One Last Lunch

by Erica Heller

  “Lola-Belle? Well, she was Laurie’s, really. You know, I loved Laurie very deeply. She was the love of my life. Even if I don’t know how happy I made her emotionally. My nature is . . . was . . . my nature.”

  The WAITRESS arrives with the check.

  Are drugs evil?

  LR (unhesitatingly)

  “Yes. I mean . . . I believe so, yes.”

  How did you know about Engels describing Stockport a hole? How did you know the name of my mother? And about the obituary? Do we live again? Are we judged?

  “Delmore Schwartz—another addict—once wrote a piece called ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.’ And so I cannot respond to your questions because we . . . I . . . am not . . .”

  Permitted?

  Silence.

  Anyhow, whatever the nature of the afterlife, I notice you managed to show up late again.

  LR

  “I promise that, next time we meet, punctuality will not be an issue. Next time, Robert, we will inhabit the same dimension.”

  Robert Chalmers was born in Manchester, UK, and was described by Hunter S Thompson as “the suavest man in England” and “a twisted Limey freak.” As a journalist for the Observer, the Independent, and GQ, he has won awards that include Interviewer of the Year and Writer of the Year. His relationship with Lou Reed, before they met, had been similar to that of any other devoted fan: occasional fleeting contact of no significance. When he did finally encounter him . . . the experience reminded him of what somebody said about another famous curmudgeon: “When it comes to this artist, there are two kinds of people: people who like him, and people who have met him.”

  — 41 —

  When you die, that’s it. The lights shut off, and there is no more.

  —Oliver Sacks, first night of Passover, 2015

  ADRIEN G. LESSER (COUSIN) AND OLIVER SACKS

  Those words have lived in my head since the last time I saw Oliver Sacks, my family’s beloved superstar cousin, at his last annual Seder. It was the fiftieth Passover that the renowned neurologist had spent with us. There was an assemblage of relatives as well as dear friends, some of whom he had not seen in years. His face lit up as he went from one to another, hugging each in turn. There was also an overwhelming sense of sorrow. Oliver had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Five months later, he was dead.

  Oliver’s broadly read New York Times op-ed piece bravely informed the world that he was dying. It was to be the first of several articles in which he addressed the emotional and physical process of facing down his own mortality. It was a heroic effort. Today, I want to know if it’s true that, as he always insisted, there is no afterlife. Given the unexpected chance to see Oliver again, I’ve invited him to have lunch with me at 12:30 at Russ & Daughters Café, a Lower East Side offshoot of the famed smoked fish appetizing store (where I believe they called Oliver the “King of White Fish”).

  Both Oliver and I believed that when you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s the final act. The curtain falls on a hushed audience, and thereafter there is nothingness.

  I have known Oliver all my life, yet I rarely had the chance to sit down and talk with him alone, so understandably, I am nervous. I’m now nineteen, a college girl, but as a child, I found his presence lovable yet intimidating. He would tell me about ferns or cephalopods, two of his great passions. But there was never a lot of back-and-forth. When he wasn’t with a patient, Oliver preferred talking to listening. Today, I’d determined that our conversation would be different. It wouldn’t be as specialized as plants or creatures of the sea. I suddenly remembered Oliver’s laughter: childlike, almost giggly, but effusive. A welcome surprise in such a serious fellow. I hoped that somehow I would make him laugh today. But given his unshakable belief in no afterlife, would he even show? My watch told me it was already 1:00. To keep the solicitous waiters at bay and to claim legitimacy for hogging my table, I ordered a Dr. Brown’s Diet Black Cherry Soda, which arrived in a huge frosted glass. I imagined Oliver striding in, wearing his familiar khaki Columbia sportswear safari suit, replete with matching pants. An intriguing instance of Out of Africa meets Sutton Place. His glasses, wire-rimmed and round, would be perched on his nose as always. And his posture would be ramrod straight, unless his bad back was bothering him.

  A waiter comes to my table, and I assure him that the second person in my party would be here soon. I glance over the menu and automatically know what Oliver is going to order, though in truth I can’t decide between herring or sable. Then, a large lox and whitefish platter makes its way to a nearby table, and I can only think about how much Oliver will enjoy devouring that meal with his customary brio. There are many stories of him sitting at my bubby’s table finishing whatever was left of brisket and gefilte fish. He was also known to eat her entire fruit centerpiece every now and then or clear out the contents of her refrigerator. I check my watch and realize it’s now 1:15, and I know Oliver had always frowned upon anyone’s tardiness.

  I very much want to talk with Oliver to learn the truth about death and dying from his unique—and now dead—perspective. A lot of people don’t want to discuss the subject, but in his research of many of the great neurological unknowns, Oliver was almost eager. He saw people whose lives had been compromised by disease, few of which had cures. He was a doctor and knew very well what was happening to him. I suppose that’s what also made him so open about death, the fact that he spent his life studying major question marks. Perhaps for him, death was just another example.

  As I sit at the table waiting for Oliver, I get teary. I never imagined I would cry at our lunch or show very much emotion at all. I try to pull myself together in anticipation of his imminent arrival. I glance over at a table of six, with an older gentleman sitting at the head of it. It was the same table that had ordered the large fish platter, and I think once again about Oliver sitting at the head of our Seder table every year. Many more people were alive then than there are now, and all of a sudden, flashes of their faces go off in my head. I can hear us all taking our turn reading from the Haggadah. Oliver’s beautiful British accent always made the passages sound profound, while his stutter humanized him.

  Is there still a chance that he might show up? If not, I will never be able to tell him about my exciting summer working for my congresswoman, nor will I be able to tell him about my first year of college. Oliver was a beloved neurologist, author, human, but to me, he was the leader of the Seder. He was the man who gave me, when I was a seven-year-old, Helen Keller’s four-hundred-page autobiography. He was the man who showed up at everything carrying a seat cushion. He was the man who sat me down three months before he died and told me to disregard any advice from my college counselor and just go for it. He was family, and while I have lots of family left, the first seventeen years of my life were uniquely special in large part because of him.

  At 1:30, I finally realize that Oliver isn’t coming. A deep wave of sadness washes over me. Now I will never be able to ask him anything, ever. I will only have the times I spent with him when he was alive and what I imagine he might have said in response to my questions about what comes after death. Maybe he would say, “It wasn’t what I expected, Adrienne,” pronouncing my name the way the French do. What I suspect he would say is, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Utterly deflated, I summon the waiter and pay the check for my soda. Then I watch as he clears the neighboring table where the huge lox and whitefish platter had been. Oliver isn’t coming. Of course he’s not coming. He never was.

  Adrien Gardner Lesser is a born-and-bred second-generation Manhattanite. She has worked in the district office of Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, as well as at Trixie Films, a documentary filmmaking company. She is currently a political science major at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

  — 42 —

  “I’ll be thinking about that as I approach the gray porch. If anyone can break through this time barrier and make this meeting possible, it’s my father.”

&nb
sp; ANNE SERLING (DAUGHTER) AND ROD SERLING

  We will meet in July when summer’s finally taken root, defeated winter and the daylilies wave orange in triumph.

  We’ve chosen noon. Exactly noon. But we’ll both be early. I’m certain of that.

  The reunion will be in upstate New York overlooking Cayuga Lake, where, after a sharp right turn, down a sun-dappled drive, our red cottage suddenly comes into view and the world behind vanishes. Built in the 1880s by my great-great grandfather on my mother’s side, and though long gone, he’s still there in a photograph down the hall, looking on through a dusty frame as three generations skip by.

  My father loved that old lakeside cabin stuck in time, with its wavy glassed windows, three small bedrooms, the dirt path down to the water, and the fact that it was only an hour to Binghamton, where he grew up. Driving by his childhood home was a pilgrimage he took for years. “I’ll be back soon,” he’d say, and my sister and I would watch him go, his paratrooper bracelet glinting in the sun when he waved goodbye.

  These trips, transporting himself backward, were not confined to those annual drives. He did that in his writing, too. In an interview my father said, “While walking on a set at MGM . . . I was suddenly hit by the similarity of it to my hometown . . . it struck me that all of us have a deep longing to go back. It was this simple incident that led to the script ‘Walking Distance’—the one where Gig Young plays a tired businessman who, while driving upstate to get away from the city, stops at a gas station that’s within walking distance of ‘Homewood,’ his hometown, his past.”

  I’ll be thinking about that as I approach the gray porch. If anyone can break through this time barrier and make this meeting possible, it’s my father. I just need to focus, concentrate, and stay attuned to each and every sound. I strain to hear him. Somewhere a dog barks, a branch breaks, Dad?!

  But it’s not him, and I can barely sit still. I’ve imagined, rehearsed this day for four decades. What if there’s not enough time? What if we don’t know each other? I get up. Pace. Look up at the cloudless sky. Listen down the drive. Finally I sit down, settling on the top step, the one I danced on as a child, where we planned our dog shows, played jacks, Go Fish, where my father last left his shoes.

  He hadn’t known he would not be back, that he was leaving, that his body was succumbing to years of smoking; a war he could not outrun, the death of his own father (to whom he never had the chance to say goodbye), and a demanding writing profession, where maybe some days he felt there were no more words.

  I glance out at the empty yard, remembering him there so clearly: blue shorts, bare-chested, barefooted, sipping Cokes, smoking menthol Parliament cigarettes, roaring with laughter in that old striped hammock (that will eventually break beneath him) listening to tapes of Jewish comedians; Mel Brooks echoing through the canopy of trees: “I’ve been accused of vulgarity, that’s bullshit.” I think about how sometimes my father would rock that hammock with a stick and fall asleep, relaxed, away from the insanity of Los Angeles, the ceaseless ring of the phone . . . forgetting for a while the world and all its cracks—his glasses sliding down his nose as he dozed.

  Closing my eyes, I feel the warm July wind pass across my face, down my arms and from somewhere, finally, I hear whistling, footsteps, down the graveled drive. I jolt my head around—a figure appears closer, closer, closer; it’s him.

  DAD!!!

  Immune to the ravages of years he never lived—he’s still fifty, not ninety-three—and so he’s running. And I’m running. One of those agonizing movie moments where everything slows. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! We almost knock each other over right there on the summer lawn. He holds my face. Calls me by one of the millions of nicknames I haven’t heard for years. “Nanny!” He’s looking at me looking back. “You’re all grown up and lovely,” he says.

  “So are you, Dad!” We laugh. I tell him, “You’re still so tan!”

  He looks like he did the last time I saw him. Not on the eighth floor of that hospital, curled beneath a white sheet. Before that, when we were at that diner in Santa Monica, doing our annual routine, where, across the table, he’d tick off the days until summer on his fingers.

  “See, Bunny,” he’d say, “only three more months. January will whiz right by, and February doesn’t count.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too short.”

  It was always the identical silly dialogue—and we never tired of it.

  We’ll make our way to the porch. We’re holding hands. Turning, he’ll choose the old rocking chair, once green, where he used to sit. I sense he’s thinking about that as he runs his hands along the wicker sides.

  We both speak at once.

  He’s sorry, he says. “We never had a proper goodbye. The last thing I said to you was, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you in a few hours.’ ”

  I finish for him, fill in the rest. “The surgery went well. That’s what the doctor said. But then you had another heart attack.”

  I don’t want to be saying these words. This is not the conversation I want us to have. I move us along.

  “Dad! You have grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. And my son is named Samuel Rodman—after your father, after you!”

  He’ll smile. Nodding, overcome, he can’t speak right away.

  Then, finally—“Jesus, honey, I’ve missed you guys.”

  It’s my turn to nod, because if I speak, I might wail. Just as I did when I finally went to his gravesite. When I knew I had to accept that there was nothing I could do, it was too late, he was gone, and all this space and time—a world forever without him—was unimaginable.

  I want to lighten this up. I don’t know how much longer we have. “I made you a tuna fish sandwich.” I hand it to him out of nowhere. “Remember when I was born you didn’t have time to finish yours and I used to make you one on my birthday?”

  He laughs, takes a big bite, and reaches for the Pepsi I have also plucked from the air.

  A motorboat drives by in the distance, creating a time-lapsed cascade of waves. The water pulls at the shore, and my father looks off for a moment. Clearly some summer memory from years and years ago has taken hold, and he’s fixed there. After a while, still looking at the lake, he says, “We had us some good times here. . . . So many wonderful days, didn’t we, Poppsie?”

  And then—“Are you happy, honey?”—his attention suddenly back to me.

  He’s caught me off guard. I hadn’t anticipated that question. I hesitate, trying to steer my way into some coherent response that won’t completely overwhelm and sadden him, but all I can come up with is this: “Well, sometimes, Dad, I’m lost.”

  He puts down his plate, reaches for my hand. He doesn’t stuff the moment full of platitudes. He just looks at me in a way that needs no reply, fully aware that I hear him.

  He’s finished his sandwich and takes a last swig of his soda. I refill it a third time and give him dessert: Angel food cake, vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup for him. Peppermint ice cream with a chocolate cookie crumb crust for me. Exactly what we used to order at Taughannock, our favorite summer restaurant by the falls.

  “Delicious!” he says. “I haven’t had one of these in years!” He reaches toward me and wipes away a bit of ice cream I feel dripping down my chin, though there’s nothing on the napkin when he pulls it away.

  I suddenly remember the lucky stone I’ve saved for him. I pluck it out of my pocket and set it on the table because he’s picked up his soda again and his hands are full.

  “Guess what? I see all our old dogs,” he says between bites. “Beau, George, Maggie, Mike, and Heidi . . . they’re all there. Still running away.” We both laugh, remembering how he used to call them “the friendly travelers.”

  I’m wondering about his dad, his mom, his war buddies, his friends. But I don’t ask. There seems a limit to what I can know. I’ll tell him about the world today but not too much; it will distress him profoundly. He’s put down his empty dessert plate and glass, listening int
ently; shaking his head, but perhaps not surprised that still so much has gone wrong. “Prejudice,” he says—as he always did—“is our greatest evil.”

  And we’ll be quiet again, looking out at the green, green water that has grown still. “You know what, Nanny?” he’ll say after a while. “I’d count this as one of our best days ever. . . .”

  At first I’ll wonder if there’s something wrong with my eyes—the way his face isn’t quite as clear—and I’ll rub them. Or, I’ll think perhaps it’s that the sun has set, the light is failing. Of course, that’s it! And I’ll grab a candle. But then, when I turn back, his chair is empty, rocking slowly from his departure. And I’ll know—my father is leaving. Leaving incrementally. Leaving for good.

  “Dad! Wait! Wait! Want to play Crazy Eights? Go Fish? Like before? Remember? Dad! We can’t be done! There’s so much more to say. . . .”

  Frantically I’ll search in the air, in the coming nightfall, waving madly for him, but there’s nothing there.

  In a choking, defeated, desperate voice, I tell him, “You can’t go. Not again.”

  I wait. I listen. Please say something. And then, suddenly, from the edge of the porch, in the darkness—though faint, I hear him—this. This! “Honey, I loved your memoir.”

  At dawn, I’m still there, looking out at the new day and the early colors streaking across the sky. The lake is calm, with a few fishermen scattered in silhouette, their voices echoing quietly across the water, the sounds of their lines reeled in, a heron flying back to her nest. I’ll have to go soon, get my things. I reach across the table, but it’s empty. I look on the floor, on the railings, on the steps, feel in my pocket again. But it’s not there. The stone for my father is gone.

  I’ll smile then, thinking again about that Twilight Zone, “Walking Distance,” and though maybe it’s just the wind, I’m almost certain I hear my dad, repeating those lines from the show: “This is a wonderful time of life for you. Don’t let any of it go by without enjoying it. . . . You’ve been looking behind you, try looking ahead.”