Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(34)

Glancing across the crowded gallery, I thanked Anthony for including me in the show. I noticed a line forming at the entrance to my room. “I think my parents are hogging all the space,” I said. “God, maybe I should take them out for dinner.”

Just then, Anthony, always so well groomed and composed, shot an alarmed look in the direction of my room. “You’re kidding, right?” He stared at me. “Your parents are here? How are they . . . going to, you know, react?”

I had the sudden sensation of waking up out of a dream. After so much insight in the editing suite, I’d somehow gone completely numb again in those remaining weeks before the exhibition, focused as I was on the formal and technical aspects of the piece. I’d done an even cleaner edit and hired a technical assistant to help me with the wiring of the piece in the gallery. Alone in the editing room, I’d been overcome with horror at my family’s collective dissociation from its own demise, only then to end up feeling nothing at all. I’d forgotten that stark epiphany, bottled it up as I’d always done, creating an emotional debt to be paid later.

“It’s nothing they don’t already know,” I told Anthony, more evenly than I felt now. “They lived it, right?”

He gave me a concerned look. “It’s just . . . your brothers’ monologues are so honest, you know? Everyone makes statements you’d imagine might be . . . just a little too painful for the others to hear.”

“I guess that’s my role in the family: can opener for the can of worms!” But I wondered if I’d opened something I shouldn’t have.

Anthony laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, good luck,” he said. “And keep going, you hear me?”


I listened to every tape until it repeated,” said my mother. “I stood right next to the TV screens so I could hear everything.”

“Not me,” said my father gruffly. “Stick with photography, Frances. That’s my advice.”

My parents were staying at the Stanyan Park Hotel in the Haight, just across from Golden Gate Park. It was one of the many ways in which they still operated as a couple, traveling together, staying at the same hotel.

I took Fell Street from Zuni, where we’d had dinner, up to the Haight. A crowd had gathered in the Panhandle, en circling a string of bongo players as they danced wildly to the discordant rhythms. With all the whirling tie-dye and dreadlocks, the scene had the feel of a Grateful Dead concert. I turned to my mother in the front seat. “Did you hear Charlie say he wants to come home for Christmas this year?”

“I heard that,” she said tentatively. “He looks like the devil, though, doesn’t he? He’s not taking good care of himself.”

“He’s a goddamn drunk!” trumpeted my father from the backseat.

I turned left onto Stanyan Street. The cherry-blossom trees in the park were flowering, the grass underneath them covered in pale-pink petals. The drifters and street people had gathered into clusters, some wrapped in old blankets, talking amiably in the last of the April light. The rough, red skin of these homeless people reminded me, of course, of Charlie.

“It’s his last stop,” I said.

“Whose?” asked my mother.





Lifting Off





FRISK BOTTLE, 1995

(by Frances Stroh)





London, 1995


My friends and I walked up the King’s Road in the light September rain, headed for the 606 Club. We’d been drinking martinis at my new flat as a housewarming, the gin still dry on my tongue. I savored the rain pelting us, pelting the pavement.

“It’s down this way,” I said, turning onto Lots Road. Smoke-stained brick warehouses ran all the way down to the Thames. A crowd had gathered in front of an unmarked building. Supper club jazz floated up the stairs from the basement. We got in line.

“I never knew about this place,” said Hari. Charismatic, with movie-star looks, Hari was studying acting in London for a couple of years. We’d been friends back in San Francisco.

“It’s a hidden gem,” said my new friend Nino, paying for the tickets. He wore slicked back hair and a boxy suit from the forties. “Members only.” We’d met at Camden Market, where Nino sold me a vintage dining table and chairs for my flat.

Camilla, Hari’s tipsy red-haired girlfriend, slid her arm through his and smiled. “It’s lovely,” she said.

I’d been out every night for a solid month since arriving in August, raging on adrenaline ever since I’d been awarded a Fulbright for a year of study in London to complete my Master of Fine Arts. With the ascension of the Young British Artists—stars like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin—London was the epicenter of the art world. Some days I had Imposter Syndrome, unable to believe my good fortune. Then I reminded myself I was here to begin my life anew, put the past behind, and launch my career as an international artist. This was where I would make my name. Who knew? I might never return to the States.

Inside the smoke haze of the 606 Club, we were given a table near the stage. The keyboardist jammed while the female vocalist sang with a voice rather like Billie Holiday’s. The guitarist hummed the chords as he played. Nino ordered a round of drinks.

“Watch the guitarist closely,” he said seductively into my ear. “It’s like he’s making love to those strings, right?”