Regarding Mister
Before I was born, my parents decided to name me Dwight if I turned out to be a boy. Then, just a week before I was born, my father decided that Michael would be a much better name. My mother didn't agree.
When I was born, they quickly realized I was a boy, and then this is what happened:
Some time after my long expected arrival, the folks at the hospital gave my mother a form to complete. The form made it official: I was a boy (so far, one without a name). It said I weighed so many pounds and ounces. It had the date and time of my birth, and the name and address of the hospital. And there was a blank space labeled Full Legal Name.
After she reviewed the form, my mother paused to consider her decision once again. Then she took the pen and wrote my name for the very first time, right in that space awaiting it.
In the hours between my arrival and the form’s, my mother computed my entire life. She consulted tables of ephemeris; she interpolated the positions of the moon and the sun and the planets, and she calculated the angles between them, right down to the second. She carefully drew little symbols on concentric circles and the lines between them in different colors. She set every detail, and then she pondered, “what does it all mean?” When she figured it out, she was ready for that space awaiting my full legal name.
“Based on his chart, this kid’s going to become a high school geometry teacher. When he grows up, he’ll be called Mister Thorne. So, that’ll be his name.”
She completed the form. She entered my full legal name as Mister Michael Thorne, which made perfect sense, because the tradition in my family is that relatives call each other by middle name, rather than first. The family would call me Michael, and that would please my father . . . . They say he was much closer to furious the night he learned my full legal name.
The summer before I started school, my father arranged to have my name removed. He didn’t want a grade school teacher asking little kids odd questions like, “is Mister Thorne here?” So he took me to the courthouse. He completed another form, and in the space labeled Full Legal Name, he got rid of Mister; I became Michael.
That night, he told his wife what he’d done, and they say it didn’t go over very well at all. There was a big fuss, and then she wouldn’t speak to my father for days. She wouldn’t fix his coffee in the morning, or his dinner at night; she wouldn’t iron his shirts and who knows what else. That was her boy and that was his name, she figured, and my father had absolutely no business messing with that. She told her sisters, “He can get pregnant for nine months and have his own child and name it whatever he wants if it’s so damned important to him.”
Everyone else called me Michael except the person (and her sisters) who knew so much about me and my fate. If she introduced me to someone, she’d say, “I’d like you to meet Mister Thorne.” As far as she was concerned, my father accomplished nothing at the courthouse. “The boy’s going to become a high school geometry teacher, no matter what you call him. It’s all set. He’ll grow up, he’ll teach geometry, and everyone will call him Mister Thorne, whether you like it or not. Just you wait and see.”
Well, I never did become a high school geometry teacher. I taught mathematics at a university for a while, but I can’t say it had anything to do with a moon in Taurus, or a grand trine, or any other type of celestial event.
I last saw her the evening of her last birthday. She was dying because all the cells in one part of her breast — a breast that wasn’t even there any more — were exploding like mad, so much so that they’d taken to exploding in some other part of her body that couldn’t tolerate so many tiny explosions. Her doctor told me that her prospects were measured in days. She was feeling a lot of pain, and they were giving her morphine to ease her.
I entered her room with a bouquet of flowers and she was quickly pleased by the sight. She wasn’t done under by the morphine just then; she was just tired of all the tiny explosions using up so much of her energy and enthusiasm. She eyed the flowers and said how colorful they were. I set them on the nightstand.
We chatted about this and that for a while, and then I told her, “I have a special surprise for you.”
“Oh! And what might that be?”
“Here, take a look at this,” I said, opening my wallet.
The weak smile that the colors of the flowers had brought to her eyes and her lips started to fade. I handed her my brand new driver’s license and social security card, and she looked at me with this old expression — like she thought I might have done something incredibly stupid.
She took the IDs and examined them. In a moment, when she realized I’d changed my name back to the one she gave me, when that notion took its form in her mind, she started laughing. And she couldn’t stop. A nurse looked in to see what was happening, but that just provoked more laughter, which attracted several more nurses, which generated more laughter. But it didn’t last long. After a few minutes, she was exhausted. Then the twin brother of Thanatos came and took her away. One nurse adjusted her covers; the others went back to whatever they were doing before the commotion; I went my way.
That was it. My best friend for so many years and so many . . . how should I say? . . . situations and such . . . . She died before the next day could begin.