patients a week when she called him up last night. He was a walking beanstalk of a man with a banana for a nose and a catcher’s glove for hands. He was methodically reading her vitals, comparing them with the data on her charts, and then checked his watch.
The doctor said, “Promise me that you two will keep this conversation short.”
“Scout’s honor,” Mayor Johnson raised her right hand for effect and managed a grin. Thomas admired the woman’s courage and her good humor.
Cavetti gave Thomas a long hard look, flashed Antonio Johnson, the Mayor’s husband, a sympathetic gaze, before finally trailing off to his work he was previously performing on the far side of the room. Some thought stopped him in his tracks, and glanced at the mayor of one of his bony shoulders.
“I’ve been your doctor the better part of your whole life, Ernestine. You never were a girl scout.” He said and grinned in spite of himself. Mayor Johnson barked out of laugh. Thomas smiled genuinely.
Mayor Johnson’s husband did not smile or laugh.
Antonio Johnson:
He had big, pouty lips, razor bumps covered his lower cheek and jaw, and he wore gold rimmed glasses that looked almost fluorescent against his dark skin, and didn’t fit as he continually pushed them up off of his nose.
He planted himself in the space between Thomas Pepper and his sick wife protectively as if he were a Doberman, with his fur ruffled, ready to spring into attack mode at any given moment. “I will not cry.” He announced to Thomas Pepper out of nowhere. “I will not cry.”
“Never mind my husband.” Mayor Johnson said. She massaged the skin around her husband’s knuckles, smoothing out a fist that the other man had made. “It’s alright, sweetheart, I’ll be fine. Give me a moment with Mr. Pepper. We have much business to discuss…and we don’t have a lot of time.”
The mayor’s husband stiffly began to back away to an area of seclusion on the opposite side of where Cavetti was standing. It was far enough away for his wife to conduct her business, but close enough for him to rush to her immediate aid if she had another attack…or came under one.
“Circumstances in our world present unique opportunities, don’t they, Thomas?”
“I’m sorry, mayor. I don’t think I catch your meaning.”
“It is amazing the bond that is forged between the dying and those who will be left behind when that fateful moment is at our doorstep.” She’d watched her husband without interruption when he finally took his place of solace. Mayor Johnson turned her attention towards Thomas and he noticed that her bruised face had taken on a harder edge to it. “Make no mistake, Thomas. I watched Senator Lavelle’s press conference. I saw when Cavetti’s aids refused to announce to the world what the truth is: I am dying.”
“Do you have any idea how this happened, Mayor?”
A spasm of pain hit her, lifted her torso slightly off of her bed, but she masked it well and neither her husband nor her doctor noticed.
“I wish I knew. I am confident that if there is an answer, Doctor Cavetti will find it. I’ll leave to details and the medical diagnosis to him. I’m more interested in the questions that you have for me, the ones that you truly want to know.”
Thomas studied her face for a minute. His legs had grown weary so he pointed at a nearby chair. “May we continue this conversation after I sit down?”
“Sure.”
The chair was far more comfortable than the ones the press had been assigned to downstairs. He sat on the chair’s edge to keep himself alert and the conversation formal as it should be. He’d taken in other observations, the journalist seeping out of him, after he’d finally gotten over the room’s unpleasant odor and Mayor Johnson’s scars: He was the only white face in the room besides Dr. Cavetti. It had been a long time since he’d felt so alone. But as he watched Antonio Johnson continuing to birddog him he felt just that, isolated and …vulnerable, and with a fresh bout of fear topping his feelings off.
Mayor Johnson must have felt his budding anxiety so she blew her husband a kiss which seemed to soften Antonio’s hard gaze, if only for a few minutes.
“We had a son together.”
“I knew of him.” Thomas said. “Wasn’t he around 19 years old when he died in the Middle East during the first Persian War during Operation Desert Storm?”
“Desert Shield, actually.” She said in a quiet voice. She was still maintaining eye contact with her husband. A small, subtle coughing spell rose up out her chest but she waved off any assistance from anyone including Thomas who had jumped to his feet faster that he’d thought was possible.
“Oh how I loved my Sean,” She said as if she had never been forced to stop talking only a minute earlier. “I can still remember how he looked the day he left for boot camp, as if I saw him passing through this room an hour ago.”
Thomas heard a story stirring inside the mayor’s mouth. So he sat back, crossed one leg over the other and prepared himself to listen. He owed the dying that much. Perhaps, Thomas hoped that many years from now, someone who listen to one of his tales when he was an old, dying man.
“Tell me about him.”
“He was taller than Antonio is now, and may God bless my husband’s heart, a lot more handsome than his father. But his good looks alone are not what made me so proud of him.” She said. “Sean was so smart, Thomas. He had an intense fascination for learning and love of books and reading.”
“You must have been very proud of him.”
“One of us was.” Although Mayor Johnson never allowed her thick lips to waver, yet her smile lost all of its warmth. “My husband began to wonder if Sean’s love of words, art, theatre, and music were…unnatural. Up into the day Sean left us for boot camp, I had never seen him show interest in a woman, not once. It never dawned on me…nor did it ever dawn on me to ask Sean about that part of his life.”
“Your husband’s own manliness came into question then. What kind of father…what kind of man raises a gay child? Those are the type of questions the father of gay boys asks themselves. What happened then, Mayor? Did he threaten Sean in some way?”
She nodded. “He offered Sean the chance to man himself up, as he put it, by joining the army. In exchange our son would be allowed to have the hefty college fund we’d saved for him. If our son showed some natural interest he would be allowed to indulge in all of his other interest upon his return to the states.”
“And this thing went on between your husband and your son without your knowledge or consent.”
“I was running for reelection of a lower seat of power earlier in my career.”
“And Sean took you husband’s offer, and opted for military service.”
She nodded again, as tears began to litter her face. “And he never even got to prove his worth in battle. He was killed when he was blindsided by a Humvee while he was unloading a supply truck in Kuwait.”
Thomas lowered his head. “Even after all these years, the memory of how this all came about must be devastating for you.”
“If only I had these years you speak of, Thomas,” She said. “My beloved husband told me this tale this morning, after my conditioned worsened from the effects of the poising. My husband told me that he felt responsible for Sean’s death. As if he had killed my son himself. And then he asked for my forgiveness. ”
“I will not cry,” Antonio Johnson said aloud as if he’d heard the mayor’s conversation with him. “I will not cry.”
Thomas got to his feet as if sitting any longer would drive him insane. He allowed the mayor a respectful moment of silence then he said, “I’m sorry, Mayor, for everything that has happened to you. And yet, you called for me. What is it that I can do for you, Mayor Johnson?”
A third coughing spell, and by far the most intense one to date, came on her suddenly. Mayor Johnson’s torso convulsed once and again and Thomas guessed that she was having a seizure of some strength and magnitude. The medical equipment beeped and whistled loudly, Cavetti ran to her side, and Antonio unleashed a wail that sounded an
ything but human.
“Alright, I’ve had enough of this, Ernestine.” Cavetti spat out angrily. “This stops now. I’m terminating this visit.” He pulled her eye lid open and shined a light in there. “Ernestine, can you hear me?”
After what seemed a long time she finally responded with a nod. Thomas thought when her body relaxed with the suddenness that it had bent in horrible pain that the Mayor of Atlanta had died.
Instead, he watched her grab the doctor’s wrist and forearm with a devastating vice like grip. “I must finish this, doctor. Promise me you’ll let me finish this.”
Cavetti looked from Mayor Johnson, to her husband, to the Peacekeepers who were at full attention, to Thomas Pepper, then to the heavens itself for guidance.
“Alright, Ernestine, damn you, make this quick.”
When Mayor Ernestine Johnson turned to Thomas, her facial features had worsened as several of the purple boils and blisters had burst, leaving pus and blood leaking around her cheeks and jaws and onto her bed.
“You are not moral man.” Mayor Johnson’s mannish tone had grown darker still; if it were because of her condition or if she were angry, Thomas could not say.
And yet he had enough of women telling him how immoral he was today, thank you. “You asked for my help, Mayor.” He said, sharper than he had intended.
“The most immoral of men are often the most honest. They have a clear understanding of who they are. They know what they