Page 5 of Blue Umbrella Sky
In only two weeks.
“No, man,nothingcan wait. My life has been on hold for so long, I feel like I can’t fuckin’ breathe. I need a change.” Milt gazed desperately about the room, feeling trapped here. This luncheon wasn’t a comfort, despite the home-cooked food, the kind faces, and the consoling words. It was a reminder that he still existed in a cage.
Dane cocked his head. “You’re not gonna leave us, are you?” There was real despair on Dane’s face, and Milt almost swept in with false reassurance, words he knew Dane expected to hear. Milt had always been the kind of guy who thought of others first—not that there was anything wrong with that, except when you did it at the expense of yourself.
Milt finally realized, in his early forties but not too late, that he needed to secure his own oxygen mask first before he would be any good to anyone else.
“You don’t want me to go?”
“Of course I don’t! You’re my best friend, Milt. Who would Seth and I go to lunch and a movie at the Boardman Mall with? Who would help us run the popcorn stand at football games in the fall?” Dane laughed. “And who will cook us that damn chili you’re always saying is the best in the world?” Dane, still smiling, wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t tell Seth I said it, but it really is. The best in the world.” Dane stared at him, hard. “Really, man, we’d be lost without you.”
Milt didn’t know what to say to that. Well, he knew what to say, but he felt like he’d be heartless and cruel if he said it.
After a few moments, though, Dane saved him. “I’m so sorry, buddy. I’m being a selfish dick. I shouldn’t make you feel bad. What a shit I am! What—what are you thinking of doing? Um, now that things are different?”
Milt looked for a minute out the big plate glass window at the front of the Legion hall, where snowflakes were beginning to fall. Pretty, big, and fluffy, but they’d make everyone’s drive home on the windy, hilly roads of Summitville treacherous. They told a tale of biting wind, cold that froze the tip of your nose, cold that hurt.
“Palm Springs has three hundred and fifty days of sunshine a year,” Milt blurted out.
Dane followed Milt’s gaze to the window—the snow falling fast, the edges of the glass etched with frost. “Sounds wonderful.” He ate a few bites of pasta, then said, “Wait. You’re thinking of moving out there? To Southern California?”
Truth be told, Milt hadn’t seriously considered it until right this very moment. In the last months of Corky’s decline, when autumn was morphing into winter, with its sleety gray skies and bare, leafless trees, he’d imagined, in a vague way, a place that was sunny and always warm. Maybe oceanfront on the Gulf coast of Florida. Naples was nice. Or maybe he could become an expat and get himself down to Mexico and the Yucatán peninsula. He and Corky had had one of their best vacations ever there, renting a beach house in the little village of Puerto Morelos. All they did was lie by the pool, drink margaritas, make love, walk hand in hand on the beach, and read a book a day. Heaven.
In the lobby of the nursing home, just before Corky passed, Milt had picked up an old issue ofTravel and Leisuremagazine, drawn by its cover—a field of Joshua trees with a range of rusty mountains, rocky and austere, rising up majestically behind them to meet the electric blue sky. Milt thought the trees looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. The magazine had contained a story about Palm Springs and the desert—the beauty of the area and the abundant sunshine, its spiritual presence. There were dazzling photos of sun-drenched mountain ranges, cacti, vibrant desert blooms, and blue skies, nothing but blue skies….
He’d set the magazine down when an aide came to tell him Corky was awake and would he like to see him?
He hadn’t thought anything more of Palm Springs until this very moment. But the thought had stayed with him, tucked away in his subconscious until today, when he realized, in his grief, that despite being devastated by a crushing loss, he was also free.
And now, seeing that article seemed very much like fate.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice becoming more confident and convinced as he went on. “Yeah, I am. If I can make the finances work, I just might move out to Palm Springs.” Another notion seized him. “Maybe take an extended sabbatical and write that novel I’ve always considered doing.”
A vision rose up in Milt’s mind’s eye—a dusty, rock-strewn trail, the earth beneath his feet sun-washed, ochre, heading upward, the side of a blue-gray mountain. A relentless sun beat down, making each step both effort and joy, making his heart pound in his chest, reminding him he was alive.
His vision stopped when Dane’s husband, Seth, with his curly-haired handsomeness and winsome smile, interrupted. He sat down at the table with a paper plate loaded with chicken breasts and pasta, and Milt hated him for just a moment—to be able to eat like that and maintain what was obviously a thirty-inch waist.
He smiled at Milt and gave Dane a little wink. “What are you two talking about?”
Dane spoke before Milt had the chance. “Milt here is moving to Palm Springs.”
Seth laughed. “What?”
They were quiet for a moment, and Milt was certain that Seth thought his husband was kidding around. Nothing much ever changed in Summitville. And teachers certainly didn’t leave Summitville High midterm to hightail it off to Southern California.
When no one picked up the conversational thread, Seth wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and caught Milt’s eye. “He’s fucking with me, right?”
And for just a moment, the ideadidseem absurd, a flight of fancy, something one would think of in the midst of emotional trauma, but with the passage of time would come to seem like a silly notion.
Maybe when it was time to retire he could move out there, get himself a little casita with a pool.
Milt shook his head. No. The idea wasn’t the passing notion of a bereaved man. It had force. And even though Milt had yet to work out the logistics of what he knew everyone would view as a rash move, he felt deep in his gut:I’m gonna do this.
Milt blew out a big sigh. “If he’s fucking with you, brother, I don’t need to see it. If he’s pulling your leg, depending on the circumstances, I might not need to see that either. But if you think your big, strapping hubby is having you on—joking with you—well, I’m afraid that’s not the case.” Milt looked down at the checked floor for a second, noticing the imprint of a muddy shoe, and then back up at Seth. “I’m moving to Palm Springs.”
Seth shook his head, an uncertain smile creasing his face. “When?”
And Milt, even though he hadn’t thought about it until right this very moment, said, “I’m putting the house on the market this week. Corky and I owned it outright, and even though the real estate market here is shit, I think our river view and our fabulous taste will see it sold quickly.” Milt allowed himself only a moment to get a little choked up at the thought of their home, stripped bare of memories, inhabited by new people ready to put their own stamp on it. He knew that, later, he could grieve. Perhaps in a backyard with a lemon tree in it….
