Much of what Jesus said boils down to put up or shut up, which is pretty good advice. Actions count in this world. I’m sure of this because when people talk to me now I feel my eyes slide off their faces and into space. I can’t do anything but freeze and hope I look like I’m still there, but Christ, I’m nervous whenever someone draws a fucking breath to talk. Naturally, then, I went out to dinner last night with my erstwhile drinking buddies for Sharkey’s birthday. The woman across the table didn’t let me get away with disappearing for even seconds, which Sharkey knew would be good for me. I felt like that woman was stabbing me in the forehead. We had a great conversation. Today, I’m ready to start putting me back together like I mean it.

Dad died and gave me homework.

This morning, I made coffee, went out for a good long walk and bought seeds to try growing basil, lettuce and cilantro in small kitchen-size pots. Last year, the kitchen herb garden failed when not a speck of sunlight hit the plants, but I am Italian. If we find a pile of dust in our kitchens we plant basil. I need basil plants in my kitchen. I need them! I’ve put up a grow light and hope the DEA realizes fresh herbs are actually good for you.

The books fall into three general categories: bread, herbs and spices and Jacques Pepin. I am interested in or frustrated by these topics – or both. I called Dad quite often to discuss something as simple as why a recipe might call for an ingredient, and could I substitute another? Sometimes, Dad would say, “Sure, and don’t stop there.” Sometimes, Dad would say, “Do that, and you will die before dessert.” Cooking may be frought with peril, but as you can see from the breadmaking gadgets pictured, Dad’s legacy to me is not one of objects but of curiosity. Of the item on the right he said, “It’s your job to learn what it is and how to use it.” In essence, he left each of his children keys to different kingdoms, connected and changing, and very much alive.

This is the clay pot he wanted to talk about the day I roasted the chicken. He was too weak to explain to me the use of this vessel, so Daria wrapped it up for me with the proviso that I learn how to cook with it. The challenge appealed to me, since I had no information as to the pot’s pedigree. The instructions say there’s no need to add fat for cooking. Hmm. The instructions also say to soak the pot for ten or fifteen minutes before use.

Damn right, I brined.

This is a cornish game hen bathed overnight in the fridge in Dad’s basic brine formula plus Italian seasoning, pepperoncini and cracked black pepper. Consider brining insurance against dry fowl when using a new cooking method. Anyway, while this looks grim and like the Ground Zero of a cross-contamination holocaust, it’s actually fantastic and you should try it. Refrigeration and enthusiastic use of disinfectant on hands, surfaces and tools will save your life. If you choose not to disinfect, please call me so I can laugh at you.

Location, location, location.

It turned out beautifully. The flavor was exciting, the meat really moist, the skin crisp. The potatoes had steamed and roasted. The bed of onion and carrot turned into a nice jus. This experiment was a complete success. Figuring out how to share my findings with the LongItalianLastName Food Science Committee may be beyond me. The thing is just too small. That hen’s stuffed in there nicely but a full size chicken? I’m not so sure. I’ll have to try that next.

The instructions also say this clay pot can be used to bake bread, which I’ll try next weekend. The clay is supposed to create an excellent crust. It’s an interesting possibility.

In the meantime, I polished my toenails, fixed my manicure and Naired my mustache. I’m considering taking a glass of wine and Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise and spending an hour in the bathtub after the Mythbusters quit blowing up stuff. After a month of no TV, it’s a joy to watch a good, vigorous explosion. Today is Miss Sasha’s birthday and Easter. Plan your own resurrection accordingly.

Huh.

I’m home now but Tuesday, I was still at Dad’s and Darla’s house in Virginia. The day was warm and sunlit. Because I was Phone Monitor and fending off callers of all types, I’d accumulated techno-debris. Moving from place to place became complicated. So I held still in the sun and typed smutty email to a handsome man, which was just funny.

At some point, I looked up the driveway and saw something odd through the trees. The mooing of cows in the pasture in front of me took on a peculiar nagging quality. I called to Darla, working on her laptop on the living room floor.

Tata: Hey Darla, want to see something weird?
Darla: Always. Whatcha got?
Tata: Um, are those cows outside the lines?

Indeed, I would’ve freaked about then but a week before, Daria had found a cow loitering on the driveway, so of course she called her husband in New Jersey.

Daria: Tyler, there’s a cow on the driveway. What do I do?
Tyler: What’s it doing?
Daria: Chewing. I can’t get home.
Tyler: The cow is between you and the house?
Daria: Yah huh!
Tyler: It’s not going to hurt you. It’s a cow.

Daria edged the van closer and the cow ignored her. She inched closer still. The cow slipped under the barbed wire and disappeared through the trees, leaving those of us unaccustomed to ways most bovine with the impression that a random cow in the driveway has got places to go and cud to chew. Darla, who lives in the house surrounded by cow pastures and paths, was not interested in cows outside the lines and returned to her laptop. I was sure, however, something was up, and up something was. Within a few minutes, a sizable number of cows stood at an intersection in the driveway. And then they started walking toward me.

Tata: Hey, Darla! The cows are coming.
Darla: I’ll get a camera.

The driveway’s long and winding and parts are obscured from view by trees. Plainly visible from our vantage point on the front steps were the calves. As the cows walked down the driveway toward the house, calves and cows inside the barbed wire and electric fence walked along, mooing madly, because cows tell on one another. Oh yes, they absolutely do. And cows don’t just have arguments – which they do – they know their voices attract the attention of attendant humans, so when there’s a lot of mooing, someone will show up with a flatbed.

Tuesday afternoon, cows headed for the house and I was entirely amused until they crossed the PVC bridge supposed to deter them from coming over for picnic lunches. Cows don’t like unstable surfaces so the pipe bridge should make them turn around but these cows were especially clever and walked around it.

My jobs at the house as Dad lay dying were Cat Wrangler (in charge of keeping cats happy, fed and out of Dad’s hair) and Phone Monitor (keeping interlopers from interloping) and I figured This here is the intersection between pet care and border patrol. Rock on. So with Darla snapping away behind me, I got up and walked toward the cows without the first clue what might happen.

Cheese it! It’s the cops!

Turns out cows are scared of Jersey chicks. I came around the trees and said, “Hey gals, whatcha doin’?” Nine giant animals that could have crushed my skull with one hoof spun around and skedaddled up the driveway. That was a surprise. When I stood up, I had no idea the girl gang would go without a rumble. I’m going to add Cowgirl to my resume.

I’m purty.

During the month we ran a household and cared for Daddy, Darla, Daria and I didn’t always get a shower every day. We reported this to Dad.

Daria: We have a game called I Am the Cleanest Of the House.
Dara: I shower before school every day so I am always The First Cleanest.
Daria: Right now, I Am the Cleanest Of the House but yesterday –
Tata: I was the Cleanest Of the House until Darla showered.
Dad: I’m out of this game, right?
Daria: And you smell fine.
Tata: I, however, cannot bear to smell me and must fix that immediately. I will shower two days in a row! I’m mad, mad with cleaning power!
Daria: She’s going to be a bitch about this until someone else gets the title.

Obviously, that wasn’t Tuesday, since I chased cows up the driveway in pajamas. An exciting footnote: to the right of me is the spot where I first saw cows outside the lines, and I hoped they’d slide through the fence. Instead, all nine cows turned left and went up the neighbors’ driveway. So. When the neighbors came home, they found cows on the lawn.

Oops.

When the undertaker arrives, I’m pouring chicken stock into a saucepan and tossing in rehydrated shitake mushrooms, a bay leaf, dried sage. When I return to the living room, Dad has been dead three hours. Darla hasn’t budged from her spot, bedside, where she caresses his right arm. Her parents have assumed protective positions between the undertaker and the front door, which interests me since I assume we should be clearing that path. I say nothing and sit on the bed at Dad’s left hand. His skin is cool to the touch but still soft. I am also interested because the undertaker is a young, nervous blond boy in a brand new suit, and he is shaped like a question mark.

Kid: Hi um um um my name is Randy um um um I’m with –
Tata: We spoke on the phone. My name is Domenica.
Kid: Yes um um um I’m very sorry for your um um um loss.
Tata: Thank you. Please sit down. Would you like a glass of water? Would you like to use the bathroom?
Kid: No, thank you. Um um um I have a few um um um questions –
Darla: GET ON WITH IT!
Kid: Yes, um um um we’d like to assure you we’ll um um um take care of everything, including um um um getting enough death certificates for your needs. Do you know how many you’d want?

We look at each other.

Tata: How many do people generally ask for, Randy?
Kid: Five or six, and we can always get more.
Tata: We’d like seven. Dad has a minor child who will certainly need copies.
Kid: And we can always get more.
Tata: Excellent.
Kid: Do either of you know your father’s parents’ names?
Darla: He’s my husband!
Tata: …and my father, and his father’s name was Alessandro. A-L-E-S-S-A-N-D-R-O. His mother’s name was Edith SicilianName LongItalianLastName. I’ll write down his children’s names for you.
Kid: Thanks. Um um um about the medical examiner –
Darla: What about him?
Kid: We’ll um um um speak to him for you.
Tata: Thank you, since we’re not sure what we’d be discussing. Which can be so awkward.
Kid: Oh, I’m sorry I’m wearing a pink shirt.
Darla: What?!
Tata: Dahhhhhhlink, we thought it was just fashion-forward for morticians.
Kid: I went to a breast cancer um um um funeral this morning and um um um –
Darla: Why are you apologizing? Why is he apologizing?
Kid: Anyway, I do apologize –
Tata: Randy, dear, did you come here alone?
Kid: Actually, my associate is waiting in the um um um vehicle. Why do you ask?
Tata: Because otherwise you and I were going to carry Daddy to the hearse.
Darla: I wondered if you were going to throw Dominic over one shoulder.
Tata: I’d do that just for you, sweetie.

Randy slips outside and I duck back in the kitchen to add more chicken stock to the pot, to lay out plates and flatware. Milk and instant potatoes wait for me in measuring cups. Butter softens on a plate. I’d opened a box of expensive frozen burgers, which someone will explain later to be a concession to the sewage taste cancer left in Dad’s mouth. Canned vegetables wait in plastic containers to be microwaved. In the living room, the kid and an older man prepare to move the body. I kiss his cheek, say, “Goodbye, Daddy,” and march back to the kitchen, where frying pans heat, ingredients simmer and the microwave whirs. The front door slams and what we’ve all dreaded happens: Darla collapses in her mother’s arms and sobs for her lost husband. I sob. Nigel sobs. Nina sobs. We all sob. Years-long minutes pass. Darla hiccoughs.

Darla: What’s for dinner?

We dry our tears. We eat burgers with pepper relish because three of us were born in England and it happens to be tasty, and mashed potatoes, creamed corn and cut green beans. Our new motto becomes: You have to laugh or you’ll cry, but you still gotta eat, and we ate that kid in a pink shirt for breakfast.

When I left a month ago, it was winter. This evening, I walked to the family store in a light spring rain. My friends filled my refrigerator with fresh vegetables and light Lebanese food. My new couch is gorgeous. My apartment smells like sachets and air fresheners I like. After a month of almost no television, RAI news is on in Italian in my living room. I cannot get used to speaking above a whisper.

Finally, I have come home.

Monday morning:

Daria: How’s your hangover?
Tata: Why are you screaming?
Daria: I’m whispering. You’re hungover.
Tata: How could you possibly know that?
Daria: Because the sounds of my little children’s tiny steps on my kitchen floor feels like roofing nails being pounded into my brain.
Tata: Anya told me everyone wound up at Auntie InExcelsisDeo’s last night. I thought she was sobbing but she said “I’m so allergic to InExcelsisDeo’s dog I could plotz.”
Daria: Anyway, I don’t have to be there to know that when I might’ve been a teeny bit intoxicated you were a dirty drunk and so was Darla.
Tata: No such thing. We have Get Out Of Jail Free cards. We could run naked through city hall shrieking Rod McKuen poems and not get arrested because we’re the grieving family of Dominic LongItalianLastName.
Daria: Wait, so I was a dirty drunk and you were afflicted family members?
Tata: Yup.
Daria: I need a better zip code.

On Saturday, Darla asked me to write Dad’s obituary and I admit to panicking a bit. Darla found a recent bio for some festival Dad was planning when he got sick. I stared at it, then called Daria for help. Dad has led a complicated, sometimes secretive life the details of which remain obscure. After many fits and starts, I tore bits and pieces out of the folksy bio and added a list of surviving relatives. Then I looked across the kitchen table and found the solution to my what-am-I-omitting? problem.

Tata: Summer, read this and tell me what I’m forgetting. Please!

Dad’s second ex-wife and my baby sister Dara’s mother Summer put down an elderly copy of People and stared at the text file. First of all, everybody who wandered by said the same thing.

Mourner: He didn’t write his own obituary?
Tata: Nope.
Mourner: …I didn’t see that coming!

Summer, like the rest of us, couldn’t believe Dad hadn’t scripted his demise and screened sponsors. He was a prowling, growling set of uncompromising standards for himself and others and this cancer thing was unacceptable, so when he told Darla he hadn’t written an obituary, even she didn’t believe him. There’s a magnet on his wonky oven that reads: CULINARY CONTROL FREAK. Naturally, we searched his computer for tributes he’d written to himself. We braced ourselves to read posthumous revelations like Now it can be told: Dominic LongItalianLastName invented pantyhose in 1958 so he’d have something to peel off women in 1959, but he was true to his word and we found nothing. Summer read an obituary draft rough as a gravel footpath and asked, “What about his bonsais? Remember when he was a professional musician? Didn’t he take pictures for a living? How many countries did he visit? Did he make that Olympic team?” Christ, if I knew. I wrote it all down, rearranged it, and emailed a draft to Darla, who was, of course, in the living room with Dad. Then, I added something, and emailed a revision to Darla, still only thirty feet away. Darla rewrote the crappy draft I’d sent her in a competent manner and sent it back to me, in the kitchen. The timestamp says 4:12 p.m. She hit send, she said later, and turned to see why Dad made a funny noise, which turned out to be a last breath, then no more. As I mentioned before, Darla’s father Nigel told his wife Nina Dad was dead. She came to the kitchen table where Summer, Dara and I waited and said, “I’m sorry but he’s gone.” Summer and Dara burst into tears. I stood up, walked around the table like an apparition and into the living room. I saw that Daddy was dead, that Darla was sobbing, that Nigel was distraught because his daughter was distraught, and I pulled the list of phone numbers off the wall. I said, “I will take care of this,” and walked back to the phone, where I called hospice and got the answering service. It was Sunday, after all. An insufficiently understanding operator spelled and re-spelled LongItalianLastName five or six times, though it should have been clear to her that the person leaving this message had just lost a significant figure in her life. Someone was supposed to call back immediately. Fifteen minutes later, no one had, I called back and made it entirely clear I was reporting a death and delays were – say it with me, children – unacceptable. At just about 5:20, a very sweet on-call nurse arrived, checked Dad’s pulse and respiration and smiled at us. She had no legal power to say the words, “He’s dead” and since I knew that, I’d already called the funeral home and said, “Dudes, it’s happened. Stand by for a hospice nurse to call you.” She called, over and over, for an on-call oncologist to pronounce Dad dead. In the meantime, sobbing at the kitchen table had given way to frustration with procedure and staring into space when the nurse sat down with us. I couldn’t move this process forward without taking a hostage, so I changed the subject for my teenaged sister.

Tata: So: thanks for leaving me that load of laundry.
Dara: …no problem…
Tata: I’ll tell you what I said this morning: “That’s enough! Those bitches are going to fold their own thongs!”

Summer and the nurse burst out laughing. Dara stared at me for a second, then snickered.

Dara: Nobody folds their thongs. What, do you fold your underwear?
Tata: Of course not. I solve that problem by not wearing any.

The spell of the last months is broken when mourners and the hospice nurse can’t stop themselves from doubling over. I don’t know what possessed me to say this but I should be checked for ectoplasmic fingerprints.

Tata: Listen, there’s no reason for you to stay here any longer. Why don’t you go home with your mom?
Dara: Daria will come back tomorrow, right?
Tata: Right, and you can have the cuddly sister then but in the meantime, why not go home?
Dara: I guess I could…

She ran upstairs to pack while Summer looked at me like What just happened?

Dara ran back downstairs with her backpack just as the nurse got a doctor on the phone. The formality of pronouncing Dad dead occurred two hours after his last breath, and then the mortuary people could leave their office an hour away. Dara kissed Daddy goodbye and I walked her and Summer to their car.

Dara: Hug me!
Tata: I…just…can’t!
Dara: You’re prickly but you’re gonna get over it.
Tata: I’m prickly, but you’re all trippy and fall-downy. Talk to you tomorrow.

When the vehicle from the mortuary arrived in the driveway, dinner was ten minutes’ from ready, by which I mean everything on the stove bubbled gently. We have been eating where he slept, but I worried it might be too much for the undertakers to arrive and find us passing the gravy, especially since there was no way Darla would leave Dad’s body. So. Again, we waited.

Dad stopped breathing a little over half an hour ago. We’re waiting for the hospice people to come and begin the legal aspects of the end of Dad’s life.

If we can choose the manner of our deaths, and some of us do, we are lucky indeed. He was asleep. Darla and her father were sitting bedside, talking quietly. He was breathing, then he didn’t draw another breath. Then, Darla’s father called to his wife, and we in the kitchen clearly heard him whisper, “He’s gone.” Everyone sobbed and I called hospice. Once again, we are just waiting.

We had a very hard night. Even the cats are restless.

I’m so tired.

On weekdays, someone takes Dara to the bus stop or, if we want to sleep an hour longer, to school. We haven’t slept well. When she was here, Daria took charge of getting Dara to high school but after Daria left, I suddenly had to think about teenager transportation again.

Tata: Shit! We have to get up early because I won’t be able to get home from the high school.
Dara: That would be embarrassing.
Tata: Wait till your friends see my hair done by a cat!
Dara: Am I too young to have a stroke?

Yesterday, we were up before the alarm. I came downstairs and glared at the coffee pot until Dara told me to put on my shoes. The fields all around were blanketed with thick frost. I started the van and could barely reach the pedals but didn’t adjust the seat because everyone who might drive it including Dara is bigger than me. We drove to the end of the steep driveway, where we sat quietly and shivered at a 30 degree angle to the road.

Dara: Put on the parking brake.
Tata: Really? You don’t want to go visit the cows across the street?
Dara: Not without a bun and sauteed mushrooms, no.
Tata: I never use that, living where things are relatively flat. How do I – um – turn it off to go home?
Dara: You press it harder and it releases or there’s a lever without a handle.
Tata: Rock on.

A minute or two later, the bus appeared. Dara and I air kissed. She got on the bus and I thought, “Hot damn, I’m going back to bed now.” But I was wrong, and I couldn’t release the parking brake.

Look, I’m not a genius. A couple of weeks ago, we were desperate to feed Dad anything he’d eat. We searched the grocery stores for ideas, for cream soups, for anything he might take one bite of and it was becoming an obsession for me. Our objective was to keep his cognitive function as clear as we could for as long as we could, and I was working on a premise I may or may not have remembered correctly from Good Eats.

Tata: Brains need protein. Maybe later, we can try spoonfuls of cream.
Darla: Brains need glucose. It’s widely misunderstood.

I blinked a few times.

Tata: I’m pretty wide…

After that, I had to calm down and rethink my obsession. Friday morning, when I pressed the parking brake pedal as far as it would go repeatedly and nothing happened, I tried pulling on the lever without a handle. Nothing. My hands were useless in the cold and without a good grip. I put the van in reverse to see what would happen and I think the cows across the street laughed at me. I sat for a minute, wishing like mad I knew what to do and wishing my hands worked. Then I thought ‘This is Dad’s van. There’s no way in the world he wouldn’t have a tool kit.’ I turned off the van and climbed into the back, where I found a bucket of tools wedged between a seat and the wheelwell – and pliers. That’s all I needed. Getting home from there was a breeze, though I was wide awake.

On Monday, I might drive to school in my pajamas.

Today’s Friday. It’s Friday? Yes, it’s Friday. I have to do more of the thinking now, even though Daria says, “Don’t think. It weakens the team.”

On Tuesday night, we decided it was time for Darla’s parents to make the two-day drive from Canada. Yes, she’s Canadian. No, she looks just like a normal person. On Wednesday, Darla called them. They packed the car – their cases were packed weeks ago – and left almost immediately. The same day, Daria’s four-year-old Sandro pulled a Houdini on the babysitter and the police were called. It didn’t go well from there. I turned a corner in the house and found Daria on a cellphone, turning a lovely shade of ashen I’d never seen before. After a series of frantic phone calls, she spilled the beans.

Daria: Sandro ran away from the babysitter and the police got involved.
Tata: No, Sandro was going for a walk.
Daria: No, he….right.
Tata: Is he under arrest? I always expected to bail him out but this kid’s a prodigy.
Daria: Your godson wouldn’t tell the police his name.
Tata: That’s my boy.

Her husband Tyler came yesterday to pick her up. The plan is for her to come back Sunday or Monday with at least two of her children. I hate this plan but the kids are so small time away from their mother is not something we can ask them to accept stoically.

In the meantime, Daria, Darla and I had formed a rhythmic, dependable tag team verging on a flat-tire roller derby; the idea of Daria’s leaving filled me with dread. For two weeks, the corps of minions jumping up when Darla appeared with some frightening pronouncement narrowed until it was just Daria and me with the italic M sewn to our matching t-shirts. Dara is really too young to be shoved into the fray, in my opinion. Yesterday, I had a few hours of near fright until Darla’s parents arrived. Then Tyler and Daria left. Dara and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

In any case, Daria left all her clothes, doubling the size of my wardrobe. I’d brought enough clothing for a few days and I’ve been here almost a month, I think. When I get home, I’m building a bonfire and burning everything I’ve worn to threads. You should bring marshmallows.

On her way out, Daria said, “I made meatloaf. All you have to do is cook it.” When we decided we should eat, Dara and I stared at the foil-covered loaf pan and cursed Daria. I took out the – don’t look, Suzette! – Joy of Cooking because I don’t make meatloaf. Gently, Darla’s mother Nina came to stand next to me.

Tata: Meatloaf…meatloaf…page 722…
Nina: I’d think we might cook at 350, maybe?
Tata: …we could do that…
Nina: For half an hour with the foil on, perhaps?
Tata: That sounds good.
Nina: And a little longer after that?
Tata: You have my full attention. Let’s do it.

And we did. Darla’s Dad Nigel talks medicine with Darla, which is a great comfort to her. This morning, Dara went to school. I sat with Dad. Darla did some work. Nina and Nigel returned the wheelchair to a hospital and picked up groceries. I am not frightened. We hung on through the white-knuckle ride because there was no other choice. Now we can let go a little.

Grownups have arrived.