The Ballad of Michael & Beulah

Take off your halo
Take off your golden crown
The spotlight's off
The shades are down

Where are your friends now?
They're ghosts in a windowpane
Sometimes it's hard to stay the same

'Cause we can live lifetimes
In a single day
No matter what you do
I love you anyway

* * *

The sun was setting on another day in the East Bay as commuters made the tiring trek home from working like a dog in the hilly city of San Francisco. Then there were those people who lived in the city and were going out for an evening of cocktails and dancing to throw away their worldly woes for just one night while the commuters arrived on their doorsteps, worn out and tired and ready to have a late dinner with their family and watch a little television to help wind themselves down.

And not far away from said commuters, an elderly man in his mid to late seventies walked slowly into his kitchen and opened the fridge door; standing there for a few moments with a contemplative look on his weathered face.

"What was I coming in the kitchen for?" he called out, confusion taking over as he stood up a little straighter.

"I dunno," replied his wife from the other room. "I thought you said you had to go to the bathroom?"

Raising his eyebrows, the old man nodded. "Oh, yeah."

Shutting the fridge door he walked out of the kitchen and down the small hallway where only a linen closest and downstairs bathroom were located. Turning the bathroom light on, but leaving the door open, the old man unzipped his pants and took the piss he'd almost forgotten to take.

When he was finished going, he washed his hands well with a good lathering of soap that foamed up in his hands as soon as it squirted into his palms, and rinsed them cleaned. Wiping them on a towel, he walked out of the bathroom and shut the door; forgetting about the light.

"Babe, I don't know why I went into the kitchen when I needed to piss. I even opened the fridge up as if I was hungry," he muttered in disbelief as he entered the living room to find his wife of forty-three years sitting comfortably on the couch with the remote control beside her. "I hope I'm not getting Alzheimer's. If I am, feel free to take me out back and shoot me."

His wife looked up and smiled, patting the cushion beside her; gesturing for him to join her. "We're just old farts now. Our brain cells are dying faster than if we were twenty-somethings drinking and smoking them away."

Sitting down, the man stretched his long legs out before him and patted his wife's wrinkly hand, massaging her knuckles as she cooed.

"You're too good to me, Michael Pritchard," she smiled, closing her blue eyes for a moment.

"As long as my ticker's still tickin' I'll always be good to you. You can count on that."

Mike looked at his wife, Beulah, with a satisfied grin. He'd never thought he'd have the perfect life with a perfect wife. And he didn't, because nothing's perfect. But being with Beulah was the next best thing. She was as good as it gets. There was nowhere to go with what they had than down. They'd been married more than four decades. The first twenty of which had been quite tumultuous what with raising their children and then having each other's fidelity in question. Their personal lives clashing with their professional lives. And so on, so forth.

But after all the bumps and bruises they'd endured and gathered, they'd stuck by each other's side and come out stronger because of it. There wasn't anything life could throw at them now that could break them down.

"Beulah..." Mike uttered, snapping both of them out of their daydreams.

"Hmm?"

"I slept with another woman twenty-six years ago."

Beulah turned her face to look at him, raising one eyebrow. "You what?"

"I slept with another woman," he repeated, looking down. "It was when we went through that rough patch and I left and went to New York for those two months. I, uh...I met her at a bar and she recognized me and I was drowning my sorrows. We talked about both our marital problems and we began meeting for lunch pretty much every day. But it was almost a month in before we slept together and even then it was only for a few weeks."

Beulah continued to stare at Mike, but made no sign of emotion so Mike was unsure of how she was taking his admission.

"But then everything started to flood back in. I was aching to go home, but scared."

"Why were you scared?"

"I didn't think you'd take me back."

"But I did."

"Yeah, you did. Which still blows my mind. I mean, there I was, standing on my own doorstep with my own set of keys and I coulda walked right in if I'd wanted to, but I knocked. And I waited. And you answered in your bathrobe and those fuzzy slippers with purple, pink and green polka dots on them."

"I'd been asleep. It was six in the morning on a Saturday, if I remember."

"I know. I'd missed my first flight because I was playing catch up with Stella and had to take a red eye. But, there you were. You were in your robe and slippers, with bed head, no make-up, complete with bags under your eyes and you were never more beautiful and I knew this was where I needed to be. It was where I wanted to be."

"And I remember how you looked like a dog with his tail between his legs, trying not to make eye contact to avoid saying anything," Beulah added to the shared memory.

"But then I walked inside and the next thing I knew, you had your arms around my shoulders and were hugging the living daylights outta me."

"You didn't stop me."

"I didn't want to stop you."

Mike and Beulah looked at each other and smiled; his hand still atop her arthritic one.

"You took me back."

"No. We took each other back. Our short-lived split was kinda mutual. You walked out but I had also basically kicked you out. The fighting was getting ridiculous and we needed the time apart to evaluate where we were in our lives and how much we meant to each other. But we couldn't do that successfully with all the tension. It did us good."

Mike looked at her funny. "You're saying you don't care that I slept with another woman?"

"No," she shrugged, turning to face the television. "Because I slept with another man."

Mike's eyes went wide and he blinked a few times, trying to register what his wife had just blurted nonchalantly. "You what? With who?"

"Billie."

Slowly, the 77-year-old retired bassist sighed a breath of relief as he turned away to look at the television as well. "Oh, just him?"

"Just him," she nodded. "I was tipsy. We were in Long Island for Bailey's school concert and we'd had a fight. You took Bailey out on the town and Billie stopped by our room. Things escalated from there," Beulah explained, ever so slightly conjuring up the memory in her head.

"Oh. I thought you were gonna say you slept with the pool boy or something."

"We never had a pool boy."

"Well, then the neighbor's pool boy."

Beulah laughed gently as she leaned to her right so that she could rest her head on Mike's shoulder. "Our neighbors didn't have pools."

"You know what I mean..." the blue-eyed man muttered. "So, then, I guess we're even Steven, huh?"

"Pretty much."

After a few moments of silence, Mike leaned a bit into his wife and asked, "It was just the one time with Billie, right?"

"Yes. We made a pact that night that it was the last time, and it was. Nothing came of it because up to that point him and I couldn't really put up with being alone with each other, remember? We'd always find something to squabble about here or there and it was tiring. But then your group slowly imploding and all the turmoil that I was made the focal point of -- the 'Yoko' -- it turned its ugly head to me and you and we began to implode. But then, I dunno. That last time with Billie, as weird as it had been considering him and I hadn't slept together in years at that point, it kinda turned things around. After you, he was my next best friend. I mean, when you left, he came over and was there for me. Talked with me, sometimes even just watched some TV with me. We became friends, which was all I ever wanted him and I to be."

Mike listened to all this with and open mind and open heart. He knew that there had been something to change the relationship between his best friend and wife, but never knew what it was.

Now he knew.

"Sex changes everything, doesn't it?"

"Oh, yeah."

"But sex with Billie that last time wasn't good enough to continue with him, obviously," Mike smirked.

Beulah heard the smile in her husband's voice and smiled herself. "Nope. He didn't know me sexually anymore. Not that he ever truly did. You did and still do. You know what I like and how, and when."

Throwing an arm around his 69-year-old wife, Mike nodded with smugness. "That I do."

Several more minutes of silence fell over them again as they watched television, until Billie Joe popped into Mike's head again, and suddenly, he became teary-eyed.

Hearing the small, sharp intake of breath from the man's lips, Beulah turned her head upward and frowned. "What's wrong, honey?"

"Just thinking about Billie; how he's been gone for so long."

"Eighteen years four months ago," Beulah added.

"And Tre..."

"I know. How ironic, you know? Testicular cancer."

Mike shook his head. "Shit, has it been nine years already since he died? It feels like yesterday we were visiting him at the hospital."

Mike frowned and leaned forward, causing Beulah to stop leaning on his shoulder. Raising a hand to his left shoulder blade she looked at him with a tilted head and bit her lip.

"I'm the last of a dying breed."

"No, you're not," Beulah insisted. "There's still Davey."

"Havok?" Mike scoffed. "He's become a reclusive old fuck who admitted himself to an old folk's home last year."

"What about the Jasons?"

"Freese has Alzheimer's and wouldn't remember me. White...he moved to Pennsylvania. Felt it was an 'ideal location for retirement.' Cold, snowy winters? That doesn't sound ideal when you're in your seventies and can't lift a shovel the way you could've twenty years earlier," Mike remarked with a hint of bitterness.

"Maybe. But you said you were the last of a dying breed. But you're not. Others in your 'breed' are still alive. Maybe not as kicking, but still alive. And if you think you're alone because your friends are gone in some form or another, you're not that either."

Mike turned his head and laughed very slightly. "I know I'm not alone, babe. I got you, our kids, our grandkids...not to mention my surrogate nieces and nephews..."

"...Joey, Jakob, Ava..."

"...Ramona, Frankito..."

Beulah smiled. "Not to mention Adrienne, Claudia and Anastacia."

"Yep. And my surrogate nieces and nephews' kids..."

"One, big happy family."

Mike nodded, "Yeah, but everyone else is set and can take care of themselves, so all that really matters any more, babe, is you and me."

* * *

You say you feel lost inside
Well I get lonely too
Even in the worst of times
I give my best to you