All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(40)

He gave me very specific instructions on how best to get to his office from the Boston airport. I followed them to a T, but showed up to an empty office.

I threw down a heavy black messenger bag, jam-packed with underwear and cables of all sorts. It was the first time that I’d stood in an office that my father could call his own. His cube at the Times was a mess of books and papers. At home, he preferred to be outside on that screened-in porch that he often shared with the dog. I gazed at a couple of notes taped to the wall and wondered about their significance. I saw an ad for his upcoming class, and something colorful jumped out at me in the corner of my eye: a vat of jelly beans near the front of his desk. He never struck me as a candy sort of professor. Later on, after he died, I asked Madeline what that was all about:


Me: Do you remember why Dad had candy on his desk? Kind of a Willy Wonka move, no?

MC: Hmm, he had it on his desk because he wanted to seem approachable.

Me: Approachable?

MC: I tried to inform him that jelly beans were the wrong move.

Me: What would have been the right move?



I heard his footsteps and tried to look busy. “There you are!” I got up to hug him, and in that moment, I felt a distance between us. I tried to quickly swat it away as I looked at him and asked for the Wi-Fi password.

We ambled over to his classroom. The desks were arranged in a hospitable square that made it clear everyone was welcome to participate. The students looked like me, if not older, and I felt the imposter syndrome creeping in. Why am I here?

After some chitchat, he introduced me. He outlined my résumé, and even mentioned my secret, that I had just finished directing my first feature documentary for HBO: “I like her but I’m a bit biased; she is my kid.”

I blushed at this intro. I knew he meant for it to come off as charming, but it made me feel small. Like a kid. I shook it off and launched into how to find and execute stories for the Web and network. I found my groove, keeping an eye on him to sense how he felt about what I was saying. We argued about the pros and cons of using an iPhone to tell a story. His students jumped in, and we tried not to talk over them. I do not believe an iPhone is a substitute for a camera. He disagreed vehemently, saying that an iPhone is a tool many people have access to, and that I was being a snob.

When the class and banter were over, the kids lined up to ask me more questions. I fished business cards out of my messenger bag, careful to keep the Hanes underwear out of sight, though perhaps those were the perfect counterpoints to the snobbery charge. We headed to my dad’s form of organized religion, the coffeehouse.

As we walked, I listened to his ragged breathing. When will he stop smoking? He looked different, older. Something welled up inside me. My superhero looked a bit worse for wear. He looked suddenly mortal.

I sat down and waited for him to begin. Being quiet was new for me. My dad sensed the change.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

He had a cold so he headed back to the Buck (his nickname for the Hotel Buckminster in Kenmore Square), and I wandered the streets by myself. Later I crept back into the hotel and to my bed in the suite; it felt weird that we had to sleep in the same room. I heard him cough over and over again and wished I could put on Gilmore Girls to help me sleep.

The next morning, as was typical for us, the pendulum had swung again, and we talked easily. We rose early, around 5:45, to catch the Acela back to New York. We sat next to each other. I felt how I felt when I was a kid, excited to spend time with him and his fascinating brain.



* * *



—

Looking back, I get lost in these moments. Is the push-pull normal in any parent-kid relationship? I want to grab and shake my former self for being angry with my dad. I felt the tension of being both his kid and his mentee, one relationship always in conflict with the other. I saw his ambition and competitiveness up close and was disturbed by what they both did to his body. I was concerned by his appearance, the cigarette breaks he took…and now I’m haunted by my inability to say, just once, “Those will kill you. Please stop.”



     Digital communication was great, but nothing beat the real thing that traveling together allowed us.



I could never say anything like that to him. He didn’t allow for it. Now, all I am left with are photos and emails. But what do they say?





23


    The Experiment





In the weeks after my trip to Boston, I felt a shift within me taking place. I had managed to pull off nine months of sobriety, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stick with it. Was I really an alcoholic?

I had finished up production on Thought Crimes, my Cannibal Cop film, and no longer had a frantic schedule to structure my sobriety around. For months, I had been in hustle mode. Wake up, drink coffee, type for ten hours, watch a film, pass out. That fall, in an effort to educate myself, I made a list of all the documentary films I needed to watch in order to assist with the edit of my first feature. I became obsessive, always saying no to hanging out with friends because I had “work to do.”

Truthfully, being around other people made me feel jealous. I hated going to dinner and watching those around me casually order wine. I would stare at the beads of sweat that formed around the wine glass and feel my mouth water. I despised that moment just before they decided whether to order one more, looking to me for approval, “Of course, have another!” During dinner, my friends’ eyes would get a little darker and their laughter a little louder. A couple of times, they would repeat themselves. And all the while I am thinking, When the fuck can I get out of here?