Part 7: The Last

The last thing my father ever ate was watermelon. I cut up a giant watermelon on Wednesday morning, and I think he had 4 or 5 pieces. From then on, that is all he wanted. The days felt so long, that when my sister tried to make him a bowl of strawberries and blueberries on Friday, I thought she had lost her damn mind. She might has well have been trying to serve the poor man a rich, delicious seafood paella.

“He can’t eat that.”

She looked surprised.

“There is skin on those berries!”

“Well he needs to eat something!”

“No he doesn’t! It’s all just getting stuck in his system!”

She put the berries down on his dresser. “Well, he can have them if he wants them.”

“… okay.”

“Awwww,” she said.

“Awww,” I said as we marveled at our shrinking father.

And the last time I will ever hear his voice, my father said this:

“Hey Allison, it’s Dad. I just want to call and wish you a happy birthday. If you’re busy just… that’s all right but um… we talked yesterday but I love you, my darling. Bye.”

I knew how sick he was in February and had the good sense to save his voicemail. I feel stupid for not making him record more into my phone, but I was plagued with the pointless notion that I shouldn’t be so morbid. Maybe if we all bury our heads in the sand like a bunch of idiots, his cancer will disappear. As so many people told me, “miracles do happen,” and if we acknowledge reality to any degree, those miracles might scamper into the night. Attracting miracles requires the same behavior as attracting squirrels: ignore reality and hope the squirrel changes it’s nature and decides it doesn’t hate humans after all. You can’t just openly request a miracle to come to you. You can’t even offer it peanuts.

Two weeks and three days after he died, I remembered I had the birthday voice mail. I listened to him for 13 seconds over and over again. 4 seconds from the end, he says “but I love you, my darling,” and I played the last clip on repeat. I cried listening to it because I love his voice and I want him to tell me he loves me and call me his darling on every birthday I ever have. As I cried, I was slightly offended that no ghost appeared to comfort me, but not surprised given my religious propensity.

The last song my father ever heard was called Trem Bala, which is a Brazilian song my mom loves. Mike recorded a video of Katty and mom singing along in Portuguese to the Spotify track. I am lying on the bed with my feet bouncing to the music and my auntie Brenda is sitting on the floor. In the video, Brenda and I look like lunatics. My dad is nearly comatose with two women affectionately singing an emotional song. Brenda and I are practically dancing.

When I watch the video now, it seems inappropriate that we did not embody the stoicism that goes hand-in-hand with death. Our smiles seem maniacal. My father is confined to his failing flesh, and we are singing and smiling as we watch his ship sinking. I wanted his environment to be joyful, but in embracing the small moments of happiness, we look so out of place. We look like should have all been dressed like Whistler’s Mother, quietly crying by candlelight and wringing our hands on a kerchief.

***

My father told me that one of his proudest moments was when I played Little Orphan Annie in Annie at the Fox Theater. My sister played Little Orphan Kate, who I had played two years prior, when I was her age. The fellow who played Rooster on Broadway in the 1970s, his name was Bob Fitch, directed the show and played Rooster, only older. All of the costumes, blocking and choreography was from the original Broadway production. I assume, in retrospect, that they had to replace the wigs over the years as wigs might not hold up as well as choreography or Grace’s vintage fur coats. My “orphanage” wig, after one production, was so sweaty and danced in it looked like a family of woodchucks had occupied it and left.

I recently looked up Bob Fitch. He is now a magician and performer living in Los Angeles. I thought of reaching out to him on LinkedIn when I moved here, but I realized that 1) he probably doesn’t have LinkedIn since he was born in 1934 and 2) there is a pretty rare chance he could get me in to the Magic Castle. I never wrote him.

My father was a lineman at the Ford factory when I was Annie at the Fox in 1991. One night, he saw his friend from the factory in the lobby of the theater with his daughters.

“Well hey, John,” his friend said. His friends at Ford all called him “John,” which is his middle name, since “Ernie” apparently doesn’t make him sound tough enough for a factory.

“Oh hi Dale!” he said.

“My girls are so excited to see the show. We got great seats.”

“Oh good. I’m in the font row. It’s great! I’ve seen it five or six times now,” my dad said casually.

During this part of the exchange, my dad realized that he was a single man, no children in sight, who had front row tickets to see Annie, which he had already seen “five or six times.” Tickets were not cheap. The Fox Theater was built with all of the decadence and splendor of 1929 when it opened and seats 4,665 people. Every corner of the building is stunning, except the back stage, which is horrifying, probably haunted, and likely not up to modern fire code. The ladies rooms in the theater, however, are nicer than any apartment I have ever lived in. It is an absolute palace.

Dale gave him a look that said “I don’t know what to make of this, and I can’t even come to the conclusion that you might be some kinda pervert because my brain isn’t processing this situation fast enough.”

“Oh, my daughters are in the play,” he said to Dale’s relief. “They’re orphans.”

“Wow! Who do they play?”

“Uhhh…I forget. Check the program.” And then he strolled away like an unrecognized king, knowing that Dale and his kids would be watching me play Annie and Kristen play Kate for the next two hours.

***

My mom described herself that week as “drowning,” and it is a metaphor I had used to describe depression before. A little thing can pull you under. A little song can have you bobbing along, forgetting the sharks and the submarines with their torpedoes all around you.

The last show that he watched was, obviously, “Another 48 Hours.” His last real shirt was a navy polo with white horizontal stripes. His last shorts were khaki and they had a lot of pockets. They were not the shorts he wore in Paris, but I remember him arguing with my mom about what he would wear while exploring La Ville Lumière.

“You need to wear clean shorts! We are in Europe!” my mother insisted.

“I’m wearing the ones I wore yesterday! They have a lot of pockets! They’ll make me happy!”

Despite her request for the minimum amount of sophistication, he was happy that day. It was the first and only time he ever went to France, and, outside his Mission to Scotland, the only European vacation he ever went on.

“I can’t believe I thought the French were sissies my whole life!” he admitted as we stumbled upon statues of American heroes and visited Napoleon’s tomb and the Musée de l’Armée.

“They are the reason we won the Revolutionary War. They were our greatest allies,” I reminded him. “Plus,” I thought “all of the women here look like they just woke up from a wild night, which is a beauty standard I fully embrace.”

We took a boat ride on the Seine. We saw the Arc de Triomphe. We ate giant bowls of ice cream on the Champs-Élysées. We walked for miles and miles, marveling at everything and taking bites of comically large baguettes as we went.

As we looked down across the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower, daddy said to Mike “I’m just so glad I got to come to Paris. I have the feeling this is the last time I will ever get to do this.”

“Oh don’t say that,” we assured him. “We will come back.”