That we—you and me—had become one in her mind.
Richard Gere.
Bartholomew Neil.
We.
Mom took her hand off my thigh and said, “You’re a handsome man, Richard, the love of my life even, but I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. You made your choice, so you’ll just have to sleep on the couch. See you in the morning.” Then she floated up the stairs, moving quicker than she had in months.
She looked ecstatic.
Like the haloed saints depicted in stained glass at Saint Gabriel’s, Mom seemed to be guided by divinity. Her madness appeared holy. She was bathed in light.
As uncomfortable as that exchange was, I liked seeing Mom lit up. Happy. And pretending has always been easy for me. I have pretended my entire life. Plus there was the game from my childhood, so I had certainly practiced.
Somehow—because who can say exactly how these things come to be—over many days and weeks, Mom and I slipped into a routine.
We both began pretending.
She pretended I was you, Richard Gere.
I pretended Mom wasn’t losing her mind.
I pretended she wasn’t going to die.
I pretended I wouldn’t have to figure out life without her.
Things escalated, as they say.
By the time she was confined to the pullout bed in the living room with a morphine pain pump spiking her arm, I was playing you twenty-four hours a day, even when Mom was unconscious, because it helped me, as I faithfully pushed the button every time she grimaced.
To her I was no longer Bartholomew, but Richard.
So I decided I would indeed be Richard and give Bartholomew some well-deserved time off, if that makes any sense to you, Mr. Gere. Bartholomew had been working overtime as his mother’s son for almost four decades. Bartholomew had been emotionally skinned alive, beheaded, and crucified upside down, just like his apostle namesake, according to various legends, only metaphorically—and in the modern world of today and right now.
Being Richard Gere was like pushing my own mental morphine pain pump.
I was a better man when I was you—more confident, more in control, surer of myself than I have ever been.
The hospice workers went along with my ruse. I firmly instructed them to call me Richard whenever we were in the room with Mom. They looked at me like I was crazy, but they did as I asked, because they were hired help.
Hospice workers took care of Mom only because they were being paid. I wasn’t under any illusion that these people cared about us. They glanced at their cell phone clocks fifty times an hour and always looked so relieved when they put on their coats at the end of their shifts—like departing from us was akin to attending a wonderful party, like walking out of a morgue and into the Oscars.
When Mom was sleeping, the hospice workers sometimes called me Mr. Neil, but whenever she was awake I was you, Richard, and they were doing as I asked because of the money they were being paid by the insurance company. They even used a very formal, reverent tone when they addressed us. “Can we do anything to make your mother more comfortable, Richard?” they’d say whenever she was awake, although they never once called me Mr. Gere, which was okay with me, since you and Mom were on a first-name basis from the start.
I want you to know that Mom truly loved watching the Olympics. She never missed the games—she used to watch with her mother too—and watching gave her such great pleasure, maybe because she never left the Philadelphia area during her seventy-one years on earth. She used to say that watching the Olympics was like taking a foreign vacation every four years, even after they switched the winter and summer games to different years, and therefore the Olympics occurred every two years, which I’m sure you know already.
(Sorry for being redundant, but I am writing to you as Bartholomew Neil—unlike you in every way imaginable. I hope you will bear with me and forgive me my commonness. I am not pretending to be Richard Gere at the time of writing. I am much more eloquent when I am you. MUCH. Bartholomew Neil is no movie star; Bartholomew Neil has never had sex with a supermodel; Bartholomew Neil never even escaped the city in which you and I were born, Richard Gere, the City of Brotherly Love; Bartholomew Neil is sadly intimate with these facts. And Bartholomew Neil is not much of a writer either, which you have already surmised.)
Mom loved gymnastics, especially the triangle-torsoed men, who “moved like warrior angels.” She clapped until her palms were pink whenever someone did the iron cross on the rings. That was her favorite. “Strong as Jesus on his worst day,” she’d say. And she even watched the opening and closing ceremonies—every second. Every Olympic event they televised, Mom watched.
But when she received your letter—the one I mentioned earlier, outlining the atrocities committed against Tibet by the Chinese government—she decided not to watch the Olympics set in China, which was a great sacrifice for her.
“Richard Gere is right! We should be sending the People’s Republic of China a message! Horrible! What they are doing to the Tibetan people. Why doesn’t anyone care about basic human rights?” Mom said.
I must admit that—being far more pessimistic, resigned, and apathetic than Mom ever was—I argued futilely for watching the Olympics. (Please forgive me, Mr. Gere. I had little faith back then.) I said that our watching or not watching wouldn’t even be documented, let alone have any impact on foreign relations whatsoever—“China won’t even know we aren’t watching! Our boycott will be pointless!” I protested—but Mom believed in you and your cause, Mr. Gere. She did what you asked, because she loved you and had the faith of a child.