Tasteful Nudes: ...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation (11 page)

I’m not sure which was more disturbing, the fact that my mom was totally ignoring me or the notion that benefit luncheons for retired clergy followed by an afternoon of wall-to-wall show tunes actually had sellout potential. I kissed her on the cheek and jumped out of the car, something I should have done as soon as she slowed down to about ten miles per hour.

Not being an older Catholic lady, I didn’t give much thought to the benefit after that. But a couple of days later, my mother called.

“Hi, Davey. Guess who I ran into up at church today—Father Aberdeen!”

Father Aberdeen was the priest in charge of music at the school masses back in high school. Since I played guitar, I’d play at mass because I could get out of class to practice acoustic renditions of songs like “On Eagle’s Wings” and other church hits. It was awesome, almost like having an ejector seat I could use to get out of anything I didn’t feel like doing during school hours.

“That’s nice. Tell him I said hello next time you see him.”

“You should tell him yourself. He’d love to catch up. In fact, I mentioned the benefit for the nuns and priests and he seemed really into it. Turns out he’s a huge McGovern fan, too, maybe the biggest.”

Then she paused and said, “Hey, Davey, I have an idea. What if you and Father Aberdeen went to the benefit together?”

I know she wanted it to sound like it was an idea she had just come up with on the spot, but it sounded more like she was reading it off cue cards she had written up the night before and been practicing with all morning. I saw through her little plan right away. As far as I was concerned, she was just trying to get me to spend some quality one-on-one time with a priest in hopes that I might become more “holy” or something. Older Catholic ladies live for that kind of crap.

“Uh-oh, that’s the doorbell,” I lied. “Gotta go.”

“So I guess I’ll just plan on it unless I hear otherwise,” I heard my mom say as I pulled the receiver away from my ear. “Your father and I need to run a couple of errands before the benefit anyway, so it’ll work out great if you and Father Aberdeen just head down there together. Thanks, Davey. This’ll be fun!”

I suddenly felt like a shop owner in a mob movie who tells some henchman how he really doesn’t need any protection and then the guy shows up to collect with a baseball bat the next week anyway. I tried to just put the whole thing behind me, but sure enough my mom called again the next day, asking if I’d had a chance to call Father Aberdeen.

“No,” I told her through clenched teeth.

“He’s expecting your call.”

“Why would he be expecting my call?”

“Because I told him you’d be calling,” my mom said as if we had just had this conversation moments earlier and I had a head injury and sometimes needed to hear things twice. “What am I supposed to do when I see Father Aberdeen at church and he asks me why you haven’t called him yet? It’ll be embarrassing. He’ll think I’m some sort of crazy person!”

“And he wouldn’t be alone on that one,” I thought. Still, there was no denying this woman was good. Real good.

Reluctantly, I called Father Aberdeen the next day. I’d always liked the guy back in high school so it was actually nice to hear his voice and catch up. It turned out he’d recently been assigned to the church near my parents’ house, the one I went to every Sunday as a kid. He was recovering from back-to-back heart attacks. And, as we spoke, he definitely sounded weary in that way one tends to get after having your ass handed to you like that.

“I ran into your mother after mass on Sunday,” Father Aberdeen said. “She said you might be taking me to a benefit next week for retired nuns and priests followed by a concert by Maureen McGovern?”

“Um, uh, yeah, sure,” I stammered, masking my rage.

“It sounds like it’ll be very nice. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even ask you to break out your guitar and play your famous rendition of ‘On Eagle’s Wings’ from back in high school! Ha ha!”

“Ha ha! That would be both humorous and unexpected, Father. I can’t even imagine! Ha ha!”

Panic began to set in as Father Aberdeen and I spoke for a few more minutes. Then I immediately called my mother to suss out how, despite my earlier unambiguous protests, it now seemed I, a thirty-year-old man with his whole life ahead of him, was attending a benefit for clergy followed by a Maureen F-ing McGovern concert with an actual priest who, from the sound of things, might very well have a third heart attack right in front of me.

“Father Aberdeen really wants to go,” my mom said. “You can’t not take him!”

“Yeah, I can.”

“Great. So you’ll do it!” my mom bulldozed. “Thanks, Davey!”

I was trapped.

My mother then started calling me every day about the benefit as if she were masterminding an elaborate air strike. There were a lot of details to hash out: what car would I be driving to pick up Father Aberdeen and would I be getting that car cleaned beforehand, what was I going to wear to the benefit and would I be getting that cleaned beforehand, did I need a haircut and, if so, would I be getting that beforehand, etc. And since he was trying to recover from those two heart attacks, Father Aberdeen had more dietary restrictions than a diabetic supermodel.

“I can’t have anything with sugar, wheat, starch, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, trans fat, gluten, spices, preservatives, cholesterol, salt, chocolate, bleached flour, unbleached flour, dairy, caffeine, or flavor of any sort,” he said, apparently not joking.

As best I could tell, if he had anything crazier than a glass of water and a Tic Tac, I’d be performing CPR. I figured this might be my ticket out, but I was mistaken.

“No problem,” my mom assured me. “I’ll bring a bag of sandwich meats. That way, if Father can’t have anything they’re serving, I can make him a sandwich right there at the table.”

I was too beaten down to imagine how that scenario might make matters even worse, but more on that later. As the big day got closer, other frightening details came to light. For example, we wouldn’t be sitting just anywhere for the Maureen McGovern concert. Our seats would be front and center so that we might better bask in that unmistakable McGovern glow. It would be like an audience with the Pope. Of show tunes. And since my mom was in tight with the organizers of the benefit, we’d all ride to the concert in a stretch limousine—a detail my mom seemed particularly pumped about.

“There’s going to be a limousine, a stretch limousine—you know, the really long kind,” she kept telling me. “And not just anybody gets to ride in it, either—just your father, Father Aberdeen, and me. Oh, and then you and some of the other ladies. It’s a special stretch limousine just for us. The really long kind that’s only for special people.”

My mom wasn’t normally flashy, so I was starting to think the benefit was totally corrupting her.

On the day of the benefit, a promising combination of snow and rain covered all of Greater Cleveland—nothing the locals weren’t used to, but I still prayed it meant everything would be cancelled. No such luck though. Starting at 7:00
A.M.
, my mom called a half dozen times, going over every last detail yet again as if we were about to rob a bank.

“Be sure to leave yourself plenty of time to pick up Father Aberdeen,” my mom stressed. “There could be traffic or construction or a funeral procession or a truck flipped over in the middle of the road or honestly there’s just no telling. Don’t chance it, David.”

“Fine, Mom.” I groaned.

“I mean it; we can’t afford to have you picking him up last minute.”

Perhaps in a subconscious act of rebellion, I’d stayed out late the night before drinking as much as possible with friends, which only added to my misery. Around ten, I got in my car and headed to church to pick up Father Aberdeen. When I pulled up, he was already waiting outside under an awning. He made his way carefully through the slush and got in my car. A few gray hairs aside, he looked unchanged since my high school days.

“So, still playing guitar I assume?” he asked as we began making our way downtown. I’m a sucker for guitar talk and was relieved that Father Aberdeen chose this as the opening topic instead of something tougher, like what I was doing with my life, for example.

“Yup,” I answered. “You?”

“No,” he said. “Not since these heart attacks. They almost killed me, so I really just have to rest up and get my health back.”

As is usually the case when someone brings up almost being killed by something, you pretty much have to stop talking about everything else and focus on how they almost died instead—there’s just no getting around it. So, as we made our way down to the hotel, I pretended to listen closely as Father Aberdeen told me about each of the heart attacks and all the hospitals, tests, and tubes that went with them. Mostly, though, I was trying to remember where the nearest hospital was and how quickly I might be able to get him there if things suddenly went south.

“You feel good though, now, mostly or…?” I asked.

“Mostly I guess.”

“Great. Anything changes, you let me know. And pronto.”

About twenty minutes later, Father Aberdeen and I found ourselves exiting an elevator onto the second floor of the hotel, where about seventy people, most between the ages of sixty-five and nine hundred, mingled about, the men in various shades of gray and the women draped in either floral patterns or colors not found in nature. That unmistakable electricity that occurs when geriatric clergy members get together to make small talk with geriatric nonclergy members filled the air as the de facto Maureen McGovern tailgate party got underway.

“Hi, Father Winslow!” a woman with a short, blue perm said. “How’s my favorite pastor?”

“I’m Father Henry.”

“Hi, Father Henry! How’s my favorite pastor?”

My mom quickly spotted us in the crowd and headed over with my dad and my aunt Helen in tow.

“Hi, Davey! Hi, Father Aberdeen!” my mom said. “Davey, why don’t you get yourself and Father Aberdeen a drink?”

Now she was talking. For the first time I thought I might be able to get through this thing. All I had to do was keep a steady stream of alcohol coursing through my veins and everything would be okay. To that end, I made a beeline for the portable bar they had set up in the corner.

“Hello.” The bartender smiled as I bellied up. “Can I interest you in a virgin mimosa?”

“That sounds nice, but I think I’ll have something a little stronger.” I smiled back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wrinkling his brow in faux sympathy. “No alcohol today.”

“Die, you heartless prick,” I tried to say in response with just my eyes. He looked to be about my age, so I figured he must have had some sense of the situation I had gotten myself into and how it might be greatly improved with ten or eleven drinks. I also knew that whatever supply closet he got all that orange juice and Sprite from was probably also home to at least a few bottles of vodka. In fact, the bastard had a mini liquor store sitting right there at waist level where no one could see it. I felt like grabbing him by the nose with his ice tongs and whipping him in concentric circles across the room until he begged for mercy.

“Fine. I’ll take a virgin mimosa and a water.” I sighed in defeat.

I returned with the drinks as my mother held court, pointing out the retired nuns and priests in the room as if they were former baseball greats trotting out to the field on Old Timer’s Day.

“That’s Father Murphy—he taught at Cathedral Latin for years,” my mother said. “And that’s Sister Patricia—she was at Saint Claire’s throughout the seventies before disappearing entirely, never to be heard from again … until today.”

She knew all the stats. It was creepy.

I knocked back my virgin mimosa, hoping the orange juice in it had somehow fermented. Then we all shuffled into a nearby dining room, where our group sat down at a large round table with a half dozen seventy-somethings. I plopped down between Father Aberdeen and my dad, with whom I briefly attempted to commiserate. My dad was never one for complaining, but even so I figured he might be willing to agree with me on the overall suck factor of the current situation.

“This blows,” I whispered.

“I’m having a very nice time,” my dad countered.

“Are you kidding? I’d rather be waterboarded.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my dad said, straightening up in his chair.

I wanted to ask my dad what he had done with the money he‘d clearly been paid to lie through his teeth. But I was too flabbergasted to say another word to him for the rest of the day. Capitalizing on the lull, one of the grandmas at our table decided to chat up the fresh meat.

“So, David, I understand you play in a musical group,” she said.

“Uh, yeah.” I cringed.

“We should have you perform at next year’s benefit!”

“Oh, I really don’t think that would—”

“It’ll be great!” She beamed while struggling up from her chair. “You stay right there while I go get one of the organizers so we can set it all up right now!”

By outward appearances, I probably just seemed like a guy spending a relaxing afternoon with an amiable group of senior citizens, but inside I felt like the victim of some bizarre psychological warfare. A minute later, my mom, who had gotten up from the table to work the crowd, ran over to me dragging a guy named Rick I knew from elementary school.

“Look who I found!” she screeched. “It’s Rick! It’s Rick!”

Rick and I played soccer together in the fourth grade. He was working at the event in some capacity and we chatted for a couple of minutes before he had to get back to things. As soon as he left, my mom came scrambling back over to me.

“What a nice young man.” She smiled. “We should introduce him to one of your sisters.”

None of my sisters were married at the time and my mom was determined to change all that, and fast. And although somewhere between fourth grade and the benefit, Rick had clearly embraced his gayness with open arms, my mom was somehow oblivious. I did my best to explain to her that the hunt would have to continue elsewhere.

“I dunno, Mom, I feel like he’s not ready to settle down with a good woman just yet.”