Eventually, the landscape begins to make sense and I learn where the pitfalls are. Here is a mountain of fear. Over there is a river of regret. Down there is a swamp of shame. Next to it, a meadow of hope. Travel with care.
It takes time, but I learn to laugh at myself, to tolerate discomfort, to accept these things that were once so hard to accept.
It’s not easy. I get depressed. I get anxious about it. I learn to just sit with it, that the thing Dad always told me about acceptance and heartache was true: “Sometimes you just have to sit on your hands and hurt.”
What can I say? It was uncomfortable and it took years and it was the only way to change.
CHAPTER 44
GREEK
Three years later, I am standing on the stage of the Greek Theatre, just up the hill from the tiny Parisian apartment in Los Feliz where I first wrote about the wishing well. Blocks of seats fan out in front of me like giant red bricks dug into the greenery of the hillside. I walked the aisles when I first arrived, after seeing the band name on the marquee, just to be sure it was the same place and not something from a dream. That happens sometimes. I have a dream in my sleep compartment of the tour bus. We’re playing somewhere like the moon or a windswept glacier in the middle of the Atlantic, looking back across the empty space and thinking how far we’ve come, how impossibly far from home we are.
Daren is on the stage adjusting his kit, the steady thump of a kick drum echoes across the canyon as Bill, our beloved longtime tour manager, calls for more rack tom, now some hi-hat. Daren pounds out a disco beat as he whispers in rhythm into his mike, “Boots and pants and boots and pants,” switching to the rack tom and floor tom, saying, “Pat Boone, Debby Boone, Pat Boone, Debby Boone.” An old touring joke.
It’s been a strange day.
After sound check, the family arrives. Tony comes first, as always. He brings his wife and their baby daughter, Juliette, a beautiful little girl with Shirley Temple curls and enormous blue eyes. He is seven years sober now. Tan and rested, he carries his baby girl through the cavernous hallways behind the stage, lifting her up as she screams in glee. He seems so much like all the promise of his life has been realized, that his sobriety hasn’t so much fundamentally changed his essence as empowered everything good about him: his wit, his undying commitment to his daughter, whom he places right at the center of his life, walking her to school and taking her to dance classes, amusement parks, the beach, so he can be like an anchor for her in the waves. He’s reached out to his son, making phone calls and inquiring about his life. His son isn’t ready. He’s still too angry. Tony doesn’t press but lets him know he’s here to talk whenever he’s ready.
As I watch him swing his daughter in the hallway, I wonder if he knows what his addiction cost his son, how much he just wanted the same father his sister has. I know Tony has regrets because he’s so honest about it in meetings, so it’s strange to think how we can be all these things at once. Disappointing to some, cherished by others. Whenever I ask him about it, he tells me he’s trying but that it’s just too much to face at once and his first priority is staying sober, that the anxiety he feels quickly becomes overwhelming and he needs more time because he simply can’t handle it. This makes sense to me.
Tony does triathlons for charity now and owns the successful large-scale printing company he always dreamed of owning. He bought the Posner house off Fairfax and Wilshire after Grandma and Grandpa died, the one Bonnie and her sisters grew up in. His big renovation was to add a pool so his daughter would have somewhere to swim.
I’m so proud of him I could burst.
Dad and Bonnie are next. Bonnie is a whirlwind of jokes and hugs, her voice, her presence like a song, sitting each of my bandmates down to ask them about their lives. “And your kitty, is he okay? Did he miss you on the tour? That happens, you know. They know.” She’s still sad since her sister Jeannie died of the pulmonary hypertension she lived with for fifteen years, despite being told she only had two years to live. She fought it the whole way. Her doctors called her “the warrior.” Bonnie was there every step and carries with her the same feeling her father carried: that life is brief and we must hold on to one another and cherish the moments we have with the ones we love while we still can.
Dad is so thin. He almost didn’t come, because he felt so poorly. His liver is nearly gone now, just a chewed-up wad of scar tissue, cirrhotic and ravaged. It has created a host of problems for him that have robbed him of muscle and energy. He just fights through it, determined to beat it. He’s changed his diet, his workout routine. He’s tried herbal remedies and countless treatments, drugs, procedures. He’s still got that quick step, that wink as our eyes meet from across a room crowded with friends and family. There’s champagne open because it’s not every day you get to play the Greek Theatre, to see a dream realized in the flesh. Dad knows it. Like everything, we’ve talked about this day.
He says he wants to go on tour with us, that he has a great voice and could maybe join the band for the encore. He’s never seen New York City, so he wants to join the East Coast leg of the tour. He’ll even get on an airplane, which is something he generally refuses to do. But he’s determined. “We’ll watch the shows and maybe take in a Broadway play, eat one of those three-pound pastrami sandwiches I’ve heard about.”
The last to arrive is Lizette, my new girlfriend. She walks into the room with a smile as she hugs Bonnie and my dad, does a little jig with Juliette. We’ve been dating for a few months now. That’s the word we use. Dating. But it isn’t like that. It’s more like being recognized by another, like you could spot each other in a crowd. I carry this feeling with me as I see her cross the room to say hi to Daren, her long brown hair and light brown eyes, her raised eyebrows as she picks up the store-bought salsa from the table, laughs and says, “Guys, we could do better. This is embarrassing. We deserve some real sa-ul-sa in here.” She pronounces the word in a native Spanish style, her Mexican and Salvadoran pride showing. She occasionally looks up at me and I look back and this is the thing we share: that we are watchers, both of us, and we recognize this trait in the other, someone else who is trying to make it up as they make their way through the world.
I don’t know how to explain how I finally fell in love except to say that when it happened, the words practically flew out of my mouth. I didn’t choose them. The feeling just filled me until words erupted into the space between us.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling except that we began a conversation one night that went on for five hours. We talked the next night and that conversation lasted five hours too. Then the next. And the next. And then we decided to be together and we are still having that same conversation.
It’s strange that after years of chasing noise and then trying to understand it, actually falling in love felt like waking up to all the quiet in the world. No wind, no rain, no far-off sirens, just the precise silence of my mind as I hold that thing that makes me calm. I guess you could say that after years with Misha, I was ready for love. But it still surprised me. She still surprised me.
She.
I still visit Misha every week and so walking through this new love has been like learning a new language. It’s foreign to me, like Greek. I have to ignore so many of my old instincts: to trust when I am scared or angry or confused; to create a space for uncertainty, for doubt, even boredom; to see those things in myself that have kept me alone and simply make a different choice. What I did not expect is how calming it would be to open all the doorways of my heart and find there is no reason to keep them closed.
She hands my father a plate of tortilla chips as she disparages the salsa. He liked her from the minute he met her. “I get you and her,” he said the day he met her. “You make sense. I can’t explain it except some people just work together.” That was how he put it as we walked out of the house the day I brought her to meet him and Bonnie. “You’d be crazy to let that girl out of your sight.”
“I don’t plan to.”
It’s such a relief. No one tells you that about love. Or at least no one ever told me. That I don’t have to work so hard to keep up appearances. I can put down the mask. Our conversation is easy and unending. We follow it across nervous mornings and tear-filled nights. There are confessions and jokes and silly evenings watching bad movies on the couch while we cuddle and talk and talk and talk. What’s wrong with that dude’s hair? Ohhh damn, did she really just say that? This son of a bitch right here. Little things, good things, sad things, quiet thoughts I’ve never told a soul, because I was too scared of what they might think. She just listens and nods her head. She’ll say something like “Yeah, I get that.” And for some reason those are the most comforting words I’ve ever heard.
I’m lost a lot of the time; I don’t really know how to talk about it. Yeah, I get that. My mother was bad to us and I don’t know how to be about it. Yeah, I get that. I put on an act most of the time. Yeah, I get that. I’ve found something in you and I don’t think I can let go, which scares me a little. Yeah, I get that. My dad is sick and I don’t know what I’m going to do if he dies. Oh, babe. Babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe. Shhhhh. I’m right here. I get that. I love you.
She tells me her secrets and it’s my turn to listen and this is perhaps the most comforting thing of all, to be able to calm her anxiety, to see her doubts, and instead of running away as I’ve always done, to simply say, “Yeah, I get that,” and for the first time in my life, stay.
* * *
TONY SITS WITH his elbow on my father’s shoulder as he balances baby Juliette on his shin. Bonnie leans into my dad in her way, grabbing his hand to kiss it and hold him close. Dad chats with the band members, who are drinking champagne and going over the set list. Lizette is on my lap and I feel my heart bursting as I pull her to me.
Every show is a celebration of something. That’s the thought I have as we take the stage later that night, as we see that beautiful hillside light up in front of us. Why are we here? With these people who have a place in their hearts like the one we have in ours? It’s not so simple and it’s fair to say that we’re the types of people who wouldn’t be interested if it was.
So what are we celebrating?
I think maybe we’re celebrating something very basic: the fact that we survived. That the bad things that happened to us didn’t break us. We’re still here and there is still a chance—as we dance and stomp and jump and sway—for something new to happen, something wonderful. That feeling connects us. We are calmed by it. Soothed. Inspired. The speakers bellow and the drums echo off the hillside. The guitars roar and the violin traces a melody. We can hear our voices coming back to us in unison, all of us together, crying out to the night sky, We’re here! We’re alive! And we know it because we’re singing! Can you hear us? We’re singing!
CHAPTER 45
THE MEN AND THEIR DREAMS
When the family arrives from San Diego, Lizette is there to greet them. She introduces herself in the lobby on the third floor, the hospice floor, where Dad has been moved after starting the morphine drip. She helps with getting coffee and water, reminding people where the bathrooms are. She remembers the stories and connects them to the faces in the room. “Oh, you’re the one who has all the clocks! I’ve heard so much about you. I love your jacket.” She holds court. She helps. “Well, he’s been better, but I’m sure he’d love to see you.” She’s good at this. I don’t understand it, how a woman so beautiful could be willing to spend her Friday night in a hospital waiting room.
My dad’s brother Wes with his gentle, bearlike voice, his brother Donny, the loud, brash one, my aunt Linda, who was raised apart from them but has come into the family fold, kind and sarcastic, our cousins Cindy and David, my parents’ neighbors and old friends, we all assemble at the way station of Cedars-Sinai as if standing on a platform waiting for a train to arrive. There are hugs and quiet words and one by one everyone goes in to talk to Dad.
Tony hugs me and leaves an arm on my shoulder as we stand together in the waiting room. There are things only a brother understands.
After everyone leaves, it is my turn and I go in to talk to him.
“Heyyy, Dad. Heyyy.” It’s nearly midnight. Bonnie and I trade off every day so he’s never alone. She gets the days. I’m there nights.
“Hey, Mick,” he whispers lightly, a slight smile across his lips.
I’m not sure if he can understand me because he’s groggy from the morphine, coming in and out of consciousness. I just want to feel like his son for a few more minutes.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
“Oh, well, yeah. That happens.” I run my hand over his short hair as if to wipe it from his eyebrows. I stroke his beard and stare into his glassy eyes. He looks so small beneath the thin white hospital blanket.
“I want you to know something.”
“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“I’m going to ask Lizette to marry me, Dad.”
“Ohhhh,” he says, smiling and nodding faintly. “That’s good.”
“You’re the first person I told.”
“She doesn’t … know yet?”
“No, I’m working on a plan.”
“You sure … you sure you’re ready for all that?”
“I’m ready to try.”
He smiles and closes his eyes. I want him to imagine the day, because I know he can’t be there. The way the light will stream through the leaves of the trees swaying over a procession of friends and family, Lizette, glowing in her wedding dress at the top of a hill at sunset. Maybe he will see the child, imagine him with his eyes, his nose, his sense of humor. Maybe he will see me. I’ve been a son for so long and I want to become a father, to be what he was for me. I trust this love of his.
“Don’t.” He looks down as I stare at him, wondering what he means as he struggles with the words. He grabs my hand and smiles at me, his hazel-green eyes beaming,
“Don’t fuck it up.”
and then he is gone
and nothing in the world can ease the unimaginable pain
It’s not that we didn’t see it coming. We did. Bonnie and I. Tony and I. Lizette and I. There were long talks about it and endless surgeries, treatments, regimens, lunches at the cafeteria of the North Tower of Cedars-Sinai. We even had a favorite place to sit. We named it. “The Posner-Jollett Memorial Table. One thousand sandwiches eaten.”
It’s that the finality of death is so hard to face because it tears a hole in the universe. It’s like looking up and seeing a nothingness where the sky used to be. Death is like a play on a stage suddenly interrupted by a hurricane. There you are, standing there reciting your lines, following your scene cues, when the building starts to shake and the roof comes flying off, somebody jumps up in the back and screams that the theater is on fire as you run for cover wondering why you didn’t see it coming, why nothing prepared you for this moment—no book, no movie script, no breathless talk at midnight. It’s confusing. It takes time for the reality to set in. It was all a play. There was a storm outside and it has removed the roof and now we must hide. You wake up feeling fine and then you remember again and begin to sob. The sky is gone. He is gone. The universe only appears permanent. And you know now that it isn’t. And it never was. And neither was he. And neither are you. And for some reason this is the saddest thought in all the world.
I
simply can’t wrap my mind around the space left by his absence. The baffling enormity of it.
Bonnie, as always, is comforting. She hugs me and tells me she loves me and that he was proud of me and that she misses him too. When we go to the house in Westchester, we bring food because that’s what people do. They eat. Neighbors bring brownies and casseroles. Cousins show up with chips and salsa. There is a table of hummus and chicken and meatballs and for some reason it feels good to eat. Like you have to fill this hole with something so it may as well be food. Lizette and I stay at the house, in my father’s bed where he slept when he got really sick. I wear his shirts and pants. I walk around in his boots and put on his rings. I excuse myself from the people in the living room and find myself lying still on the bed grasping his pillow, sobbing. Lizette comes in and lies next to me. We don’t move for hours.
Bonnie wakes up in the middle of the night. She’s in the living room looking at pictures, of her father and mother, her sister, her husband, my father. I wonder how she handles it all, to have lost all the people she loved most. We tell old stories. The trips in summers when Tony and I would come to visit. All the dogs they loved, the little terrier named Guy who was so nervous he would scare himself when he farted, the small aboveground pool they bought when Tony and his son lived with them briefly that we named the “white trash” pool. The way Dad would dance into the room in his bikini underwear when we were kids, dragging his foot behind him and saying, “This is the move. You gotta drag your leg and say, ‘Hey, Mama, you need a date tonight?’”
We laugh and we cry and agree the family is too small now. It’s time we started growing again.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Bonnie keeps asking me, rubbing the tears from my eyes.
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