One Last Lunch
Page 1
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Copyright © 2020 Erica Heller
Cover © 2020 Abrams
Published in 2020 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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ISBN: 978-1-4197-3532-5
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Dedicated to my mother, my grandparents, Mary Lou Shulman, Richard Glass, Catherine Flanagan Stover, Janavi Held, Warren Cassell, Alan Epstein, Arthur Gelb, Dolores Karl, Juris Jurjevics, Ilse Dusoir Lind, Irene Towbin, Lucy, Sweeney, Thistle, and Lola.
What I wouldn’t give for just one more lunch.
MENU
INTRODUCTION
1. Erica Heller and Joseph Heller
2. Clarence Major and James Baldwin
3. Brook Ashley and Tallulah Bankhead
4. Al Díaz and Jean-Michel Basquiat
5. Muffie Meyer and Little Edie Beale
6. Daniel Bellow and Saul Bellow
7. Carinthia West and David Bowie
8. Aviva Layton and William Burroughs
9. Benjamin Cheever and John Cheever
10. Sara Moulton and Julia Child
11. The Rev. George Pitcher and Jesus Christ
12. David Layton and Leonard Cohen
13. Kirk Douglas and Herschel “Harry” Danielovitch
14. Jesse Kornbluth and Nora Ephron
15. Elwood H. Smith and Nancy Boyer Feindt
16. David Breithaupt and Allen Ginsberg
17. Phyllis Raphael and Max Glezos-Chartoff
18. Stephanie Pierson and Marcella Hazan
19. Margaret Heilbrun and Carolyn Heilbrun and her pseudonym, Amanda Cross
20. Joe Lewis and Jimi Hendrix
21. Hussein Ibish and Christopher Hitchens
22. Allegra Huston and Enrica “Ricki” Soma
23. Lee Clow and Steve Jobs
24. Kaylie Jones and James Jones
25. RF Jurjevics and Juris Jurjevics
26. Nancy Evans and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
27. Hilma Wolitzer and Maxine Kumin
28. Cathy Ladman and Leo Ladman
29. Caroline Leavitt and Henry Leavitt
30. Elizabeth Mailer and Norman Mailer
31. Merrill Markoe and Ronny Markoe
32. Bob Balaban and Groucho Marx
33. Malachy McCourt and Frank McCourt
34. Rick Moody and Meredith Moody
35. Dahlia Lithwick and Paul Newman
36. Kate O’Toole and Peter O’Toole
37. Taja Sevelle and Prince
38. Rain Pryor and Richard Pryor
39. Christopher Rauschenberg and Robert Rauschenberg
40. Robert Chalmers and Lou Reed
41. Adrien G. Lesser and Oliver Sacks
42. Anne Serling and Rod Serling
43. Dan Allentuck and Maureen Stapleton
44. Tracy Tynan and Kenneth Tynan
45. Mark Vonnegut and Kurt Vonnegut
46. Richard Bausch and Eudora Welty
47. Cameron West and Robin Williams
48. James Grissom and Tennessee Williams
49. Richard Lewis and Jonathan Winters
50. Erica Heller and Joseph Heller
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
There will be time to murder and create . . .
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Mr. Eliot’s message of loss mingled with memory is achingly clear, but what if, in some cases, there wasn’t time? Too often, when people are whipped from this earth, they leave behind loved ones who are lost and left fumbling with unresolved issues, without having expressed crucial emotions, secrets, breathless declarations of love, and apologies, troubled by questions, so many questions. Who among us has not dreamt of having just one more sliver of precious time with someone we miss terribly and want—no, need—to see again? Sometimes it’s in order to tie up loose ends, other times to luxuriate in the divine splendor of their company, linger once more in a loving embrace that was once as warm as sunshine to us on a dark, blustery day?
“I just hope she knew how much I loved her,” whispered a tearful friend recently, having just lost her sister.
“The last time we met, we had a tremendous argument. I brutally criticized him, and I’ll never forgive myself,” a lifelong friend told me this week, in the small, trembling voice of a child, about his brother, who had just succumbed to cancer.
How terrible, I’ve always thought, to stagger through this life freighted with regrets, with moments lost to us because of stubbornness or fear, all because we always assumed there would be future opportunities.
But leave it to the French to concoct the perfect idiom: l’esprit d’escalier—literally “staircase wit”—the predicament of chancing upon the perfect riposte too late, when you’ve already reached the bottom of the stairs. Well, for our purposes here, let’s change it to l’esprit du cimetière.
We almost always feel that a loved one’s death has cheated us of critical time together. Some people are lucky in that they really do have time to say everything. When my saintly but sassy mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1994, I quit my job, moved in to care for her, and thus began an honest, ever-ranging conversation with virtually no boundaries that lasted a year and a half. With my father, it was quite the opposite: a call in the middle of the night telling me that he had succumbed to a massive heart attack. Still, I’d give anything to be able to sit around at lunch with one or both of them on a bright, cheerful day. I would laugh and reminisce with my mother, luxuriously cloaked once more in her warmth, wit, and tenderness. With my father, I would finally get the chance to ask the big questions I’d always been afraid to ask, hopefully elicit some rarely exhibited gentleness, and unscramble and decipher some of the constantly crossed wires that helped contribute to a lifetime of cryptic, slow-simmering intolerance from him. It was this lunch, trapped in my imagination but making itself known repeatedly, like a door in the wind that keeps banging away but never quite slams shut, that led me to the basis for this book.
In talking to people for it, I never once heard from anyone that there was no one they’d like to have lunch with just once again, if only they could. In most cases, I only had to explain the book’s premise and inquire as to whether they’d like to contribute. Most were happy, no, eager to participate, but even those who hesitated found that when it came time to create their lunch, the experience they forged tumbled out onto the page almost effortlessly.
Writers, actors, artists; everybody had somebody they missed terribly, whose absence was palpable, for what turned out to be a startling variet
y of reasons. Rain Pryor chose her father, Richard Pryor, to laugh and lunch with. Writer James Grissom longed for one more lunch with Tennessee Williams. Kirk Douglas picked his father, and so on. Amazingly, the current of powerful emotions that ran through all these stories was never the same twice.
What I learned from the lunches was that even the death of someone who means the world to us cannot rob us of two magical things: our memories and our imaginations. Our minds, unchained, are free to wander back any time we like, as often as we long to, to feel comforted or amused or angry or even peevishly annoyed; to rewrite the ending to our own private scenario. Our fantasies, too, often sprint way ahead of us, untethered, to occasions and emotions we might still experience with the person who has been lost to us—to hold on to that person just a little longer and feel as if they’re back in our reach and in our life.
Perhaps the most ironic thing about this book is that in each instance, in each fantasy, in order to recount an honest, faithful story, come what may, the person doing the imagining really did get to spend valuable time with their loved one, friend, sparring partner, or cherished acquaintance again, if only in their deeply private, kaleidoscopic imagination. One or two lunches we’re shown are in fact past lunches, because the writer wanted so much just to circle backward and relive them.
This wish for a definitive denouement is visceral, as old as time. In fact, in Plato’s Symposium, he imagines an after-dinner conversation between a bunch of Greek luminaries, past and present. Symposium just happens to be one of the most famous pieces of writing from the ancient world. And Plato’s wish, his fantasy of one last meal with Socrates, was written 2,400 years ago.
But now, please be seated, take a sip of water, and kindly place your napkin in your lap.
Lunch is about to be served.
— 1 —
“I just want you to be happy.”
ERICA HELLER (DAUGHTER) AND JOSEPH HELLER
To imagine lunch now with my father, Joe Heller, it would have to be in spring. Unknowingly reacting to the blooming nature all around him, shoots pushing obstinately up even through the cracks in the city pavement, he was often softer, gentler in spring. Perhaps the tender buds unfurling all around him would somehow leech his own fiercely guarded tenderness to the surface—who knows?
We would meet, of course, at his favorite place: the old Union Square Café. The knowledge that a fuss is almost certainly going to be made about him there is something that he is hardly impervious to. He never was, and this time, he’s been gone since 1999.
When I arrive, he is standing outside, waiting for me. He looks healthy, tanned, his majestic crop of white leonine hair, which can easily be spotted from three blocks away, is still surprisingly impressive, like a crown resting atop his head. Both of our eyes fill with tears as we embrace each other, long and hard. “Let me look at you,” he says, stepping back just a bit. “You look so beautiful,” he says, his damp eyes taking me in. “Are you hungry? I am.” He chuckles a bit as we step inside.
Danny Meyer is at the front of the restaurant and rushes over to greet us personally, shaking my father’s hand with both of his. We’re seated, given menus, and Dad says, “I’m starving, and I know that we should order, but I just can’t believe we’re here. When I died, I certainly thought I’d never see you again, and it broke my heart.” He puts down his menu and takes one of my hands in his. We order, but first he requests his signature drink: a dry martini, straight up, with a twist. His eyes are bright with tears, with pride and, apparently, abundant love for me; this chameleon, who could always turn gruff and biting with a simple, quick, strategic verbal pirouette, seemingly in the space of a single breath.
Great quantities of oysters, pasta, and fish are brought to the table. I am too excited to eat, but he dives in robustly, making most of it disappear with his typical, legendary mealtime fervor. He has clearly caught me unawares, behaving so sweetly, so humbly, and so dear. He laughs, he chatters, he reminisces.
At some point coffee arrives, with a complimentary dessert from a beaming Mr. Meyer. We are talking about paradisiacal summers from long ago, on Fire Island, trips to Nathan’s in Coney Island. Suddenly he says, as if in a dream, “I miss her, too, you know,” and I know he’s talking about my mother, now long gone. A love story for thirty-eight years right up until the cataclysmic moment it wasn’t.
Toward the end of the lunch, Carl Bernstein, lunching with friends at a nearby table, strolls over and tells my father how wonderful it is to see him. My father proudly introduces me. “This is my daughter Erica, not just beautiful but brilliant, one hell of a writer.” Hours go by, but we are still lost in memories, in laughter, in this golden moment we both know won’t ever come again. Dessert, our sumptuous banana tart is but a memory, most of which I ate myself. The restaurant is now almost empty except for the waitstaff setting up quietly for dinner. The light outside is dimming. My father pays the check, stands with his customary grunt, leaves his tip on the table, takes out a Stim-u-Dent from a tiny pack in his coat pocket, sticks one firmly in his teeth, and says, “This is horrible. I never got to say goodbye to you before. Now I do and it’s even worse.” We step out into the crepuscular late afternoon. Again, we embrace. This time clinging like shipwrecked sailors saying their very last goodbyes.
A loud bus goes by, making his last words almost indiscernible. By now, I am sobbing. I believe he says, “More than anything else, I just want you to be happy. It’s really all I’ve ever wanted,” just before I lose him, as he walks slowly down the block, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, until he inevitably blends into the gloomy miasma of teeming rush-hour foot traffic.
I could swear that’s what he said, but of that I can never be certain.
— 2 —
“Thanks for the lunch, baby.”
CLARENCE MAJOR (FRIEND) AND JAMES BALDWIN
It’s hard to believe, but after thirty-one years, I’m once again back in Nice, France. I taught here from 1981 till 1983. This time my stay will be brief.
Back then, my old friend James Baldwin was living a short distance away, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Today, as I step out of the blazing sunshine into the cool Restaurant Tolentini (Jimmy’s favorite restaurant in all of Nice), I see that Jimmy has already arrived for our lunch.
There he is again, with that famous, wide-open smile.
I haven’t seen Jimmy since that last dinner party at my apartment in 1983. That was fun, but I am especially fond of my memory of the little impromptu gathering Jimmy; my wife, Pamela; a few other friends; and I had after the formal ceremony when the university here awarded Jimmy an honorary doctorate.
Jimmy stands as I approach our table, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m surprised to see that he looks exactly the same as when I last saw him. In his fancy blue dress shirt, black slacks, and black loafers, he looks particularly happy and well. His bright smile always lands me in a good mood. We embrace.
He says, “Hey, baby! Good to see you! The years have treated you well.” This is pure Jimmy. He calls everybody he likes “baby.” He puts out his cigarette in the ashtray on our table.
I say, “Hey, Jimmy!”
We sit facing each other.
It’s great to see Jimmy looking so well. Let’s face it, he never had an easy time of it. He preached in a Harlem storefront church from the age of fourteen to seventeen, then as a young man, he moved downtown to the Village, where life was difficult. Finding work was not easy. When he was lucky, he worked as a waiter.
But he was broke a good deal of the time. Sometimes he slept on rooftops. This was in the late 1940s, when legal segregation still existed. Restaurants, for example, routinely refused to serve black people, and public schools were legally segregated by race.
So, in 1948, Jimmy left New York with forty dollars in his pocket. He’d reached his breaking point. And by then he also knew he was a writer and was determined to prove it to the world. A lot had changed since those days: the Supreme C
ourt’s ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But a lot also hadn’t changed.
Jimmy moved to Paris, to a hotel, but broke and alone, unable to speak the language, he was very, very lonely. Paris was no immediate panacea. Soon, he was ill. He had no money to pay for doctors or his hotel bill. Rather than putting him out, the elderly Corsican woman who owned the hotel nursed him back to health for three months. This woman was a survivor.
And now, here we were at Restaurant Tolentini. Jimmy knew the maître d’, Maurice, for many years. Maurice is an elegant, middle-aged Frenchman with patrician manners. He doesn’t miss a beat. You can tell that this restaurant is his ship and he’s its captain. Meanwhile, the background music is Mozart’s Magic Flute. As always, I feel comfortable and pampered here.
Restaurant Tolentini’s is airy and plush inside. The white, marble-paved floor is shot through with streaks of green and purple. The restaurant has lots of red velvet drapery, and the tables and chairs are all of highly polished dark oak, with matching red velvet upholstery.
The elaborate crystal chandeliers above us are aglitter with soft light. The wallpaper shows an eighteenth-century outdoor festival with plenty of food and frolicking. The napkins are embossed with the restaurant’s name. The railings are gold chrome.
To the left of us there’s a big long fish tank on the far wall with a variety of native Mediterranean fish: goby, mullet, skate, blackhead, dory, sardinella, and bass, all swimming around and around in their own private universe. It’s lighted like a ship at night, at sea.
The din of voices is rich and low, speaking proper French. We may be in Provence, but this restaurant is no place for provincial rubes.
Maurice strokes his little black moustache.
Jimmy says, “Maurice, this is Clarence Major, a good friend of mine, and a fine writer. He taught here at the university back in the 1980s.”
Maurice says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Major.”