ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part One, Chapter 54: A Real Departure

Joshua has appeared on every stage in town and even beyond. Next stop: Los Angeles. L. A.

He buys a black BMW motorcycle about as old as he is and teaches himself how to ride it. He buys a tool kit for it and twin saddlebags. He retrieves his savings from the bank, loads the few possessions he’s taking with him into the saddlebags, and steels himself for the two thousand mile journey across mountain and desert.

“I used to be scared of dying,” he tells Ernie and me as we three stand in the parking lot of our apartment building. His bike’s beside him. “I’m not scared of Death anymore.”

I don’t think about what his words suggest: that he’s worried about surviving this journey; that he has doubts about making it. Instead, I look into his clear blue eyes. I hug him. He’s wearing a thick leather jacket that masks his body, fit from throwing newspapers and cutting grass. Ernie isn’t comfortable with hugs, but he puts his arms around Joshua, who’s five inches taller, and hugs him. Ernie’s eyes blink. Blink again.

Joshua gets on his motorcycle. Revs it up. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. I’ll call you every night. The worst part of going to L. A. is leaving you guys.” He puts on his helmet.

Ernie and I walk behind him as he slowly leaves the lot. We wave and keep waving until he throws up his hand a final time, then disappears in traffic. We can no longer hear his motorcycle. Silently, we head back to our apartment.

“Maybe we’ll go to a baseball game tonight,” Ernie says.

“Maybe so.”

Joshua’s the one Ernie goes to the track with. Joshua’s the one he plays cards with, goes to movies with, plays putt-putt with. Joshua is his playmate and fellow artist, his friend. Maybe Ernie considers him his best friend. Maybe Ernie considers me a traitor. Maybe I am.

Ernie disappears into Joshua’s room, perhaps to catch a final whiff of him. Perhaps to touch the lavender shirt still hanging in Joshua’s closet, the shirt that’s faded and frayed and looks just like him, the shirt he wore in an outdoor stage play. Perhaps Ernie’s opening a top drawer to take out one of the bandannas Joshua wears about his head when he cuts grass.

What Ernie comes out with is a Playboy.

When I next see Ernie, he’s seated on the living-room floor, his back against the daybed, the magazine in his lap, a pained expression on his face as his hand moves up and down, up and down under the Playboy, its pages moving as Ernie’s hand moves.

I go back to our bedroom. Ernie’s hurting, and I don’t know how to comfort him. Perhaps I never have.