Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

curled in my lap, I told him I’d be leaving soon but not to worry, that I’d be in a better place. I don’t know what got into me; I don’t even believe in a better place. But there I sat, morbid with fear, soft-pedaling oblivion the way parents do with their kids. And five years later my little white lie blossomed into black comedy when I laid Harry to rest under a stepping-stone in the garden.
    I made the same assumption about my mother. Back in the days of night sweats and endless fatigue, it was reasonable to believe that I’d beat Mama to the grave. In fact, Mama herself argued energetically for my exportation to “a nice Orlando memorial park just down the road from Disney World.” My father had been buried there several years earlier, so Mama was bound and determined to launch a tradition: a family reunion of sorts, without the dirt bikes and Jell-O salad. I turned her down gently, but my brother Irwin caved in and bought a plot that could comfortably accommodate his entire family, even the daughter who’d moved to St. Pete to work for the Home Shopping Network. Irwin is fifty-seven, a Christian and a realtor, and so thoroughly committed to both disciplines that he belongs to an organization of Christian realtors.
    I’m not fucking with you here; they have a website and everything.

    It was Irwin who called to tell me that Mama was feeling poorly and that I might want to think about coming home soon.
    “I don’t wanna scare you, Mikey, but I thought you should know.”
    “That’s okay, Irwin. I appreciate it.”
    “It could be six weeks or six months, but…it’s not looking good.”
    As hard as it was to hear this, I wasn’t surprised. My mother’s emphysema, the result of decades of liberation by Virginia Slims, had already confined her to a Christian-run convalescent home in Orlovista, Florida, where, for the past six years, between walls of yellowing family photos, she’d been convalescing her way to death.
    “Is she hurting?” I asked.
    “Not really,” said Irwin. “Just kinda…wheezy, ya know. And her color isn’t good. She’s been asking about you a lot lately.”
    “Well…tell her I’ll be there soon. I’ve got some miles saved up.”
    “Great…that’s great, Mikey.”
    I asked him how Mama had liked the birthday present I’d sent several weeks earlier: a silver-framed snapshot of me and Ben, taken just after the wedding, standing beside a waterfall at Big Sur. I hadn’t a word from anyone, so I’d been wondering.
    He thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah…the picture.”
    “Right.”
    He chuckled nervously. “Good one, Mikey. You had me going for a while.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “C’mon. He works for you, right? Or he’s a friend or something.”
    “No,” I said evenly, as if talking to a three-year-old. “That’s Ben. That’s my husband. The one I’ve told you about.”
    “Oh…sorry…I just…he looked so—”
    “No need to be sorry.”
    “But wasn’t that annulled or something?”
    I had no choice but to torture him. “What do you mean?”
    “You know…the state court made a ruling, didn’t they?”
    “You’re shitting me!”
    “No. They revoked it. It was big news, Mikey…even in Florida.”
    You bet your ass it was. Singing and dancing in the streets no doubt. Might even be a state holiday by now.
    “This is awful,” I said glumly.
    “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it.”
    “Do you know what this means?” I said. “We’ve been living in sin!”
    After a moment, the light dawned and he groaned in exasperation. “You see,” he said, “this is what I mean. Always jerkin’ my chain. Can’t trust a darn thing you say.”
    “Or even a damn thing,” I added, laughing.
    Now he was laughing, too. “I mean, c’mon, bro. You send us this picture of…I dunno…Huckleberry Finn or somethin’…and you tell us he’s your husband …”
    “If it helps any,” I said, “he’s older than he looks.”
    A silence, and then: “How old is he?”
    “How old was Jesus when he rose from the dead?”
    “Mikey, if you’re gonna be disrespectful—”
    “I’m giving you a reference point, Irwin.”
    “Oh.”
    “Ben is a grown man, is all I mean. He’s had a life already. There’s no training required.”
    “He’s thirty-three, you mean?”
    “Very good. Big gold star on your forehead.”
    “Well…” Irwin cleared his throat in preparation for a brave leap into the abyss. “He does look nice…I mean he looks