“Where are we going?” asked Anna, all business again.
“Just up one level,” Shawna replied. “This thing just blew me away.”
The object of her awe was an early-twentieth-century oil by Arthur Bowen Davies called Pacific Parnassus. It was basically the ocean side of Mount Tam, Marin’s own pinnacle of the gods, made riotous here by swirling fog and golden slopes above a cobalt sea. It was painted in 1905 but it could easily have been yesterday. The things that made it enchanting were still here, still ours. I saw what Shawna meant. Or thought I did.
“This is what I’ll miss,” she said. “You know?”
“I do,” said Anna. I knew she’d be missing Shawna as much as any of us, but her tone was more celebratory than sad.
I told Shawna the painting was captivating, but I’d expected something a little more avant-garde from her.
“The guy was totally avant-garde. He was practically a pagan. He identified with the Ashcan school…and he was even a Cubist for a while.”
“Still…this could be a jigsaw puzzle.”
“I’ll forget you said that. Look closer.”
I leaned into the painting, studying the landscape. “Is there a giant penis in the clouds or something?”
“Close. Check out the mountainside.”
It took me a while to find them, since they were almost the color of the fields and barely bigger than a paper clip. “People,” I said. “Naked people, in fact.”
“You are correct, sir,” said Shawna, imitating Ed McMahon on the Carson show. She used to do that when she was seven years old, charming the dickens out of grown-ups. She might be young, I thought, but she does remember Johnny and Ed.
“Where are they?” asked Anna, stepping closer to the painting. “I don’t see them.”
“Here,” I said, pointing. “And here…and there’s a couple down here in the trees.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Anna yanked open her bag and removed an enormous magnifying glass with an ornate handle fashioned from junk-shop silverware. I don’t know exactly why it struck me as hilarious but it did, seeing her there in her sneakers and her turban and Chinese grandma pajamas examining the canvas like Inspector Clouseau on the trail of a murderer. Shawna, I was glad to see, found it humorous, too, so we both dissolved in giggles—to Anna’s mounting annoyance.
“Stop it, children. Don’t make a scene.”
“Are they girls or boys?” Shawna asked, prolonging the mirth.
Anna’s eyes were still glued to the glass. “I presume they’re gods, if this is Parnassus.”
“Maybe they’re picnickers from Mill Valley.” This was my contribution.
“Really,” said Anna, putting the glass away. “How old are you two?”
Shawna looked chastened. “I just figured you’d think it was cool.”
“It is, dear. It’s extremely cool.”
“We weren’t laughing at you,” I put in, taking her arm. “Just that thing.”
“It’s very handy,” said Anna. “You’ll see.”
We spent another half-hour drifting through galleries until Anna discreetly expressed her need for “the ladies room.” When we found it, Shawna asked if she needed assistance. Anna shook her head with a smile. “I’m fine, dear,” she said, before turning to me halfway through the door. “I’ll need to go home, though, after this. Notch will be cross with me.”
The door swung shut. Shawna turned to me with a slack expression.
“Who the hell is Notch?”
I grinned at her. “I’d introduce you, but she’s still under the armoire.”
21
Memory Foam
My husband was doing yoga in the bedroom, attempting the union of body and soul, while I was nattering away. I was pleasantly stoned by then and lobbying for a quiet evening on the sofa with The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Ben had never seen the film, so I had TiVo’d it in the hope of enlightening him. I was droning on about this wonderful, moody, romantic story and its brilliant author, John Fowles, and the other atmospheric movies—The Collector and The Magus—made from Fowles’ novels.
This is typical of me. Given pot and the nearness of Ben I can be a crashing bore. Ben has a master’s degree (and I don’t, of course), but I somehow feel compelled to play teacher when we’re together, to tell him every little thing he missed by being young. It’s tempting to do this because he listens so generously, even with a foot behind his head.
When his cell phone rang, he sighed at this final invasion of his peace.
“Shall I check it?” I asked.
“Please.”
I took the phone from the nightstand and looked at the readout. “It’s Leo,” I said.
Ben untangled his limbs and took the phone from me. I returned to my Morris chair and picked up a magazine, knowing that Ben would not require privacy.
“Say hi for me,” I told him.
I’ve met two of Ben’s exes: this one, Leo, the retired Suburu dealer from South Bend, and Paolo, the Italian stockbroker from Sardinia. They are both nice guys, but except for the fact that we’re all (I’m told) uncut and pushing sixty from one side or the other, we are wildly unalike. It intrigues me to think that each of us has spent significant time with Ben; each has been his answer to something. But I don’t feel especially competitive in their presence; I feel like a clue, a piece of the puzzle. It’s much easier not to be threatened by your lover’s exes if you don’t want to fuck them yourself.
Ben took the call on the bed. This was our new Tempurpedic mattress, designed by Swedes or NASA or somebody to conform to every contour. We ordered it on an impulse at the Denver airport last Christmas when we were visiting Ben’s family. Seeing him there on his stomach, pale and glistening in his briefs, I imagined the imprint his package would make on the memory foam, like a nifty Jell-O mold.
“So how’s our favorite Wilted Flower?” Ben asked his ex.
Leo and his friend Bill, who worked for Allstate back in South Bend, had recently moved to Fort Lauderdale and bought a little ranch house in Wilton Manors, the gay neighborhood. Most of the homeowners were fairly old and fairly well off, so Wilted Flowers had become the pejorative-of-choice for locals who saw themselves as neither.
Leo’s friend Bill is just that, by the way—a friend. The two have never been lovers. They just got tired of selling and wanted to share a place in the sun. As far as I can tell, they’ve both relinquished romance without a fuss. They garden and play bridge and throw luaus for their neighbors and never have to negotiate the politics of three-ways and afternoons at the baths. They will grow old together, those two, tucked in their separate beds (with their separate collections of porn). There must be a certain comfort in knowing that the guy across the cornflakes in the morning has noticed, just like you, how short the days are getting. At least you’re at the finish line together.
There’s something to be said for that, no doubt.
But would I trade it for what I have with Ben?
God no. Not in a million years. Not while love is still something I can taste and touch and nurture and pull down the pants of. Not while I still have a shot at this.
I’m the lucky one here, of course. It was Ben who got the short end of the stick. The double whammy of HIV and advancing age makes me a pretty shaky deal in the happily-ever-after department. I can at least dream of one day dying in my lover’s arms, but he can’t do the same with me. He’ll have another life entirely, for better or worse.
“Hey,” he said, speaking to me but still on the phone. “What’s twenty feet long, shaped like a snake, and smells like urine?”
I looked up from my magazine. “Say what?”
“It’s a riddle. Leo just told it to me.”
“I give up. What’s twenty feet long, shaped like a snake, and smells like urine?”
“The conga line at Chardee’s!”
I frowned at him. “What the hell is Chardee’s?”
“You know. The restaurant in Wilton Manors. The suppe
r club. Where the older guys go to get drunk.”
I made a face at him. “Lovely.”
Ben laughed. “It was Leo’s joke.”
“Well, tell him he’s a sick fuck. A sick old fuck.”
Ben obliged. “He says you’re a sick old fuck.”
I could hear Leo hooting, enjoying the hell out of this.
“Ask him,” I told Ben, “if he can spell gerontophobia.”
Ben wouldn’t take it that far. It wasn’t fair to pick on Leo, however gently. He was too harmless for that. “Cut him some slack,” Ben whispered. “It’s funny.”
“Hilarious,” I said, returning to my magazine. “Old people pissing themselves.”
Ben ignored me and spoke to the phone again. “Yeah, sure…he loved it…he always loves your jokes.”
It must have been the Florida connection that got me thinking about my brother’s impending visit. That steel-trap mind of mine had me gnawing off my leg again. As we lay on the sofa after the movie, Ben noticed the distraction in my eyes.
“What’s up, babe?”
“Oh, just…the Irwin thing. He sounded so stricken when we talked.”
Ben nodded slowly, his intuition confirmed. “Bring him to the house, then. I’ll still be at work. You guys can talk all you want.”
“He didn’t seem to want that. And how can I tell where we should talk, if I don’t know what he wants to talk about?”
Ben shrugged. “Give Patreese a call. If it’s anything at all to do with your mom, he might have some idea.”
I thought that was brilliant and told him so.
“I try,” said Ben.
I found Patreese’s cell-phone number on my copy of the power of attorney. He had scribbled it on the bottom at the very last minute, in case we needed him.
“It’s almost midnight there,” I pointed out.
“He’ll be up. And if he’s not, he doesn’t have to answer.”
He answered, as it happened, on the fifth ring. There was noise in the background: screaming, drunken female voices. “Yeah?” he said, shouting above the din.
“It’s Michael Tolliver.”
“Who?”
“Alice’s son. From San Francisco.”
“Oh, Lord, honey. How are you doin’?”
“Great,” I said, relieved by his cheerful acknowledgment. “I’m here with Ben.” I swapped a private smile with my husband. “Is this a bad time?”
“Nah. These crazy bitches can just cool their engines. Hang on, my brother.” He was gone for a matter of seconds while he must have closed a door somewhere, since the din was largely gone when he returned. “That better?” he asked.
“Much. You workin’ a gig or something?”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ bachelorettes. I’m changin’ into my sailor outfit.”
I bugged my eyes for Ben. “He’s changing into his sailor outfit.”
Ben laughed.
“Listen,” I said to Patreese. “I won’t keep you but…my brother’s coming out to see me tomorrow, and he’s been acting really peculiar since we got home.”
“Uh-huh.” This was noncommittal at best.
“Has something…happened around there?”
“Around where?”
“The Gospel Palms.”
A long silence and then: “Well…your mama had a fight with ol’ whatshername…Lenore. I reckon that must be it.”
“A fight?”
“Yeah. Knock-down-drag-out. She don’t want her comin’ around anymore.”
“Was this about the power-of-attorney thing?”
Another puzzling silence. “I don’t really know for sure.”
“Yes you do, Patreese. She tells you everything.”
Patreese cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Sorry, Michael…I can’t do this. You just wait and talk to your brother. You’ll be fine. I don’t feel right about gettin’ all tangled up in family matters. It wouldn’t be fair to you, either.”
“Okay,” I said evenly.
“A lotta shit shakes loose when folks are dying. You don’t need to hear it from the hairdresser.”
What on earth? I thought.
“You’re not pissed at me, are you?”
“No…of course not.”
“I saw your mama day before yesterday. She’s no better…but she looked a lot more at peace, you know? Now that she’s spoken her peace.”
Someone must have opened the door, because that mindless estrogen roar was drowning us out again. “I gotta go,” said Patreese. “Say hey to that sweet thing o’ yours. I’ll call if there’s any change with your mama. Don’t you worry.”
Before I could thank him he was gone. I closed the phone and turned to Ben.
“Now I’m really freaked,” I said.
22
Keep Me Company
The restaurant at the Airport Marriott was called JW’s Steakhouse, presumably after old Mr. Marriott himself, the archconservative Mormon billionaire. It made sense that my brother had picked it. This was a piece of his America, clean and predictable, a safe refuge at the gates of Sodom. Whatever his mission today, Irwin would feel better here, buffered by families and beef-eating businessmen. These were his peeps.
Me…I’d never felt so out of town this close to the city.
Irwin had chosen a quiet corner of the restaurant. He stood up when he saw me, fussing reflexively—and rather touchingly, I felt—with his comb-over. When we were face-to-face, he thrust out his arm and grabbed my elbow with the other. He’d learned this trick from our father, an acknowledged master at keeping love at arm’s length.
“Hey, bro,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem…I was already in the neighborhood, so…”
“Sit down, sit down.” He was too distracted to joke. “You ordered yet?”
“Irwin…I just got here.”
He looked mortified. “I meant…you know…would you like to?” He handed me the menu. “These places are pretty dependable. I’ve been to the one in Anaheim and the one in Philly. Fine cuisine every time. The Cowboy Steak can’t be beat.”
At eighteen ounces the Cowboy Steak would have choked a coyote, so when the waitress arrived, I ordered the seared tuna. “That’ll be good, too,” Irwin offered gamely. “It’s all good here.” Then, without a word to me, he ordered double scotches for both of us.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ve got clients this afternoon.”
“Just bring ’em,” Irwin told the waitress.
When she was gone, there was a lead-footed silence, so I jumped into the breach and asked him, as tactfully as possible, what the hell was going on.
“First off,” he replied, “it’s not about you havin’ the power of attorney. I know about that and I don’t care. Mama can die whenever she pleases. She’ll get no trouble from me. I want to make her as comfortable as possible. She knows that, too.”
I nodded, wondering how he’d found out. “Does Lenore feel that way?”
His expression grew stony. “She’s got nothin’ to do with this. You and me are the next of kin, and that’s that. Whatever we say goes.”
“Maybe so, but Mama seems to think that Lenore—”
“Fuck Lenore!”
Under other circumstances, I might have teased him about the language, but there was real anguish in his eyes. He ran his palm along the tabletop, smoothing out his thoughts. “Lenore moved out last week. She’s living with Mel Brook.”
He said Brook, of course, not Brooks—I heard that clearly—but I got the visual, anyway: Lenore humping away on the beloved entertainer. There had to be a joke in there somewhere—maybe about Christians needing Jews for the rapture, or Lenore confusing Mel Brooks with Mel Gibson—but I managed to restrain myself.
“Is Mel Brook…someone I should know?”
He shook his head. His right eye flinched convulsively a couple of times—a tic I hadn’t seen before. “Just this gal she knows from Sunday school.”
Now I had a new image of Mel: a Bible-toting dyke
in a gray mullet and a polyester pantsuit. I couldn’t help myself: “She left you for a woman?”
“No!…Hell, no!” He looked like I’d smacked him in the face with a dead flounder. “She didn’t leave me for anybody. I…banished her.”
“Banished her?…Jesus, Irwin.”
“Could we leave His name out of this?”
“Then don’t talk like a biblical patriarch. Who the hell says ‘banished’?”
“I asked her to leave. I told her to leave. Stop messing with me, Mikey. This is tough enough as it is.”
I offered him penitent silence, then spoke in a more reasonable tone. “What happened? Y’all always seemed pretty content to me.”
That was not the right word, of course. Complacent would have been closer to the truth. Irwin and Lenore weren’t as lovey-dovey as they once were, but they seemed resigned to each other for the rest of their days. They had their McMansion and their grandkid and their Personal Savior, and that had seemed a gracious plenty.
Lenore, you should know, wasn’t always such a tight-ass. When Irwin was courting her back in the seventies, she was still the social director at a convention hotel in Tallahassee and something of a firecracker. She was Christian, but she didn’t make a fuss about it. She was pretty and perky and sometimes very funny, and my folks were openly amazed that their crazy-ass delinquent son had landed someone so presentable.
This was roughly the time they learned of my “lifestyle,” so they were thrilled to have a shot at breeding grandchildren. Irwin bought a split-level house just down Abbott Springs Road, and the four of them—Mama and Papa and Irwin and Lenore—became a functioning unit. Mama would write me effusively about their long road trips in Irwin’s Buick: one to Colorado, as I recall, and another to New York to see Cats on Broadway. For almost a decade they were Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel, and it got to me more than I would ever have imagined. I would not have traveled with them for anything in the world, but I felt a little jealous sometimes. More of an outsider than ever.
Then Papa died and I announced my antibody status and Mama dug deeper into Jesus, taking Lenore with her. The reason seemed clear at the time: they had already lost one Tolliver man and were almost certain to lose another. Whatever their petty rivalries over the years, grief had made them sisters in salvation. Or so I believed. Irwin did, too, poor bastard, so he began strangling his cuss words and praising the Lord to placate the women he loved. Like me, a fellow male, he was oblivious to the real bond between Mama and Lenore, the secret they had planned on taking to their graves.