"How is your health? Are you keeping busy?"
"My health is fine. I keep busy. Father Ferlenghetti came to dinner last night
at the house. I made a nice roast, and I'll have sandwiches today."
"That's good."
"I'm thinking of your mother, you know."
"I know."
"Do you think of her, Art? You were so young when she went, but you remember
her, don't you?"
"I do, Gran." He remembers her, albeit dimly. He was barely nine when she died.
"Of course -- of course you remember your mother. It's a terrible thing for a
mother to live longer than her daughter."
His Gran says this every year. Art still hasn't figured out how to respond to
it. Time for another stab at it. "I'm glad you're still here, Gran."
Wrong thing. Gran is sobbing now. Art drops his eyes from Linda's and looks at
the crazy weft and woof of the faded old Oriental rug. "Oh, Gran," he says. "I'm
sorry."
In truth, Art has mourned and buried his mother. He was raised just fine by his
Gran, and when he remembers his mother, he is more sad about not being sad than
sad about her.
"I'm an old lady, you know that. You'll remember me when I go, won't you Art?"
This, too, is a ritual question that Art can't answer well enough no matter how
he practices. "Of course, Gran. But you'll be around for a good while yet!"
"When are you coming back to Toronto?" He'd ducked the question before, but
Gran's a master of circling back and upping the ante. *Now that we've
established my imminent demise...*
"Soon as I can, Gran. Maybe when I finish this contract. September, maybe."
"You'll stay here? I can take the sofa. When do you think you'll arrive? My
friends all want to see you again. You remember Mrs. Tomkins? You used to play
with her daughter Alice. Alice is single, you know. She has a good job, too --
working at an insurance company. Maybe she can get you a better health plan."
"I don't know, Gran. I'll *try* to come back after I finish my contract, but I
can't tell what'll be happening then. I'll let you know, OK?"
"Oh, Art. Please come back soon -- I miss you. I'm going to visit your mother's
grave today and put some flowers on it. They keep it very nice at Mount
Pleasant, and the trees are just blooming now."
"I'll come back as soon as I can, Gran. I love you."
"I love you too, Arthur."
"Bye, Gran."
"I'll call you once I speak to Betty about the chiropractor, all right?"
"All right, Gran." He is going to have to go to the chiropractor now, even
though his back feels as good as it has in years. His Gran will be checking up
on it.
"Bye, Arthur. I love you."
"Bye, Gran."
"Bye."
He shakes his head and holsters the comm back in his pants, then rocks back and
lies down on the rug, facing the ceiling, eyes closed. A moment later, the hem
of Linda's robe brushes his arm and she lies down next to him, takes his hand.
"Everything OK?"
"It's just my Gran." And he tells her about this date's significance.
"How did she die?"
"It was stupid. She slipped in the tub and cracked her skull on the tap. I was
off at a friend's place for the weekend and no one found her for two days. She
lived for a week on life support, and they pulled the plug. No brain activity.
They wouldn't let me into the hospital room after the first day. My Gran
practically moved in, though. She raised me after that. I think that if she
hadn't had to take care of me, she would have just given up, you know? She's
pretty lonely back home alone."
"What about your dad?"
"You know, there used to be a big mystery about that. Gran and Mom, they were
always tragic and secretive when I asked them about him. I had lots of stories
to explain his absence: ran off with another woman, thrown in jail for running
guns, murdered in a bar fight. I used to be a bit of a celeb at school -- lots
of kids didn't have dads around, but they all knew where their fathers were. We
could always kill an afternoon making up his who and where and why. Even the
teachers got into it, getting all apologetic when we had to do a genealogy
project. I found out the truth, finally, when I was nineteen. Just looked it up
online. It never occurred to me that my mom would be that secretive about
something that was so easy to find out, so I never bothered."
"So, what happened to him?"
"Oh, you know. He and mom split when I was a kid. He moved back in with his
folks in a little town in the Thousand Islands, near Ottawa. Four or five years
later, he got a job planting trees for a summer up north, and he drowned
swimming in a lake during a party. By the time I found out about him, his folks
were dead, too."
"Did you tell your friends about him, once you found out?"
"Oh, by then I'd lost touch with most of them. After elementary school, we moved
across town, to a condo my grandmother retired into on the lakeshore, out in the
suburbs. In high school, I didn't really chum around much, so there wasn't
anyone to talk to. I did tell my Gran though, asked her why it was such a big
secret, and she said it wasn't, she said she'd told me years before, but she
hadn't. I think that she and Mom just decided to wait until I was older before
telling me, and then after my mom died, she just forgot that she hadn't told me.
We got into a big fight over that."
"That's a weird story, dude. So, do you think of yourself as an orphan?"
Art rolls over on his side, face inches from hers, and snorts a laugh. "God,
that's so -- *Dickensian*. No one ever asked me that before. I don't think so.
You can't really be an adult and be an orphan -- you're just someone with dead
parents. And I didn't find out about my dad until I was older, so I always
figured that he was alive and well somewhere. What about your folks?"
Linda rolls over on her side, too, her robe slipping off her lower breast. Art
is aroused by it, but not crazily so -- somewhere in telling his story, he's
figured out that sex is a foregone conclusion, and now they're just getting
through some nice foreplay. He smiles down at her nipple, which is brown as a
bar of Belgian chocolate, aureole the size of a round of individual cheese and
nipple itself a surprisingly chunky square of crinkled flesh. She follows his
eyes and smiles at him, then puts his hand over her breast, covers it with hers.
"I told you about my mom, right? Wanted to act -- who doesn't? But she was too
conscious of the cliche to mope about it. She got some little parts -- nothing
fab, then went on to work at a Sony dealership. Ten years later, she bought a
franchise. Dad and second-wife run a retreat in West Hollywood for sexually
dysfunctional couples. No sibs. Happy childhood. Happy adolescence. Largely
unsatisfying adulthood, to date."
"Wow, you sound like you've practiced that."
She tweaks his nose, then drapes her arm across his chest. "Got me. Always
writing my autobiography in my head -- gotta have a snappy opener when I'm
cornered by the stalkerazzi."
He laces his fingers in hers, moves close enough to smell her toothpaste-sweet
breath. "Tell me something unrehearsed about growing up."
"That's a stupid request." Her tone is snappish, and her fingers stiffen in his.
"Why?"
"It just is! Don't try to get under my skin, OK? My childhood was fine."
"Look, I don't want to piss you off. I'm just trying to get to know you.
Because... you know... I like you. A lot. And I try to get to know the people I
like."
She smiles her lopsided dimple. "Sorry, I just don't like people who try to mess
with my head. My problem, not yours. OK, something unrehearsed." She closes her
eyes and treats him to the smooth pinkness of her eyelids, and keeps them closed
as she speaks. "I once stole a Veddic Series 7 off my mom's lot, when I was
fifteen. It had all the girly safety features, including a tracker and a panic
button, but I didn't think my mom would miss it. I just wanted to take it out
for a drive. It's LA, right? No wheels, no life. So I get as far as Venice
Beach, and I'm cruising the Boardwalk -- this was just after it went topless, so
I was swinging in the breeze -- and suddenly the engine dies, right in the
middle of this clump of out-of-towners, frat kids from Kansas or something. Mom
had called in a dealer override and Sony shut down the engine by radio."
"Wow, what did you do?"
"Well, I put my shirt back on. Then I popped the hood and poked randomly at the
engine, pulling out the user-servicables and reseating them. The thing was newer
than new, right? How could it be broken already? The fratboys all gathered
around and gave me advice, and I played up all bitchy, you know, 'I've been
fixing these things since I was ten, get lost,' whatever. They loved it. I was
all spunky. A couple of them were pretty cute even, and the attention was great.
I felt safe -- lots of people hanging around, they weren't going to try anything
funny. Only I was starting to freak out about the car -- it was really dead. I'd
reseated everything, self-tested every component, double-checked the fuel.
Nothing nothing nothing! I was going to have to call a tow and my mom was going
to kill me.
"So I'm trying not to let it get to me, trying to keep it all cool, but I'm not
doing a great job. The frat guys are all standing too close and they smell like
beer, and I'm not trying to be perky anymore, just want them to stay! away! but
they won't back off. I'm trying not to cry.
"And then the cops showed up. Not real cops, but Sony's Vehicle Recovery Squad.
All dressed up in Vaio gear, stylish as a Pepsi ad, packing lots of semilethals
and silvery aeorosol shut-up-and-be-still juice, ready to nab the bad, bad perp
who boosted this lovely Veddic Series 7 from Mom's lot. Part of the franchise
package, that kind of response. It took me a second to figure it out -- Mom
didn't know it was *me* who had the car, so she'd called in a theft and bam, I
was about to get arrested. The frat rats tried to run away, which is a bad idea,
you just don't ever run from cops -- stupid, stupid, stupid. They ended up
rolling around on the ground, screaming and trying to pull their faces off. It
took, like a second. I threw my hands in the air. 'Don't shoot!' They gassed me
anyway.
"So then *I* was rolling around on the ground, feeling like my sinuses were
trying to explode out of my face. Feeling like my eyeballs were melting. Feeling
like my lungs were all shriveled up into raisins. I couldn't scream, I couldn't
even breathe. By the time I could even roll over and open my eyes, they had me
cuffed: ankles and wrists in zapstraps that were so tight, they felt like piano
wire. I was a cool fifteen year old, but not that cool. I started up the
waterworks, boohoohoo, couldn't shut it down, couldn't even get angry. I just
wanted to die. The Sony cops had seen it all before, so they put a tarp down on
the Veddic's backseat upholstery, threw me in it, then rolled it into their
recovery truck and drove me to the police station.
"I puked on the tarp twice before they got me there, and almost did it a third
time on the way to booking. It got up my sinuses and down my throat, too. I
couldn't stop gagging, couldn't stop crying, but by now I was getting pissed.
I'd been raised on the whole Sony message: 'A Car for the Rest of Us,' gone with
Mom to their Empowerment Seminars, wore the little tee shirts and the temporary
tats and chatted up the tire-kickers about the Sony Family while Mom was busy.
This wasn't the Sony Family I knew.
"I was tied up on the floor beside the desk sergeant's counter, and a Sony cop
was filling in my paperwork, and so I spat out the crud from my mouth, stopped
sniveling, hawked back my spit and put on my best voice. 'This isn't necessary,
sir,' I said. 'I'm not a thief. My mother owns the dealership. It was wrong to
take the car, but I'm sure she didn't intend for this to happen. Certainly, I
don't need to be tied up in here. Please, take off the restraints -- they're
cutting off my circulation.' The Sony cop flipped up his goofy little facemask
and squinted at me, then shook his head and went back to his paperwork.
"'Look,' I said. 'Look! I'm not a criminal. This is a misunderstanding. If you
check my ID and call my mother, we can work this all out. Look!' I read his name
off his epaulettes. 'Look! Officer Langtree! Just let me up and we'll sort this
out like adults. Come on, I don't blame you -- I'm glad! -- you were right to
take me in. This is my mom's merchandise; it's good that you went after the
thief and recovered the car. But now you know the truth, it's my mother's car,
and if you just let me up, I'm sure we can work this out. Please, Officer
Langtree. My wallet's in my back pocket. Just get it out and check my ID before
you do this.'
"But he just went on filling in the paperwork. 'Why? Why won't you just take a
second to check? Why not?'
"He turned around again, looked at me for a long time, and I was sure he was
going to check, that it was all going to be fine, but then he said, 'Look, I've
had about as much of your bullshit as I'm going to take, little girl. Shut your
hole or I'll gag you. I just want to get out of here and back to my job, all
right?'
"'What?' I said, and it sounded like a shriek to me. 'What did you say to me?
What the hell did you say to me? Didn't you hear what I said? That's my
*mother's car* -- she owns the lot I took it off of. Do you honestly think she
wants you to do this? This is the stupidest goddamned thing --'
"'That's it,' he said, and took a little silver micropore hood off his belt, the
kind that you cinch up under the chin so the person inside can't talk? I started
squirming away then, pleading with him, and I finally caught the desk sergeant's
eye. 'He can't do this! Please! Don't let him do this! I'm in a *police station*
-- why are you letting him do this?'
"And the cop smiled and said, 'You're absolutely right, little girl. That's
enough of that.' The Sony cop didn't pay any attention. He grabbed my head and
stuffed it into the hood and tried to get the chin strap in place. I shook my
head as best as I could, and then the hood was being taken off my head again,
and the Sony cop looked like he wanted to nail the other cop, but he didn't. The
desk sergeant bent down and cut my straps, then helped me to my feet.
"'You're not going to give me any trouble, are you?' he said, as he led me
around to a nice, ergo office chair.
"'No sir!'
"'You just sit there, then, and I'll be with you in a moment.'
"I sat down and rubbed my wrists and ankles. My left ankle was oozing blood from
where it had been rubbed raw. I couldn't believe that the Sony Family could
inflict such indignities on my cute little person. I was so goddamn
self-righteous, and I know I was smirking as the desk sergeant chewed out the
Sony cop, taking down his badge number and so on so that I'd have it.
"I thanked the cop profusely, and I kept on thanking him as he booked me and
printed me and took my mug shots. I was joking and maybe even flirting a little.
I was a cute fifteen-year-old and I knew it. After the nastiness with the Sony
cops, being processed into the criminal justice system seemed mild and
inoffensive. It didn't really occur to me that I was being *arrested* until my
good pal the cop asked me to turn out my pockets before he put me in the cell.
"'Wait!' I said. 'Sergeant Lorenzi, wait! You don't have to put me in a *cell*,
do you, Sergeant Lorenzi? Sergeant Lorenzi! I don't need to go into a cell! Let
me call my mom, she'll come down and drop the charges, and I can wait here. I'll
help out. I can get coffee. Sergeant Lorenzi!'
"For a second, it looked like he was going to go through with it. Then he
relented and I spent the next couple hours fetching and filing and even running
out for coffee -- that's how much he trusted me -- while we waited for Mom to
show up. I was actually feeling pretty good about it by the time she arrived. Of
course, that didn't last too long.
"She came through the door like Yosemite Sam, frothing at the chops and howling
for my blood. She wanted to press charges, see me locked up to teach me a
lesson. She didn't care how the Sony cops had gassed and trussed me -- as far as
she was concerned, I'd betrayed her and nothing was going to make it right. She
kept howling for the sergeant to give her the papers to sign, she wanted to
swear out a complaint, and he just let her run out of steam, his face perfectly
expressionless until she was done.
"'All right then, Mrs. Walchuk, all right. You swear out the complaint, and
we'll hold her overnight until her bail hearing. We only got the one holding
cell, though, you understand. No juvenile facility. Rough crowd. A couple of
biowar enthusiasts in there right now, caught 'em trying to thrax a bus
terminal; a girl who killed her pimp and nailed his privates to the door of his
hotel room before she took off; a couple of hard old drunks. No telling what
else will come in today. We take away their knives and boots and purses, but
those girls like to mess up fresh young things, scar them with the bars or their
nails. We can't watch them all the time.' He was leaning right across the desk
at my mom, cold and still, and then he nudged my foot with his foot and I knew
that he was yanking her chain.
"'Is that what you want, then, ma'am?'
"Mom looked like she wanted to tell him yes, go ahead, call his bluff, but he
was too good at it. She broke. 'No, it's not,' she said. 'I'll take her home and
deal with her there.'
"'That's fundamentally sound,' he said. 'And Linda, you give me a call if you
want to file a complaint against Sony. We have secam footage of the Boardwalk
and the Station House if you need it, and I have that guy's badge ID, too.'
"Mom looked alarmed, and I held out my raw, bruisey wrists to her. 'They gassed
me before they took me in.'
"'Did you run? You *never* run from the cops, Linda, you should have known
better --'
"I didn't run. I put my arms in the air and they gassed me and tied me up and
took me in.'
"'That can't be, Linda. You must have done *something* --' Mom always was ready
to believe that I deserved whatever trouble I got into. She was the only one who
didn't care how cute I was.
"'No mom. I put my hands in the air. I surrendered. They got me anyway. They
didn't care. It'll be on the tape. I'll get it from sergeant Lorenzi when I file
my complaint.'
"'You'll do no such thing. You stole a car, you endangered lives, and now you
want to go sniveling to the authorities because Sony played a little rough when
they brought you in? You committed a *criminal act*, Linda. You got treated like
a criminal.'
"I wanted to smack her. I knew that this was really about not embarrassing her
in front of the Sony Family, the nosy chattery ladies with the other franchises
that Mom competed against for whuffie and bragging rights. But I'd learned
something about drawing flies with honey that afternoon. The Sergeant could have
made things very hard on me, but by giving him a little sugar, I turned it into
an almost fun afternoon.
"Mom took me home and screamed herself raw, and I played it all very contrite,
then walked over to the minimall so that I could buy some saline solution for my
eyes, which were still as red as stoplights. We never spoke of it again, and on
my sixteenth birthday, Mom gave me the keys to a Veddic Series 8, and the first
thing I did was download new firmware for the antitheft transponder that killed
it. Two months later, it was stolen. I haven't driven a Sony since."