Travels with Penny: True Tales of a Gay Guy and His Mother (15 page)

“That’s Dad?” I said astonished. “He had hair?”

“Of course he had hair, you nit-wit,” Mom said. “He was so good looking, wasn’t he?”

He was. Of course, I couldn’t tell my mother that. There’s something creepy about thinking your father was sexy.

Suddenly, the image changed, and my sister and I sat on the sides of the toilet, feet dangling into the bowl splashing each other.

“This is gross, Ma,” I said. “We’re playing in a toilet.”

“We didn’t have a lot of money,” Mom said. “This was cheap. It’s clean water. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s a toilet.”

“So? The dog drinks out of the toilet.”

“I know and that’s disgusting, too.”

“Oh, grow up.”

For approximately the next half-hour, we sat watching images from the past. My parents didn’t appear often, at least not together, but when they did, it was obvious that they were enjoying happy times. Mom waving, carefully picking her way through a foot of snow; Dad under the hood of a car, tinkering with the engine; my sister and I chasing each other around a snow-covered lawn, pushing each other into the snow.

“You really lived in a basement apartment?”

“We didn’t have a lot of money. We had to borrow money so we could get married.” I looked at her. “We didn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“Why didn’t you wait?”

“We loved each other,” she said simply. “And your dad, being in the service, got housing on base after we got married. It was better than nothing.”

“I had no idea.”

She nodded and thought about it. “Who would have guessed we could go from two stupid kids who didn’t own or know anything to owning a house, a car and actually retiring from good jobs? We were so damned young. Neither of us had graduated from high school, for God’s sake.”

“You did good, Ma.” She nodded.

I thought about this as I took the videotape out of the player. Maybe this explained why Dad gave me so much grief those times in the past when I wanted to take Mom to New York or to Europe. It would make sense that, having no education, no money, no investments, virtually nothing except her since he was twenty, he would have seen their relationship as the foundation of his entire life. When I came along, wanting to drag her to parts of the world he felt were dangerous with no plan and no inkling of how to prepare for an emergency, he probably flipped out. Where I saw adventure and spontaneity, he saw the underpinnings of his world being threatened. No wonder he couldn’t stand the idea of taking her overseas. Europe was the unknown. In his world, you didn’t go from nothing to something by flirting with the unknown. So this was the key to my over-protective attitude with my mom and my fear of Dad finding out about the sex shop, the red-light district and Mr. No Ass Chap Man: Him doubting me was the byproduct of him protecting her. And she, through her travels, enabled him to live vicariously while never losing her own sense of security and, thus, safety.

I yawned and got up. Too much thinking tires me out.

“I’m headed to bed,” I said. Mom didn’t move. “You going to bed?”

“I think I’ll hang out here and watch some TV for a while.”

“Not sleepy?”

“Well,” she muttered, “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Want a sleeping pill?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, I’ll just sleep in the recliner.”

“Ma, you cannot sleep in a recliner.”

“Yes, I can. Your father did it all the time. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

THERE ARE
TWO FULL ENTRIES
in my journal for the eight days I spent in Tennessee for my father’s funeral. One of them recounted a dream I had about my father and me in a bar, which I shared with you earlier. That entry was written in the scrawling, uneven writing of a guy who had just woken from a dream. The other coherent writing was done on the last day of my stay. Everything else written on the pages of my worn journal is chaotic, random notes ranging from words like “dazed” to half-finished sentences that in retrospect carry no meaning whatsoever. I often wonder why I didn’t use that opportunity to say something interesting or poignant about the experience. My father was dead, and I had nothing to say about it.

But the truth is I had much to say about it. I wanted to say how terrifying the experience of losing a parent really is. I wanted to wax philosophical about the dining room chair where Dad used to sit and now remains empty, as if any visitor who sits in it will be marked for death. I wanted to pour onto the paper every moment of the day, describing in detail how my body quivered under the grasp of an invisible fist as a giant hand squeezed me, crushed my bones and made breathing impossible. I wanted to record how it feels to walk into the middle of a room, lost in thought, only to jerk yourself awake and realize you’re holding your father’s shoes in your hand and instead of putting them down, you wonder if you should bring them to the crematorium so someone can put them onto his feet before they burn his body. I wanted to be one of those people who said something important and helpful to people who find themselves facing the death of their parents. But the pages sit blank—a series of random ink doodles are the only entries in my journal the week my father died.

I had to face the fact that there was nothing new I could say to the world. There’s nothing new anyone can say to people who have lost a loved one, so trying to do so just sounds trite. What do you say to someone who lost a spouse? I’ve never been married to someone for forty-six months, much less forty-six years. Relationships are such tenuous things—I learned long ago never to ask why someone loves their partner. They don’t know. When it comes to love, most people eventually do what their hearts tell them to do. Reason has nothing to do with it. Logic is thrown out the window with the first utterance of “I love you.” Both parties settle into a comfortable and familiar pattern that becomes this thing called a relationship until they die or something thumps their petri dish life. What could I possibly write that would do justice to the years of “What do you think?”, “We bought a house” or “I never said that!”?

I wrote, instead, about the final year of graduate school, when I found myself hanging out with my parents more than ever before. “I drive your father crazy,” Mom said to me during one of my many visits.

“It’s good to know, Mom,” I assured her. “When he’s hauled away by the men in the funny white coats, I’ll know who to blame.”

“Shut up,” she said, typing into the computer. “These are financial records.” The printer chugged to life, spit out a sheet of paper lined with numbered columns and Mom thrust it at me. “This is the column for the check number, this is the name of the company and the date the check cleared.” She snatched it back and filed it. “Then I have a record of when I paid what.”

“Mom, that’s what online banking is for.” She looked at me oddly. “You don’t have to print it. You can call up the history of your checking account whenever you want and look at it. God made servers so you don’t have to keep paper copies of shit.”

“Well, I just do it anyway. Just in case.” Even though I wanted to, I didn’t ask “just in case what?” I suppose the possibility of nuclear attack always looms over us. Although if that were to happen, I doubt if a mushroom cloud will ask to see printouts of your financial records.

I mentioned to my father how Mom’s addiction to creating useless paperwork was reaching critical levels and asked him if it was time for an intervention. He didn’t seem too interested in discussing the waste of paper, nor the possibility of psychiatric help. I think I woke him from a nap, as his voice was thick and heavy with sleep as he said, “Yeah, I know. It makes her happy.”

“Dad—she’s in there making pie charts of paid bills.”

“Who cares? It keeps her busy.” Then he fell asleep. I wanted to change the channel on the TV, but the remote lay in his lap. There was no way I was reaching for it.

One of Mom’s compulsions is, as she puts it, “tidying up.” As I see it, she doesn’t clean a house, she beats it into submission. Constant dishwashing, vacuuming, dusting and spot checks keep her whirling like a tornado in Kansas for hours on end. Dad never complained, though, nor did the rest of the family. As long as we were willing to put up with the vacuum as background music to the nightly news, none of us had to get our hands dirty. Dad found it particularly advantageous. In exchange for an OCD housekeeper, all he had to do was listen to Mom chattering away about the unfolding events of the day and let her shoot random questions at him while he watched
The Price is Right
. She wasn’t interested in the answers. She was interested in knowing he was there.

The whole week I was visiting them, I found myself remembering these events and wondering what Mom would do when she didn’t hear the answers anymore. What happens when, in the middle of vacuuming the couch, she shouts out, “What do you want for lunch?” and silence is the only answer? I’m used to this because I live with a cat. Anyone who lives with a cat will tell you they are terrible conversationalists.

* * *

It’s frustrating: In this world of
Car Repair for Dummies
and
Dating for Dummies
and
PCs for Dummies
, and everyone from the local church to the local hospital wants to give you “helpful handouts” and “easy acronyms to remember,” there is no easy-to-read how-to book for burying a dead parent. There should be a checklist for the family of the dearly departed, a guide that tells you to get several signed copies of a death certificate, how to request the bank remove a name from a checkbook, how to tell the car repair place that the point of contact is no longer living, and how to tell well-meaning friends not to say, “Oh, I’m sorry” one more time or you’ll shoot them.

I’ve noticed the most helpful things in the world are rarely easy to obtain.

So looking back on the incident, I know why there are no entries in my journal that week and only ink doodles. Entries are for remembering bits of your life. Blank pages are for forgetting them.

LAST NIGHT
,
SUNDAY, AUGUST 5.

Mom and I prepared to go to bed about midnight. I had already changed into my shorts and T-shirt, which I slept in while visiting, and she hadn’t changed out of her shorts she’d worn all day. She hugged me tightly, as if fearing I would disappear.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. I nodded and murmured something I don’t remember. “Your dad always said that if something happened, you’d be here.”

“Of course I would,” I said. How do you respond to that?

She hugged me tighter. “I am so proud of you—we both were.”

“I don’t know why,” I said because it’s the truth.

“Are you kidding?” she said in my ear. “Lots of reasons. One time your dad watched you interpreting on stage and he said, ‘You know—he’s pretty good.’ You turned out great. Both you and your sister did. Your dad and I did okay.”

I think we all want to hear things like that from our parents. Despite the fact that we all grow up, leave home and pursue fucked-up lives of our own, there’s nothing that can substitute for kudos from a parent. I’ve spent years of therapy time and hundreds of dollars trying to
not
feel that I need to hear those words, but it doesn’t help. Ironic that now one of them is gone and I don’t need to hear the words as desperately is when I hear them.

“THIS IS
MY FAVORITE PLACE!”
Mom giggled as she unhooked her arm from mine and trotted towards the store’s entrance, nearly knocking over an elderly couple in the process. Great. This makes the fifth or sixth “favorite” store this afternoon. I watch her plow through the herd of high school students standing in a circle in front of the entrance, cell phones in hand, oblivious to the world and hear Mom’s terse, “Excuse me,” as they toppled against each other like a gaggle of Gap mannequins floating on the open sea. By the time they were able to rip their attention away from the electronic leashes and look up, Mom had already made it over the threshold of the store and into the den of bright lights, colorful signs and advertising lies I knew exhausted but also thrilled her. Mom’s an addict, strung out on the tasty oblivion of consumerism which she mainlines through a Visa card.

The sign above the entrance read BROOKSTONE.

Brookstone. Where have I heard that name before? I let the name seep into my brain like spilt coffee on my freshly laundered and pressed pants. It sounded so familiar. It must be some kind of chain store, or one that advertises widely, as I don’t shop, unless said shopping is done under extreme duress, such as clutching a gift certificate in my hand or dragged to Ross Dress for Less by a well-meaning friend who has a gun pointed at my head. I was born with a DNA defect that causes me to break out in hives whenever I get near a mall. The malady is compounded by the insanity of capitalistic mass marketing techniques. The sheer number of choices numbs my mind. Stores don’t sell just pants, but the same pants in different colors. Usually I wander around a store until I throw my arms in the air and run away, screaming like a little girl, or crawl into a corner and howl “Just tell me which pants to buy!” Seriously, how many choices do people need? There’s a fine line between consumer choice and just-buy-the-damned-things-already. Signs are everywhere, screaming: BUY NOW! SAVE OVER 20%! Why don’t we buy nothing and save 100%? How about signs in windows that preach the truth: COME IN! BUY STUFF YOU DON’T REALLY NEED ON A CHARGE CARD THAT GOUGES YOU FOR INTEREST! BRING IT HOME, WEAR IT ONCE, THEN FORGET ABOUT IT!

For years, I’ve thrived on Value Village, Goodwill and the kindness of strangers for my clothing, which has resulted in a fashion sense that runs the gambit from green-checked flannel to red-striped flannel. Lately, however, I’ve discovered the crème de la crème of thrift stores: Jewish Women’s Auxiliary. In graduate school, I found a morning suit for $25, a tuxedo for $60 and a wide assortment of jackets, shirts and shoes for pennies on the dollar. We’re not talking the cheap wingtips with soles worn through that a stodgy banker threw in for a tax deduction. We’re talking clothes given-to-old-Jews-who-died-before-they-had-a-chance-to-wear-them kind of clothing—with tags still attached and everything. I’m not sure if I have a low standard of dress, if Jews have a higher standard of dress, both or neither. All I know is that show me a Jewish Women’s Auxiliary and I’ll show you one happy homo with checkbook in hand.

Due to my acquisition-retardation condition, my familiarity with store names is limited, which is how I knew Brookstone must be a chain or advertised widely enough to be seen by me—a guy who doesn’t even own a television. The name hung around the back of my mind as I motioned an elderly couple past me, circled the high schoolers still fixated on their cell phones and went into the store in pursuit of Mom.

I found her a few feet to my left, behind a stack of colorful boxes and below a huge banner announcing ANNUAL SALE! DISCOUNTS OF UP TO 25%. The banner was caked with dust.

The woman bobbing her head at Mom had a thin face, huge eyes and a mouth that looked too big to fit onto any human. Her hair was teased so violently the follicles were still in therapy for an inferiority complex. It loomed over her, like a Zeppelin preparing for take off. Behind her stood a young man wearing a brown smock, horn-rimmed glasses and an identical broad smile. All-in-all, they looked like living bookends of a marketing and design department gone postal. As I approached Mom, hoping to grab her arm before she reached for her wallet, the smell of the sales people assaulted me. The woman emanated a combination of tangy scents and flowery essences. The young man smelled like Old Spice. My father wore Old Spice. My father and every other middle-aged dad in town. It was the official scent of Midwestern dads in 1960. Was it possible I’d reached that age when outdated colognes are in fashion again? I plunged between the two who, together, amounted to the olfactory equivalent of the
Peanuts
character Pigpen and hovered near Mom’s side. Why is it people complain about second-hand cigarette smoke, but it’s still legal to asphyxiate people with perfume?

“Your father and I used to come into this place all the time,” she said, fondling a battery-powered toy helicopter. “Your father would sit in the massage chair, and I’d play with the toys. We had so much fun!”

Her eyes lit on something else deep inside of the store, and she disappeared behind a pyramid of cardboard boxes.

Damn. She’s using again. We’d found the neighborhood pusher. Its name is Brookstone.

“Good morning,” the smiling young woman with therapy hair crooned, pegging Mom for the addict that she is. “Want to watch widescreen movies on your iPod!” It wasn’t a question. It was a command.

Mom stumbled towards her, all glassy-eyed and drooling, high on the possibility of whipping out the charge card. “What’s that?”

“A wonderful new companion for your iPod,” she said cheerily. Her face didn’t move, but parts of her eyebrow cracked. “You put your iPod or iPhone into this device,” she demonstrated by placing her own iPhone between two speakers approximately five inches square. “Then when you turn the iPod onto its side, like magic! You can watch your rented movies on the wide screen!” Her voice slid the scale from excited to orgasmic. I feared she would faint.

Mom watched the young woman grab the prop iPod and twist it onto its side. The iPod moved a couple of inches, then jammed halfway between the two speakers.

“I’m new,” she explained, her smile never fading. “It turned earlier.” She swiveled the iPod upright, then attempted to spin it onto its side again. This time it slid easily between the two speakers. The entire system was about a foot long by five inches high.

“It’s perfect for viewing on a plane. Do you travel?” Her eyes sought me out.

Don’t look her in the eyes, I told myself. I’ve always found it best to treat salespeople like vampires and avoid direct contact. Too late. Her gaze caught mine, and the tracker beam of consumerism tugged at my brain. I felt the pressure to respond. “Not as much as I’d like—”

“I understand,” she said with a voice so soft I could nap on it. “It’s hard to sit in one place for those long, long hours, isn’t it?”

“Totally,” I agreed.

“Well, now you could put this on your lap, plug in the iPod and watch a film!” Her smile returned, she jumped in her seat and winked. She seemed so friendly. Honest. Understanding. Maybe I had judged her too harshly. Maybe she wasn’t a vixen hunting for a sale. Maybe she really cared about airplane-numb-ass. “You do have an iPod, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“I thought so. Everyone does these days.” She laughed and I laughed with her. Her laughter resounded like little bells. She winked again. I felt warm. Was the air conditioner working?

“The batteries go in here,” she continued, flipping the system onto its front and showing me the back of the device. “They last long enough for an entire movie.”

“That is so cool, David!” Mom said, appearing at my side. When did she get back?

“Well … ” I stammered. “What about the iPod? Doesn’t this drain the battery of the iPod?”

She leaned over and picked up a smaller box. “This is a replacement battery!” Her exuberance was infectious. I found myself giggling. She slipped the sleek metal contraption out of its comfy cardboard home and held it out to me between two manicured fingers. “When the iPod’s battery dies, you just pop this into the bottom and like magic, you’ve got a fully recharged battery again!”

I had to admit, it sounded really cool. Far too often I’ve gotten on the plane only to discover I had left my book in the suitcase or at home and tried to amuse myself by reading the in-flight magazine. That’s it! The in-flight magazine! Brookstone advertised in the shopping magazine stuck in the seat pocket in front of me! I looked around the store and realized Mom had led me to the promised land of gadgets: the noiseless standup fan that deionized the air, the digital photo frame, the pocket projector, the talking remote meat thermometer, the anti-snore pillow! I loved this store!

“So I need to get the portable speakers and the battery charger?” I asked.

“Right,” she said. “With those two, you can have over four hours of movie-watching.” She touched my arm and enthusiasm infused me. I felt my heart quicken and my breath catch. I must have four hours of movie-watching. I will die without four hours of movie-watching.

I did a quick calculation. The portable iPod travel speakers were only $49.99, and the portable, rechargeable replacement battery was on sale for $29.99. Seventy dollars is such a small price to pay for four hours of in-flight entertainment.

“Do you sell the movies?”

“You can download them directly from iTunes! Isn’t that simple?”

“I’ve never done that before,” I sighed, a heaviness returning to my chest. I knew this was too good to be true.

“It’s soooooo easy,” she crooned, patting me on the arm. “The movies rent for $1.99. Then you have thirty days to view them.”

“Only a buck ninety-nine?” I felt lighter. Maybe there was relief for my in-flight boredom.

“Do you have earphones? If not, we sell them over there.” She pointed to the back of the store.

That made $49.99 for the speakers, $29.99 for the rechargeable replacement battery and $1.99 for a movie. That’s affordable. I turned to ask Mom what she thought, but she was in the far corner of the store by now, standing next to another young man in a brown smock at a table with miniature frogs inside a miniature, plastic aquarium under a sign that read, OWN YOUR OWN ECO-SYSTEM.

“Just a second,” I said to the woman. “I need to ask my Mom.”

“These are so cruel,” Mom said as I plodded up behind her. “Look at this. This aquarium can’t be more than eight inches square, and these poor frogs have to live inside. That’s just mean.”

“Well,” the deep-voiced, smooth-skinned salesman said, “the entire aquarium is a miniature eco-system. It remains in perfect harmony.” He lifted one of the tiny aquariums.

“The plants provide oxygen, the algae grows on the stem, which feeds the frogs and the bacteria will take care of the frog’s waste products. When you think about it, it’s the way nature meant it to be. We’ve only brought Mother Nature back into balance.”

I nodded. I couldn’t agree more. Before humans came along with Tupperware, plastic shopping bags and silicone, everything was biodegradable. A hundred years ago, the cycle was complete. Now, we have garbage barges floating alongside New York waiting for a place to decompose.

“You can have your very own little world—a
planet
if you think about it. And it’s on sale,” he smiled. He looked so … innocent … honest … friendly. “You can save $20 if you buy it today.”

“Really?” I asked. I did some quick math in my head. If I bought the frogs today and saved twenty bucks, with the money I saved, I could buy the rechargeable replacement battery for the iPod widescreen movie-watcher. That way I could do my part to save the environment while simultaneously avoiding boredom on my flights.

I nudged Mom, but I hit only empty air.

“Just a second,” I said. “I need to talk to my Mom.”

I found her standing by the U-control Silver Bullet mini-RC helicopters.

“Look at these!”

From nose to tail, they measured about four inches, and, like advertised, “fit easily into the palm of your hand!” While not perfect replicas of real helicopters, they looked pretty snappy, like some futuristic built-by-Q-specifically-for-James Bond contraption. They came in two colors and radiated “cool”: neon red and cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is my favorite shade. When I was a kid, I would ask Santa that all my toys come painted in cobalt blue. They didn’t, of course, so I deemed Santa either mean or colorblind, depending on my age and what other cool things he got me.

“They are radio-controlled by a control box like this,” a young, smooth-skinned man in a brown smock said, showing us the square device that looked like a video game controller. He looked so … innocent … honest … friendly. “Watch this.”

He pushed one of the two buttons on the contraption, and the helicopter ascended in a flurry of blades. With a nudge of the second button, the helicopter dived to the left and then to the right. Within minutes, the tiny dive bomber was dodging in and out of the display racks.

“That is so cool!” Mom grinned. “I love this store!”

“Want to try it?” the man asked Mom.

She snatched the control box and held it in front of her. “Like this?” she asked and pushed a button. The fiery red helicopter flew up and crashed against a light fixture. It fell like a rock, landing at our feet.

“Oh, well,” Mom sighed, “another one bites the dust.” She handed the control box back to the young man.

“Here, I’ll show you,” the young man said. He picked up the toy and placed it onto a stack of boxes that displayed pictures of the toy helicopters. He pressed the remote control box into my hand. “Press this lever just hard enough to raise the helicopter into the air.”

“They’re indestructible?” I asked.

“Pretty much, yes. The parts are flexible plastic, not rigid. That provides for plenty of crashes.”

Mom watched as he demonstrated. Once the helicopter was safely on the ground again, she snatched the controller from me.

“Hey!” I tugged back. “You had a chance!”

“This is not going to get the best of me!”

“There’s another one over there!”