The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir

Chapter Seventeen: Embracing Pahrump

250 C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N EMBRACING PAHRUMP MY FATHER’S STREET-PERSON REGALIA HAD PROTECTED HIM FOR DECADES. But one time in the late 1980s, the costume failed to work. Dad was accosted outside a Reno casino, robbed of his gold Rolex and his thick roll of greenbacks. The thief struck Dad and put out his left eye. The emergency room doctor presented Dad with a decision. The eye would never again serve him; the doctor could leave it in or take it out. It was Dad’s call. Dad sat upright in the hospital bed, his left eye heavily bandaged, and, misquoting the Bible again, replied with a bitter grin: “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.”So instructed, that’s what the doctor did.After Reno, Dad wore an eye patch that conformed well with his desire to shock. By Jerry’s account, he had a bit of trouble on the golf course from loss of depth perception . But, according to Jerry, he was generally unfazed. I rarely saw Dad for a decade or so and I didn’t seek him out. The next time I heard from him was in 1995 when he called, looking for Jerry. He needed a ride to Las Vegas from Hot Springs. Did I know where Jerry was? Of course I did: as always, Jerry was out of town. The bad joke didn’t slow him down; I could hear Dad edging toward asking me for the ride. Usually at such moments, I would remind him that I had a job—I was teaching the literature of the Vietnam War at Tulane at the time—and unlike him couldn’t take off for parts unknown. This time I skipped such small change: “What can you be thinking asking me for a favor? When I had a brain EMBRACING PAHRUMP 251 tumor and lost my job and family, you disappeared. Not a word. This is the first time we’ve spoken since 1991.” “I thought that’s what you needed,” he offered, his version of tough love, I suppose. That was the end of that conversation. Soon after that call, he called at five in the morning.“The hotels in New Orleans want too much money.”He had heard about my new house on Audubon Park. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad.” It wasn’t right turning away my father, but I wasn’t sure how I would ever dislodge him. Maybe this time it would be my shoes, not Sophie’s, on the sidewalk and my house signed away. A year or so later, Jerry showed up in Florida at Mom’s condo on the beach. She had decided to hold Thanksgiving dinner in Destin. Rosemary had brought Rien and Tommy and I brought Matt and Owen, all young teens. Jerry had Dad in tow—but had sense enough to install him in a nearby motel. One afternoon Jerry took all the boys bowling. When they came back they told me in hushed tones about their one-eyed grandfather at the bowling alley. They had met him only once before. “When we were leaving, Dad,” Matt explained, “he asked Uncle Jerry who ‘those boys were?’” “Yeah, Dad,” Owen added,“he doesn’t even know who we are.” Now, in Las Vegas, 2003, it was time to pay my last respects. I was on my way to a sustainable food conference in Napa, California, when I got a rare call from Jerry: Dad was in a coma. Besides losing an eye, Dad had taken a fall in his Hot Springs bathhouse that had required drilling his cranium to release the pressure of the bleeding. The present seizure was probably a 17.1 One-eyed and raring to go— the Gorilla Man on his deathbed. EMBRACING PAHRUMP 252 long-term result of that injury. Jerry had found him after this new seizure. Actually he found him twice. The first time Jerry found Dad lying on the floor, he and Sophie assumed he was taking a nap. He had been playing with the kids. Jerry wanted to wake him; Sophie said, let him sleep. Three hours later, returning from the movie, they found him still lying there, still unconscious, but now, humming and murmuring. They couldn’t wake him. Jerry called 911. The ICU...