Bernard Cooper - The bill from my father: a memoir

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A Memoir

BERNARD COOPER

Simon & Schuster
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SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Copyright 2006 by Bernard Cooper

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Chapters of this book have appeared in the following publications: First Words and The Bill from My Father (under the title Mine) in Los Angeles magazine; Winner Take Nothing in GQ, The Best American Essays of 2002, edited by Stephen Jay Gould, and The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers, edited by Bruce Shenitz. The chapter entitled The Bill from My Father was performed on This American Life.

This is a work of nonfiction. However, certain names and details of the characters lives and physical appearances have been changed, and some events have been altered or combined for the sake of narrative continuity.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cooper, Bernard.

The bill from my father : a memoir / Bernard Cooper.

p. cm.

1. Cooper, Bernard, 1951Family.

2. Cooper, Bernard, 1951Childhood and youth.

3. Authors, American20th centuryFamily relationships.

4. Authors, American20th centuryBiography.

5. Gay menUnited StatesBiography.

6. Fathers and sonsUnited States.

I. Title.

PS3553.05798Z4625 2006

813.54dc22 2005044503

[B]

ISBN: 0-7432-9899-3
eISBN: 978-0-743-29899-5

Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com

Thanks to Sloan Harris (who encouraged me to put it all together) and Margaret Marr at International Creative Magicians for their astonishing sleight of hand. Steady momentum for this project was provided by Geoff Kloske, one of the countrys largest exporters of midnight oil. Steven, Kathryn, and Eliza at the Steven Barclay Agency have been invaluable in allowing me to meet writers and readers I might not otherwise have had the pleasure to know.

Where would a writer be without trusted early readers? I was lucky enough to see this text through Jeff Hammonds X-ray eyes. Tom Knechtels gently rustling pom-poms bolstered my spirit without disturbing the neighbors. Glen Gold and Alice Sebold were instructive and loving and just plain fun. Two chapters in this book were shaped with a set of precision tools belonging to Kit Rachlis at Los Angeles magazine. Amy Gerstler, amazing poet, turned the manuscript pages WITH THE POWER OF HER MIND ALONE ! I could not have started, finished, or written the middle part of this book without Jill Ciments friendship and long distance calling plan, or without Atsuro Rileys full-color diagrams of the universe.

My story only touches upon those of my sisters-in-law, Nancy and Sharleen, who have my deepest gratitude. Rabbi Bob Barruch performed a fact-checking mitzvah. Benjamin Weissman performed a high dive while lighted on fire. Other superhuman feats were performed by Michael Lowenthal, Kimberly Burns, and Laura Perciasepe.

This book was completed with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Brian Miller Fellowship.

The Bill from My Father

I scratch, said my father. Itch it!

Id asked if he knew what his first words had been. Instead of ball or mama, he blurted his earliest misunderstanding, his voice so plaintive an imitation of his childhood self I almost leaped out of my chair and asked him where it scratched.

The two of us were sitting in the living room of his Mediterranean house in Hollywood, the house in which I grew up and where my father now lived alone. During my boyhood, the room had been used to receive my parents guests, a progressively rarer occurrence over the forty years of their marriage, and especially since my mothers death. The pillows, as always, were plumped, if musty. Knickknacks lined the shelves of the breakfront. A broad mahogany coffee table gleamed at our knees. This was the largest room in the house, its acoustics muted by wall-to-wall shag, the once-white fiber aging into ivory.

Itch it. Eighty years had passed since he made that jumbled plea to his parents, but when he tilted his head in recollection, sunlight from the bay window glinted in his horn-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes lit with the expectation that his need was about to be relievedall it would take was accommodating fingers. I could almost feel his prickling skin and see him arch his back like a cat.

But what youd meant to say was, I itch, scratch it?

Of course thats what I meant to say! I was just a kid, for Christs sake. I got the words all turned around.

A microphone was propped atop the coffee table, and I nudged it closer to where he sat. I couldnt ask my father a question without his taking it as a challenge. Hed rightly have said the same of me. For as long as I could remember, our communication had been a series of defensive reflexes. No scholar could interpret a text with more care than wed devoted to parsing each others remarks, searching for words that might be tinged with insult. I didnt mean you look tired in a bad way. I heard you the first time. Whats with the face? Such was the idiom in which we spoke. Not surprising, we didnt speak often, and when we did, it wasnt for long.

Id been raised to assume that my fathers history was a place forever out of bounds, a mythical city. His refusal to mention his past was as elemental as his olive skin, as inbred as his restlessness, as certain as his gloom at the first drops of rain. My father wouldnt talk. Oh, he rambled all right, joked and cajoled, but talk it was not. He blustered about the price of gas. He rhapsodized about the steak he ate for dinner, where it fell on the spectrum from rare to well done. But for all his chatter, he remained aloof. It was almost as if he hadnt existed before I was born, as if his history began the moment I perceived him, a blurry face floating above my crib and cooing musical nonsense. Id lain there wide-eyed and made him happen, and so he was mine as much as I was his.

A tirelessly inquisitive kid, Id often asked about his life before me. Where had he grown up? How had he met my mother? What did my three older brothers, Robert, Ronald, and Richard, do for fun when they were my age? Hed answer without elaborationAtlantic City. At a friends apartment. Horse aroundhis terseness a warning that Id have to content myself with whatever tidbits he parceled out. My father wasnt evasive so much as skilled at the illusion of candor. You asked, he answered. He routinely used the fewest words. Further questions were impertinent.

Our current conversation was more of the same.

What other things do you remember from when you were little?

Taffy.

Taffy?

Saltwater taffy.

Tell me more.

His expression said, Taffy is taffy, for Christs sake. Whats to tell? He was dressed in a khaki polyester jumpsuit, the official uniform of his retirement. The zipper ran from neck to crotch, enabling him to slip in and out of it with a minimum of effort, like a quick-change artist who donned the same costume again and again. The position of the zipper served as a barometer of his mood. When tugged low, it exposed a gold chain nestled in his silver chest hair. My father had an eye for the ladies, and he, in turn, gave them something to see: a wedge of tanned and manly skin. When pulled high, the zipper signaled his wish to withdraw, to go about his business unnoticed, the khaki fabric a camouflage that allowed him to merge with the background. That day in his living room, the jumpsuit was zipped as high as it would go.