Baked In Seattle

by Shaw Sander

  The words wouldn’t come. There seemed to be no time to write, everything compressed and hurried, not a single quiet moment to create. Yet given the gift of time on a Sunday morning, I sat mute in front of the machine, eyes staring out the picture window at nothing I could name. My legs fell asleep sitting at my desk with nothing produced, the pages all blank.

  I kept seeing Dew’s face grinning at me, frenzy and disturbance radiating off him in waves, his hospital gown knotted at the side, his enormous feet stuffed into non-stick socks. When I closed my eyes, I felt like I was smothering, pressed into a little coffin, my air supply suddenly threatened.

  I went to work but had no idea how I made it through the day. Laundry got done, clothes washed and folded, carried upstairs, but the basket sat on a chair for days. Hot and fresh from the dryer, the clothes grew cold, the wrinkles set-in. Food was made but without any interest. My brain couldn’t seem to focus, everything felt disconnected. Tears sat behind my eyes everyday, overwhelmed at the bigness of life and death, how precious everything is and how little we realize it. Joni was right that we don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone.

  Sleep was the one thing I could do well. I slept at every opportunity, completely exhausted.

  When I got quiet, Sunshine messages from my childhood came back to me in flashes, warm inspirational phrases suddenly forefront. Things I hadn’t thought of in years floated 8-Ball to the surface. Time takes time. Willow trees bend in the breeze. The circle remains unbroken. We are all looking at the same stars. Chop wood, carry water. Be kind. Take care of yourself and the rest will be taken care of.

  When shit stacks up, take a step back.

  I smiled when that last one came to mind, since it wasn’t Sunshine.

  It was from the book of Malcolm.

  “Have you seen the Gay News?” Drake warbled over the phone. “Page three, upper right hand corner. ‘Local man gay-bashed south of the border.’ The picture isn’t very flattering with the grainy black and white newsprint and the glare off my casts, but I am the belle of the sympathy ball, darling. Thank you so much for suggesting such a thing. I went public with my story and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. The local news stations have scheduled a time, isn’t that something? College friends have called. As soon as I have my facelift after the stitches come out, I’ll make a debutante debut at Mandrake and be interviewed by the society hounds just like Don Lockwood in “Singin’ In The Rain.” You know our motto, darling: “Dignity. Always dignity.” I’ll be thirty pounds lighter and look ten years younger. This year I’ll be sitting in a huge open clamshell at the Pride Parade, a human rights banner strung across my six-pack abs. I’m a star, darling! It’s my little fifteen minutes.”

  “You sound wonderful. Turned things around quite a bit. Did you call that reporter gal to get your personal story splashed all over the press?”

  “Yes, I did. She’s the one covering Lesbo-Land now owned by Andrew the FTM and you can tell which side she falls on in the debate. Butch Wax on all her wheels. Easy two hundred pounds, five one. Wears those plaid Pendleton jackets with the square pockets, looks like she could pull a locomotive with her teeth. But she says she might be able to fan the flames of my personal injustice and get me an apology from the Mexican Consulate, like you said, and make it a huge international incident.”

  “That would be a hoot!”

  “Honey, I just want a crack at Anderson Cooper. Mother of Adonis, that man is a living Dreamsicle. He’s as handsome as Cal Anderson, bless his soul.”

  “Maybe you’ll hear from some relatives over this. Will that bother you?”

  “No. Fuck ‘em, Princess. I can’t carry the weight anymore. This is my big coming out story, forty years later. Cinderella has arrived at the dance, darling, thanks in part to you.”

  “Al, its Blake.”

  I was upright in my sleep. The phone was in my hand, mind awake in an instant, a Pavlovian response one never loses after raising children.

  We had never been friends, Blake and I. She treated Shelly like shit when they were lovers, drunk and belligerent with her crazy Mason County family. There could only be one reason Blake would call at two in the morning and it wasn’t good.

  The Broadway Funeral Home was packed with Shelly’s Spanish-speaking Wenatchee family, a hundred clean and sober friends, a few skinny die-hard using buddies in sunglasses, twenty or so DHL drivers and customers from her old route, even, I noted with some shame, Mr. Personality, the guy we’d screwed with subscriptions. That explained the little dog tied to a railing outside.

  Smartley the Seattle police officer was one of the pallbearers along with Shell’s brothers and three drag queens Shell had partied with at Gay Bingo, now in the somber reverse drag of suits and ties. Anthony Ray was in sunglasses with a well-dressed posse in the back and had sent a prominent heart-shaped wreath be-ribboned: “My Great Loss. Sir MixALot.”

  A white woman I assumed was Shell’s first lover Claire sat in the back.

  A photo of Shelly laughing in front of Dick’s Drive-In had been blown up and easel-ed near the white pearlescent closed casket, a wreath of yellow and red roses framing her moment of joy in garish DHL colors. “Want fries with that?” had been her response to their new uniform’s color palette. I’d told her she looked like a Hot Dog On A Stick vendor.

  I pushed Drake’s wheelchair to the far aisle and we went up to the fourth row, right behind Shelly’s sniffling family. This was Drake’s first public outing since his “international incident” and he’d worked hard to be presentable. Dark glasses covered much of his bruising and stitches. We’d eased the clothing around his splints, casts, braces and sore areas as best we could.

  My black button-down dress was starched in Shelly’s honor, lips red to compensate for my lack of eye-makeup, which had gone smearing down my teary cheeks in moments. I couldn’t stop crying, angry as hell at my best friend for choosing junk instead of years more life, angry I didn’t get to say goodbye, sobbing into a monogrammed hanky Drake had given me for the occasion. Malcolm sat on my other side in a dark navy suit, holding my hand and Birgitta was next to him, red-eyed but perfectly splendid, her blond hair spilling onto a somber clinging dress.

  Children in the rows ahead of us cried for their Tia Mishellita, hanging on solid brown women who moaned under black mantillas. Grown men with brown calloused hands wept as Spanish-language hymns were sung, bearing their beloved baby girl to heaven. A harpsichord played mournful church tunes and held incomprehensible sorrow for us all.

  A table full of photos and candles was laid out near the casket, ready for reflection after the genuflecting pause at Shelly’s bier.

  I could not believe Shelly was dead.

  I almost couldn’t bear it.

  How much harder must it be for her tiny mother and grandmother, sobbing in the first row, nearly falling prostrate in grief as they reached for the casket. Shelly had gone to the city to make good, to better herself and the whole family but instead they would bury her, the train to Mexico scheduled for this evening.

  “We’re going to the Blue Canoe after,” Malcolm leaned over and whispered to me, pointing to Gitta, who nodded at the arrangement. “Tell Drake. Place is closed. I’ll make sandwiches. And double Mojitos. This is so sad.”

  “Roger that. What’s with the photographers?” Drake whispered, gesturing toward the back. Two cameramen were slowly making their way forward, trying not to seem disrespectful. They had press credentials slung around their necks and seemed to be from competing papers, jockeying for position.

  Suddenly the photographers moved to the far aisle where we were, Drake’s wheelchair blocking most of the way.

  “Excuse me. Con permisso,” one of them said, right behind us. Drake leaned away as if to let them pass and a flashbulb went off in Drake’s face. Four more lights flashed, the two men elbowing each other to get a shot of Drake.

  “This is outrageous!” Drake hissed. “Stop this at once. This is a funeral, gentlemen, and your came
ras are not welcome.”

  A microphone, then four, were stuck in Drake’s astonished face, local television station logos visible.

  “Is it true, Mr. Astor, you are from the wealthy Spokane Astor family? And is it true that they have not accepted that you are gay? And if your incident in Mexico is to be believed, what are you doing here at a Mexican funeral?”

  Malcolm forcefully stood up and moved me behind him, placing himself next to Drake.

  “Move along, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing to see here.” Malcolm said gently but with frightening authority. “You are interrupting a family’s private grief, the height of rudeness in any culture.” He bowed his head in the direction of Shelly’s family, staring at the scene. “Mr. Astor is tired and recovering from his injuries, and he is here mourning a dear friend. If you have any other questions, you can contact my office.”

  “And you are?”

  “I’m Mr. Astor’s agent. All calls through my office. Let’s be going, Drake. Heads up. Ladies?”

  Malcolm motioned for Gitta and me to follow him. Then head held high, he pushed Drake’s wheelchair straight through the newscaster throng and out of the funeral parlor as we trailed behind in a blur of flashbulbs.

  “Brilliant strategy,” I complimented Malcolm as the Mojito started to sink in. The Blue Canoe had a sign on the locked front door: “Closed: Death in the Family”

  “We walked right past all those news people like we do that everyday!”

  “Yes, Malcolm, thank you for extricating me from that delicate situation.”

  Drake wiped his mouth with the pale blue linen napkin.

  “Will we be on t.v.?” asked Gitta, her eyes sparkly with anticipation.

  “Always take the high road,” Malcolm said, smiling at us over the turkey clubs on grilled garlic focaccia he’d whipped up in the darkened Blue Canoe. “You know, Malcolm X wrote about stealing carloads of stuff in the white neighborhoods when he was coming up and if they saw a cop, they’d flag the cop car down and ask directions, saying they were completely lost and in the wrong neighborhood. The cops even escorted them a time or two. Gotta take the obvious way---no one ever suspects a thing if you can play it off.”

  “Well, you can be my agent any day,” Drake sighed. “This fame business is exhilarating but I can see how it would get tiring. I have a whole new sympathy now for Elizabeth Taylor. How she must have suffered.”

  “What’s the sauce?” Gitta asked Malcolm, lifting her bread to study the ingredients.

  “It’s special sauce,” Malcolm smiled. “Thousand Island with a splash of balsamic vinegar, so it doesn’t taste like Mickey D’s special sauce. Seriously. We buy Sysco Thousand Island by the five-gallon bucketful, then Alphonzo, the prep guy, has to beat five cups of balsamic into it, then we call it our own.”

  “Why do funerals make people hungry?” Gitta wondered, putting her sandwich back together.

  “It’s the circle of life,” Drake sang out, one arm outstretched, doing his best Elton John. “We see death, we are reminded of our own lives and the need to sustain them.”

  “Why didn’t she want to live?” I asked everyone in general, my sandwich untouched.

  “She hit the wall, Al. Nothing you could have done.” Malcolm said matter-of-factly.

  “The treatment looked bigger than death itself. Dying’s easy. But who really knows another’s insides? We all have terrors we don’t tell others, or maybe we aren’t even aware of them until something threatens us. What’s that AA definition of fear you told me?”

  “That we won’t get something we want or something we already have will be taken away from us.”

  “Right. We can’t know on what level staying alive felt more threatening to her than passively dying. None of us have been in her shoes. But I gotta say, if I’m gonna die, a heroin overdose is the way to go, especially if I’m looking at a prolonged wasting disease eating me alive from the inside.”

  “Go out James Dean, young and beautiful,” Drake nodded.

  “But why not want to get the treatment, no matter how temporarily painful, so you can live to see what happens next?”

  “Some people get tired, Al,” Malcolm said quietly, taking my hand across the table. “She’s gone. There’s no more why. She’s gone, is all. Start there and move on.”

  “It’s for you,” I told Dew, my face a stunned blank.

  Amazed at the miracle about to unfold, I couldn’t believe the span of years between the two incidents, yet they would now be forever connected. I handed my cell phone to Dew.

  “Who is it?” he asked, holding the mute button, bewildered someone would call for him on my phone, his eyes taking my emotional temperature as he scanned my body language.

  “It’s Fernfeather. She says George Wilson Ziller wants to talk to you.”

  A King County executive saw the blurb from the funeral on the news and asked around to see if he could meet Birgitta.

  A friend of Malcolm’s saw us on TV and asked if he could meet me.

  We decided to make it a double blind date and all go for drinks at The Edgewater.

  “I’m Simon,” smiled a tall black man in glasses, holding out his hand. His teeth were perfect. “You must be Annalee. Malcolm told me you were stunning in person and he was right. Curves in all the right places.”

  “Hello, Simon.” I kissed his cheek, feeling optimistic for the first time in what felt like years. Something rolled over in my belly, flipping the happy switch. All my sensors lit up full-on.

  “This is Jerry,” Simon said, gesturing toward him then Gitta, “whom I just met here five minutes ago. We are double-dating, I understand?”

  I nodded, grinning like an idiot, clutching my little bamboo woven bag. I was glad I had spruced up, silk blouse slippery on my skin. Suddenly I felt confident, a surprise path opening in front of me as far as my eye could see. We would have a child together, our joy encased in a white picket fence, Graham Nash warbling in my ear about two cats in the yard.

  Gitta seemed to be as star-struck over her guy as I was about mine.

  “I’m Birgitta,” she said, smiling brightly at the handsome white guy. He looked straight off sixties Madison Avenue, a muscular Elvis Costello with perfect retro tie and horn rims, a pipe in his mouth.

  Both men might have stepped off the pages of GQ as they busied themselves with taking our coats and getting them hung. Gitta looked wide-eyed at me, enormously pleased. I could tell she could hardly wait to excuse us for the powder room

  “Well, ladies, what’ll it be?” Simon asked as he hailed the bartender with one hand and pulled out my chair with another.

  “How’s my brother?” Peanut asked first off.

  She was on break from her new gardening job at the nursery, smoking a cigarette out back.

  “He’s coming back, honey. He’s almost rational now and he’s calmed down quite a bit. The non-stop talking has ended, too, thank the Universe. I think he is going to want to come back to the greater Chicago-land area.”

  “Good. I miss him.”

  “You guys!” I laughed. “You grew up with him in the same house and you barely spoke through your whole adolescence and now that he leaves, you miss him. I mean, I’m glad you two are so chummy now but I’m still stuck in the old days. I’d be talking to you on the phone and you’d ask ‘how’s my brother?’ and I’d tell you to go in the next room and ask him.”

  Peanut giggled.

  “I know. And then I’d ask you what he was reading and how’s his girlfriend….”

  “It drove me insane, you two. But I’m glad you’re friends now. How’s your dog? Dew talks about him a lot.”

  “He’s good. How’re my cats?”

  “Old. Fat. Lazy. They’re having a happy old age.”

  “I really like my job. I get to wear this cool sun hat, it’s, like, woven or something, with a chin strap that’s two leather thingees and a bead. The plants are so lush. I could just stand there and smell them all day long. I love getting my hands dirty
.”

  “Your hands? Dirty?”

  I couldn’t imagine those delicate white hands with the weekly nail job enjoying ground-in topsoil.

  “What do you do with your rings?”

  “Oh, I wear gloves. Cotton ones, then rubber over that. I mean I love getting my gloves dirty.”

  “How’s Chad?”

  I had stepped on a nerve. Her cards retracted, pulled in closer to the vest.

  “Fine. Not sure how this will all shake down but for now it’s cool.”

  Peanut didn’t want to sound committed to this relationship. She was always the free spirit, one foot holding the door open. Leave Yourself An Out. I thought of that minor-key country song “Melancholy Child” when Peanut went dark and moody, holding back, wary of others, protecting her little crab-shell. Fast change of subject. She was done.

  “How’re you doing, Mommy?”

  We had lived through hell together and she was checking.

  “I’m…okay. Kinda spaced out, bumping into things. Very tired. But this will all pass and things will balance out again. But for now, I’m tired.”

  “I think soon you will have things to look forward to.”

  Her crayon drawings always had sunny skies and hopeful smiling animals, like dolphins and happy puppies.

  “That’s a nice idea. I’ll hold onto that. And something good has happened. His name is Simon.”

  “Oooooo, tell me everything. But later, when I get off work. Gotta go.” I could hear her grinding out her cigarette. “Love you, Mommy.”

  “How was it?” Drake begged to know, his wheelchair parked at a Blue Canoe booth. Malcolm set down the drinks and joined Birgitta, Drake and me.

  “Straight out of the Barbie Prom Game. We both got Ken the Dreamdate,” I said, sipping my Lemon Drop.