I work in the media world—lord knows this gal wanted to follow in her dad’s footsteps. He legitimately did a talk the night he passed. I went backstage, eager to meet the people he spoke to. When I shook Glenn’s hand, he said, “Your dad never shuts up about you! He came to Rio and all he wanted to talk about was you. He is your biggest fan.” I stated matter-of-factly, “And I am his.”
My dad, as all you know, was a brilliant mind and compassionate human. He was a curious sort and wanted to know about everything. I honor him by attempting to do the same.
When we were little, my dad would have us say, “Make way for El Rey” when we opened up the door. Well, today, make way for El Rey now.
I’m not sure if I made El Rey, aka the king, proud with my words. But I had gotten through it, and that was a feat in and of itself. I moved toward my pew and sat down, removing my glasses and crying as silently as possible. Meagan grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
Near the end of the service, a Times photographer began clicking his camera. I didn’t understand why he was there. Why would this be an important moment to capture for the paper? Hadn’t there been enough of that? The final prayer was said out loud, and I was instructed to head to the back of the church for the receiving line of condolences.
I said little when people came up to me, but I did hug. Words were escaping me. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, made his way up to me. I was surprised; I’d only met him a couple of times during the outings he and my dad took to the U.S. Open every year. I’d sent him a couple of links of my work at the request of my dad, but I didn’t know him well at all. I braced myself.
David’s face was warm and expressive as his dark eyes looked down at me. “F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in life. Your father proved that smart man wrong. What a hell of a second act.” He moved along quickly, but made sure to mention that he’d stay in touch. I nodded and mentally made a note, as my dad would have had me do.
The bagpiper had warmed up enough to play as the mass of people exited the church to head down to the basement for cheese and tepid white wine. Another photo was snapped for the Times. Days later I carefully studied it. In the photo I am following Jill and Madeline down the stone steps. I’m either smiling or grimacing, my mouth open, perhaps saying something. I couldn’t tell. Once again, my memory was a blur. But the photo served as documentation that at least this part was over.
27
Traces
“Writing is choosing.”
Sudden death creates a creeping sensation that you are living in an alternate reality. In the days after the funeral, when I returned to the house, I would look through his bedroom door. His room remained the same, despite the fact that he would never return to it. The soft light blue sweater was hung over the upholstered white chair. Thick nonfiction books and ballpoint pens lined the nightstand, books he set out to read but now wouldn’t. The black VAIO laptop remained plugged in, awaiting his return.
Charlie, our middle-aged white lab, sat patiently in the kitchen staring at the back door, lifting her head up ever so slightly to try to see through the fogged glass. Is that him? Is he coming? I whispered to her that I loved her just as much as he did. I hugged her the way he would, a giant embrace. We were sisters.
She died two weeks after him; I understand how she must have felt.
Objects tell us the stories of the people who held them. I see this at the cabin and our house. What they valued and cherished and what they couldn’t live without. It’s hundreds of things that are each a self-contained puzzle piece. In the weeks after his death, Jill told us to start thinking about what things of his we might want. But he didn’t care much for stuff. Give him a headset, a notebook, and a comfy cashmere sweater and he was set. I didn’t feel the same way. I wanted him. I was looking for something.
Madeline had made sure to grab a couple of the flowers from the funeral. Perfect long-stemmed white roses. It was decided that we wanted to save these perennial artifacts and encase them in a clear resin. I was not sure if I wanted a memento to remember one of the worst days of our lives.
We set out for the hobby store Michaels in our parkas. The winter was unrelenting. My eyes took in the scene of mostly women wandering the aisles, some with their kids, and I was hit with a wave of normalcy. People were out living their lives even though it felt like ours was ending. The fluorescent lights made my skull reverberate. I started to grow queasy. I wanted to get out of there as soon as humanly possible.
When I asked Meagan and Madeline how long they expected we’d be, they put me to work and tasked me with finding a glass receptacle for the dead dad flowers. I skulked off in search of the right aisle. Meagan called after me, but I didn’t turn around. My wet boots squeaked on the linoleum floor as I got to the glass department of the godforsaken craft store. I stood there and considered scooping up all the containers and sending them crashing to the ground. I was electrified by the thought of destruction. I craved the feeling. I got close and grabbed a cheap plastic vase, but it wouldn’t have had the satisfying smash I wanted it to. I placed it back on the shelf and recognized what I was doing. I grabbed three glass jars, thick ones, and put them in a basket. I walked away from my fantasy and back toward the nightmare.
When we got home Jill told us we had to do our arts and crafts project in the basement because the resin could get everywhere. As my sisters spread out their craft loot, I stood back, hoping to offer moral support rather than creative contributions. “I’ll just get in the way,” I said. Meagan rolled her eyes and Madeline followed suit.
The canister of resin was unlocked, and noxious fumes filled the air. Madeline wore gloves as she carefully poured the liquid gel into the container holding one white rose. The rose faltered and started to tip to the right side, the gel unevenly filling up the small round jar. It was the first pancake of the bunch and I claimed it as mine. I like things a little off-center.
We left the roses to set and I headed upstairs and looked at his desk in the dining room. It wasn’t really a desk, just a repository for things he was supposed to look at next. He preferred to be mobile, drifting from one room to the next with his laptop in hand. I picked up his leather wallet with his driver’s license. He was carrying it in his pocket when he collapsed. I opened it, feeling cautious, as if he might yell at me. In the ID photo he was unsmiling but looking darn handsome. His New York Times business cards were stuffed in little slits, and there was cash in the billfold. I brought it up to my face and smelled it. The leather mixed with the stale tobacco and I was taken back to his presence, to that last hug outside on the sidewalk. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel it.
I was startled when Meagan walked in on me, her hands still in gloves. I stammered nervously. “Oh, ya know, just smelling his belongings.”
She stifled a chortle. “I get it.”
She left the room, and I placed the wallet on the desk exactly where I’d found it. I saw a series of reporter’s notebooks, filled to the brim with his trademark scrawls. I grabbed one and took it upstairs to my childhood bedroom and sat down on the edge of the quilt-covered bed.
This room, my room, felt empty now. The notebook housed clues, but I couldn’t make complete sense of it. Just one mystery after another as my brain fogged with gut-rotting sadness.
* * *
—
As weeks passed I couldn’t help but text him. Because we’d been so digitally tethered, it felt only normal, albeit a bit morbid.
One night I wrote, “I’m sorry I didn’t act more grateful when you gave me that sweater at Christmas.” The message felt like the panicked act of a kid who has forgotten her algebra assignment. I wanted him to know that I was appreciative and that I loved that he got me a sweater that reminded me of his own sweaters.
I sometimes feel like an inferior version of his doppelgänger. I have his DNA, but am not him. Our text history is short. I deleted a m
ajority of them to free up space on my phone and I curse myself for it. But I still have his emails. I typed in C A R R 2 N @ G M A I L . C O M again and clicked through page after page of our back-and-forth.
I created a Google document and start copying and pasting my favorite lines:
“Find myself thinking about you a lot. Wondering what kind of adventures you’re living, learning you are doing, tasks you are on.”
“i’d be working every angle.”
When I closed my eyes I could hear him saying those things out loud. Whenever I would send him a flare email, his response was always relentlessly positive and made me feel like I was part of a tribe, a team. That someone was taking care of me. I knew, then and now, that this was a rare relationship for a child to have with a parent.
For the most part, parents love and want to protect their children, but how many of us really know one another? I wondered what caused this sense of closeness, and I realized I’d never even asked him this. My educated guess was that there was some guilt about our unseemly origin story involving cocaine and later crack. We were premature babies born to our mother while the two of them battled their demons. My mother fled back into her disease while my dad sought treatment. He wanted to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. That his story would protect our own; we would be the successful women he knew us to be.
The words were there, archived. But he was not an active part of the conversation anymore. I had so many questions for him. How on earth could I find the answers?
How do I have a career without you?
What else did you want to do?
Was my moderate success because of you?
How do I live sober?
How can we remain a family without you?
Why were you so hard on me?
Why were you so hard on yourself?
Did part of you know you were going to die?
What do you wish you had told me before you died?
The information exists within his digital sphere. I move toward the emails, the Gchats, texts, and tweets. Data for me to mine. Possible answers to my many, many questions.
28
The Upside of Getting Fired
“My, you just keep turning out. You are full of surprises.”
My first HBO film, Thought Crimes, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2015. Any novice filmmaker would be nervous, but I also felt tremendous gratitude. I had finished something I set out to do, a feat I was unsure I was capable of after my firing. And I had reason other than delusion to be confident about the film.
Five months before, I had screened the movie for my family. The perfect ending to a nice Thanksgiving meal. With our bellies full of turkey and stuffing we headed upstairs to Dad and Jill’s bedroom to see what these blood relatives of mine had to say about the documentary I had made. The room, decorated many moons ago, always made me feel comfortable. The walls and comforter were a deep textured green; a Picasso print hung above their California king bed. A coin dish sat on the bureau, filled to the brim with AA coins, pens, and a shamrock bowtie. I asked if I could use a pen.
I was excited to get my dad’s feedback—his opinion was one of the few I trusted completely and without question. The room was mostly silent as Meagan, Jill, Madeline, my dad, and I made our way through the film with a couple of laughs and groans. I sat on the floor as I didn’t want to be the weirdo that watches her family during screenings.
As the credits rolled, helped along by KISS’s “New York Groove,” I stayed silent. Dad was the first to speak. “Well, you fucking did it. Smashing job.” The rest of the family exalted the film with praise, and each member took turns dissecting parts they loved or were confused by. My dad did have one big criticism: We show the supposed Cannibal Cop eating wayyyyy too much. He called it a “skull fuck.” Did I mention he cursed a lot?
My dad and I had been plotting for months on who to invite to the premiere. I had been, let’s just say, an out-of-work loser for a little bit, and he was grateful to shift gears and have a second kid he could brag about (my ever-achieving twin sister had just started her PhD program). Now that was a wash. I invited the people on our list, but felt super self-conscious, like a junior high nerd sending out Evites to a basement party that people wouldn’t want to go to.
Very true to my modest Midwestern roots, I rented a dress for the occasion. A brilliant blue dress made by Monique Lhuillier, it was bejeweled at the waist, with pockets to tuck my hands in. I looked the part, but now I had to act it.
My sisters and I took a car service over to the venue. I was pretty much silent the whole ride, anxious about the speech I had to make. Meagan asked me not to drink, and I begrudgingly promised her I wouldn’t.
I stepped out of the car in my much-too-high nude pumps from DSW. I regained my composure and was invited to walk my first-ever red carpet for a film I had made. I smiled slyly, making sure not to show any of my slightly crooked teeth. I felt beautiful and cool. Jill came up to me, done up nicely, and asked for my palm. In it she placed a small metal Buddha figurine and squeezed my hand closed around it. Before I could say anything, she said, “Dad would be so proud,” and strode away as quickly as she had come. He had died two months prior, but he would have no doubt wanted the show to go on.
It was time to give the introduction, and I pulled it off without a hitch, making sure to mention Gil’s courage in participating but also my dad’s guidance. I spoke plainly and earnestly into the microphone: “To my father, who taught me truth is a hard-won battle but to strive for it at all costs.” I knew instinctively to mention the living: “To all the women in my little Carr family who are inspirations and give me the strength to carry on.” And with that I sat in the front row and the iconic HBO static reverberated in my head and on the screen. I had done it.
A smile crept onto my face and I felt a rush of gratitude for an opportunity that few are afforded. My dad had told me that being unceremoniously fired would be one of the best things that ever happened to me; he was right. It made room in my life for this. He was always right. Throughout the night, I felt a push and pull of grief and happiness. I was on a panel with Alan Dershowitz, drinking a Shirley Temple with one of my favorite filmmakers, Alex Gibney, and dancing on the bed at the Standard hotel, toasting my dear friends for all the help they had given me. How could he have missed this?
29
Chatter
When your parent, child, close relative, or partner dies, you get a pass to eat whatever you want. In my case it was buckets of Velveeta Shells and Cheese, the kind my dad used to make when we were kids, white trash by way of the Midwest. The pass also gets you out of work when you can’t hang in anymore, the excuse to cancel on anyone at any time, and, oh yeah, to drink whatever you want. You have real pain. The only way through it is to medicate, right?
After sitting by myself for all of twenty minutes in my apartment I would become twitchy. One night I texted my friend Kathleen and begged her to meet me. We went to a nearby bar where she bought me drinks, even though I knew she didn’t really have the scratch to spare. The feeling of being pitied—I hate that I like it.
I drank eight glasses of cheap white wine over the course of many hours. When we got back to the apartment, I pulled The Night of the Gun off the bookshelf and drunkenly read it out loud. I knew I was making my friend super uncomfortable, but she placated me by listening. What a nightmare. My roommate Yunna was awakened by the commotion and came out and stared at me through bleary eyes. She quietly asked if we could keep it down. I cried and told her I would try. When Kathleen left I continued drinking and reading my father’s book. I could hear him.
It had been two months since my dad died, and while I was spiritually thin, I was otherwise large, the continuous cycle of wine and pasta quickly leading to a fifteen-pound weight gain. Anything to stop the
feelings, I muttered inside my own head. After another boozy night, I had to decide whether I was going to get up and face the day or spend it in bed. No one would care either way. I decided to text my twin.
Me: Waking up is the worst
MMC: Tell me about it
Me: How many times have you cried today?
MMC: 5
Me: But it’s not even 10am.
MMC: I know.
I often asked my dad the question “How do you do the next right thing?” He responded, “you wake up and things are better. that’s how.” But things do not seem better upon waking; they feel the same. Limbo.
I headed toward the bathroom, praying that my roommates weren’t home. I didn’t want to be accountable to anyone. I walked past the front door and glanced at my dad’s obituary taped to the back of it. Yunna had taped it there, just like we did at our house in Montclair. “David Carr, Times Critic and Champion of Media, Dies at 58.” It’s my dad’s face in a black-and-white photo, his chin propped up in his hand. He looks youthful, charming, curious. It was a picture I had never seen before. I stared at it. I wondered if it was healthy to have this exposed, so readily available. But the alternative—taking it down—seemed like sacrilege. I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like shit. But again, I kind of liked it. My outsides matched my insides.
But I couldn’t stay there all day. I raced to get to the bus on time at the Port Authority. Jill had asked us to come back to Montclair for a family dinner. The sweat was dripping down my face despite the brisk air. I was hungover from the night before, and there was a deep pulse in my head that kept vibrating every thirty seconds or so. I checked my phone and the glow hurt my eyes. I closed them while I waited at the terminal. The sheer number of drug addicts and New York commuters tend to make for a combustible atmosphere at the Port Authority.
All That You Leave Behind Page 17
