by Delia Ephron
Dad takes my hand, and that makes me even sadder. “Your hand’s cold,” he tells me. He always says that. He’s said it to me a million times. Dad has this completely fierce, crushing grip. I don’t shake hands with him, I never did, obviously, because he’s my dad, but now I’m recalling that Jenna told me that BlueBerry said her hand nearly disintegrated the first time she shook hands with him.
“Remember how you were the champion arm-wrestler in college?” I haven’t thought about that in ages either, or that when I was little we always armwrestled. “You let me beat you.”
“No, you won.”
“You always said that, and I thought I was so strong. Dad, tell me what happened? Did it hurt? Were you scared?”
“When?”
“You know.”
He shakes his head.
“Come on, this can’t be like Little Women, where I hunt and hunt but the details are never revealed.”
“You’ll find nothing here you don’t already know.”
“What?”
He gives me the MLS. No kidding. Me, the big MLSer, gets one back, and believe me, he’s better at it than me. I search his eyes for a clue—the eyes are the key to everything—but his remain opaque, and his mysterious half smile gives away nothing.
“I don’t get it.”
“You will.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, where it won’t stay, and straightens my shirt—his shirt—on my shoulders. I am totally rumpled. I wish I could bottle this feeling of having Dad tidy me up. And let me tell you, my dad is handsome. He has the warmest, most soulful brown eyes, and his face is so open to feeling. When he smiles, he could melt ice. When he’s serious, his intensity positively radiates. A photograph can convey the specifics; it helps with the history—that Dad’s nose is crooked, for instance. He broke it in a fistfight when he was ten. My dad, the tough kid. But a photo never captures charisma. Definition (mine): having charm enough to fuel a rocket. Right now he’s telling me something, and my mind is wandering into how happy I am, how lucky, how amazing. I have to ask him to repeat. “What, Dad?”
“You don’t get to know what death is or isn’t. No one gets that.”
“But I’m here. No one gets that but me.”
He laughs. Hearing him laugh is fantastic. Laughs are original, each person’s, don’t you think that’s true, and they are extremely hard to recall. Almost impossible. His rumbles, like it’s coming out of a bass drum. I’m loving that so much that I almost miss the bad news. “The ordinary mysteries of life—those you’re stuck with,” he says.
Death is a mystery for sure. Death is one colossal mystery. “But I’m scared. If I’m scared, how can I live?”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly? That’s not an answer, Dad.” He’s turned into Confucius, dispensing little sayings with no explanations. He used be the great expounder. “I’ll find nothing?”
“Nothing that you don’t already know.”
“Why am I here, to build up my muscles?”
“Is that a bad idea?”
“Be serious.”
“I am. Come on, banana, look at the view.”
Dad leans forward and rests his arms on the terrace wall. I do the same, and together like big birds, we survey the area. We’re at the far edge of the cove, high above, and from this perch we can appreciate the whole landscape of Dad’s puzzle. Below, the houses huddled around the cove, the beached dinghies, the cluster of seaside tables shaded by umbrellas in jaunty colors. It’s thrilling to see the whole panorama for the first time. My hard work brought it to life. Most amazing is the confirmation once and for all that we’re in the puzzle, because there are no blues. Wherever land meets sky, there’s a jigsaw horizon of giant knobs and indentations as if our whole world, Dad and my private world, has a fanciful turreted wall around it. The GWW seeps through the ins-and-outs and appears to coat the entire sky with a gray, filmy glaze. Out in the sea, well, there is no sea except for the little boat bobbing in its blue lagoon with lacy puzzle edges. Instead of water there’s a steamy mist so light, it might be rising off a cup of hot tea.
“Remember, you waved to me when I was in that boat.”
“I did?”
“You must remember—you were at the hotel.” I point to the building, but he’s not interested. Did death give Dad amnesia?
“Puzzle light is unlike any other,” he says, “because it’s fixed.”
“Except for the GWW.” I explain that I call that spooky stuff the Great Woolly White. “The more of the puzzle I completed, the thinner it got, I guess because it occupied less space.”
“You did the puzzle?” He sounds surprised.
“Who else? Now the GWW is wispy and romantic, tantalizing, don’t you think?”
Dad nods. He gets the mood.
“At first I thought the puzzle was Ireland, but then I fell into that café, the one with the grape vines on the wall. By the way, remember that placemat in your office, the watercolor of grapes? Mom stole it.”
“Really?”
“It was on your wall and then it was on Mel’s.”
“So that means she stole it?”
“What else?”
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
Dad just smoothes my hair.
“I can’t believe I have to grow up with Mel. He’s the un-Dad. Mom married him as a reaction.”
“They always seemed happy when I bumped into them in town.”
“They were probably…”
“What?” says Dad.
“Nothing.” I was going to say pretending, but I’m thinking about that stupid game they play where they get excited about commercials and laugh their heads off. Also the nickname Booper. Dumb, but you’d never call a guy Booper unless you were sweet on him. “You never said that before.”
“What?”
“Anything nice about Mom and Mel. Anything really. You acted as if Mel didn’t exist.”
“I have a different perspective now,” he says.
I guess that’s a death joke. “Dad, they’re not artists like us.”
“No?”
“No! God, Dad, you’re not agreeing with anything I say.”
“I’m not disagreeing.”
“You’re doing something.”
“Calm down,” he says. “Are you hungry? Why don’t we get a gelato?”
Showing off my new muscles, I descend the deep terrace steps without a wince. We stroll through the town, cozy together. “I wish she didn’t send me to that idiotic school.”
“It’s a good school.”
He sure has changed his opinions, or did he always think that? Is that something I already know? Since I’m supposed to know everything? “Who pays for it?” he remarks. That is absolutely not a question, because we both know the answer.
“You couldn’t, Dad, you’re an artist.” I point out the obvious.
We lapse into silence. If you want to think, walk. Mom always says that, and I never paid attention, but it’s true. My mind drifts. Information rearranges itself. Maybe it’s the squeak of our shoes on the cobblestones, or the comfort of my arm linked through Dad’s, or everyone around me speaking a language I don’t understand so why try, or simply the happiness of being with Dad, but suddenly I know. “The watercolor was Mom’s. You stole it from her.”
He laughs. “Now I stole it?”
“Okay, not stole, but you kept it when you got divorced. I bet you didn’t tell her. Because when she saw it, she was surprised.” I’d been preoccupied with concealing Dad’s gift. I assumed she’d never been in Dad’s studio before. She probably hadn’t, but she did take a serious pause and dart straight to the grapes. “Mom painted that, didn’t she?”
Dad grins. He’s proud of me, as if I’ve shown him a report card with straight As.
So Dad liked that watercolor not because it was a painting on a placemat. He just liked it. Or maybe he especially liked it because Mom did it. Every time he took a break from work and looked up, tha
t’s what he saw.
I have to think about that.
“Why doesn’t Mom paint anymore?” I throw that out, but I know he won’t tell me. I’m wondering if I already know that, too. I mean, if you consider what you know, you also have to consider if there’s something you’ve refused to know. Why did she stop painting?
A hairpin turns wends us into a street so narrow that, to appreciate the striped and patterned houses and the crooked tile roofs, we have to crane our heads way back. We’re in a skinny museum with huge colorful canvases on both sides, but no way to achieve distance to get a decent view.
Ahead, where the houses end, a ribbon of GWW curls in and snakes toward us. I grab Dad’s hand now, because it looks as if we’re bound for oblivion, but we walk right through, and as soon as we spill out of needle street, we’re on the wharf, big and open and inviting except for a steam-pit cove. The smell is distinctive, low tide. Low tide and no water. How strange. A boy races by. I watch him until he catches up with a cluster of tourists around the stone church. Hey, I built that church, piece by piece.
The hotel turns out to have a name, Il Fiore di Mare, scripted in white neon above the door. I drag Dad down the quay, but when I reach the hotel, I want simply to lay my hand against the wall. The stucco feels cool and rough. I don’t know why I need to do this. The plaster has faded unevenly, its lovely plum color mottled and spotted, cracks everywhere. When I lift my hand, pink dust sparkles on my palm.
I glance up at the second-story window. The window is open now, shutters thrown back. “From there,” I show him. “You waved at me from there.”
“Where do you want to sit?” asks Dad.
I search for another touchstone, the tangerine-colored umbrella. On a second go-round I spot it, folded closed, cinched with a thick cord. I point to the table nearest it and push Dad to hurry over. I’m wondering about the smudges in the puzzle, items merely hinted at, too small or nearly hidden. On the round white table—the one that umbrella must have shaded—sits a single white ceramic mug, a trace of foam on the inside, coffee half drunk, lipstick smeared on the rim. A red flannel jacket flops over the chair back. I’m about to snatch it for a closer look when a waiter pinches it by the collar, tosses it over his arm, collects the mug, and wipes the table clean.
“Due gelati, per favore,” says my dad as we sit. “Cioccolati.”
I chatter about Jenna and James, making Dad laugh, which I love to do, describing Signor Chef flipping his oven mitts, the crazy chicken valentine. I tell him about Harriet the Honker trashing the poison collage, Rocco and Leo the Lizard. “That camp is prison,” I insist. I omit Simon, but the whole time I’m bringing Dad up-to-date on everything, everything that’s happened since he died, I consider how to slide Simon in without setting off curiosity alarms. I never figure out how, so I don’t tell Dad everything. I guess this is the official beginning of his not knowing stuff.
The gelato is delicious. I stir it into soup and eat it by dipping the spoon, holding up the spoon so the soup drips back into the bowl, and licking the residue off the spoon back. This is positively the slowest way to consume ice cream. I always did it when I was little and it was time for Dad to take me back to Mom’s and I didn’t want to leave him.
“Will I ever stop being sad?”
“The blues are the hardest.”
“Dad, don’t joke.”
“I’m not, honey. It’s the truth.”
“I don’t get why you would give me this weird town in Italy. I was sure it was Ireland. Wasn’t it amazing that I discovered the puzzle?”
“You can’t control things after you die.”
That bugs me and I can’t explain why. I throw myself back in my chair and glare.
“Do you want to get mad at me?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Will it make it easier?”
I know what he’s referring to. Leaving. “Did you have a premonition? Is that why you finished them early?”
“Finished what early?”
He’s being so dense. “My beautiful carved box. The puzzle. You finished them before my birthday. You never finished things ahead of time.”
I think he’s pondering that observation, running it through his brain maze, but then I realize, no. He seems to wilt. He’s here with me but almost not. He’s moving away without moving a muscle. “Dad?”
He reaches out to touch my face. “You’ll figure out the rest.”
“Can’t I come back?”
“No,” he tells me in a whisper so faint it could be the wind. “Go.”
I don’t think my legs will walk, but I hear the chair scrape the ground as I stand. The gull is calling—that noisy raucous bird demands my attention. I watch it swoop by and vanish into the plumy mist rising from an empty sea.
When I turn back for one last look, I’m smack in front of Mom’s front door, and the only thing in front of my face is a big brass door knocker. A medieval lion. Mel installed it when he moved in. I don’t know what to do, so I lift the heavy ring and rap.
“Who’s there?” Mom calls.
“Me.”
She opens the door. She’s wearing a striped apron and wielding a wooden spoon. “What’s wrong?” she says instantly. She opens her arms and I fall into them. “What? What is it, sweetie?”
I whimper into her shoulder.
She holds me tight. “You miss your dad?”
I whimper more and she clasps me tighter.
“You’re stabbing me, what’s this?” Mom separates to see what’s jabbing her ribs—my mini Italian phrase book. “Are you studying Italian?”
I sniffle. “No, Jenna’s boyfriend is.”
“Your dad and I were in Italy before you were born. In this tiny coastal town so innocent—” She stops. Her body tenses, her face stiffens. Boy, do I recognize that jarring halt, the instinct to resist a feeling so powerful it could mow you down. She takes her time, letting emotions recede before confiding. “It was the most romantic time of my life.”
She pulls me into the house and swings her arm around my shoulder, keeping me close as we walk to the kitchen. “Come on, come with me. Are you hungry? What can I get you?”
“I don’t know.” I can’t keep the wail out of my voice.
“Sit down right here.” She pulls out a chair and I sink into it. My head feels wobbly. I have to lay it on the table.
Mom pulls a chair around right next to mine. Over and over she strokes my hair. She has a feather touch. My eyelids droop and finally close. My brain gives up and shuts down. I wish I could rest here forever.
Eventually she gets up and I hear rustling, so I look. She’s tasting something in a big pot. She sprinkles in spices, salt and pepper, tastes it again, and lowers the heat. “Chili,” she says. “It will be done soon.” She hangs up her apron.
“Do you want to watch the light, Mom?”
“The light?”
“The sunset.”
“What a wonderful idea.”
We go upstairs. Off her bedroom the deck has a brand-new wicker couch. With my legs tucked up and my head resting on Mom’s shoulder, we snuggle while the sun melts on the horizon. It looks like an egg, sunny side up.
30
I can’t do the blues. Every time I try, I break down. Sobbing, wailing, moaning. Sounds come out of me I’ve never heard before. I roll around on my bed, muffle the noise with my pillow, mop my face with a towel, and try again. More sobs. I didn’t know eyes could produce so many tears. Scientifically speaking. My chest hurts and my nose is sore from blowing it. I don’t want to finish the puzzle. I know I can’t go back, but I don’t want to go forward either. The blues are good-bye, the final closing of the gate, good-bye to Dad.
After crying enough tears to bust a dam, I concentrate for a moment here, a moment there, and then I get caught up because the blues are so challenging.
To make matches, I have to be sensitive to nuance because there are no obvious clues. With the pastels, for instance, all those baby b
lues, it isn’t just that I have to hunt for tinges of pink or the barest hint of lilac or the tiniest brush of white that might be a cloud. I have to see the emotion in color—the sunniness, the flatness, the joy, the calm, the ache, the sigh. Sometimes I can’t rely on color, only shape—slight angles, fractional differences in depth or curves. The blues sharpen me. They make me see things I never saw before. They force me to see in new ways.
Mom and Dad were in Vernazza together in July, aka Luglio, 1990. July. Nine months before I was born. Once I ponder those facts, I understand Dad: His obtuseness when I said he’d waved to me from the hotel window; his surprise that I did the puzzle; his confusion when I raved about how amazing it was that he’d finished it early. Dad never finished anything early. Like everything else he did, this was late. By the time he completed it, their marriage was over. I guess he wrapped it up and put it away. It had been stashed under that desk for years. The wrapping paper wasn’t recycled. It was old.
The puzzle and box were for Mom. An act of love, as Jenna said. He carved my name, Frances Anne, because I happened there. Me. Their creation.
They had me because they were happy together. It’s comforting to know that. It’s comforting to know that my parents loved each other, even if it wasn’t forever.
Dad made these gifts for Mom and that’s who’s going to get them, but how? I can’t leave the puzzle on the floor. What is Mom going to do with a completed jigsaw puzzle as large as the kitchen table? That will be her problem, not mine, although I searched the web and it turns out you can have puzzles framed. As for that gorgeous box, she can use it for jewelry or for pictures of me—I could suggest that. I think she’ll like having the mementoes of Dad.
Dad wasn’t right about something. All that “trust the eyes” stuff. My eyes led me to misunderstanding and wrong conclusions because here’s something else I figure out while I’m doing the blues: The eyes see only what the heart lets them. Take Mom’s listening to Dad’s hideous pennywhistle music on that afternoon when we cleared out his house. She was relishing those bird twitters, she was a million miles away, maybe thinking of some dreamy time when he played her that music, maybe when they were lolling about on a Sunday afternoon or had just brought me home from the hospital and they thought they’d delight my baby ears. But what did I see when she tapped her foot in time? Irritation. A frenemy in motion.