Queen of the Oddballs (21 page)

I’m not so sure he can.

But I wipe my tears, pull myself together, then turn back to read the cause aloud to him.

“Leukemia: Brutally killing inspiration.’”

In Rome I wandered into almost every church. Surrounded by ancient paintings, mosaics, gold leaf, statues, and altars lit with candles placed by those asking for and receiving, I melted into God’s presence. I prayed that I would never do what my father had done. I vowed to continually nurture my creativity, to keep my inspiration alive and burning as brightly as the flame-lit altars.

On the day my father was to return to L.A. from Dallas I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and quietly tiptoed downstairs to a pay phone in the lobby of our hotel. With the time difference, my father would have just arrived home from the airport. Instead I heard my brother’s voice answer my parents’ phone. He hesitantly told me Dad had gone back to the hospital. On his return trip he felt so much pain in his legs that he had to ask for a wheelchair to transport him from the airplane’s gate. My father was a man who always had everything together, and when he didn’t, he had to appear as if he did. For him to ask for a wheelchair—this was serious.

I called the hospital.

“I’m coming home today,” I declared, when my mom answered the phone. I heard her hand the receiver over.

“No you are not,” my dad replied firmly. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, you’re in the hospital—you had to get a wheelchair at the airport. That is not fine.”

“Look, I’m not going to die now. I promise. All you’ve been doing is taking care of me. Please, Hill, just stay and enjoy yourself. Honestly, that’s what would make me feel best.”

I hung up and walked back to our room. I climbed into bed, and as Jennifer took me in her arms I began to cry.

“Come on, Honey, let it all out,” she whispered, holding me safely.

And I did, sobbing for hours, finally releasing the torrents that had been stuck deep in my soul, gnawing at my skin.

There in a hotel room in Rome, I surrendered.

My mom works all day, then at about 5:00 comes to relieve me at the hospital. She tells me she does her crying at the office, slipping into the bathroom or taking a walk outside, and also at night, home alone in the bed she has been sharing with my father for forty years. Since I returned from Rome, I can no longer hold back.

“Dad, I’ve been trying to be all strong for you, but you know what?”

“What?”

“This sucks. Of course I’m a wreck—how could I not be? So from here on in, you’re just gonna have to deal with me crying.”

The tears fall now, with no restraint. My father sees and takes my hand.

“You know what?” he echoes my query, his voice shaky.

“What?”

“You’re right. This does suck.”

Then, for the first time since he got sick four years ago, my father starts to cry.

By the time we returned from Rome, Jennifer’s widower had already remarried. I knew because I watched the soap every afternoon, as soon as I came home from the hospital. It helped me unwind.

On the Fourth of July, Jennifer and I planned to go to a barbecue at a friend’s house. On the way, we stopped by the hospital to visit my dad. He cracked jokes, trying his damndest to be as charming as always, despite his pain. We all laughed and hugged; he shooed us out, encouraging us to go have some fun. Hours later, while at the barbecue, I received a call from my mother—my dad had taken a turn for the worse, and suddenly he was in and out of consciousness. We raced back to the hospital.

“You should gather the family,” the doctor informs us. It could be today or tomorrow.”

Doctors never use the words “die” or “death.” They talk around it. At this moment, I am grateful. Death is still a distant notion, vague and surreal.

We gather close friends and family—including my dad’s parents, who can’t fathom that they are going to outlive their sixty-four-year-old son. We hold a constant vigil at his bedside. My dad—the fighter, the trooper—remains feisty. The doctor’s prediction, “today or tomorrow,” does not arrive. One day, two days, three days, four.

Jennifer, who stays by my side all these days, walks with me down the third-floor hallway. We both need to take a breath. Her arm is around me; we’re not saying a word. Nothing makes a person more present than imminent death. As we stroll, we almost collide with a middle-aged woman on one of those hall walks that every visitor to the cancer ward takes at one time or another. She looks up, startled.

“Oh my God, it’s you.”

We stare at her, not understanding.

“Emily Stevenson. You’re alive.”

Before Jennifer can respond, the woman adds, “I mean I know you’re the actress and all, but, oh my God—my mother and I watched you every single day. She’s been sick for a long time now.”

It’s getting harder for me to breathe, almost suffocated by someone else’s pain on top of my own.

“I know this sounds crazy, but my mom isn’t doing so well. Maybe if you could come to her room and say hello, you know, show her you’re really alive, maybe it would help.”

“Of course, I’d be happy to,” Jennifer smiles compassionately.

We follow the woman with messy salt-and-pepper hair towards the room where her mother lies, dying. I wait outside the door and watch as Jennifer enters the room. I see the mother, tubes in her arms, oxygen mask on her face, lying motionless. I don’t hear what they say to each other, but I see my girlfriend take this woman’s hand in hers, and I see the life force returning. A glimmer comes to the woman’s eye, a smile on her dry, cracked lips. And then she gathers all the strength that’s in her, sits up, and hugs Jennifer. They hug for a long time.

On day five of our vigil, Jennifer has to leave to go to an important audition. Soon afterward she returns to the hospital, looking even more gorgeous than usual. She’s wearing a tight, short skirt, heels, a cleavage-revealing blouse, and her hair and makeup are impeccable.

My father, who has not spoken for days as he drifts between worlds, continually gasping what could be his last breath, notices her walk into the room. He slowly turns his head and through his partially opened eyes, gets a good look at Jennifer. Inspired by her beauty, he utters his final word before he dies an hour later.

My father just says, “WOW.”

• The World Wide Web is born. I do my first online chat in preparation for promoting the book I’ve recently sold,
  Girl Power
  . Only one other person is in the chat room and we both LOL over the fact.;)
  
 

• Ten years after hanging out with Tom Hanks when my band Angel and the Reruns shot the film
  Bachelor Party
  with him, he stars in
  Philadelphia
  , for which he will win the Acadamy Award for best actor.
  
 

• Michael Jackson is accused of child molestation but charges are dropped when a settlement agreement is reached. Good thing for him that’s over with.
  
 

• A bomb goes off at the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. Good thing more people weren’t killed.
  
 

• Weight loss advocate Susan Powter screams from infomercials and books to STOP THE INSANITY!
  
 

• Twenty years ago I was given a free ticket to see what would be Barbra Streisand’s last concert, at a McGovern for President benefit. Now I am given another free ticket to the event of the year—her comeback performance on New Year’s Eve at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Too bad I’m still not really a fan of hers.
  
 

• A star-studded year of friends: I spend Christmas Eve with Melissa Etheridge, who comes out at Clinton’s inaguration ball; k.d. lang, with Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal, comes to my house for dinner and sings her hit song “Constant Craving” in the hallway; and since my good friend’s boyfriend is John Cusack, I see him in bed one night wearing acne medicine.
  
 

• To gather writing for
  Girl Power
  , I go to a teen girl wheelchair basketball game, an Indian reservation, a home for teen mothers, and weekly Riot Grrrl Meetings. “Revolution Girl-Style Now!”
  
 

• LAPD raids the home of Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss, and Lorena Bobbitt cuts off her husband’s penis, while Janet Jackson scores a hit with “That’s the Way Love Goes.”
  
 

W
hat do you do when you’re on a self-imposed sabbatical from serial monogamy and meet the person you’ll probably spend the rest of your life with?

Run like hell.

That’s exactly what I did when I met Maxine.

When I was involved with Jennifer, my life became much like her soap opera. My father died from a dreaded disease; with no prior experience my mother was forced to take over the family business; my previous two girlfriends, Elizabeth and Katie, fell in love with each other; a close friend miscarried in her eighth month of pregnancy; my housemate, Ken, after a lengthy search, discovered that despite the fact that his birth mother had given him up for adoption in Brooklyn thirty years ago, the two of them had been living just one block from each other in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley until her death one month before he tracked down her identity; and Jennifer plummeted into a deep depression, which she had had previous bouts with during our relationship. Through arduous therapy sessions (mine, not Jennifer’s!), I came to realize I had developed a pattern. According to my therapist, darkness was seductive to me since I believed that my own light would nurture, encourage, inspire, and heal my mate, which, in turn, would make me worthy and necessary. That’ll be $3,755, please.

Then in a climactic episode, the night before Jennifer and I were to leave on a trip for my birthday—staying in intimate bed and breakfasts throughout New England to watch the leaves turn color—I went to sleep on “my” side of Jennifer’s bed and on “my” nightstand I found bobby pins. Jennifer, the soap opera actress, gave a Daytime Emmy-worthy performance, swearing she had no idea how they had gotten there. But I, the amateur detective, not only knew exactly how they had, but also whose they were. Come on, who the hell wears bobby pins?

We still went to see the leaves turn color except what turned the most throughout our trip was my stomach, especially when Jennifer would go off to make a “work” phone call. Yeah, to her bobby pin-wearing “agent” no doubt.

In a romantic bed and breakfast overlooking an orange-and-red maple forest, I decided that the best birthday gift I could give myself was a break from relationships. And more than just a commercial break—it was time for a hiatus.

I spent the first few months of my time off mostly in tears, mourning the loss of my father, of Jennifer, and of all my failed relationships. But by mid-spring I started getting into a groove and actually began to really enjoy my freedom. I was hanging out daily with Wendy and Lisa from Prince and the Revolution, having officially made the leap from fan to close friend (
really
this time!), and felt more creative than I had in years. I was feverishly working on my book
Girl Power
and, vowing not to squelch inspiration as my father had, I began to make visual art—found object assemblages—and showing and selling pieces in established galleries. I took all the energy I had been giving to my girlfriends and instead infused it into my work and my life.

By fall, I was celebrating one exciting, powerful year of being on my own.

And then I met Maxine.

Katie, my ex who had remained a close friend, had gone out with Maxine a few times, but on each date, she said, she kept thinking that Maxine and
I
should meet. “We’ll all go out to dinner,” she announced. “You have to know each other, you’d be perfect together.”

That’s precisely why I kept putting off the dinner. “I’m not ready for a relationship now,” I declared. “I’m loving being alone.”

Katie finally convinced me to go out with her and Maxine on a chilly Thursday night in November. We met at Pane e Vino, an intimate Italian restaurant on Beverly. Maxine was charming and adorable, funny and smart. (Damn.) She was a TV writer-producer working on the number-one hit sitcom, so she was also creative and successful. (Crap.) And then she invited Katie and me to a screening the following night of Catherine Deneuve’s new film,
Indochine
, premiering at an event Maxine was producing to benefit Amnesty International—she had a conscience, too. (Shit.)

After dinner, we went to her house, a big mistake for someone trying to avoid a relationship, because her home was as intriguing and inviting as Maxine. A bungalow near the Hollywood Bowl, every room was splashed with colors deep and bright, walls filled with brilliant art—similar to the kind I had been making. In a corner of the red-and-yellow living room sat a drum set, one bass drum with “SAMMY” across it, the other emblazoned with “DAVIS JR.” “Sammy was the greatest entertainer of all time,” she said, “and when his estate was being auctioned off, I had to rescue his drum kit.” She told me she was a performer—she used to do stand-up comedy and even had a band—then turned to writing. She had a deep love of variety shows since childhood, so she completely freaked when I confessed I had been a juggler and fire-eater. She even had a very specific collection of old tiki bowls and mugs from Harvey’s, a restaurant in Lake Tahoe in the fifties and sixties. I too had collected Harvey’s bowls.

All of this did not bode well.

That night Maxine asked me to dinner for the following week. I hesitated. Besides my resistance to what seemed inevitable, another quality about Maxine made me nervous. She was so upbeat and optimistic. Maxine had her
own
light—she didn’t need mine. However, I did agree to see her.

On the morning of what was to be our first date, Maxine called. “Wanna go to breakfast so we can discuss where we’re gonna go for dinner?” she asked.

Amusing and charming, right? But her enthusiasm freaked me out. Here was someone I wouldn’t be able to just “date.” When Maxine and I did take the plunge, it was obvious we’d be together for years to come. And I just wasn’t ready for that. But would I ever be? Suddenly it dawned on me that maybe
I
was the one with the commitment problem. Perhaps that’s why I always chose others who couldn’t commit—to let
me
off the hook. Hell, I couldn’t even commit to one career, afraid I might be missing out on something else.

And, despite the pull, I found plenty more reasons for not getting involved with Maxine. If I was showered with the kind of attention and care that I’d never really before received, could I give up being so self-reliant? What would I
do
in a relationship with a person who had nothing to “fix”? Could I stand giving my heart to someone and risk having them carelessly neglect it again? Could I take any more loss so soon after losing my dad?

I couldn’t start seeing Maxine but I also couldn’t
not
see her. I passed on breakfast but did keep our plans for dinner.

During our first couple of weeks of “dating,” I tried to take it slow. In fact, I was always putting on the brakes. Maxine would call me four times a day; I’d call back once. One day she sang “I’ve Got the World on a String” in its entirety on my answering machine, each verse ending in “I’m in love.” I had to stop seeing her for an entire week after that. We’d sleep together only on weekends—luckily she was busy working so she didn’t have that many nights available anyway. When we did hang out, we always had a great time. On Sundays we’d wake at 5:00 a.m., make coffee, and head into the chilly winter mornings combing the flea markets, sharing the steamy, caffeinated brew from a little red thermos cup as we searched for vintage treasures. We went to Outsider Art exhibits at museums and hung out with each other’s fascinating friends and equally fascinating exes who had become family.

But then came spring and with it a hiatus from her TV show. Maxine wanted to go to Europe. And she wanted to take me with her. I still had plenty of issues with receiving—the last trip to Europe was paid for by Jennifer’s job, not
her.
Letting Maxine pay would be tough, and since I wasn’t making enough money to afford the trip, that was the only option. I also was definitely not ready to be with her—hell,
anyone
—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for three whole weeks. But she persisted, and despite my trepidation, I agreed to go.

On a cool day in May we flew to Paris. The more romantic Maxine was, the more I stiffened in terror. So we argued while eating lavender crème brûlée in Juan-les-Pins, sobbed during a boat ride in the Blue Grotto on Capri, broke up in a sacred forest in the south of France, and didn’t speak a word to each other in a sleeping car train to Positano. We had heavy discussions about our relationship at three ancient ruins, two seashores, in four taxis, and at six outdoor cafés. Poor Maxine was mystified.

Finally we decided to cancel the last leg of our trip, Venice, and go home early instead. We took a train to Rome, where we would spend our final night before flying back to L.A. Now that the pressure was off, we didn’t argue; we didn’t even weep. We rented Vespa scooters and tooled around town. At twilight we rode to a charming outdoor café on the Piazza Navona. Other patrons had parked their scooters out front, lined up in a row like a Vespa showroom. So I gave my scooter a little gas and picked up the front wheel a bit to ride up on the curb and join them.

I pulled to the end of the row and parked next to the last scooter, then watched as Maxine gave her scooter a little gas and turned to pull up onto the curb. Not enough gas. She tried again, but this time gave it a bit more throttle than necessary. Suddenly Maxine was careening full speed ahead, doing an unintentional wheelie right in front of a statue of Jesus. As she tried to slow down, her scooter peeled out of control, wiped out, and slammed into the scooter parked at the top of the row. That scooter banged into the next parked scooter which thwacked the next, and the next, and the next, and the next. As I stood and stared in stunned silence, each Vespa fell, like dominoes, until, at last, my scooter went down, and
I
was knocked to the ground, under the whole pile.

Maxine’s pants were ripped, her knee and arm bloodied, and both of us lay sprawled on the sidewalk. We looked up at each other and simultaneously said, “Are you okay?” We each nodded. Then we burst out laughing. Uncontrollably. We laughed so hard that despite the pain and the fact that we still couldn’t stand up yet, it was our cheeks that hurt most. It was a relief to feel pain somewhere other than in our hearts.

When we finally stopped laughing I looked at the mess we’d made and saw each fallen scooter as a symbol of each of my reasons for not allowing myself to be in this relationship: “I can’t take so much attention”; “I’m scared to commit”; “I can’t handle being with someone so together, someone who doesn’t need my help”; “It’s too soon after Dad died, I can’t handle any more potential loss.”

One by one each of my excuses was knocked to the ground.

And there I lay, under the pile, scratched and scarred but still in one piece.

I picked myself up, limped over to help Maxine, and surrendered to the destiny I had been trying so desperately to avoid.

We never did make it to Venice. But we did manage to make it to each other.