Often he would pull over, take his camera from the glove compartment, and snap some shots while I wondered if we would ever reach our destination. My father loved to watch, in autumn, the long scarves of lonely birds, flying, finally together, toward home.
“It’s all going to be okay, Betty,” I say later, back in Paris, when she gets her nighttime worried look and starts to make her sounds: “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” And for one long moment, I let myself slip into denial and believe it.
Betty asks again about the eggnog, as I write a note to my friend Stephen, an artist, who has lung cancer and is probably dying. “What’s up, Florence Nightingale? Are you ready with my enema?” he asked me a few weeks ago on the phone.
For a while, Stephen and I met at the Starbucks on Greenwich and Bank at 7 a.m. daily for lattes and old-fashioned doughnuts. His mother still lives in Texas, and whenever there is a storm warning, she wakes him at odd hours of the night to proclaim, “The storm is coming. It’s heading this way. It’s heading this way.”
He imitated her expertly, and we laughed, and about once a week I asked him to retell me my favorite story, a tale he excelled at repeating: There was a time in his life when Stephen kept very late hours, and one night, in the Village, at a twenty-four-hour convenience store not far from the river, he encountered a fine black sister of the self-created feminine persuasion whose deportment suggested that her business might possibly involve certain amorous transactions.
She had a bit of glitter on her face, a pile of errant hair, and a derriere of some considerable dimension tucked into some snug-fitting denim shorts. On top, she had on some kind of loose-fitting garment. Her eyes—large and saucerlike—gave the impression that she had recently ingested some mood-enhancing chemicals. When Stephen encountered her, she was in the back of the store, trying to stuff a large canned ham under her top. Then, proudly, she marched through the checkout, protecting herself with a purchase of maybe a Butterfinger or something.
But perhaps because of her state, she suddenly lost it and did a kind of swoon thing or whatever and the ham dropped out from underneath her top with a large thud. The cashier looked at her. She looked at the cashier, then at the ham, and announced, “I can’t be coming to this store no more. People be throwing hams at me.”
. . .
I love the citizens of the city night. For many years, I was one of them. I had adventures. My life has been an odd hotel with strangers drifting through and friends sometimes growing concerned. At times I was known to show up at work seven days a week, logging in at odd hours and setting off complicated alarm systems. For years, always feeling a little resentful, I walked past town houses where lamps revealed marble fireplaces and beautifully organized bookshelves. Like the assortment of strange relics in our basement, I have some cracks, broken chips, missing pieces. I have spent my life trailed by voices in my head saying, “You’re no good. This isn’t right. You’re not right.” My skin is sometimes the most uncomfortable garment of all. I have wandering eyes that do not easily meet the glances of others. When shaking hands with new acquaintances, I still wonder if my grip is right. Is it manly enough? I tell too many jokes. In a city of arrogant wristwatches, I have rarely been able to keep a Timex running right.
As a child, I kept broken things from around the house or taken from the trash in the bottom drawer of the bureau in my room. When I was finally grown, when it seemed that life would be inhospitable here, I fled—to Washington, Boston, New York. I will never forget my father’s face—his sad, lonesome look—when I left the house to go east.
I give last-minute gifts, haphazardly wrapped, travel on fantasies and imagined furloughs, late-night planes, booked too tardily for discount rates. I have no condo, summer home, or good investments, or family of my own. I have no husband, or domestic partner, or even beloved pet. Betty would never guess quite how things have been. If pressed to do so, she could not really imagine how I have lived. I never wanted a house with a few nice things. Or did I?
. . .
I am exhausted. Before I go to bed, I look in on her, as always. There is a pungent smell coming from her room.
“I’m here to check on you and your hair,” I say.
“I sprayed it,” she says. “I don’t know if it will work.”
“You’re a mean old woman, you’re not a bit good,” I tell her.
“I can’t believe you’re not in the penitentiary.”
. . .