Straight Man

the printed page. She may be right. One thing is certain. Mr. Purty doesn’t understand that his verbal miscues are a serious matter to my mother, that she could never take seriously the affections of a verbally clumsy man. Even his awe of her own verbal dexterity she holds against him. For Mr. Purty, listening to my mother talk is not unlike watching a bear dance. It’s just the damndest thing. There’s nothing and no one my mother won’t pass judgment on, and this nonplusses Mr. Purty, who, if he has opinions, keeps them to himself. That my mother has so many and writes them down for publication in the newspaper strikes Mr. Purty as unaccountable behavior. If he were ever to have an opinion, the last thing he’d think to do with it is write it down.
    I myself have only one consistent reaction to my mother’s columns in the
Railton Mirror
and that is dread. A relatively small portion of that dread is occasioned by contemplating what she’ll say. No, it’s actually her byline that causes my heart to plummet. Mrs. William Henry Devereaux is the name she’s remained faithful to in the face of commonsense all these years since being abandoned by William Henry Devereaux, Sr., my father. Her stated rationale is that she fears, given the remarkable independence and originality of her intellect, that she might be thought a feminist. But what this is really about is that she has always considered herself the wife of William Henry Devereaux, Sr., for worse, not for better, till death do them part, as agreed in public, never mind what the divorce papers say. As a result, there are God knows how many readers of the
Railton Mirror
who believe my mother to be my wife. Often I am called upon in social situations to defend her positions, which would be tedious enough even if I were able to ignore the Oedipal implications of being linked, journalistically, by marriage to my own mother. Lily, that other Mrs. William Henry Devereaux, is pressed even harder to defend opinions she has never voiced and does not share.
    “So, how’s business?” I ask. The table Mr. Purty just set out is crowded with an assortment of knickknacks, priced to sell. The most expensive item appears to be two dollars. Most are fifty cents. So, for mere pennies you can choose among fifty or so figurines, sacred and profane. Plastic Jesuses and plaster Marys mingle happily with grinning, big-bellied gargoyles. Most puzzling, since I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Purty is capable of an artistic design, much less a blasphemous one.
    “I put the good stuff out later in the weekend,” he explains. He showed me around his house once. That is, we weaved among the narrow pathways of stuff piled floor to ceiling in every room. “I always offer to give your ma a preview, maybe let her choose something. But she don’t seem too interested.”
    “She’s not sure you’re a gentleman, Mr. Purty,” I say. “She probably thinks you’ve got other reasons for luring her into your house.”
    “I do,” he admits. “But I’d be a gentleman with her. She’s a real aristocat, your ma.”
    I try not to smile, but I can’t help myself. I’d like to explain to Mr. Purty that my mother is not an “aristocat,” as he imagines. She’s simply imperious, an old scholar-teacher descended from intellectual nobility perhaps, but that’s about it.
    “You must be excited about your dad coming here to live,” he says.
    I decide on understatement. “It’ll be different having him around, all right.”
    “Your ma says he’s been pretty sick.”
    “He’s suffered a kind of breakdown, I guess,” I explain. “They say he’s improving.”
    “Your ma will make him better.”
    “You think so?”
    “Sure.”
    “Hold that thought, Mr. Purty. And thanks for the nose.”
    My mother meets me at the door to her downstairs flat, and we exchange pecks on the cheek. “Henry,” she says, looking me over briefly, registering my mutilated nostril the way you notice the passing of a bright city bus you’re not trying to catch. Both she and my father were the most detached of parents. When I was a child, they would examine me from time to time, as if to make certain that I was still equipped with the standard factory equipment, after which they would return to whatever conversation they’d been engaged in. Neither could understand my attachment to sports, and both were impatient with athletic injuries, small or large, which they perceived as willful. My mother