The ladies held on to both his watch and pinky ring for me after they’d been removed following his recent unsuccessful surgery. And holding his ring in the flat of my hand, I remembered the square-shaped stone sparkle as he nervously gripped my upper arm as we stood dead center stage at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where I had been performing my show Wishful Drinking. On this particular evening my father had attended my show, accompanied by his two nurses Sarah and Augy, his dealer Randy (naturally), and his little dog Minnie. The audience applauded wildly as I stood beside my beaming father, his head hunched over and his left leg jiggling nervously. When the applause finally subsided, I leaned down to him and whispered, “Do you want to sing ‘If I Loved You?’” I asked him this tentatively, with my shoulders scrunched up high, and he began to laugh, his eyes shining.
“Of course!” he replied enthusiastically.
So, I held my hand up in order to silence the cheering crowd and told them, “My dad and I are going to sing the song we always sang together, ever since I was a little girl. It’s the song ‘If I Loved You’ from the show Carousel.” And as the audience’s clapping and cheering once more subsided, I kneeled down next to him, my face upturned to his and, with his gaze fixed tightly to mine and after a hush no bigger than your fist, we began to sing—face to face, voice to voice, each wound round the other, father and daughter, two voices, no waiting, one song. My father, wheelchair-bound at my side, riding the song to the end of its harmonious journey. And as the last note slowly faded back to silence, the crowd rose to its feet as one, cheering. My father sat quite still, holding my hand, seemingly absorbing his ovation. Then he began oh so slowly to rise until he was standing upright, miraculously, as if he’d somehow been healed by show business. Raised up to the heavens, mobile, and in somehow perfect health. Whole again. The crowd had loved him till he was healthy, happy, and home free.
I wore the ring to his memorial, on the middle finger of my right hand. His send-off was a small affair attended by his three daughters, this one mournful ex-wife, and a couple of comics. The sad gathering was naturally held in the exclusive private back room of Factor’s, a West Side deli located on Pico Boulevard. We all mingled beneath an array of photos of Eddie laughing with beautiful women or singing in clubs or on TV. My half sisters periodically snuck covetous looks at Eddie’s ring glittering smugly on my hand, knowing on some secret level of the Fisher family language that it belonged to all of us, and that one day each of us would look down at our hands and there it would shine. “Oh, that’s at least five or six karats,” one untrained observer studying my stubby little hand told me, while another, looking doubtful, his brow furrowed seriously, volunteered, “I’d say it’s ten, and I know my diamonds,” prompting a third to say, “That thing is worth at least fifty grand, and I’m being conservative. I mean, who knows how much this thing could turn out to be worth?”
Well, it turned out that someone did. A few weeks after this, I not quite unexpectedly found myself doing my show in Australia, and one day, while shopping in one of their malls one afternoon in a jewelry shop specializing in fire opals, I suddenly thought, Hey! Who better to appraise my dad’s ring than a jeweler with one of those 10x magnifying eyepiece things?
At first this particular jeweler hemmed and hawed awkwardly, a timid predator circling his distracted prey. As I watched, he turned the ring slowly, squinting at the stone, studying it carefully, turning it back and forth and back and forth. He finally spoke, still examining the gem in his hand. “This could be as much as ten karats,” he offered. My eyes widened. I looked at my friend Garret, whose eyebrows also climbed northward toward his hairline and beyond to the blue Sydney skies.
Suddenly the jeweler’s voice changed slightly. “Oooooh, wait. Hang on a tick,” he suggested. And so we waited—I mean, really, what were our options? “I’m beginning to notice these… uh… what would they be?… little chips around the edge near the center, which… Well, if it were actually a diamond…” He lifted his head and gave me a look, a combination of concern, guilt, and apology. “Well, you see, if it were actually a diamond… there wouldn’t be any chips is all.” I hesitated, gradually absorbing this new information, and then I began slowly nodding, a smile spreading across my not-that-amazed face. Perfect. There you go. This totally made absolute Eddie Fisher sense. “Would you like to have a look?” the jeweler offered gently, holding his magnifying glass sympathetically toward me.
I held up the palm of my hand to convey my low level of need to confirm that my father’s ring turned out to not be the hoped-for legacy of not quite inestimable value, but was, instead, seven or eight karats of cubic zirconium.
The thing is, I loved my dad. I mean, the man was beyond fun to hang out with, appreciative, playful, and eccentrically sweet. He was all those things and a whole lot more, but this was also a man who—though he genuinely meant to give bona fide diamonds of only the finest color, cut, and clarity—ultimately was only able to offer cubic zirconium. But hey, a ring’s a ring however you cut it, right? I mean, karats or no, the thing sparkles. The main thing is, finally, that my dad wore this ring for years and years and years until the end of his long lovable lunatic ride. So if you see any of my siblings, could you tell them about the ring not being real? I’m sorry, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to break this one last, teeny bit of hilarious exciting news. Not that I think any of them will ultimately be any more surprised than I was. I mean, there is just something so perfect, so right, so Eddie about this news.
He came to me in a dream one night while I was in Sydney on tour Down Under, with my now one-and-a-half-woman show. It was the night before my birthday and, after watching an enjoyable documentary on serial murderers, I took my meds and drifted off to sleep. I dreamt my father was alive again and particularly wanted to let me know how pissed he was that I had his ring. Keeping my eye on the bigger picture here I said, “But we embalmed you! How could you have survived that?” I mean the man sounded fantastic, albeit pissed about how he’d been treated in death. Ringwise, that is. “Tell you what!” I said. “Next time write a fucking will that gives us ANY kind of instruction on what you want done! And who you want to do it!” Then I attempted to shift gears. Where were my manners? The man was back from the dead! “Wait till you see some of your obituaries! They were totally awesome! Seriously! I mean, there was even all this stuff about you knowing presidents and everything! Elizabeth Taylor even cried when I told her!”
Somehow, though, none of this alleviated his irritation. I told him how glad I was that he was alive. His death had upset me so much. Then I realized that all the people who had sent me their condolences would probably write me again, wanting the details on how he had outlived death. What was his secret? I called my half sisters, Joely and Trisha, to tell them, but they already knew—it had been on the news—and they were en route to see him at the house I had rented for him in Berkeley. I tried and tried but couldn’t reach my brother, no matter what combination of numbers I employed. I wouldn’t be able to go see him for a while, because I was in Australia doing my show, but I knew now that I would have to send him back his ring.