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Today would have been Anita’s 54th birthday.
Its hard to have to deal with this so soon after her death, but really its no more horrible than any other day.
The weather is ghastly, work is fucked up, but none of it touches me because I’m already in a place so bad the rest of it is “in the noise.” That’s an expression from physics I guess, meaning something can’t be detected because its characteristic signal is insignificant compared to the background radiation.
I’ve really got nothing.
I went to work like normal, and everything seems automatic and slightly distant.
But after work I decided to take the girls out to dinner to celebrate their mom’s birthday, just as we know she would have wanted us to.
We had a little family tradition of at least feasting the birthday boy or girl with the dinner or restaurant of their choice. You might say the tradition has its origins in the days when we were kids, my mom used to let my brothers and me pick our favorite dinner on our birthdays. I used to pick spaghetti and meatballs. Its not about how difficult it was to make, that was just what I liked. And from time to time as grownups Anita and I would ask one another to make something, rather than opting to go out. My favorite of hers was Chicken Cordon Bleu.
I remember when she first tried that recipe. When we first started living together she couldn’t cook worth shit. I was a much better cooker than she was. She told me one time that was one of the things that attracted her to me — I grilled her some fresh trout and asparagus and stuff like that, and poured her a little wine. And she was like, “Oh. Nice!” Yep, that’s how it all got started.
That was way back in the day, when I marked the phases of my life by where I was living at that time. So that would have been my little apartment on Valley View. One day she dragged me out shopping at this weird little hole in the wall out in Addison called Tuesday Morning, because that was the only time it was open, like a couple of hours one weekday morning every three months or so, you found out by word of mouth, and if you knew about it, you could go in and grab all this overstocked crap. Everything was like 75% off, and then some. Just the kind of place Anita would have loved, and as for me, well, it was against my nature, but when you love someone… oh, who am I kidding? I hated it and complained the whole time even then. But even complaining and quarreling with Anita was fun, somehow. One good thing came of it though, we found this decent cookbook, complete with pictures and step by step instructions, for the complete idiot. We put it to the test: “what does par boil mean?” Success! This is the book for us.
And in that book we had many adventures in dining. Eventually, Anita became quite accomplished, but I always told her that I taught her how to cook. She was like “What?” And I said, I bought her that book, and so everything she learned in there, she got from me. And she’d laugh and kiss me. I really miss that laugh, especially from back when we were young and love was fresh. That’s a real thing there.
In that book somewhere there was this recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu, and it was a beaut. Anita eventually mastered it and it became her signature dish.
So Monica, Liz and I popped the cork on that champagne bottle, and went out to celebrate their mother’s spirit on the anniversary of her birth.
Anita and I had a more or less standing date Friday nights and in our latter years we settled down to a pretty regular routine. You might think it was boring, but you would be wrong. When the world is flinging all kinds of shit at you, retreating into the routine and familiar can be comforting and reassuring.
We would go out for dinner and a movie, talk about everything under the sun, laugh and make out in the theater like kids, and come home for a romantic evening in our little treehouse love shack.
Later on as we got older, and with all the entertainment choices at home it grew more and more difficult to justify the bother and expense of a movie out. Plus we were tired as shit come Friday night, so we’d just do dinner and watch a movie at home. We were pretty rigged out with the dvr, dvd rentals, or online. Too many choices, really. And then we had so much trouble agreeing on what to watch. She always wanted something focused on “feelings and relationships” and I wanted something thrilling with action and all that. Sound familiar?
One time we had some fun working through how someday we’d sit down and write the perfect combo — imagine a Tom Clancy action / spy thriller combined with a sexy, trashy romance. Anita loved historical, period elements like Jane Austen and the like. It is one of the toughest things for me to face the reality that dreams like that will never come true, not ever. It may never have come to pass anyway, but you always hold out that hope, that someday. But now we know for sure that that dream, the one where we worked together to create the perfect story will never be. Anita and I will never write that story — the perfect screenplay for the perfect date movie that fully satisfied both of us, and all other men and women just like us across the continent, among the couples out for looking for fun on their date night.
But maybe she’ll still be here with me, and guide me as my muse, and someday I will make it happen out of sheer force of will, something like what we imagined. If she does, I swear, I’ll give her top credit.
So, not only did Anita and I have a standing date, it was always the same one. The parameters changed slightly over the years. We’d go to our current favorite place, and we’d order the same thing every time. At first, it involved babysitters, and our place was a little hole in the wall called La Dolce Vita. It was run by this cute little old Italian couple, who grew their own herbs right there on the patio, and you could hear them chattering to one another in Italian in and around the kitchen. But one day we dropped by and they were gone, so we had to move on.
In recent years it was always sushi. I remember she hated even the idea of it at first. I said “c’mon, try it.” But originally she just ordered tempura, and watched me eat my tuna or whatever, and turn up her nose. Then I won her over, and ultimately, she was committed. She loved it as much as I did. That’s our life together in a nutshell. We won each other over, until we’re pretty much in agreement on everything that matters. Can I get a witness?
Actually, that reminds me of another of our first times together, dinner and a movie, and the morning after the first night I stayed over at her shitty little apartment down on Park Place. Man, that place was a dump! It was a shambles and her couch was a wreck, it was stained and I think it had fleas, and her mattress was laying on the floor, but wow! What a night! Never mind that, but in the morning I took her out to breakfast, and at one point became aware she was just sitting there watching me eat. I was ravenous, and ate too fast, like some kind of animal. And she just looked at me and asked herself, what is this? That’s what love is, people.
Lately, Anita and I had been frequenting a place called Nagoya, because it was pretty good, and a good value, and if you asked just the right way, they’d pop a bottle and pour you champagne by the glass.
But Monica, Liz and I went to another place, just because. We paused out in the parking lot to observe a really dramatic sunset sky as a very rare thunderstorm broke through the area. Very rare these days, as we’re in a pretty serious drought. We hung out in the parking lot, and watched the gathering clouds, menacing and dark, turn lavender and gold and salmon, and then a firerworks display of cloud to cloud lightning lit the sky and etched shadows on our retinas. Meanwhile, I regaled the kids with stories of how I met their mother, and other recollections and adventures from those days.
How our mutual friend Leo Dour journeyed down from New York to try one last time to win Debbie’s heart. Debbie was Anita’s roommate and best friend, and they were all buds back in college. Leo came to Dallas to woo Debbie, and he had to look me up, and why not, I was available, why not be his wing man, and make a foursome and we went out on a double date. That’s how we met.
And there’s lots more story to tell there, that will have to wait for another day.
But the girls and I had a fine time, and a proper celebration. And when we came home, Liz cranked up some jams, and we all turned on our computers. That’s the new mode, even when Anita was still with us: four people, four computers. Everybody doing their own thing. But it was kind of cozy in a way, like I imagine back in the day, but punctuated by the clicking of keyboards, or music, or the sounds of computer games or youtube or whatever.
For some reason I hadn’t opened up this one laptop we had laying around until just then, and when I did, there was a window open that told me Anita had been the last person to use it. She had finished one of her favorite games, and left the high score up like a hard won trophy. Word games and crosswords had become a compulsion for her lately, and this particular one was called “Text Twist.”
I stood there, as Rage Against the Machine blew out of my amp, covering me over with sound like an ocean wave, and I could not bring myself to close that stupid window. Finally I broke down in tears, a worthless piece of crap.
Then we huddled up a little bit, and I came to a new awareness that I was being kind of selfish. I knew my girls were dealing with their own grief, even as they’re concerned, and were trying to take care of me. They’re mature young women now, but I was still their father, their only parent, and they’re still looking to me to set an example. And all that overwhelmed me even more, and we all just sat there stewing, while I sobbed, out of tears, but still perfectly miserable.