So Many Stars

Mom needed to be stabilized medically before the real work could begin, Linda Stephens, MD, told me over a lunch of something I thought certain only a goat could enjoy. Her liver, she added, was just just about totally fried, she had undiagnosed diabetes so of course chronic kidney disease too, COPD and incipient cardiac insufficiency. This on top of a truly foul sense of humor, and, oh yes, cataracts.

"Is that all?" I think I said.

"Yeah, thank God for Medicare," she said, and I'm pretty sure I laughed. Then she looked at me like, well, you know. "You have a nice smile," she said, then: "I like it when you laugh."

So...I'm looking at that dreamy, faraway look in this woman's eyes and thinking: my mother's shrink is coming on to me?

"Oh, I'm sorry," she stammered, catching herself in mid-fall.

"Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?" I said, catching her off balance.

She had more than a nice smile, too. Fucked like the proverbial epileptic whore, if you know what I mean. Plug in and hang on for the ride. Still, there was something about this one. Something real, something that cried out "Home!" Like what I needed to do right now, right here and now, was stop and take a long smell at her roses.

She grew up on a farm outside of Athens, Texas, was a small town girl -- she knew what a Dilly Bar was without having to stop and think about it. She'd wanted a fancy red sports car, but bought a Chevy pickup instead, because she went home a lot on weekends and still helped out on her dad's place. She wasn't afraid to be seen with a little dirt under her fingernails and wore sensible shoes. That kind of small town girl.

And she was smart. Took her degree in philosophy and turned that into an M.D. She liked to talk about current events and what we might do next weekend. I took her to Tokyo and we walked until I was about to drop, saw more things in one week there than I had in ten years. She talked and I listened, and against all odds I found myself falling in love with her. An odd feeling, too, kind of fun, but with a lot of anxiety.

And I think I told her about my feelings one day. Out walking around a Buddhist temple, acting like tourists. We were hand in hand when she told me she was madly in love with me, that she been since the moment she laid eyes on me. Totally irrational, she added, looking at me with the kind of possessiveness that drives most sane men to drink.

"So, when can we get married?" she asked then and there.

Married? Me? I think the numb speechlessness might have given away my feelings. It's amazing how quickly something so fine and big can come crumbling down into piles of rubble.

Oh yes. Mother. I moved her to an assisted living facility, but by then another doc had taken over.

+++++

The plan, according to Sheep Shit Airways, anyway, was for us to bunk-out in Stuttgart for the required interval, then fly back to Perth for the next load. Yeah, I guess, like...whatever. But me? I was thinking about the money in the envelope, and what it all meant -- at least according to Sam. I don't cotton to the idea of being someone's slave, and the slow burn in the middle of my gut was reminding me of that, but now it was time to leave the aircraft and get some sleep. Nothing else mattered now.

So Andy and André handled the bags and I helped Sam down the two-story stairway, then we grabbed a taxi and went to the nearest Marriott, and a black C-Class Mercedes followed us to the hotel, and two men in sunglasses watched over us as we checked-in. How clever, I thought, especially as there was so much sun out this foggy morning.

I got her an adjoining room, of course, and when she'd gone in I laid out my bag and was getting stuff out to shower when she knocked on the door between rooms.

She was naked as the day she was born and grabbed me by the cock and pulled me into the bathroom. We showered, draining the Rhine in the process, and she coiled around me in the steam, began striking all the right places, and soon all thoughts of sleep were gone. Barely dry, we fell onto the bed and she took charge, yet it was soon apparent her every gesture, every thought that passed her lips was all about wanting to be loved, needing to be appreciated as something more than a toy. As someone who'd been used and discarded for decades, as someone yearning to feel something deeper than love.

And you know? It's kind of odd, but I could relate to that.

+++++

I flew down to Austin the weekend they were moving Mom from assisted living to a long term care facility. She'd become unmanageable again, throwing feces on the people who came by to check-up on her, urinating all over the place, trying to get orderlies to eat her out -- those kinds of unmanageables.

And Linda met me at the airport.

"We need to talk," she said.

"About Mom?" I asked, my eyes locked-on her belly.

"No, you silly moron. Us. We need to talk about us, you and me. You and me -- and the baby we're going to have."

+++++

I let her sleep-in that first morning, sleep with her dreams and get comfortable with them, and sometime in the afternoon I went down to the lounge. Sat down and ordered a dark rum something and pretended to drink it, brooding in my dark corner thinking dark thoughts.

And André wandered in, though thankfully not in full drag, and he came over and sat down across from me.

"You're a good pilot, Jim," he began, "but I think perhaps you are a lousy human being."

"Oh? So you've just noticed?"

"Some people hide it very well. Others, not so."

"So, what gave me away?"

"That woman. Sam. She is in trouble, no?"

"Yes, very much so, I think."

"These women, these women the Saudi's send away, they do not treat some of them so well when they leave."

"Discarded, I think, is a better choice of words."

"As it may, but I thought I read in your dossier that you are engaged."

"That's true. I am."

"And yet you take this woman to your bed?"

"That's true. I did."

"So, this is why I think you are a bad man."

"I see. I agree completely."

"I can fix this, you know. I can take you upstairs and put on my other clothes and fuck you in the ass."

"You know, André, as tempting as that sounds, I think I'll take a rain-check."

He laughed.

I laughed.

Nervously, I might add.

"So," he continued, "what are we to do with this girl?"

"Get her on that Lufthansa flight to New York. Tonight. They won't fuck with her over there."

He nodded his head. "That may be, but my guess is that won't stop them."

I nodded. "Delta still flies non-stop from here, to ATL, but she's got another flight on Lufthansa booked. Frankfurt, then Chicago and on to San Francisco. Try to throw them off."

"So, she'll show up for Lufthansa, then hop on the Delta flight?"

"That's the plan."

He steepled his fingers, sighed. "We may need some sort of diversion."

"Oh?"

"I'm not an idiot, Jim. I saw the goons in the Mercedes, and I don't think they're going to let her out of their sight for one minute."

"Goons. I like that..."

"Yes. I thought of Bogart and Bergman when I saw them, and I smiled a little too, I think. Perhaps they would approve, too, this desperate flight of hers, and you struggling to help her?"

"So then, in this old world of yours, I'm Victor...what was his name?"

"Lazlo. Paul Henreid. And of course I would be your Captain Renault. Oh, and this Samantha makes an excellent Ilsa Lund, don't you think?"

"I do, yes, but with all due respect to Miss Bergman, Sam's got better legs."

"Yes. She's elegant enough to make me wish I was straight again."

"Again?"

"Yes, but that's a long story, one for another day. Oh! -- here comes our Ilsa now..."

And he was right, of course, she did look a little like Ingrid Bergman. A much taller Ingrid Bergman, and with Bergman's perfect breasts too, but her legs were something else entirely.

She sat across from me, looked at André, then me. "What are you having?" she said, looking at my drink and wrinkling her nose.

"A rum something. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's just a little shy of 200 proof."

André picked it up and sniffed, then put it down and pushed the glass away, mumbling "And here I thought you'd spilled jet fuel on your trousers..."

A waitress came over and Sam asked for some white wine, a Riesling, perhaps, and I watched as a jazz trio came in and set up their amps and mics. Then Sam's goons came in and sat across the room from us. One even looked our way. Foolish.

"This is so fun!" André said breathlessly, in all his limp-wristed glory. "I can hardly wait to see what happens next..."

Sam looked at André and smiled, but I could see she was a little put off by his over-the-top showmanship, then her wine came and the waitress asked André what he'd have.

"Ooh, one just like his," he cooed, and after the girl left Sam looked at him coyishly...

"So, are you going to drink it, André, or suck it off?"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, here we go..." I sighed.

"Ooh, Jim, I like her...she's reading my mind. Maybe we could go up later and have a little threesome?"

"No thanks, amigo, I'm trying to quit."

"Oh? So there's hope for me yet?"

And Sam chimed in next: "Should I leave you two alone?"

I simply shook my head. When the cocktail waitress came with André's jet fuel she looked at my glass and asked if I was ready for another.

"Sure," I said, "but this was really weak. Could you ask the bartender to make the next one a little stronger?"

+++++

I was in a funk. I mean flat-out, stone-cold depressed.

I'd gone to visit my mother and after five minutes the only thing that came to mind was little Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. Head spinning, split-pea soup flying everywhere, screams of "Your mother sews socks that smell..." filling the air with latent malice. All that was missing was Father Karras absorbing Satan and flying out the window, absolving humanity's sins one more time as he tumbled down those perilously steep steps.

But Linda had tried to warn me over the phone. Hadn't she? Hadn't she said something to the effect that mother had really gone downhill? That it wasn't going to pretty?

And that her condition was only going to get worse, that the COPD and CHF were getting very bad now? That her brain was starved for oxygen, that normal function was shutting down.

No, not pretty at all.

We were sitting at my favorite restaurant in the world, an old Mexican place on the east side that's been there, right there, since before the last ice-age. Best cheese enchiladas in the known universe, and the thought of arriving too late and finding they've run out of guacamole a mortal sin known to make grown men weep, because even presidents have been known to divert Air Force One to Bergstrom -- just for their guacamole. Yes, it's that good.

And I sat there at the table with Linda, looking at that green stuff in the bowl on the table and thinking about my mother, strapped down in a hospital bed just a few miles away.

I'd failed her, hadn't I? I'd tried once, when I still cared about her, but her pandoras's box of insanities had driven me away, just as surely as little Regan's demons drove away Father Karras. They'd driven my father away too, once upon a time, but that sense of duty intervened -- and he stuck it out.

Until he finally put that Smith and Wesson in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

But...I'd failed Nancy-Sue too, hadn't I? Wasn't that plain to see now?

And what about Alice? Didn't I fail her too? I tried, at least I think I tried to be there for her once I knew she needed me, but...? Wasn't that another case of me doing too little, and maybe just a little too late?

Even so, Linda was holding my hand, helping me through cascading floods of doubt and self-recrimination. When you get right down to it, there's nothing better than to have your existential crisis with a psychiatrist sitting across from you, ordering you another Margarita and feeding you green goo on stale chips.

But no, she was drinking club sodas, wasn't she?

And she was sitting there, eating for two now, as she put it.

And my chromosomes had danced the dance with hers, tripped the light fantastic and in the afterglow something happened -- again. The cosmic tumblers had fallen into place -- again -- only this time there was no running away.

And I told her about my feelings. My feelings about failing my mother. About failing Nancy-Sue and Alice...

"You know, Jim, you told me once, in Kyoto, that you loved me."

"At the temple," I said. "Higashi Honganji -- I remember cherry blossoms?"

She nodded. "Do you -- remember?"

"You've picked a helluva time to ask me that, you know."

She nodded, and yes, I think then she understood. That's the problem with shrinks, but I guess you knew that already.

+++++

A vocalist joined the trio and began playing, so I leaned back and drifted down Moon River for a while, thinking of two drifters -- off to see the world. I looked at Sam, wondered if she might be my Huckleberry Friend, if there could ever really be such a thing. She was looking at me, kind of a cross-eyed stare, distracted, but then I realized she was looking through me -- looking at the goons --

Then the trio started in on their next song, a song that took me back to Nancy-Sue and long walks in the night. So Many Stars. Sergio Mendes' smooth vibe on the dreams that wait for us out there.

And the choices that come for us in the night.

The girl's voice was something else, and she had a kind of smokey Streisand thing going...

I kept drifting, drifting in the currents of those words, until I was somewhere deep in the heart. In my mind's eye

I saw an old phonograph in the living room, and I heard that music again, coming out of tinny speakers -- and I saw my mother. Dancing. In her bare feet. Alone -- lost in the arms of her dreams -- as voices lost in time drifted through the music...

And there are oh so many stars. So many stars...

"Jim, are you alright?"

It was André. I turned and looked at him, wondered where I was, thought I saw myself dancing with my mother, and I remembered the way she looked at me that night. I'd just been accepted to UT and she'd been all crazy proud of me, so happy. She'd been dancing to that music when I came in from practice, dancing before I'd shown her my letter. It was the only time she ever told me she was proud of me, the only time I ever felt like she loved me.

But drifting through the music I suddenly realized I'd been very wrong...about her, about a lot of things.

+++++

She came and sat beside me, held my hand, looked at me like I was a little boy who'd just lost his puppy.

"I think I understand you, Jim. You've been running all your life, haven't you? On the football field, at home -- and then here, in Austin. Then you just kept on running. Maybe out of fear, or maybe it was something as simple as habit, something like inertia. But I know this about you too. You've felt cornered all your life, because you hated your mother -- but thought you had to love her -- and that there was something wrong with you because you hated her so much. And then, your father's suicide..."

"But I..."

"No, Jim, let me finish." She had my hand in something like a death grip, which I suppose it was, really, and while I could see some kind of fire in her eyes I also saw something far more troubling. She knew I was slipping away, that my own inertia was pulling me away from her. "You told me you felt guilty about leaving home, about leaving Nancy, but I'd like to know why? Why'd you feel guilty? Had you made promises to one another? Did you know she was pregnant?"

"No. I felt like I had to get away from her, that she was suffocating me, wanted to cut me off -- from my dreams."

"So why on earth would you feel guilty about leaving someone who made you feel that way?"

"I'm not sure I did...not until I learned about Alice."

"And you didn't learn you had a daughter until the girl was, what? Seventeen?"

"Yes."

"And you're supposed to feel guilty about that, too?"

"I don't think 'supposed to' had much to do with it. I felt guilty because I wasn't a part of their lives. I started to think it had been my destiny to be there...for them."

"Your destiny...to not follow your dreams? Really? I'm curious...whose life are you living, anyway? Yours, or are you beholden to any and everyone who stakes a claim on you? That you have to cut your dreams loose and fall into a new orbit when someone passes too close?"

I shrugged, but not because I didn't know she was absolutely correct. No, I was getting mad -- because of the look in her eyes. Anger. Almost fury, the very opposite of love. "You're wrong about one thing." I paused, waiting for her to ask, but she wasn't biting so I continued. "I don't hate my mother."

The look in her eyes was almost murderous, like I'd betrayed her -- and all she thought she knew about me, then...

"Bull-fucking-shit," she said.

I don't know, it was like something snapped inside as I sat there, numb at first -- then furious, looking into her eyes for a way out. I felt betrayed, injured and hot with pure madness, and she seemed taken aback -- like she'd gone too far.

"Goodbye," I said as I pushed back from the table, throwing a wad of cash down, then putting on my coat. I walked away, walked out into the night. And I never looked back.

I guess some things never change.

+++++

"Jim?"

"Yes, André. Sorry. I was just caught up in the music."

"Jim?" I heard Samantha now. "You're crying."

"Am I? How silly."

"The music...? Made you feel how...?" she asked.

I looked into her eyes, let her look into mine. "I was thinking...what it would be like to fall in love with you?"

"You don't want to know," she said, smiling.

"I'm not so sure."

And I felt André's eyes on me just then. Not condemning, not judging me -- more like he was measuring me. Something like depth of resolve, perhaps. Was I, just maybe, a man of my word?

+++++

I called a taxi from the restaurant, went to the hospital.

A nurse made a stink about visiting hours. I told her I needed to talk to my mom, and that it was important.

She called someone, then called an orderly -- who took me to her room.

Of course, the nurse had called Linda...

My mother was a shadow of herself now, just another shadow in a room full of dark places falling off into a different kind of night. She was, I assumed, in that place people go when on a diet of haloperidol and thorazine, a dry-mouthed land of hazy awareness spiced by never ending sleep. I pulled a chair to her bedside and looked for her hand, found it under the restraints binding her to the bed, to this life -- and I took her hand in mine.

"Jimmie? Is that you?"

"Yeah mom, it's me?"

"I didn't want you to see me like this?"

"It's okay, Mom. Doesn't matter one little bit."

Her tongue was thick and dry and she had trouble talking now, so I brought a cup of melting ice to her lips and slipped the straw into her mouth. She took a sip, then another, then shook her head a little.

"Thanks, Jimmie. I was feeling a little dizzy... "

"I love you, Mom," I said -- and she smiled as those words skipped across her waters like a stone.

"I know you do, Jim. You were the only one who did, you know." She looked up, shook her head. "Feel so dizzy, but there's something I need to tell you -- about your father."

"No you don't, Mom. All that doesn't matter now. It never mattered."

She squeezed my hand, she looked at me again and smiled -- then she stopped breathing.

The orderly was standing by the door and he came to her bed, checked for a carotid pulse then ran from the room. I heard the 'Code Blue' call on the intercom, carts rushing down the hall, nurses shouting and it all sounded very serious -- then we were in the living room, listening to that song...