Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (46 page)

“We stayed up for much of the night in her hospital room, each of us with a spoon, eating ice cream out of the same tub, talking about everything, and solving the world's problems,” he recalled. “I don't remember the specific topics, but I do remember the tone, which was very personal and very touching. She knew by then that she would not survive, and I got the impression that she was determined to not waste a minute of her remaining time—she wanted to talk and discuss and listen—and eat a ton of ice cream. The nursing staff was not pleased.”

I wasn't there when Molly was discharged to hospice care at her much-loved house in Travis Heights. It became increasingly difficult for her to eat, and food, which had been so important to her for so long, became less and less appealing. Still, friends continued to bring items that might coax her to eat. Johnny Guffey was among them. He brought mashed potatoes, a Molly favorite. Later, Courtney Anderson told Johnny that when Molly learned the mashed potatoes were from Jeffrey's her eyes lit up and she smiled. By then she was so sick it was difficult for her to swallow.

Flash came from Florida. Marg Elliston came from New Mexico. She, like Molly, had a considerable cookbook collection and was a serious Julia Child fan. Molly, Marg, and their friend Marcia Carter had celebrated their sixtieth birthdays together. They dined on the Trio terrace at the Four Seasons Hotel and watched thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats make their nightly exodus from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge.

“During my Austin visits, I patrolled the kitchen, which was the hub of the house,” Elliston said. “Molly had a wonderful array of pots and pans and every gadget you could imagine. I learned about lemon zesters in her kitchen. I was also amazed at her spice collection, not just because of its extent and variety but because the bottles and jars were neatly arrayed on shelves in alphabetical order! Molly assured me that the spice arrangement was not so much indicative of an orderly mind but more of a writer looking for the next inspiration.”

The birthday-sharing duo returned to Austin a few days before Molly died to make chili and soup for friends and relatives who were sure to come.

“Marcia and I took up stations in the kitchen, preparing food that could hold, food that the many family and friends who were supporting Molly in her
last days could eat without having to think about it,” Elliston continued. “From our post in the kitchen, we could also provide advice and support to the various groups who were monitoring phones, trying to make Molly as comfortable as possible and figuring out how in the world to say good-bye.”

Recalling that time, when Molly's remaining days were truly dwindling down to a precious few, Jim Hightower took a deep breath and sighed. “It was not too long before she died. Writer Anne Lamotte came from San Francisco; Molly's brother, Andy, Shelia Cheaney, and Betsy Moon were there, too. I had offered my house for Christmas dinner, but Molly said no. There was a Cowboys game on and Molly was feeling okay—not great, but okay. Andy and Betsy Moon did most of the preparation. As we were about to go to the table, she leaned over, touched my arm, and said, ‘This has been one helluva ride.'

“We sat down to this huge pasta salad with about nineteen ingredients—well, maybe not that many, but it was a hearty salad. We went on to tell stories from our various trips. The conversation, as always was engaging, entertaining. It was like so many other evenings of shared conversation. It was strange to think that we wouldn't have those conversations again.”

Molly couldn't join in the eating, but there was a sense that she was aware of the gathering of friends. The end came late on the afternoon of January 31. Lou Dubose reached me at the
Post
just as I completed edits on a cover piece for the following week's food section. Those closest to her were there—her brother, Andy; his wife, Carla; Courtney Anderson; Sara Speights; Kaye Northcott; Hope Reyna; and Shelia Cheaney. Del Garcia arrived a short time later and helped Hope prepare Molly for transport to the place where, in accordance with her wishes, she was cremated.

Mercedes Peña, herself a cancer survivor, had shepherded Molly through much of her battle with cancer and still finds it impossible to talk about Molly's death. By the time Molly died, Mercy—which is what we all call her—had been wrangling Molly's illness concurrent with that of her longtime partner, Ed Wendler, who died in 2004. Moreover, Mercy has waged a thirty-five-year struggle with her younger son's congenital anomalies. Doctors had said he wouldn't live to be twelve.

In the Philadelphia production of
Red Hot Patriot
, Mercy was one of only three people other than family named in the play—Kaye Northcott, Carlton Carl, and Mercedes. Mercy was credited with persuading Molly to access her emotions, an experience that Molly found thoroughly unenjoyable. She even
wrote about the “getting-in-touch” experience for
Time
magazine's February 18, 2002, issue. That too was part of the play. In a column titled “Who Needs Breasts Anyway?” Molly wrote:

I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives—a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay. My friend Mercedes Peña made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. “How do you Latinas do this—all the time be in touch with your emotions?” I asked her. “That's why we take siestas,” she replied.

I arrived on my birthday as planned and stayed with Malcolm and Stan. Molly's memorial service, held at the nine-hundred-seat First United Methodist Church in downtown Austin, was standing room only. People came from throughout Texas. The Popes came from New Orleans; Myra MacPherson came from Washington, DC. Eulogies generated tears and laughter. At Carla's request, I read a message of condolence that Nicole Concordet, Molly's god-daughter, sent from France. Linda Lewis cracked wise as only she can, recalling her one birthday “camping” expedition with Molly. Courtney Anderson openly acknowledged her battle with alcohol and praised Molly for her courage in the same war. But it was Marcia Ball who brought home Molly's fiery spirit with her thunderous rendition of a Molly favorite, Jerry Lee Lewis's “Great Balls of Fire.” It was not what Marcia originally envisioned.

“I arrived at the church prepared to play something appropriately sedate, not overly religious, but not maudlin,” she said. “Then word came down from somebody in authority, I don't even remember who it was, but they said that [“Great Balls of Fire”] was what they wanted.”

And that was what they got. With sadness now indelibly hitched to that energetic recessional, the congregation was linked in spirit to the extinguished flame that burned so brightly in Mary Tyler Ivins.

Following the memorial service, Andy and Carla invited selected friends to choose a personal memento from among Molly's belongings. Hannah couldn't come to Texas, so Andy suggested I take something for her, necessitating a quick call to her in Colorado. She asked for the battered copper saucepan, the one she had used to show Molly how to repair a beurre blanc. It now hangs in Hannah's little Aspen kitchen and is periodically removed when she needs to
make a butter sauce or heat a bowl of soup. (She refuses to own a microwave.)

I took a small Oaxacan wooden armadillo that, for as long as I can remember, gathered dust on the fireplace mantel of Molly's office, and the Pier 1 salad bowl over which we had many a spirited exchange. I always made too much salad, she said. And you make too little, I said. Too much salad dressing, she said. Too little, I said. Black people are fat because they eat too much, she said. White folks eat
before
they attend dinner parties so they don't leave hungry, I said.

“Sweetsie,” she'd say, “anyone ever tell you you're fulla shit?”

“It's 'cause I eat so well,” I'd reply.

I miss our juvenile, utterly tasteless exchanges. People who didn't know her would have been appalled at some of the things we said to one another, just as some were shocked at her appearance in
Dildo Diaries
. For those unaware, it was a documentary based on the Texas House of Representatives debate on the illegality of anal sex—or as she defined it, “the law that made it illegal for a prick to touch an asshole.” That, she said, made it illegal for half the House to shake hands with one another.

On more than one occasion she let slip one inappropriate comment too many at the dinner table, shocking a guest or two. Detailing the occasion really doesn't matter, but be warned: when tempted to use the word “nigger” in the presence of an Afro-American you don't know, bite your tongue.

And, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, so it goes.

One of Molly's frequent interjections was “le plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose”—the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Since her death a lot has changed.

As she predicted, Barack Obama did get elected president. She chastised me for being an early Edwards supporter; there was something slippery about him, she insisted. 'Nuf said on that score.

The menus at Polvo's are now laminated and the prices have gone up.

Jackie Gaer, a long-haired wisp of a woman, is a Molly fan who bought and renovated her Travis Heights house but took great pains to retain its essence—including a love of cooking good food. “So you think Molly would like it?” Jackie asked earnestly. “Yes,” I said, with true honesty. “I think she'd love it.”

Local pols continue to amuse—a couple of years ago Governor Rick Perry won a successful bid for publicity by having someone leak the news that he, Governor Goodhair, while jogging, had shot and killed a coyote that threatened
his daughter's dog. The weapon of choice was a laser-sighted .385 Ruger with hollow-point bullets—surely something most governors carry on a run. Of course, no one else ever saw the coyote, none of his security people were with him, and no one seems to know what happened to the decedent, but the alleged incident made the
Washington Post
, CNN, Fox News, the
New York Daily News
, and most important of all, all the local papers—a point not lost on voters as the photogenic guv eased up on an election year.

Oh, did I omit the part about the running path being on the property of his 6,300-square-foot rental house (estimated cost: $10,000 monthly) while the governor's mansion—damaged by a yet-to-be-solved episode of arson—underwent repairs? This from the guy who redirected stimulus money from the unemployed to balance the state budget; he who calls for overstretched state agencies to sacrifice.

If only Molly were here to direct some of her formidable energy Perryward, as she did in her response to Florence King, the conservative writer who accused her of plagiarism. Molly publicly acknowledged fault and apologized. But for some reason King couldn't let it go, insisting that Molly never apologized to
her
. So Molly sent a personal letter of apology that concluded with: “. . . boy, you really are a mean bitch, aren't you? Sincerely, Molly Ivins, plagiarist.”

How I miss that voice.

As self-deprecating as she could be, as scathing as her commentary could get, she was also plagued by demons. She never resolved her adversarial relationship with her father, yet when he visited she was gracious. Her mother, charming and generally proud of Molly's achievements, never quite understood how Molly could be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize three times and not win one. That inability to grasp what an achievement it was to be so honored saddened Molly. Yet none of this, at least in my mind, detracted from her love of both parents.

For years Molly belabored the notion that she should have been able to do something to prevent her nephew's death. She struggled with considerable psychic pain. It would be a disservice to paint her as larger in death than she was in life, especially since her legacy is sufficiently remarkable and enduring in and of itself. In the end she was human. A truly remarkable writer, but human all the same.

I wrestled with how best to address her eighteen-month victory over drinking, but she was proud of it, so it must be mentioned. As private a person as she was in many ways, I think she would not have wanted me to ignore her final
triumph over a battle with alcoholism that she fought most of her life. One Friday evening, about a year before she died, Molly announced that she was turning in at a reasonable hour; she had to be up early for her Saturday morning AA meeting. As she headed to her room, she turned back and said, “You wanna go?”

I felt honored. If I could cook with her, get prescriptions filled, and accompany her to chemo, I could also accompany her to fight another insidious disease. Humanizing her flaws doesn't diminish her legacy. It is yet another measure of what she could do once she committed to a cause. She finally allowed her cause to be herself.

Mercy's admonitions took.

Molly acknowledged her human, vulnerable side. For so many years she fed and nurtured others. In those waning months she understood the importance of nurturing herself. She fought a valiant battle, but once it became personally apparent that even well-fought battles can be lost, she made a decision to die on her terms. As she quietly said in a rare and uncharacteristically confessional moment, “I made the decision that I don't want people to remember me as a drunk.”

I said I never thought of her as one; that after her talent and celebrity were stripped away she was, after all, another one of us who, on many an occasion, failed to heed the yellow light that signals caution. And I say shame on anyone who can't understand the toll taken by the pressure she put on herself—not to mention the pressure that comes with formidable talent tethered to celebrity. Had I, like Molly, refused to permanently move away from one of the meanest states in the Union, I'm not sure I wouldn't have sought solace in something beyond green tea and limonadas myself.