Mesopotamia

by Arthur Nersesian

  “Not acceptable,” I said coolly. “You used me to get money.”

  “It was never about the money,” she said haltingly. “Not really.”

  “Then what was it about?”

  “It was about seven children not living with the belief that their father died making meth.”

  “But he did make meth!”

  “Not when the shack blew up! They did that. I only kept the cough medicine because I figured the kids might need it some day.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He did it to make money to start this whole project. I mean, for the first time he seemed interested in something, buying the Elvis outfits and stuff; it pulled him out of a real funk and he finally started acting like a real dad … so …” She began weeping. “Look, I don’t want no money, okay?”

  Hearing her pardon Floyd’s shortcomings by his improvement as a father revealed so much about her. Vinetta’s two oldest children were inherited from Floyd’s prior marriage. Two others dropped down the chimney when her sister suddenly died. Only three kids were actually hers, yet I never saw any difference in her concern or affection. She totally devoted herself to the life that fate had more or less bestowed upon her—the consummate mother. How could I fault her for having an idiotic husband? I brought Vinetta into the dining room and sat her down.

  “Look, you have two choices. I can just give you fifty thousand dollars, as we discussed. Or I’ll make you a one-time offer. The store here, ZigRat’s, nets about twenty thousand a year—that’s all profit. What I’m thinking is, you can get a loan for as much as you can and I’ll lend you the rest to pay for this place. Keep living off whatever you have been living on, you can use the store’s profits to pay the mortgage, and whatever you have left over, you can pay me.”

  “You know that no bank is going to gamble on our future.”

  “I can cosign the loan with you.”

  “How much is this place?”

  “They’ll take about a quarter-million.”

  “You’d cosign a loan with me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Actually, since I own a third of the place, you’d only need a loan for a hundred and eighty thousand. You can pay me back at your leisure.”

  “So I won’t get the fifty thousand dollars,” she said.

  “That’s true, but I’ll be taking the entire risk. So if you default, I’ll be paying five times that amount.”

  “Sandra, I don’t think … What I mean to say is, with the kids and all, I just don’t know if I can run a store.”

  “Pete’s getting older. He has maybe another five or so years, but that might be just enough time for Floyd Jr. and some of the other children to learn the business.”

  “I gotta talk to the kids,” she said, and dashed out of the room.

  I really couldn’t afford any Oprah-size acts of generosity—like loaning her the money myself—but I couldn’t abandon her either. If Vinetta hadn’t put me up and guided me along that Elvic rainbow, I wouldn’t have gotten the pot of gold at its end. I just couldn’t go back to New York knowing Vinetta and all those damn kids were living in that leaky, sinking bread box that they might get evicted from at any moment. As long as she slowly and steadily paid the bank back, I’d be fine. And if worse came to worst, I could cover her for months that she was in the red.

  Suddenly, Vinetta and all seven kids rushed back into the room. “Tell her what you said,” she prompted little Floyd.

  “Mom said you offered her a deal to live here and work in the store, and we all cheered. Then she said you were heading back up to New York City, but I remember you saying you lost your place, so I said why don’t you just stay here with us because to us you’re now kind of a co-ma.”

  Without a relationship or even a home, it was actually a decent offer, but moving back into my childhood home with all those kids, I’d yo-yo between maternal flashbacks of my combative childhood and Vinetta’s current screechfests. “Thanks so much, Floyd, but my life is up there.”

  “Well I don’t need to tell you that no matter how old you are or sick or whatever,” Vinetta said, “this will always be your home, and we’ll always be your family, and I’d be willing to put that in whatever contract you want.”

  I told her I might just take her up on it if I couldn’t get my kid in a good New York school, then I revealed my own little blessing: “I’m pregnant.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she replied after a slight gasp.

  “No, I’m going to try to keep it,” I said, and explained to her how I chronically miscarried, so even though I was hoping for the best, I was braced for the worst. I was familiar with all the bleak statistics for older parents, whose babies have higher rates of birth defects. Still, I had to give it a shot.

  “Edwina’s husband works at the International Savings and Loans over at Murphy County Mall, I can give him a call.” I told her that would be fine. I could probably download my financial records online in order to cosign with her.

  Over the next few days, when the Enquirer hit the stands, breaking the Scrubbs story wide open, reporters flooded into Daum-land like starving dogs fighting for final scraps of meat. Since the story also involved Snake Major’s evil son Roscoe, I was glad we were over in Mesopotamia. My phone kept ringing with endless calls from reporters wanting to talk to me, but my job was over and I felt no duty to give any interviews. Let them do their own dirty work.

  I suggested that Vinetta lie low for a while, just in case any impulsive friends of Roscoe’s came looking for revenge. Even so, it wasn’t like anything awful was going to happen to Snake’s son. When the story broke, I learned that the Mexican authorities in Puerto Vallarta, acting on behalf of American law enforcement officials, kicked in the door of their little beachfront hideaway. They arrested both Missy Scrubbs and Roscoe Major to extradite them to America for faking her kidnapping. On that day, Thucydides Scrubbs, the Monster of Memphis, officially became the latest victim of the press. Charges against him were immediately tossed out and he was clearly grateful to slip back into obscurity.

  After working out all the financial agreements with my sisters, I watched the kids while Vinetta went out to the Murphy County Mall. When she returned to the house that afternoon she was beaming.

  “This is a little difficult to ask, but if I don’t need you to cosign my loan, would you consider giving me the fifty thousand dollars?”

  “I suppose, but you don’t have a job or any equity. You can’t even put down a deposit, how would you be able to get a loan for that much?”

  “Gavin says there’s a way to do it. And I won’t need no cosigner.”

  “I’d be very careful, Vinetta. That’s a lot of money.”

  “He says I’d have to exaggerate some facts and figures, but lots of people do it and no one ever checks.”

  “Vinetta, do you really want to take a chance on some nefarious loan? I mean, if something goes wrong and they can foreclose on you …”

  “I’d rather do it this way if that’s okay.”

  A bank that would loan an umemployed mother a quarter-million would be an intriguing investigative piece, but unless Ben Affleck was screwing yet another celebrity named Jennifer in the bank’s lobby, I wouldn’t be going anywhere near it. I cut her the check and wished her good luck.

  Since Vinetta was nervous about returning alone to her water-logged trailer and retrieving the rest of their things, we drove back together late the next day. By then the electricity was back on and she played a message that Minister Morton Beauch-eete had left on her machine. It was to me, asking that I call the Blue Suede pronto.

  I would’ve just drove over to the pub, but fearing retribution from Roscoe’s friends, I called and introduced myself.

  “When Mr. Carpenter took sick, he asked us to tell you just in case,” said one of the bored barflies.

  “Tell me what?”

  “In case he died. Which he did two days ago.”

  “Course he did,” I said tiredly
. This was what I half suspected he would do—go back into hiding, confirming my suspicion that he was the real Elvis.

  “He didn’t leave you nothing so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “I wouldn’t take anything even if he did,” I shot back, trying not to sound too skeptical.

  “Case you’re interested, he had a heart attack.”

  “Well, if he happens to miraculously come back to life, you can tell him—”

  “Lady if you think I’m lying you can go down and see his body for yourself, but you best hurry up. They bury him tomorrow.”

  “Where exactly can I pay my respects?”

  He gave me an address for the Cunningham Funeral Parlor in the next county over. I called it to confirm that this was the last full day of viewing for one John Carpenter.

  “Do you know how he died?” I asked the funeral director.

  “Nope.”

  “Can I ask what he looks like?”

  “Day-ed.” His Southern accent made the word two syllables.

  “Is he an older white gentleman?”

  “Frankly, I haven’t seen the deceased.”

  That night, I told Vinetta I was leaving early the next day. She asked me what my plans were for Thanksgiving. When I told her I had none, she made me promise to come down; this year they had a lot to be thankful for. Since it would be just a few days before the unveiling of my mother’s headstone, it was well timed. I told her I’d be there. Knowing it was my final night with the kids removed all the usual anxiety. I really enjoyed just talking and playing around with them.

  Early the next morning, she and the kids gave me a lifetime of little kisses and one big group hug, then I drove across the county to Cunningham Funeral Parlor. A line of shiny black cars were parked out front. Without even trying to look mournful, I marched inside to see most of the assholes from the bar huddled around the lobby with Sheriff Nick, who was explaining the route through town for the funeral procession. Before anyone noticed me, I dipped into the viewing parlor. The coffin lid had already been closed.

  “You’ve got to let me see him one last time,” I pleaded with someone who seemed to work there. The man quickly opened the polished maple box. Looking inside at that elderly white-haired man, I saw him plain as day for the first time, now that life’s veil of fractures and scars had been lifted: Elvis Presley, dead at seventy-one years of age. At least that’s who he looked like.

  “Did you know him?” I asked the undertaker.

  “Kinda.”

  “What happened?”

  “Just passed away in his sleep, I hear,” he said simply. “We all will someday.”

  “Where is he being buried?”

  “The new cemetery over near Mesopotamia, Patriot Hills.”

  “All are sleeping, sleeping on Patriot Hills,” I paraphrased Edgar Lee Masters’s beautiful Spoon River Anthology. It truly comforted me that he would be up there with others I loved. In a world where so many people wanted to be the King, this was the one person who vowed he wasn’t. What better proof that he was real thing.

  When I hurried out of the building, I virtually knocked into the gang of good old boys, who seemed naked without their rifles or their beers, standing out front in their ill-fitting suits. They eyeballed me menacingly as I headed out to my car. I fired up the engine, flipped on the radio, and drove east. According to the news, yet another hurricane was heading into Florida. Although Hurricane Katrina was only a category one, I wanted to stay ahead of it. With a little luck, I’d hit Atlanta by late afternoon and get to spend a little time with the sisters. Then I could return to New York a few days later where I’d have to find a new apartment and ponder the distant possibility of a whole new life as a mother. Even if I did miscarry, which was still all too likely, I could always feel genuine comfort about helping the one lost family that I did find.

  Acknowledgments

  Ibrahim Ahmad

  George Solimine

  Mary K DeVault

  Scott Shephard

  Aram Saroyan

  Jon Resh

  Becky Gordon

  Barney Rosset

  Kara Gilmour

  Arthur and Abraham Temple

  Jonathan Ames

  Toby Sailing

  In Memorium

  Ruby

  Ellen Miller

  Ellen Sisk

  Susan Woolf

  Also by Arthur Nersesian

  The Fuck-Up

  Manhattan Loverboy

  dogrun

  Suicide Casanova

  Chinese Takeout

  Unlubricated

  East Village Tetralogy (plays)

  The Swing Voter of Staten Island

  The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx