Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

didn’t…ssss…come with you, did she?”
    I was confused. “Your hairdresser?”
    “No…ssss…Lenore.”
    “She’s over at the mall,” I said. “I wanted this to be just us.”
    “I hope she didn’t…ssss…bring those puppets!”
    I chuckled. “No…well, they’re in the van, but…I think we’re safe.”
    “She like to bored us silly last week…ssss…Set up the stage in the dining room without so much as…ssss…a pretty-please to anyone…ssss…Then she went and…ssss…told the whole blessed world I’d turned blue.”
    “Well, that’s not very discreet.” I could have been a lot more supportive, but I hadn’t been expecting an open invitation to lay into Lenore.
    A sly light came into Mama’s eyes. “I never had so many…ssss…visitors in my life…ssss…all of ’em lookin’ for the Famous Blue Lady…ssss…I think the young’ns…ssss…were expectin’ a Smurf.”
    When I laughed hard at that, she looked rather pleased with herself. Mama had gotten sassier in these last two decades without Papa. I’d always assumed she was trying to channel him a little, thereby taking up the slack in the pissing-and-moaning department.
    She shook her head slowly. “I’ve never understood it.”
    “What, Mama?”
    “What Irwin sees in that…ssss… Jesusy woman!”
    “Well,” I said, dragging up a chair and sitting down, “it’s a damn good thing we’re not married to her, isn’t it?” I reached for her hand and held it for a while. It was small and unnaturally plump and—yes—a little bit blue.
    “Some of us don’t need puppet shows,” Mama declared with a righteous scowl. “Some of us would like to…ssss…worship the Lord in silence.”
    I gazed down at her nebulizer mask, that ugly Muppet nose, lying abandoned in her lap. “Shouldn’t you be wearing that thing?”
    She shrugged. “I can…ssss…take it or leave it.”
    “Well, take it, then.”
    She resisted.
    “C’mon, lady. Humor me.”
    She looked at me wearily for a moment, as if on the verge of saying something, then picked up the mask. “It’s just medicine…ssss…it doesn’t do anything.”
    “Be that as it may…let me do the talking for a while.”
    So Mama stayed on the nebulizer while I rattled on about the gardening business and the nice weather in Orlando and the landscaping at the Gospel Palms. My eyes, meanwhile, roamed the room for evidence of anything more substantive. I found it on a shelf by the window: the framed snapshot of Ben and me at Big Sur that I’d mailed to Irwin for Mama’s last birthday. I’d apparently shamed him into giving it to her.
    She caught me looking at the photo and pulled off the mask. “So where did you hide…ssss…the young feller?”
    Normally, she wouldn’t pronounce the word that way; she was being cute. She was doing her best Granny Clam-pett, to let me know she wasn’t nearly the rube I took her for. It was a sweet gesture but unconvincing; somewhere beneath all that white makeup and blue skin, the same old red-state heart was beating. Mama was a proud member of the Greatest Generation—or at least its ladies’ auxiliary—and those folks don’t have to approve of you to love you. They can forgive you until the cows come home.
    I gazed back at her calmly for a bit. “What bothers you more?” I asked. “The young part or the feller part?”
    “Well,” said Mama, “we’ll just…ssss…have to see, won’t we?”

    Ben returned from Starbucks minus Lenore. She had some shopping to do, he said, but she’d be back in an hour to pick us up. I figured she knew the limits of Mama’s energy and thought it best to give us a deadline. That was fine with me; I wasn’t even sure how well I could fill up the time. Ben made a valiant effort by dumping a handful of cellophane-wrapped cookies on the bedside table as soon as I’d introduced him to Mama. “I thought we should try these,” he said. “They’re madeleines. Ever had one?”
    “Not from Starbucks, ” I said, giving him a jaundiced look as I took one.
    Ben mugged at me and turned back to my mother, who seemed to be studying his face for some killer final exam. “How ’bout you, Alice?”
    Jesus fuck! He called her Alice.
    Mama blinked at him for a moment, then reached primly for a madeleine. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said.
    “Madeleines seemed appropriate,” Ben said, looking hopefully from mother to prodigal son as we nibbled away. “They’re for remembering,