Striped Shirts
& Epitaphs
* * *
On the May night I met Alberto, I had confessed that 2005 was my first year without a valentine—and I was still bitter about it. A few weeks later, he flew me to New York for our second date and a huge bouquet of red roses was staged in his living room. A handwritten card had asked me to be his valentine.
But on our first February 14th, I discovered that Alberto didn’t actually subscribe to Valentine’s Day.
I don’t need Hallmark telling me when to say I love you, he had scoffed.
Everyone in his office, as well as most people I encountered in New York City, shared his hostility toward the holiday.
Must be an East Coast thing, I thought, and bought him a gag valentine card that was two feet tall and sent an arrangement to his office. Alberto was mildly amused but didn’t reciprocate.
The following year I scheduled his flowers to arrive on February 13th, along with a card asking him to be my anti-valentine. He did not acknowledge the gesture.
The last two years, I skipped the flowers and sent love notes to the office without any expectation. On Valentine’s Day 2009, we had morning sex, read the Times in bed, and he asked if I’d be into the Calder exhibit at the Whitney?
Hells to the yeah.
After an hour or so among the whimsy that is Alexander Calder, we headed to La Esquina for brunch and back home for a movie.
Since my anti-valentine is missing this year, I’ve been invited to no shortage of Lonely Heart parties tonight. But between now and then are eight hours of meltdown opportunities, so I decide to distract myself by making valentines for New York City.
I flip through magazines I’ve ignored this year and use a heart-shaped candy box as a pattern trace. With Alberto’s bitten-on Sharpie, I write words like Remember and YES and give it away. Gayson meets me downstairs and we set out to graffiti-heart lampposts, walls, and trees in front of places that hold meaning for me. The throngs of post-brunch, handholding couples don’t sting as sharply with a gay at your side and paper hearts in your hand.
* * *
The morning after Valentine’s Day, I receive a letter via concierge.
It’s from a man I recently met at church. He remembered my reference to living on 23rd and Tenth and apologizes for his forthrightness, but he’d like to see me again and would I please give him a call?
I’m a little uneasy about being tracked down, but I’m also intrigued.
Well done, Sherlock, I say when he answers on the second ring.
Stephen laughs and tells me he figured I lived in a doorman building so he picked the biggest one on the block.
When are you free for dinner, he asks.
I review my mental schedule—a movie with my cousin tomorrow, Hilda in town on Wednesday—and tell him it’s either tonight or next—
Tonight’s great, he interrupts.
We agree to meet at eight at Sushi on Hudson.
Over dinner, I learn that Stephen tangos. Speaks six languages. Has lived all over the world. Cooks and plays violin. Is comfortable in his own skin and his faith in God.
He asks me questions, listens to my answers, calls me luminous.
As we’re pulling on coats after dinner, he takes me off guard with a kiss.
It starts out light, exploratory.
Then his hand finds my hair and tugs it.
I reflexively bite his lip.
He replies by enveloping my mouth, scraping my chin with whiskers.
I do not want it to end.
When it does, he says he can’t remember the last time he had a kiss like that.
I do not say mine was eleven months and one day ago.
* * *
All night I dreamed of shooting waterfalls with Alberto’s camera, trying to apply a technique I learned in a photography seminar last weekend. In the dream, I kept changing the shutter speeds and comparing results, wishing I’d taken the class before I went to Iguazu.
Today, I bring out his Nikon and change the lens. I adjust the ISO according to my notes and snap a few manual shots. Too much light. I change the F-stop and the results are worse. I adjust the settings until the result is something Alberto wouldn’t hate and head outside to spend the day shooting NYC in a snowstorm.
* * *
Since Hilda is staying with me, I informed Stephen that I’d be off the grid for thirty-six hours and would get in touch tomorrow.
In that timeframe, he’s called three times and sent a dozen text messages.
The texts include phrases like thinking of you and have missed you.
We’ve had exactly one date.
I don’t know if Stephen is needy or high maintenance, but his seeming inability to give me space reminds me of Alberto. And I have not missed the constant checking-in he required from me.
But since I might be projecting and since Stephen isn’t clairvoyant, I email him after Hilda leaves:
This level of correspondence—I did mention I’d be entertaining my late husband’s mother, no?—is off-putting. I’m open to seeing you maybe once a week and sprinkling that absence with a text or two, but that’s all I can promise until I return from Cuba.
He replies to say that he “likes me” and he’s “not as high maintenance” as I might think. He’s always been the “giver” in relationships and has gotten used to “women only knowing the role of taker.” He thanks me for explaining my perspective and agrees to slow the pace to whatever level I wish.
* * *
Leaving Revolución tonight, I hear the low strains of Los Lobos playing on Alberto’s computer. I wait for the elevator and glance around the lobby: at the wall of now-dusty industry awards, at the rearranged Eames furniture that’s been rearranged, at the conference-room shelf that’s been broken for a few months.
It occurs to me that Alberto really doesn’t live here anymore.
This place he helped build no longer contains him. It’s a place that continues without him. And for the first time in eleven months, the realization comes without bitterness.
* * *
It’s Saturday morning and Stephen calls me on his way to the fishmonger to buy a piece of flounder as big as a doormat. Afterward, he’ll be picking up fresh bread for his breakfast.
I’m still in bed with my second latté, third cigarette, and the Times spread around me like a pop-culture quilt.
Would you like to meet up tomorrow? he asks.
Sure, I say. Maybe brunch somewhere in the Village?
I’m not much of a brunch person, he explains.
Not much of a brunch person?
I mean, I could try it, he says, unconvincingly.
No, no, I say. We can do Sunday night if you’d prefer.
I’d rather it be earlier than later—say 6:30.
I cannot remember the last time I ate dinner at 6:30.
My grandparents eat dinner at 6:30.
How old is this guy?
In terms of deal-breaking statements, I’m not much of a brunch person and dinner at 6:30 seem like silly reasons to disqualify a fellow. But they leave such a bad taste in my mouth that I cancel my date tomorrow with Stephen via text message.
* * *
Skipped church to avoid Stephen and went to the gym instead. As I’m leaving Equinox, my phone chimes with an invitation from Sharon to brunch at Kingswood.
Thank God for brunch people, I reply. See you in ten.
Despite my non-brunch outfit and lack of makeup, I grab a cab and meet her in the West Village. Somewhere between our mimosas and girl talk, I step outside for a smoke and scroll through unread Facebook messages. After months of silence, there’s one from the Aussie announcing that he’s on my side of the pond this week. He makes a few poker references that are over my head and says he will beam if I get in touch.
I’m ambivalent about getting in touch.
I was game to meet him a few months ago in London, but he never replied when I reached out. Plus, isn’t it Lent? And didn’t I swear off sex for forty days?
I do not reply.
* * *
Did you get my message? the smart, scratchy accent asks.
Yes, I say.
Read it aloud, the Aussie says.
As I recite it, he translates the poker metaphors to English, line by line.
He stops me after I read this bit of garbled phrasing: “so time and time again, on a Saturday . . . well, like its my theatre, i walk all over the sky with her. 4 why not? eh?”
Did you understand all that? he says, excitedly.
Not an effing word, I reply.
I was asking you to meet me in the amphitheatre at the High Line yesterday! I was there and if you’d shown up, he says, I’d have married you straightaway.
The Aussie’s hyperbole makes me laugh, whereas Stephen’s most recent text about hoping to one day know me completely and unconditionally makes me cringe.
Tonight I change Stephen’s contact name to “Stage Five Clinger” and vow to be less specific with strangers about where I live.
Other than the erratic Aussie, Stephen will be my last distraction until next fall, when I’ll meet an extraordinarily gifted pastel artist, courtesy of a service disruption on the C train. He will take me to gallery openings, ignite my fire for Indian food, and add one thousand new songs to my iPod. I will wake up beside him so often that I’ll no longer be the girl who checks men’s pulses in a morning panic. We will part ways after a ten-month run but remain friends who occasionally make out.
* * *
Less than halfway through today’s pre-Cuba errands, I’m in a bitter New York state of mind.
I can’t stand to see another couple sharing an umbrella in the falling snow or linking fingers on the train, so I splurge on a midtown taxi. Inside a warm cab, the Indian driver surprises me with a gushing appreciation for the fabric of his daily life. I listen to him describe how his two-year-old dances like a hopping robot when he watches television and how not even weather like this keeps New Yorkers indoors and how much he likes the computer app that enables him to watch TV programs from all over the world. I tip him extra for doing what I’ve been unable to do all day: get out of my own self-absorbed head for ten minutes.
I knock out the remainder of errands and walk home to change before meeting the Aussie at Soho House. Smoking is now forbidden in the billiard room, so after a bottle of champagne, we slip into a cab and exchange the pool table at the House for a hotel-room shower at Sixty Thompson.
The sex is the kind you can’t wait to have, but twenty minutes into it—when you realize there’s no orgasm in your immediate future—you’re content with a drink, a laugh, and a smoke.
I’d forgotten that the Aussie is a fan of hypothetical questions like if you could live and die like anyone in history, who would it be? And if you could fuck anyone famous who would it be? And oh, on your epitaph, what would your family write vs. what would you write?
I’m no good at these questions—the better answer usually comes to me a day later—but I did help my parents design my brother’s headstone, so I give it a go:
(family version)
THERRESA “TRÉ” CLAIRE MILLER-RODRÍGUEZ
March 6, 1975 - ?
Beloved Daughter, Faithful Friend, Devoted Wife, Loving Sister
“This is the Part in the Movie When . . . I Wait for You Here.”
Goodness and loving kindness followed me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalms 23:6)
(my version)
“TRÉ” THERRESA MILLER RODRÍGUEZ
March 6, 1975 - ?
Darling Daughter, Delightful Friend, Wonderful Wife
“Life is a festival only to the wise.”—Emerson
And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world.(Matt. 28:20)
At dawn in a downtown hotel room, this unlikely exercise gives me yet another reason to appreciate cremation: one day I may decide to bury the remainder of Alberto’s ashes and write his epitaph, but today?
Today is not that day.
* * *
In early evening, the Aussie calls me en route to JFK.
I enjoyed seeing you again, he says. And on my next trip, let’s try it sober.
His next trip will not be to New York. It will be to Thailand, where he’ll drunk-dial me and ask me to join him for the week.
I will have just returned from Cuba and I’ll laugh before saying what I’ve learned to say to men I hardly know who ask me to fly across the world on a whim: Darling, if you leave the arrangements to me, I probably won’t get to it. However, if there’s a plane ticket in my email, I will be on the flight.
Text me your passport number, he says.
Two days later, a travel itinerary appears in my inbox: round-trip to London next week.
Bangkok was too complicated, he writes, so I booked us at Soho House in the countryside. Join me—eh?
Into the laundry go my Cuba clothes and out of the closet come London-in-spring outfits. Can’t quite bring myself to open the lingerie drawer, but I stare at my satin Agent Provocateur robe folded over a hanger.
See the embroidered “AP” on the pocket? Alberto had said when I opened the box. It really stands for “Alberto’s Property.” Now let me see you in it.
Wearing Alberto’s Property for someone else is unsettling, but if not now, when?
Will it ever be appropriate to wear these things for someone else?
I decide to bring the robe, and try not to overthink the significance of this trip—exactly thirteen months after Alberto’s death—but as I’m stepping into the shower the morning of my flight, the phone rings.
Are you my wake-up call, I tease.
Turn on the news, the Aussie commands.
Ten-four, I say. What’s up?
There’s a volcano in Iceland, he says, slowly.
And?
All flights in and out of the UK—and Europe—are grounded.
Kiss my ash, Iceland, I say with disbelief, but CNN’s Breaking News banner confirms his words. British Airways’ Web site is urging all passengers to wait until their flights are confirmed before heading to the airport.
It will be a few hours before I accept that I’m not flying to the UK today. And a few weeks before I realize my flight will never be confirmed because all volcano-disrupted travel had to be rescheduled within ninety-six hours of cancellation.
I will remove the Agent Provocateur robe from my suitcase and spend the day unpacking London. Each time I walk past Alberto’s 8x10 portrait, I will shake my head.
A volcano? Really? You couldn’t arrange something a bit more—dramatic?
* * *
Tonight is the thirtieth birthday party of Kerri, Revolución’s singing PR director, at a suite in the Waldorf. I go alone—but with a good blowout and the necklace I wore in Río for New Year’s. Her fabulous friends keep asking exactly how we know each other through Revolución—when did you work there? which department?—so I finally admit that I was married to one of Kerri’s bosses. Which satisfies some, but not all.
You’re married to Fico?
No, the . . . other one.
Oh my God! You’re THAT Tré!
Even though I am that Tré, tonight I do not feel like the white elephant in the hotel suite. Which is why I stay for more champagne and dancing before folding myself into a cab early enough to attend church tomorrow.
* * *
A year ago today, there was snow on the ground as we drove to St. Claire’s Parish in Jersey for his goddaughter’s christening.
I’m scrolling through the baptism photos when an email forwarded by Hilda comes in.
It’s from her friend, Mercy, who’s invited us to her Havana home, one of the places Alberto stayed on his trip to Cuba.
My home is his home because he was like family, Mercy writes. And even though I’ll be in Spain when you’re here, please spread some of Alberto in the garden.
I will talk to him all the time, she promises. And it will be a place where you can always feel his presence.
* * *
Of all that I consider to be Alberto’s Legacy, the gift with the most profound impact on me is the maxim he lived by: Do the thing you are most dreading. And do it now.
He took this concept out of the ether and applied it to his daily life.
As in, don’t procrastinate or bury your head in the sand about your finances, deadlines, promises, or goals. Write To-Do Lists often. Complete them swiftly. As a result, the man lived fearlessly and presently. Lived each day as if it really was his last.
His approach does not come naturally to me. In fact, I often resented his questions about where I was at with X project or Y goal or Z task.
But lately, his mantra has begun to organically root itself in my world.
After all, what is there to dread?
What the ever-loving fuck could daunt me more than pall-bearing my husband at thirty-four years old?
Do it now.
Doing it now is becoming my clear and present answer to everything.
Today, it buoys me out of bed to write a To-Do List on the bathroom mirror with a dry-erase pen. Lines full of things that would’ve daunted me six months ago, a year ago, four years ago. Things I’d usually put off until the eleventh hour.
Do the thing you are most dreading. And do it now.
* * *
I’m doing the thing I’m most dreading.
I’m packing for Cuba and deciding what to wear on the Ides of March.
I keep thinking this will get easier.
It just gets less immediate.
* * *
Mom, do you have a minute?
I was just packing for New York, she says. What’s up?
Can I run a few ideas for your visit past you? I haven’t bought tickets or made any reservations yet.
Yeah, good call. What’s the plan?
There’s a Cuban orchid show at New York Botanical Gardens and a few of my friends want to take us to dinner before my birthday. There’s Sunday service in Brooklyn at Pastor Weinbaum’s church. Brent and Quiana want to join us for St. Patty’s Day parties in Hoboken on my actual birthday. And the big one: putting Alberto’s walk-in closet into storage.
It sounds like a lot, she admits.
Too much? I ask.
We’ll be spreading it out over six days, right?
Yes, I say. I’ll try not to exhaust—or exasperate—you this time around.
* * *
At Revolución today, Fico greets me and my mom with hugs. As I nudge Raquel out of Alberto’s chair to launch Arturo Sandoval, I overhear Fico telling my mom what he’s planning for March 15th.
It’s on a Monday and we’re closing the office, he explains. We’re going to spend the day doing things that remind us of Alberto: go to the MoMA, see a live Cuban band, hit one of his favorite restaurants, drink Chivas and mojitos.
I swivel around in Alberto’s chair. You’re making March 15th an office holiday?
Yes, he says.
Really?
Yes, he nods.
You do know how delighted he would be to have a holiday declared in his honor?
I think I do, Fico says, grinning.
* * *
It’s my birthday.
No one brought me café con leché in bed this morning.
I’m not in Connecticut.
It’s not 2009.
Don’t how to do today without him, but the birthday wishes posted on my Facebook Wall are rallying me out of my pity party and toward the parade across the river. Brent and Quiana accompany me and Mom on the train to a post-parade party in Hoboken. Between gold trumpets and green beer, my girlfriends lift my sprits with surprise cupcakes and a room of singing strangers.
But when Mom and I get home, I surrender to the tears I’ve been fighting all day.
I just want this day to be over already, I sob. And tomorrow? Storing Alberto’s closet?
No picnic either.
We’ll do it together, she says, gently. Don’t think about it now.
* * *
When I packed up my brother’s closet, I gave certain articles of clothing to his friends. It was meaningful for me and Phil’s friends seemed to appreciate it, so I’ve written down the measurements of Alberto’s out-of-state friends and packed boxes of striped shirts accordingly. In shifts this afternoon, I invited the locals into his closet.
The walk-in was the last bastion of Alberto in our apartment and it’s been reduced to five industrial-size storage bins packed away in Manhattan Mini-Storage. Standing inside his empty closet with its bare shelf units, I’m stunned by the realization that he’s really not coming back for any of it.
* * *
My mom is on a plane back to California with Alberto’s shoes because my dad happens to wear the same size.
My luggage is out, filled with the 66 lbs. allowed per person by Cuban customs.
A final meeting with my lawyers took place today and I signed four copies of the buy-out agreement prepared by Revolución’s attorney. I messengered our 2009 tax documents to the accountant. Cleaned Alberto’s Hasselblad lenses, charged the spare batteries for his SLR, and packed them beside notes from my camera seminar. I’ve hidden several bags of Alberto’s ashes inside a hollow red monkey statue, hoping to avoid confiscation by a government that regards ash-scattering as illegal pollution.
In other words, a whole lot of distraction dressed up as accomplishments.
* * *
After all the dreading, all the planning, this day is finally here.
I pray my way to the airport, asking God to give me what I need because I don’t know what that is.
Peace? Wisdom? Strength? Comfort?
All of the above?
But between New York and Miami, I get something I don’t need: a cold.
Hilda plies me with lemon tea and honey, covers me with blankets, insists I stay with her. I nod gratefully and postpone my check-in at the W for a few days.
* * *
Friday the thirteenth was one year ago today, and I’d taken Alberto to Fico’s doctor for a physical on my lunch hour. His knee was giving him trouble, ditto for his right shoulder. Plus, he was forty and we agreed that complete check-ups are something forty-year-olds do.
After examining him, taking blood, and performing an EKG, the doctor had given him a clean bill of health. He’d said what we expected: Lose some weight, get more exercise, stay away from cigarettes.
On our way to lunch afterward, Alberto had texted Barby and Fico: Looks like I’ll live after all!
Forty-eight hours later, they both stood in our kitchen, showing me this message on their phones, the same look of disbelief in their eyes.
* * *
Hilda? Since when have you had a white elephant in your living room?
What white elephant?
The one under your coffee table, I answer.
Oh. That. My mother bought it when she lived in New Jersey, maybe thirty years ago. She brought it on the plane to Miami and gave it to me as a gift.
Why is it facing backward?
It’s good luck to put its ass toward the door.
Good luck, huh.
I stare it down.
Can I take you to see the table, she asks. The one I told you about?
The table is where she plans to place a small trunk of Alberto’s mementos and the ashes I’ve given her this morning.
I’m ready if you are, I answer.
The store is a half-block away and filled with Middle Eastern and retro American furniture. The Cuban storeowner is heavily made-up and dressed for cocktails at eleven in the morning. She greets us in Spanish, takes my hand, kisses my cheeks.
A small furry face suddenly peeks out from her cleavage, blinks at me.
Is that . . . a monkey? I stammer.
Yes, Hilda says. It’s a mini-mono.
The monkey blinks at me again before diving between breasts and disappearing into folds of fabric.
Hilda motions for me to follow and as we walk through the store, she asks if I know this shop used to be the headquarters for El Patria, Alberto’s father’s newspaper?
I stop walking.
You mean, when you met him, the newspaper was here?
Sí, that black-and-white picture of Albert as a baby, the one where he’s reaching for the stars, was taken right where you are standing.
The white elephant, the monkey, and now the table for his ashes found at his father’s old office?
What do you think of the table, Nené?
I laugh.
I don’t have to see the table, Mumu. I already know it’s the right one.