December 1 - December 24, 1998

CHAPTER IX

I NEVER GOT HER ANYTHING, POPS

Near midnight on the night before Paco died, Jay finally worked up the nerve to come into Paco's room. He took up a position at the head of Paco's bed. While Paco drifted back and away again on the crests of morphine dreams, Jay remained where he was, a silent, red-eyed, and smashed sentry. In the waiting room, Julia had smelled the alcohol on his breath.

At one point, Paco motioned for Jay to come closer. Everyone saw Paco whisper something to Jay, but no one heard what it was.

Just after Three A.M., in his best Godfather style, Paco whispered his final order: everyone was to leave the hospital (all were tired, all needed rest). Julia knew there was more to it.

At first, people shuffled about uncomfortably. They didn't seem to want to go. Julia thought of the lingering good-byes of the holiday get-togethers she and Paco hosted over the years. It was a little like that. As their friends said their good-byes, they touched Paco's hands, or kissed his forehead, or briefly rested their fingers on the side of his face. Some promised they'd come back tomorrow, though most suspected there wasn't going to be one.

When everyone was gone except Julia--with Jay, Sal, Libby and Uncle Nick out in the corridor--she gently pushed the tubes aside and got in bed with her husband, to feel once more the length of his body against hers, even if it was now bird-boned and bleached almost past recognition. She may have dozed for a time, or reached some state approaching it, though she could still hear Paco murmuring to her, humming and singing a bit in his lovely off-key voice. When he fell silent, she turned her head to look at him. He studied her face for a time, too, as though trying to commit her to memory for all the ages.

"You, too," he said. "I want you to go home."

Go home?

"I can't do what I need to if you're here," he continued, "because when I look at you, and you look back at me, when I touch you--that’s all making me want to stay, when it's way past time to go."

She sat up to absorb the full weight of his words. She glanced toward the door. Sal was there. She saw in his expression--the puckering pain, the sunken-eyed disbelief--the sorrow of all parents who outlive their children. The part of Julia that couldn't, wouldn't give up, the part that still so preposterously envisioned an eleventh-hour save, couldn't even imagine leaving Paco.

She glanced in silent appeal at Sal. With tears running down his face, Sal nodded at her. "Come on, Jules," he said quietly.

Paco glanced at Julia, then back at Sal. "I never got her anything, Pops. I never found the right kind of gift. You know, that something to last like I explained it in my letter."

Sal and Julia looked at one another. Julia wasn't sure what Paco was talking about.

Sal said, "You love her, son. I can’t think of a gift more special than that." Paco shook his head. He seemed to think it wasn't enough. "I promised her I’d see that she’d always have what she needs," he said. "I’m not going to be around to do that. Pops, she’s sure always done that for me."

"We'll be there for her, Paco," Sal whispered. "We'll take up right where you leave off."

Paco closed his eyes in relief, then opened them and looked at Jules, "Please, Honey. I'm really tired."

Julia swallowed and nodded She could feel Paco's eyes following her as she located her purse (there it was, under a chair), her coat (Sal spotted it on the floor in the corner), and the courage (somehow) to leave him.

Paco had asked Julia to let go, so he could. Because he had asked her to, because it was all there was left to do for him--she did it: She stepped off a ledge of the tallest skyscraper her imagination could conjure and understood the fall wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

Paco was still watching Julia a few moments later when she looked back at him from the corridor. Despite the morphine blear, she saw the love, the courage, and, yes, still some of the merriness that had always shone out of his liquid, mahogany-brown eyes.

The one thing about Paco that would stay with her forever would be his eyes.

Julia spent those last hours of her life as she knew it, frozen in a corner of the sofa with her cats. Sal, Libby, Uncle Nick and her own family--all nearly as stunned and broken up as Julia herself--moved around her like specters, bringing things she didn’t want, then taking them away.

At Six o'clock A.M., Paco's oncologist phoned the house on Alta Vista to tell Julia Paco was gone.

She sat there in shock, trying to call back the feel of him and hang onto the last few things he'd said: "No one’s had a better ride, Jules."

"I love you," she'd said.

"This's been the longest holy moment in the history of them, honey. You’re what I’ve loved most about my life. Did you know that?"

"I do know." She was crying. "I love you."

"Well, as much as I love you now, I’m going to love you even more when I’m gone," Paco promised.

"I love you."

"I'm not kidding, Babe. We’ve been so close, we’re in each other’s DNA. Believe me, something as insignificant as death isn’t going to end this love story." He caressed her face. But he was tired and his hand fell away. "When you need me," he went on, "listen for my voice. You’ll hear it in the wind, you’ll hear in your heart. Because that’s where the best of me will be, Jules, alive and well in your heart."

Then in the final moments, the moments before Paco asked her to leave, just before Sal and the others came back in, Paco spoke to Julia about his unfinished business. He made his dying request.

The evening before Paco's memorial, Steve Quinn dropped by the house to have dinner with the family. The Studio sent food, enough to feed the Berellis and Mortons and all the people who were dropping by for several days. Jay was there, too, almost glued to Julia. She didn't want him around, but she couldn't shake him.

"What will you say at the service tomorrow?" Steve asked Julia when he came into the kitchen with the tray of espresso cups and discovered her sitting alone in the dark breakfast room.

"I don't think I'm going to speak. It's all just words now," Julia said.

"Maybe," he said. He sat down across the table from her. "But if there's anyone Paco'd want to hear from, Jules . . . It's you."

The morning of Paco's memorial, Julia's closest friends and her sister, Renee, helped her dress. She wore a winter-white pantsuit, and the silk Perry Ellis tie Paco wore at their wedding.

Over the years the Studio brass received many requests from employees to hold weddings, funerals and various other receptions and celebrations on Studio property. Paco's memorial was the first one they ever approved. It took place in the rose garden with catered food and live music, and was packed with Paco's friends and family.

Steve Quinn was the first to speak in praise of Paco. He talked about Paco's love for his cats, as well as his untiring effort in support of a local pet charity called Pet Pride.

"He was my son-in-law," Julia's dad said into the microphone. Julia wasn't aware he planned to speak. "My son;" Mike Morton continued, "the son I didn't even know I wanted." He paused for a moment to compose himself then went on. "My wife, my daughters and I called ourselves a family." He shrugged. "We were. We shared the same last name, cared about each other." Mike surveyed the crowd. "But we weren't a real family until Paco became a member. Paco taught us how to cherish each other."

As Mike moved away, Sal came forward to take his place. The two men embraced for a moment.

Sal moved behind the podium, he surveyed the faces in the crowd. The one he wanted to see most wasn't there. As Sal spoke, Julia heard a waver in his voice she was unaccustomed to hearing. In a matter of days he seemed to have aged 20 years. He talked about what a joy Paco was as a boy, and how proud he was that his son had grown up to be such a wise and loving man. In conclusion he said, "My poem of a son, my lovely boy, was the definitive but all too brief dissertation on living large."

Julia believed that out of all the people who spoke in praise of Paco that day, Sal was the one who really nailed it. Uncle Nick, alarmed that they were flying in the face of tradition by holding the memorial at the Studio rather than in a church, led the celebrants of Paco's life in prayer.

After everyone else present had moved to the lectern, said whatever it was they wanted to say, Julia, suddenly realized there were, after all, things she wanted to say, too. Almost as she began, the PA system blanked out. Only those standing closest could hear her. She talked at first about how losing Paco was like losing the other half of her memories, that the sound of his footstep was so familiar, she knew it even when he approached her from behind, a long distance away. She said that she could pick him out of a crowd by the angle of his head, and that she not only knew all his facial expressions, but she also understood exactly why he made them. Then she recited the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem because it always so reminded them of the day they met, and that first night when they had walked the streets of Manhattan until dawn. When the PA system kicked back in, Julia was just reciting the last stanza:

"We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,

We hailed "Good Morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, "God Bless you!" for the apples and the pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares."

Jay didn't speak at the memorial. He didn't even want to try.

While Paco and Julia fought the good fight, despite his claims to the contrary in his last letter to his father, Paco never once stumbled or lost his courage.

He was so extraordinarily resolute that the full-page ad in Variety--arranged for by those at the Studio he worked for and with, to commemorate him--which appeared a few days after the memorial service--was worded to pay particular tribute to that aspect of his character.

Jay Russo composed and designed the ad. The typeface he used had about as much serif as the dictates of good design allow.

September 18, 1960

I can't eat. I can't sleep. I stumble over the mesa like a ghost. Dewey thinks I'm ill, and I am (although I feel confident that he has no idea about the source of my affliction). At sundown, he's taking me to see the local healer (his mentor, apparently). I will perform whatever rites, rituals, prayers I'm instructed to.

The thing is, for it to work . . . you have to want to be healed.

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