The next morning, my father knocked on my door, and I was sure he was going to announce that he was moving to the same downtown club, because I didn’t understand then what “private” meant or that my parents weren’t club-type people. Instead, my father announced that we were all playing hooky and going to Disneyland.
Never in my life had we done something so normal. Disneyland? As a family? On a Tuesday? I’d accompanied my parents to art openings and cocktail parties, backstage at concerts and to designer showrooms. My parents would pull me out of school for weeks at a time to go to New York or Tokyo or Houston while my father installed projects. The nuns at Sacred Sisters would wag their fingers and warn that I would never learn cursive or multiplication. But then my mother would work her charm, and my father would offer to light the chapel for Christmas Eve Mass, and off I would go with their blessing. The nuns were right, though; I never really did learn cursive.
But Disneyland was a whole new experience for us as a family. It was one of the best days of my childhood. We rode It’s a Small World three times because my father was fascinated by the ride, as if it was a message from another universe. We stood in line for Space Mountain, ate some giant turkey legs, and watched a parade on Main Street. We were almost like every other family, except for the times when my mother was asked for her autograph and my father’s insistence that we stay for the fireworks, even though we were exhausted, because he wanted to see the “color palette.”
After the trip to Disneyland, my father disappeared for eight weeks. I would later learn that he went to Betty Ford and got sober for the final time after a relapse. When my mother explained it all to me at sixteen, I joked about that maybe he was high at Disneyland and that’s why we did It’s a Small World three times. She did not confirm or deny my allegation. But at age ten, I had no idea what it meant when my grandmother Adele, who came down from San Francisco for an extended stay, told me he went to the desert to dry out. I thought he literally got wet somehow and went to get dry.
I don’t recall my parents ever fighting like that again. Whatever they worked out that night stuck for the duration, as did the sobriety. He went to meetings, sponsored his fellow artists and creatives, and avoided triggering situations. The work was still intense and there were long periods of silence from my father, but my mother’s anger and resentment faded. Her ultimatum, or whatever bargain they struck, was life changing for both of them. First, an iconic Gap ad of the two of them shot by Patrick DeMarchelier debuted in every magazine on the newsstand. After the world was reminded of Suzi Clements Blakely, her modeling contracts picked up, giving my mother her identity back. Finally, my father created Castle Burning in Central Park, establishing him as one of America’s best-known artists. But it all started that day at Disneyland.
Several months after the epic Disneyland trip, my father, home and sober, created a piece called It’s Not Really a Small World After All that the New Yorker once called “a tiny, tinny miracle.” Housed in a stand-alone tin-sided building measuring about twelve by fourteen, It’s Not Really a Small World After All paid homage to the immensity of the universe, using forced perspective and natural light to bring the galaxies down to the viewer. A slab of black marble kept the floor cool, as the piece was meant to be experienced over an hour as the moon rose during certain days of the cycle. Viewers would lie on their backs as the moonlight came in through a carefully engineered slit in the roof. Hundreds of pinpoint mirrors reflected the light in mesmerizing patterns. My father created a mock-up of the piece at his studio, and I loved lying in the dog-kennel-size box watching the light show.
It’s Not Really a Small World After All now stood on a bluff above the Marin headlands in Tiburon at the home of a private collector. But there, in the lobby of a hotel in Paris, I held a copy of my father’s initial sketches in my hand. It was dated the day after we went to Disneyland in 1990. Notes in my father’s hand read “The most incomprehensible fact about the universe is that it is comprehensible”—his favorite Einstein quote.
I broke down.
Nate guided me to the glass elevator and walked with me to my room. Wisely, he didn’t ask any questions, waiting for me to regain my composure. I was now officially his worst one-night stand ever, a complete basket case as the spontaneous tears gave way to full-blown sobbing. He fetched me a glass of water like a good boy. Poor Nate, he was thoroughly out of his element, clearly not something he was used to. I managed to hand him the piece of paper.
“What am I looking at?”
There was a long pause as I took some deep breaths and drank some of the water. I spoke slowly. “A page from my father’s notebooks. He wrote down every idea, every thought he had for decades in these simple black-and-white notebooks. We thought they were lost on 9/11. But maybe not.”
“Wait, is this different than the Panthéon Sketches?”
“Yes, completely. The Panthéon Sketches belongs to the museum. A different artist, different time. But this is from my father’s personal notebooks.” My voice rose in volume and frustration. Poor Nate kept nodding. “I don’t quite understand the connection between the Panthéon Sketches and this page from my father’s notebook, but there must be one, right?”
“I feel I’m about ten steps behind in all this, but not necessarily. It could be a coincidence. Statistically, that happens more than you think. The two incidents, three if you count nearly being run down, they may not be connected at all. For sure, though, a lot of people know that you’re in Paris and exactly where you are. I wonder how that is?”
I was glad one of us could reason. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Nate sat down next to me. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t tell you what this means to me.”
Nate put his arm around me as I buried my head in his shoulder. He soothed my hair and we sat quietly for a few more minutes. His suede jacket smelled like pine needles, rich and woody. I wanted to kiss him, be naked with him again. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, the stress, the mild hangover and jet lag. I wanted Nate to make it all go away for an hour. “It’s like a ghost. Or some kind of miracle.”
Nate released his arm from around my shoulders and created some distance between the two of us. “Isn’t there someone you should call?”
“Umm . . .” A shrink, my mother, the police, Luther—yes, I should call all of them. “I can’t think.”
“Is there anything else in the envelope?”
I reached into the envelope and pulled out another piece of paper, a page of cream-colored stationery, almost rough and ragged in its texture. On it, there was a paragraph of crisp handwriting. I scanned the page. “What the hell?”
“What?”
I read it out loud:
There she rode on horse with sword
And led her men without a word
Here’s my book that tells me so
Here’s my faith that lets me know
I’ll see her again, oh yes
I’ll see you at six, sweet maid
Come meet with me at six, sweet maid
There was no name, no signature, just a hand-drawn sketch of a black bird.
“What is this?” I handed the paper to Nate. “A clue? An invitation?”
Nate studied the page, then read it aloud to himself, as if hearing the words might make more sense than reading them. “It’s both. But it’s unusual. It’s not a riddle. It’s like a poem. What’s this drawing? Do you recognize it?”
I shook my head. “A blackbird?”
“Yes, but, I mean, does it mean anything to you?” I shook my head. Nate was agitated. “Okay, now you call the police and then your friend and her lawyer husband, because I don’t like this at all.”