Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father Read online

  One of the things I like especially about having been in the poetry scene is all the really marvelous, interesting people I’ve met. I hope your life puts you in touch with as many wonderful people . . .

  My workshop and reading went very well. I read “Elegy,” then a poem about someone with AIDS, then some prose by someone with AIDS. There were about 75 people in the class & things really began to get emotional, especially when I had students write about death & read their work. Afterwards, several people said they liked my class better than any, that I was a really good teacher, that I was very brave. (I guess because I let myself emote & tear up a few times – which gave others permission to do the same.)

  Unfortunately, Dad had not taught me the same. Like being a waitress, my emotions were something I knew little about.

  AFTER FOUR WEEKS at La Criée, I’d dropped ten pounds and built muscles I didn’t know I had. I’d also managed to find my rhythm at work, had memorized the place settings and organized my tasks. I even earned the grudging respect of my coworkers, including Maggie, who started driving me to the taxi stand at Place de Clichy on the back of her scooter whenever I missed the last Métro. My points were bumped up from three to five, so I was earning more per paycheck. By the end of each night, my personal tip glass was filled with franc coins. Only the German, Hilde, received as many. She earned her tips because of her sheer competence as a waitress. I think I impressed with an American brand of table service, a smiling, friendly patter that can be rare in French restaurants.

  Then one night at the peak of the dinner shift, another scorcher, a table ran out on me. I’d happily bid “adieu” to the well-dressed young couple, convinced they’d left extra money on my table. When I discovered they’d in fact stiffed me, I figured I could chase them down in the street. I ran after them in my blue and white La Criée uniform. I forgot to put down my corkscrew and it made sharp imprints in my squeezed palm.

  “Attendez!” I yelled. Wait! “S’il vous PLAÎT, atten-DEZ!!!”

  When I finally caught up with them and grabbed the man’s shoulder, he turned and I realized I’d chased down the wrong couple.

  “Je suis desolée”—I’m sorry—I wheezed. “Bonne soirée.” Good-night.

  I returned to the restaurant depressed. I explained to everyone what had happened, hoping for their sympathy. Véronique reminded me that the cost of the bill would be docked from my pay. This was policy. All I received from the waitresses was disdain. “Quelle conne,” I heard behind my back. “Quelle conne.”

  The next afternoon, as I mopped the floor after the lunch shift, Oui-FM played REM’s “Losing My Religion.” I fell fast and hard into the comfort of this song with a homesickness that hollowed my insides. The song’s mandolin riff coupled with Michael Stipe’s plaintive lyrics—he didn’t know if he could “do it”—tunneled a brief escape out of that gloomy dungeon of a job, as if the sound of something from my old life could be a portal back to that life. By the time the song finished, I knew I had to leave La Criée. I had only a couple of weeks left in Paris and I didn’t see the point in suffering through them.

  The next day, I confronted Véronique. It was the end of lunch and she was sitting in an upstairs booth, delicately forking a plate of smoked salmon, which was forbidden to the waitstaff. Reading the paper, she ignored everyone rushing around clearing tables and sweeping the floor.

  “Il faut qu’on parle.” We have to speak, I said, easing into the booth across from her.

  I watched her eyes narrow and her lips pull into a tight smirk and in that moment, I made a split-second decision to play the one card I knew would allow me to extricate myself from the job with the least confrontation.

  “Mon papa, il est malade. Il va mourir.” My father, he’s sick. He’s going to die.

  In any other circumstance, “my father is dying” would be an incredible lie to get out of a job. And because I was using this news to facilitate my departure, it felt like a lie. The sudden burst of tears that followed also felt like a performance. But it wasn’t. I really was sad. So, so sad. It was as though, in that instant, I finally realized just how sad I really was.

  Looking around, she quietly stood and pulled me into the back office next to the bar. Wiping my eyes, I said, “Je suis desolée. Il faut que je parte.” I must go. I started to weep again.

  What was odd about this moment is that it was the first time I’d let myself cry about my father in front of anyone. With Theo, I hid myself behind the bathroom door. On the phone with my grandparents, I tried to swallow my tears. With my dad I only felt angry; I couldn’t cry at all. The depth of feeling aroused by my father’s illness frightened me. I imagined it as a large and powerful black hole that would suck up everything in its path. So I worked hard to conceal the depth of my grief. I don’t know if I didn’t trust my friends and family to receive my sadness or if I didn’t trust myself to properly reveal it. All I know is that these emotions felt dangerous to me.

  But here in this office with this skinny French woman with the severe ponytail and icy demeanor, this woman whom I didn’t like at all, I freely wept. With a clear purpose to my grief—get out of this godforsaken job—I finally felt at liberty to grieve, to feel the full weight of what my father had dropped on me before boarding the plane back to the United States. He was dying. He was dying. He was dying. And there was no way around it.

  “Je suis desolée,” she said, clasping my hands in hers. She felt terribly sorry for me, for my “pauvre papa,” my poor daddy. It was as if she suddenly saw me for the young girl I was. She let me go that day—that day!—and said if I wanted to return after my father was better I could, that there would always be a job for me. I thanked her, saying how much I appreciated this job (I didn’t), saying how I’d call and write (with no intention of doing either). As I waited for the Métro back to Theo’s, I felt incredibly light and clear-headed. I knew what to do: I had to wind up my summer, finish my semester in New York, and return to San Francisco.

  21.

  “HE GAVE HER A JOB. She gave him a . . . raisin to live!”

  Brad and I were laughing so hard that we were blowing crumbs all over the table at Bruno’s, our daily café stop near the NYU campus. We had another twenty minutes before our first class, and we were finishing up our third cup of coffee. (Bottomless coffees, along with ricotta-filled sfogliatelles, being Bruno’s great draw.) Brad had just offered the tagline for a movie we’d concocted, The Sun-Maid, inspired by a small raisin box I had in my backpack. We’d cast Sean Connery as the steel-eyed owner of the grape vineyard and Winona Ryder as the bonnet-wearing sun-maid he employs and who eventually melts his heart.

  Brad and I had met during my second semester in Paris, when he transferred from NYU in Germany. He looked like a blond Hugh Grant down to the “butt cut,” as he called the floppy parted hairstyle that Grant later wore in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The son of a Midwestern lawyer and the middle of three children, Brad had had a very different upbringing from mine. But we had an easy rapport and were fast friends. I felt with him the same sort of affectionate ease and playfulness I felt with Dad. Theo was initially jealous of all the time we spent together. He didn’t know, as I wouldn’t for years, that Brad was gay.

  With Brad’s help, the New York I returned to in the fall of 1991 felt like a different city from the one I’d left the previous spring. Where New York had been confusing and cold, the city now felt electric, as if anything was possible.

  My first order of business on returning to the city was to find a place to live. After sifting through the Village Voice classifieds, I found a share on Lafayette Street, just south of Cooper Union. The building smelled strongly of bleach and pesticide, but it was cheap. For a mere $125 a month I slept in the “main space” on a futon hidden behind a freestanding trifold screen. Next to me behind the screen was a tall, round fish tank, whose inhabitants were obscured by a thick film of dirt and algae that went ignored, week after week. I didn’t mind becasue I was rarely home.

/>   Brad was my constant. Weeknights we met for dinner at NYU’s Weinstein cafeteria, where Brad had a meal plan. Since I didn’t, we set up complicated ruses to get me in. One day we were looking for a “friend” named Jennifer. Another day I tearfully claimed to the guard that my wallet had just been stolen. We’d then fill up at the salad bar and buffet stations, the mediocre food more appetizing because it was free. I’m sure the guard was wise to our tricks or likely didn’t care, but we were energized by the cleverness of our plots. We called ourselves the Meal Plan Bonnie and Clyde.

  But just at the moment I’d feel most buzzed, returning from a night roaming the East Village bars with Brad and our friends, I’d open my mailbox and find a letter from Dad:

  September 15, 1991

  Dear Alysia –

  I just wrote a short letter to Theo. My eyes are so bad I can’t read the paper anymore or even write a letter unless I put a blank paper over the lines above. With my eye problems lines of print or writing collapse into each other – so I can read the top line but then the following lines blend together or some lines are big, some lines tiny.

  I could probably read better if I put a patch over my right eye like a pirate. Got your letter today & even using a magnifying glass & putting a paper above each line I was reading I still could hardly read it. It would help me if you typed (& double-spaced) your letters. Otherwise I’ll always have to have someone else read them to me.

  “Pigeons in the grass, alas!” to quote Gertrude Stein.

  I miss you but I don’t want to be a drag on you. I feel this is the time you should have for school, etc. – NOT having to get tied down caring for me. I guess I worry about being helpless & dependent on anyone. See! I can worry too. Actually, I don’t worry too much though cuz all that exists is the present moment & right now I’m fine. I hope you are too. And that you can accept that you are.

  Love,

  Dad

  My father didn’t want to be a “drag” on me but, inevitably, because of letters like these, that’s the role he played. I’d like to say that I was a thoughtful, good daughter, attuned to his needs and to my commitment to take care of him. But I was young and callow, still hungry for whatever fruits New York could offer. Brad had found an internship working for a national TV show and I was determined to land one as well. When not studying, I spent my afternoons paging through job binders at student services. The state of Dad’s health, as reported in these letters, felt like an intrusion in the life I was trying to build. Unfortunately, I felt close enough with him that I told him so.

  9/21/91

  Dear Dad,

  I received your letter yesterday. Sometimes reading a letter from you can be depressing. You complain so much about your bad health and ill luck!

  I’m not asking you to censor these aspects of your life. But if you accentuate less the negative I would enjoy your letters more.

  My life is often frustrating too. To get internships I have to send off my resumé. I’ve written my resumé but I haven’t found a good block of time when I can type it. This stresses me out because then I think I’ll lose the internships.

  . . . I really enjoyed our conversation the other night. That we can laugh about what to do with your ashes is a big step for me. I have a lot more trouble accepting your condition than you do. I suppose that parents take on a mystic quality in the eyes of the child. To a young duckling the father duck is omniscient and like god, never dies. I’m used to having you in my life. You know me well.

  Sometimes I feel you provide a security and support that could never be matched. I’m starting to learn that isn’t true. My relationship with Theo attests to the fact that my life is growing, opening up in new directions.

  Gotta go.

  love, Alysia

  By October I found an internship at Columbia Records. I spent three afternoons a week in their Blackrock building, addressing envelopes to radio stations across the country and stuffing them with CDs and press materials for all the bands the label was pushing. In my free time I poked my head into offices, saying hello to whomever was inside regardless of their rank. What did I have to lose? And each week I came home with free CDs given to me by my new record exec friends, which I gleefully shared with Brad.

  Through a girl in my French class I also found a weekend job hostessing at a midtown French restaurant called La Brasserie, which piped the hits of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf on a continuous loop. After my adventures in France I easily got the job, which entailed greeting people at the door and strategically situating them in the restaurant so that it always looked full.

  Walking from my apartment in the East Village to Brad’s in the West Village, I felt young and free and fierce. I’d worked and lived in Paris, with a blue-eyed Parisian who still wrote me letters proclaiming his love in fresh ink. Rigorously applying myself to my studies, I was getting all As, making the dean’s list. The fall air was thin and crisp, sharpening my senses. I moved in long strides across the avenues. I moved so fast, I felt as if I was flying.

  As the year progressed, Dad continued to write me accounts of his declining health but, thoughtfully, he now headlined these sections in case I wanted to skip them. Of course I couldn’t, and the effect was no less painful:

  Complaints (I’m labeling so you can skip):

  1) Headaches, diarrhea past 2 days (bad enough to keep me home) medical safaris eating half my time, feeling wiped out, Kaiser never sending me the right stuff so I have to stay home all day for next 2 days.

  2) Loneliness – my roommate’s been gone a lot & I’ve been spending most of my time alone. I used to go to certain clubs & cafes to socialize but my lack of energy, health problems has just about cancelled all this. Also I used to enjoy going to sauna at the Kabuki w/friends, which I can no longer do. So I find myself more & more isolated which is itself depressing, alienating, & not good for immune system. I’ve always been a bit of a loner but AIDS seems to make me more so.

  3) Career. Can’t get through to this woman in NYC who I want to be my agent. She’s always gone, on phone, etc. Not a good sign. In a way I even feel abandoned by New Narrative group of writers, which I founded and first published and reviewed. They don’t include me in readings any more.

  I wonder if it’s partly my illness. I recall my reluctance to visit Sam D’Allesandro when he was sick. AIDS makes people nervous, uncomfortable & they want to avoid being around it. Maybe they think I want to remain alone – or am too sick to do anything.

  Okay – enough complaining!

  In another letter, Dad directly addressed my future as his caregiver:

  I’m enclosing some newspaper clippings for your (hopeful) enjoyment. Also a flyer on homecare (not to depress you but so you’ll see there’s help in this area). I think a key thing in homecare is to take care of yourself so you don’t burn out. Namely (whenever that time might come) I’d try to set it up so my friends could have a schedule of helping out so that you’d have free time to get away & do other things. Also, Kaiser has nurses that would come in a few days each week. So it’s not like you’d have to do it all, all the time.

  Dad believed he was being considerate with these notes, easing me into what I could expect in the year ahead. Instead, I felt besieged. Couldn’t he see? I was just getting everything into place in New York: the apartment, the internship, the job, the friends! I convinced myself that if I had enough engines revving at once, I could drown out the siren call of Dad back in San Francisco. There’d be too much to leave. Dad would understand and let me stay.

  So instead of preparing for my early graduation and eventual return, as I’d resolved to do in Paris, I sought out even more work and activity. Brad and I waitered dinner parties for the Weiksners uptown, earning extra cash. Though I was planning Theo’s visit that Christmas, I sought out attention from cute guys, flirting with a busboy at La Brasserie who was into rave music and a waiter at Dojo’s who gave me free slices of carrot cake whenever I came in.

  In phone calls with Dad early tha
t fall, we had joked about what I’d do with his remains after he died. We imagined the havoc my kids would wreak if they accidentally knocked over his urn (“Billy, stop playing in grandpa’s ashes!”). But as the inevitable approached, I started to push against the boundaries of our agreement: “Maybe I should just finish the school year, Dad. It’s only a few more months.”

  “I want you to come home,” he answered.

  “But I’ve only been in this internship for a month and a half,” I said. “And I’m meeting so many people! I could get a job at Columbia Records!” But my father never wavered. He continued to write letters, presenting himself as the loving but ailing father. And he never let me forget my promise.

  11/20/91

  Dear Alysia –

  Went to see the doctor yesterday. He doesn’t know what my skin rash is. He said it looked like scabies but you don’t get that on your neck and forehead. So he gave me an antibiotic, which made me a bit feverish last night. Meanwhile, the itching drives me crazy.

  Ten more days and my roommate will be gone. I can hardly wait. Anyone would drive me nuts if they stayed in the apartment all day everyday . . . Considering the trouble I have living with one roommate, how will I manage living in a hospice w/10 or so others. No privacy at all!

  Time for me to do my infusion now. Then Danny Devito’s “Other People’s Money.” A light escapist film appeals to me right now.

  Now after the movie – I’m having a cup of peppermint tea in a cafe at Fillmore & Haight. Lots of beautiful shots of NYC. From skyscraper offices & wealthy apartments it sure looks fine. If you’re living in a nice apartment and enjoying your job & friends, I can see why you want to stay. 3 and 1/2 years ago you didn’t want to leave home & I more or less pushed you out of the nest. Now you don’t want to come back.