Or it could have been yesterday, when I got a call from
Raf’s mom—could I help her send an email? Of course, and there I was—a
son with an aging parent! Not quite Franny of course—and by that I mean
no disrespect to Ilia, whose name I have now taught the computer. She’s
equal, but not the same. Anyway, it’s all…well, the same. (The son
and aging parent business, I mean….)
“We’re at a point where decisions have to be made,” she
said, after I had calmed her down, written and rewritten her 60-year life story
since graduation from Case Western, and read
it to her four times, to assure accuracy. Oh, and then heard her call
Cleveland, where she spoke to a nice young guy—William. At one point she
had to hand the phone to me, and it wasn’t a language issue. Or rather,
it was. He was talking passwords and updating profiles. She was
just speaking her very good English.
OK, that done. Maybe it was the title of the
friend of Franny’s who had written to me to thank me for sending the
blook. He wrote from work and I peered at his name—“The Reverend Jeff….”
Well, I knew that, of course. But wow, talk about
wearing your religion lightly! His wife had been the beacon of the
Morning Glories, and Jeff himself had been there as well. He even took
her to see the prairie. Yet never had he breathed a word of God. Or
perhaps, never had he not. I don’t know—it’s confusing in my mind.
But I do think of the Failure
Club, and the work I gotta do. So I hit him back and tell him I’m a
man with a mission. I gotta get every man, woman and child to know about
how Franny slipped away from the party and went gently home to rest. And
skipped the nursing home in then process.
He responds within minutes, with a couple of possible
contacts. And I feel a pressure in my shoulders, just like those days at
Wal-Mart. Gotta go to work!
Which made me remember, perhaps, the day they canned
me. The elegant Human Resources lady had read the letter—“your positions
have been eliminated”—and really, that was no surprise. It was just the
train coming closer, as I lay tied to the tracks. So why did I think…
‘…but I was just having fun!!’
Yup, I was back playing with friends, and Franny had
come to scoop me up, and it was time to come home now, and well….
I was just having fun.
Well, now it’s time to get back to work, ‘cause I
definitely have to write or call these guys and make contact and put myself out
there and ask a favor, albeit for humanity. Write a book in which I tell
the world that I almost heard voices, that I was gonna off myself, or even that
I was gonna off Franny? Oh, that I can do.
Call a stranger? Nah!
‘Well, it’s started,’ I think, or shudder, and go off
and take a walk. Franny’s walk.
I begin to consider the various ways I can get the
message out.
Scene One—the setting, a brightly lit shopping mall,
Plaza las Américas
Characters—a large crowd of shoppers, with one gringo
Dialogue: Gringo: “Con permiso, señora, pero
mi madre muerta tiene un mensaje para usted."
It’s so ridiculous I’m NOT gonna translate.
Well, we have—that is Taí and I—better ideas. In
fact, I like the idea of wearing a t-shirt I have designed in my mind. A
photo of a nursing home interior, and elderly lady in a wheel chair, her hand
grasping out. A nurse walking by, paying no attention. Above the
photo? The words “Occupy? No *%#!%^ way!” Below the
photo, the title of the blook.
I could do that, I think. It would be fun.
Well, I or Franny or we continue our walk, and guess
what? A gay cruise is in town, and the Old City is full of gentlemen of that
sort, as a friend used to say. And one of them is a charming couple. The man to the right is young and skinny (as I once was). The other
is examining the hanging roots of the ficus tree (as Raf still does.) And
for reasons completely unknown, I decide to greet them.
“Buenos días, caballeros” I say, and that’s not all. I give it a Madrid spin, growling
out the s as a sh and making the double ll sound like sherry sloshing in a glass.
They don’t respond but attend to their business: being
young, happy, and—I do hope—in love.
And it hits me—wow, they’re living in another world! Or rather, the world that I lived in, at that age, is for them a faraway
place. They told their parents that they were gay—the parents nodded and
went back to the TV. They take a gay cruise, not because it’s gay
but because it’s fun.
Different worlds.
And I come home and think of Jeff, or The Reverend, or
whoever he is, and the work I have to do.
Or the play?
I just wanna have fun.
