Last year, I spent the majority of three long months with my mother, Nancy, at her quasi plantation in wildly rural northeastern Iowa. I originally went to help her with the house and grounds, as her health while not yet failing is not the best. However when my own health started to fail the quasi plantation became a bit of a multi-generational Convalescence Home. But in between trips to the Mayo Clinic, I still managed to do most of the work there. She cooked dinner, which was nice, and I performed wonderful and wholesome farming activities like mowing and burning dead grass and paper trash. Happily I was also able to burn my early attempts at writing Romance Novels. I was deeply influenced by Fabio in the late nineties apparently.
I walked into her kitchen one Monday morning to find my mother crying because Minnesota Public Radio would no longer be broadcasting Classical Music to her area. Literally crying and bemoaning her music-less fate.
I offered to set her up with an ipod but she insisted that was far too much work for her and she wanted a DJ broadcast (so she didn’t know what was coming up next).
So after conferring with a few of my friends I decided the best course of action for her was to get Sirius Satellite Radio. We headed to Best Buy 90 minutes away to get a Sirius Radio set up.
Best Buy, I found, was far less depressing than the wretched Wal-Mart we usually went to. No wandering browsers with tank tops and exposed feet. Everyone there knew what they wanted and was in and out in record time. Very little chit chat. Economy of thought and action is a far too rare commodity in the rural Midwest I have found. But Best Buy was all business.
We found our way to the Sirius counter in the back of the store and found an older gentleman, Arlen, standing there.
Arlen. Handsome Arlen. Masculine Arlen. Silver Haired Arlen. Arlen of the single black, mesh wrist brace.
Arlen was immediately taken with my mother and as he had a kind of Michael Landon, wholesome lumberjack appeal going on I whispered to her,
“Work it on Arlen.”
“I don’t want to ‘work it’ on anybody,” she whispered up at me, as she is quite small.
“Work it! You want a guy on the inside. I don’t know anything about this stuff.”
So work it she did. It took a few minutes for her to get up to speed. But what started as sweet smiles and lively conversation quickly became a tidal wave of coy eyelash batting, giggling, foot shifting and hair tossing.
Whenever the bile rose high enough in my throat to taste it, I would excuse myself for a “cigarette break” wherein I would sit in the car and talk to my mother’s poodles about my childhood.
After one particularly long break, I returned to Best Buy to find Arlen and Nancy at a different computer terminal for check out. Arlen was new to Best Buy it seems and had yet to master their Computerized Inventory system. But I was relieved to know that things would be wrapping up soon.
But as I approached them I heard my mother say,
“If you’re going to keep people here so long you guys should really serve wine.”
They both giggled and she poked Arlen flirtingly in the shoulder. Arlen blushed. At that moment I decided when I got home I had to immediately bathe in bleach. Perhaps every day after that as well. And drink some just to be sure. And call my shrink. And find an Exorcist.
This was my fault. My God what had I done? I was obviously going to Hell or was this it already?
We finally wrapped up the purchase and my mother got Arlen’s card. Or rather somebody named Fred’s card, which Arlen had written his work and home number on. Like I said, Arlen was new to Best Buy.
We drove home in silence. My mother basking in the glow of her interactions with Arlen and I quietly doing a mental inventory of all the wrong choices that had brought me to this place in life.
I trust that she and Arlen have seen each other again and that he has helped her with her many electronic issues throughout the house and property that are far beyond my capacity to solve. I just don’t want to hear about it. We do not speak of Arlen.
But I have also decided that I when the time comes, I will call Arlen Poppa. Uncle just feels too informal.
–Shawn E Milnes
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