White Hot Grief Parade

by Alexandra Silber

  It is the third Saturday of August, 1995—the weekend of the Woodward Dream Cruise, a classic car event held annually in Detroit to celebrate the essence of Motor City. After World War II, people began to “cruise” in their cars along Woodward, from drive-in to drive-in, often looking for friends who were also out for a drive, celebrating a new sense of freedom. Now the Woodward Dream Cruise is the world’s largest one-day automotive event, drawing 1.5 million people and 40,000 classic cars each year from around the entire world. We’ve lived here a year, and we decide to pull up to Woodward and take a peek at the event that spans all the way from Pontiac to the State Fair Grounds inside the Detroit City limits, just south of Eight Mile Road. It is absolutely majestic. Most of the cars on display are vintage models from the 1950s to the early 1970s—muscle cars, hot rods, T-birds and Corvettes, but there are some turn-of-the-century gems, some custom, collector and special interest vehicles all dating across the last century and change.

  I am in the kitchen, and it’s one of the rare nights when Dad has taken it upon himself to “cook” dinner. Mom and I stare down at our plates; they contain masses of once-colorful vegetables, slopped in butter, with skins charred so black that the food is indistinguishable from food. So close are these once-vegetables to barbeque coal one might as well be eating coal straight from the bag. “Don’t panic,“ Dad urges. “It’s not burnt. It’s Cajun.”

  I am playing Miss Hannigan in the third grade production of Annie at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills, California. It is my first theatrical experience and, even though I am merely eight, I know that I am a hoot as I copy Carol Burnett’s performance from the film, down to every intonation and drunken idiosyncrasy. It is the morning of the day of the performance, and I am not the least bit nervous. At breakfast Dad says, “You should eat.” But I do not. And then, hungry and tired by evening, I forget the words to my song for the first time ever while singing my big number. (Since then, I have always eaten something before a performance).

  I am on the banks of Quarton Lake getting ready for my very first ice-skating sojourn outdoors on a natural body of water. We have lived in Birmingham, Michigan for just a few weeks and Quarton Elementary School (where I have recently been enrolled in the fourth grade) has an annual Quarton Lake Skate that features skating for parents and kids alike, as well as a vat of hot cocoa. I hold my dad’s hand as I take my first-ever steps, skating until my nose is red from the exertion and cold.

  I am at Dairy Deluxe on Woodward and Fourteen Mile. It’s the classic Birmingham summer hangout that goes by many unofficial titles (among them: the Twirly Dip, Double D, and DD). The joy of a visit to Dairy Deluxe is indeed in the quality of the ice cream and various confections, as well as the little quirks that make it (and have kept it) so small-town charming over the years. In reality, Dairy Deluxe is really nothing more than a hut with a giant, neon ice cream cone sign atop it. But, to me, it is much, much more. The same people have been running Dairy Deluxe for well over twenty years, and they still write down your order by hand on bits of paper, dole change out without calculating it first on a register, and make your order themselves, handing it to you through a teeny tiny window.

  I am driving along Maple Road, rounding the strange curve any nonnative Birminghamer would find confusing—right at the twisty point where suddenly you are confronted with what I always blasphemously referred to as “Christian Corner,” where the “First” Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches all appear in a clump, sprung up like eager flowers drenched in holy water. On the same strip of Maple sits the beloved Mills Pharmacy, where Dad used to take me in to buy as much candy as possible for a single dollar. (It was his way of teaching me about counting out and budgeting money.) Individually wrapped Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids are only ten cents and candy bars fifty cents. There are Laffy Taffy, Pixy Stix, Runts, Nerds, Necco Wafers—the list is endless. A charming bearded man behind the old-fashioned candy counter used to greet us, and he was so like the one in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that I practically expected him to burst into song at any moment. It was pure magic.

  I am on the curb in the chair on big trash day. I have been out here for hours. I am soaking wet. I realize that every memory is now merely another painful nostalgic touchstone. None of it, not one single thing, will ever be magical again.

  I am touched on the shoulder by Lilly. The moment had arrived to just surrender. I am brought inside, shaking and miserable.

  I am lost without him.

  PART FOUR:

  THE AFTER-AFTERMATH

  “I Wish” / “I Know”

  In sixth grade, when asked by our middle school music teacher to bring in a recording of our favorite music, everyone else brought in Ace of Base, Boyz II Men, and Mariah Carey. I? I brought in the 1989 Original Cast Recording of Into the Woods. That’s right. I brought in Stephen Sondheim. Even at eleven, I could appreciate a 6/9 time signature, internal rhyming, all things Robert Westenberg, and poignant social parallels.

  Into the Woods—with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine—is a masterpiece of the musical theater about the inner lives and backstories of the world’s most famous (and infamous) fairy-tale characters. We are fortunate as a culture to have the original production preserved not only on audio recording, but in a beautifully filmed live video of the stage performance. I grew up devouring both.

  A narrator guides us through the first act of familiar stories: Cinderella and her Prince, Jack and his beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and some new characters such as a Witch, a childless Baker and his Wife, all crisscrossing and influencing one another in ways our children’s stories were never privy to.

  The curtain rises, and the audience is welcomed by the Narrator,23 who cheerfully opens with, “Once upon a time” followed by a now-celebrated and utterly identifiable series of chords, and then it’s lights up on the characters! The first is Cinderella. She sings a phrase that is to become the haunting theme of the evening: “I wish . . . ”

  Every one of our characters has a wish—to go to the festival, to have a child, for fortune, wealth, security, beauty. These are the things that they want. And so they wish.

  By the end of the first act, every character has achieved their well-known conclusions, actualized their wishes, and we celebrate with them in a rollicking act one finale celebrating happily “Ever After!”

  Things get more complicated in the second act.

  After intermission we learn Cinderella’s prince is unfaithful, and life in the luxurious palace is unfulfilling. The Baker and His Wife have their child, and they are ill content. With the wolf dead, Little Red feigns confidence in the shadow of her attack. The Witch has lost not only her daughter Rapunzel, but her magic powers in exchange for physical beauty. And above all, Jack has murdered the giant in the sky, and angered his wife, who now threatens to destroy their kingdom if she cannot take her revenge on her husband’s killer.

  Slowly, over the course of the incredibly difficult second act, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly everyone suffers in the wake of the Giant.

  This musical opened on Broadway in 1989, at the very height of the AIDS epidemic, and, as a child born in the middle of the crisis, I suppose I only now realize that the actors in the original production were suffering losses every day—of their friends, family, and members of their communities. Mind-obliterating, countless losses and daily fear—all of it lacking in any kind of reason. A different kind of Giant had ravaged their kingdom.

  When I was a child, I suppose I was too young to understand the story with this level of intensity, but, as Little Red Riding Hood so simply explains in act one: “I know things now.”

  Into the Woods is a piece I have never truly seen myself inside of— somewhat unusual for an actor, as we tend to see where we would, or would like to, fit inside a story. But with Into the Woods, I’ve always been in the audience, seeing the whole picture, never precisely identifying with any individual story arc.


  Until now.

  In the final few moments of the play, the too-old-to-be-babied and too-young-to-be-ready Little Red Riding Hood sits in shock. She is already vulnerable, traumatized from her experience with the wolf in act one; yet, in this moment she cannot move in the wake of losing her entire family. Her face is strained, but no tears come. She realizes slowly that she is alone in the world—a child with nothing but a wolf-skin coat on her back.

  Beside her is Cinderella. She is dressed in rags once more, and, having left the Prince, she is on her own again to face the world as a stronger and smarter woman than before.

  Dreams shattered, lives forever altered, the two women sit there. And from the depths of Little Red’s soul, comes the musical phrase we know from what seems like forever ago, a cry from her soul so straightforward, so true, yet so painful she can barely utter it: “I wish . . . ”

  Cinderella looks at her. Not with pity. Cinderella cannot grant her wish. No one can. The kingdom is annihilated. People are dead. Life will never be the same. Her childhood is ended. Cinderella responds simply, “I know.”

  Four words. Just four. Yet this brief exchange is the summation of my entire life.

  Little Red, my eighteen-year-old self, and Cinderella, the self of today. Would that I could look that eighteen-year-old girl straight in the eye, as Cinderella does for Little Red. I wish I could tell her that she is absolutely right—this is the bottom of the well of human pain. That her innocence is shattered, her childhood at its end. Loss like this will never be “OK,” darling girl, I would say. It will only grow familiar and thus less harrowing. There may never be anything deeper or more painful to wish away, ever again.

  But now? Now Little Red has earned her passage to the human race. She may now arrive upon humanity’s shores as the inextinguishable woman she is destined to become—that this exact tragedy, in time, if she allows it, will make her soul the richer and escort her to her highest self.

  Those four words capture the essence of both versions of myself, of where I sit today as perpetual eighteen-year-old and ever-evolving adult. As I write these words upon the page, looking back to my own “once upon a time,” exactly half my life ago. Before the Giant ravaged my kingdom, taking all but my heartbeat.

  23 Incidentally, played originally by Tom Aldridge, who also plays Mr. Gutmann in What About Bob?, thus, making him a god among men

  Barren

  What is ‘If you are on fire?’”

  “What is ‘An attack of the undead.’”

  “What is ‘If there isn’t any open wilderness for miles.’”

  “What is ‘Public restrooms.’”

  It’s November 27, 2001. I find myself in my own personal game of Jeopardy!. The category is Last Resorts. And just my luck: I’ve gotten the Daily Double.

  I was on a recovery table dressed in Kent’s long-sleeved light blue shirt that, to this day, still sits below my nightstand. My thoughts raced— wildly—of what had happened, what was happening, what would become of me in the most immediate moments, and what would happen for years to come.

  I had chosen to be alone. We all knew Grey had a proclivity toward being troubled by such matters. We did him and ourselves a favor: we elected not to tell him. Instead, Kent suggested they go out for the day. And I was not about to be that girl who showed up with her mother. Plus, did I really want to trouble my mother further?

  I got myself into this, I thought. I will get myself out.

  Everyone knows that teen sexuality is a landfill of anguish and uncertainties. Anyone who has not dipped a toe into the toxic pool of adolescent sexual experiences is both a weirdo and also one of the four luckiest people on Earth.

  Sometimes you are so in love, you think you are going to burst. Sometimes, you are so wracked with need, with unutterable emotion, that you long for any scrap of comfort. Sometimes two young people connect with each other in an unalloyed display of love amidst a hurricane of despair. And sometimes, you do everything right, take every precaution, and everything, still, goes terribly wrong.

  My father was dead. I’d dropped out of college and been disowned by my family. But today’s event? I had tipped my king.

  I got myself into this. I will get myself out.

  And so I did what I knew I had to.

  “Your body might never be exactly the same,” the nurse said a while later, gazing down at my chart.

  “OK,” I replied, still numb.

  “Fine,” the nurse said. “Sign here,” she instructed, looking me over. How young, her eyes said, what a goddamn shame it is.

  “Besides,” I continued. “If I ever wanted to feel good about my body, I should never have become an actress.”

  “Right,” she said, and spun on her heel, taking her leave of the dark, New Age-y room.

  On my left was a wan, older woman in the bed next to me. She was groaning softly. I imagined she felt like I did—that she hurt more in her choked mind than in the body that had just been emptied. I leaned over toward her and our eyes locked.

  Then she extended her hand.

  Her fingers groped for mine, for some kind—any kind—of connection. This woman was all alone too. I let her hold my hand and returned a small squeeze. That was all we could do.

  Do you want to ask me what it felt like to become a statistic? The answer: not great. I had done everything right. I had been a good girl. The perfect child who didn’t make mistakes.

  But I never wavered. Not from this.

  At home, Mom put me into the makeshift office bed, brought me a heating pad, and let me rest. A few hours later, Kent and Grey returned from their outing. I made overtures about not feeling well.

  And we never spoke of it again.

  Controversial-ku

  “It reminds me of my favorite poem, which is,

  ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic. . . and so am I.’”

  —Bob Wiley, speaking to patients in a mental hospital, What About Bob?

  1.

  Asleep. Silence shook

  me like a soldier, awake.

  I’ve passed through a door.

  2.

  There are things I can’t—

  (It shall never be undone.)

  —say. But this I can.

  A Trip to U of M

  Afew days after Thanksgiving—the week after my abortion—we decided to see a touring production of Tartuffe playing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Why not, right? What better way to pass the time than with 17th century problems as told in rhyming couplets? After the show, I spied a classmate from high school. I thought I’d be able to dodge him and escape without notice, but we caught eyes and I dutifully approached from across the theater.

  “Hi Dave,” I said awkwardly.

  “Oh, hey Alex,” Dave Breen—he of the high school popular crowd— replied with his signature nonchalance. I tried not to wince at his use of Alex. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just saw the show.”

  “Right,” he said. “But you don’t go to school here, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Right. But you’re a freshman right now, right?”

  “Sure.” I suppose it was technically true, and even if it wasn’t, it was the easiest response.

  “So are you home for Thanksgiving or something?” This was by far and away, the most concern Dave Breen had ever shown me, unless you counted our on-stage exchanges in the plays at Groves High School.

  “Um—” I hesitated. “Well, not exactly.”

  It started to dawn on Dave Breen that something was fishy. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry—”

  “My dad died.”

  The was a pause. A pause during which Dave Breen just stared at me.

  “Pardon?”

  “A few weeks ago,” I said.

  These few monosyllabic words sputtered out in what felt like a lifetime.

  “He’s dead. He died.”

  Dave didn’t say a word.
>
  Dave was actually a kid from high school who knew my dad. He starred in the “Playing Frisbee with the Popular Kids” story, which goes like this:

  (AL— a freshman in a large, typical public American high school in the spring of 1998 in a Midwestern “Wonder Years-y” suburb. The phone rings. AL answers it.)

  FRESHMAN AL: Hello, Silber residence.

  POPULAR SENIOR: Hey Al, this is Popular Senior calling.

  FRESHMAN AL: Oh. Um, hi, Popular Senior. What’s going on?

  POPULAR SENIOR: Well . . .

  POPULAR JUNIOR: (talking from the background) Ask him! He said to call! He said he’d play!

  POPULAR SENIOR: Sorry, that was Popular Junior Guy.

  FRESHMAN AL: I see.

  POPULAR SENIOR: Well, we were calling because we were just hanging in the park and wondered if . . .

  (AL holds her breath at the thought the popular guys want to hang out with her.)