I can touch the baby squirrel. Cradle it. Bury it. Be its mother.
I turn off the TV, crumple up the newspaper, and go about my day.
My Pine Tree
I hear the chainsaw. I can’t look outside. I’m frozen at my desk. Two men are on my terrace, where my pine tree has sat for the last forty years. They have been ordered to cut down the tree.
The Latin name for my pine tree is Pinus bungeana, a rare, beautiful Chinese pine. A lacebark pine, it is called, because of the delicate lace design on the bark.
It had lived for more than forty years on my terrace, and that is no small feat. My apartment in New York is on the seventeenth floor. It’s a penthouse apartment with a huge wraparound terrace. Last week, I received a certified letter from the landlord’s lawyers demanding that the tree be taken off the terrace because the weight was causing damage to the roof. There was no way to lift it and get it into the elevator. By now, it was more than twelve feet high. There was no way to dispose of the tree other than to chainsaw it apart.
Back in 1979, when I moved into the apartment, I discovered that the previous tenants had left the tree behind. It was small then, a few feet high, secure in its terracotta pot. It was indestructible. It kept flourishing against all odds. Over the years, I had containers especially constructed for it. It cost me thousands of dollars to have them hand-built and assembled, and the tree planted and replanted and repotted. Nothing deterred this tree from growing; it has survived brutal winters, high blustery winds, ice, snow, pollution, bugs, lack of rain, too much rain. Occasionally, because of fifty-mile-an-hour winds, it has toppled over, been lifted back up, and kept thriving. It’s been tethered to the railing that sits perched upon the parapet that wraps around my terrace. Or more precisely, their terrace. The landlord reminds me every time I let the pronoun “my” slip out unconsciously. I don’t own the apartment. I rent it.
I first rented it almost forty years ago, with my closest friend, Claude Tessier. My darling, dear Canadian boyfriend. Claude was a dancer and singer, and spoke with the slightest French-Canadian accent. He was born in Hull, Quebec. We met in Prince Edward Island in a production of Anne of Green Gables, and we instantly bonded. We dated and then lived together back in Toronto. Claude was bisexual and, eventually, as painful as the realization was for our relationship, he made the decision to be exclusively with men. We kept our deep friendship and co-signed the lease to our apartment in 1976.
By then Claude was working on Broadway. He had been snatched up in Toronto by Broadway producers and given a work permit to appear in A Chorus Line. He was cast as an understudy in the original production. He was the go-to boy for understudying. He learned quickly, was reliable, never missed a step, a line, a verse. I saw A Chorus Line fourteen times while Claude was in it. I was always so proud to sit in the audience and witness my exceptionally talented best friend shine on stage.
I married Claude in the spring of 1979 so that he could get a green card. That way, he wouldn’t have to worry about being deported. Claude moved from show to show. Copperfield, Cats, Evita, and Les Misérables. I don’t ever remember him being out of work. Everyone loved Claude, but I loved him more than anyone. He was my soulmate.
We were perfect roommates. I worshipped him, and we were devoted to each other. Claude loved taking care of me. He cooked for us and decorated the apartment. He macraméd, knit, played the recorder, the piano; his tap shoes, always worn out, crowded the closets. He picked audition songs for me, cheered me up with hand puppets he had made, taught me how to tap, and even picked out my wedding dress when I later married Bob Dolman. He witnessed the birth of my two sons, and they loved him.
Claude was on the road, in Florida, touring with Les Miz. He called me in Los Angeles where I was then living, and told me he was very sick. This was the late ’80s, when there were murmurs of a “gay” disease called AIDS, but I didn’t know anyone who had it yet. And then Claude started showing the symptoms. He was tired. He had constant diarrhea. He was weak. He couldn’t continue with the show; the production was flying him back to New York.
Claude’s dream for me was that one day I would star on Broadway. I had all but given up the dream for myself. I had two small children and was deeply ensconced in my life in Pacific Palisades, California. And then out of the blue I got a phone call to audition for My Favorite Year, a new musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty that was being adapted for Broadway from the successful movie starring Peter O’Toole. It was 1989. I was asked to fly to New York to audition. I didn’t want to leave my kids. But Claude encouraged me to audition. I knew how important it was to him. I got the part. It was my first role on Broadway. Claude was forty and I was forty-four.
The truth is, the real reason I left my two small children with their dad in Los Angeles was to be with Claude as he tried to fight his dreadful disease. I didn’t want him to be alone. I wanted to take care of him. We lived together once again. By then he was very sick. Claude was extremely thin, losing weight rapidly. He had sores all over his face, cold sores on his lips, and reddish-purple marks everywhere else on his body. He was weak and so frightened of being alone.
“Please, can I sleep with you tonight, Andrea? I’m scared,” he said.
“Yes, my darling, come into bed.”
We shared the same bed for weeks while I was in rehearsals, until previews started. I wasn’t sleeping, and I was exhausted. It was becoming too difficult to take care of Claude. His behaviour was erratic. Hallucinating, he’d pack his bags and say that he was flying to Florida for a vacation. “Come back, honey,” I would say to him as he struggled, one unsteady step at a time, to walk to the elevator. “Come back, let’s unpack your bags and I’ll run you a bath, and you can put your pyjamas on and get all cozy and comfortable in bed, and I’ll sit with you and read you a story. Doesn’t that sound like a nice thing to do, honey?”
“Okay, I’ll go to Florida tomorrow.”
“Yes, darling. Tomorrow. But for now, let me take your bags, and you sit and I’ll run you a bath.”
While my show was still in previews, Claude was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital. The dear, kind nurses there on the eighth floor, the AIDS floor, looked after him. Every day before rehearsal started, I would visit Claude, and every night after the curtain came down, I would run to Lenox Hill to be with him again. “Hang on, Claude, please hang on,” I’d say. “It’s our dream, honey. Both of us on Broadway. What you always wanted. What I always wanted. I want you in the audience on opening night. I need you in the audience. I want to make you proud.”
Claude died during a preview performance, three days before opening night. The stage manager met me in the wings and told me the hospital had called and that Claude had passed away. The show was not the hit we all hoped it would be, but six months after we opened, I won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Our Tony Award, Claude’s and mine. It was his last gift to me. I know this.
And now our pine tree is being sawed in half. It is killing me. Claude’s and my tall, beautiful pine tree, which witnessed our life together. It’s the end of an era. I can’t bear to go out there and see what they have done to our tree. The sound of the saw is cutting a hole in my heart. I have never emptied the one closet that still holds most of Claude’s mementoes from Broadway. His gold Chorus Line top hat, his tap shoes, the original sheet music from Les Miz, his pens and colouring pencils and sketch pads and handmade puppets, and headshots and recorder and resumés and signed photo from Michael Bennett, the director and choreographer of the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line—I have never been able to part with any of these things. Our pine tree was a witness to the deep bond and love I had for this man. Now it’s gone. There are no more witnesses. Just memories.
The Train
I’m on the train now, in the quiet car, travelling from Penn Station, New York City, to Wilmington, Delaware, where I will be performing my one-woman show for the next week.
The gentle motion of the train, the gentle passing
by of the trees and houses and tracks and streams and backyards and discarded cars, makes me think of death in Venice. Not my death, although it would be romantic to die in Venice in the arms of a gondolier. No, I’m thinking of someone else’s death in Venice. I guess I’m thinking of the movie and the last sad image of the boy sitting alone in the café. Or maybe there was no boy, and no café. My memory is shaky. But the passing images feel cinematic. Flashing back in time to another era. Even though the seat I am in is plastic, and the passengers are dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, even though there are empty bags of potato chips and chyrons of train info above every doorway, even though the porter is surly and his uniform is dirty and too small for him, even though the café car serves cold pizza and packaged fast food, I still think the train is romantic and I wish I were on my way to Venice. Not to die. But to locate the hotel I might die in, when the time is right.
My Lost Youth
It’s so fitting. It’s rainy and dark outside. There was a thunderstorm at 6 a.m. It woke me up from my sleep at the Portland Harbor Hotel. I had spent the last night in Portland, Maine, where I had dinner with my brother and his wife. I stayed at the hotel in order to get an early train to Boston this morning. The train from Portland to Boston has been operating for only ten years. As the taxi drove up to the station, I thought back on my childhood growing up in Portland and realized I had never seen a train station here before. I think there must have been one years ago. All cities were accessible by trains at one time, weren’t they? There’s so much about my childhood that I don’t remember.
While I was waiting for the taxi, I sat in the lobby of the hotel and picked up a book on the history of Portland. It was lying invitingly on the table next to my wingback chair.
And there it was, on the first page, the beautiful poem by the New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
My Lost Youth
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” …
And Deering’s woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I am on the train now, on my way to visit my childhood best friend, Tina. She lives in Needham, Massachusetts. I am making the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Portland to Boston, and have arranged for a car to pick me up at South Station to drive me another thirty minutes to Tina’s home.
Tina was diagnosed eighteen months ago with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Her daughter, Jessa, wrote me a week ago that the tumour had spread and that Tina has been given six months or less to live. I have planned to spend the day with Tina and her daughter and son and four grandkids. The tumour has affected Tina’s short-term memory and speech. I’m not sure how we will carry on a conversation. I’m not sure what Tina will remember about our past. But I am sure that when I see her, she will be smiling and giggling, and her arms will be outstretched, waiting to hug me, and she will say, as she always does when she sees me, “Oh, honey, honey. How are you, honey? I am so happy to see you.”
This is an impossible journey for me. And yet, as I write this, I see how selfish that statement is—or maybe it’s just human. What is the script I am going to follow when I visit with Tina for the next seven hours? What am I expecting to accomplish? Do we reminisce? Do I try to make her laugh and forget? Do I pretend that I will see her again? Another friend, having just lost a cousin who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, gave me this advice when I asked him how I should be, what I should or shouldn’t say to Tina: “Be honest. Miracles do occur. You can tell her that you are going to cherish the present time together, while waiting for a miracle.”
I’m not as brave as he thinks I am. I am scared. I am scared that I will fall apart and will not be able to be strong for Tina. I am scared that I will make the present worse for her, and that she will end up taking care of me.
Forty minutes before we reach Boston, I become nervous. Stage fright. That’s what it feels like. Not sure of the role I’m playing. Not confident that I will remember my lines. Not even sure how I will inhabit my character. She’ll see through it. I won’t be convincing. I will be superficial and unable to stay present and in the moment. What am I so afraid of? That I won’t be enough. That I will let my friend down. That I will be a fake. Tina, so authentic and genuine, someone so comfortable being who she is, deserves the same back from me.
Tina Stevens and I were best friends growing up together in Portland. “Tina” wasn’t the name she was born with, but the only name I remember anyone ever calling her. Her real name was Mertina. Have you ever heard a name like that? I haven’t. It’s so original, like Tina herself.
Eighteen months ago, I received a phone call from Jessa, Tina’s daughter. She said she and her mom were coming to New York for the day to consult with a neuro-oncologist because Tina’s memory and speech were noticeably altered—something that had happened gradually over the past few weeks. It had been several years since I had seen Tina. The last time we saw each other was when she came to see me on Broadway in Young Frankenstein the Musical. Whenever I appeared on Broadway, Tina would call to say she was bringing the family to New York. And then they would arrive, and I’d see how her granddaughters had grown, and we’d go out to dinner and reminisce, and then she’d load the whole family back in the car, and they’d make the trek back to Needham. Tina loved her grandchildren so much. Never said a judgmental word about anyone in her family. Just pure unconditional love. Tina had two children: Jessa, a physical therapist, and Josh, a paramedic and a registered nurse at a hospital in Needham. Although Jessa told me that both she and Josh suspected a brain tumour, they held out hope that it was benign. Tina had asked to see me. Jessa was calling because Tina’s speech was difficult to understand, especially over the phone. But she wanted very much for us to get together. Of course, I said. We’ll go out to dinner or we can order in, and then you’ll spend the night with me. Whatever you need, please come. I would love to see you both. Secretly, I was scared at what I would see, and I could already feel the wheels of How am I going to entertain her? spin out of control.
If there was anyone I thought could fight this cruel disease, it was Tina. I have since learned she is losing the battle. I just received this email from her beautiful, loving children:
At this point, the doctor said that she has about two to six months left to live. And you may not be surprised to learn Tina is prepared to die. She is at peace with this, as Mom told Josh, Alecia, Greg, Hailey, Mackenzie, and Jessa when we all gathered together on Saturday night to share our love for each other and hear Mom tell us that she loves us all and is okay with what is happening.
It doesn’t surprise me that Tina is at peace. She has always had deep faith. I envied her profound connection with the Church, and her life of service. That and her fierce independence. Never a victim, our Tina.
I don’t know what to do with this devastating news other than write and keep writing until every memory between us has been reignited and I can believe, in some way, that I am prolonging her life.
I can hear Tina now. Oh, honey, don’t be silly. Please don’t do that. Don’t write about me. Write about yourself. Your life is so interesting. I am so proud of you. I am so proud of all you have accomplished. And she would be laughing and giggling and asking me all ab
out myself, and I would feel so damn important because that was just one of her gifts—making the other person feel so grand.
When we were growing up, I wanted so much to be like Tina. Petite and athletic, cute and confident. She was the head cheerleader at Deering High. I can see her so vividly in her purple-and-white uniform. Her short blonde hair cut in a bob. Her golden tanned face always smiling. Her hands clutching the pompoms that sat resting on her hips, her legs spread apart in a V as she stared directly into the bleachers, ready to shout out the next command.
“Sway to the left, sway to the right. Stand up, sit down, fight fight fight.” So fitting a cheer for Tina. A fighter in the sweetest little package.
Tina and I were inseparable in high school. I tried so hard to be different and rebellious when I was growing up, in order to stand apart from everyone so I would be noticed, when all I really wanted was to belong. Tina, on the other hand, was a true free spirit. She didn’t need to work hard at being someone she wasn’t. She knew who she was. She was proud of who she was. She didn’t make excuses for who she was. She didn’t have to try to be anything.
One night—I was probably fourteen at the time—I was awoken by rocks being thrown at my bedroom window. I looked outside and there was Tina. It was 3 a.m. She had climbed up the tree next to the house and was now knocking on my second-story bedroom window. I opened it.
“Let’s go to Dunkin’ Donuts,” she whispered.
Wow, what an adventure. How daring. How exciting. And Tina was going to lead the way. I just had to follow. I got dressed, snuck out the window, and both of us, in the middle of the night, walked the neighbourhood streets of Portland until we reached Dunkin’ Donuts. We sat and ate doughnuts like big girls, and drank chocolate milk. We were not there long before we were approached by two policemen who had noticed two young, unaccompanied girls sitting in a doughnut shop in the middle of the night. This was Portland, Maine, in the early ’60s. Believe me, we stood out. They put us in their patrol cars and drove us back home. I don’t remember Tina being the least bit concerned. Why shouldn’t we be able to get doughnuts at 3 a.m.? We weren’t hurting anyone.
Lady Parts Page 16
