Michael Tolliver Lives (16 page)

“
How?
How did you leave him?”

“On the side of the road.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Mama, I have to say, looked a wee bit proud of herself. “He stopped to get a Nehi soda…ssss…and I just drove off and left him.”

I was grinning shamelessly. “I take it you went back for him.”

“I did not,” she said, smoothing the sheets. “I went to the Baptist retreat…ssss…at Blowing Rock. I didn’t get home for ten days.”

“Papa never told me this.”

She twisted her lips into a small, triumphant smile. “He was a proud man.”

“How did he get home?”

She shrugged. “Never told me.”

“Did he have to cook for himself?”

“I reckon.”

“Musta bought Moon Pies from ol’ Drool Rag.”

She let that go without a smile. “I needed some private time with the Lord…ssss…and it never cost Papa a cent.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Green Stamps,” she said proudly.

“Green Stamps?”

“From the…ssss…Piggly Wiggly.”

Green Stamps were Mama’s personal currency back then. She’d sit in front of the TV at night with a wet sponge and fill up whole booklets with them, later redeeming them for toasters and curtains and, once, even an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. They offered her the illusion of wealth, since all she ever
really
bought were groceries.

I still didn’t get it. “The Baptist retreat took Green Stamps?”

She shook her head. “I traded ’em in for a kitchenette set…ssss…and sold it to Mee-Maw.” Mee-Maw was my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who died in a car wreck in South Carolina a few years before Mama joined the Anita Bryant Crusade.

“So Mee-Maw was in on this?”

“Oh, no…ssss…I didn’t tell a soul.”

“Nice work, Mama.”

“Don’t you tease me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I mean it.”

“Turn the TV…ssss…back on.”

“No. I want to talk about the…power of attorney…thing.”

She arranged her hands in front of her, one over the other, the way a cat does. “All right, then…ssss…talk.”

“I’m just…I just want to make sure it’s what you really want.”

“You’re hearin’ it…ssss…from the horse’s mouth.”

“All right, then.”

“I wanna go…ssss…when the Lord calls me. When he takes…ssss…my last breath. I don’t wanna lie here like a lump on some infernal…ssss…machine with Lenore praying over me…ssss…. you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And those puppets better not come around after I’ve passed.” Smiling, I took her hand in mind. “I’ll do my best.”

“You don’t have to be here,” she said. “I…ssss…didn’t mean that.”

“I want to, Mama…if I can.”

She shook her head emphatically, withdrawing her hand. “This is between…ssss…me and the Lord, Mikey.”

She wasn’t trying to be brave; she meant it. The Lord was the only man who’d never let her down. He was not her angry, bullying husband or her unrepentant homosexual son or even her good son, the one who worked so hard to be a Christian but was hopelessly indentured to a woman Mama despised. As long ago as Blowing Rock the Lord could be counted upon to be exactly what Mama needed, when Mama needed it.

There was no point in wasting time with the others.

The signing process was surprisingly quick. Ben arrived in a taxi at noon and met the lawyer in the lobby. (Mama had chosen this guy from the Yellow Pages, reasoning that someone named Joel Bernstein wasn’t likely to know anyone in Lenore and Irwin’s crowd.) When Patreese arrived, resplendent in a crisp pink shirt and gray tie, the three of them joined me in Mama’s room. We looked more like a caucus at an ACLU convention than the hastily assembled support group of a dying Christian lady.

Patreese pulled me and Ben into a huddle while the lawyer was conferring with Mama. “Y’all doin’ all right?” he whispered.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“I came in this morning,” Patreese said. “She wanted to look pretty for y’all.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I noticed.”

“I told her we bumped into each other.”

Ben smirked. “One way of putting it.”

Patreese rubbed my back with a big warm palm, while doing the same to Ben. For a moment we were a threesome again, and it was oddly reassuring.

I glanced toward the door. “What if we have visitors?”

Patreese frowned. “You mean the puppet lady?”

Ben stifled a giggle.

“Don’t sweat it,” said Patreese. “Mohammed’s looking out for us.”

I almost took this as a declaration of faith, considering Patreese’s less-than-predictable profile, but stripper/hairdresser/Muslim seemed like one note too many.

Ben caught my confusion. “Mohammed’s the guy at the desk,” he said.

When we were done with the signing, Mama dismissed the lawyer, kissed me goodbye with brisk efficiency, and declared her need for a nap, thereby banishing the three of us to the Starbucks across the street. (Mr. Bernstein had to be in court.)

“Are y’all still headin’ home tomorrow?” Patreese asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, feeling the strangest mixture of relief and guilt. “I really gotta get back to work.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her for you.”

I told him that would be wonderful and wrote down our phone number and email address on a napkin. “Don’t get that mixed up,” I said, “with all the
other
ones you get.”

Patreese lowered his eyelids playfully. “Listen here,” he said. “I don’t mess around with just any ol’ coupla white boys.”

I thought that was a charming thing to say. “Hang on to your copy of the document,” I told him. “Just in case my sister-in-law gives you any shit.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” said Patreese. “I got the goods on
her
.”

This puzzled me. “What do you mean?”

“Just don’t you worry.”

Ben smiled impishly. “Did you strip for her or something?”

“Oh Lord, honey,” Patreese replied. “She wishes.”

That evening Lenore fixed dinner for us at the house. Sumter was there as well, still buzzing from a puppet show with his grandmother at a Christian academy in Pine Castle. It was a pleasant enough gathering, since we stayed off the hard stuff—by which I mean politics, religion, and sexuality—and my brother, touchingly, worked hard to support the illusion of a cozy family reunion. While Lenore was stacking the dishes and Sumter was watching
American Idol
with Ben, Irwin pulled me aside with a wink.

“Come sit in the boat with me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nah…c’mon…it’s a nice night. The kids are watching TV.”

This was another cradle-robbing crack, but I let it go with a curdled smile.

“C’mon,” said Irwin, shoving me toward the latter-day ark parked in his driveway.

We mounted the trailer and sat side by side in the padded seats, staring out at a sprinkling of stars and the brutal halogen streetlight across the cul-de-sac. Irwin looked furtively from side to side, then toward the living room window, before taking a flask from under the seat and holding it out to me. “Not a goddamn word,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Glenfiddich.”

To me, drinking scotch is reminiscent of sucking on pennies, but Irwin had just risked hellfire two times over—drinking
and
cussing—in the name of brotherly bonding. The least I could do was recognize the gesture, so I took a swig from the flask and made an appreciative hissing noise. Irwin took a bigger swig, then put the flask away.

We sat for a while in silence while a dog barked sporadically in the distance.

“Too bad Papa’s not here,” said Irwin.

“Is it?”

“C’mon, bro.”

I tried to find a way to sound less harsh. Like a lot of straight guys, Irwin had concocted myths of his father’s greatness out of pure animal need and one too many viewings of
Field of Dreams
. “I think we experienced him differently,” I said.

“Remember when we were little, though? That summer he taught us to do sailor knots?”

“I remember how much he yelled when we got them wrong.”

“I know he could be an ornery old cuss.”

“Ornery?” I turned to face him. “Walter Brennan was ornery. Papa was flat-out mean. Papa was…Dick Fucking Cheney.”

Irwin gaped at me. “Who’s Walter Brennan?”

“You know…on
The Real McCoys
…Grandpappy Amos.” I sang some of the theme song for him. “‘From West Virginny they came to stay, in sunny Cali-For-Nye-Ay.’”

“Oh, yeah. The old guy with the limp.”

“He was probably our age then,” I said darkly. “The age we are now.”

“Nah.” Irwin considered that for a moment. “You think?”

“A few years older maybe. Not much.”

“Jesus.”

The word hung there between us like a mist. Poor ol’ Irwin was probably wondering if he’d blown his monthly allowance of blasphemies.

“I know it couldna been easy for you,” he said at last. “With your lifestyle and all. Papa could be hard sometimes.”

“He was hard on you, too.” I remember well how the old man had screamed and yelled and threatened permanent disownment during Irwin’s bad-boy days.

“Maybe a little,” said my brother.

“He was even harder on Mama. She tried to leave him twice.”

Irwin turned and blinked at me.
“When?”

“The first time…when you and I were at Camp Hemlock. She holed up at the Baptist retreat. And she was on the verge of leaving him just before he died.”

Irwin’s mouth was hanging wide open. “How do you know this?”

I shrugged. “She told me herself. This morning.”

“This is nuts.”

Another shrug. To me it was the sanest thing Mama had ever done.

“No,” said Irwin. “I mean, she woulda said something to Lenore. We were livin’ across the road when Papa died. Mama and Lenore were really tight.”

That’s true,
I thought. They were praying for Mama’s queer son, who was dying of a biblical plague out there in sunny Cali-For-Nye-Ay.

“I’m just telling you what she said,” I murmured.

“Anyway…why would she just up and leave him? He had cancer.”

“Yeah…but he’d had the operation a while back…and everybody thought he was getting better. Even Papa said he was back in fighting form.”

Irwin frowned. “But why would she…? Do you think something
happened
?”

“A wasted lifetime, I’d say. Taking a rough guess.”

Irwin was aghast. “I never heard word one about this.”

He looked so rattled that I put my hand on his knee in a way-too-awkward gesture of comfort. “She’s ready to go, Irwin. That tends to loosen people’s tongues.”

He nodded numbly. We just sat there for a while, listening to that barking dog and the distant joyful noise of Ben and Sumter, yelling out their choices for American Idol. The kids were watching TV all right, and the grown-ups were facing the facts.

I took my hand off Irwin’s knee. “I guess she just needed to tell us.”

“She didn’t tell
us,
” Irwin said bitterly. “She told
you
.”

I could understand how he might be hurt. He and Lenore had spent years caring for Mama, and she’d repaid them by saving her biggest secret for the absentee son from the West. For a moment I considered telling Irwin about Mama’s fears of having to live on a respirator—and the obvious wedge that had driven between her and Lenore—but I knew that would open a whole new can of worms. It was best to just leave it alone.

“Mama’s no dummy,” I said. “I’m sure she knew that I’d tell you.”

16

Practical Considerations

B
ack in San Francisco, we hit the ground running. Ben joined his boss and two other craftsmen at the Concourse Exhibition Center, where they were setting up for a big furniture show. Meanwhile, Jake and I were up in Pacific Heights at the French Consulate, replacing the dead portions of a boxwood hedge. This was my second job at the consulate, and I loved working there, gardening for the government that had seriously pissed off Bush by declining his war.

Consulates aren’t my usual thing. I was referred to the job by someone I’ve known for years, a socialite named D’orothea (the apostrophe was added during her modeling days) who ran a stylish restaurant here in the late eighties. She and her wife, DeDe, knew someone on a committee at the consulate, so I was called in at the last minute to gussy the place up for a garden party. They must have liked us, because there we were again, leaning on our pickaxes in the foggy sunshine. A nice lady from the staff who looked a little like Leslie Caron (the current version) had just handed us a tray of leftover goodies.

“Mmm,” said Jake, lifting an éclair. “Freedom pastries.” He’s a dry little dude, but every now and then he fires off a good one.

Chuckling, I reached for a
pain au chocolat
. “You should take some back to your beau.”

Jake looked at me with a cheek full of pastry. “My
beau
?”

“Fuck off. I’ve been in the South.”

“Orlando’s not the South.”

“A lot you know.”

“And Connor’s not my anything. We’ve only had a couple o’ dates.”

“Connor, eh?” The new…whatever…had surfaced while I was away, but this was the first time I’d heard his name. I knew only that Jake had met the guy at Lazy Bear, the big gay shindig up at the river. They had taken a walk in the redwoods and talked about global warming. The second date, presumably, had been back in the city.

“It’s no biggie,” said Jake. “It won’t go anywhere.”

“Why not? He’s gay, right?”

He nodded.

“Does he know the score about you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And he’s cool about it?”

Another nod. “Maybe a little
too
.”

“What do you mean?”

Jake turned over a bucket and sat on it, his hands dangling disconsolately between his knees. “Ever heard of Buck Angel?”

I thought for a moment. “A country singer, right?”

Jake shook his head. “A transman porn star. An FTM.”

It took a while to wrap my head around that. “Okay.”