“I just want you to be happy.”
To imagine lunch now with my father, Joe Heller, it would have to be in spring. Unknowingly reacting to the blooming nature all around him, shoots pushing obstinately up even through the cracks in the city pavement, he was often softer, gentler in spring. Perhaps the tender buds unfurling all around him would somehow leech his own fiercely guarded tenderness to the surface—who knows?
We would meet, of course, at his favorite place: the old Union Square Café. The knowledge that a fuss is almost certainly going to be made about him there is something that he is hardly impervious to. He never was, and this time, he’s been gone since 1999.
When I arrive, he is standing outside, waiting for me. He looks healthy, tanned, his majestic crop of white leonine hair, which can easily be spotted from three blocks away, is still surprisingly impressive, like a crown resting atop his head. Both of our eyes fill with tears as we embrace each other, long and hard. “Let me look at you,” he says, stepping back just a bit. “You look so beautiful,” he says, his damp eyes taking me in. “Are you hungry? I am.” He chuckles a bit as we step inside.
Danny Meyer is at the front of the restaurant and rushes over to greet us personally, shaking my father’s hand with both of his. We’re seated, given menus, and Dad says, “I’m starving, and I know that we should order, but I just can’t believe we’re here. When I died, I certainly thought I’d never see you again, and it broke my heart.” He puts down his menu and takes one of my hands in his. We order, but first he requests his signature drink: a dry martini, straight up, with a twist. His eyes are bright with tears, with pride and, apparently, abundant love for me; this chameleon, who could always turn gruff and biting with a simple, quick, strategic verbal pirouette, seemingly in the space of a single breath.
Great quantities of oysters, pasta, and fish are brought to the table. I am too excited to eat, but he dives in robustly, making most of it disappear with his typical, legendary mealtime fervor. He has clearly caught me unawares, behaving so sweetly, so humbly, and so dear. He laughs, he chatters, he reminisces.
At some point coffee arrives, with a complimentary dessert from a beaming Mr. Meyer. We are talking about paradisiacal summers from long ago, on Fire Island, trips to Nathan’s in Coney Island. Suddenly he says, as if in a dream, “I miss her, too, you know,” and I know he’s talking about my mother, now long gone. A love story for thirty-eight years right up until the cataclysmic moment it wasn’t.
Toward the end of the lunch, Carl Bernstein, lunching with friends at a nearby table, strolls over and tells my father how wonderful it is to see him. My father proudly introduces me. “This is my daughter Erica, not just beautiful but brilliant, one hell of a writer.” Hours go by, but we are still lost in memories, in laughter, in this golden moment we both know won’t ever come again. Dessert, our sumptuous banana tart is but a memory, most of which I ate myself. The restaurant is now almost empty except for the waitstaff setting up quietly for dinner. The light outside is dimming. My father pays the check, stands with his customary grunt, leaves his tip on the table, takes out a Stim-u-Dent from a tiny pack in his coat pocket, sticks one firmly in his teeth, and says, “This is horrible. I never got to say goodbye to you before. Now I do and it’s even worse.” We step out into the crepuscular late afternoon. Again, we embrace. This time clinging like shipwrecked sailors saying their very last goodbyes.
A loud bus goes by, making his last words almost indiscernible. By now, I am sobbing. I believe he says, “More than anything else, I just want you to be happy. It’s really all I’ve ever wanted,” just before I lose him, as he walks slowly down the block, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, until he inevitably blends into the gloomy miasma of teeming rush-hour foot traffic.
I could swear that’s what he said, but of that I can never be certain.