The Good Luck of Right Now (2 page)

“Richard Gere is right! We should be sending the People’s Republic of China a message! Horrible! What they are doing to the Tibetan people. Why doesn’t anyone care about basic human rights?” Mom said.

I must admit that—being far more pessimistic, resigned, and apathetic than Mom ever was—I argued futilely
for
watching the Olympics. (Please forgive me, Mr. Gere. I had little faith back then.) I said that our watching or not watching wouldn’t even be documented, let alone have any impact on foreign relations whatsoever—“China won’t even know we aren’t watching! Our boycott will be pointless!” I protested—but Mom believed in you and your cause, Mr. Gere. She did what you asked, because she loved you and had the faith of a child.

This meant I did not get to see the Olympics either, and I was initially perturbed, as this was a traditional mother-son activity in the Neil household, but I got over that long ago. Now I am wondering if Mom’s boycott, her death, and my finding the letter you wrote her—maybe these things mean you and I are meant to be linked in some important cosmic way.

Maybe you are meant to help me, Richard Gere, now that Mom is gone.

Maybe this is all part of her vision—her faith coming to fruition.

Maybe you, Richard Gere, are Mom’s legacy to me!

Perhaps you and I are truly meant to become WE.

To further prove the synchronicity of all this (have you read Jung? I actually have. Are you surprised?), Mom booed the Chinese unmercifully at the 2010 Vancouver games—even the jumping and pirouetting Chinese figure skaters, who were so graceful—which was just before I began to notice the dementia, if memory serves.

It didn’t happen all at once, but started with little things like forgetting names of people we saw on our daily errands, leaving the oven on overnight, forgetting what day it was, getting lost in the neighborhood where she lived her entire life, and misplacing her glasses repetitively, often on the top of her head—small everyday lapses.

(She never forgot you, though, Richard Gere. She talked to you-me daily. Another sign. Never once did she forget the name Richard.)

To be honest, I’m not really sure when her mental decline began, as I pretended not to notice for a long time. I’ve never been particularly good with change. And I didn’t think of giving in to Mom’s madness and being you until much later. I am slow to the dance, always late for the cosmic ball, as wiser people like you undoubtedly say.

The doctors told me that it wasn’t our fault, that even if we had brought Mom to them earlier, things would have most likely ended up the same way. They said this to us when we got agitated at the hospital, when they wouldn’t let us in to see Mom after her operation and we started yelling. A social worker spoke with us in a private room while we waited for permission to see our mother. And when we saw her, her head bandages made her look mummified and her skin looked sickness yellow and it was just so plain horrible, and—based on the concerned looks the hospital staff were giving us—we were visibly terrified.

On our behalf, the social worker asked the doctors whether we could have done anything more to prevent the cancer from growing—had we been negligent? That’s when the doctors told us that it wasn’t our fault, even though we’d ignored the symptoms for months, pretending away the problems of our lives.

Even still.

It wasn’t our fault.

I hope you will believe me, Richard Gere.

It wasn’t my fault, nor was it yours.

You sent only one letter, but you were with Mom to the end—in her underwear drawer, and by her side through me, your medium, your incarnation.

The doctors repeatedly confirmed that fact—that we couldn’t have done anything more.

The squidlike brain tumor that had sent its tentacles deep into our mother’s mind was not something we could have predicted or defeated, the doctors told us multiple times, in simple straightforward language that even men of lesser intelligence could easily grasp.

It wasn’t our fault, Richard Gere.

We did everything we could have done, including the pretending, but some forces are too powerful for mere men, which the social worker at the hospital confirmed with a reluctant and sad nod.

“Not even a famous actor like Richard Gere could have secured better care for his mother,” that social worker answered when I brought you up—when I shared my worry of being a failure at life, not even able to take care of his only mother, which was his one job in the world, the only purpose he had ever known.

Miserable failure!
the tiny man in my stomach screamed at me.
Retard! Moron!

The brain-cancer squid ended our mother’s life only a few weeks or so ago, a short long blur (that stretches and shrinks in my memory) after surgery and chemo failed to heal her.

The doctors stopped treating her.

They said to us—“This is the end. We are sorry. Try to keep her comfortable. Make the most of your time. Say your good-byes.”

“Richard?” Mom whispered to me on the night she died.

That’s all.

One.

Single.

Word.

Richard?

The question mark was audible.

The question mark haunts me.

The question mark made me believe that her whole life could be summed up by punctuation.

I wasn’t upset, because Mom had said her last word to the you-me Richard Gere of pretending, which included me—her flesh-and-blood son—too.

I was Richard at that moment.

In her mind, and in my own.

Pretending can help in so many ways.

Now we hear birds chirping in the morning when we sit alone in the kitchen drinking coffee, even though it is winter. (These must be either tough, hardy city birds unafraid of low temperatures, or birds too lazy to migrate.) Mom always had the TV blaring because she liked to “listen to people talk,” so we never knew about the birds chirping before. Thirty-nine years in this house, and this is the first time we ever heard birds chirping in the morning sunlight while we drank our coffee in the kitchen.

A symphony of birds.

Have you ever really listened to birds chirping—really truly listened?

So pretty it makes your chest ache.

My grief counselor Wendy says I need to work on being more social and forming a “support group” of friends. She was here in my kitchen once when the morning birds were chirping and Wendy paused midsentence, cocked her ear toward the window, squinted her eyes, and wrinkled her nose.

Then she said, “Hear that?”

I nodded.

A cocky smile bloomed just before she said—as only someone so young could—in this upbeat cheerleader voice, “They like being together in a flock. Hear how happy they are? How joyful? You need to find
your
flock now. Finally leave the nest, so to speak. Fly even.
Fly!
There’s a lot of sky out there for brave birds. Do you want to fly, Bartholomew?
Do you?
”

She said all of those words quickly, so that she was out of breath by the time she finished her cheery cheer. Her face was flushed robin’s-breast red, like it gets whenever she’s making what she considers to be a remarkably extraordinary point. She looked at me wide-eyed—“kaleidoscope eyes,” the Beatles sing—and I knew the response to her call, what I was supposed to say, what would make her so happy, what would validate her existence in my kitchen and make her feel as though her efforts mattered, but I couldn’t say it.

I just couldn’t.

It took a lot of effort to remain calm, because part of me—the evil black core of me where the tiny angry man lives—wanted to grab Wendy’s birdlike shoulders and shake all of the freckles off her beautiful young face while I screamed at her, yelling with a force mighty enough to blow back her hair, “I am your elder!
Respect me!
”

“Bartholomew?” she said, looking up from under her thin orange eyebrows, which are the color of crunchy sidewalk leaves.

“I am not a bird,” I told her in the calmest voice available to me at that time, and stared fiercely at my brown shoelaces, trying to remain still.

I am not a bird, Richard Gere.

You know this already, I know, because you are a wise man.

Not a bird.

Not a bird.

Not.

A.

Bird.

Your admiring fan,

Bartholomew Neil

2

THAT GUY HUNG OUT WITH PROSTITUTES

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

In order to remedy the gaps in our collective knowledge of each other, I went to the library and googled you on the Internet.

Patrons are permitted to look up anything at the library except pornography. I know because I once saw a man (with gray dreads that made his head look like a dead dusty spider plant) get kicked out for viewing Internet pornography in the library. He was sitting next to me, rubbing his crotch through his filthy, incredibly baggy jeans. On his screen were two naked women on all fours like dogs licking each other’s anuses. They kept moaning, “Ewwwww-yeah!” and “Mmmmmm-haaaa-YES!” I remember laughing because it was so ridiculous. The women acting like dogs, not the fact that the man was kicked out.

(Do people really enjoy looking at women behaving in this manner? I find it hard to believe, but if it is on the Internet, there must be a market. And not just crazy library patrons either—but people with computers at home, where such viewing is allowed.)

An older librarian came over and said, “This is not appropriate. Sir, you cannot behave this way here. This is entirely unacceptable! There are rules, sir. Sir, please.”

The man yelled at the librarian, refusing to go. He said, “I ain’t no sir! I’m a man! M-A-N MAN! H-U-M-A-N HUMAN B-E-I-N-G!” which made the old librarian jump and take a step back. She did not like his spelling at her.

Everyone in the library had turned and was staring by this point.

I was glad The Girlbrarian was not there to see.

(The Girlbrarian would not have been able to deal with such a situation, and I like that about her. She’s beautifully slow to take action. She thinks about things a lot before she makes a move. I watched her once as she sorted through books that had been damaged. I don’t know for sure, but based on my observations, I guessed it was her job to decide which damaged books should be thrown away and which should be taped together and kept. Most people would have glanced cursorily and quickly tossed each book to its fate one way or the other, right or left, keep or trash, but she examined the books so carefully, turning each over and over like precious dead butterflies that she could maybe open and make fly again if only she were gentle enough. I watched her for three full hours from the other side of the library as I pretended to read the newspaper. It was a miraculous sight to behold, until one of the other librarians came over and yelled at The Girlbrarian for taking so much time. She said, “These aren’t gilded in gold, Elizabeth!” The Girlbrarian flinched when the words hit her ears, and she hid in her long brown hair that covers her face like a waterfall can cover the entrance to a mysterious cave. That older librarian sorted through the remaining books in less than five minutes as The Girlbrarian watched through her hair with her shoulders slumped. I saw The Girlbrarian’s hands start to reach for several books as they were tossed into the throwaway pile, but she managed to refrain and her fingers never got more than five or so inches from her white-corduroy-covered thighs. You could tell The Girlbrarian wanted to intervene and argue on behalf of many of the books.)

Have you noticed that far too often the best people in the world lack power, Richard Gere?

China has power.

Tibet lacks power.

Are you impressed with my research into and knowledge of your favorite cause?

When the police arrived, the pornography man—who was most likely homeless, because he smelled like fish guts rotting in an old leather boot—shook his head several times, like he was really dismayed, disappointed even, and then he yelled, “I’ve paid taxes in my life! Dozens of times! Thousands of dollars. I’ve funded the U.S. government, which is your employer! You! And you! And
you
! All of you are government employees! Public servants. You work for
us
! The people! Not the other way around. I am
your
boss. You!
You! YOU!
” He pointed his index finger at all of the library workers and policemen. “Now I want my representation! This is a free country! If I want to look at porno, I can, because it’s my constitutional right as an American citizen. Porno for everyone!” The man ranted for some time about how much American presidents loved sex. Bill Clinton’s stained dress. Thomas Jefferson making love to his slaves. JFK and Marilyn Monroe. I wrote most of it down in my notebook immediately, because it was interesting, real, spontaneous, even if it remains unconfirmed, and is most likely an exaggeration.

But I recognized something important that most people do not understand: that homeless man was pretending he had the right to speak openly and freely, and pretending can be more important than settling for what is agreed upon as true—what everyone else is holding up as fact. (In this case, the fact was this: homeless men are not supposed to speak to people with homes—especially in a confident manner.) Facts are not always as important as pretending. Pretending gave that man the power he needed that day to speak his mind. Most of the government employees will never speak their minds, which is why they were so afraid of the homeless man. He disrupted their lives with his pornography and interesting presidential proclamations. If only more people pretended for good causes. If only The Girlbrarian could pretend more effectively—she would accomplish many great things, I am sure of it. The problem is that madmen do all of the pretending and action taking. Have you noticed this?

I always write down interesting important things.

I don’t look at pornography because I am a Catholic, and I try not to masturbate, but I’m not always successful with my efforts.

Do you ever masturbate, Richard Gere?

I bet you haven’t had to masturbate in a long time—not since you became famous. When you marry a supermodel like Cindy Crawford, you probably don’t ever have to masturbate again. (I know you are no longer married to Cindy Crawford, but Carey Lowell. Like I said, I’ve been researching you.) Why would you even need pornography, with such beautiful women in your home?