Michael Tolliver Lives (10 page)

“I figured y’all would wanna rest tonight,” she said, passing the eggs to Ben. “We can head over to Mama Tolliver’s in the morning.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“She’s fresher in the morning.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant but thought it better not to ask. “Is there some place we can pick up an azalea or something?”

“Oh, sure. There’s a nice mall right outside of Orlovista.”

There’s a nice mall right outside everywhere, Lenore. It’s nothing BUT malls anymore.

“So…Ben…Mikey says you’re originally from Colorado.” It was the safest possible approach she could have taken, but at least she was making an effort.

“Right,” Ben replied pleasantly. “Colorado Springs.”

“Colorado’s beautiful, I hear.”

“It is, actually. Magnificent. It taught me to love the outdoors.”

Her brow wrinkled in thought. “Oprah has a house there, doesn’t she?”

“I think she does.” Ben nodded. “Up near Telluride.”

“They were redoin’ it one time on her show. You know that decorator of hers? Nate?”

“Well, not personally.” Ben grinned crookedly, offering a glimpse of that seductive gap. “I think I’ve seen him, though. Sort of…compact and handsome, right?”

“That’s him,” said Lenore. “I like him so much. He’s just the nicest person.”

“He seems to be,” said Ben, casting a sideways glance at me.

“He really is,” said Lenore. “And he has wonderful taste.”

I found this endorsement touching. Lenore wanted my young swain to know that she’d had some exposure to queers. If only the ones she’d seen on television.

After a moment she added: “His friend died in the tsunami, you know.”

Ben’s smile wilted. “No…I hadn’t heard that.”

It was news to me, too. “His partner, you mean?”

Lenore neither confirmed nor denied. “They were in Thailand in this little hut on the beach, and they woke up one morning, and the roof came clean off the hut, and this big wall of water just carried them away. Nate grabbed on to a telephone pole, but his friend didn’t make it. It was the most awful thing. He talked about it on the show.”

I was mildly unnerved. I’d seen Nate once or twice myself and could picture him tangled in 600-thread-count sheets with his boyfriend—a taller guy, I imagined, and darker, and just as gorgeous—when the unimaginable ripped them from their idyll. But, even thrusting Ben and me into the same situation, I couldn’t get a handle on the horror and the loss. “At least he was out,” I said. “He could be totally open about his grief.”

“Out of where?” asked Lenore.

“You know…the closet.”

Lenore frowned. “Well, I don’t think he’s one of those activists, if that’s what you mean.”

Irwin was squirming in his chair. “Would somebody please pass the eggs?”

Ben got up and handed the tray to my brother. “They’re delicious, aren’t they?”

“You know,” I told Lenore as evenly as possible. “I think of myself as an activist.”

“Oh…
now,
” she said dismissively. “You know what I mean.”

I did know what she meant. She meant there were good homosexuals and bad homosexuals, and she would never think of me as a bad one. My parents, I remembered, had once categorized black folks in much the same way. They didn’t disapprove of
all
Negroes. Just the uppity ones. The ones who insisted on
special rights
.

Why do I even bother with this?
I thought. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a meaningful exchange with these people—one that didn’t focus on scenery or television as a handy means of avoidance. The list of what we
couldn’t
talk about grew larger all the time. Phony Florida elections. Secret American torture camps. “Intelligent design.” A far-from-intelligent president who wanted to amend the Constitution to insure that wicked folks like Ben and me would never receive equal treatment under the law.

The truth was that I had long ago stopped caring what the biologicals thought about me, but I had never stopped accommodating their nonsense. It was a nasty old habit not easily broken—making them all feel as comfortable as possible. I gazed around the room, looking for an easy route back to the banal. I found it in a large kitschy print over the fireplace: a woodland chapel at night, its windows ablaze with a golden glow.

“That’s very nice,” I said. “Is that a new acquisition?”

Lenore beamed with pride. “It’s a Thomas Kinkade. You know, the Painter of Light? Irwin gave it to me for Christmas.”

Irwin puffed up like a partridge. “
That
one set me back big time,” he said. “Lemme tell you.”

That night, after dinner at the Outback, we returned to Inn Among the Flowers and decided to hit the sack early. The day had been draining for both of us. Ben was toweling off from a long shower when he tossed a low-grade thunderbolt my way:

“Why didn’t you tell me your brother was hot?”

I took that in for a moment, stretched out on the bed, then looked up from a pamphlet on Disney World and the Epcot Center. “Because he’s not,” I said evenly.

“C’mon. I know he’s your brother, but you must be able to—”

“What exactly is it that turns you on? The comb-over? The beer gut? The Banlon shirt?”

Ben laughed. “His gut’s no bigger than yours.”

“Well…technically maybe.”

“He’s just a big rugged guy, that’s all. Sort of a Suit Daddy. A countrified Suit Daddy. There are whole websites for those guys.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Countrified Suit Daddy dot com.”

He flopped on the bed next to me, naked and spicy-smelling. “He looks like somebody you’d see at an interstate rest stop looking for a little Brokeback action.”

“Well, thank you for that,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “Thank you for that truly revolting new spin on my brother.”

Ben waggled his eyebrows. “I’d like to have a truly revolting spin on your brother.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

He laughed and kissed my shoulder. “All other things being different.”

“Thank you,” I said grimly.

“But if I met him at a bar, say—”

“He doesn’t drink,” I shot back. “He doesn’t even cuss anymore. Lenore has dragged his sorry ass to Jesus.”

“Apparently,” said Ben.

“He used to be kinda fun, you know. I mean—an asshole sometimes—but fun. Now he reminds me of our father at his worst. Especially when he was talking to Sumter.”

Ben looked at me dreamily, rubbing my belly in silence for a moment.

“You think he’s one of us?”

“Who?
Irwin?
”

A chastising swat. “No…Sumter.”

I rolled on my side and grinned at him. “He
is
kind of a flamer, isn’t he?”

Ben grinned back. “Pretty much.”

“That would be a hoot, wouldn’t it?”

“Not for Sumter,” Ben observed. “Not in this family. Did you see the look on your brother’s face when the kid was showing me his puppets?”

“Oh, man, how could you not?”

“He’s obviously worried about it.”

“Well…fuck him.”

“Is that what you were like when you were nine?”

I feigned indignation. “No! Are you kidding? I ran a very butch puppet show.”

Ben laughed. “I’m sure.”

“Strictly cowboys and Indians. And the cowboys always won.”

Ben moved closer, entangling his legs with mine. “I’d love to see where you lived. The orange groves and all. Just to be able to picture it.”

“There’s not much to see anymore,” I said. “There’s no home there now. Just a Home Depot.”

He smiled. “But what did it look like?”

“Oh…dirt roads through the groves…white frame houses with lightning rods. Granddaddy was in walking distance.”

“Like a Disney movie.”

“More or less.” I gave him a dark little smile. “Before Disney got here.”

Ben smiled and sighed.

“There were these wooden stands out on the highway,” I told him. “This two-lane blacktop that ran along our grove. They sold orange-blossom perfume to the Yankee tourists. We hated those stands back then…Mama said they looked common…but I’d love to see one now…the way it was then, I mean. I’m sure I’d think it was wonderful.”

“You wanna go look for one,” Ben asked, “after we visit your mother?”

“After we visit my mother,” I replied, “I wanna find a gay bar and get shit-faced and stick my tongue down your throat.”

“That would work, too,” said Ben.

10

A Little Bit Blue

T
he Gospel Palms was located, not surprisingly, within spitting distance of a mall. The building was low and modern, the grounds modest but well tended. It might have passed for a small resort if not for the droning gray Muzak of the freeway and a Radio Shack visible through a tangle of palms and light poles. As Lenore turned the Little Witnesses Puppet Wagon into the parking lot, a pair of kids in Mickey Mouse ears were dodging the lawn sprinklers with lunatic glee. I had a terrible urge to join them.

“Listen,” said Lenore, turning off the engine. “Before we go in. Do y’all know about the blue bloater thing?”

“Nooo…” I said, frowning in Ben’s direction.

He shrugged. “Me neither.”

“Well…with emphysema patients, you know, they divide ’em up into pink puffers and blue bloaters.” She tilted her head and blinked her eyes in ladylike apology. “I know that sounds gross, but those are…you know…the actual terms they use.”

She seemed to be waiting for a response, so I said: “Okay.”

“Mama Tolliver’s been a pink puffer for a real long time. They call ’em that because they take these short little puffs when they breathe…and, you know, because of the color they get. Real…
rosy
in the face. The way she’s been until now, you know?”

I nodded.
Until now?

“So,” sighed Lenore, drawing out the suspense, working me like one of her puppets. “Sometimes the people who have it are just pink, and sometimes they’re just blue, and sometimes…when it gets worse…they can change from one to the other.”

Perversely, I found myself thinking of a home pregnancy test. Or one of those sticks you pee on for the Atkins diet. “So,” I said, losing patience with my sister-in-law’s theatrics. “I take it she’s a blue…whatever…now?”

“Bloater,” she said. “Yes.”

“And what does that mean exactly?”

“It means that the arms and legs get all puffy and—”

“Bloated,” I said.

“Yes.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “And the skin gets sorta bluish.”

“Right.”

“Don’t worry,” Lenore said. “She keeps it covered up when she’s got company.”

“With makeup, you mean?”

She nodded ominously. “I’m afraid so.” She widened her eyes as if to suggest, ever so nicely, that I should brace myself for a major cosmetic atrocity. Then she climbed out of the Puppet Wagon and fussed briefly with her hair in the rearview mirror. “Don’t forget your pretty flowers,” she said, meaning the hydrangea in the backseat.

Spotting that plant on a table at Kroger’s, I’d remembered how much Mama loved hydrangeas. There were half a dozen bushes blooming in our backyard every summer, some of them the size of pup tents. Mama would pull up a lawn chair when the sprinkler was on, just to smoke her Slims and watch those thirsty blue globes bobbing in the spray.

To a boy of seven—Sumter’s age, come to think of it—Mama seemed nothing less than a sorceress when it came to hydrangeas. I remember watching in amazement as she knelt in her cotton sundress to crucify the ground with rusty nails—a trick that she assured me would turn blue blossoms into pink ones before the year was out.

My love of gardening had come from this woman.

Her and Anna Madrigal.

The lobby of the Gospel Palms was tiny but efficient, presided over by a sweet-spirited portrait of a blue-eyed Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount. There was an alcove for visitors and a mini–florist’s cooler—more like a vending machine, really—that dispensed carnation corsages in several unnatural colors. Behind the reception desk sat a balding Middle Eastern man who nodded at Lenore as we passed, though she didn’t even bother to slow down. I noticed the bumper stickers on his file cabinet—
PROUD AMERICAN
and
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
—strategically positioned for the benefit of anxious visitors.
Poor bastard,
I thought.
Guantánamo Bay must seem awfully close.

Outside Mama’s room we held a brief powwow, where Ben, bless his heart, offered to take Lenore over to Starbucks so I could have some time with Mama before introductions were made. She was sitting up in a chair when I entered. Her face was made alien by a bulbous nebulizer mask, and her hair was a meticulous helmet of lavender blue, obviously done that morning. She’d been waiting for me, I realized.

Seeing me in the doorway, she yanked off the mask in embarrassment. “Mikey,” she said, her voice more gravelly than I’d ever heard it. “Lenore was spose to warn me.”

“It’s all right,” I said, smiling at her. “I’ve worn one o’ those myself.” I was relieved to see that her makeup, while a little on the goopy side, was not nearly as gruesome as Lenore had suggested. It seemed to cover the blue, at any rate.

I set the hydrangea on the bedside table and knelt to hug her, entering the faint mist of her nebulizer. She was wearing an old polyester pantsuit, and her legs did seem to be swollen. She pulled my cheek against hers, then released me with a brisk pat.

“When did you get to be so gray?” she asked.

I smiled at her. “About the time you got to be heliotrope.”

This was only meant to be affectionate, but a cloud passed over her face. “Did Lenore tell y’all…?” She stopped to suck air through pursed lips as if—God forbid—she were toking on a joint. “Did Lenore…ssss…tell y’all I was turning colors?”

I was mortified. “Oh, no, Mama! I just meant your hair color.”

“Oh.” She patted the side of her Easter-egg do, almost girlishly proud of it.
When nothing else can be done,
I thought,
you can always do your hair
.