When God Was a Rabbit

I thought this is how it would be if the sun died; the gentle shutting down of an organ, sleepy, no longer working. No explosion at the end of life, just this slow disintegration into darkness, where life as we know it never wakes up because nothing reminds us that we have to.

What a lovely house,” said my mother with not a jealous thought coursing through her mind.
She was always like that: grateful for life itself. Her glass was not only half full, it was gold plated with a permanent refill.

Nancy was sitting in a deck chair next to Nelson and me on the lawn, finishing off her screenplay about a Second World War bisexual double agent that she’d casually entitled Playing for Both Sides (a film that would actually go into preproduction the following year, but not, thank goodness, with its working title).

“Hey,” he said. “Up early or still up late?”

“Not sure. Want a coffee?”

I could have gone out with them but I’d felt like time apart. Wanted to clear my head, rid myself of the bitter clutter piling behind my words, and I’d reached for music instead, music and wine—plenty of both

“What’s the time?”
“Time for scotch. Come on, I found Dad’s stash.”
“Where?”
“Wellington boot.”
“So obvious,” we both said.

He was dressed as Liza Minnelli, and looked really pretty until you saw that he hadn’t shaved, either his face or his legs. When we left the house both my mother and father had shed a tear as their beloved son walked out into the cold night air dressed as a daughter, unsure as to what he might return as. That, my father would later say, was one of the unexpected gifts of parenthood.

“It was my mother’s, but I can’t get it on my finger anymore because I’m too fat. Thought you might as well have it,” she said, not looking at me.

(Translation: I love you and would like you to have something that’s very dear to me.)

“We went to his funeral,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

“They’re weird, aren’t they?” I said.

“S’pose they are,” he said.

“Everyone staring at the coffin,” I said.

“I didn’t know they found the body,” he said.

“They didn’t. Maybe that’s why we were all staring at the coffin,” I said.

But ultimately, who cared? Truth, as he always said, was overrated; nobody ever won prizes for telling the truth.