Parker - Dear Mr. You

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Jacket Design by Jaya Miceli

Jacket Photograph by Isabelle Selby

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker, Mary-Louise.

Dear Mr. You / Mary-Louise Parker.

pages cm

1. Parker, Mary-Louise. 2. Parker, Mary-LouiseRelations with men. 3. Parker, Mary-LouiseFamily. 4. Parker, Mary-LouiseFriends and associates. 5. ActorsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

PN2287.P267A3 2015

791.4302'8092dc23

2015017170

ISBN 978-1-5011-0783-2

ISBN 978-1-5011-0785-6 (ebook)

appeared in somewhat altered versions titled My Dad, My Boy and If Youre Good You Get Dessert in the June/July 2012, volume 157, nos. 6 and 7, and the August 2009, volume 152, no. 2 issues of Esquire , respectively.

For my mother

Manly creature, who smells good even when you dont, you wake up too slowly, with fuzzy, vertical hair and a slightly lost look on your face as though you are seven or seventy-five; to you, because you can notice a woman with a healthy chunk of years or pounds on her and let out a wolf whistle under your breath and mean it; because you thought either rug would be fine, really it would; to you who can fix my screen door, my attitude, and open most jars; to you who codifies, slams a puck, builds a decent cabinet or the perfect sandwich; to you who gave a twenty to the kids selling Hershey bars and waited three hours for me at baggage claim in your flannel shirt; you, sir, you took my order, my pulse, my bullshit; to you, boy grown up, the gentleman, soldier, professor, or caveman; to you and to that guy at the concession stand; thank you for lying on the hood of that car and watching stars plummet, thank you for the tour of the elevator cage, the sound booth, the alley; thank you for the kaleidoscope, the get-well tequila, the painting, the truth; thank you for the brown diamonds and blue points; to you, who carried me across the parking lot, to the ER, and up the stairs; to you who shows up every so often only to confuse and torment, and you who stays in orbit to my left and steady, you stood up for me, I wont forget that; to the one who cant figure it out and never will, and to the one who lost the remote, the dog, or your way altogether. To you who Ive tried to understand, so necessary and violent; you who transported, comforted, and devastated, sometimes all at once; I still have what you said was mine, I kept that, along with the memories, despite memories being a word I loathe for both its icky tone and wistful graveyard implications, but there it is and here I am recounting them. Some I may get wrong and others Id love to expel forever, but thank you for them nonetheless, and this,

this is for you, Cerberus, sweet beast with your many faces,

and you, Father Bob,

to the Deer Dancer because he saw me over there,

to the painter, and the poet,

to NASA, and to that cabdriver, what can I say but that I was wrong and Im sorry,

to sweet Blue and kind Abe,

to firefighters all, especially that one,

to Uncle, and the newspaper boy and the goats,

to Little Owl, what an honor to watch your first flight,

to Rafiki Yangu, and to my mentor, and my doctor,

to the ones I never met and the ones I often wish I hadnt.

Most of all to you, Daddy. Thats you in me, the far-off gaze. The poems are you, as are the good deeds and the jars of candy I hide everywhere. You are what makes me indomitable and how I know to keep walking when I feel crippled in every conceivable way. Thank you to the actual heavens and after that, and you others who make up my tremendous et cetera, this is

to you.

The world is at war again. Thats twice now, in your lifetime.

Your only son has been overseas for eleven months. The last you heard, he and his fellow soldiers were going to make a beachhead landing on the shores of the Philippines. If your boy John was involved you can bet it went off like gangbusters. He is nineteen years old and remarkably good at life.

If there were a way to spy on him at this moment youd see a young man wrapped inside an army-issue poncho and sleeping in the corner of a rice paddy. Artillery is firing across the road but that sound is lost in the rain, which falls in thick black sheets, and your boy sleeps long enough for that rain to surround and lift him. When he wakes he is floating on his back.

He will hit the double decades in two and a half weeks and you have a plan thats been brewing.

You go to the only bakery you know, which is two towns over. The woman behind the counter is wiping her eyes on her apron by the time you ask to buy the biggest loaf of rye bread she has. Shes just gotten an earful about your son and refuses to charge you for the bread, also throwing in a few cinnamon buns. You thank her up and down and tell her you enjoy the way her blouse matches her eyes.

You have a bottle of gin for the drive back but you run out of it around the same time you run out of fuel and have to pull over to the side of the road. You hitch a ride back to the house with a nice fellow, a miner like yourself, and tell him about your plan for your sons birthday. You are open to strangers. Aside from that its a darn good plan.

In forty-three years, your granddaughter will be found hitchhiking by the side of the road near San Francisco. She will stand there with two young men wholl encourage her to hike up her skirt and look as winsome as possible by the off-ramp. They will have constructed a sign out of cardboard to catch the eye of someone nice enough to pull over. The sign will say MARIN, PLEASE, WEVE READ SARTRE . Theyll get a ride fairly quickly from a fellow who sees only a girl with a sign, but when he stops the two boys will come running out from behind a bush. The boys will stuff themselves in that tiny car and thank the man for his generosity before he can protest.

In an hour or so your granddaughter will enter a coffee shop with one of the boys. They will have empty stomachs and less than two dollars between them. They have a plan though. The girl goes off to a corner table by herself while the boy scans the joint for someone to beat at poker. She will eat breakfast slowly, setting down her book in between bites of croissant with strawberry jam, only ordering a hot chocolate when the boy gives her the signal that he is winning and they will be able to pay for their food. A man will notice her and attempt to sit across from her, but she will give him a blank stare as she points to the boy, who has seen the man approaching. The boy will narrow his eyes and give him the universal signal for SCRAM, and as the man skulks away she will go back to her book, which is, incidentally, The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre. It will start to rain as the group drives across the Golden Gate Bridge. Your granddaughter loves the rain as you do, the grandfather shell never meet. By the time shes born you are dead and your wife has married your brother. Your granddaughter never thought much about the fact that instead of Grandma and Grandpa, it was always Grandma and Uncle George. When she gets older shell wish shed met you, as you are the subject of many stories that are told and retold within the family.