White Hot Grief Parade

by Alexandra Silber

  And, perhaps worst of all, there was not a scrap of chocolate. Because Grandpa Al didn’t like chocolate, therefore no one else was allowed to like it either. And even if it was your birthday and you adored chocolate, even if you hated lemon cake with your whole being, even if you were nine: you got a lemon cake because “Grandpa doesn’t like chocolate,” and everyone is going to eat this lemon cake and enjoy it and that is the end of that because apparently dessert is not a democracy. That is why I hate yellow dessert to this very day (yes, including banana cream pie).

  But other than that, they were just like those other grandparents. Just like.

  There we were, in the living room. First there was my grandmother Edna, inert. Then my grandfather Albert, staring straight ahead with an address book open in his lap. Next was yours truly, an oddly buoyant teenager under the circumstances. And then Mom, who was, at this point, an absolute puddle.

  Rabbi Daniel Syme sat in the center before this line of ragged Silbers. He stared at us. Behind his glasses was a pair of dark, sensitive eyes set beneath a pair of bushy, expressive eyebrows. He was tall and impressive and wizened—emitting an immediate sense of sanity. I had no logical reason to, but I trusted him.

  “So,” he began, hands folded across his middle. “Tell me everything you can about Michael.”

  The rabbi needed to hear everything he could about Michael Silber in order to write a eulogy for this total stranger in forty-eight hours. This half hour was supposed to be ticking that box. So far it was profoundly sucking.

  Well, there have been worse half hours. You know, in history.

  When I first told the story of the Teddy Bear House to a therapist, I told it with such theatrical gusto and panache, I was convinced I would be applauded, praised for my good humor in the face of madness, declared well adjusted, and be on my merry way. Turns out, in the wake of the tale, the very nice shrink responded with: “Right. I think we should meet twice a week.”

  It had happened the summer of 1992 when we were visiting my grandparents in their lakeside home in Metro Detroit. My grandmother Edna expressed an interest in spending a day with me, possibly later in the week.

  “Just a grandma-granddaughter day,” she said, the thought of which filled me with existential terror. Growing up as a quiet, contemplative and anxious only child, one comes to feel nervous about spending time alone with anyone that was remotely not your parents. Plus, my grandparents creeped me out. From the beginning—from the moment I was conscious enough to have instincts—I could tell something was fishy.

  The day came. I settled into the front seat of her Oldsmobile, hair in long braids, dressed in purple leggings, and off we went to Farmington Hills.

  Where were we going?

  Why, that was a surprise!

  To this day, I hate surprises.11

  Classical music blared. After what felt like hours of driving through heavily wooded suburban territory—my grandmother’s face peeking over the wheel while her tiny frame arched upward to see the road—we finally pulled into a parking lot. She stopped the car. We got out at a grocery store.

  “This is the surprise, Grandma?” I asked.

  “No, no, this is just a stop,” she said, and in we went.

  We picked up deli meats, a cake, vegetables cut into microscopic slices. Then we got back into the car, classical music blaring again, and we drove some more.

  The long light of afternoon was cutting through the tops of the Michigan trees. We pulled onto a dirt road, turned a corner, and stopped before a tiny house sheltered by the wild brush and nearly void of daylight. It looked like every house in every fairy tale, where the little kid is about to be eaten.

  “Is this the surprise, Grandma?” I said, my voice low.

  “Yes,” she said. “This is the Teddy Bear House!”

  Now I had—and frankly still have—no idea what the “the Teddy Bear House” was or was supposed to be. All I knew was that I had never been more scared in my entire life and there was no way I was going in. I hoped my horror-struck expression was making this clear to Edna when she leaned down, informing me that, “The entire house is full of all kinds of teddy bears from all over the world! You will love it.”

  I would not.

  She grabbed my hand and walked me up the forbidding path. As we headed toward the front stoop I heard the screeches of ominous birds, the squish of damp earth beneath my pink Keds, and as I began to imagine the kind of pie I would inevitably be cooked into, I suddenly loved and hated and missed my parents very, very much.

  Edna knocked on the door. She knocked again. The silhouette of a similarly tiny old woman appeared and began unlocking about 200 deadbolts before she finally opened the door a crack, saw that it was Edna, and opened it to reveal herself in full-on crazy lady regalia. If some people in life are weeds and others are flowers, this woman was a weed sprouting out of a bubblegum-pink kimono, with a thickly painted flower face, offset by Doris Day hair, and acrylic thorns.

  “Come in, come in,” she coaxed, singing it slightly, her giant eyelashes flapping. She escorted us into the house that was, as promised, covered floor-to-ceiling in teddy bears. They all looked as terrified as I was. Perhaps, their glassy eyes said silently to me, perhaps if we stay very, very still she will spare us.

  “I was just making some tea. Would you like some, Edna?”

  “No, thank you,” Edna said. “I have to be going.”

  Going? I thought. Thank God!

  “Sylvia is expecting me any minute and I can’t be late for another of her get-togethers or she will absolutely never invite me again. I’m bringing extra goodies just to be sure she knows I mean business.”

  Who the hell is Sylvia? I thought. And when do we leave?

  “Where are we going, Grandma?” I asked out loud.

  “Oh no, dear,” Edna replied, her voice going up an octave. “You are going to stay right here at the Teddy Bear House with this lovely lady while I go to a little party with my friends and then, later, I will come back and get you and it will all be our little secret.”

  I looked at Edna and felt my mouth drop open in astonishment. I panned across the room and slowly let my eyes settle on the Teddy Bear Woman, sitting on a dusty upholstered chair, hands entwined and head cocked like a young girl in an old fashioned painting, smiling so hard I was afraid her flower face might break apart.

  I did not know how to call my parents. I did not know how to get help. I stared at her, too frightened to cry.

  I spent the day helping the Teddy Bear Woman dust and organize, crawling into small spaces and cleaning little trinkets only a child’s hands could properly get to, after she encouraged me to play the piano, sing and sit up straight, I was spent. I asked if I might lie down, which she allowed me to do after I finished assembling a dollhouse.

  She led me upstairs to the top floor of the house, opened a tiny room with a key, and pointed to a small bed that must have once belonged to a child. This room was not covered in teddy bears—the only room in the house that wasn’t. There was only a sole worn bear that lay on the bed itself. He looked tired. Broken. I sat down on the bed as I stroked his chest, then turned toward the door just in time to catch her locking me inside as she left.

  I remained locked in that attic bedroom until Edna returned six hours later. I thanked the Teddy Bear Woman as best I could, ran to the car, and closed my eyes.

  As we drove back, Edna asked me if I had had a nice day. I knew what she wanted me to say. I knew she was waiting for my lie. I would not give it to her. In an almost inaudible voice, I replied, “No.”

  Edna shifted in the driver’s seat and the speed of the car increased. All bets were off now that Edna knew I could see right through her and that I had no regard for dishonesty or game playing. I was scaring her; children are supposed to be obedient, to fear the wrath of their elders. In this moment, I made it clear I would be doing neither.

  Her voice transformed.

  “If you ever tell your parents what happened tod
ay,” she hissed, “I will be very angry.”

  “OK,” I said. It was neither an agreement nor a disagreement. Merely a recognition.

  We returned late that night. Both of my parents were waiting in the kitchen.

  “How was your day?” Mom asked.

  “Have a nice day o’ fun with Grandma?” asked Dad with the voice of a carnival barker—he was an expert at manufactured enthusiasm.

  “Great,” I said. “Wasn’t it, Grandma?” My eight-year-old eyes pierced her, unsmiling.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  We both left the room, leaving my parents there, staring at one another in equal parts confusion and dread.

  It took three days for Dad to get me to tell him what really happened the day of the Teddy Bear House. It was only because he reminded me that “secrets are important to honor, yes, but not when you feel afraid or are in danger. There is a sacredness in full honesty. Especially with yourself.” He would know. For, as I was all too quickly coming to learn, my dad came from a family where nothing bonded you together like dark, horrible secrets.

  When I later finished telling my father what had actually happened, I was in tears. The air went very still.

  My father shook quietly in a righteous rage I had never witnessed in him before. He wrapped his arms around me, reassuring me I had done the right thing in telling him the truth, that what had transpired was scary, wrong and a “betrayal of trust,” and the he was so sorry it had happened. Within the safety of his arms, warm and majestic as a lion’s, I felt, I believed, that as long as I could remain right here, I would never be frightened again.

  I was engrossed in the memory of my father’s embrace that day, strong around me as the realities unfolded. When I looked up, I saw that Rabbi Syme had patiently walked through several rooms of our home, observing family photos guided by my mother, and skillfully dodged three teenagers zooming through the house at varying speeds.

  Seated once again, we all sat there as Rabbi Syme took stock of the Silber Situation.

  My grandmother Edna, steeped in Overwhelm (and rightly, for her son was dead), rocked back and forth in her chair, beating her breast, to, presumably, soothe herself.

  “He was a professional baseball player,” said grandma.

  Oh dear. This was already going off course. My dad was not a professional baseball player (though he desperately wanted to be), and my grandmother’s penchant for untruths was an indication of her inability to cope with reality. Of course I had empathy for my grandparents’ loss, but in that moment my mind was tainted with memories of their prior human deficiencies. My grandmother was want to do this slow, rocking, breast-beating thing, and claimed that her failure to function was because she had “a Russian soul.” Such was my father’s initial tumor surgery when she rocked and wailed in the waiting room, and halfway through the eight-hour surgery took off to another part of the hospital claiming she had a piece of glass in her eye. Or when she “just couldn’t” make it to dad’s first chemotherapy treatment. Or when she didn’t leave her bed for five years sometime in the mid-1950s due to a whispered-about depressive episode. All of these, I guess, because of the Soul. I had always pegged Russian souls to be a bit more stoic—beautiful, stark, and melancholic surging with an ocean of feeling alive just below the surface, churning to the tune of a tormented violin.

  Or whatever. Apparently this Russian Soul was just incapable of behaving like an adult.

  “And a member of Mensa,” my grandfather grunted.

  Not at all unlike cockroaches, for every one of my grandmother’s flaws, there lay, waiting in the walls, a hundred more flaws belonging to my grandfather, lurking silently and carrying disease. This was, predictably, not a good start.

  “Really?” the rabbi replied, scribbling it all down.

  “No not really,” I said, looking over at my grandfather, totally beyond tolerating this lie-fest for one more second. All bets were off now.

  My father grew up wanting just two things from life: to play baseball and to have his father’s love.

  He loved baseball and played in high school, in college for the University of Michigan during undergrad, and after college he had to choose between Harvard Law School and playing first base for the Chicago White Sox.

  But Albert had different plans for his eldest son. Albert was hard on Michael and expected his exceptionally bright son to become a lawyer and join the family business. Silber & Silber: Michael’s name had practically been branded above the door since coming out of the womb.

  Albert made it very clear that if Michael had any other plans for his life, he must rip them out by the roots, for if he did not join the business and accompany his father, Albert threatened to forsake him. Michael capitulated. It would be the first in a lifetime of compromises to earn his father’s unwinnable approval.

  Michael got his law degree from Harvard. Albert had gone to Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. Michael’s second mistake was outshining the master.

  When Michael returned home after law school, his name was already on the door, but Albert needed to take his son down a notch, to put him in his place after graduating from his fancy Ivy League institution at the top of his class. He made him do paralegal work below the qualifications of a man of his credentials—filing papers, driving to properties, getting coffee for clients. Michael took it all. He wanted his father to approve.

  After two years of mind-numbing grunt work with no escape in sight, Michael hatched a plan: a merger of the most powerful law offices in Detroit at the height of the city’s power that would be successful for everyone involved. Crucially, it might also give Michael his freedom.

  He worked on the plan for a year. Albert gave his blessing. Michael conceived of, plotted out, pitched, sold, and solidified the plan and, on the day everyone finally gathered together to sign the paperwork, Michael could hardly contain his excitement. Freedom, he thought, freedom as well as my father’s love and approval. It could not have been a greater day.

  Around the table went the legal contracts, each leader signing his name while praising the wunderkind who had made it all happen.

  “Albert! Just look at your boy!”

  “He’s better than all of us, this kid is!”

  At last, the papers fell before Albert.

  Michael handed him the pen, eyes shining.

  “Pop,” he said, smiling. “I wanted to make you proud.”

  Albert looked at his son. He did not move.

  “I never wanted this,” Albert said, voice echoing. “I worked a lifetime to build this company and you sell it off like firewood?”

  The realization dawned slowly upon Michael, working its way to his consciousness like a creeping acid. “Pop, please, you said—”

  “Never mind what I said. The deal is off.”

  With that, Albert left the boardroom, leaving Michael there, sunk in a chair, to face the other men.

  Michael stood and looked upon their faces—their expressions nearly as stunned as his own. He gathered the papers on the desk and he left the room, the office, Detroit, Michigan, and all that he had known. For all he knew, forever.

  I know, I know. I can hear you loud and clear reader: Alright, Horatio Alger, we get it. But Albert and Edna—these narcissistic, sad-sack loony tune Parents of the Year were not going to have custody of this narrative any longer. If they reigned supreme, if they controlled this moment with their money and their threats of withheld love, my father’s humanity, his true character would die out with the dust he had already become.

  I had to do something.

  My mind—scorched by a kind of blinding clarity I had never known before or since—began to evaporate away any trace of the fog of grief, fear, or hesitation. I locked eyes with the rabbi and silently said to him: Sir, it is very important that you listen to me. This is a man’s eulogy we are talking about— his memory, his character, his imprint on the world. I cannot allow these bozos to tarnish his life any further. There is no room for fa
mily politics. Not in this funeral. Not if I have anything to say about it.

  The look he returned told me that he already knew it. He could see it all, but I would have to step up. So with that look, I began to talk.

  I told him about gardenias. Their beautiful, pungent odor. That smell outside the duplex on Bedford Drive where we lived in Beverly Hills just before we moved to Detroit. Dad saw the way the sunlight hit them in the afternoon and, sparked by the word gardenia in the lyrics, sang “The Girl That I Marry” at the top of his lungs.

  I told him about home movies and the way my father would always point, look directly into the camera and give his name, rank, and serial number. Or how he’d clown around, flipping fake burgers on a fake barbecue.

  I told him about road trips to Mackinac Island and playing Yahtzee for hours during the dark skies and curfews of the LA Riots until I was too tired to be frightened. I told him about his black leather chair—the way it creaked in the office, how it smelled of leather and cologne, and how worn the arm rests were from all his countless hours of calculating and typing. I told him that my father loved baseball and theater and caramel corn and going to the library and the individual cherry pies you can get at the grocery store and eating yogurt with a very small spoon.

  I told him about when my father took me to New York, where we went to my very first Broadway show—our family’s favorite, Ragtime. I remembered when the lights came up for curtain call, tears were streaming down our faces, and we were silent, but he looked at me and his eyes told me: he knew that, one day, I would tell stories like that on Broadway stages.

  I told him about the last night, when he had held my hand as though it were connected to my heart, and squeezed it urgently, so hard, that I thought my heart might break.

  Is it possible to have someone else’s life flash before your eyes? If so, that’s what happened in that moment when I spoke so quickly and with such fervor that no one would ever have dared to speak over me. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped talking, if I stopped chattering and laughing and vomiting anecdotes all over this warm-eyed holy man, I would lose a kind of battle that felt ripped from the pages of Sophocles. Excuse me Antigone! Step aside Electra, I’ve got my own Greek tragedy to project to the back of the amphitheater of this Detroit living room.