Alice's Champagne Palace

I went to an Ellis Paul concert at Club Passim, without Chris, once. He was still feeling the effects from chemo and he insisted that I go with my friends. I didn’t want to go…I mean, I wanted to go, but felt as though I should stay with Chris. How could I have fun taking in a concert by our favorite folk singer, a singer I knew nothing about until Chris brought me to see him, when he couldn’t even get up off the couch? My friends and I went. I cried. I got to hear Ellis’ new song, Alice’s Champagne Palace, and Chris didn’t. It was the first time I had heard more of Ellis’ songs than Chris. I felt as though I had stolen from him; one-upped him. I needed for him to hear that song before he died but it just didn’t turn out that way. I knew he would appreciate the rhyming conventions. I mean, c’mon…”Raise a chalice to Alice’s Champagne Palace”? The words just roll around in your mouth. Creej never got to hear the song. I always knew he would love it but by the time the CD was released, he was already dead.

I read a magazine article about Ellis which revealed that his real name is Paul Plissey. Chris and I felt so betrayed! In silent protest, Chris was going to start his own folk band and call it “Paul Plissey”.

Though I feel that someday I will find myself at another of Ellis’ shows, the mere thought of going induces shortness of breath, butterflies, guilt, sadness and anxiety. He’s playing on April 6th at Borders here in Boston. I think I may break away, take a long lunch and let the conquering begin. Chris would have told me to go. Pre-cancer, he would have come into town to meet me and we would have enjoyed the show together. He is also playing the Somerville Theater on April 9th. It’s probably sold out by now. It sold out last year but Chris and I were there because he used to buy the tickets the moment they went on sale. It was a great show. I cried then, too, because I feared that Chris would die. I don’t think he saw me, but then, I never thought he saw me. Somehow he could always tell when I was fighting it.

I used to tease him (relentlessly…and about most things). The moment Ellis hit the stage, or Mark Erelli for that matter, I would fish, frantically, through my bag, find my house keys, push them on Chris and exclaim, “Thank you for a beautiful 5 years! I’m coming Ellis!! Wait for me!!” Chris would just say, “You little sonova…!”

The last time we were going to see Ellis was this past New Years Eve. In November, we walked up Mass Ave. to Harvard Square together to buy our tickets and walked back as darkness fell. It was what I loved doing with Chris; nothing more; a nice, romantic walk (he would have made fun of me for saying that) with my husband. But alas, the services were never rendered. On Christmas morning, after being in pain for three weeks, Chris woke up and told me he needed to go to the hospital. I drove us to the emergency room where Chris underwent tests for the entire day, the last of which revealed many large tumors on his liver. We talked that day about how we were both sure he’d be out by New Years Eve and in time to ring in the new year with Ellis. Neither of us knew he would be dead a week later.

Ellis’ music has the capacity to instill euphoria throughout my soul, but until I can step over the life and death line (I have been walking the grey area of the death side of the line since Chris’ death), I can’t be free to enjoy it. It haunts me.