Listen, Ramone says, your mom has a plan.
For what?
To rescue your job, you idiot."
Telling my mother about my professional fiascos
is precisely the sort of thing you could expect from Ramone.
I smack him upside the head with a flat of my palm.
Aww, he says, OK, aww.
You're a lousy gay lover.
You know what I tell him?
I do it because I care if he lives rubbing his temple.
His suit jacket is dusted with flakes of dandruff.
He's just a customer service rep like me,
there's no need for the suit.
But that's Ramone for you.
My mom says we should hack into the mainframe ourselves.
Sorry, your mom says we should hack into the mainframe
ourselves, erase your email trail.
This was my mother's idea, I say,
to hack into the mainframe?
Ramone opens the fridge, releasing
the garbage-y smell of leftovers from the lunch
into the break room.
Well, she's willing to finance the operation, he says.
I need you to quit hanging out with my mom, I say.
We had a relationship that exists independently of you,
he tells me.
Louise comes into the break room wearing that blouse I bought
her for Hanukkah last year, the one that makes
her tits look so fabulous.
She sees me in my stained khakis and sleep-deprived face.
Your fly's down dickwad, she says.
Hey Louise, Ramone says, meet me at the top
of the roof for lunch.
We've got a plan for saving your job.
Louise fixes Ramone with one of her testicle-withering stares.
Who does she whispers, you and dickwad here?
I hold my hands palm forward in innocence.
It has nothing to do with me, I say.
God forbid you have a plan, Louise says.
Louise doesn't let me help her with Janie.
She's a single mom, working full time
with a kid in a wheelchair.
We've been living together for a year
and I've never picked up Janie, not even
to help her out of her chair.
Louise won't even let me sweep up
the Cheerios Janie knocks over with that hand of hers,
shrunken and twisted as it is, her soft fleshy claw.
Underneath all the piteous frustration about her body,
Janie is a kid with a good heart and a sweet smile.
I don't know how Louise manages not to be crying all the time.
Incoming extra office email from her Highness,
Mrs. Wife of his Highness, Magote.
You are very stupid.
This is not a scam but a payback.
Are you cognizant about what the white man came to do
to my grandfather's?
You do not know what they stole from Nigerian kingdom.
This is justice time.
The external auditor is skinny with bad teeth and glasses
all around for his face.
He asks me questions and I answer them with lies.
No, I have never used my corporate email account
to send personal messages, except for sometimes I
say for verisimilitude to my mother.
I'm sure I can tell her the guy that
might tell the guy that mom doesn't understand
professional boundaries.
On my way back to the cubicle, Ramone
pulls me into the men's room.
So he says, how did it go?
I'm golden, I tell him.
We bonded over impossible mothers.
To be cocky, those guys are fucking animals, believe me.
And speaking of mothers, dinners at mom's tonight, 7 o'clock.
Whose mom, I say.
Yours, idiot.
Mine is dead, remember?
Who's the lousy boyfriend now?
At the front door of her house that evening, my mother
throws her arms around Ramone's neck.
My dear, she cries.
Over his shoulder, she shows me a steely eyeball.
We sit at the table.
She's prepared a supper of Kalamata olives, dried figs,
and peanut butter on crackers, and champagne.
I know a guy, she screeches, so my father can hear.
He knows all about computers.
He'll break into your office and wipe out the evidence.
I asked him and he said, Yes.
The peanut butter is the all natural kind, ineptly stirred,
his thin and oily and dripping off the cracker.
It's not that easy, mom, I say.
Your mother is afraid for the little crippled girl.
My father yells, damn shame.
Corporate health care is a crock a shit.
Disabled dad, she has a disability, I articulate.
Also you could unmute yourself, my mother says.
Nigerians dear.
Why Nigerians?
Could you not accomplish this?
She looks helplessly at Ramone.
Scam baiting, he replies.
Could you not accomplish this on your own time, she says.
Instead, you indulge your hobby at work.
Did you not realize you're playing with that little girl's
life?
Ramone picks gamely at his olives and fix.
Go easy under my ring, he mutters.
Interesting that you care so much, mother,
I say, given your feelings about Louise.
My mother flaps her hands at dismissal.
I don't give a shit about that woman.
Are we clear?
But the little girl, the little girl
in a wheelchair with no health insurance, it's a nightmare.
I feel responsible.
Louise's computer was confiscated today, I say.
What?
My father yells.
It's too late, dad, I shout back.
The auditors took her computer.
They'll analyze the keystrokes or whatever they do,
they'll find a record of the emails to Nigeria.
Were too late, dad.
We're too late.
As I speak, my father's eyes are bouncing frantically
between Ramone and me.
You're not gay?
He says.
He looks at my mother in alarm.
Isn't that what he just said, dear?
The boy is not gay.
He said, we're too late.
My mother cries, leaping from her seat.
We're too late.
She's scampers to his chair and stands behind him,
clapping his shoulders in a dramatic little embrace.
And for the record, people, I say, I'm not gay.
My mother releases my father's shoulders.
Ramone, is this true?
Ramone reaches for the back of her neck,
holds it affectionately.
He's in love with Louise, sweetie.
He admits, not me.
What?
My father said, what the hell did he just say?
He's not gay, my mother enunciates, bending to his ear.
The awful woman is the girlfriend.
And the handicapped girl?
My father asks.
And here goes the horror of Ramone's genius idiot preying,
your grandchild, he tells them.
A fair trade, a lie for a lie.
Ramone is the best friend I ever had.
Incoming extra office email from Her Highness Mrs.
Wife of His Highness Magote.
Africa is the birthplace of humanity.
You are idiot, American.
Return all the things you steal from our ancestors.
We will hit you, guys, until you stop
making child slavery and weapons of mass destruction.
But the security breach turned out
to have originated from a couple of teenage identity thieves
in Portland, Idaho.
And when the company wide email arrives,
announcing the discovery, I stand up in my cubicle
and wait with a hopeful grin for Louise's head
to appear above her partition.
I fucked it up so badly, she has no reason to forgive me.
On her face isn't oceanic event of happiness,
an underground earthquake of relief, a maternal tide.
Someday, we'll end up on our beach, Louise and me,
ancient versions of ourselves, tottering
through the loose sand.
She's thinking it's her arm around me, keeping her upright
and me thinking it's mine around her.
We will have lived a long life of tribulation,
and pain, and humor, and unremarkable joy.
The Nigerian princes will have become grandparent Lore.
I can nearly feel her bones to the linen tunic
she'll be wearing through her thin elderly skin
through the tuneless muscles.
In all my long life, I will never
have desired a woman like I do this one.
Later, the security team calls Louise into her office,
into their office to inform her that in the course
of their investigation, they found the Nigerian Prince
emails.
They give her two weeks severance pay.
In my arms that night, she sobs.
She feels foolish.
It was her fault as much as mine, she says.
She's a mother, she's supposed to be responsible.
She cannot play loose with her crappy job.
The weight of Janie's condition threatens
to crack the bed frame, to pull us mattress and all
through the floor to the apartment below.
We're heavy as what I'm saying.
A dump truck of river rock, a 1,000 iron safes.
But she's taken me back.
She's forgiven me, and I will never ever fuck up again.
I pull her on top of me to take her weight,
to cushion her landing.
In the morning, the UPS guy delivers a state-of-the-art
pediatric wheelchair, with a pink and purple frame,
and sparkly ribbons woven between the spokes.
I come out of the shower to find Louise frowning
over the thing, which is parked in the living
room like a Christmas bicycle.
Janie is wild eyed and clapping.
What the fuck is going on?
Louise asks me.
She waves the packing slip.
Your mother did this?
It's Ramone's fault, I say.
That bitch, these things cost five grand.
She stabs at the keypad on her cell phone.
Ramone, she says, when he picks up.
What have you done?
Louise goes silent, eyes wide and tearing
as she locks my gaze.
And I know he's telling her about the trust
fund my parents started for Janie,
and the health insurance policy they spent a fortune on.
And he's delivering the news in a way I couldn't, just
exactly the right language.
Goddamn, Ramone, always comes out
smelling like a lemon cupcake.
The wheelchair is lightweight, half the width
of the behemoth Janie has so much trouble navigating,
plus the kid loves it.
She's screeching to be freed from her old chair, screeching
for Louise to hang up the phone.
I lift Janie.
She's wobbly headed and too late for her age.
Louise gasps a little and holds three fingers against her lips.
Gently, I put Janie down, settling her into her new ride.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]