NO SIMPLE REMEDY

1st part

I remember when Uncle Charlie told me that death was something we all have to go through before we can understand life. I never understood what he meant at the time; I was still something of a kid myself, and my mother had just died three days earlier. He said it though, and I remember thinking it must be something he thinks adults say to children when they lose a parent—just like his father probably said it to him. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, but then, a lot of things Uncle Charlie said, or did, never made any sense. I mean, he missed his own sister’s funeral. He showed up three days late, stinking of gin, and wearing mismatched socks.

I was eleven years old when my father died. That was the year Uncle Charlie promised to move us out to Tuscany. It had always been a dream of Mother’s to die in Florence she said, and he’d laughed; I told myself to look Florence up in the Atlas before I went to bed. It was a city he’d visited during the war he told us, and Mother laughed, saying she thought he’d been there on a vacation. 

“And why would you think that?” Uncle Charlie asked. 

“I don’t know,” she laughed. “With everything else that happened to you, I thought they’d sent you there for a rest.”

Father hesitated, maybe thinking it over, and then laughed with her.

“I wish it was a tour. Unfortunate that it wasn’t,” Uncle Charlie said, his voice a soft whisper.

I watched as his gaze drifted up toward the ceiling. There was a lot of emotion in that stare—I could see his jawline clenching—and looked at my brother Richard scraping the last of his dinner off his plate, not paying any attention. There was a single tear balanced on the edge of Uncle Charlie’s eyelash though, and he looked down at me—perhaps sensing me staring up at him, I don’t know—because he winked at me before grabbing Mother and kissing the top of her head. And then he leaned over and kissed Father’s head as well. Whatever he was thinking was lost in that moment, lost in that brief hug, along with the tear in his eye. Then he and Father poured themselves another round of drinks and toasted to their great, good fortune, because Uncle Charlie had news that Mother won the role in an Italian movie.

Rather than saying it was a night I’ll never forget, I like to think of it as a night I’ll always remember. I’ve learned over the years that I’ve forgotten more things than I could ever remember, but I’ll always remember that night because of that single tear hanging on Uncle Charlie’s eyelash—and how that was the night I first learned about the finality of life.

Uncle Charlie was with the same agency that represented Mother throughout her acting career. We lived in the south of London at the time, and Uncle Charlie said that he’d taken care of everything. Of course, there were still papers to be signed, and drinks to be drank—Father was drinking his whiskey sours, and Uncle Charlie his gin and tonics—proving that neither man was sober enough to handle such a transaction. Uncle Charlie said he need only take care of his sister; they’d sign the papers in the morning.

“God have mercy on us,” was all my mother said when she heard that Uncle Charlie was taking care of everything.

And then Father looked at his watch and half-stood, bowing over the table and drinking as much of his drink as he could.

“I’m late,” he said, putting the glass down and picking his cigarette up out of the ashtray. It was hanging out of his mouth as he tightened his tie and ran his hands though his slick, black hair.

“Good?” he asked me, and I gave him a thumbs up which he told me was American for good.

“Are you leaving, Darling? Oh, please don’t,” Mother said, reaching out for his hand. “You shouldn’t, to be honest.”

“No choice, my love,” he said, picking up his suit jacket from the back of the chair. “Cecil’s expecting me, and he’s only here until tomorrow,” he added, making sure to pick up his drink and drain the last of it.

Father’s was the first funeral I’d ever been to.

Three years later Mother got her diagnosis. Cancer. A death sentence for most people back then; almost a certainty for a woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer. We all cried together, as families do.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Uncle Charlie said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Instead of moving us out to Florence and making good on his promise of three years ago, like he said he would, Uncle Charlie found us a five bedroom furnished apartment in a small hilltop town in the Chianti district. Montepulciano, he said. A lyrical name to my English sounding ear, but about as far removed from Florence, as Dover is to London.

Uncle Charlie had a small Fiat 1100 he’d bought for a song, and with Mother in the front seat and the three of us crowded into the back, he still managed to get two small suitcases and Mother’s medical supplies into the boot. We left Rome with an old Italian map none of us could read.

“I thought you said you knew the way?” Mother said, looking tired. She stared out of the window at the rolling hills slipping by. I could see her face reflected in the window as she rested her head back against the seat; she only closed her eyes for a moment, but in that moment the mask fell away and I could see the pained expression she was hiding.

I looked at my sister beside me, watching Mother.

When Mother opened her eyes again, I followed her gaze up to a walled city on top of a nearby hill; all I could see were towers and trees against a clear blue sky. They were tall pines, looking nothing like the trees we’d left back in Kent, but swaying just the same in a gentle breeze. I could see the towers on the distant hills caught in the sunlight, and nudged my brother Richard who looked up, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to reading his book.

“In Florence,” Uncle Charlie said. “I know the roads in Florence—not all of them, mind you—just the ones that mattered. The ones we travelled on.”

“Is this your way of telling me we’re not lost?” Mother asked, rolling her head to the left so she could look at him.

“We’re not lost,” Uncle Charlie said, looking at her.

We pulled over to the side of the road a minute later, and he had his finger on the map looking for the road we were supposed to be on. He rolled the window up because whenever a truck passed by, the map would flutter on his lap like a bug, and he’d have to fight with it to straighten it out. He began tracing a line on the map; it looked like a blue artery you sometimes see on someone’s arm.

“And how do we get to Monte-whatever-it-is, from wherever we are now?” Mother asked, pulling a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it with her Lady Barbara Zippo. I leaned across my brother and cracked the window open. He pushed me out of the way because I’d brushed up against him and punched me in the arm. I knew better than to say anything and waited as he rolled the window down.

I hated sitting in the middle.

“I’ll get us there, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Uncle Charlie said with a laugh.

“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it, Charlie?”

“What’s that?” he answered, looking up.

“ ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it’? That’s what you said when Mancini told me he wasn’t stopping production just because David died. I lost the role because of that heartless bastard. He never wanted me there in the first place. That’s what I heard; that’s what Judy said. She was the hairdresser on set. He was the only one who didn’t want me. We were supposed to go to Florence then, too. Remember? It wasn’t so much what he said that bothered me, as it was how he said it. But still: ‘We’ll beat this,’ you said. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.’ A year, Charlie. Do you remember that? I didn’t work for a year.”

“And whose fault was that? You can’t blame that on me, Daph,” Uncle Charlie said, looking at the map again and tracing his route. He looked at her when she didn’t answer.

“You don’t want to take the calls, pretty soon the calls are going to dry up, Daphne,” he said with the tiniest of shrugs, like he didn’t have anything else to say about it. “You should know that.”

“I do know, Charlie,” she said, reaching and stroking his cheek, smiling. “I don’t blame you—for anything—just so you know. But I couldn’t do anything then, you know that. I loved that man more than life itself. But by the end of last year, though, I was getting desperate. And what did you say? ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it’, you said. So I strolled the boards at the Old Vic and the Saville. Strutted like a slut, more like. I played Conégunde in Candide. And then I did that Revue at the Palladium with that insufferable gap-toothed Thomas, and Sykes…oh, and Leigh…Leigh…Oh, what was her name?”

“Adele. Adele Leigh,” Uncle Charlie reminded her, and she nodded her head ever so slight; her smile nothing more than a hint, if that.

“And Hattie! Oh Charlie, do you remember Hattie?”

“Remember her? I almost married her! Dodged a bullet with that one, I did. She said she’d make me legit,” he laughed. “She said I wouldn’t have to break the law every time I wanted to be with someone. To make certain of it, she planned to be there.”

“And look at us now, Charlie.” Mother sat up and began rolling the window down, flicking ashes outside which blew back in at Richard through the rear window. I looked at Richard, dropped my head down, and smiled.

“That’s not fair,” Uncle Charlie said looking up from the map on his lap, sounding uneasy.

“Mom!” Richard called from behind her. “Use the ashtray.”

“And now that we know it’s cancer, you still say, ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.’ But it’s cancer, Charlie. I’m not coming here to make a movie like we were supposed to that first time. I’ve come here to die.”

“I think I’ve got it sorted out.”

“Do you?” Barbara asked. “After all this time, you just think?”

“Barbara, that’s enough,” Mother said. “Please?”

“Well, it’s not London, is it?” Uncle Charlie said over his shoulder before looking down at the map again. “We just have to get off this goddamned road and we’ll be—”

I looked up when he cursed and saw his eyes snap up in the rearview mirror, looking at me. His eyes looked hollow, almost haunted, and there seemed to be a shadow of guilt that hung over him like a lingering fog.

“Are you listening to me? I’m sorry, Charlie,” Mother said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t blame you, but there’s nothing you can do to fix this.”

“I haven’t fixed anything, of late,” he said. “I couldn’t even find a place for you in Florence.”

“I’m sure we’ll do fine once we’re on our way. On our way, yes, but to where?” Mother asked.

“Montepulciano. Right, Kiddo?” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“Roger, Charlie,” I said, knowing he liked it whenever I tried to speak with an American accent. He smiled, then started the car again, waiting for a gap in the traffic before merging back onto the autostrada.