I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever be, but I’m trying the best I can. Sometimes, you have to face the pain head-on, and I feel like the train is closing in on me. It’s closing in on all of us.”
“Ron said you see a lot of younger men. Is that a way to cope? Is it about control?”
“You wantmeto discuss my man troubles with a Christian woman from Ohio?” I ask. “Now,thatis a sitcom.”
“I won’t judge,” she says. “I promise. Ava won’t ever talk to me about her boyfriend. I know she has one. I know they sneak around. I’m trying to change. I’m trying to listen. Ron told me the best thing someone can do sometimes is to just shut up and listen.”
So I tell her about the young men. I tell her about Kyle. I tell her about what happened, about praying on my knees to a false idol, about what I’ve had to do to become famous again.
Trudy only listens. Finally,finally, she says, “We all do things to survive, Barry. I have to believe God can forgive us when we are pushed into a corner and have no other option but to walk through fire to make it to the other side, even if our souls are scorched. Maybe then we can heal, and we can help others, even if it’s our final act.”
“Speaking of acts, do you know what makes a sitcom work, Trudy?”
“I have no idea,” she says.
“Sitcoms have followed the same basic format throughout the history of television. Every show starts with a cold open that throws you directly into the action, followed by three acts anda finale. That’s it. It finally dawned on me while rewatching episodes ofThe Golden Girlsthat life is just like a sitcom: three acts. We are born, we grow up, we die. And the finale always leaves you in tears because it’s so hard to say goodbye to something you love. The biggest surprise of all? A half-hour sitcom isn’t even thirty minutes. It comes in around twenty-two minutes without commercials, which isn’t a very long time at all to enjoy the show.” I look at Trudy. “We all have so little time to enjoy the show.”
Tears well in her eyes. “We’re all in our third act, aren’t we?” she asks.
“The train is coming right for us, Trudy,” I say. “The best thing I’m learning we can do is scream in fear and excitement as it approaches, just like I used to do as a kid when I’d stand on a train track with my friends. I’m also learning that being scared again in life can lead to really great things. You just have to walk through that fire.”
Trudy yells suddenly, and I jump.
“It feels good to scream,” she says. “Can I tell you something, too, Barry?”
“Anything, Trudy.”
When she’s finished talking, I stand and walk over to the sofa and sit beside her. Trudy puts her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her.
She does not cry. She simply asks, “Can we watch another episode?”
Sid
I pull the sheet up over my naked body.
Here, in the light of first dawn, my skin is as wrinkled and crumpled as the sheet itself.
Leo is lying face down on the bed, his sculptured back and round rump silhouetted in the pale light of the morning.
I pull at the loose skin on my stomach. It tightens momentarily, but then I release it, and I again am human crepe paper.
A wave of shame and repulsion pulses through me.
“Don’t.”
Leo opens one eye.
“You are perfect.”
I will myself not to cry.
Leo grabs me, spoons me, holds me until I quiet.
“How sexy to wake up to a wrinkled, weepy old man,” I whisper into the pillow.
“Stop it,” he says. His breath is on my neck. I can feel his heartbeat. “You are perfect,” he repeats.
“You are blind.”
