Disposition of Remains Read online

  Misty and Paul never got married, and she continued to work at the Imperial Palace, helping whatever needy stranger crossed her path in search of a little advice and as many boozie drinks as she could furnish. She remained blissfully content.

  ***

  I decided to keep Dr. Manny as my obstetrician, so I made the journey back to Los Angeles for the remainder of my prenatal visits. The rest of my pregnancy was uncomplicated—no more vomiting or fainting. I even developed that “glow” one always hears about.

  Jerry accompanied me to all my appointments. He was fascinated with the whole process. I later learned that he was also fascinated with Dr. Manny. As it happened, Jerry and Dr. Manny became quite close while discussing my birth plan, as if I weren’t part of the process.

  After a few years, Jerry moved his practice to Las Vegas. He and Manny set up the first obstetrics/gerontology office in Las Vegas, possibly anywhere. I loved that it truly represented the circle of life.

  It was so great that Jerry had finally settled down, but he couldn’t stand that I’d had a baby before him, so he and Manny adopted a baby boy. They decided to adopt from Zimbabwe after I told them of my experience in Africa. I threw their baby shower, of course. I was just returning the favor since Jerry had thrown one for me.

  I was so happy to have Jerry back as a regular, permanent part of my life. After all, he was my first love.

  ***

  It was decided—mostly by me—that Wilbur would keep his place, but we saw each other whenever we could. I didn’t want him to change his life for me and ultimately resent me. I could see how much he treasured his freedom, and I had grown to feel the same way. I wanted to keep alive the charm, the romance. I didn’t want our relationship to become about the bills, or which way the toilet paper came off the roll, or who left the cap off of the toothpaste. I wanted to savor every moment I had with him, and miss him when we weren’t together.

  For my thirty-ninth birthday, Wilbur gave me two framed posters with which to decorate my new place with Misty. One was a print of Botticelli’s magnificent Birth of Venus, and the other was a one-sheet from the film The Lion King. I loved them both equally. Every time I looked at them, I recalled how close I had come to losing everything, including my very life. My near-death experience had given me the opportunity to live outside the walls of the prison I had created for myself, and never look back.

  In between his travels, Wilbur attended prenatal classes with me—at his insistence. When I was about thirty-seven weeks pregnant, I took leave from work and Wilbur and I temporarily set up camp in Los Angeles.

  We were out to dinner with Manny and Jerry when the contractions started. Manny assured me that I still had hours until I needed to go to the hospital.

  “It’s not that common that a woman’s water breaks on its own,” Manny insisted, just as a puddle was forming under my chair.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Jerry screamed and started to hyperventilate.

  I was a little embarrassed but otherwise fine.

  “Now we should go to the hospital,” Manny announced in a quiet voice.

  I spent the ensuing car ride trying my best to calm Jerry down. He became hysterical every time a contraction started.

  By the look on my nurse’s face, I realized I must have been the only patient in history to arrive at the hospital in the same car as her obstetrician. I also had two other men with me, neither one of whom was the father of my baby. We all thought it was funnier to not explain.

  My son was born on November 16, on a rainy day. I had seen hundreds of newborn babies before, but had never fully understood the love that a mother instantly feels for her child. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He had dark skin and hair, and ice-blue eyes. He didn’t look like Evan had had a thing to do with him. My immaculate conception.

  I had read every baby book I could get my hands on, but I didn’t have a need for a name book. I knew from day one that I wanted to name him Sandro, after The Master—Alessandro Filipepi, otherwise known as Sandro Botticelli. As was I in my own way, my son was a cross-cultural enigma: a Native American, Jewish, and Russian mix—with an Italian name.

  Misty and Paul made it just in time for the delivery. We were a true modern family.

  Wilbur cried when he first held Sandro, just like any new father would do. He stayed with me in the hospital, but I really didn’t need his help. Taking care of a newborn was the one thing I knew how to do. It was probably the one and only thing I ever taught Wilbur, that he didn’t already know.

  We left the hospital and drove back to Las Vegas, making several pit stops along the way to take care of Sandro’s various needs. When we arrived, there was a package on the doorstep—the cradleboard that Irma was making while I was in Havasupai. She had known all along.

  Wilbur stayed with us for the first few weeks after Sandro was born. He held him when he cried, changed his diapers, gave him baths, and even rocked him to sleep. Fatherhood came naturally to him. It didn’t surprise me at all when my son’s first word was “daddy.”

  It went on that way for a few years. Wilbur would come and stay and eventually, I would shove him out the door, encouraging him to get back to his life. He would grudgingly go visit his parents and keep up with his various properties, but Sandro grew up secure in the knowledge that Wilbur would always return.

  At some point, I realized that our relationship could handle the everyday. If we tried, we could manage to avoid the mundane—live each day as a new adventure. It wasn’t ever going to become about the laundry or bills—maybe about the toilet paper, but we could work out those kinks. It was about the three of us becoming a family. I never grew tired of Wilbur’s touch or the sound of his voice. While we didn’t always agree, he never once raised his voice to me, or to Sandro. He wasn’t Evan. And I wasn’t the same Stacia. Wilbur deserved all of me, and I gave it to him.

  Marriage was still out of the question, although I knew that if suddenly, I had a desperate need to marry Wilbur, he would have said, “all right.” He always gave in. But we weren’t about ownership or convention. Instead, we had a “commitment” ceremony in Sedona, the place where we had first met.

  After the reception, Misty and Paul came with us to the river and we made our way to the vortex just below Cathedral Rock. We all went for a swim for old times’ sake. Naked, of course.

  ***

  Even though he slept through the night after only a few weeks, I would wake up during the night just to look Sandro, and to remind myself that my little miracle was real. I had once thought that death was growing inside of me, and instead, it turned out to be a new life—his and mine. The thing I thought was going to take my life, actually gave my life back to me.

  I wanted to teach Sandro all I knew. I wanted to learn with him. I wanted to show him the world that I had never bothered to see. I wanted to show him everything through my eyes. I wanted him to know the joy of life and to teach him never to squander it, like I’d almost done. If I weren’t to be successful at anything else in my life, I wanted to succeed at that. And I believe I did.

  After Wilbur and I had become fully “committed,” I left my job at the hospital. Wilbur legally adopted Sandro, just in case Evan ever reared his ugly head—as unlikely as that would be. We moved our things into Wilbur’s home in Arizona, but we never really stayed there for any length of time.

  Wilbur and I homeschooled Sandro, if one could call it that. We taught him more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. We educated him out in the world—the whole world, not just the part of the world that I wanted to see. Wilbur and I would pick random cities we had never heard of and just board a plane. We had many a critic tell us that we should provide a more stable life for Sandro, but we weren’t about convention.

  ***

  It wasn’t long after Sandro was born that I yearned to see The Master. Not God—I wasn’t in any hurry at all to see Him. Eventually, we saw all of Botticelli’s works of art. I think “Botticelli” was the second word that Sandro uttered after
“daddy.” We went to the Louvre in Paris at Christmastime to see some of his frescoes. We saw the walls he painted in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. We traveled to Rome, Naples, Milan, Bergamo, and all over the greater Florence area. In Spain, we saw more of his works in Barcelona, Granada, and Madrid. We saw still others in Amsterdam, Munich, and Dresden as well.

  I was surprised to discover Botticelli’s works could also be found in Washington, D.C.; New York; Massachusetts; and Philadelphia. I even started a sort of Botticelli fan-club blog, which boasted some two thousand members.

  I took my son to Botticelli’s grave in Florence for the first time when he was only six months old. We were lucky enough to have made it to the Ognissanti twice before Sister Constance died. I had outlived her, after all, and she had been correct when she’d said that God had a surprise for me. I was eager to show her my surprise in person. I imagined how nurturing she must have been to Josephine as a child by the way she took to Sandro.

  Sister Constance made me promise on my very life that I would never tell Sister Josephine that she was her biological mother. And I never did. I did, however, try to convince her how much damage the lies would cause, how these things inevitably come out, how much pain my mother’s lies had caused me. She was never convinced; she felt it would crush Sister Josephine’s faith to know that Sister Constance had broken so many of God’s laws.

  ***

  It wasn’t long after I had left Florence for Africa, that Michael started drinking again. After about two years of trying to help him work through his demons, Graziella finally threw him out. His girls were so great, but after Michael left their home, he had very little to do with them. He went on a self-destructive spiral that never really ended. I think he had it in him all along. At the very least, I had to give my mother credit for steering me away from that path.

  Graziella didn’t lose her zest for life or her love for Florence. She happily drank wine with dinner and even served the watered-down version to her children, as many Italians do. After Michael left, Sandro and I—and sometimes Wilbur—would stay with Graziella and the girls. Filipa and Bianca loved to babysit my son while we walked the streets of Florence in search of some tiny, out-of-the-way nook we had not yet explored. Sandro grew up with Florence as his second home, and he fell in love with it just as I had—although his Italian was much better than mine.

  ***

  My relationship with my father strengthened over time. He was a kind man, not the unscrupulous monster that the Havasupai people believed him to be—though he had made some serious mistakes. Even though I forgave him, and even Ana forgave him eventually, he never entirely forgave himself.

  My father eventually received his letter from Evan, but not as easily as I had come by mine. Evan had no incentive to just hand it over; he had nothing sinister to gain, and nothing precious to lose. My father used the hospital’s panel of attorneys to threaten Evan with all sorts of fire and damnation if he didn’t turn over what was not rightfully his. I’m certain that Evan was concerned about his name becoming tainted if the case had to go to court, so he finally relinquished the letter.

  My father never showed me the letter and I never asked to see it. My mother and my father had a special kind of bond, a private bond, and the personal nature of her last words to him were meant to remain private as well. He left the letter to me in his will. To this day, it remains unopened in a cedar box my mother once gave to him.

  On September 19, the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death—and also my birthday—my father and I made a trip to the reservation in Havasupai. Sandro and I had become regular visitors by that point, and had participated in all of the annual powwows. We had even learned some of the Yuman language along the way. I wanted Sandro to know everything about his Aunt Irma and his heritage. I wanted him to know everything that had been denied me.

  It ended up taking several conversations with Irma to convince her that my father was not a demon and that it was perfectly safe for him to visit the reservation. I don’t know if she ever really believed it, but because her sister had loved him so much, Irma wanted to honor her last wish.

  It was a quiet night on the reservation, the off-season for tourists. A full moon shone brightly in the sky as my father led me to my mother’s “special place.” It had become one of my special places as well. Together, we poured my mother’s ashes into the beautiful blue-green waters at the base of Havasu Falls. I could literally feel my mother’s happiness as she finally reached the destination to which she had longed to return. I felt connected to her once again. That connection that had been severed when she died was reconnected in that moment, and I finally understood my mother with perfect clarity.

  That was when my father asked me if I would pour his ashes alongside my mother’s when he died, so that they would remain together for all eternity in their special place. He would explain his decision to Ana, he said, so that she wouldn’t think it was my idea; he knew she wouldn’t understand. He had given his life to Ana and her mother, and had ultimately sacrificed some of his happiness. He wanted his death to be on his terms, just as I wanted my death to be on mine. I completely understood my father in a way that Ana never could. I had walked in his shoes, and had lived to tell about it.

  ***

  My half-sister Ana wasn’t exactly waiting with open arms to have a relationship with me. My very existence on Earth defied everything she knew about her own family. Who could understand that better than I could? I gave her time, and eventually she came around. Her son Travis was only a few years older than my son, and they grew up as the best of friends.

  Still, Ana was always a little bit broken. She never completely recovered from our father’s lies. He decided not to leave her a note. He didn’t wait for his death. Instead, he told her his wishes while he was living, so that there would be no question as to their authenticity.

  So when it was time to put our father to rest in the blue-green waters of Havasupai, Ana never questioned it. He had lived a good, long life with a peaceful end, and she knew that was what he wanted. In fact, we went together. It was the only time I ever saw Ana cry. Ana, with her blonde hair and her blue eyes and her nose that was just like mine, finally became a sister to me. Even though our relationship wasn’t close on the outside, the bond we shared was one that cannot be shared by those who aren’t flesh and blood. And even though we were so monumentally different, ultimately, we were very much the same.

  CHAPTER 44

  Shortly after Sandro turned twenty, I took a trip by myself to Havasupai. I hiked and wandered, soaking up the spirit of the canyon. I spent time with my parents at the blue-green waters of Havasu Falls, and then I walked to the cave. While I could always feel my mother at the Falls, I could strongly sense the presence of my grandfather at the cave. I sat down inside the cave, admiring the ancient drawings of my people. A coyote wandered out from among the trees and looked into my eyes. This time he wasn’t smirking. I didn’t move. I didn’t know what the trickster had in store for me. To my surprise, he strolled slowly in my direction and even nudged up against me. The coyote sat on his haunches next to me, seemingly admiring the walls of the cave, as I was.

  I peered at him from the corner of my eye, afraid to move or breathe. He looked at me one more time, then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, he strolled off. What was I missing this time?

  I made my way back to Irma’s house and told her about the coyote. Irma was a very old woman by that time.

  “You have been fooled again,” was her predictable response.

  In my dream that night, I sat cross-legged in the cave, waiting for my grandfather to appear with another cryptic message. Eventually it came. My grandfather came to the cave and appeared before me in the form of the coyote.

  “It is time,” he said.

  Grandpa had apparently taken to quoting The Lion King. It is time? Time for what? I was confused in my dream, but when I awakened, his message was clear.

  Before the birth of Sandro, I h
ad been so busy slowly dying inside that I’d forgotten to live. As much as I had become aware of my own mortality and had lived my life accordingly, at some point I was so busy living, I’d failed to notice that one day, I was actually in the process of dying. There was no surprise reprieve awaiting me this time. The ovarian cancer had reached stage four before I even noticed its existence.

  I entered into the stages of grieving once again, although, this time, it took me about fifteen minutes to make it through the entire process. It was like a long-lost friend. No one could figure out how I had just accepted my fate, especially Sandro. I underwent some treatment, mostly so my son wouldn’t think of me as a quitter. I wished everyone could have the experience that I had: to have their life taken away in pieces, then given back whole. It is something I couldn’t even begin to explain.

  When I realized that the end was near, it was just two days before Sandro’s twenty-first birthday. I had to make a decision. I couldn’t do to my son what my mother had done to me. I had to either hold out until after his rite of passage, or make it a point to die immediately— before his birthday occurred. But, if I died before, I would likely still disrupt his celebration, so I decided to live, just for a few more days.

  Wilbur hired a nurse and rented a wheelchair, and we took Sandro to Las Vegas on his birthday. We sat in Misty’s station at the Imperial Palace, foolishly stuffing dollar after dollar into those lighted metal boxes. Misty still fit into her boozie outfit after all those years, and, at my insistence, she managed to get Sandro good and plastered. I wanted Sandro to remember me living, even with my last breath.

  I left a note for Sandro that was similar to the one my mother had left for me. But I left my note in more trustworthy hands: Wilbur’s. I had no secrets to disclose. I’d made sure that Sandro learned everything there was to know about his life—and mine—while I was still living. I just reiterated how much I loved him and always would, and I let him know where he could find me if he needed me. I left him a notarized copy of my will with specific instructions for the disposition of my remains.