Daring (56 page)

The funeral fell on the Fourth of July. Scores of people interrupted their holiday to come to Sag Harbor. Led by the sound of a harp's haunting sweetness deep inside a country cemetery, friends gathered under a canopy of tall trees to watch Clay lying in his final sleeping place. A navy honor guard played “Taps.” The image of a skinny sailor boy Clay came to me, climbing a flagpole in the South Pacific to shout about the Japanese surrender. He didn't have to die in battle after all. He lived eighty-two years.

Tom and Sheila Wolfe invited guests for a lunch of reminiscing in their buzzing, blooming backyard. Tom gave me a long brotherly hug. It brought to mind his tenderness in visiting Clay and engaging him in talk of the world. For his last visit, he charmed someone on the
New York Times
obituary desk to give him a copy of the obit, always prepared in advance for any notable. He had read the first paragraph to Clay in his mellow Virginia accent.

Clay's face had relaxed. He was assured of his legacy.

AFTER THE FUNERAL,
my immediate concern was Mohm. Having lost a second father, she was inconsolable. Her husband had recently left her. I flew back with Mohm to Cambridge and stayed close for a week. She found some peace when we visited the Asian Art collection in the Museum of Fine Arts. Then we returned to her roots, eating in a new Cambodian restaurant. It turned out to be owned by her former refugee camp counselor, Darvy Heder, who was thrilled to see Mohm and offered her a job and a room in her large home. Before leaving, I found Mohm a counselor she liked and accepted.

For the rest of that summer, planning the September memorial was a welcome absorption. I wished Clay had been there to lead Louis Armstrong's Memorial Jazz Band as it marched up Central Park West and down the aisle of the Ethical Culture Center, banging out the beat of irrepressible life. He would have loved it. His finest successor as editor of
New York
magazine, Adam Moss, gave a stirring tribute, embellished by images of Clay on a screen behind him. It was a rousing celebration of Clay's progeny: scores of writers, editors, art directors, photographers, journalism students, and the golden moment in American magazines.

AND THEN, THE VACANCY.

I returned to the Mashomac nature preserve on Shelter Island where Clay and I were inspired to change our lives. Finding the spot on the shoreline where the osprey nest was in sight, I sat quietly, eyes half closed, praying for the willingness to surrender my obstinate self-will. I couldn't play God to Mohm, to Maura, or to anyone else.

After a while, I felt a stirring. Raising my eyes, I saw a huge white-winged bird lift off its nesting pole and rise into the sky with a furious flapping of wings. Then, suddenly, it gave itself up to powerful air currents blowing in from the sound. Swept along, swooping and soaring, this great osprey seemed to trust in something unseen to allow it free flight. This must be what it means to “let go” to a power greater than oneself.

I TRIED TO THINK OF ONE GOOD THING
about being a widow: more closet space. I knew the worst thing about being a widow: five to seven
P.M
. Here are some things I did in the first year: Made pillow covers out of his cashmere sweaters so I could still lay my head next to him. Tickled my grandchildren. Reached out to my neighbors. At Christmas, I gave his unworn silk pocket squares to editors he admired—Graydon Carter, Byron Dobell, Robert Emmett Ginna.

“Shouldn't I be moving on to the next stage?”

The wise cancer therapist who had talked Clay and me through his journey fixed me with her gently mocking smile. “Move on?” said Ruth Bolletino. “You're not there yet.”

“Where am I?”

“You're in the agony of grief.”

It was a year and a half after Clay had died and I still didn't have the courage to feel the sorrow. Dr. Bolletino urged me to express my feelings by writing them in a stream of consciousness. “Feel it to heal it,” she said, apologizing for the trite motto. “If you don't go right through the middle of the pain, if you amputate it, cut off the feelings, or drink to numb them, the anger and resentment never go away. They fester. Unexpressed grief comes out as explosions of anger, or in a physical manifestation.”

“Hmmmm, I have shingles.”

She nodded sympathetically. “It takes a hell of a lot of energy to keep down the violent grief of loss.”

I had kept it down by throwing myself into work. After months spent developing a proposal for a book on family caregiving, I was invited to a dinner with AARP executives. I told them my idea for a series of caregiver diaries, blogs with video, portraying families in different stages of the journey. Emilio Pardo, the chief branding officer, was a veteran caregiver himself. He enthused, “We want your caregiver diaries and your stages—what do you need from us?”

AARP gave me just what I needed. A purpose. I was teamed up with a fast-acting film producer who had a wicked sense of humor and brought along a laid-back videographer who could edit with his eyes closed. We traveled the country for months to scout caregiving families with inspiring stories to tell about how they created their own circles of care. I offered them a framework for where they were in the journey. When it fit, it was reassuring to them. It felt like I might be coming back by giving back.

But once we returned to the hotel after a day's shooting, I would fight restlessness and boredom and eat too many Snickers bars. I tried to write in my journal. Too raw to bleed on paper. Not ready yet. Losing someone to whom you could pour out your soul leaves you alone with the silent screaming self-consciousness that is too much to bear. No tinsely party or sumptuous meal or self-indulgent shopping spree would blot up the seeping fear of being solitary forever. So much of grief, I decided, is raw fear.

Would there ever be happy times again? A tearless night? A rising from bed that was not a heroic act? Careless laughter? I would not join a grief group. I'd rather join a cheerful group. Dr. Bolletino, the cancer family specialist, was correct. I had to feel it to heal it, and the best way was to write out the feelings. I joined a playwriting workshop given by my friend Milan Stitt, a veteran playwright and teacher who ran the graduate playwriting program at Carnegie Mellon University. Theater has always been the church where I go to heal. Playwriting was a long-postponed passion. I wrote a play,
Chasing the Tiger
, about love and death, based on Clay and me. Many late nights I sat in the pillowed window seat of a coffee shop and let flow my feelings on paper, from icy to scalding. Writing absorbed them.

The first staged reading, in Lakeville, Connecticut, starred Jill Clayburgh and Ed Herrmann. Jill, a friend and superb actress who had starred in
Hustling
, portraying me. I didn't know at the time, nor did anyone outside of her family, that Jill herself was suffering from cancer. She gave a noble performance, her last stage appearance. Five months later, in November 2010, under the care of Dr. Sean Morrison, she died peacefully at home.

WHEN
PASSAGES IN CAREGIVING
was published, in May 2010, I gave my maiden speech on the subject at a party thrown by my publisher.

“You must be a saint!” exploded a woman whose husband had been faltering for some years after a stroke. “Didn't you ever feel angry or resentful or even secretly wish he'd die sooner rather than later?”

Of course I had. The widow was alerting me to be less preachy. I was no saint. I hate making this confession. After two years in the program, I had “slipped.” I'd like to blame my drinking problem on the book tour. After performing all day, I would wind up with a major speech at a town-hall meeting or a hospital fund-raiser. Audience response was a high. So was the intimacy of listening to people's stories while signing books. Then, suddenly, I was deposited at another strange hotel, hungry, tired, and lonely, greeted by a big gift basket of wine and cheese. So I would pour a glass to keep me company while I emptied my melancholy into a journal. Wine only made me more maudlin, so, of course, I needed another glass, and then another to put me to sleep. Four hours later, when the alcohol wore off, I would suddenly awake with a racing heart and fears stripped bare. Some model caregiver!

Gratefully, I rejoined my spiritual fellowship. My top priority every day would be to resist taking a drink. My sponsor met me for my confession and recommitment to the program. She admitted that, like me, she didn't believe that one drink, one step over the line, and you were lost. But the pattern was there. The behavior was recognizable. I was one of the lucky ones who found recovery before hitting bottom.

After the first month, the physical craving subsided. Gradually, my attitude toward alcohol changed. After six months, I didn't have to fight it. I felt almost giddy in ordering my new drink of choice, ginger ale. Once my drinking problem was removed, I found something even more wonderful about the program. It gave me a new outlook on life. I found so much more enjoyment in simple things, precious moments, lesser expectations. Going to meetings became essential to maintaining my well-being and learning humility. I thanked my Higher Power each morning for doing for me what I couldn't do for myself. And I got an answer! I printed it out and hung it over my morning mirror:

THE GREAT HEROISM OF A SOBER LIFE
is getting up in the morning and facing the day, greeting others, going out into the world with something to give. When we are in the grave of our own thoughts, feeling like we will never be able to crawl back out, our fingernails packed with dirt, how is it that sometime later we can be laughing, and laughing hard?

One morning in the fall of 2010, an early phone call shook me out of ruminating. The voice was blithe as a clash of cymbals. “Gail, dear Gail, lovely to hear your voice! Will you be having your Thanksgiving party this year?” It was our dear friend David Frost. The memory of our traditional party gave me a flush of pleasure, though I had planned no such thing. “David, leave it to you to push my button.”

Frostie must have sensed even across an ocean that I needed a kick in the pants. I promised to think about getting up a party in the country. But once I did, I was stung to remember that I no longer had a country house. I no longer had a country life. A fellow
Vanity Fair
writer, Michael Shnayerson, was a well-known host in Sag Harbor. It took only one phone call to set a plan in motion. Michael and I decided we would each call twenty people. I would try to summon the spirit to invite our old friends to another Saturday-night Thanksgiving soirée.

Boeuf Bourguignon sounded easy. Michael and I split the tasks. Shopping was my job, a delightfully tactile experience. Beef, butchered into exactly two-inch chunks, needed to be squeezed to judge its plumpness. Were the mushrooms firm enough to slice clean? Was the bacon smoked in applewood? The baby carrots fresh from the earth? Sniffing fresh rosemary, parsley, and thyme made me swoon. I bought the cognac and pinot noir to tart up the stew, planning to make my sober beef in a separate pot.

Michael was late returning from New England where he had to pick up his daughter from boarding school. The beef quivered in my hands as if eager for the pot. Only three hours until party time! I started heating the oil. When Michael arrived, we took turns tossing the meat into the deep fryer, squealing at the sizzle of fat. A fountain of fat sprayed to the floor. We kept at our task, twelve pounds of beef to be seared in hot oil, in single layers, slowly turned to brown on all sides. After an hour or so, the floor was becoming a puddle, cooling to the thickness of collagen.

I slid. Landing gently, I flailed around but couldn't get up. I coasted into Michael's shins. It brought him down, too. Not one of our feet could find a grip. Slipsliding on our bums like kids who shouldn't be left alone, we laughed, ridiculously, infectiously, unstoppably, but so good.

Friends arrived, faces I was famished to see after too long. Their precious idiosyncrasies endeared them to me more than ever. Tom Wolfe in his deliberately mismatched socks; Bina Bernard, who had shepherded me through the maze of Clay's rehabs and returns, on a health kick again; Steve Byers, a Montana writer proud of his Tom McGuane sensibility and wearing a cowboy hat.

To my surprise, Robert Emmett Ginna, my onetime editor at
Life
, appeared. I had invited him, but we hadn't seen each other since Clay's memorial. His red hair was whitened, but his crooked Irish smile was still ravishing. Showing up was a sign that he might be moving back into life himself after his wife's death seven years earlier.

Hours later after most guests had said their good-byes, I found Robert alone in the sitting room. We sat close. “How was the dinner?”

“Jolly,” he said.

“And the food?”

“You were the most delicious dish of the evening.”

This could easily be dismissed as a pickup line by a practiced party drunk. But coming from Robert, an entertaining storyteller but otherwise an impeccably correct and buttoned-up character, it was astonishing. He and Clay were old friends, having shared a cramped office at
Life
when they were both what Robert called “young cubs” breaking into print. Robert was a polymath, an art historian who became editor in chief of Little, Brown, who wrote and produced Hollywood films, and was a founding editor of three magazines,
Scientific American, Horizon
, and
People.
For the past twenty years he had been teaching creative writing, mostly at Harvard.