Mark Dunn - American Decameron

He lived in Tallahassee, Florida, and worked in the athletic department of the university there. He didn’t even seem surprised by the call. “I know I have an aunt,” he told Rosanna. “I know that she and my mother have never gotten along. I thought someday I’d look her up. I know she never married, so I’ve got no cousins.”

“I’m sure she’d like to hear from you,” said Rosanna. Then Rosanna took a breath and said, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“That she took care of you the first three years of your life.”

Cory shook his head. “Mom said I was put in foster care.”

“You have no memories of that time?”

“Vague ones. Some nice lady who wore pearls.”

“She still wears pearls.”

Cory didn’t call. After getting the full, true story from his mother, who now ran a gallery in Soho, he drove up to Marietta. And when he turned up on his Aunt Nona’s doorstep that Saturday, he had someone he’d brought along with him (with his wife’s somewhat hesitant consent).

A little boy. Three and a half years old. He looked just like his father at that age: round face, plump cheeks, long black lashes over bright, brown, wondering eyes.

His name was Brandon.

And he liked trucks.

It was an elaborate scheme — and to think that it was engineered by a girl of thirteen. Lindsey took a risk and no matter how you feel about what she did, you have to admire the courage it took to pull it off.

Lindsey is my niece. She is my mother Hallie’s granddaughter. I don’t want to confuse you with too many names and relationships here, but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll make it short and sweet. Mom had two kids: me and my sister, Sybil. Sybil married Gary. I never married. I’m what they call a lifelong bachelor. I seldom clean my apartment. Don’t come over.

Anyway, I call Gary “Doc” to get under his skin. He dropped out of UF’s med school, and now he does probably just as well selling medical appliances, but he hates me reminding him that he couldn’t cut the mustard as a doctor. He, in turn, calls me the family bum, and I suppose that makes us even.

Sybil and Gary have three kids — Donald, Glen, and then the “Afterthought,” Lindsey. I would never call her that to her face, and would ask that you don’t either, or I will come and do serious harm to you.

So that’s the cast of characters with regard to my lovely extended family. But there are a couple of other vital players in this family drama: Winnie — now that’s my mom’s late-life lesbian lover — and Nurse Gibson. I have no idea what Nurse Gibson’s first name is, but she’s important to the story because she’s the night nurse supervisor on the Intensive Care floor at the hospital, where my mother is a critical care patient, and in this capacity she wields quite a bit of authority.

So I got this call at about five o’clock today, just as I was getting ready to head home. I work at a temp agency, conducting interviews, giving typing tests. It’s something any monkey could do, but it keeps me employed, and I happen to like meeting the beautiful, desperately needy young women who come through my door. I’m still waiting for the floodgates to open after last October’s stock market crash, with virtual legions of anxious, out-of-work young temp prospects filing through, but the economic prognosticators still can’t agree on whether or not we’re going into a full-blown recession. I mean, didn’t we just come out of one?

So I pick up the phone and it’s my niece Lindsey, and I’m thinking she might have been calling to ask how her Gran is, since my mother has been in intensive care for almost two weeks because of the stroke, and I got the chance to visit with her today and Lindsey didn’t. It’s been touch-and-go, but over the last couple of days things have started looking a little more hopeful, though Mom still hasn’t been given very good odds for long-term recovery. She’s responding well and even getting a word or two out every now and then, which my sister Sibyl is attributing to all the prayers being sent up on Mom’s behalf by members of Sibyl’s church’s prayer chain.

I pass no judgment on Sibyl for her religious faith excepting the fact that she and Doc tend to wear their religion on their sleeves like big neon armbands. They have charitable hearts, I grant you that. Through their open-handed love offerings they’ve pulled probably a half-dozen Peruvian kids off the street and into a church-run orphanage and filled their bellies with nourishing food while bringing them to God. Not the Catholic God of South America, but the Protestant God of North America. I make a special effort to keep my feelings about all this to myself. I just duck my head at family functions and keep quiet.

You see, I’m basically a non-confrontational…okay, I’m a coward.

But not Lindsey. Lindsey, as I quickly find out, is bound and determined to get Winnie in to see her grandmother before things take a turn for the worse. Sibyl has made it clear that our mother is to have no visitors besides family. And of course it doesn’t matter that Mom and Winnie have been living together for the last eight years. They even rode together on the Lavender Panthers float in one of those West Coast gay pride parades, for Chrissakes, but this is where my sister has decided to make her stand.

The doctor agrees with Sibyl that, as Mom’s daughter, she has every right to ask that the official visitor list be limited to family members only. Not that the hospital doesn’t have a similar policy of its own, since access to ICU patients is pretty tightly restricted as a rule.

I would have argued against this position on behalf of Winnie, but again, I am, as I have previously noted, a coward. All I’ve really been able to do is come downstairs to the main waiting room every other day and report to Winnie how Mom is doing. That’s not quite what Winnie needs, obviously. She wants to see my mother. She wants to sit and hold the hand of the person she loves most in the world.

My niece Lindsey agrees.

Let me tell you about Lindsey. She’s the conscientious kid who volunteers to take all the classroom animals home over summer break. She’s the principled kid who stands up to her classmates, and even sometimes stands up to her teachers when something gets said which she considers disparaging of a particular group. I call Lindsey our family’s little “Catcher in the Rye.” She’s like Holden Caulfield stationed in the rye field, keeping everybody from going off the cliff. It’s hard work looking out for everybody . Do you think you know a Lindsey? Because I happen to think there isn’t another thirteen-year-old girl quite like her.

Well, she calls me up just as I’m about to transition to weekend mode. It’s Friday night. It’s pizzas and Buds with a couple of the other lifelong bachelors who live in my apartment building. I’m in a hurry to start my weekend R & R. But I sit down and listen. Lindsey says she’s going to tell her parents that she’s spending the night with a friend of hers, but really she’s going to the hospital where they have Gran.

“Aren’t they going to check with the kid’s parents — the one you’re supposed to be having the slumber party with?”

“Are you serious? I spend, like, almost every Friday night at Tiffany’s house.”

“So Tiffany’s in on it?”

“Oh, totally. She’s got a really cool lesbian aunt who’s going to send her to Europe when she’s eighteen.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Pregnant pause. Third trimester kind of pregnant.

“I’m a little confused here, Lindsey. ICU visiting hours are over at seven. Besides which, they wouldn’t let you see Gran by yourself anyway.”