Laid Bare: Essays and Observations (14 page)

Then Bruce’s Aunt mentioned Campari. A visible shudder went around the room like a wave at the playoffs. I had tried that bottled Campari-and-Soda thing a couple of times when Bruce and I were in Italy, but just hadn’t been able to acquire a taste for the bitter ruby-red aperitif. Tonight there was an “ycch” from this part of the room and a “no thanks” from over there, but there were no takers on Campari as a favorite.

Bruce’s aunt sat placidly on the couch, one leg crossing the other so that the two were absolutely vertical, her Mona Lisa smile perfectly conveying her benign contempt for the uninitiated among us.

“Well, you’ve obviously never had a Negroni,” was her response.

We all admitted that was true.

Bruce’s uncle came into the waiting room and picked up the newspaper.

“Does anyone know…”

“I’m talking,” scolded Shelley, as her husband sat with the
Times
resting on one knee. “A Negroni is Campari, sweet vermouth and vodka. It’s a wonderful cocktail.”

This endorsement, coming from someone who puts pepper on her oatmeal, left me dubious, but I promised I’d try one at dinner.

“So, what’s a ten-letter word…”

“We don’t know!” answered the group in unison. “If we knew we would have filled it in,” said Bruce’s sister.

“C’mon, dinner!” announced Bruce’s Dad. I’m hungry.

As well stood up to leave Frannie said she’d just wait here.

“But you need to eat something.”

“Just bring me back something,” she said. “Anything, I don’t care,” she said to pre-empt a discussion.

“I’ll stay and keep you company,” I said as everyone was putting on their coats.

“But your Negroni,” said Bruce’s aunt. “I know, I’ll get it to go.”

“You can’t get liquor to go,” chastised Bruce’s Dad.

“
She
can,” answered Bruce’s uncle.

The whole group left for dinner, their mission of returning with a Negroni turning the excursion into an adventure, not just an excuse to eat.

And so, as the door swung silently closed Frannie and I found ourselves alone in the visitors’ waiting room of the I.C.U. on the last night of Bruce’s life. Visiting hours had long since ended, but the staff had pretty much given us the run of the place. Matters were clearly reaching a conclusion and I suppose they figured there was no harm.

“Hey, Cuz, why don’t you lie down over here?” I crossed the room and sprawled out on the blue vinyl-covered couch, resting my head in Frannie’s lap. Her nails felt good as she gently scratched my scalp and my mind started replaying the previous few days as I stared at the drop ceiling overhead. Considering the life-and-death seriousness of the situation, there had been an awful lot of laughter in that brightly-lit room on upper 5
^th
Avenue.

A week earlier, shortly after Bruce had checked in, a Scrabble game was underway in the waiting room. Bruce’s Mom gave a sly little smile and started to place her tiles on the board, announcing that, including the double-word bonus, she had 42 points. We watched in anticipation as she spelled out J-E-W-B-O-Y.

No way! It’s not really a word and, if it were, it would be hyphenated, we challenged. Besides, you can’t leave that word lying around on a Scrabble board at Mt. Sinai! After startling several arriving visitors with “Jew boy should be hyphenated, right?” we finally acquiesced and granted Bruce’s Mom her 42 points.

A couple of days later his Dad and I were talking in the waiting room. I had my feet up on the coffee table that was filled with outdated magazines and somehow mentioned I had been the organist and choir director in my church all during high school. “Wait a minute,” he said, cutting me off in a melodramatic stop-the-presses manner. “You mean you’re not Jewish?” As if this fact was somehow going to be a problem at this point.

As things became more and more grim we realized we needed to make some decisions. Everyone in the family was fine with my wish to have Bruce cremated, but they weren’t sure how his Mom would feel about it. I worked it so the two of us were alone in the waiting room and, screwing up my courage, explained to her that, shortly after we met, Bruce and I had gone to their house by the ocean in Rhode Island. We took a bottle of champagne to the beach on a cold, gray December day and talked and talked. It’s when we knew we were in love. I told her I wanted him cremated so, at some point in the future, our ashes could be scattered together on that beach.

“I just want to know one thing,” she said, looking at me exactly like a protective mother would. “Did you guys buy the champagne yourselves or did you take it out of my pantry?” Laughing, I jumped out of my seat and crossed the room to hug her.

“What is it, cuz?”

Frannie’s question brought me back to the present. I guess I must have been sniffling a little; she wiped a tear from underneath my eye as my head lay in her lap.

“When this is all over I just hope, well, I still want to be part of the family.”

Frannie’s hand grabbed a clump of my hair and she gave it a gentle tug. “Huh! You’re not getting rid of us that easy!”

I sat upright and turned to face her.

“
That easy?!”

We stared at each other long enough for the total absurdity of what she had said sunk in and then we simultaneously burst out laughing. We were in the throws of hilarity when the door opened and the group came back in from dinner. Bruce’s aunt led the way flourishing a cardboard coffee cup in each hand.

“One martini to go,” she said, handing a cup to Frannie. “And one Negroni, as promised.”

The cocktails made Frannie and me even giddier and caught us up with the drinking that had gone on at dinner, all of which served to increase the volume of our conversation significantly. When the nurse came in to ask us all to hold it down a little, we decided we should probably call it a night. We knew they’d call us if anything dramatic happened during the night.

And it did. They called several hours later and we all made our way back to the hospital. Not a heck of a lot of laughter during that visit, as I recall.

I still feel my spirits dip every year as April 18 approaches. But enough time has passed so that my strongest memory of that night involves an unfinished crossword puzzle, a lot of laugher and a Negroni in a cardboard cup.

How to make the perfect Negroni: 1 ounce each Campari, sweet vermouth and vodka. Stir with ice and pour into a cardboard to-go coffee cup. Serve under fluorescent lights and garnish with a lemon twist and laughter.

WINDS FROM THE SOUTH

Two millennia ago the Roman elite went by barge across the Bay of Naples to one of the most beautiful islands in the world, a journey that took most of the day. In the final decade of the 20
^th
century, I found myself making the same trip, but I traveled
above
the surface of the water in a hydrofoil and I would arrive less than an hour after pushing off from the pier in
Napoli
. My reason for going to Capri, however, was very different from that of the Caesars: they went to shed their cares. I was going to leave some of my late husband’s ashes.

I say “husband” because, long before the issue of same-sex marriage entered the national debate, there was really no other word to define the relationship Bruce and I shared. It was intimate and lovely. We had private jokes that only we understood; we fought about sex and money, something understood by
every
married couple.

Bruce had died from AIDS five months before, which meant we never got to take the trip to southern Italy that was to be our next vacation. So I decided to go alone.

We had traveled extensively, and I had wanted to share with him this wonderful, lemony island, which had counted among its guests not just the Caesars but such diverse personalities as Somerset Maugham and Clark Gable. And Bruce would be able to practice his (very) limited Italian. As expressive and animated as he was, he could never quite wrap his mouth around “
grazie.
” He would veer from “
gracias
” to “
graziass,
” never landing on the correct pronunciation, until he finally settled on an all-purpose “
grah
…,” letting the recipient of his thanks fill in the rest mentally. The waiters generally understood what he meant by “
grah
…”, and he would beam like a little boy at his new-found ability. (He did, once, manage to form the word correctly and with a perfect Italian accent. The hotel-keep in Madrid was mightily impressed.)

On this trip I stayed at the Hotel Caesar Augustus which, in 1996, was still an elegant but slightly dilapidated relic of the halcyon days before the war. Its ochre stucco arches opened onto a terrace that boasted a spectacular—if vertiginous—view. The azure sea lay a dizzying 1,000 feet below, and spotlights mounted on the cliff just beneath the terrace illuminated the hotel’s clean art-deco lines.

I decided I would toss Bruce’s ashes off that terrace on the final night of my stay, which I thought would be a fitting end to my trip.

For three days I moped around Capri
.
One evening I dined in an empty restaurant which the night before had hummed with a chorus of German and English voices. I asked where everyone had gone and was told, “But, it is the Scirocco!” Like an actor making a well-rehearsed entrance, the fabled wind from North Africa had arrived perfectly on schedule bringing with it a faint hint of spice and mystery as well as a never-ceasing breeze. It rose and fell in intensity, but never, ever stopped.

On my last night there I had dinner and drank too much wine. As I wandered back to the hotel, I tried to think of anything but the task ahead.

In the months since Bruce died, I had found myself completely at the mercy of my emotions, so I wasn’t sure how this scene would play out. When the last of Bruce’s ashes had drifted down to the sea, would I throw myself after them? Or would I collapse like a puddle onto the terra cotta tiles and have to be helped to my room as the hotel staff whispered about “the sad, sad
Americano
”?

I walked across the lobby and pushed open the heavy glass doors of the terrace. There were one or two couples leaning against the wall nearby, so I found a secluded, dimly lit spot out of their sight.

I reached inside my jacket and reluctantly took the packet out of my breast pocket. The ashes had remained—literally—close to my heart since I had boarded the Alitalia flight at JFK two weeks before. I was not terribly anxious to let them go now. The moon shone plaintively on the water, and I tried focusing on its liquid reflection to maintain my composure. As I opened the envelope and poured the ashes into my palm, I whispered a few words of love and remembrance. “Well, Bruce, I guess we made it to Capri after all,” I thought. I brought my hand to my mouth and kissed the closed fingers before drawing my hand back over my head. I mustered all my strength and resolve as I threw.

And then the Scirocco seized control of the moment: a
whoosh
of air blew the ashes up and over my head. They were caught in the blazing lights below the terrace and transformed into a spray of stars. I might as well call it what it was: my husband was circling overhead in a cloud of
fairy dust
. After dancing in the air for a few moments, the ashes blew giddily away into the night.

I stood there open-mouthed, transfixed.

What made them shimmer so? Was it Bruce’s silvery laugh? His sparkling smile? Most likely it was just flecks of bone and tissue. But it brought from deep inside me a sound that might best be described as the marriage of a sob and a chuckle.

And that perfectly timed gust of wind? I suspect that was Bruce laughing at my solemnity and forcing me to see the moment as something wondrous. He robbed me of a good cry that night but never has a victim submitted so gladly to a thief’s demand. I wanted to cry out, “
Grah! Grah!”

I have not been back to Capri since that night eight years ago. But, when I do I’ll stand gazing out over the moonlit sea and listen for Bruce’s distant laugh in the warm, faint breath of the Scirocco.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

This volume was assembled after repeated requests from readers for a compendium of my essays, which were scattered among many sources and publications. For those who are interested, the original sources are listed below.

They’re Playing Our Song

The Beauty Curse

The Church of Me

Norman Rae

---Unzipped Magazine

Tradewinds

Did You Have View?

---Saba blog

Houses of Worship

An Empty Bowl

Little Miss Indian Giver

Him and His Shadow

Recounting the Abbottts

Cicciolina, Miss America and Me

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

The House Painter

Panhandle Manhandle

Rattlesnakes Have Been Observed

We Shall Come Rejoicing

My Huckleberry Friends

So That We May Bring You

Shoplifting Fire

Vino e Cucina

Oysters, Rockefeller?

So, This Guy Checks In To A Hospital...

Winds From the South

---Gus’s Soapbox

Rigatoni With Sausage and Fennel

September 25, 1 A.M.

---Gus Mattox blog

The Longest Mile

All We Owe Iowa