Chapter Two: Day 1 5pm (cont.)

I was on US 78 W on my way to my the Sloan Kettering oncology facility in Basking Ridge N.J. Sitting in the passenger seat was my mother who had been diagnosed with lung cancer several months earlier. We were on our way to the third out of twelve radiation treatments. Her prognosis was good. They had caught it early, but the diagnosis was sobering and, as you can imagine, the mood in my car was tight lipped and somber. Going to a place where they promise that they are going to hurt you, make no promises of future well being and where you are among the sick and dying is sobering.

Some people put on a false front when facing treatment for a disease that has a huge chance of causing your demise. Mom was not one of them. She was not overly morose or weepy. Just tense and as brittle as a decades old pressed flower. I had tried my jolly elf routine and it had been as successful as telling an Italian joke at a Knights of Columbus meeting. A very loud silence permeated the car which kept us imprisoned in our fears and thoughts. We were both startled into the present when my phone blared through the car speakers. It was Del. A welcome distraction from the somber mood in the car. I answered the phone on speaker. I had barely gotten out “Hi D “ let alone warned her we were on speaker and Mom was sitting next me when she began cursing me out. Apparently, she had just gotten off the phone with Duke, then a sophomore at MIT,  with whom she had just had a knock down drag out fight and for a reason I could not fathom at the time, blamed me for the argument.  He had told her in a way sophomore in college often lecture their parents that listening to Fox News was rotting her brain.  Her political opinion was racist and woefully ignorant. That her view of Christianity, steeped in the megachurch evangelical community in which she had immersed herself were both heretical to the true precepts of Jesus and hypocritical. That she preached love and understanding but practiced hate and intolerance. She screamed into the phone “You did this to him. You and your New York liberal elitist point of view. You have stolen his values from him.”

It stung like a slap to the face on a cold day. A smack that came with no warning. A blow that produced instant anger that would never be regretted. How else should I have felt? New York Liberal elite was transparent code. She might as well call me a dirty Jew.  it would have meant the same thing. Back on heals from a verbal assault I didn’t see coming I parried with a brilliant retort. I said  “What the fuck do you mean by that.”

“You and your liberal ideas that you put into his head. All those Jewish ideas he gets from the New York Times and other anti-Christian media. It has turned my son against me. I never should have let you into our house.”

I guess I could have followed Jesus’s advice and turned the other cheek. But as she pointed out I am Jewish, a son of a holocaust survivor and someone who has a well-tuned knee jerk reaction to antisemitism.  I reacted. Not in a patient understanding manner but as man who has just been told that a twenty plus year relationship has been nothing more than a charade.

“Who the fuck do you think you are calling me on the phone and accusing me of corrupting your son. What kind of antisemitic racist bullshit is it blaming Jews for corrupting his values. Your fucking savior was a Jew. Have you your fucking god damn mind? Perhaps one of the reasons your son has turned against you is you spouting this kind ugliness to him. You spent every day with him for twenty years and suddenly I am the problem and Jews are to blame. Clearly, it’s us because of course it can’t be you. You talk to him every day and I maybe speak with him once a month and his opinions and thoughts are my fault. Perhaps it would be more useful for you to take a look in the mirror than call and yelling at me while I am taking my mother to radiation therapy.”

“I don’t need to look in a mirror. I know where he got these anti-Christian ideas from. Whenever you came to visit, I would spend weeks trying to deprogram him and Liam from your ideas. I told Conor I never liked having you in our home.”

I had always done my best to be the best uncle, the best guest, the best friend I could be. Never once in the twenty-five years I had known Del, not once during a single visit had she raised a red flag about my behavior. I always thought I was the welcome addition to their house. Uncle Danny. The guy who took care of Delilah when she couldn’t get out of bed for fear of losing her baby. The Uncle who bought the kids their first hot fudge sundae. The man who got took them to Yankee Stadium with tickets behind home plate and on the rail. The guy who whenever he came to visit would take the family to Morton’s or Chops or some other fancy restaurant for an opulent meal not just for fun but to teach them what to do when they went to fine restaurants. The link to their roots who reveled in telling the boys stories about their grandfather because they needed to know about their legacy. Now this woman, whom I had introduced to her husband is telling me that I was never welcome in her home.?

The slap had turned to a kick to the balls. Every circuit was blown. The years of happy memories had been irretrievably altered. Oddly, instead of intensifying my emotions,  her comments turned them cold. “You know what Delilah. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. I will never set foot in your home again. “ and pushed the end button on my phone.  There was silence in the car for a few miles and then my sweet, Ferragamo loafer wearing, never leave the house without putting on lipstick mother said, “What a cunt.”

Late that afternoon, after I dropped Mom at home, and was stuck in traffic on the Lincoln Tunnel helix I  called Conor. I started with “Louise called your wife a cunt today.” It got his attention. I told him what happened and said “I love you man, but I will never stay in your house again. Never. Not because of animosity or anger. But because if she has been harboring all this hate for me for years, and saying nothing, how can I feel welcome when I know somewhere lurking beneath the surface is this hostility, this antisemitism bullshit. Can’t do it.”

Conor had a tone of voice when he was super angry. It was a low registered growl where he enunciated every consonant and diphthong.  He used it now and replied, “I will take care of it.”

“Nothing to take care of. It is what it is. Del just told me today who I am to her and revealed who she is and I heard her.”

“I will take care of it.”

“Whatever. Do you want you want to do but I said what I meant and will do as I say” echoing one of Conor’s father’s favorite axioms.

Later that day, I got a call from Delilah. I didn’t answer it. I had no desire to talk with her and let it go to voicemail. The message, when I finally listened to it a couple of days  later when curiosity had gotten the best of me, was a non-apology,  apology.  She was sorry for the tenor of the conversation but that she meant what she had said. As she didn’t ask for forgiveness, I saw no reason to give it, let alone speak with her. But to be honest, even if she had asked, I am not sure at that time I could have given it.  My relationship with Conor remained the same, except our friendship would be conducted over the phone or on his occasional trips to the city. True to my word, I never set foot in their home again and probably never would have seen her again if I had not fallen in love and married. 

In 2012, I was in desperate need of a break. I had spent most of my free time over the previous two years being a caregiver for my father. In 2010, he fell and injured himself so badly that he could no longer walk. A pattern of hospital, rehab center, home developed where I became the child that helped both parents cope. I drove them to Dr’s appointments or drove Mom to the hospitals and rehabilitation centers when Dad was sent there. Or, just sitting with my father in his hospital rooms and bedroom and talking. It was traumatic. It was debilitating. The daily contemplation of the inevitability of your parent’s mortality, dealing with the indignities of old age such as wiping your old man’s ass or changing his catheter took a physical and psychic toll.  And even though Dad’s constant refrain was “Don’t break your ass over me” and my always reply “Don’t worry it is already cracked” I found it impossible to take time for myself. They called. I came. Not trying to being a hero, just a son who was trying to do his best to repay the debt they never asked me to pay. Sons, like friends, show up.  It was always on duty and the caregiving for my father had ground me down like a knife that had been sharpened too many times.

Then the Costa Concordia hit a rock and sank off the cost of Italy killing 34 passengers. While for many the sinking of the ship reinforced the idea that cruises were not an ideal vacation, for me, who had never been on a cruise, sparked a different thought. Don’t judge me.  I thought that due to the tragedy that their cruises might be bargained price and afford me a champagne vacation for beer prices. I was right. An eighteen-day cruise from Santos, Brazil to Savona Italy, all-inclusive with a balcony stateroom was less than $1,500. I booked it on the spot. I hoped it would re-expand my world beyond my work, my apartment and my parents’ home. I hoped being on a cruise, without good internet and expensive phone service would allow me to recharge and get strong for the imminent and inevitable conclusion of Pop’s story. And perhaps, if I was lucky, I might find a little joy.

I did not expect to find a wife. But I did. On the third night of the cruise, I was seated next to a stunning Brazilian lawyer named Nadine Silva-Campos and by the time we said our farewells at the end of our cruise I knew that I had found my great love. An intercontinental romance commenced. Nine months later, punctuated by the deaths of both of our fathers and long flights between Rio and New York City, we were engaged. 

We decided to get married that summer, in my parents’ backyard, among a small group of family and friends. I asked Conor to be my best man and for the boys to be there for their “Uncle’s” big day. I knew, of course, that this meant that Delilah would have to attend.  At that point it had been almost five years since we had talked. I figured the wound had scarred over at that point those whatever uncomfortable feelings we had for each other had faded to skin tone. By and large I was correct. She was helpful and thoughtful. Mostly. Nadine told me later that she found her a little bossy. This was echoed by Mom who told me that Del had told her that she had arranged the buffet incorrectly and had set out to do it her way. If you are trying to make a good impression on someone in their own home, it is probably bad form to tell them they are too feeble to lay out a table properly. It is especially bad form if that person, like Mom, has a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder and knows exactly how she likes things arranged.  Or if that person already thinks you a cunt.

I am not saying that the animosity had subsided, but it was enough to broker peace. I would not and could not forget what lay beneath Del’s church lady facade. A bell once rung cannot be un-rung. But it was enough to allow me to step back into their new home in California with only slightly uncomfortable feelings.

“Nothing Del” I said “Your husband and I were just discussing whether the green flash exists or whether or not it is myth invented by hippies and drug dealers to get us to stare at the setting sun. What do you think?”

She made no move to embrace me. Perhaps it was the oversized glass of red wine in her hand. Or perhaps like me our truce would only go so far. It didn’t really matter but it made for an awkward moment that was only relieved when she took a seat on the deck chairs on the far side of Conor farthest from me. Her welcome, or lack thereof, made me realize that Conor’s insistence that I stay with them was his idea and not embraced by Delilah. I was thinking how awkward this was going to be over the next few days when she said “People around here talk about the Green Flash all the time. You always see people walking out to the pier at sunset to watch it. Our neighbor Phyllis, she and her husband have cocktails every night on their deck and watch for it. “

“But have you ever seen it?”

“Well, no but….”

“That is what I was telling Conor. It is hooh-hah designed by some chamber of commerce to get people to come to the beach and spend money at their stores and restaurant” I said with what I hoped was more than a touch of snark to my voice.

I could tell from the nearly invisible smile on my buddy’s face that he had heard my comments the way they were intended. I was throwing a verbal hand grenade into the room and seeing what would happen. Or said another way, just adding a little spice to the conversation to make it livelier and fun. It is an element of my sense of humor. An element, I might add, that was shared by Conor and had been honed by Conor’s Dad who loved to inject a bit of contrarianism or fit of fantasy in a conversation for fun. All good, except I had forgotten Delilah lacked a sense of humor.

She replied with earnestness “Well, it just has to be true. Phyllis would not make it up. She has lived here all her life and she claims to have seen it. So I believe her.”

Conor chuckled. I may have too. Which I could see instantly was a very bad idea as Delilah’s face turned stormy. Pro tip: “never tease your hostess.” Especially if she doesn’t particularly like you, has little or no sense of humor, and you get her husband to join in. Her voice tinged with ice said “Well, why don’t we just sit and watch and perhaps then you will see that you have been wrong.”

Properly chastised, I turned my attention to the red orange globe that radiated a finger above the Pacific. It was splendiferous. Marmalade skies meeting a blue green ocean. In our silence you could hear waves breaking on the beach 200 yards away along with the occasional screech of a gull and the rustle of a flag on the neighbor’s flagpole. Watching the sunset, when I have had the opportunity, has always been one of those timeless moments reminding me not only of the inevitability that everyday must end, that we must suffer the darkness before we greet a new day. Watching the end of the day has been a ritual of man since we achieved sentience. And the green flash. How long had we been looking for that?  It is not that I did not believe in the flash. It was more that I didn’t need to see it to appreciate the moment. The green flash was, if it existed, was gilt on the already gilded.

There was no green flash that evening. That is, neither Delilah, Conor nor I saw it.  The sun slipped beneath the waves with no expressions of its departure at all. I couldn’t resist. I said, “Anyone see the flash?”

Conor said with a smile “I must have blinked.” Delilah, did not think I was funny and said with little enthusiasm “Lets go to dinner.”

We ate that night at The Strand House restaurant. It may not be my favorite restaurant in Manhattan Beach, but with its location at the end of Manhattan Beach Blvd. on the last hill before you reach the Pacific and with its large plate glass windows overlooking the world’s largest Ocean its view cannot be denied. They also made an excellent Manhattan which, due to my ironic sense of humor, I always drank when I am there.

When the waiter brought us our refreshments, I say “Dude, can you imagine what you father would be saying to us right now.” Conor’s father, Big Con to his closest friends, had been an oversized presence in both our lives. He was suave, always dressed elegantly even on weekend and wickedly funny in the way you didn’t always know he was joking. My mother once described him as “one of the handsomest men” she had ever seen. The president of an Investment company he had mentored me in the finer things in life extolling such things as how to make the perfect Martini ( over vodka so cold you could chip a tooth you whisper the words Noily Pratt) or at one legendary meal at the Brompton Grill in London introducing me to vintage Port.  Despite the fact we would argue about politics all the time (He thought Nixon a great President, I thought he was a crook.) he embraced me if not as a member of the family as a member of his clan. 

He was also a man of quiet faith and inner certitude they don’t mint any longer. On his way to work he would stop for a few moments of prayer and reflection at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. He remained faithful, as far as I know, to his wife until the day he died even though she was a hopeless, degenerate alcoholic. Elizabeth O’Neil Kennedy had been a beautiful debutante, charming and witty when Big Con had met her. Somewhere along line she had fallen in love with the bottle (yes, I understand that the alcoholism is a disease, but I didn’t know that at the time) It meant that for most of their lives Big Con, despite being a legendary tippler (code for functioning alcoholic) he had both mother and father to Con and his two siblings Leonard and Kathryn. It was he who did his best to set his children on the right path in life let alone make it to school.

It was Big Con who had made sure that Con had put his nose to the grindstone in our senior year in High School so his grades would be sufficient to get him into his alma mater, Union College in upstate New York.  He was also responsible for convincing Conor to embark on a career in insurance. It was, after all, the de facto  family business. Big Con’s father had been a successful broker so it stood to reason that Con, despite his aspirations of being a psychologist, would undertake a career in the same industry as father and grandfather.

Big Con had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer just two years after we had graduated from college. A disease that we all felt was brought on by having the company he had built over the last quarter of a century stolen from him. It was an awful time. How could it not be? A vibrant larger than life young man, he was barely in his fifties, being eaten away disease that was slowly eroding his life force. He had refused all pain medication and had managed his pain with vodka and gritted teeth. My most vivid memories of those times were seeing this man I admired laying on a couch in his kitchen racked by pain and soothed by alcohol with his wife in her normal alcohol induced dementia screaming down from the stairs at him. ”You bastard. How could you do this to me. Leave me alone like this” as if she was the aggrieved party in his demise. 

Big Con had become mythical in Conor’s family from the tales we would tell Duke and Liam. Some apocryphal, some unvarnished truth. But what really stuck was an exchange my friend would have with his boys. They would tell him that he was “the best dad” and he would always respond “No, I had the best dad.” Thoughts of him when we were together were never distant. Waiting for our drinks I say to Con.   “He would have loved this place. Not just the beach. But the attitude. It is so different than most California beach communities. It is like the difference between Belmar and Spring Lake in New Jersey. People come here to live. There is a community and some age to the place. It is shut off from  the rest of the area. Self-contained. I can see him walking down the street. Dressed in blazer and grey slacks and tassled loafters window shopping and just enjoying the scene.”

Conor smiled and said “Here is to Big Con.” We clinked glasses.

I added “He would have been proud of you too. Running the west coast of the United States for Mercer’s. He would have gotten a kick out of that. What was that joke he used to tell about Mercer’s. The one with the guy trying to pick up a girl at a bar.”

Con smiled “A famous actor walks into a bar. He is a handsome brute with muscle bulging through his shirt and with a glow of confidence from knowing he will be recognized walks up to the prettiest woman in the place and says “You know the studio thinks that I am a perfect physical specimen even my dick is insured by Mercer’s for one million dollars. The woman snaps back “Really, how did you spend the money.”

Conor and I howled with laughter. Probably more than the joke was worth but more from the moment of celebration and remembrance of all the jokes that his father had told us. He was a prodigious storyteller. But I notice that Delilah is not laughing at all and is eyeing me with a glint of disapproval. The joke does not align with her fundamental Christian values, and it is yet another example of why she mostly disapproves of me. I don’t care. I have not cared since she shared her true feelings about me in that fateful phone call. But I am a guest in her home, and I try to be respectful of people even when they don’t reciprocate them.

I change the subject and ask “Delilah, new coast, new home. How are you going to be spending your days with Conor out making the world safe for insurance?” The appetizers arrive and we are all temporarily quiet as our starters are placed in front of us. I exchanged a quick glance with Conor. His look tells me that the question I ask is a good one. He wants to hear the answer as well. Her not working or contributing to the finances of the household has been a major bone of contention since little Con’s birth. It had become a sniping point and fodder for passive aggressive behavior between them ever since.

Del picked at her Caesar Salad, never raising her eyes from her plate and said “I have not figured that out yet. We have not even unpacked yet. And Duke is moving out here next month to start his doctorate at Cal Tech so I am going to have him get set up. So right now I have my hands full. I’ll figure out the rest when the time comes.” When Con saw that she would not meet his look, he said with more than a touch of irony “Don’t forget Del that idle hands are the devils workshop.”

It was an asshole thing to say. Couples should not argue in front of other people. It is unseemly, impolite, and make those who experience it want to either crawl underneath the table or referee neither of which is a good option. But that was Conor’s way. He was not easy on Delilah. He would often confront her about things that bothered him in front of other people and even his children. To my shame, I never confronted him about this. Partly because I had learned over time that couples had their own ways of navigating their relationship. My parents had loved arguing with each other, something that I despised seeing, but when as an adult I had confronted them on it my father had looked me in the eye and said “We have been married for forty-three years. How long have you been married?” I had met couples who never had sex with each other but had beaucoup sex outside the relationship but stayed together not because of inertia but because they loved each other enough that they found ways to make the marriage work for them. Those things did not fit my idea of what I wanted from a marriage but who the only opinions that matter in a relationship are those in it.  If it worked for them who I am to judge.

Later, I would wonder whether I should have said something to Con about his behavior. Perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps not.

I also knew what was going to happen next. I had seen it enough in their relationship. Delilah would adopt a saccharine sweet persona where she would coo and fawn over Con. He would respond with kindness and solicitude. And they would become a Facebook ready image of the happy couple.

That is exactly what happened. The boil of resentment lanced they proceeded to coo at each other for the rest of our meal. They talked about the life they were going to build for themselves in California. Their need for a second car and how Conor wanted a Lexus and the ever-thrifty Delilah thought it would be best if they bought a Honda. There was an apartment to decorate and golf clubs to investigate. Honestly, it was boring and a little unsettling to me. Dull because how others set up their domestic arrangements doesn’t interest me very much. Have at it. Call me when you are done. Unsettling because the ease they had moved from eye daggers to puppy dog love was so fast it left me dizzy.

Dinner concluded with a shared dessert of all thing’s donuts: Tahitian vanilla bean, apple crumble, chocolate crunch, spiced blackberry, caramel with fleur de sel. Very California to have a beginning of day sweet at the end of the day. To accompany our dessert, I ordered a bottle of Dolce by Far Niente and while not Chateau Y’Quem one of my favorite after dinner wines. I toasted them by saying “Dolce means sweet in an Italian and Far Niente meeting means without a care. May your new life in California be sweet and without a care.”

Little did I realize then how those words would boomerang on me.

We didn’t quite stumble back to their apartment. But we weren’t walking a straight line either. We were in that marshmallow state where you have had just the right amount of liquor, your belly is full of good food and you are in the presence of people that you care about. Conor was all for continuing our imbibing when we got home but I was still on east coast time and had reached my personal limit on alcohol, so I begged off and went to bed.

Robin Williams famously said, “I love Jack Daniels, but Jack Daniels does not love me.” I remember that every time I wake in the middle night after an evening of imbibement. Inevitably, I wake up. Inevitably, I cannot fall back to sleep.  That night, when I woke, it was even more difficult than usual falling back to sleep. Part of it was how uncomfortable I felt being in Delilah’s home. While there was a truce between us, there was also an underlying tension. It went beyond her barely disguised animosity for me. There was something else gnawing at the edge of my awareness but for the life of me I could not figure out what that was. In my eyes, Conor and Del had reached a pinnacle point in their lives. A beautiful new home on the beach in one of the nicest communities in California. A great job that not only provided a significant income but prestige as well. A marriage that produced two fine young men and while not perfect seemed, at least from the outside, to work.

I awake to the sound of distant drums and muffled cheering. I suspect that somewhere on the Ritz’s property a group of native Hawaiians are giving some mainlanders a highly sanitized introduction to their culture. Perhaps a hula demonstration or Luau. I have no desire to get up and join them. It is too corny and I am too tired for any socializing tonight. But I am still wrestling with what brought us here in the first place. Not only the death of Conor but the circumstances that led up to it, how I had missed so much and the role I had played when everything went tits up.