“As Viv’s cardiologist, I really wish I didn’t just hear you say that.” Ty puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head. “Seriously though, Josie, why are you so worried that your aunt Viv is going to die? You see her every day. She’s back at work, back to doing things with her friends.” The genuine concern on Dr. Golden’s face is reassuring. It seems he actually wants to help me sort through my tangled emotions.
“It’s just, well, I already lost one mother when I was four. You would think twenty-six years later I would be strong enough to lose another, but I don’t think I am. I’m not ready.”
“Wait, I thought you were almost forty?”
“Okay fine, I’m not ready to lose another mother thirty-six years later, but who’s counting, genius.”
“Apparently you are, backward by ten.” Ty chuckles and picks up his beer for another swig. “So your mom died when you were four and Aunt Viv raised you?”
“Kind of. My mom left me at Aunt Viv’s front door and I haven’t seen her since. She could be dead or she could be very much alive.”
“Must have been something big for a mother to leave a beautiful child like you and trust someone else to raise her. I can’t imagine.” Golden Boy actually looks pained as he pictures a little girl left behind by her mother. He’s probably thinking about Gracie and finding it unimaginable that he or Daniel would or could ever do that to her. There’s something about how open he is to my history that I launch into details only three people in my world know.
“Well, since you’re going all therapist on me, I actually don’t knowwhy my mother left me.” I don’t want to look Ty in the eye, so I start scratching at some gunk on his suit pant leg with my index finger.
“Your aunt Viv never told you?” Ty lifts my chin up with his thumb, so I have to look at him when I answer.
“Aunt Viv has never been willing to talk about it with me and over time I’ve gotten too scared to ask. It must have been something awful if Aunt Viv won’t talk about it ’cause that woman will talk about anything. After all these years it’s become the taboo topic in our family. Even Etta knows not to bring it up. Now it’s a three-generation Bordelon secret.” My body feels tired and heavy and I wish I could crawl over and curl up in Ty’s lap. I have enough self-awareness to know that that’s taking the doctor/patient’s closest relative relationship too far, even for the Golden cardiologist.
“Secrets are exhausting to keep. Particularly family secrets,” Ty says, looking like he’s all too familiar with this topic. I wonder if it took him years to come out to his family. If maybe, even though he’s a handsome, successful, kind doctor, his parents still struggle with his sexuality.
Ty’s phone beeps in his pocket as if it knows I am ready for the attention to shift off me.
“Ugh, that’s Daniel. I’m sorry to do this to you. I’d love to stay for a second beer, but I have to get going. It’s my turn to pick up Gracie at gymnastics, or what I like to call the world’s most expensive cartwheel.” Ty stands and puts out his hand to pull me up. Just like at lunch in the Presidio, his hands feel warm and strong, like if he wraps them around you everything will be alright. I understand why Aunt Viv has put her faith in him as her doctor. “Oh, I almost forgot.” In three large steps with his long legs he reaches into his bag and grabs the dumbbells and lines them up perfectly on the coffee table, laying the TheraBand over the top.
“Do you want to date a doctor?” Ty stops halfway to the door toask. “I mean, they’re kind of an egotistical, pain-in-the-butt, know-it-all bunch. And you’re right, they got no swag.”
“Sure, I guess I would. Hadn’t really thought that deeply about it, but why not? Free medical advice.” I can tell Ty is trying to brighten the mood before he leaves me alone in my apartment, so I follow his lead.
“Okay then, I’ll see what I can do. I might know someone. He won’t be as great as I am, but I promise he won’t be sloppy seconds, either. Tell Aunt Viv I said hello and to get to work pumping iron.” I can’t help but wish my future blind doctor date will be just like Golden Boy.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell her. And I can assure you she will ignore me. But, so you know, your professional effort is filed away and appreciated. By both of us.”
“I’ll start with appreciation and in a few months you two will be fully idol worshiping me, you’ll see.”
“Noted. Now get out of here before Gracie is the last Simone Biles wannabe to be picked up at the gym.” I shove Dr. Golden out the door, knowing how stressed Etta gets when she is the last girl standing at ballet.
I hear knocking at the door and quickly scan the room to see if Ty has forgotten anything before I open it. “Yes?”
“Next time, I want to hear about Michael. Don’t think you glossed right over that topic without me noticing.” Gays love gossip.
EIGHTEEN
My day has passed in relative ease: no stressing parents or demanding Nan. But it’s all about to go downhill fast because the sand has run through the hourglass: I have to tell Aunt Viv about the party. I decide to tell her the faux good news at the apartment. If I tell her at school, she may get home before me and change the locks. If I do it at home at least I’m assured a roof over my head for another night.
I take the long route and walk from school through Golden Gate Park to work out how I’m going to open a conversation that I know Aunt Viv is going to immediately shut down. When I gave Etta the keys to the car so she could drive herself and Poppy to dance, she hugged me in the upper school hallway. IN FRONT OF HER FRIENDS. I know this moment of fleeting parental kindness is going to include a stop at Starbucks for Venti Frappuccinos, a quick shopping trip on Union Street, and texting at all the wrong times; it was worth it to get some public affection from Etta after weeks of the cold shoulder and one-word answers as we worked through college applications. I remind Etta not to take her purse into Lululemon andkeep her hands out of her pockets. Etta knows what my reminder means without my having to explain it in front of her friends. The art ofpublic proprietyis a lesson all black boys and girls are taught at the feet of their parents if their mamas and daddies are worth a grain of salt. Don’t give any shop owner reason to call the police. We may reside in progressive San Francisco, but we live in America and no one is going to go accusing my daughter of shoplifting. I don’t want to have to hurt anybody for their sheer stupidity.
On my walk home, I stop in front of the De Young Museum. With my back to the copper wire tower, the De Young’s signature statement, I stare across the park to the California Academy of Sciences. Aunt Viv and I used to love to take Etta to CAS on the day when admission was free. We would be in line first thing in the morning before the crazy crowds showed up, so we would feel like paying customers who come to the museum and don’t have to jockey for a view. Every time, Etta made a beeline to the aquarium, the animal dioramas, and the planetarium. Aunt Viv and I would stand behind her and speculate what kind of scientist she would one day become: anthropologist, veterinarian, or epidemiologist. In those moments, I knew Aunt Viv used to do this exact same thing with me when I was young. I didn’t fulfill her doctor dreams, but I felt confident Etta would with two strong women behind her, guiding her. When Etta was six it seemed her possibilities were endless. Though we haven’t been to the Academy in years, I still hold on to wanting Etta’s options to stay open. I want to know the scientist housed in that grown dancer’s body still has a fighting chance.
I stop to see if the snack bar is open at Stowe Lake House. For some reason I’m craving a Drumstick ice cream cone, but no such luck—it closes at 5:00. I take this as a sign to get myself home to face Aunt Viv. Maybe she will surprise me and be excited about the party, but I doubt it.
My favorite things about San Francisco are the brightly paintedVictorian homes, which are a staple of the city’s neighborhoods street after street. If a house were painted hot pink with lime green and white trim in Seattle or Chicago the neighbors would talk in hushed tones about the tackiness. In San Francisco, passing a turquoise and cranberry two-unit building makes you feel right at home.
With no ice cream to boost me up for going a few rounds with Aunt Viv, I need late-afternoon caffeine. I hop into one of the zillion coffee shops between the park and my apartment hoping they serve Blue Bottle coffee. That stuff is like rocket fuel to propel you through the worst of what might be comin’ your way. The shop is packed, clumps of twos and threes huddled over laptops, talking at rapid speed, eager to think up, develop, expand, and then take public the newest, latest, and greatest tech company—in three years or less. And they can say it all started in a little coffee shop in the Richmond when they are interviewed byFast Companymagazine. I applaud the optimism that is a hallmark of the San Francisco professional’s mentality, however, the millennial arrogance of thinking that at twenty-eight, post business school, you can take your idea from talk to tech in twenty-four hours or less grates on me. The Bay Area landscape is now littered with teens thinking they’re failures because the business plans they developed in their after-school entrepreneurial clubs couldn’t raise a seed round.
As I climb the front stairs to our second-floor unit I smile at the yellow door, our own contribution to the colorfulness that is San Francisco. It was Etta’s choice. We promised her when she was seven that as soon as she could say “yellow” instead of “lellow” we would paint the door. In second grade when her front teeth corrected, and the pronunciation did, too, the three of us went to Ace Hardware on California Street, got ourselves a can of bumblebee-yellow paint, and went to town on the front door. I still love it.
“Aunt Viv, you home?” I yell, hearing shuffling coming from the back bedroom.
