Bergman? Is my father destined to the same fate as Rick? Will he always just have the fifteen years of marriage with my mother, plus the two years they dated? Is that all my father gets? I can’t accept that.
When I had swung by my father’s two-bedroom Cambridge apartment to drop off Shadow, my suitcase and bags, before heading over to see my Aunt Helen, he was in the living room that had been converted into a library/office. He got up to pat me on my head, pet Shadow, and ask, “How long are you staying?” And I answered, “Not long, don’t worry. I won’t move one of your beloved books!”
“How long is not long?” he asked.
Rude? Maybe, if it wasn’t coming from my father. He’s just like that.
“A few weeks, don’t get scared. I’m not moving in with you; my tits are still perky, and if I have to post myself on eBay, I’m sure some desperate guy will buy me,” I said, and marched out. I don’t usually talk crudely to him, but I was outraged.
After spending time with my aunt, I went reluctantly back to his place. It was time to end his ‘single’ lifestyle once and for all. Trick or treat? It was time for the trick. He was out, and I stared at the piles of new books that he bought over the last several years. It had been eight months, since I had last seen him. When he came to Los Angeles to see me, it was at least amusing, because he theorized and pontificated (AKA) babbled about Hollywood and ‘Hollywood’- type people, which made me laugh.
Shadow was stretched out on the two-tone grey sofa and my father had left a post-it on his laptop screen (‘Gone to Trader Joe’s’). What would we do without Trader Joe’s, the West Coast food store that came East (smart move).
I immediately took Shadow to the Charles River, one of the best spots to walk and think. Tricking my dad about a ‘love interest’ and dealing with Aunt Helen dying meant I needed to make a fast plan for myself.
An hour later, when I returned, my father had prepared a gourmet veggie meal for us, even removed his books from the square birch kitchen table. Big step for him; my father likes to leave his books everywhere, and never move them. Weird! He’s a cross between Sam Shepard and Clint Eastwood. So what woman wouldn’t want him? It’s just that he’s completely bookish; he thinks books and talks about books.
He sat down after feeding Shadow and proceeded to tell me about writing two essays, one on Napoleon and the other on Caesar. I listened, because that’s all I can do. Once he was done eating and talking, I asked, “How long has she got?”
He studied my question as if it was typed across my forehead.
“Not long,” he replied. That’s when I began to set a trap for him.
“A woman stopped me on my way into the building. She asked about you,” I said.
He looked at me without any interest. God help him if he rejects a nice woman he encounters outside of his apartment. I mean, she’d feel like a piece of shit.
“Did you come onto some lady last week at one of your Harvard lectures?” I asked, like I was serious. He looked mildly confused.
“Did you?” I asked, as if the imaginary woman had actually stopped me.
“I don’t think I did,” he said, now slightly concerned, and he stood up.
“Well, you must have led her on,” I said.
“I didn’t,” he said, defensively.
Ha, ha I got him. I watched him stride out of the kitchen and I smiled.
“Not going to be easy! But I will win,” I told myself.
I had heard all the rumors about the late, great author J.D. Salinger, writer of my all-time favorite book, Catcher in the Rye. He had lived life as a recluse after the success of his book, even his marriage was short lived and I guess I felt that my father was in the scary process of following in his footsteps—minus the best selling book.
My father walks a mile-and-a-half every morning, and then sits slumped over his desk, reading; he ignores the phone whenever it rings. He lets his mail pile up and only sifts through it at the end of each month. He never has friends dropping by, never wants to go to a movie (he prefers rentals) and he abhors eating out. He has his routine and goes ballistic if it’s broken. He wears the flannel button-down shirt or navy blue turtleneck, loose-fitting trousers, and suede walking shoes—every day. He showers every few days and manages to comb his hair, brush and floss his teeth daily, but other than that, he does nothing to ‘switch up’ his routine. Aside from saving for retirement, he donates to educating those in need. And the Harvard students adore him; they follow him around campus and bring him meals and wait for him to pontificate more academic stuff.
When my mother loved him, he was a ‘giant’ in my eyes. The odd part is that my father is tall in a professor-type way, and women ogle him constantly, but he looks through them; he even ignores them when he talks to them. I don’t know why I should care, why it bothers me. If I was at all brave, I would sit his long, tall body down on the couch and say, “Dad, you need to get laid. You need to fall in love! Dad, I’m sick of you being lonely; it scares me for my own future,” but I’m not brave. Besides, he’s an adult—and he’s got a brilliant mind. My father and I don’t argue. We’ve had maybe six fights, in twenty-seven years, most of which took place during my ‘semi-turbulent’ high school years, go figure. We just exist with each other.
As days passed, my father didn’t even ask about my Hollywood life or what I’m planning to do with my future. Instead, I could feel him counting down the eleven-day stay in his apartment. I didn’t tell Aunt Helen how sad I was beginning to feel, not wanting to worry her. She was dying, after all, and she needed me to save her brother and to be the niece she had always invested in.
Paloma called in the middle of all this and told me to put my dad on an online dating site without telling him, and to screen the women and then set him up on blind dates. Now, that was a trick worth considering. But I wasn’t ready yet. Not while living under his roof, and not while spending visiting hours with my aunt. “Paloma you’re wicked,” I told her and she just cackled and then told me how she was going on second dates with a white-collar Manhattan lawyer, a Williamsburg-based artist, and a Connecticut contractor, and that all three were really good guys. We made another ‘true love’ pledge over the phone; “True love, nothing less than the best, no settling for less. Amen,” and then we hung up.
The next day Aunt Helen told me that my mother had called her to say goodbye—I almost vomited. I mean, shit, okay, she’s dying, but my mother calling to say “GB” just made it so extremely real and filled me with anger.
“Why did she leave my father? What did he do? Did he stop having sex with her? Did he ignore her? Did he become too overeducated for her?” I asked.
She looked at the ceiling and then at me; she spoke slowly as if she was cautiously selecting each letter, each syllable, and each sound.
“Your father did his best, and your mother did her best. Blame holds no importance,” she said.
“But…” I tried to go on.
“You must promise me that you will stop blaming your father, and that you will see him for the heartbroken man that he has been and help free him, even if you have to pretend,” she said.
“I don’t want to blame
him anymore,” I replied.
“Don’t waste your life with blame. Just do your best,” she added and then she closed her eyes. Not to die (TG), but to sleep, or to pretend to sleep or to give me space to leave, because I was crying. Not out loud, not so anyone could tell, but I was crying inside myself. I had blamed my father. I had been blaming him since I was fifteen. Because frankly I couldn’t deal with how easily she left me. Bam, she disappeared. She had Facebooked me and I had ‘friend-ed’ her, but I never responded to her private Facebook messages.
Outside of my aunt’s care center, I burst into visible tears, and cried all the way down Mass Ave on my way back to my father’s apartment. TG for sunglasses (I have nine pairs—it’s an LA thing). When you cry with sunglasses on, no one really notices.
Okay, I’m a daydreamer, I’m an actress, I live in movie scenes, and suddenly the best director in my life, my Aunt Helen, was fading out. It killed me. It felt like an actual murder was happening. No one in the world ever called me on my ‘stuff’ like she did and soon she would be gone and all I’d have left would be my two best friends and my father. Suddenly that just seemed like nothing, nothing much at all.
17
OPPORTUNITY
I needed a new place to stay. It was day eleven and my days crashing with my lonely, overeducated father were numbered, so I called Laurel. She was the first rich friend I met during high school, and her parents had just moved to Martha’s Vineyard, leaving her their four-bedroom Cambridge house (a few blocks from Harvard Square). Her parents also own a condo in Palm Springs, and, of course, a treasured summer home on Martha’s Vineyard. Money is freedom—when there’s millions of it. Laurel looks like the ‘all-American’ girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She majored in business in college, but her minor has always been in men. Fact of the matter is that these days, she does less business and more men.
“I’m off to make love to a divorced, Italian banker, I met him on Facebook,” she screamed into the cell phone, skipping hello and how are you.
Girl Act Page 11