Straight Man

dramatizes anger but reduces anger to melodrama. My wife considers overtly dramatic behavior of the sort my mother has always relished undignified. And Lily is right, no doubt about it. But a man like me, who’s easily confused by women, prefers signposts with large lettering. My mother contains her own share of depths, but she’s willing to simplify, to offer unambiguous directions: GO  …  STOP  …  YIELD . William of Occam could follow such road signs, and so can I.
    “Are you still miffed that I’m not going with you to New York?” I venture.
    My mother turns from the sink where she’s rinsing our plates and saucers to study me. “No, Henry, I’m not
still
miffed that you’re not going to New York. I never was miffed about that, so I can’t very well
still
be miffed.”
    “Oh,” I smile at her, since she’s obviously miffed at something.
    “If you had a truck, or a reliable vehicle of any sort, it would be another matter, but you and that monstrosity you drive would be of no use to us. Instead of towing, we’d end up towed. No, your friend Charles Purty and I will do famously without your assistance. It’s time he got out of Railton, and you know how I love New York. True, I could wish for a more sophisticated escort. I’ve never entered the Russian Tea Room in the company of a man wearing cowboy boots and a shirt with metal buttons, but that can’t be helped …” Her voice trails off as she contemplates the scene she’s just conjured.
    “Call before you go,” I suggest, getting to my feet. “I read somewhere that it closed.”
    “The Russian Tea Room? Don’t be absurd.” But then, suddenly, she’s serious. Or a different kind of serious. “What worries me is that you are in no way prepared for your father’s return.”
    This is such a puzzling thing to say that I can’t help but stare at her.
    “What I was in no way prepared for, Mother, was his departure,” I remind her. “These days, thank God, I could care less what he does and doesn’t do.”
    The expression she offers me now is my least favorite of all those in her vast arsenal of annoyingly superior looks, the one that says, “Who are you trying to kid, buddy-boy?”
    “What?” I say, feeling myself become more than a little heated.
    “Have it your way,” my mother says, and I see that I was wrong about her last expression being her most annoying. This sad, wry one she’s replaced it with is even worse.
    I consult my watch. “I have to go teach a class,” I remind her. In the Devereaux family, this obligation has always been the ace of trumps, and I can see how much my mother hates to see me play it now.
    “Oh, yes,” she recalls. “The one where everybody talks but you. I always forget what you call those.” My mother hasn’t forgotten what workshops are called, or that she disapproves of them. “Before you illuminate all those young minds with your eloquent silence, would you mind going down into the cellar and bringing up the smaller of my two suitcases?”
    I follow her to the cellar door, and when she flips the light switch, there’s a brief flash, followed by a distinct pop from the dark, nether regions of Charles Purty’s cellar. “Oh, phooey,” my mother says. “And I’m out of lightbulbs.”
    “Just leave the door open,” I suggest, since I’m pretty sure I can see the suitcase in question from the top of the stairs. “And step out of the light.”
    My mother does as she’s told, for once. “Be careful, Hank,” she says, touching my elbow and favoring me with the name she has always despised. “The stairs are in a frightful condition.”
    And I do as I’m told, for once, recalling, as I start to descend, my wife’s premonition that I may end up in the hospital while she’s gone, a prophecy I’m determined to thwart. The problem is that once I enter the stairwell I am blocking my own light, and everything below swims into darkness. I feel for the next step cautiously, like a man without much faith that there will be a next step, or that it will be where reason would place it. At first I can feel the walls on each side, but as I descend these fall away, and there is no handrail. “There,” I hear my mother say, “you’re on the bottom,” though how she can see this when I can’t is beyond me. She is right, though, I have reached the stone floor, and in another moment or two my eyes adjust. Feeling my way in the dark, Ilocate the handle of what feels like a suitcase, then