We were just digging into a delicious beef stew my wife had made when the phone rang. It was a little after 6:00 p.m.
“It’s Helen… [two rings, three rings] Okay, I’m going to answer it,” I decided. After all, what if my brother had just died? Or what if he were calling from her place to tell me she’d just dropped dead, and what should he do?
To my great relief, my 89-year-old mother sounded fine and only (?) wanted to thank me for the flowers I’d sent her on her birthday six weeks ago. The next thing was, she asked me to stop sending my brother checks. Oookay, that was a direct request. Fine.
I’d been doing this from her bank account, which both my sister and I have access to. He’s 59 with bad lungs, kidney tumors, and a taste for evil habits. Not that I blame him for the predilection, but he has personality changes and accidents. He lives in a trailer she bought for him, dependent on her for financial support. He collects old junk before trash pickup and stores it in his yard. (The neighbors complain, but I understand. We are brothers, you know.) He doesn’t have a car, and now his third-hand golf cart, the one he uses to go up the street to Helen’s house, has bitten the dust. They fight all the time, just like with my father. My rationale was, if I paid him—from her account—on a monthly basis, for looking in on her, he wouldn’t have to grovel and ask her for money. Eliminate the middleman, reward responsibility. Less pressure, more fun.
Well, the fun part worked. And now she was shutting it down, at some relief to my karmic burden, but oh what a price. Out of my hands and into the fiery furnace! (The peril in Tucson is great.)
Ah, but there was more. The phone call, remember?
She wanted to talk to my wife. “I’ll see,” I said, leaving my sweetie an out. The Iowa girl nodded, and I handed her the phone. More gentility and calm. How perfectly extraordinary. And then Helen requested me back on the line:
All in one breath: “I CAN’T TALK TO YOU! YOU’RE NOT THE SON I HAD. I DON’T KNOW YOU. Butyou’restillmysonandIloveyougoodbye.” [click]
WHAM! I am largely immune but flash angry at the whoosh of the spear past my ear. (Hey, people are eating here!) Jesus H. Christ on a sesame seed bun, will this ever END?!? Uh, no. Not until the blinding white flash on the horizon to the west.
The fuse is lit, though, and I am WIDE awake!
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