In the end we may end up alone anyway. At fifty-nine my mother began her fight to stay alive all by herself. She fought a brutal battle for two and half years against a relentless disease called Amyloidosis. Although it was more than two years ago, my eyes still can’t escape her bed in the hospital nephrology unit. She is draped in plastic tubes. Her dark red blood is pumping through the clear plastic. This machine is literally cleaning her from the inside out. I look at her in this bed down the long hallway filled with medical machines. I am frozen. I am stuck in the stiffness of the cement that has encased my heart at her sight. Is this a humiliation? Does she feel humiliated? Will this be the last straw that will finally brake her? Will this be her final defeat? The wind was already knocked out of her. My father escaped their life together one year before her diagnosis. Thirty-four years of marriage wiped out with the quick force of the door closing on it’s hinge.
Tonight I went to a movie in Paris by myself. I made my way out on a Saturday night into the sharp February night air along the Seine. I hoped that I would feel less isolated outside surrounded by strange voices and bodies than alone in my apartment. I rode the metro, acting as if I was one of the local Parisians. I wore a bright silk scarf as part of my French camouflage. An Indian shopkeeper on Ile St Louis gave it to me earlier in the day as a ploy to get his lips on me. He was unsuccessful with my lips but I got a free scarf. On the metro, I met Natalie holding the most outrageous and beautiful bouquet of pink, creme and white fresh flowers. Her fingertips had faint traces of potted soil smudged on them that crept underneath her nails. She makes the most of her hands. She uses them. This bouquet was whimsical complete with baby bananas; roses, peonies, fragrant lilacs and a touch of an exotic tropical flower pulled from a Caribbean soil somewhere. I distracted myself from my prickled insecurities by talking to Natalie through a fellow passenger who translated for us. As the conversation began to fizzle out, I made my way off the train and on to the street.
After many false turns and a few “oh shits”, I finally crawled to the right place. Arriving late for the 7:30 movie showing, I was forced to wait two hours for the next movie time at 10:00 pm. So, I caved and did what every red blooded American these days would do with my unexpected idol time in a foreign country. I sat in the Starbucks across the street. This particular Starbucks in Paris happened to have crystal chandeliers. The decor provided me with the false security that this was a unique Starbucks that had French culture and prestige. This was absolutely not an American establishment in Paris. I was to avoid doing American things at all costs. I was clearly doing this unsuccessfully, as I had been frequenting “Breakfast in America” every other day. This coffee joint was enormous and filled with the rumble of friends and couples laughing and lively. Arms and legs were draped on chocolate brown stuffed chairs. Male and female bodies nestled in every one of the available corners and crevices.
As I sat alone I swiftly became convinced that I was a complete loser. There it was again! The feeling I was trying to avoid back at the apartment. It had followed me all the way to the Starbucks. Shit! Quickly I had to do something – anything to change my mood. In the past, I successfully pushed away my feelings of isolation and inadequacy with my reliable ipod and my blackberry. These two little black plastic rectangles have become my little life rafts in Paris. Who would be my drug of choice? Nick Lachey singing about Jessica Simpson or Chantal Kreviazuk? I know what you are thinking now. How can you listen to Nick Lachey? Seems extraordinarily cheesy but I shared an intimate and painful experience with Nick. We both suffered a separation and divorce at the same time. This album marked the end of his relationship.
So I chose Nick. I was in my depressive post divorce isolation mood. I have lived in Manhattan for twelve years, and therefore I am an expert at persistent distraction, avoidance and activity. Stillness is the enemy of all New Yorkers. I fell into "reality shut down mode," killing minute after minute playing and re-playing love songs until show time.
The movie is called "The Family Savage" starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. In the movie, a brother and sister are thrown back into each other’s quirky lives when they have to care for their aging dementia-ridden father. They fly their father back from Arizona to be near them on the east coast. He spends his final weeks in a dismal old folks home in Buffalo, New York. His “children” are now thirty-nine and forty-two years old and both are still single and childless.
As the movie unfolds you discover the odd way that both Wendy and her brother have developed into adults. Their maturation and coping skills are underdeveloped as a result of their dysfunctional childhoods. Wendy lives in a dump in New York City and temps to support her dream of having a play produced. Throughout the movie she is popping prescription pills. She shares her apartment with her cat and a sickly fichus tree with more leaves on the floor than on its branches. Her brother lives in a dumpy house in Buffalo covered by stacks of books and papers. His place is a mess. He has been working on writing a book on Brecht that never seems to find the light of day.
At one point, the daughter Wendy is sitting with a male nurse's aid from Nigeria in the old folks home. It is late at night and they are sitting on the floor leaning against a couch in the lounge where they have attempted to catch her stray cat. Walter asks her “Are you married with children?” She replies, “No I’m not but my boyfriend is.” He then responds by saying “You must have had a difficult childhood to be so pretty and still unmarried and alone.” My body floated out of my seat and on to the screen. His words drove into the core of my heart. This is exactly why I am alone in Paris. I am her. She is me. Why is it that we travel far and fast thinking we can escape and we end up right where we started? We end up sitting in the truth that we left behind. Maybe we convince ourselves that this psychic geographic distance will somehow provide new site. We believe that we will suddenly comprehend what was incomprehensible in a country with our own currency.
I am alone because I have made a choice to be alone right now. Maybe I push men away because I worry that my fate is tied to my mother. She was pretty too. Maybe I will be sixty-two and sleeping underground. Her head is beneath a piece of limestone that reads “Full of Grace.” When I visit my mother there is no one there by her grave. I just see Spanish moss weighing on trees, sunshine filtering through the leaves, stray golf balls scattered about and a bald eagle building a nest over her head.
