Beauty Dish

Saturday, April 16, 2005

A Death is a Beginning
My first day in London seemed thirty-seven hours long. Part of the drag was jet lag, and the rest was a mixture of unyielding cigarette odor and culture shock. I come from a place of sun-kissed non-smoker surfer types, people who drink skinny lattes under nature's sky, people who keep to themselves and don't speak to strangers. As an Avon Lady, I'm an anachronism. I know how to pull a brochure from my purse and hand it to a woman reaching for her double espresso mocha while complimenting her on her handbag. But London was strange, more urbane than New York City, full of chain smoking regulars ready to run you down with opinion and sarcastic wit.
Saturday night. Should be Friday night, I thought, I lost a day through travel. I tried to read the "Tube" subway map posted on a wall outside my hotel, but the eight colors of track and odd sounding locations confused me. My destination was the West End, the West End, where's the West End? It didn't show on the map, so I flagged down a slow moving old man and pointed to the sprawl of transportation.
"Excuse me! How do I get to the West End?" I paused for effect and cleared my throat. "I'm American, and I'm totally lost." The man's left hand held the one-inch remnants of an unfiltered cigarette. He blew dark haze in my face and let loose with a Welsh-slanted torrent of language I couldn't understand. It didn't even sound English, though I knew it somehow was, so I grinned and thanked him and headed down the dark stairs toward the ticket booth. My purse held a ticket to Chicago, the musical, and as I stomped down the stairs I listened to the echo of my boots and the ricochet of British conversation off the dingy cement walls. A flood of people rushed around me, sure of their destination, and I breathed with relief as the ticket man pulled a small Tube map from a desk display and marked my route with yellow highlighter.
I made it through the night rhythm of underground tracks, past the street performers eating fire and juggling around the glass angles of Covent Garden to the West End, to the massive theatre covered in twenty meter tall billboards advertising Chicago, handed over my ticket and found my seat. The show was awesome; funny and loud and bawdier than I expected, and I clapped and sang along with the rest of the audience. It seemed to be an international crowd. I heard the southern drawl of a woman from Georgia, perhaps, or Alabama, and more foreign accents than I have ever heard in one location. French, Italian, Spanish, everyone loved Chicago. The curtain rose for intermission, and I rose, too, like the rest of the crowd, ready to pour into the streets for a pint at the pub across the street. But a woman's voice poured over the loudspeaker, a voice wavering, emotional.
"His Holiness, Pope John Paul II has just died. We will take an additional half hour intermission."
People just stopped moving, breathing, thinking. It was as if someone unplugged our theatre, unplugged our life support along with it, and I watched an older woman in the row ahead of me move her hand up to her mouth in surprise and sadness.
I didn't return for the second half of the show. I don't know if Roxy makes it out of prison, don't care, really. I opened my Tube map and walked back to my hotel in the cool air, remembered my years as a Catholic child, my first communion and confession and confirmation, the ways the Church government my family's life, the difficulty I had leaving the Church, the disappointment I had with it now as the mother of a gay child, as a woman. Maybe things will change now, I thought. He seemed like a good-hearted old-fashioned man. And Polish, like me.
The next morning I wandered to Westminster Cathedral and intoned the prayers of my childhood with thousands of other mourners. The sun kept climbing in the sky, the air was warmer than usual everyone around me agreed, and the huge speakers erected near the entry door hissed and crackled with feedback. I've been to Mass many times since chucking my religion. I've attended baptisms and funerals and weddings and family reunions. I said prayers those times, took communion, genuflected in tradition. But this time I said it for real, let the Holy Spirit move through me like those ancient Christians, let it rise from my breath in reverence and hope.

6:45:38 PM    doorbell []

Just a small thought
I have loads of stories to tell you about my trip. But I want to share something simple and important: The day I flew home was my birth daughter's birthday. This was the first time in her entire life that I could call her and wish her Happy Birthday and hear her say Thank You. It was several days ago now, but I'm still smiling.

5:46:07 PM    doorbell []

The Truth About Past Lives

at the British Museum....
Three weeks before my best friend, Patrick, died, he asked me if I had any regrets. He did, he said, a deep regret about a man he once crossed in business. Patrick wrote the man a letter asking forgiveness, tucked a check inside the envelop, gave it to me to mail.
"Now I can die in peace." His words were serious but he said it like a joke, as if balancing business books from some old charade couldn't possibly ease his transition across the river Styx.
"Well," I said, "I have a regret, too. You probably already know what it is. You know. Mark." I dropped my eyes to the floor, tried not to tear up at bad memories of a man I loved too much, a man I let drive out of my life in his camper van. The love of my life, I thought, stupid but true. The love of my life.
"I figured as much. But Birdie, I hated him." Patrick laughed at my discomfort, and I started laughing too, at the way they hated each other, danced around my emotions, how in some ways I chose my friendship with Patrick over a marriage with Mark. Damn men, I thought. Damn stubborn intelligent men. Damn them all to Hades. "And Birdie," Patrick added as he gasped between laughs, "your real regret should be putting everyone and everything above yourself your entire life. Dammit girl, you never do anything fun for yourself and let the rest of the world suffer your absence. You'll come to regret that more than that fucking asshole who didn't deserve you."
I thought of Patrick's words as I packed for my trip. I stuck my photo of him holding Cracky, the Avon cracker server, in my purse. I figured I could talk to his spirit during my long flight. Do something for myself or I'll regret it, I repeated these words to cover the guilt of leaving my boys for two weeks, kept them circling through my mind as I drove to Los Angeles with one shoulder bag and a rolling suitcase stuffed with clothes I thought would look cosmopolitan, international. I even said them out-loud to the check-in attendant at Virgin Atlantic.
"I'm taking my very first solo vacation! And my first overseas vacation! And I feel so damn guilty, but if I don't do something for myself now, I will always regret it." I stared the young girl down, dared her to defy me, but she clicked her keyboard, merely asked if I wanted isle or window (window, natch!) and if I still wanted the vegetarian meal.
"Oh, wait. I see you're traveling with someone. I'll put you two together." She continued hitting the keys, and I raised my eyebrows in confusion.
"No, I'm alone." I looked at the line behind me, half expecting to see the ghost of Patrick dragging his black leather luggage, but only saw strangers with arms crossed, cell phones to ears, iPod wires hanging across their chests.
"Sorry, my mistake then," the woman answered, and handed me my passport and boarding card.
I took the confusion as a positive sign that my best friend still lived and haunted my life in some mysterious way, but the moment I passed through the security gate, I understood. I stood shaking, felt my face turn pink to white to red hot in some kind of new fear, face to face with my biggest regret, Mark.
"Patrick told me you would be on this flight. He told me if I wanted you back this was my big chance. He told me he hated me, but I already knew that. I'm sorry he died, Birdie. I know how much you loved him. I'm here. I want you back. Please say I can travel with you."
My arms continued shaking, and I noticed a small group of people watching us from the sidelines, waiting for me to take him in my arms, waiting for me to say Yes. I saw a small black box in Mark's hand, a ring box, knew it was the engagement ring I threw in his face during our last fight. He looked exactly the same. Short red hair, tall, thin, strong arms, piercing gray eyes, the look of some ancient Scottish lord, unapologetic, rip smart, and I felt the harsh flood of love and desire I thought I lost fly from the earth through my feet, through my legs and heart and hair. I can picture this now as if it happened five seconds ago, it's frozen in my mind like nothing else this lifetime, a perfect mental photograph with smell and touch and heat, Mark looking uncertain and hopeful. I only have the memory, though. I left him there, once again, flew alone to London, empty isle seat beside me.
I cursed Patrick those ten hours of the plane, cursed him as I walked the streets of London that first afternoon, cursed him as I visited the mummies at the British Museum, cursed him as I listened to a new age Irish woman with coal hair and a red sweater tell her companion she must have been Cleopatra in her distant past. "Cleopatra, I was." I turned to watch her sweep her arms in blessing over statues and obelisks, a blessing learned eons ago in some dirty hot pyramid, and I cursed Patrick once again.
It wasn't until my long flight home that I realized he left me the best gift of my life. The chance to affirm a decision, to lose a deep regret, to be reborn as a woman beholding to nothing and no one, no man. And somehow I know he knew exactly what decision I would make.

9:10:03 AM    doorbell []