“This is Barry,” Kyle says, “and he just may be your long-lost brother.”
Ida puts her arms around me and gives me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.
“My big brother is back,” she says. “I missed you.”
As Ida is draped on me, I catch Kyle’s eye.
Me, too, he mouths.
“You need some water,” Kyle says to Ida. “Press day tomorrow, remember?”
“Boooo!” she yells. “No fun!”
Kyle puts his arm around Ida and begins to escort her back inside.
“It was nice to meet you, Larry!” she yells.
“Barry,” I say.
The security guard moves back into place.
“Let me show you to your car, sir,” he says to me.
Something tells me he’s seen this movie before.
When I get home and crawl into bed, I cannot sleep.
A mockingbird calls outside my window.
It is a single, lonely male—probably very old—seeking a mate in a world that is already coupled. It only wants its voice to be heard.
Its song is loud, desperate, and I pull the pillow over my head, knowing it will not stop calling.
Ron
I start preparing for Church of Mary days before the Sunday event, much like my father would prepare and practice his sermon in the days leading up to the Sabbath.
For many years, I have chosen themes for our Sunday services: In the summer, for instance, considering it is hotter than Hades, I might channel the classic movieSome Like It Hot, with each of us dressing as a character from the film, or perhapsThe Towering Inferno, with flambé as a featured course. One Christmas, we all dressed as versions of Dolly Parton throughout the years while her Christmas album played, and I served delicate pastries called Minne di Sant’Agata that, fittingly, look just like boobs.
Last week we celebrated Valentine’s, and this week is a tribute to the Rat Pack and the kickoff to Modernism Week in Palm Springs. For fashion, I’ve decided on fedoras, and for food?
My mother’s recipe box sits rather unironically in a Zsa Zsa–designed cabinet in the kitchen. When I pull the worn, wooden box free and set it on the fancy countertops by the Wolf stove, the juxtaposition is jarring, a bit like finding a La-Z-Boy recliner in the middle of the Frey House, a desert modernism masterpiece perched in the mountains, where I will be a docent this afternoon.
I open the lid and scan the handwritten tabs—Appetizers! Salads! Sides! Entrees! Desserts!I pull cards I placed Post-its on and took photos of earlier this week from the box.
I trace my finger over my mother’s cursive, tilted letters that look as if they are being blown off their foundations by a tornado like the ones that seemed to pop up out of nowhere every spring.
What is it about food and family? A favorite recipe? A beloved dessert?
Once you taste it, you are home, and the memories—no matter how bad—are, for a fleeting moment, tinged with sweetness and nostalgia despite all the horrific storms.
In honor of bygone Rat Pack days, I already have the menu planned. For appetizers, I have decided upon stuffed celery and pepperoni pinwheels. Brunch will be beef stroganoff with scalloped potatoes along with creamed peas and onions. Of course, I will serve a salad: a Jell-O salad chock-full of carrots and marshmallows. When my mother used to ask if we wanted a salad, she did not mean a healthy one—say, spinach or kale—but rather dessert before dessert. For dessert? A pineapple upside-down cake.
Barry won’t eat a bite, of course, but he will critique my menu. He’s what I call “pretend Southern.” Barry is like a woman from Charleston who leaves the South behind for good but then goes back for the holidays and starts saying things like “I’m as happy as a clam at high tide,” although she didn’t even know clams lived in the water.
I sip some water and think of recent nights: My gays have not been so golden. Teddy, who has seemed off for weeks, tossed a drink in a bachelor-to-be’s face (he did deserve it) and then left Streetbar without any warning; Sid followed suit; Barry dressed in a tuxedo last night—a real one, mind you, not a tearaway tux—and left without any explanation, returning home and heading straight to his room like a sullen teenager.
Me, you ask?
