Dear Mr. You

by Mary -Louise Parker

  Oh, I’m all right. How are you doing?

  I got my father to his chair to rest. I decided to leave my parents’ apartment for an hour and go to my hotel across the street. I walked toward the door and turned to him. “Anything, Daddy? Anything at all?” I asked. He caved in a little, collapsing on the idea of a wish being granted. He was not a man to ask for anything, or give himself much more than books, his one indulgence. Most requests to even get him a glass of water were met with, “No thanks, I’m driving.” I saw him wrestling, and then realized I knew what that answer was. I knew before he said it. I felt like an ass for asking. If it had been a game show I would have won a car because he only managed to say

  I don’t suppose . . . I know it’s too much to ask

  when I held up my hand to stop him.

  “No, no, I got it. I know what you want, Daddy,” I said. I ran. I raced down the hall of my parents’ apartment and out onto the street. I kept running down the street to my hotel where I bolted to the elevator and made it up to my floor only to hit the button to go back to the lobby again, through which I barreled, back to the concierge just in case they had an idea, but they did not. The concierge could not find me raw oysters, could actually not find any oysters at all that night. They suggested getting frozen clams from the Piggly Wiggly on the interstate and thawing them in the microwave.

  In the Pacific Northwest where you were it was not yet dawn. You were already busy wading through low tide. Was there ever a pride in knowing you were harvesting something rare? Like most things, I never wondered how it ended up in front of me until I couldn’t find it. Maybe you were cursing us that morning, the people who would enjoy the result of the gashes on your arms and frostbite in your fingertips. Filling one bushel wouldn’t grant you enough pay to buy a half dozen in one of those fancy bars. Despite his appreciating quality seafood, my father was far from fancy. If he’d been introduced to you I guarantee you he would have shaken your hand warmly and said, “John Parker, glad to meet you,” and been actually glad. He would have listened to you with a soft and sincere chorus of “I’ll be darned”s and “that’s fascinating”s falling from his lips set in their crooked half-smile. His wide eyes with their bottomless dark would search yours, looking into you rather than at you, in the way of certain people who are always listening. Listening even when they are speaking.

  He would carry our questions and problems into bed with him at night, truly considering them and aching to produce even a tiny solution. He’d call hours or days later and respectfully, he’d offer up

  Hello, just your father. Correct me if I am wrong, but something occurred to me late last night

  So yadda yadda Google, yellow pages, etc., gratuitous displays of emotion to strangers on the phone, my friend in New York City going on every food blog in the D.C. area; gross, shameless overuse of the phrase “beloved dying father,” to messengers, restaurants, and caterers: groveling, offering, praying, and then, jackpot. The door to my parents’ apartment opened that evening and my brother and I entered with bags containing clam chowder, corn bread, and one dozen each raw Blue Point and Olympian oysters; harvested by you, the hero of this book, wherever and whomever you are.

  I now know, after saturating myself with info (the children forced to shuck them for thirty cents a day during the Industrial Revolution is another boo-boo in the arena of this experiment called homo sapiens and also, I don’t know if you’re aware of the illegal harvestings with a bunch of unlicensed pickers who ship contaminated crops to Britain?), about the harvesting of oysters. You, sir, would never have kept your job one day had you not been fast, nimble, and capable of withstanding enormous amounts of discomfort without complaining, quitting, or cheating. All of that makes you precisely like him, this man you’ll never know. He went without plenty in his life, worked in coal mines and suffered on battlefields and in jungles. He was betrayed, abandoned, robbed, shot at, hit by a train twice, electrocuted, dropped from a plane with a faulty parachute (later meeting the rigger of said parachute in a bar and buying him a drink because “he was a nice fellow and he admitted it”), he was shunned and publicly humiliated for being a whistle-blower, went hungry and bankrupt, was left for dead, and survived brain and heart valve surgery. In spite of all that, by the end of his life he was the most grateful of men. His gift for receiving and for being appreciative was profound. The handwritten thank-yous he wrote were letters, not “notes,” and he would go on for pages, describing how

  the goodies arrived and I put the candy with my stash. I finished one book already, and the one on Buddhism, I can’t put down. These gifts are a reflection of all the hard work on your part. We are so proud. Did you happen to get the last poem I sent?

  and

  If the Rolling Stones can tour at their age, we can too. Here I am in my hotel robe, in a room fully half the size of our house. I’m looking out at the Arno as the sun goes down, and oh, yes! Having a glass of champagne with your mother! It’s almost too much to realize. You’ve made this such a memorable time in our lives. It just doesn’t get any better than this

  His fight to live honorably merited more rewards than I could dream up, but at the very least, he deserved those oysters. I swear he would have gone out there in waders and gloves himself if he’d been able to get up from his chair, but he couldn’t, and this is why we needed you.

  He gave as much of a smile as he could summon when he saw your oysters, he put his hand up and touched his white V-neck T-shirt and said

  Be still my heart.

  Aw, thank you, sweetie, will you look at that

  I have the last white T-shirt that he wore in a bag inside another bag in my closet. I still haven’t opened it, but I wonder if it carries the scent of your oysters, or the echo of one of his trademark two-note laughs that he let out when he looked at them on a plate before him. That little high-pitched giggle served as punctuation for just about anything, but usually one of his oft-used refrains: “That’ll really take the wind out of your sails, heh-hah!” or, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play, heh-hah.” It was sometimes accompanied by serious eye-rolling but today he couldn’t manage that.

  My father went after your oysters with reverence. There was no show, just my brother and I watching him savor every bite with a stunning lack of ceremony. We gazed at him with complicit rapture, giving full respect to the experience you brought him. There was no after and no before.

  I want to tell you now, that you who reached your bruised hands into the sea to bring my father his last meal: the shells you pried loose from the beds are in a bowl on my bookcase. I treat them like Fabergé eggs. I look at one up close and turn it over. I count them.

  Because you got zero fanfare before, now you matter the most. Dearest Oyster Picker, you are like a change-of-life baby, showing up late and thereby cementing your position as favorite. You represent all of it, the men we never consider who slave for the safety and happiness of others, like my dad. It’s man at his highest, don’t you think? Besides, in looking for you I know so many terrifically cool things. I know how oysters help the environment by filtering ocean water and improving its quality like you can’t believe. They provide a habitat for species of fish I had no idea existed, and help with nitrogen pollution by their consumption of phytoplanktons, whatever the heck those are, and I think help the quality of nearby bodies of water. Maybe. I’m not completely sure how they do that. Anyway I’m pretty sure they do, AND four oysters gives you a whole day’s worth of copper, iodine, and some other thing. They are super-rich in vitamin B12, which is key if you are moody or have memory issues. The aphrodisiac component is sweet when you consider that oysters can and do change their gender midlife. Oysters are trannies! How can you not love them! It completely makes sense that Aphrodite chose to bust out of one, in her love goddess glory. Can you picture that moment with her springing up all ripe and golden, but out of a jellyfish? Or some algae platform? Oysters are so key and so fly that there is a whole movement to save the
m to keep their briny mojo working on the world. There are groups of hard-core oyster-lovers heading recycling projects, so the oyster never really dies. They plant new babies right on the old shells and send them back in. It’s an easy way to contribute to Mother Earth and say sorry for all the hairspray and oil spills. You just drop them off at designated spots and they take care of it. It’s another thing I never considered before I considered you: Where did all those shells go? I just ate them and forgot about it, as they became sky-high monuments to hot sex and burgeoning zinc levels. All that landfill that could have been going back home with a fresh start on a shell so happy to be reincarnated.

  I know you don’t have time to do the recycling part but here’s the thing: we can do it for you. I’ve been looking at your shells in the bowl and I’m going to find one that is giving me signals and I’ll send it back for both of us. I know how important your job is now and I don’t really forget those kinds of things once I learn them. It’s a tiny something I can do for you.

  I will tell you now, Oyster Picker, the night after he had your oysters he stopped speaking. Everyone went to sleep except me and I sat next to him holding his hand. The last thing he said to me was, he said

  Squeeze my hand, please

  I held it until that last breath flew out and he went wherever it was he’d found where he wouldn’t be scared or lonely for us. Where he could continue on with the things you and I don’t know about yet.

  When I heard from his doctor that he would die in a matter of months or even weeks, I called him. I tried to talk both of us out of it altogether. I knew he was afraid and I tried to say all this stuff about, I don’t know. It sounds so inane now. All the usual stuff about how no one really knows anything, and he had every reason to stay open to miracles. We didn’t know for sure what would happen, I kept saying, and he said, yes, you’re right. Then because he was the wizard of all fathers he asked me what I was doing, like that should have mattered. I said well, okay, I’m standing in this really awesome bookstore. You’d love it, I said. He gave a sigh of longing and said, oh my, tell me, they have anything interesting? I said yeah, tons. I’ll send you a book from here, how does that sound. He said that’s wonderful, that’s just tremendous, thank you sweetie. I told him I was sending him some candy too and he thanked me, said he’d be on the lookout for it, and he then said, tell me, what are you writing now? You working on anything? I said oh Daddy, just little things, I don’t know, and he said okay, but listen to me

  just write, keep writing, promise me that you will.

  Acknowledgments

  First and hearty thanks to Scott Henderson for the constant encouragement and for leading me to the brilliant Eric Simonoff. (Eric, you are a giant.) Without him there would be no book. Humble thanks to Colin Harrison and Nan Graham at Scribner for their enthusiasm about this project and confidence in me; I am so grateful. For help and support: Debra Kletter, Larissa Laskin, Nicole Gillingham, Claudia Ballard, Nicole Burdette, Jake Honig, Frandy Rubio (you too, Andy), Amanda Hosten St. Louis, Katrina Diaz, Kate Barry, K. Todd Freeman, Josh Ritter, Hunter Parrish, Joe Morra, and Kirsten Parker. Peter Hedges, for help with the birthing of babies and books (and for Lucas). Deep bows to those who said that I could and should write: Craig Lucas, Mike Nichols, Mark Strand, Eli Attie, Mary Foote, Elizabeth Cuthrell, Merri Biechler, Jessica Lamendella, Dava Waite, Mary Karr, the chief himself, David Granger, Ryan D’Agostino, and everyone else at Esquire. For keeping it real and surreal, that’s you, DONKEY, okay? Gratitude from MY HEART’S DEPTHS to my siblings Jay, Sage, and Bruce. My thanks is FOR REAL LIFE, especially to and for my two ETERNALS, my son, my daughter. To them, ETERNALLY.

  © TINA TURNBOW

  MARY-LOUISE PARKER is a Tony, Emmy, Obie, and Golden Globe Award–winning actress. Her writing has appeared in Esquire, The Riveter, Bust, and Bullett. This is her first book.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parker, Mary-Louise.

   Dear Mr. You / Mary-Louise Parker.

    pages cm

   1. Parker, Mary-Louise. 2. Parker, Mary-Louise—Relations with men. 3. Parker, Mary-Louise—Family. 4. Parker, Mary-Louise—Friends and associates. 5. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.

   PN2287.P267A3 2015

   791.4302'8092—dc23

  2015017170

  ISBN 978-1-5011-0783-2

  ISBN 978-1-5011-0785-6 (ebook)

  “Dear Daddy” and “Dear Mr. You” appeared in somewhat altered versions titled “My Dad, My Boy” and “If You’re Good You Get Dessert” in the June/July 2012, volume 157, nos. 6 and 7, and the August 2009, volume 152, no. 2 issues of Esquire, respectively.