I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [107]
Pa contested the divorce, the judge threw him out of court, and a curtain came down on the major chapter of his life. He was free. So he started dating a variety of women, taking them out dancing, writing them love letters. Sleeping with them? I don’t know—but I hope so. But he kept my mother’s name. “Hi! What’s your name?” “Andy Dam-boize,” he’d reply. It’s the name on his grave.
Eventually, he retired and went to Maine to live with Paul and Kathleen, and started fishing full-time, though he never caught a fish. Paul and Kathleen had six children, and he regaled every one of them with his wonderful Irish stories, the same tales he had recounted to my siblings and to me. We loved them and would importune, “Pop! Tell another, tell another!” but when we heard, “All right, I’ll tell you the story of Jimmy McGorry, and now my tale is done!” we’d groan with disappointment, because it was a signoff, his way of saying “Enough.” The tales were done for the night.
I was teaching a group of children in an auditorium at St. Patrick’s School in Jersey City when the principal, Sister Maeve,1 called me out of rehearsal, and led me into an office to answer an urgent phone call. “Hello, this is Dr. Mulet. Do you know a Georgette d’Amboise?” Boss had died of cardiac arrest, the police were at her condo, and I was to call them to get the details. It seemed she went in her sleep. I hung up, numbed and brain-scrambled, and called Carrie. “I’m going with you,” Carrie said. “I’ve been through this, with the death of my mom. You won’t be able to function or make a decision. You’re going to need someone.”
Diary entry, January 23, 1984:
I am amazed at how I have not broken down. How great she was, and what a lesson to me. To be what she wished and imagined me to be—I think I can aim at that. My wife is great as well. The women who have been part of me have been extraordinary. Last time I spoke with Boss, less than a month ago, she had me laughing about a dear friend, James V. Bowler, a newspaper columnist, being her gigolo—his word. Boss: “My gigolo is coming over to call on me, bringing me my groceries.” She talked about him, how smart he is, how sophisticated. “He knows about everything! Everything there is, he knows about dance and music and art.” She had me laughing, and we had a good laugh together. I promised to come down to visit her by the end of February or early March. “Oh I wish I could hold and hug you, my Jacques.”
Carrie and I jumped on a plane to Tampa. We were met by James V. Bowler and taken to her apartment. A neighbor, Steve, had given the Boss’s extra key to the police, but we managed to get in via Ruth Smith, a lady in the condo office. Inside, Boss’s tiny slippers were next to the bed, where she had died. The house was not a mess, although she had not been able to keep it spick-and-span, as was her wont. While Carrie started cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, I got into Boss’s bed, and tried to fit my body into the indentations where hers had last lain. I talked to her, whispering so Carrie wouldn’t hear. After a while, I got out of the bed, stripped off the sheets, threw them out, and put the mattress outside to air. Carrie picked out clothes she thought the Boss would like to be buried in. That night, I slept on the floor and Carrie slept in the narrow hide-a-bed couch.
My siblings arrived, and I discovered that Boss had left pages and pages of notes for each of us, with detailed orders about funeral arrangements and exact instructions for how her belongings would be distributed. From Boss’s last letters and orders:
I have at Fortune Federal an account holder’s T.R.I.T.F.… You can draw all the amount, it is to pay for my funeral expenses. You will buy a modest coffin—you will find a white silk dress in among my other dresses; you can also choose another off-white evening dress that could be suitable. I have made arrangements with Moss Funeral Home Inc., they will give you all the help you need. You’ll find their card among these papers.