Queen of the Oddballs (20 page)

• Just weeks after I see
  The Silence of the Lambs
  I’m in a public sauna when Jodie Foster walks in. Despite already sweating for twenty minutes, I stay an additional half hour and nearly suffer from heat stroke just to watch Jodie talk to her friend. Completely naked.
  
 

• Rodney King is severely beaten by police officers after leading them on a high-speed chase and resisting arrest. The beating is captured on video and aired repeatedly on television.
  
 

• I have a garage sale at my house with my friend Daryl Hannah, who makes a
  Splash
  selling her junk for the first time. I buy some of her used books for a dollar while my old tennis shoes, which she purchases for fifty cents, end up on her feet in
  Steel Magnolias
  .
  
 

• Iraq declares some of its chemical weapons and materials to the UN and claims that it does not have a biological weapons program.
  
 

• Author Douglas Coupland coins the phrase “Generation X” as grunge music hits the scene.
  
 

• Two of my rerun icons—Natalie Schafer (Lovey on
  Gilligan’s Island
  ) and Nancy Kulp (Jane Hathaway on
  The Beverly Hillbillies
  )—die.
  
• I drive to see 1,760 yellow umbrellas erected near Interstate 5 by the artist Christo, while 1,340 blue umbrellas are simultaneously unfurled in a valley in Japan.
  
 

• Janet Jackson signs a $30 million contract with Virgin Records, Michael Jackson signs a $65 million contract with Sony, and I receive a $12.43 ASCAP royalty check for my Angel and the Reruns song, “Buffy Come Back,” playing on the radio in Thailand, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia.
  
 

• Michael Landon is treated for cancer and spends weeks in the hospital room next to my father’s.
  
 

I
met her and fell in love with her as she was dying of leukemia. Well,
she
wasn’t—the character she played on a highly rated soap opera was.

She had starred on the show for many years but due to the fact that she wanted to pursue opportunities in feature films, she suddenly contracted the deadly disease and was on her deathbed.

My father had been battling the same deadly disease for three years.

I had never watched a soap opera until I started dating Jennifer. In her final days on the show, her lush blond hair and bright blue eyes couldn’t have been more alluring as she gasped, collapsed, and wept in her husband’s arms—making him promise he’d move on without her. Even as she was dying, she was radiant.

I can’t say the same for my father.

The blood leaves my arm, flowing swiftly down a tube, passing through a machine, then returning to a vein, this time in my other arm. Since it is accompanied by a torrent of cleansing liquids and hydrating fluids, within moments my bladder is full, and I have to pee like crazy. But I’m stuck in this position and will be for another four hours, needles and tubes in both arms acting as restraints.

If my own father can lie there, being poked and prodded daily, if he can lose his hair and all that he eats; if he can lose his strength, his pride, and any dignity that’s left as a nurse has to clean the bed he has soiled; if he can barely open his eyes but still make jokes and make sure the nurses don’t feel put out; then I can lie here restrained, with blood and liquids flowing, bladder bursting, as the technicians collect platelets that could very well save Dad’s life—for the moment, at least.

The first time Jennifer and I kissed, we were at her memorial service. It was held in a friend’s backyard one late summer afternoon, and everyone came dressed in black and delivered eulogies honoring her dead character, Emily Stevenson.
*

They spoke of her boldness, her beauty; her youth and her restlessness—all the days of her life—keeping up the ruse late into the evening. I even made a donation to the Leukemia Society in memory of her character.

As Jennifer and I began to see each other regularly, something happened that I never expected. I got hooked. Not just on Jennifer, but on her soap opera. It didn’t matter that she was dead and gone; the characters continued to speak of her, mourn her, and have flashbacks of her, so I still felt her presence. And by the time they stopped mentioning her altogether, it was too late for me. I had developed a serious habit.

This was not exactly the best time to start a new romance. For the previous three years I had been taking care of my father while he was in and out of the hospital. I had spent every day by his side while my mother was relegated to keeping their business running, and, although my brother was frequently at the hospital donating platelets for my dad, he was mostly busy struggling to support his family and raise two young children. Since I was now writing a book and made my own hours, I was able to do my work as I kept my dad company, massaged his feet, ran to summon the nurse, and questioned the doctors.

“Squeeze my hand,” I say. I hold on to him, tightly.

“Oh, sorry, Bob,” the nurse keeps repeating. “I’m so sorry.” She continually pokes my father’s arm with a large needle, trying to put in a new IV.

Charming and still handsome at sixty-four, with the face of a seasoned character actor who could have played the kindly neighbor, my father is beloved by all the nurses.

“Let’s try it again,” she says. She inserts the needle into another vein.

My strong, unshakable dad winces and squeezes my hand until it’s numb. Pools of blood form under his skin, instantly bruising.

“Sorry, Bob. You have no veins left, and the couple I see just keep rolling,” she tries to explain as she pokes once more, creating another clotting mass.

Finally my dad loosens his grip around my hand and focuses all his attention on the nurse.

“Good thing I kicked that heroin habit,” he teases.

She laughs, eases up. The IV needle finally settles into a vein.

One evening, about six months after Jennifer and I began seeing each other, I arrived at her house and found her on the doorstep talking to a striking woman who looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a European
Vogue
.

“Hey, I want you to meet Vincenza,” Jennifer said. “She’s my international agent. Vincenza, this is my girlfriend, Hillary.”

“Nice to meet you,” we both said, shaking hands.

“Guess what, Honey? We’re going to Rome.”

“You are? That’s great. When do you guys leave?”

“No,
we
are going. You and I.”

“What?”

“
Jjjjjhyes
,” Vincenza said, drawing out the word in her thick Italian accent. “Jennifer we want for magazine photos spread. She huge star in Italy. It shoot in Rome next week for three weeks, and she only come if you come. I say jjjjjjhyes.”

“Wow,” was about all I could utter.

I had never been to Europe and had always dreamed of going. And what a way to go. Star treatment, all expenses paid, in the throes of a wild romance. It was perfect. Except for one small detail.

I didn’t want to leave my dad.

There is a specific smell on the third floor cancer ward of Saint John’s Hospital that wafts into the elevator doors as soon as they open. Sour and foul, perhaps it’s the closest thing to the scent of death.

A therapist tells me to shield myself before going into the hospital. Every day I stop before the doors that slide open to the lobby, and there I take a deep breath of what seems like fresh air, even in Los Angeles. I visualize a shield around me, protecting my body, heart, and soul, but I make it a glass one so I’m not shutting out anything I need to receive or, more important, give.

When the trip came up, my father’s leukemia was in remission. He hadn’t been in the hospital or on chemo for several months. He had even returned to work. I told him about Rome, and he said, “Of course you’re going. End of discussion.”

“What if something happens to you while I’m gone? I’d never forgive myself.”

“If you stay here on my account and miss this opportunity,
I’ll
never forgive you, so either way you’re screwed.”

In fact, my dad announced, during the time I would be away, he was going to Dallas on a business trip. So off Jennifer and I went to Italy.

Upon our arrival, a limo picked us up at the airport, and we sped down the streets, an incongruous sight—flashy car among ancient ruins. In media-glutted Los Angeles, Jennifer was rarely recognized. Though I had heard that she was internationally famous, her face even plastered on potato chip bags in Greece, neither one of us was prepared for what was about to happen.

As we neared the hotel, we saw an enormous crowd waiting outside. When the limo pulled up and they spotted Jennifer, the entire mob surrounded us, screaming and knocking on the windows. Homemade signs read: “Jennifer we love!” and “Welcome Emily Stevenson to Roma!”

“No way,” was all Jennifer could say.

“Jjjjjhyes way,” I teased as we pried our way out of the car. Jennifer was rushed by the throng who shouted out praise in Italian and begged for her autograph. Paparazzi cameras flashed.

About an hour later we finally managed to reach our room. Inside the luxurious digs, Jennifer grabbed me in her arms and led me to the bed. But I stopped her. “I have to do one thing first.”

I called my dad.

One day, several months prior to Rome, we are in the outpatient area on the second floor at Saint John’s. Dad’s been home from the hospital for a week, but I still take him there every other day for either chemo or blood and platelet transfusions. Even though my father has lost twenty pounds, all of his hair, and most of his strength, he won’t allow his spirits to weaken. He brings the nurses candy, and they all fawn over him.

I hold it together like I never have before. I am normally someone whose emotions are so irrepressible, when it comes to crying I often don’t have a say in the matter. Once when I was watching
The Price Is Right
a woman whose bra strap stuck out from her sleeveless top won the big showcase, and as she jumped in excitement, her wig slid down, forcing her to adjust it on national television. I cried for ten minutes. But now I need to be strong for my father—as brave as he’s being. As he sits there, blood emptying from a hanging pouch into his veins, I ask, “Can I go to the cafeteria and get you anything?”

“Nah, I’m okay,” he answers.

“Come on, they’ve got some good-lookin’ desserts down there. How about some ice cream or chocolate cake?” The love-of-sweets gene runs deep in my family.

And then my dad looks up at me with, I swear, a twinkle in his eyes and a devilish, childlike smile—he looks like he’s about five years old. “I’ll have a strawberry ice cream cone.”

“Perfect. I’ll be right back.”

And that’s all it takes. I make it out to the hallway and walk slowly to the elevator, sobbing in soundless convulsions, nose dripping, eyes overflowing. I continue crying all the way down to the basement floor cafeteria. In the hallway, I pause to sit on a bench in front of a statue of a saint. I read the descriptive plaque beneath it: St. Dimpna, Patron Saint of Family Happiness. Sure.

I return to the transfusion room, having pulled myself together. I watch my father—my rock—eat a strawberry ice cream cone with one hand while the other stays motionless, red blood dripping into withered vein; I see the pink ice cream glistening on his upper lip and chin. And as I wipe his face, there in front of him for the first time, I start to weep.

Jennifer and I spent every morning in Rome together, falling again and again onto the floor through the crack in our pushed-together twin beds. We’d kiss good-bye with the windows wide open but the blinds still closed, just to make sure none of her fans, who were gathered in the streets below, repeatedly chanting her name, would spot us.

On her way out of the hotel lobby, Jennifer would stop to sign autographs, pose for pictures, accept gifts and flowers, then push through the crowd to her waiting limo, which would whisk her away to that day’s location. I sometimes joined her, but more often I wandered on my own, exploring. With exquisite shrines on just about every street corner and elaborate statues and fountains at each turn, the city transported me. I wandered from piazza to palazzo, sat in outdoor cafes in front of ancient monuments, and was mesmerized by backstreets, saints, cathedral bells, and painters working at easels. I never once stopped thinking of my father. I’d meditate and visualize him healthy and well; I’d visit churches and light candles for him.

At dusk I waited in our hotel room for Jennifer. The smell of tulips, roses, garlic, and burning myrrh filled the room from the streets, accompanied by shadows and light and the sound of honking horns and footsteps on cobblestone.

We dined in outdoor restaurants, sharing romantic dinners under twinkling white lights snaking through overhanging branches. We were always being watched, so in public we didn’t touch. But that only fueled our connection, intensified our desire, so by nightfall, when we returned to our hotel room and closed the blinds, allowing in only a sliver of moonlight, we held back nothing. Although Europe had always seemed far away and foreign, now it felt so familiar. And no matter how far from home I was, there was that same Moon, shining her light and grace down on us.

“Can I get you anything?” I ask my dad as he squirms with pain in his hospital bed.

“A gun,” he jokes, with as much strength as he can muster.

“Sorry, mine didn’t get through the metal detector downstairs. How about I read to you instead?”

“Sure.”

I’ve just been to the Bodhi Tree, where I bought several books about healing, about focus and will—about miracles.

My father is an artist. Although he stopped painting and sculpting early on in my life, reminders fill my parents’ house. Easels and palettes with crusty oil globs still smelling of color are tucked into closets; the dining room floor he carved and stained in an elaborate pattern remains; the table with a large sundial on top that he made is the centerpiece of the den, where the shutters with ancient Egyptian scenarios that he carved two decades earlier still cover the windows.

But by the time I reached my twenties, Dad was increasingly consumed by his business—the juvenile furniture manufacturing and distributing company he took over from his father—and he stopped painting, creating, or expressing. He was up at 5:00 a.m., out the door and to the office before 7:00; he returned home in time for dinner with the family, a nightly ritual consisting of my brother and me arguing, invariably ending with my father yelling, “Can’t I please have some quiet?” Then he’d head up to bed and stay there until the next day when he was off again to work. He had settled into a routine so precise that every morning before he left, he checked for five things: his upper shirt pocket for his glasses, his back pants pocket for his wallet, his front left pocket for his keys, right pocket for his lighter, and left jacket pocket for his cigarettes.

I decide to read to him from a book by Louise Hay called
You Can Heal Your Life
.

“Oh this is interesting, there’s a list of Probable Mental Patterns that cause specific illnesses. Should I see what mental pattern causes leukemia?”

“I’m not so sure I want to know,” my dad says. “Ah, why not, go ahead.”

I find leukemia and am stunned into silence.

“So?”

Those damn tears start to flow again. I turn away so he doesn’t see as they spill right onto the page.

“Come on, I can take it,” my dad prods.