After Auditions
My
grandmother was down to next to nothing
the
last time I saw her, a still, stick figure
in
a hospice bed. She was breathing fine,
in
and out of morphine sleep. I was watching
a
ballgame on the muted wall tv, wondering
if
the Applebee’s next to my motel was open late.
Suddenly
I saw her eyes were open and she said
softly
but matter of factly, I slept with that bastard
Eugene
O’Neill one time after auditions in Provinceton,
but
he was so drunk nothing happened. I
thought
he
was going to make me a star .Then her eyes closed
and
I took her hand, told her, That’s okay, Grandma,
and
I hope that soothed her, but I’ll never know
if I said it in time.
Over
My Dead Body
Screaming
Mimi was my aunt’s professional name;
she
was a stripper in Dallas in the 1960’s. One year
when
I was a little kid, she brought her boss Jack Ruby
to
our house for Thanksgiving. My mom seemed to like him,
at
least more than most of Mimi’s other boyfriends back then,
but
at the table during dessert he told a dirty joke real loud
right
in front of me and my cousins about a traveling salesman
and
a farmer’s daughter and nobody laughed except him.
It
got real quiet until my mom asked if anybody wanted
another
slice of pumpkin pie, said there was still plenty
of
real whipped cream left.
A
year later, after we watched him shoot Lee Harvey Oswald
on
tv for the hundredth time, my dad grinned and said to mom,
Well,
you can relax now. I guess you don’t have to worry
about
your sister bringing him over for Thanksgiving again
next
week. He’ll be here over my dead body, she replied,
sitting
up straight in her chair. That filthy joke he told last year
really
ruined my dessert.
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