After 22 years together my partner is still mystified by my emotional, expressive family, and I am equally confounded by his reserved, stoic family of New England WASPs. This caught up with me again on a recent trip to New Jersey visit his widowed, 88 year-old mother, whom we had not seen since last New Year’s.
We got out of the taxi and walked into the house where his mother, Duckie, was watching the Golf Channel with her cat, Simba, on her lap. The house was pitch dark; Duckie does not believe in opening the drapes because of an odd notion that sunlight is bad for cats so even now, at noon, her home was bathed in a gloom that made me want to open a vein. “Hi Mom!” said my partner brightly as we walked in.
“Sshhh,” said Duckie. “ He’s about to putt.”
“I don’t think he can hear us,” I said and Duckie glared at me. She does that a lot.
As we waited for a commercial break I looked around the cheerless living room thinking that an Afghani prison would have more charm than Duckie’s house. My mood remained bleak as a commercial came on and it was time for each of us to dutifully peck Duckie on the cheek.
The formalities over, we tried to sit on the sofa. “Don’t sit there,” said Duckie. “That’s Simba’s couch.” Wondering, we sat on the floor and watched Duckie watch golf. Please note that the only thing in the world worse than actually watching golf on TV is watching someone else watch golf on TV. “Five days?” I said to my partner. “Really?” But he ignored me. “Sshhh!” said Duckie, glaring.
“So who’s playing?” I asked Duckie, with an enthusiasm that was not genuine. “SShhh!” she said. That’s when I gave up and retreated into a stony silence. The only other sound in the room was Duckie’s great-grandmother’s grandfather clock loudly ticking away the remaining seconds of my life. “You’re middle-aged,” said the clock rhythmically. “Soon you’ll be dead. ”
“So who do you have to fuck around here to get a drink?” I said loudly into the hushed silence.
OK, that’s a lie. I did not say that but I wanted to. The reality was that because the room was very dark and very warm and very quiet I immediately dozed off as I always do in Ducky’s house; sometimes I doze off in the middle of a conversation, mainly because there are only two appropriate topics for conversation in that house: Golf and Simba, neither of which I find riveting. When I woke up a commercial was on; my partner was gone and Duckie was looking at me. “He’s in the cellar,” she said, answering my unasked question.
I nodded, knowing there were only two reasons why he would be downstairs: Assuming he had not already hanged himself, he was probably looking for the ancient bottle of cooking sherry that we discovered on our last trip. My partner’s family, those granite-jawed Puritans, live is a state of iron-clad sobriety and cooking sherry is as good as he’s going to get in that house. I dozed off again.
When I woke up again Duckie was still looking at me and my partner was still MIA because, as he confided later, he had found a bottle of Manishewitz peach wine behind the sump pump.
“You sure sleep a lot,” Duckie observed. “Are you a necrophiliac?”
“Excuse me?” I said, more loudly than I intended and as wide-awake as I’ve ever been.
“It’s OK if you are,” she said unperturbed. “My brother was a necrophiliac. He lost his job because of it.”
“Please tell me he wasn’t a mortician,” I muttered as I heard my partner coming up the cellar steps.
“He was a cop,” said Duckie, leaving me to ponder several different scenarios, none of them good. Just then my partner came into the living room, swaying slightly and smelling mightily of peaches.
“I was just asking Guy if he is a necrophiliac like your Uncle John,” Duckie said conversationally to my partner.
“Uncle John had narcolepsy,” said my partner. “Not necrophilia.” I nodded, speechless. “He used to fall asleep and crash his squad car,” he explained, “so they put him on desk duty.” He looked back at Duckie. “Narcolepsy,” he said firmly. “Not necrophilia.” Duckie shrugged as though the difference were negligible.
“Guy has neither,” said my partner loyally.
I knew what was coming and on the spot I invented a blatantly false excuse to go down to the cellar. “Look behind the sump pump,” said my partner out of the side of his mouth just as Duckie said, “So what’s necrophilia?”