Ham (9 page)

Cooper probably would have liked that story, but execution tales before bedtime are never a good idea either.

“A few years later we moved to Los Angeles and Zach and Emma loved it. They could run more and play more and it never snowed.”

I flashed on the first winter Danny and I spent in Los Angeles. Zach could get anxious sometimes. His brow would furrow and he would look troubled. One night, what started as a worry became a full-fledged nervous breakdown. His eyes darted from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, and he began pacing in circles with a thin, inconsolable whine. Soon he was drooling dementedly and his big, sad eyes started rolling around, unfocused. It was three o'clock in the morning and he was clearly having a seizure. Danny and I rushed him to an emergency veterinarian. After a quick examination, the doctor took us aside and said, slowly, seriously, thoughtfully, “Is it possible . . . that your house . . . is haunted?”

“Beg pardon?”

“I asked if your house could be haunted?”

“This is your professional medical diagnosis?”

“Have you seen anything strange?” he continued. “Heard any peculiar sounds? Felt a frigid presence? Has anything mysteriously moved from one place to another? I'm just asking if it's possible.”

“Is it possible,” I responded, “that you have a degree and a license to practice medicine?”

We were, indeed, in California.

It turned out that a tree was scraping slightly against our Spanish roof tile in the wind and Zach had freaked out. We gave him sedatives until we could arrange for the tree to be trimmed to the tune of a thousand dollars.

We were a family and did what families do for each other. At the depths of my alcoholism and accompanying depression, when Danny was often traveling extensively, my obligation to feed and walk Zach and Emma was the sole reason I got out of bed. They were there when I was broken, and they were there through my frazzled recovery. Stalwart. Unconditional.

When Cooper was born, the dogs instinctively stepped up to a new level. “Cooper, did you know that when you were a baby, Zach would sleep outside your bedroom door to protect you at night? And Emma would lick your face and push her forehead against you if you were crying?”

“And then they went to heaven, right, Daddy?”

“Yes, Cooper. But they loved you very much.”

•  •  •

After fourteen healthy years, our baby dogs declined, seemingly overnight. Their joints became arthritic and their eyesight and hearing deteriorated. Taking them for walks, carrying them up and down steep stairs, and hoisting them into the back of the SUV or SVU was painful for all of us. And maybe, with a new infant at the center of our world, they felt their task was done. Not in a sad way. In a complete one.

One night, Danny and I got down on the floor with Zach and Emma and said, “You have been the bestest dogs ever. And we know you're hurting. Please feel free to leave the party at any time. We'll be okay.”

Not long after, Emma had a really bad day that revealed a ruptured tumor we didn't know she had. And we had to put her down. Then, three months later, Zach had acute renal failure and left us as well.

I've always considered myself a true-blue pet person. But as I traversed the litany of my animal history in an effort to bond with my child, I realized that while it is brimming with love and compassion and laughter and tears, it's also riddled with abandonment, disease, murder, suicide, genocide, and the supernatural—very much like a day in the four-year-old, action-packed imagination of Cooper.

Perhaps my son and I aren't so far apart after all.

Danny and I believe that furry family is essential to a full life. We've promised Cooper a puppy of his own when he is five. He's already considering names: Stinky, Farthead . . .

Danny will probably be the one who takes Cooper and the pooch on hikes and have wrestling matches and play fetch, and I will cook organic dog food and schedule vaccinations and invent funny puppy stories. Cooper will learn from us both.

And the dog.

He'll learn the most from having the dog.

Rochelle Chambers had a spectacular voice. She flipped and fluted in a high, playful register like a violinist. A soulful, black violinist. At our high school talent shows, she sang with an ease that escaped me. I was sure she popped up in the morning and just opened her mouth and trilled like some celebratory bird. My singing was effortful and born of a need that surfaced in a cry.

Rochelle, who preferred to be called “Roach,” for completely non-drug- and non-insect-related reasons, repeatedly asked me if I'd like to go to church with her some Sunday. It wasn't the kind of invitation that insinuated I needed to be saved. I sensed there was something more—a secret that Roach wanted to share. Finally, I said yes.

The following Sunday, only an hour after a devious sun had sneaked up, uninvited, I showered and stumbled into a pair of black slacks and a white, short-sleeved buttoned shirt. Roach arrived soon after, dressed in a rousing shade of mulberry that matched her mood. Her broadly ruched chiffon blouse both hugged and softened her generous bosom. She looked like she was going to a party.

I looked like I was going door to door to sell Bibles.

We drove down the hill, past middle-class, neatly painted homes with closely mowed, dew-sprinkled lawns and impatiens-lined walkways, and then farther and farther, through the poorer section of Sand Springs: run-down houses and hollow carcasses of cars peering through weeds that shot up between axles and rusted hoods in unwatered yards. Chipped ceramic mules and gnomes aimlessly guarding cracked puzzle-piece front walks. Pebble-covered tar shingles collected upright, like playing cards, in distended rain gutters.

We drove on, crossing the Sand Springs railway track and into an area I'd only heard about. Colored Town. It was a ten-square-block ghetto with no room for expansion—row after row of clapboard houses, barely more than shacks, with narrow, dry clay yards and no trees.

At the end of the road, a wooded area emerged, centered by a small white, plain brick church. In great contrast, parishioners buzzed around the entrance, dressed for show, especially the ladies: in electric tangerine and turquoise and cranberry, stripes and polka dots and presumptuous, architectural hats with matching shoes and gloves, like sapphires sprinkled among dust. Roach introduced me to her family and neighbors and I was greeted with grace.

Once inside, she left me in a worn pew and joined the choir behind the pulpit. And then the spirited rhythm of a small band started—no single, solemn organ here—and the congregation rose and sang:

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me roun',

Turn me roun',

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me roun'—

I'm gonna wait until my change comes!

The sound had nothing to do with any church I'd ever attended. There was no attempt to create a pleasing, ethereal, homogenous blend.
Real people
were singing without apology.

Don't let nobody turn you roun',

Turn you roun',

Don't let nobody turn you roun'—

Wait until your change comes!

It was loud and untamed, a united glorious noise built on vastly individual voices, each with its own story, celebration, and pain. I sang along in my head but dared not join in.

I promised the Lord that I would hold out,

Hold out, hold out!

I promised the Lord that I would hold out—

Wait until my change comes!

A nearly carnal joy rose slow and hot in the back of my throat, swelling until I could no longer contain it, and I opened my mouth and let it pour from me.

I say I'm gonna hold out!

Hold out,

I say that I'm gonna hold out!

I'm gonna wait 'til my change comes!

Until now, the closest thing I'd experienced to this kind of liberation was alone in my room, singing along with Aretha. Except. Except—this was about more than a “chain of fools” or “respect when you get home.” The people in this black church seemed to have a direct connection to a happy God, who surely danced, and an unbridled belief that change would come and suffering would end through faith and action.

It had only been thirteen years since the Civil Rights Act had been signed. It was all still hot and messy and red and personal, like a fresh wound, purposely inflicted. Things were changing, indeed, and I was standing in the middle of it. I didn't know the songs, but the choruses were simple and easily memorized, and I lifted my voice and sang along as if I'd known them since before forever. I felt that perhaps I had.

An old woman next to me took notice of my full-throated enthusiasm and seemed to know everything about me in a single moment. She was ancient and ageless and beautiful—her crinkled face read like a history map, and her eyes, which had surely witnessed more than they should have, glimmered beneath the ghost-colored haze of cataracts. She was standing in the middle of even more change than I. And now, a flush-cheeked white boy was singing gospel at the top of his lungs, right by her side, in
her
church. She grabbed my hand with her crocheted glove, wrinkled her nose with approval, and shouted a “Hallelujah!”

Roach smiled at me from the choir. She'd shared her secret. She had let me in.

Even though I was no more black than I was Jewish, I had found yet another tribe that seemed more natural to me than my own.

And it changed the way I heard music and sang from that day forward.

•  •  •

Rochelle Chambers released something primal inside that set me on a trajectory, for the next several years, of leaving home and defining myself through a fusion of theme parks, rep companies, college musicals, black-box revues, and dumpy nightclubs. And then, after a few performances on a national television show, my anonymity gratefully expired and I was suddenly thrust into the spotlight I had yearned for.

In one moment, I was recognized everywhere, invited to everything, and hobnobbed with everyone. America embraced the little white boy with a big soulful voice dressed in oversize thrift-store tails and Converse high-top tennis shoes. All of the oddities and eccentricities that once separated me from others had become the very qualities that made me original and special.

To my ever-growing astonishment, I was even accepted by many of the legends I had grown up idolizing: I lunched with Lucille Ball! I shared a dressing room with Al Green and improvised with him! I discussed playwriting backstage with Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner! I was just about adopted by Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera! I was given song ideas from Bette Midler! I had breakfast with Michael Jackson and Rosa Parks—at the same time! I had dinners with Roddy McDowall and his friends, friends like Bette Davis, George Axelrod, and Lee Remick! I was summoned to the stage at a Patti LaBelle concert and we sang together! I chain-smoked with Elizabeth Taylor! I got a phone call from Stevie Wonder at three o'clock in the morning. He asked me to come to his house to hear a song he'd just written . . . for
me.

“What?! Really? When?” I asked, suddenly fully awake.

“Now,” he replied.

Three in the morning, three in the afternoon . . . it was all the same to him.

And to sing an original song with Stevie . . . it was all the same to me too.

I didn't have much interest in most of my contemporaries and most of them had little interest in me. But I got it where it counted. Backstage, while shooting a television special, Sammy Davis Jr. put his arm around me and said, “You're one of us.” Those were the sweetest words I'd ever heard, the kind of old-fashioned showbiz validation every old-fashioned stagestruck kid longs for.

Another time, at a charity event, Gregory Peck walked across a ballroom to my table to tell me he was a fan. How could Gregory “Atticus Finch” Peck be a fan of mine?

It was all overwhelming. Where would it end? Or could it somehow go on forever?

In the middle of it all, Motown, my record company, called to say that a prominent promoter had asked me to open for the great Aretha Franklin in Cleveland. I was told Aretha had specifically made the request and couldn't wait to work with me. I couldn't believe she even knew my name much less asked if I would do a show with her! It surely couldn't get better than this. She was one of my top five idols. Tom Waits was another and I knew he'd never ask me to open for him. The other three were dead.

I'd grown up singing along with Aretha and had learned to place my top notes without straining my voice by mimicking her. Two years prior, when visiting home, my father and I were in the car together and I blasted the radio, belting out “It's My Turn” with Aretha. My father said, “You're a boy. How come you want to sing in the same octave as a woman?”

“Because I can,” I replied, and went for the key change.

Listening to Aretha had taught me
how
to sing. Going to church with Rochelle had taught me
why.
The combination of the two had transformed me.

The offer was to do two shows on the same night—8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. I would need to have thirty minutes of music specifically charted at my own expense for Aretha's twenty-piece band. The fee was low, not even enough to cover my orchestration expenses, but I didn't care. I would use the charts again and it was for a concert with
Aretha Franklin
! I was offered one airfare and a single hotel accommodation, so I would be traveling alone with no management on hand, nor my own pianist. But Aretha's conductor was H. B. Barnum and a showbiz veteran, famous in his own right, so I was covered.

Honestly, I would have sung with a kazoo and peddled myself on a tricycle to do this gig.