Beer Party in the Heavens

Beer Party In The Heavens

Cathy hits John lightly on his bare inner thigh with a powder puff, “Spread them, C’mon, spread them out like a woman about to have sex.” John makes a feeble attempt. “Gosh, John," Cathy says, “If I was like this we would have never had all those kids.”

And turns to me with a raunchy laugh.

Cathy, trying to powder her husband John’s private parts, is eighty and bouncy, full of good humor and tales, her wrinkled face often breaking into merry, sometimes ribald laughter. “Wrinkles merely show where the smiles have been,” a sign in her kitchen says. Her husband John is eighty-six, feeble, wheelchair-bound, though usually lucid. His beached-whale of a body, full of sagging muscles, is huge, devoid of color. Peering out of his pasty face, his eyes radiate intelligence when he is not sleepy.

Cathy is done, with a satisfied “There we are!” turns to me and says “I take good care of the family jewels, don’t you think?”. “And everything else, Ma’am,” I say, as I wheel John into his customary spot in the living room, looking out into the front yard with its freshly mowed lawn, flowers and birds.

As John dozes off, the real treat of my visit starts: Cathy’s tales. “The other day my sister Jenny called. She wanted to talk but she was drunk. When I mentioned John was coming home from the hospital, she slurred who’s John? I don’t care for any John.”

“Now she’s a good sort, mind you. She just can’t handle the drink. But she is kind of addicted: needs it for the pain, she says. When I ask her what pain, she says you know, Rudy has passed on and Danny has passed on and they are not coming back and here I am and that’s that.”

“Rudy was her first husband. He was Italian and Catholic, and when things were bad between husband and wife and his brother suggested he should get rid of her, he would come back with you know how hard that woman works? Circles around any Italian woman I am sure.”

“That’s how he measured her: as a workhorse. Not as a wife, not for love, but how hard she worked for him.” Cathy explains with a sigh. “But then he was a workhorse, too. He worked extremely hard all his life, but didn’t have anything to show for it. My elder son Tom bought this brand new house in Walnut Creek, worth half a million. Rudy came to the housewarming, saw the place and cried. What did I work this hard for, all my life? What do I have? Soon he hit the bottle and three years later he was gone. Didn’t leave much for Jenny, of course. Now she lives in a mobile home down South in Costa Mesa. Usually drunk when I call. But let me show you our pictures”.

Cathy brings out a well-preserved album, full of pictures in sepia tones. Three chubby sisters in the late 1920’s peer out from under beautiful bonnets. “My mother used to sweep the church. Many kind people gave her all those nice dresses we are wearing. We didn’t have a dime, of course.” As the album gives out to her days as a young woman, she is dressed like Marilyn Monroe, and looks as striking. When I mentioned that, she giggles a “Thank you!”

“So how many boyfriends did you have before you settled on John?” I ask. “Aw, too many. I never kept track. They were after me all the time, you know. They kept calling even after we married. John was jealous. Weren’t you, daddy?” Cathy turns to John with a twinkle.

But John is asleep, snoring, his breath wheezing, his head lolling limply onto the chest. “It’s good when he snores. I know that he is, you know, still there. Jenny put Rudy on the toilet seat to brush his teeth. When she came back in five minutes, he was gone. Quite a shock for her. She started screaming and the neighbors called me. When I got there she was in a state.”

Cathy is matter-of-fact, does not need support. The family draws strength from her, as did her mother when she died of cancer, and later her sister, when she died of emphysema.

“Too many cigarettes”, Cathy explains as we walk out into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

I break out laughing at a sign that says, “A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen and this kitchen is delirious.” But Cathy’s house is exceedingly organized and tidy. She putters around it all the time, cleaning this and tidying that. Her household things have an age-old, well-worn patina. Massagers from the sixties, vacuum cleaners from the mid-seventies, toasters from early eighties, all well kept and functioning. “The Fanny Farmer Book Of Cookery” from 1948 occupies pride of place. Where modern books would say, “Blend in a mixer”, the book advises you to “rub it down the sleeve”.

“I take good care of everything” Cathy says proudly. “My mom always said a woman’s place is in the home. Not that I always agreed, but she had a point.”

“So were you brought up religious?” I ask.

“No, my mom’s dad shoved religion down their throats, so she was always wary of it, I guess. You can go to the church if you want to, seems to do some folks some good, she told us, though she never went.”

“And do you go the church now?” I ask.

“No, every evening I walk in my backyard. The moon up, it’s beautiful out there and I look up and say God is up there somewhere. And so is my mom and my dad and my granddad, and Rudy and Danny and my sister Mary. I am sure the men are having a beer party and the women are cursing them in the kitchen somewhere up there. We men are good sons-of-bitches, my daddy always used to say.”

Cathy’s face is serene, her eyes smiling, as always.

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