Twenty-Six
Disney World is the happiest place on earth. This is a known fact, verified, proven. Those who disagree have simply never been, have never smelled the piped-in-cinnamon sugar scent of Main Street, USA, or tasted the cool creaminess of a Dole whip; haven’t heard the screams from Splash Mountain as they wait in line, eagerly, for their turn down the slippery slope; and haven’t seen the spires of Cinderella’s castle as they walk through the gates. Epcot is my personal happy place. The second park to be built at the Orlando sight, Epcot was completed after Walt himself had already passed away. The park is very different from his original vision of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and, in fact, has the distinct feel of being two different parks smashed together—because it is. Epcot came about when two imagineers with two different ideas and two different models tried pushing the models together.
If Magic Kingdom is one hub surrounded by the spokes of a wheel, and Hollywood Studios is an ambling boulevard, and Animal Kingdom is a rough, sloping mountain pass, then Epcot is all circles and spheres, puzzle pieces stuck together to form a whole. The two halves curve like slices from two different melons. One half is Future World, with rides about conservation and communication and technology. The other half is The World Showcase, part international bizarre, part World’s Fair. Each melon half sits around a man-made lake (large, but not so large that you can’t see the opposite bank at all times). And, of course, it is topped by the iconic “golf ball,” a 180-foot-tall geodesic sphere that contains Spaceship Earth, easily the most fun you’ll ever have while learning about world history. Usually less crowded than the more popular Magic Kingdom, the sight of the huge gray sphere of Epcot rising up above the trees has the uncanny ability to drive away every trouble out of my mind. Except, this time, it is not quite working.
It is Sunday June 10th, 2018, fifteen days before my twenty-sixth birthday, and “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” from Hercules is blaring through the speakers as I navigate my best friend’s car into the spot indicated by the enthusiastically waving parking lot employee in the orange-striped shirt. After I put the car in park and turn off the engine, I take a deep breath, my hands flexing on the steering wheel.
“Are you okay?” Liz asks, her hand on the door handle and one foot already out of the car. I smile at her, and it only feels 40% forced.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Our first stop is the trunk of the car for supplies. I have a tiny backpack full of snacks, as well as two bottles of sunscreen, and a plastic canteen full of gin and Sprite (honestly, more gin than Sprite). Liz and I both slather on the sunscreen because it is a beautiful, cloudless June morning and already ninety degrees. It is 9:00 a.m. so I don’t take a swig from the flask, but the thought is tempting, and I can’t help but wonder if that is one of the signs that I am turning into an alcoholic. Both of my parents were alcoholics, and drug addicts. They met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, what a wonder the marriage didn’t last. I cram the flask into my tiny backpack and as I lead to way to the line for the tram to the park entrance, my smile becomes less forced. Liz and I take selfies on the tram, our hair tossed about in the slipstream of the 40 m.p.h. vehicle. I try not to think about the phone call.
In the morning, before Liz and I got on the road, my father called me; an odd occurrence, since he usually just messaged me on Facebook, if he contacted me at all. It was 6:30 a.m. I had just woken up an hour before, suffocating beneath Liz’s purple polyester bedspread. I hadn’t really been sleeping—who can ever sleep the night before a Disney trip? When my alarm went off I bounded out of Liz’s bed to start getting dressed. Liz simply buried her head further into her mountain of pillows, cursing me and my need to get on the road at the earliest possible moment. I let her sleep until 6:00 a.m., my excitement making me generous, and when she did finally stumble out of bed, it was with a chorus of muttered complaints that bounced off of me as though the sparkly makeup I was meticulously applying in the mirror was actually a magic shield.
By 6:30 a.m., we were both dressed, Liz’s car was packed, and we were about to hit the road. The call, like a lot of things my father has done, threw everything off.
“Hey, kid,” he greeted me when I picked up. “Do you know if grandma is home?”
I wondered how much my father knew about his own mother if he was wondering about her whereabouts at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. My grandma and I are both night owls. Before I moved to Chicago, when I was performing regularly with a Rocky Horror Picture Show cast in Tampa, I would usually get home around three or four in the morning and she would still be awake, playing matching games on her cellphone and watching HGTV.
“She should be,” I replied. “Why, what’s up?”
Liz was hovering in the doorway, watching me with tired eyes that made me feel just a little bit guilty for making her get up so early. On the phone, my father paused, and a spike of anxiety joined the guilt.
“I’m in the hospital,” he said. “I think it was a heart attack.”
Our main goal on this fine Sunday morning is to visit the World Showcase Promenade, a 1.2 mile stretch hosting pavilions from eleven different countries: Mexico, Norway, Germany, Italy, Franc, England, Canada, China, Morocco, Japan, and, of course, America. And I don’t mean shabbily erected tents with tables crammed beneath. This is Disney World, land of details and immersive storytelling. Each country has a slice of the mile-long path, and each slice is dominated by a piece of intricately detailed architecture. Mexico has a step pyramid, Morocco has an open-air market, China has a circular theater. England is laid out like a city road and is teeming with shops, including a Twinning’s tea shop with more tea and biscuits than you could consume in a year.
The World Showcase is my favorite part of Epcot. Each pavilion is unique, with snacks and shopping themed specifically for that country. Walking into each pavilion does not feel like walking into the countries themselves, I imagine. It is a manufactured version of the best parts of the countries represented, but when I’m waiting in line for sushi in Japan and can hear the drum ceremony outside, or when I’m browsing through trinkets in the market at the heart of Morocco and all around me is the smell of incense and roasting meat, I feel more connected to the world at large. It is a manufactured connection, but it still means everything to me. As a kid, it was the closest I ever came to being a glamorous world traveler. It doesn’t open until 11:00 a.m., so we decide to stop for coffee first. I lead the way. I’ve got a reputation for being Disney-wise, my head loaded with tips and tricks for surviving the sunbaked, ornery, Mickey-ear-wearing throngs. I know where the good bathrooms are (the one next to Journey into Imagination is secluded and rarely used). I know how to sneak in booze (in a plastic water or soda bottle, never glass; they confiscate glass), and that you no longer have to sneak in food.
Between us and the coffee shop are the Legacy Gardens, the first true challenge of Epcot navigation. It is a place where you can pay to have a loved one’s face engraved on a little piece of metal and displayed for all eternity on a shining marble slab. It’s an odd feature for a theme park, but Epcot has always been a little odd; a science and world cultures themed family vacation destination? Whacky, but I love it dearly. Sitting flush up against the park entrance, the Legacy Gardens is the spot everyone stops to take a photo, regroup their scattered party, or to ask questions to the overworked employees. It is a great photo spot: a dozen hulking, brown-marble slabs slanting a path toward Spaceship Earth, colorful hedge sculptures of Mickey and Minnie Mouse towering over all. Nothing at Disney is half-assed, not even the landscaping. There is an added challenge, one that I am fully responsible for. Before entering the park, I had stopped at one of the ticket booths and asked for a Happy Birthday button, because I wanted as much festiveness crammed into this day as possible. The woman behind the glass wrote my name on the button in looping script and handed it through with a smile. Walking in, every employee who saw my button wished me a happy birthday, as did several guests, an unspoken Disney tradition. I’ve wished complete strangers Happy Birthday, or Happy Anniversary, or Happy First Trip to Disney World countless times. Despite these challenges, I am able to safely navigate us to the Starbucks without losing Liz in the crowd.
Despite my best efforts, I am thinking about my dad at the Starbucks just past Spaceship Earth. It is fairly new, installed a few years ago, and it is one of the changes to the park that has not upset me. I was not a big coffee drinker until after my dad moved home from Canada. He had been gone for ten years and came back my junior year of high school. He missed a decade’s worth of birthdays, my first broken bone, and my sister’s high school graduation. The day he came back, Casie and I picked him up from the airport. I had swine flu and puked twice on the way there. We sat outside the luggage pickup at Tampa International Airport, so he could smoke. He told us that leaving was a mistake and asked us to make a spot for him in our lives now that he was home, begged us for forgiveness while crying freely. I noticed that we had the same eyes, that his turned green when he cried just like mine did. I told him that he came back, that that was all that mattered, and at the time, that had been true. I didn’t realize then what kind of a man my father was. I saw him cry. After sixteen years of fear and abuse at my mother’s hands—of jumping every time the garage door opened, a coffee mug shattered or a door slammed, or watching my words in case I said the wrong thing—having a parent that cried and asked for forgiveness for their wrongdoings was like a revelation: everything would be okay now that he was back.
We used to get coffee and talk. He always wanted to talk. He fooled me, at first, into thinking he wanted to talk with me—about my life and my goals and my dreams. Then I realized he only wanted to talk at me, about how sorry he was for leaving us, sorry because he knew how violent and unstable my mother was, and he left us there anyway. He talked about all the things he was doing to fix it, how he couldn’t change what he had done, but how he was really going to be there for us now. They were words that sounded pretty, but it did not take me long to figure out that he simply wanted praise for trying, that it was all just empty promises.
We have two hours to kill before the World Showcase opens, so we ride Spaceship Earth twice, waiting in line beneath the giant ball and sighing with relief every time a gust of wind blows over us. As we are waiting, I get a text from my grandma saying that she had arrived at the hospital an hour ago, and that they are running the usual gamut of tests on my father. I text her back, asking her to keep the details coming. Inside the ride, crammed into the little blue cars, we practically melt in the cool darkness as Dame Judy Dench’s voice guides us through the history of communication on this, our Spaceship Earth. The smell of the artificial fire burning in Rome is one of my top five favorite scents of all time. The last time I rode Spaceship Earth with my father, pre-Canada, we were hopped up on sugary sodas and laughing at everything. My sister and I shared a car while my father rode in the one behind us, cracking as many terrible jokes as he could cram into the fifteen-minute ride (something about our family resemblance to the wooly mammoth near the beginning, something else about Suleiman’s onion hat further in that I didn’t get). We were the most obnoxious family on the ride that day, but I didn’t care; I was too busy trying to breathe through my giggles.
Mentally, I have divided my father’s heart attacks into two categories: pre-Canada and post-Canada. It’s an even split. He had four, either before moving to, or while in Canada. Those are the ones I have been told about, but do not know the details of. I do not know exactly when they happened, I do not know their severity. I can guess at the various causes (cocaine before he got clean, horrible diet, too much caffeine, no exercise after he got clean, and a history of heart disease from his father’s side of the family). He has had four since he moved back to Florida in 2008: one major one and three minor ones, and I visited him in the hospital every time, except for this one. Heart attack number eight, and I’m strolling through the crowds of a theme park, sipping iced coffee, while my family scrambles to make sure my father is okay.
His first heart attack since coming home, the major one, was in 2014. I was working two jobs at the time, taking a break from school after nearly flunking out due to a bad battle with depression. My grandma called me while I was at work and explained that he was in the hospital. I left work in tears, got in my car, and cried the entire way there. I knew at the time that it wasn’t the first one, but I didn’t remember the others. For the first time, it had felt as though his heart attack was happening to me.
At the hospital, I found my grandma sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room, a Styrofoam cup of black decaf coffee in one hand, and I was struck by how small she looked, how exhausted. At the time, she was seventy-one. Always spry, always sharp, but in that hospital waiting room she looked every one of those years. When she saw me, she stood to hug me tight. She was not crying even though her son was in the hospital, and it occurred to me then that she had watched her husband die of a heart attack at fifty-four. This was my father’s fifth one, and he had just turned fifty. He had been clean before my sister was born, had quit the cocaine and alcohol, but still ate greasy food, shot-gunned Trenta iced coffees, and smoked like he had stock in Marlboro.
“Don’t be scared by how he looks when we go in,” she had warned me as we stood outside the door to his room. “There will be a lot of tubes and monitors making noise, but he’s okay for now.”
Okay for now is how I’ve thought of my father ever since.
After Spaceship Earth we hit up Journey into Imagination, and by the time we get out, the World Showcase is open, and the real party can begin. I’ve come to Epcot for my last three consecutive birthdays with the intention of Drinking Around the World. It’s difficult to find any facts about when or how the grand tradition of Drinking Around the World began. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it started when Epcot decided to serve alcohol. Magic Kingdom is a booze-free park, meant to be family friendly in every sense of the word. Epcot has a broader scope. The goal, as dictated in numerous articles and YouTube videos, is to buy and consume one drink from each of the eleven country pavilions. This is difficult because eleven drinks is pure madness, and the cost of each drink is high both emotionally and financially. I already know we won’t succeed, but that isn’t the real point.
Our first step is La Cava de Tequila in Mexico. It is cool and dark inside, so naturally it is crowded as people try to escape the sun for a few minutes. The margaritas are potent, the perfect beginning, but as the salt grinds between my teeth I realize I am still thinking about my father. This frustrates me. I am at Disney World with my best friend, I am wearing a sparkly plastic tiara and a button that says Happy Birthday, but I can’t stop thinking about my father, trussed up in a hospital bed because at fifty-four, he never bothered to learn how to take care of himself. I’m thinking about my grandma, sitting in yet another hospital waiting room, a cup of black decaf coffee in one hand and looking more irritated than worried. I’m thinking of my sister, who loves my father as much as she hates him, and who drove him to the hospital during the heart attack before this one, barely over a year ago.
I find myself wondering how different my life would be if my grandfather hadn’t died when I was too young to remember his face outside of photographs. I always think of my grandfather at Disney. My grandma likes to tell me that he always cried during the fireworks at Magic Kingdom whenever she catches me doing the exact same thing. My grandfather was tough, a hard worker, but infinitely loving. He liked to fix things with his own two hands, even though he was not very good at it. My favorite story about him is one that gets told at nearly every family dinner. One pleasantly sunny afternoon, my grandfather had been making a few minor repairs to the pontoon boat he and my grandma owned. Somehow, he got distracted and managed to screw his hand to the boat with an electric screwdriver. According to my family, this was “classic Wayne” behavior. He was accident-prone, determined, and a big softie.
If my grandfather was still alive, I wonder what he would have taught me: how to fix things without screwing myself to them, how to shoot a gun, how to drive stick, how to stand up for myself, how to respect others, or how to fish. My father doesn’t have his father’s gift for repair. He tried to take me fishing, but grew frustrated when I could not get the hang of it. Same with trying to teach me to drive stick. He was not in my life enough to teach me anything, really. My grandfather died of a heart attack. He had a history of heart disease, southern-born love of greasy foods, and my father is a fine example of history repeating itself, and it’s the ones not stuck in a hospital bed who have to watch it happen. Helpless, furious.
We pass through Norway without buying a drink, but a man in full Viking dress spots my tiara and bows to me. We watch part of a contortionist act outside China, fanning ourselves and shading our eyes with our hands. We make it through half of the canteen of gin while we munch on dumplings at the picnic tables and stumble through the shop behind the dumpling stand, buzzed and giggling, and holding carvings of dragons and tea cups aloft for each other’s giddy perusal.
We are drinking wine in Italy when I realize I am angry. The wine is making my cheeks warm, and whatever Liz was saying is drowned out by a raucous surge of laughter from the table two over from ours. I sink back in my chair and I am angry at my father for having a heart attack. Over winter break, I had to pick him up to bring him to grandma’s house for a family dinner because his car had broken down again. He made me stop at a corner store so he could pick up cigarettes. He had stopped smoking after the heart attack of 2014 but had, apparently, started again a few months previous, despite having had two more minor heart attacks since then. I was furious as he lit up the cigarette in my car, filling the confined interior with acrid smoke. He mocked me for listening to The Smiths, saying that Morrissey was a douchebag. I said Morrissey was a douchebag that made great music, and he came back with some asinine comment about how the art shouldn’t excuse the artist. I bit back a retort about how tearful apologies shouldn’t excuse crappy parenting, and turned the music up instead, not saying another word to him for the rest of the drive as Morrissey belted out something about too much caffeine into the awkward silence.
As I tip my head back and drain my glass, I realize I am not mad at him on my behalf, but on my grandmother’s, who buried her husband after his third heart attack and now watches her son go in and out of the hospital for the same reason, never knowing which will be the time he doesn’t come out, wondering if she will have to bury him, too. I am mad at him on my sister Casie’s behalf, who feels cheated, abandoned, who still craves approval from both of our shitty parents and hates herself for it.
Liz keeps shooting me furtive looks. I feel guilty that I ruined this trip for her as much as for myself. I know she doesn’t care, but I do, so I hand her the canteen, urging her to drink more. Eat, drink, be merry. That was why we were there.
In Japan, I order a Tokyo sunset, my favorite drink in all of Epcot. Coconut rum, peach schnapps, banana liquor, and pineapple juice, garnished with an orange slice, and decorated with a paper umbrella. It is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. I’m sipping it slowly, savoring, as I browse through the gift shop. I used to have a little tradition every time I came to Epcot. I would buy myself a pair of chopsticks. The shop has an entire wall of them. They come in every conceivable color. I already have so many pairs—bamboo ones with purple owls, black ones with ninjas, red ones with a beautiful painting of a geisha—and I hardly use them, but seeing them in my silverware drawer is a small happiness. I haven’t bought a new pair in a while, and I’m contemplating a cherry blossom painted pair when my grandma calls me.
“Hey, sweetie.” It’s how she always greets me. I haven’t spoken to her all day, and the relief I feel at hearing her voice leaves me dizzy. Although maybe that’s the Tokyo Sunset.
“Hey Gram. How’s the patient?”
“He’s doing okay. They put a stent in his heart and he’s resting now.”
I sit down abruptly on the shelf below a display of anime t-shirts.
“Wow, already?” I reply. “So he’s okay?”
“Yes,” she replies. She sounds so tired.
“Are you okay?”
She sighs. “You know, I’m not sure. I’m glad he’s okay, but. . . .”
There is a long pause. My eyes are stinging, and I can see Liz in the periphery, sticking close, but trying to give me and my grandma what little privacy a crowded shop in a theme park can afford.
“I know,” I say, because I do. We’ve done this dance too many times; we’re both sick of it, and I know my sister is, too, and I know that none of that will change my father’s behavior.
“Number eight,” she says. “Jeez.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, like it’s my fault.
“Don’t be, he’s the one who should apologize to you. What a dumbass.”
I laugh out loud at that, startling some of the tourists trying to look at the t-shirts I’m sitting in front of. I refuse to move out of drunken stubbornness.
“How’s Disney?”
“It’s great!” I exclaim. I feel lighter, now, some combination of the alcohol and hearing my grandma’s voice. “I’ve had five drinks.”
She’s laughing with me now. It’s a bright sound.
“Good, keep drinking, try to relax. He’s going to be okay.”
I say goodbye to her and down the rest of my Tokyo Sunset.
I’ve been told that my grandfather loved It’s a Small World, unironically and with great enthusiasm, a fan of the message in the song that plays during the ride, even if he wasn’t a fan of the creepy dolls that crowd every surface of it. I relish hearing this because I have always loved It’s a Small World unironically and with great enthusiasm, a fan of the message if not the dolls. My grandfather is a mythic figure to me, a hero and a gentleman, and a loving husband and a good father, a figure worthy of story time over every family dinner. I still wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t died when I was so young, if he had been around after my father moved to Canada. I wonder if, after learning what my mother was doing to me and my sister, he would have gotten us out much sooner than we got ourselves out. I’ll never know, but he was a better father than my own turned out to be, and I have absolutely no idea what that says about the fairness of the universe, so I order champagne in France.