Page 11 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
“His blood, my blood, our bodies are as one, I still feel his kiss, his lips as sure as the morning, but he’s gone, the oceans rise, and the winter calls without him.”
—“The Song of the Dead,”The Wooden Horse, Act Two
Jonah didn’t hesitate before answering his phone. When his mum’s face lit up the screen and sent vibrations skittering across his dressing table, his hands were around it within seconds. He’d been waiting for her calls, eager to get them instead of dreading her lovely round face appearing on his screen like usual, expecting bad news. A little over a month had passed since their conversation in the kitchen and he could still hear her chest sucking in painful breaths as tears created rivers around her home back in Cornwall. Weeks of her not finding a home for Dad. Weeks of excuses and empty promises. He sent her links to nursing homes he found himself, nice places overlooking the sea where Dad could sit out in well-maintained gardens and still hear the waves crashing against the edges of cliffs, but she found fault with them all.
The research, however, helped him take his mind off Edward and the seven months he spent fucking Wes while still fucking him. He never thought dementia homes would quell the burning rage and heartache he could feel brimming in his core at all hours of the day, but desperate times called for unusual desperate measures.
“Mum?”
“Sausage!” Her voice sounded surprisingly jovial. “I’ve got the girlsround, and we were just talking about something totally outrageous that happened yesterday, and I justhadto tell you.”
Jonah eyed the clock on the wall in his dressing room. He needed to be onstage for warm-up in five minutes, but he could hear a slight slur in her words and his chest constricted as he thought of her and her friends sipping wine while Dad sat unaided somewhere in the house.
“I’m at work. Mum, can it wait?”
“Why answer the phone if you can’t talk to me?”
Jonah bit down on the inside of his cheek before answering. “I always answer when I can in case it’s important, you know, something up with you or dad. Did you look at the new homes I sent you links to?”
“Well, no, Jonah, I didn’t, because something rather awful happened yesterday.”
“What happened? I thought you said it was outrageous and now it’s awful? Are you both okay?”
The phone rustled and Jonah could picture her propping it against her ear with her shoulder while she busied herself with something else as another woman laughed in the background. “There was a flasher down on the beach.” The sound of a cork being popped from a bottle of wine interrupted her sentence. “Showed his willy to all the people down there trying to eat their sandwiches.”
“Blimey,” Jonah said with a slight laugh.
“It’s not funny, Jonah. Agatha, you remember Agatha, don’t you? The woman who grows the broad beans? Well, she hadn’t seen a penis in a decade, nearly gave her a heart attack. She choked on her scone, the poor thing.”
“Is she okay now?”
“A bit shaken. She had to give a police statement. Can you imagine going down the station and having to tell an officer about the willy you saw on the beach?” He could hear the wine being poured into a glass. “When was the last time you saw a penis, dear?”
Jonah made a strangled noise from the back of his throat. “Is that your way of asking me how my love life is? I told you Edward broke up withme. No penis viewings for me. And, Mum, seriously, I need to go, I’ve got to do warm-ups then get ready.”
“I just want to know why you can’t hold down a boyfriend, Jonah. You work in the theatre, it’s the prime place to meet someone. Isn’t that where all the gays are?”
Jonah looked to the ceiling and let out a slow breath. “ ‘All the gays’?”
“Darling, I knew you were gay the moment you came down the stairs draped in my sequin cardigan and made me and your father watch you perform ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ for us in the living room. You were seven. You’re telling me you’re the only gay in the theatre?”
“It’s true, no homosexual can deny the call of Barbra Streisand.”
“Who?”
“I will not dignify that question with an answer. Look, Mum, you need to get back to me once you’ve looked at those places I sent you—” The door to his dressing room opened and Sherrie’s usually smiling face frowned at him from the hallway. He waved his hand at her, then pointed to his phone. “Mum, look I’ve got to go.”
“Fine,” she snapped, the wine-induced playfulness gone. “Go play pretend. It’s far more important than talking to me, isn’t it?”
“Mum, don’t be like that. It’s my job, please—” She hung up. Jonah looked at his phone, momentarily bewildered, then placed it down on his dresser.
“Parents, huh?” Sherrie said, pushing the door open more to let him out into the hallway.
His eyes fell on Bastien’s closed door, and he went to knock before Sherrie stopped him. “What? He didn’t wait for me?”
“The fact you two have to walk everywhere together around here is slightly concerning,” Sherrie quipped. “But, no, Bastien’s sick.”
“He is? He didn’t tell me.”
