John Nettles

Coffee for Mother In our old neighborhood, at Buddy's convenience store (corner of North and North Highland Avenues), where I once saw a cop bounce a drunk's head off the fender of his cruiser, leaving a bloody smear, and where this fat, bearded guy dressed up as Batman used to hit on the slacker girls by saying he was a record exec, until the cops picked him up for violating the Mask Law, there was a guy who'd come in every morning for coffee with his invisible mother. Two cups -- he took his black, she took hers with cream and two sugars, I know because he'd ask her every time: "Mother, would you like cream? Sugar? Two?" looking straight at a patch of air just below his shoulder, then he'd pay for the coffee and go, holding both cups and the door for Mom. I'd see him later, walking and talking with her and nodding, and I'd look for the beige puddle, the split styrofoam husk, from where he tried to hand his mother her coffee and the poor dear proved too far gone to take it.

Copyright © 1999 John Nettles All Rights Reserved