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  To Eleanor, Mary Ellen, Ellen Marston, Perry Lawrence, and any other handle Mom used in her eighty-two years

  “Have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the senses?”

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  WINTER 2008

  Chapter 1 OVERWHELMED IN OLDE TOWNE

  “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford.

  Then I want to move in with them.”

  —Phyllis Diller

  Dusk fell quickly as I braced for my mother’s chaotic December arrival in Virginia.

  Dead leaves and lively carolers swirled around Olde Towne Portsmouth’s warped cobblestone streets. Tinsel-lined, fogged-up bar windows advertised mulled wine. The brick square in front of the 1846 courthouse was festooned with luminous Christmas clowns. Their creaky mechanical arms mystified red-cheeked children.

  The neon glow of the deco movie palace on High Street beckoned clutches of merry-makers wrapped in scarves. Where High Street runs into the river, crowds formed a single-file line for Portsmouth’s paddlewheel ferry to Norfolk, a service that has chugged along since 1636. Passengers hurried aboard to cross the harbor before seven. That’s when the holiday lights atop Norfolk’s mini-skyscrapers were switched on, signaling the start of the Grand Illumination Parade. Marching bands played brassy holiday tunes, as plump majorettes in white knee-high boots twirled batons and strutted to the beat. Their panting breath sent bursts of mist into the first chilly air of the season.

  Usually I am on the curb cheering them on. That year I was at home, overwhelmed in Olde Towne, cheering on a wiry, white-haired, self-proclaimed Jesus freak. His name was Steve Self and his business card read Self Service. I hired him to help fix up the rickety old house I had just bought for my rickety old mother and me. Mr. Self wore faded blue jeans and a utility belt. He wielded power tools for the heavy jobs, while I handled decorations. Such as a flag featuring a gingerbread man with a chunk missing from his leg and the message “Bite Me,” which I hoisted over the porch.

  For motivation, I blasted my usual Christmas playlist: a disco version of “Silver Bells,” Charo’s “Mamacita Dónde Está Santa Claus?” and a blues ballad called “Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas”—a tune that hit too close to home for my evangelical handyman. Mr. Self looked up from the pink shag carpet he was laying in the downstairs bedroom intended for Mumsie and let out a groan. Having given up liquor after some hard-partying years, he became born again as a means of leaving the past behind and starting anew. Whatever it takes.

  In a clumsy attempt to correct the musical faux pas, I skipped ahead to the next track. It was an obscure country rant called “Here Comes Fatty with His Sack of Shit.”

  “That’s a little better.” Mr. Self laughed in his raspy southern drawl. “But don’t you have any spirituals?”

  “Sure do!” Lawrence Welk’s accordion interpretation of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was in there somewhere.

  Mr. Self was a godsend. He was the contractor hired by the realtor to replace shattered windows and broken pipes when I made the rash decision to buy the dilapidated Victorian. I asked him to stay on to sand the splintered hardwood floors, install a senior-friendly sit-down shower for Mommie Dearest, and jack up my bathroom sink upstairs so I wouldn’t throw out my back when I bent my six-foot-five frame in to shave.

  Mr. Self helped me paint each room a different color from the Crayola Crayons Paint Collection: Tickle Me Pink, Shamrock, Neon Carrot, Radical Red, Banana Mania, and B’dazzled Blue. My house looks like a rainbow burst through a window and hemorrhaged all over the place. Once the chemical fumes from the paint had faded, Mr. Self drilled holes in the walls and installed thrift shop sconces, on which I placed candles, vintage photos of oddball strangers, and souvenir shot glasses.

  Out of respect for his religious beliefs, I hid my framed Exorcist poster of a possessed Linda Blair in the closet until he was finished. I could not resist, however, screwing on my light-socket plate of a cartoon hunk, his blue bathrobe flung open so that the switch dangles between his legs. As electrical accessories go, it’s a turn-on. My pious carpenter chuckled and shook his head when he saw it. Mr. Self was devout but not disparaging. When he invoked a Bible passage, it sounded more like he was trying to recall his Social Security number than espouse morals. As an atheist in southern Virginia, I’ve learned to sidestep religion and politics and find common ground with any interesting individual I encounter. While I do not believe in gods above and devils below, I do honor the instinct inside that tells you the right thing to do. That’s why I decided to buy a house and move in my ill, unhinged mother.

  Her name, which she changed many times over the decades, was now Perry. I addressed her as Mom—or in heated conversations “Mother!” My friends called her Perry so I often did, too. Sometimes she referred to herself as Paris, pronounced in the French way: Paree! Whatever the name, my friends were uniformly shocked when I announced that I would be taking her in. They listed the many ways my life would be derailed:

  “You’re not much of a family man.” “You love living alone.” “You barely have the patience to stay overnight with your mother once a year; how would you tolerate being around her all the time?”

  I travel a lot with work, so hopefully I won’t feel too trapped.

  “You work for PETA and pinch your nose at the stench of meat.”

  Perry hasn’t eaten meat since the eighties.

  “What about having boyfriends over and impromptu late-night parties.”

  She would love that. She always wanted to be a fag hag but never had the social skills. Plus she’s nearly deaf. I could play music at any hour.

  “You’ve never owned a house, only rented bachelor pads—how will you maintain a home and a full-time job while looking after a sick old woman?”

  Ouch. This one was tough to answer. I was such a gadabout that I had deemed myself unqualified to care for a low-maintenance plant, much less a high-maintenance parent. Was I as nuts as my mom?

  Taking in Perry was not a decision to make lightly. Long troubled by the way Americans discard seniors like cigarette butts, I read up on how other countries dealt with the aged in hopes of inspiration. In Tamil Nadu, elders are gently bathed in fragrant yet lethal oils that cause kidney failure; alas, Mom was too hobbled to climb into a tub. In ancient Japan, old people were brought high into the hills and abandoned; Virginia has so many damned hiking trails that she would be found before I made it to the after-party. Inuits set their withering parents adrift on ice floes, another tradition ruined by global warming.

  Enough with the fantasies. There was no shirking this responsibility. I felt duty-bound to look after my mother. I couldn’t stick her in some nearby apartment where I’d count the minutes during visits, nor in assisted living, where dead neighbors are whisked out the back door each week like expired brisket. We had to be under the same roof, enjoying life in our own house. Neither of us had ever owned one.

  Could I become responsible enough to be the head of a household, learn what a mortgage was, and do home repairs? Mom and I were hopeless in a hardware store. To us a screwdriver wasn’t a tool but a cocktail. My only repair kit was a small blue plastic foldout case meant for single ladies called “Do It Herself,” with wrenches that looked like they belonge
d in Barbie’s Dream House. To make this mission a success, I would need guidance from anyone who offered it, starting with my saintly handyman.

  As he showed me the difference between a Phillips and a flathead (I generally used a butter knife), Mr. Self said, “It’s a blessing you’re taking in your ailing mama, but it sure would be easier on you if you were married.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “I’m not the marrying kind. Plus my kind isn’t allowed to marry. At least not yet in Virginia.”

  “Well,” he said, looking away sheepishly, “God bless you anyways.”

  “I appreciate that. And I am blessed with good friends. One of them is flying in with her from Los Angeles tomorrow.”

  Chapter 2 HOME STRETCH

  “Thank God I have this oxygen mask—people fart nonstop on airplanes.” So declared my seventy-eight-year-old mother as she boarded the packed flight at Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX.

  Hard of hearing, she hollered without realizing it. Thus the remark reverberated through the United Airlines cabin like an overhead announcement. According to my tall ex-boyfriend Diego, who was kind enough to accompany her on the red-eye, Mom’s statement turned heads as she limped up the aisle wheeling an air tank and clutching a floral medicine tote. Towering behind the hunched white-haired granny, Diego struggled with two quivering cat carriers.

  Mom was so ill the week before she flew to Virginia that she went from the hospital directly to the airport. She had no luggage except a carry-on and Daisy and Sydney, her feisty felines, whom Diego had scooped up. Mom had COPD: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which makes breathing difficult.

  “You must delay the trip until you’ve recovered from this latest bout,” Mom’s doctor ordered at her bedside, flanked by my two vexed brothers, Mike and Pat. Ignoring the advice, she made her getaway with my ex as her henchman. Impulsive episodes like this intrigued me as a kid, but caused me to flee across multiple time zones after high school. It had been more than twenty years since I felt that tinge of anxiety about Mom’s manic behavior. Now, as her (gulp) guardian, I would be dealing with it on a daily basis.

  Once Perry, Diego, and the two shrieking cats reached their row near the back of the plane, Mom texted me: “I will not croak in L.A.” Long unable to hear over a phone, she quickly took to texting, with the zeal of a teen. With arthritic fingers whose pink nails needed a touch-up, Mom typed, “I’m making this move now even if I drop dead at the arrivals gate in Norfolk.”

  I read her message in my half-finished house sipping a full glass of wine. Her dramatic departure from LAX brought me back to a scene from my childhood that unfolded at the very same airport. The incident marked the first time I truly sensed something was amiss with Mother.

  I was nine at the time. My brothers and I were returning from a two-week summer vacation in Florida, where we visited our father, Ray, and new stepmother, Joan. They rented an RV and took us on an exotic road trip. We marveled at the dancing mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs, sped around the Everglades on an airboat, and explored the recently opened Disney World. We were unable to call home and check in with Mom as our phone service had been cut off (again). Instead, we scribbled postcards to her every few days and looked forward to recounting our adventures as soon as we returned.

  Mom greeted us at our gate looking glamorous but fragile. She had casually styled dark blonde hair, frosty pink lips, and baby blue eyes that were dripping tears and traces of mascara. We merely thought she was overjoyed to see us. But when we hugged, she convulsed in sobs. What awful thing had happened while we were away? Finally, she sighed relief and regarded us with weighty seriousness.

  “Don’t worry, boys—your father will never kidnap you again.”

  My brothers and I exchanged the usual look of exasperation at one of Mom’s meltdowns. But the magnitude felt greater this time. It was beyond the occasional divorcée diva fit.

  “We weren’t kidnapped,” I said, forcing a smile. “We were on a road trip; didn’t you get the postcards?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t fool me. I heard what happened and I’ve been to see a lawyer.”

  “Heard what, from who?” asked my older brother Mike, trying to reason with her. “We don’t have the money for a phone but you’ve seen a lawyer about a kidnapping that didn’t happen?”

  “We went to Cape Canaveral!” added my younger brother Pat.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whimpered. “I’m just glad to have you kids back safe.”

  Disheartened, we went from skipping off the plane to trudging through the terminal. Previously, whenever Mom seemed paranoid or delusional, I had written it off to the circumstances: an irksome employer, unfair landlord, untrustworthy neighbor, or a spat with ever-patient Dad. He moved clear across the country after their eleven-year marriage imploded. He rarely spoke to her or about her, not even disparagingly. It was all a big mystery. That day, as we made our way through the crowded airport, I detected in Mom a puzzling trait. An emotion beyond her control put her in an alternate reality. Arguing over the occasional delusions only made matters worse.

  I changed the subject to our favorite show. “I hope the season premiere of Carol Burnett has a ‘Mama’s Family’ skit.”

  “That would be wonderful.” Mom sniffled, wiping her eyes as we exited the terminal.

  “Will you cheer up, Mama?!” I yelped in a prepubescent drawl, imitating Eunice, the Carol Burnett character who gets flustered with her own neurotic “Mama.” I often mimicked Eunice’s wisecracks as a roundabout way of acknowledging our own crises. “Mama, you’re gettin’ furrows in your forehead from all that frownin’!”

  Mom chuckled and the dark spell was broken. Mike zigzagged the luggage cart with Pat riding on top, our beat-up Galaxie 500 miraculously started on the fourth try, and everything was back to normal for a while. Such was our life in the seventies.

  Now, more than three decades later, Mom was back at LAX. Not as glamorous, but just as much a drama queen. Diego told me that once she was in her seat, Perry removed her oxygen mask and flagged a flight attendant.

  “Excuse me, how long into the flight will dinner be served?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s food service only in first class.”

  “I see,” Mom replied politely. “That’s why I’m a communist.” Diego burst into laughter, thinking she was joking. Still giggling, he crammed the cat carriers under the seats in front of them. The sedative prescribed by the vet had finally sent the adopted kitties to dreamland. Mom always had an affinity for strays. Not just cats, but any wayward creature. Including several loveable loners I befriended over the years—like Diego.

  Mom often became a surrogate mother to misfit friends of mine, especially to those rejected by their own parents. When my childhood best friend Michael contracted AIDS, he reluctantly came out to his parents, only for his mother to say, “I’d rather you told me you were a serial killer.” Mom took charge by moving in with Michael to nurse and entertain him as he wasted away. At that point, I lived across the country, but she dutifully called and put Michael on the phone so we could reminisce, even as he started slipping into a coma and could only respond with sighs.

  If someone was down, Perry came ’round. Because she had so often assumed the role of an irreverent Florence Nightingale, even when her own health failed, I quickly ran out of excuses as to why I couldn’t look after her.

  As Perry’s reckless move to Virginia grew near, Diego, her latest protégé, was eager to help. He offered to escort her on the plane, freeing up more time for Mr. Self and me to work on the house. To be candid, Diego was a very experienced escort—though his clients were not usually little old ladies on airplanes, but closeted businessmen in hotel rooms.

  Diego and I first met in Las Vegas. I had flown in to lead a PETA protest at a fashion convention, while he was there to “entertain” male conventioneers for whom the slogan “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” was especially apt. After work, we each ended up at a gay club
. As the tallest guys there, we naturally caught one another’s eye. Diego was handsome, soft-spoken, introspective, and intriguing. He charmed me by reciting a dark poem about Sin City, though I could barely hear it above the din of the dance floor. We ditched the loud bar for a quiet walk and a passionate night in a dumpy room at the Imperial Palace. He didn’t tell me about his livelihood until the next morning.

  “I’d like to see you again,” he stammered nervously. “But I want to tell you how I support myself so there are no surprises later.”

  “Are you a hit man?” I half-joked. “If so, do you do pro bono work and take suggestions?”

  “No, fool. I’m an escort. Just until I get myself through nursing school. I’m totally safe, but some guys can’t handle it.”

  Diego had already told me that he grew up in a large religious family, so it was a bit of a shocker. Though statuesque, his casual style did not suggest “Vegas gigolo.” I never imagined being in this situation and didn’t know how to feel. I really liked Diego (an alias) and wanted to see him again, so I just shrugged it off. Like most of us, I occasionally succumbed to foolish jealousy. Maybe dating a hustler would help me overcome that awful trait.

  I introduced Diego to my mother on our first rendezvous in California. He was captivated by her brash humor and the fact that she didn’t judge anyone unless they wore a fanny pack. Given his conservative upbringing, Diego was astounded that Perry so easily accepted him, not only for being gay but also as her son’s boyfriend. They bonded over her collection of Mexican history books and Dame Edna videos and kept in touch, often emailing each other articles from The Onion.

  When I confided in Mom about Diego’s saucy source of income, her eyes grew wide. She shushed me. After thinking for a moment, she imparted her brand of motherly advice. “Never refer to Diego as a hustler. Just say that he’s in real estate—and manages a very large rental property.”