Notes on a Banana
Page 34
Annie left us, and we sat on the couch, which had been moved out of the way to make room for the tables, and talked. Nothing important, or that I can remember. It was the warm murmurs of unspooling our week for the other, wineglasses in hand.
“It really is beautiful, David.”
I slipped my hand into his. “Thank you, mon cher. For everything.”
Guests arrived the next day, beginning at one in the afternoon. Bottles of prosecco were popped. “We always begin a party with bubbles” was my motto, and our cassoulet parties were no exception. As Alan filled glasses and stoked the fire, I moved from one knot of guests to another, offering a platter of gougères. Annie kept sidling up to me, asking me if there was anything she could do. “Yes,” I said. “Enjoy yourself. Now get lost!” She and her husband, Tony, peeled off and chatted with Dan, our contractor, and his wife, Mamie, a local chef, and our photographer friends, Bob and Linda.
“Everything is so beautiful,” Cindi whispered, reaching for a gougère. “It’s magical. Alan did a wonderful job.” I smiled to myself; I had no desire to correct her.
“I think you’ve forgotten something, sir.” That was Martin, and knowing Martin as I did, I figured he couldn’t get through the day without ribbing me about something.
“And what is that, Mr. Goldberg?”
“This.” And he wrapped his arms tight around my rib cage. He was shorter and older than me, but there was the sweetness and innocence of a ten-year-old to his affection. It was like getting a hug from Boo-Boo Bear.
Carlos and Jeffrey admired the Hershey chocolate cake gracing the sideboard. I had originally planned for a seasonal apple cake steeped in plenty of cream and butter, but it was Aurora’s birthday, and, with apologies to the French, birthdays and the Hershey cake trump everything at our house.
Bob called Alan and me over to the poster of the fat man and his geese, and held up his camera. I rested one hand on Alan’s shoulder, the other on his arm. Laurel and Hardy. Fat and skinny. Throughout my life, I’d battled a whole hell’s worth of demons, but weight was the one that had eluded me in the long run. Tomorrow, I keep telling myself, tomorrow.
“I want a picture of us, too,” said Kate, one of my closest friends and a longtime editor in chief at a publishing house.
She sat on my lap, and I scooped her close as she leaned her head against mine. For years she’d been encouraging me to write a book, but my answer was always the same one I’d given my father so long ago: I have nothing to say.
“I think I finally know what I want to write about,” I whispered. That’s when Bob snapped the picture.
To people who’ve seen the photo on Facebook or Twitter, it looks like nothing more than two friends, heads together, smiling at the camera. But I see the moment of resolve, the decision to tell my story.
I stood and walked over to Alan in front of the fireplace. I threaded my fingers through one of his belt loops, like I’d seen my mother do so many times to my father, and pulled him close. I called out: “Everyone . . .” The room quieted, and heads swiveled in our direction. “Let’s eat.”
EPILOGUE
I am untethered from my heavy, cloddish body and soar, with the daring, stomach-lurching swoops and dips of those flying dreams I loved when I was young. I hover near that eleven-year-old boy pacing outside of a movie theater, wringing his hands as he tries to make sense of what just happened to him. He doesn’t see me, because he can’t; I haven’t happened yet. But I float up to his ear and whisper softly, so softly he can’t hear it, but his heart feels it: “You will be okay. You will grow to have an astounding life. Just hang on, Banana. Just hang on.” He looks at the clock on the wall and walks bravely back into the theater, back into the hell he just escaped. But he has a gift he doesn’t yet know how to unwrap.
I stand in the center of a running track. It’s morning. I watch that young man bolt from a cafeteria. He’s trying to outrun his fear. I shake my head. He doesn’t yet understand that wherever he goes, fear is. He hasn’t figured out that fear topples in the face of authenticity and truth. “You must become your real self, imperfect and glorious,” I thrum into his burning lungs. “Only then will you be able to stop running.” But he’s too frantic, screaming at the sky, cursing God as if it were His fault this happened, pleading to be healed. I plunge my hand into his gut and plant a small seed of quiet. It’s too tiny for him to notice. But it will take root. “It will grow,” I assure him, although all he hears is his hoarse shouts, “and you will eventually have the courage to be yourself, to love the way you were born to, and you will persist. I promise.”
That man, now a few years older, lies restless in bed. His head is full of guns, pills, and nooses. The threat of death comforts him. I lie down beside him. I spoon him. He, too, can’t see me. But he feels something—he is too exquisitely sensitive not to. I take my fingers and comb them down his body, untangling his exhausted and depleted nerves. “Death is not yours to choose,” I tell him. He thinks of a smiling face of pills. He imagines swallowing them, but I stop him from taking all of them. “It is not your time.” He struggles and cries; the relief of death is so seductive, he just wants to let go and float down into dark, cold water until he is no longer. But he grows sleepy because of my stroking. He doesn’t know it yet, but sleep will always, always be his greatest gift. It was the gift he once didn’t know how to unwrap. He is learning.
Last, I stand next to that same man, fully grown, in love, and out of his mind. He shits his pants, he abandons his one true love, he wants to give up. He believes, incorrectly, that he has succumbed to his enemy. What he doesn’t know is I have been whispering in his ear for years, “You are not at fault. Your body, your DNA, is to blame.” And like a mantra I sing, “Manic depression, manic depression, manic depression.” He doesn’t hear. I persist: “Manic depression, manic depression.” One day, out of the blue, while at the stove cooking too much food for too few guests, he tells his beloved, “I know what’s wrong with me.” Joyous, I kiss this man gently on the lips. He finally knows I’m here, understands I have always been here, but he waves me off. He’s too excited about the possibilities.
RESOURCES
BEING GAY/COMING OUT/BULLYING
Dawson, James. This Book Is Gay. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Fire, 2015.
Huegel, Kelly. GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing, 2011.
Owens-Reid, Dannielle, and Kristin Russo. This Is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids: A Question-and-Answer Guide to Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Chronicle Books, 2014.
Savage, Dan, and Terry Miller, eds. It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living. New York: New American Library, 2012.
Signorile, Michelangelo. Outing Yourself: How to Come Out as Lesbian or Gay to Your Family, Friends, and Coworkers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
BIPOLAR DISORDER
Cheney, Terri. Manic: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.
Duke, Patty, and Gloria Hochman. A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness. New York: Random House, 1997.
Jamison, Kay R. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. New York: Knopf, 1995.
Miklowitz, David J. The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford Publications, 2011.
Papolos, Demitri F. The Bipolar Child: The Definitive and Reassuring Guide to Childhood’s Most Misunderstood Disorder. 3rd ed. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2007.
RECOVERING FROM CULTS
Lalich, Janja, and Madeleine Tobias. Taking Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006.
Langone, Michael D. Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995.
Professional organizations: The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), ICSAhome.com.<
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Singer, Margaret Thaler, and Janja Lalich. Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes enormous courage, and a certain amount of ballsiness, to write a memoir. It takes even more to know you’re being written about and not to complain. No one exemplifies that more than my parents, Manuel and Elvira Leite. They’re extremely private people, yet when they knew our world would be cracked open for others to see, they responded with: “If writing about our struggles can in some way help others with theirs, you have our blessing.” Thank you for your kindness, understanding, and generosity of spirit. I love you both.
To Alan Dunkelberger, thank you for answering that ad in 1993 and for every year since. For allowing me my obsession, for following me down every dark and frightening alley as I wrote this book, and for making sure I always found my way home. I couldn’t be who I am if it weren’t for all that you are. I love you, too.
To my agent, Joy Tutela, I don’t deserve you, but I’m so happy I have you.
To everyone at Dey Street Books: My amazing editor, Denise Oswald, who gently and with great insight guided me and the text and who reminded me I was funny. To the publicity and marketing gurus, Shelby Meizlik, Michael Barrs, Sharyn Rosenblum, and Emily Homonoff. I never cease to be amazed. To my publisher, Lynn Grady, for adding me to Dey Street’s roster of jaw-dropping authors. (I’m still shaking my head.) To Mumtaz Mustafa, art director and designer, and Joel Holland, illustrator and hand letterer, who created a cover that still causes me to sigh with pleasure every time I see it.
To Marion Roach Smith, for her guidance in class and in life. You are a friend, truly. To my fellow writing students, Suzanne Fernandez Gray, Cheri Gregory, Susan Kayne, Sheila Siegel, and Dan New. I hope you see a little bit of yourself in here. And to my writing group closer to home, Cindy Eastman and Trudy Swenson, I’ll always be indebted.
To my early and not-so-early readers, Ellen Kroner, Kate Morgan Jackson, Deb Turcotte, Jeanine Bova, Roy Trimble, Danny Pring, Martha Engle, Jenifer Monroe, Gigi DiBello, Jeffery Stockwell, Carlos Rodriguez-Perez, and especially Suzanne Fortier, who read the manuscript—what?—seven times. To Ned Nunes, for his careful and critical eye.
To Renee Schettler Rossi, Beth Price, Tracey Gertler, and Dan Kran, who kept Leite’s Culinaria fresh and vital in my absence. To Annie Musso and Kelli Willis, both of who kept my life this-side-up for more than five years. I can’t thank you all enough.
To Janet Mitchko, for your love and friendship and our endless phone calls. To David Lindsey Griffin, who was and is the good object. To Dan Harris, who encouraged me early and consistently. To Anne Goudreau, Joe McDonald, Beverley Loranger, and Greg Martin, for research help. To Joyce Johnson and Sydny Miner, for their sound advice. To Ann Stamler, for her warm encouragement and kindness. To Elizabeth Alvarez, who suggested I write a little book of essays. (I guess I don’t do anything little.)
To those whom I may have forgotten, blame my aging brain, not my full heart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID LEITE is a food writer, cookbook author, and web publisher. He founded Leite’s Culinaria (leitesculinaria.com) in 1999. In 2006, he had the distinction of being the first winner of a James Beard Award for a website, a feat he repeated in 2007. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Pastry, Men’s Health, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. His first book, The New Portuguese Table, explored the food of his heritage and won the IACP’s 2010 First Book: Julia Child Award. David is also a frequent correspondent and guest host on public radio’s The Splendid Table. He has been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered and has appeared on United Stuff of America, Beat Bobby Flay, and the Today show. When no one is looking, he still dances in his underwear in the kitchen.
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ALSO BY DAVID LEITE
The New Portuguese Table
CREDITS
Cover illustration by Joel Holland
Cover photograph of banana © by Dmitry Vinogradov/Shutterstock
COPYRIGHT
NOTES ON A BANANA. Copyright © 2017 by David Leite. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Handlettering by Joel Holland
All photographs are from the author’s collection
ISBN 978-0-06-241437-3
EPub Edition March 2017 ISBN 9780062414397
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