The first thing he learned after his mother’s death was that he’d been born a cat.
Patrick had no one to complain about this to. It was just him and her cooling body. None of the others had come. Children, grands, exes like spouses, employees, girlfriends, boyfriends, other friends; all ignored her warning. Wasn’t even a cat. He knew the old boy, a big, luxuriously long-haired ginger with cougar eyes, had passed in December. Chester. Twenty-two years old. Not bad for a cat. Mom called Patrick and told him that Chester had been her best lover.
Patrick — he accepted Pat, but he preferred Patrick, but he wasn’t going to be an asshole about it — couldn’t tell you why he’d come. Just a feeling, he professed. A feeling like he needed to. That he should. So he told his beer group. He, like the no-shows at his mothers, knew how adeptly his mother could toss the bullshit, as her father often said to his grandson. “Watch your mother. Marcia loves drama and doesn’t mind expending lots of bull to get it. She loves being the center of the spotlight and pulls it to her by any means needed to gain it again.”
While the old boy spoke, spittle flicking off his lips and tongue, smoke crowding the sky from his pipe, Patrick was wondering, who is Marcia? Never asked the old man, though. Not before the old man died. Asked him often later, after he was dead, Patrick decrying to himself, why didn’t you ask him then and there? Was something that kept him awake at night whenever he pondered his victories and failures. But in his defense, young Patrick was enjoying the contact high being achieved from the staunch quantity of personally-grown marijuana the old man tamped into his pipe.*
And then there the flicks of spittle, flying past him like Patrick was in a spaceship navigating through an asteroid belt in a movie. A crunch seemed eminent. Patrick feared the crunch. He always waited for crunchtime.
But returning to Mom’s death. Vivid memory of that day. March. Blue skies after a mean winter, one with cloud-crushing sunlight and record snow levels.* Was going to be seventy degrees that day. Patrick had wondered, do I dare wear shorts? A study of his naked legs in the mirror didn’t lean him either way. On the one hand, his legs were so pale. Whiter than ghosts. Whiter than a snowman. Pale as a cloud-obscured moon.
The once muscular limbs were also now terribly skinny. Once upon a life, his shapely, muscular legs garnered compliments. But those powerful calves and thighs had shriveled. Reminded him of old sticks found in the yard after a windstorm. ‘Cept they were white.
Also. Were shorts appropriate to wear if his mother was dying? He had to remind himself, that’s what he was dressing for. Each day always had its own main event, even if the main event was as small and routine as going to the coffee shop for a frap to drink while completing word games.
On the other hand, why the fuck should he care what people thought about his legs? Screw them.
Then came the drive, forty minutes into the country south of Medford. Almost to California.
Then, the arrival. He’d put that off by stopping off in Jacksonville for coffee. Maybe a pastry. Doughnut. Or pie. Instead, he had a cheeseburger, fries, and a beer — IPA, actually, if you need specifics. Patrick felt addicted to specifics. The IPA was 451. Named for the area code. Locally brewed. Delicious. Went well with a burger and fries, illicit food which he should not be eating, if he listened to his doctor.
The 451 IPA tasted so good, he had two, watching people as they came and went, checking his phone, waiting for someone he knew to come in.
When he finally arrived at the immaculate old home set back from the road, he knew no one else was present. No cars were in the driveway under the huge pines. Patrick thought about turning around and leaving. That’s what a sane person would do. Well, no one had ever accused him of being sane. Besides, he had to pee. And he was already here. He didn’t need to stay long. Just go in, verify Mom wasn’t dying, and take his leave.
The porch creaked under Patrick’s steps. The broad oak door with its chiseled stain-glass windows was wide open.
He went in. Stopped in the tiled entry. Looked. Listened. He felt like an owl. A watching owl.
Everything gave signs of being freshly dusted, vacuumed, swept, polished. Nothing was out of place. That was Mom. No matter what house it was, this one or the — well, that didn’t matter. Mom’s houses were always immaculate. Cleaning was her hobby. Only thing ever out of place in Mom’s house were people. Especially her children and family. And reality.
Edging forward, Patrick muttered, “I have a bad feeling about this.” His voice felt out of place.
A shudder shook his shoulders. He stopped after two steps. “Mom?”
He said it soft and listened for responses, peering into the living room, down the halls toward the kitchen and sunroom. No sounds of life.
That struck him as fucking ominous. In hesitant explanation to his beer group later, he explained, “I felt like the house was resisting me. I really wanted to run, except that I was a grown adult, a seventy-year-old man. Psychologically, I shouldn’t be running out of a house like a frightened child.”
“Also, your knees probaby couldn’t take running,” a smart ass in the beer group put in with a grin.
Patrick nodded. “That, too.”
“Shit,” he muttered, softly, so Mom wouldn’t hear. God forbid he upset her by swearing. That might kill her. He chuckled but stopped. Chuckling didn’t feel right.
He looked up the dark carpeted stairs. If she was dying, she was probably in bed. That made sense. Then again, he was talking about his Mom. Marcia, Carrie, Joyce, Brenda, Priscilla, Judy, Catherine, Deborah. The woman loved changing her name. Changed it like others might by a new car.* Never explained why. She’d been Carrie was Patrick was born and Brenda when he graduated high school and started college. No telling what name she’d die with.
The wind soughed through the trees like they were impatient with his dithering. He’d need to go up the steps.
“Patrick?” he heard. “Come up. I’m in my bedroom.”
Permission given by her, the house relented and let him in. Still, the going up the steps felt like a walk to an electric chair.
She was in her huge four poster bed. The thing was big as a cruise ship. Her room was perfect. Spotless China blue carpet. Looked new.
Mom was propped up on fresh white pillow cases. Flower-covered duvet and white sheets were arranged around her.
“I knew you would come, Patrick.” Mom looked beautiful. Blond beehive, soft make-up, red lips. Not a wrinkle, crease, or sag anywhere. One hundred one years old, she didn’t seem like a day over fifty. She looked like a 1960s movie star. Didn’t appear to be courting death. She looked a lot better than him. He looked closer to death than her.
“You look good, Mom,” he said. She puckered up and raised her arms. He dutifully delivered a mosquito kiss and speculative hug.
“There, Patrick,” she said, pointing as he stepped away.
“What?”
She pointed more insistently. “The book. On the dresser.”
“The brown one?”
“Tan. Yes. That’s my document.”
“Okay. Want me to bring it to you?”
“I do not. It’s your’s.”
“Okay. And what is your document?” Patrick picked it up.
The fucker was thick. He’d brought it to the beer group. It sat in the table’s middle, surrouded by pitchers of IPA and amber beer. They all stared at it. Four inches thick. Tan. Didn’t even look touched. “Pick it up. Feel for yourself.”
Back at Mom’s, she answered, “This is my life. This is the truth.”
Patrick opened it. “The truth of what?”
She didn’t answer. He looked up. She was still. Open green eyes regarded the ceiling. “Mom?”
“No,” she answered, and sighed.
He knew the death sound. Had heard it from a brother and sister, grandmother, grandfather, ex-wife and son, and a couple dogs.
“She was dead,” he told the beer group. “I didn’t know what to do. Well, I knew, but I wasn’t ready to do it. I was surprised, shocked, really. She’d really done it, she’d really died. I really felt like she’d live forever. I needed some time to deal with that. So I went over and sat down in her recliner by the window. I looked at her a while, and then out the window, listening to the wind. After some time, it struck me that I heard nothing else. No birds, no other cars, nothing but the wind in the trees. It was a little eerie, a little disturbing.
“And then, the beer caught up with me. I had to pee. I went to her bathroom but I wasn’t going to use it. Mom never wanted us to use her bathroom.”
“Why?” someone asked.
“I don’t know.” Patrick shrugged. “Because she was a strange person, I guess. There was another on the same floor, so I went to it. I took her document with me. Getting into the bathroom, I realized that I needed to do more than pee. So I sat on the commode and opened Mom’s book.”
He paused, lips parted, looking in toward memory of the moment. “It was weird. Crazy. I didn’t open it to the first page. I opened it a few pages in. That’s where I read, ‘Mother gave birth to five today. I named one Patrick.’ And then, a few lines down, was a second entry. ‘Patrick turned today. Martha died.'”
Patrick swallowed. “It was dated the same date as my birthday.”
Everyone moved, releasing tension, picking up beers, drinking. Some hissed, “Wow,” and “Holy shit.” Patrick let the moment passed.
“That’s not the thing I really wanted to tell you.” Leaning his arms on the table, he looked around at his friends. “That was a week again. Last night, I had an itch. When I scratched it, it felt like a lump. Then it felt like something more. I checked it out in the mirror today and then used a camera to take a photo. It’s furry. About an inch long, right above my asshole.”
“A tail,” the group’s smart ass exclaimed.
Patrick solemnly nodded and set his phone down on the table. “I have photos.”
***
*An admirer of his mother’s father, Patrick tried emulating him by taking up the pipe like the old man smoked. He found that he disliked putting things in his mouth. Ended up not smoking anything. No pipe, cigarette, cigar, joint. Nothing. Also learned that not putting things in his mouth disappointed several lovers. Oh, well. That was their problem.
*Patrick later learned that the record snow that he remembered from the year his mother died actually happened two years before his death. Memory. What’re you gonna do?
*Although, funny, she still had the same car, a pink Cadillac Eldorado convertible that she had when he left for Vietnam.
