Poles Apart

by Terry Fallis

  “Wow. I guess it pays to have friends in the nation’s capital.”

  “You got that right,” the young officer said. “Why don’t I go upstairs with you just to make sure everything is how it’s supposed to be? Okay?”

  “That would be great,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  Ten minutes later, he was back down on the street patrolling a tight circuit that circumnavigated the building. We’d uncovered nothing unusual in the apartment. It was all just as I’d left it, including a few stray corn flakes on the floor. I wasn’t sure how long I’d have personal police protection, but it did kind of make me feel like a big deal.

  I sat down on my couch. I was wiped. Sitting in economy class of a commuter aircraft for three hours before even taking off doesn’t sound like an enervating experience, but somehow it was. Still on the couch, I had closed my eyes when I heard footsteps hustling up the fire escape. I wondered if it might be my Orlando Police Department bodyguard again. The footfalls stopped as the banging on my kitchen door started. I don’t know why I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t.

  I opened the door, and there stood Shawna Hawkins dressed – some might say, undressed – as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and behind her the very large Lewis Small. Shawna came through the door first like a runaway train, locked me in a bear hug, and started dancing me around the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe you write Eve of Equality. I just can’t reconcile it all in my brain. It’s been my new favourite blog for six weeks now! And you live right here!” she gushed, rocking me back and forth. “When I’m dancing tonight, I’ll be thinking, I’m just a pole apart from an A-list feminist blogger! It’s just so awesome.”

  She was big and strong. If she wanted to keep hold of me and swing me around like a rag doll, she could do it … so she did. She eventually slowed the rocking and let me go just before I began to think about the benefits of Gravol. Through all of this, Lewis just leaned on the kitchen door and smiled. I know he always smiles anyway, but there were a few more watts in his grin that night. We then just stood there beaming at one another.

  “No wonder Batshit Bennington was so pissed. You live right above the club! What are the odds?” she asked rhetorically. “Lewis brought me up to speed on your visit with the little man a few days ago. Isn’t Lewis just the bomb with a blush brush? The man’s an artist, a real artist.”

  “Come on. With the symmetry in your face, a blind man with no arms could make you look good every night,” Lewis said.

  “No, I have to agree with Shawna. You are a make-up maestro, Lewis,” I said. “I parked in the handicapped spot at the airport just by showing off my cosmetic rib contusions.”

  “Really? You did that?” Lewis asked.

  “Well, no. But I could have. I’m sure I could have,” I replied, and then opened the fridge. “Who wants a beer?”

  “No thanks,” they answered in unison.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said to myself as I grabbed one and twisted off the cap.

  I took a long haul on the bottle before turning to Lewis.

  “Any word from Mr. B as to what his next steps might be? You know which extremity of mine he plans to break first?” I asked. “Do I need to enter the witness protection program?”

  “I think you’re safe for a little while,” Lewis replied. “We haven’t seen him or heard from him in a few days.”

  “We think he might be busy with his accountants, lawyers, and business advisors about this place,” Shawna added. “The numbers are apparently way down and still heading south. The crowds are smaller each night. I’m trying not to take it personally.”

  “You think it’s the demonstrators out front?” I asked, tipping my head toward my living room window.

  “Bingo. Them and their cameras,” Lewis said. “They’ve now mounted them permanently on private property across the street. We can’t do squat about them. It’s not good.”

  “Well, I no longer care,” Shawna said. “I’m out of here in a couple weeks for good. It’s dissertation time and then I’m hanging up my dancing shoes for the bright lights of academe.”

  “Good for you, Shawna,” I said. “I’d take a women’s studies class from you anytime.”

  “Are you kidding? As soon as I land a gig in some tiny Midwestern college, I’ll be calling up my buddy – you know, the creator of the best feminist blog on the web – and asking you to guest lecture in my class. I’m not shittin’ you on that. I’m serious!”

  “And I’ll be there. Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”

  “Thanks, Ev.”

  I looked at Lewis and an idea crash landed in my mind, out of the blue. I suppose it should have come sooner, but I’d been a little cerebrally compromised the last few days.

  “Lewis, I need a favour that I think might be in our mutual interest,” I said.

  “Lay it on me.”

  “I’d like to profile you in an upcoming issue of Make-Up Artist magazine. And we’ll need to move quickly on it.”

  “What are you on about, Ever-man? What profile?”

  “I owe the mag a biographical profile of a leading make-up artist. The guy I was supposed to be covering won’t return my calls, and I’m tired of trying to nail him down. You’re one of the most talented cosmetics czars I’ve ever seen. So let me put you in the magazine. We don’t have to say you work at XY. We’ll just say you’re a much-sought-after freelance artist. We’ll throw in some great shots of Shawna and maybe the twins, you know, before they do what they do, and it’ll be great! It might even get you some new gigs on the side.”

  “What about Mr. B?” he asked.

  “I don’t think his make-up skills warrant a major magazine profile. I’d rather write a piece on you.”

  “I mean I’d rather not have the big man find out about my make-up moonlighting. You know?”

  “Come on, Lewis,” said Sheena, I mean Shawna. “Do you really think Mason Bennington is ever going to come into contact with Make-Up Artist magazine? I’m not even sure he can read. Come on, do it!”

  They both left a few minutes later after we’d set up a time for me to interview Lewis. I was quite pleased with this inspired solution to a problem I’d been ignoring for far too long.

  In the morning, I finally got around to checking my email. I should have checked sooner. With my little secret now well and truly out there, my inbox was under siege. I scanned and then ignored almost every email except for the one from Beverley Tanner. It had arrived the day before, while I’d been lounging on the tarmac in DC with my ass growing numb.

  Young Everett,

  You are now a star! And I guess I can’t keep you to myself any longer. I can’t believe the media coverage the story has spawned already and it’s only the afternoon. This is just the beginning. I’m glad Shelley stepped up, as I thought she would. Congratulations on such a wonderful coming-out party!

  I’m very proud of you and what you’ve accomplished. The cause is so well served by you and your glorious creation. Speaking of the blog, I’ve attached my attempt at a so-called guest post. Writing a short and punchy piece that still tells a story, and makes a point, was harder than I thought. Feel free to have your way with it.

  I’m tickled about all of this and that you’ll finally be getting the recognition you deserve. The movement faces as many challenges now as we did in the very beginning. You can help. So write on, young Everett. Write on.

  Yours in equality,

  Bev

  I had a quick scan of her post. It was wonderful, witty, thoughtful, and smart, and imbued with a sense of hope and optimism. It nicely captured not just what Beverley believed, but who she was. I thought it was perfect.

  It was close to noon by the time I arrived. Something wasn’t right. I knew it as soon as I walked into the hospital. I could feel it. It was quiet in the main corridor. Too quiet. Yolanda was not at her post. I walked into Dad’s room and found him sitting fully dressed in the chair next to the window. Mom was in the chair ne
xt to him, holding his hand. Dad didn’t look good. Neither of them did.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  Dad slowly tilted his head to look up at me.

  “She checked out, son. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Who checked out?”

  “Beverley.”

  “She checked out? That’s weird,” I replied. “She thought she’d be here for at least a couple more months.”

  Mom shook her head and looked down.

  “No, son. Listen, I mean the big check out,” Dad explained.

  I sat down on the bed. I needed to sit down on the bed.

  “You mean she’s gone? She died?”

  Dad just nodded.

  “When? How? Where?” I asked. “What … what happened?”

  “Yolanda found her this morning, in bed. She must have passed in the night, in her sleep,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry, Ev. Everyone is shocked.”

  “I opened an email from her just this morning. She wrote a guest post for the blog. How did this happen?”

  “Yolanda said it was probably a massive stroke,” Mom said. “She likely never felt a thing.”

  “The one she was always joking about,” I replied. “She was always ‘waiting for the big one.’ ”

  I got off the bed, left Mom and Dad, and walked down to Beverley’s room. The door was ajar. I pushed it open. They’d already taken her away. Yolanda was making her bed – making the bed – and had already started loading Beverley’s clothes into a big cardboard box. She turned when I arrived. We just looked at one another. She pulled a Kleenex from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.

  “This is the worst part. You think you’re going to get used to it. But you really don’t. There’s no time just to sit and feel bad. We have to get the room ready for another patient on the waiting list. He arrives tomorrow morning. It’s not right. In a half-hour it’ll be as if she was never even here,” she said, stopping and sitting on the bed.

  I sat down beside her. Without even thinking, I put my arm around her. She leaned against me.

  “I’m sorry she’s gone,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.”

  “Nobody did. The night staff said she seemed okay when they looked in on her. She was in bed a little earlier than usual. But thanks to you, she was in very good spirits. She was telling everyone about you and what you did yesterday. She was very proud of her young Everett.”

  Yolanda stopped talking then. She pressed the Kleenex to her mouth. She looked up at me, then reached for another Kleenex from the box on the night stand. She handed it to me.

  I gathered myself.

  “Have you let her family know? She has a son.”

  Yolanda just looked at me for a few seconds.

  “No. That’s the real tragedy. She has no family. No next of kin was listed on her admission form. She was all alone. I know she would often write to her son, but we have no forwarding address or any information to confirm he actually exists.”

  It didn’t take us long to load Dad’s belongings into his Ford Escort. I was going to miss that car, though Dad wasn’t supposed to drive until his doctors gave him the green light, likely sometime in the coming weeks. We pulled away from the hospital in silence with Mom, in convoy, driving her car behind us. I was not used to being with my father when he was quiet. It hadn’t happened very often.

  “Despite a few years of being whisked around by chauffeurs, I’m glad to see Mom still knows how to drive her own car,” I said, glancing in the rear-view mirror and grasping for conversation starters.

  He said nothing. We drove in silence for a good five minutes. That’s a long time.

  “She was quite a woman, wasn’t she?” Dad said, almost in a whisper.

  “Yeah, Dad. She sure was.”

  Mom and I spent the afternoon getting Dad settled. His condo still looked presentable after my initial deforestation initiative the day I’d arrived in Orlando. It seemed so long ago, but could still be calibrated in weeks. Dad seemed happy to be home, but the melancholia that descended earlier that morning wouldn’t be lifting any time soon. When I left in the early evening, Mom was cooking dinner for them both in my father’s underused galley kitchen. Dad let me take his car.

  I still couldn’t bring myself to start dealing with the mass of emails, tweets, and blog comments unleashed by the NOW media briefing. It could wait. Instead, after chatting with Shelley Hunter for a while on the phone, we agreed that I would write an obituary for Beverley Tanner. The NOW communications team would ensure that it was sent to every major newspaper, network, and media conglomerate on the continent. With no family, who else would do it? I spent a lot of time on Beverley’s obit. I wanted it to do her justice. I sent it off to Shelley around eight o’clock Saturday evening and promptly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, there was still some dwindling coverage from my little revelation two days earlier, though the story had pretty well run its course by then. I was pleased to see that there was plenty of media pickup on the obit I’d written for Beverley Tanner. Most publications ran it verbatim alongside file photos from her glory days in the movement. I was pleased. She deserved it.

  I then spent the entire day, Sunday, wading through emails and interview requests, and managing the EofE Twitter feed and incoming comments to the blog. It was an arduous task that left my mouse finger suffering with exercise exhaustion. But it had to be done.

  Still no word from Mason Bennington. Lewis was off on Sunday, but as agreed, he popped up in the afternoon to do the interview for Make-Up Artist magazine. He reported that no one downstairs had heard from Mr. B either. After the interview, we went downstairs so I could take some shots of Lewis in action, making up the dancers, Shawna included. Two years earlier, the magazine had given me a fairly decent DSLR camera and I’d learned how to use it to a reasonably competent level. Lewis outdid himself and the resulting photos, particularly those of Shawna, were amazing. She was happy to let me submit them along with the piece. You couldn’t tell where the shots were taken. No one would know that Lewis’s models would soon be disrobing and then swinging on a pole before the hungry eyes of upper-crust men.

  I called Dad to check in and Mom answered. All was well. They’d had a quiet day. Dad was watching a NASCAR race on TV. She told me with considerable shock that Dad wanted to handle the cooking that night. I asked for a full postprandial report.

  By ten o’clock Sunday night, I was again exhausted. I was still processing Beverley’s passing. My way of dealing with grief seemed to be to ignore it. In theory, I knew she was gone. I think I even accepted she was gone. But was there something else I was supposed to be feeling or doing? Was this the full extent of my grieving?

  My last act before turning in was to write a few words of introduction to Beverley’s guest post and then to publish it on EofE, along with the obituary I’d written. It seemed a fitting tribute.

  The next morning, just as I was about to head off to the airport, Yolanda phoned me.

  “Your father has left a couple things here and there’s a package for you from Beverley that we found in her dresser. Can you come by?”

  It was on the way to the airport anyway. Yolanda was at her station. She saw me and smiled. Then she grabbed one T-shirt and one baseball cap from the counter, both bearing Ford Mustang logos.

  “I don’t think there’s any question about who owns these,” she said, holding them up. “They were in the laundry and came back this morning.”

  I took the hat from her.

  “Be right back,” I said. “Don’t go away.”

  I dashed down the hall and out the door onto the grounds. He was where I knew he’d be, staring aimlessly into the distance.

  “Hi, Kenny.”

  “Hi.”

  “My Dad wanted you to have this, but it was in the laundry,” I said, holding the hat out to him. “He wasn’t sure whether you’d want it or would wear it. But he wanted you to have it, anyway.”


  Kenny took it and looked at it, nodding slightly. Then he took off the old, ratty Corvette hat he’d been wearing for years, and slipped on the Mustang cap.

  “The Vette’s a way better car, but I guess this is a better hat,” he said. “Tell your dad, thanks.”

  “I will. But you can tell him yourself, too. He’ll be back to visit.”

  Yolanda was still standing where I’d left her. I took the T-shirt from her.

  “Thanks, Yolanda. I’ll get this back to my father. But I doubt he’s missed it.”

  “I doubt it, too. He’s got quite a few of them.”

  “Thanks for everything, Yolanda.”

  I turned to go.

  “Hang on,” she said. “Don’t forget this.”

  She handed me a package wrapped in brown paper. It felt like there was a shallow cardboard box inside. A Post-it note on top said “Young Everett” in handwriting I’d come to recognize.

  “We didn’t see this until after you’d left.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think I can open it right now,” I said.

  Yolanda reached out to pat my wrist.

  “I hear you, honey.”

  I wrapped it in the Ford T-shirt and turned to go when my eye caught a glimpse of something in the corridor, outside of what had been Beverley’s room. It was the pine box that she kept.

  “Where’s that going?” I asked, pointing to it.

  She sighed.

  “We have no choice. With no next of kin, someone on the janitorial staff just comes and takes it away. I don’t really know where it goes. Doesn’t seem right.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “Okay, Yolanda, if you just look out the window over there for one minute, I’ll take care of it. Are you with me?”

  She nodded and turned quite formally to look out the window.

  I walked down the corridor, placed the T-shirt and package on top of the box, leaned down, and hoisted the whole thing up. I managed to get my arms underneath it and rested it against my midsection.

  “Was Beverley a blacksmith in her spare time? This thing weighs a ton,” I said.