Free Dear Mr. You by Mary -Louise Parker

with Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque and hang off the edge of the bed while the blood circulated to our olive green faces. We’d dangle there and he’d smoke while explaining Fosse to me, or Jesus, or the combo platter of both. Once the mask became hard we’d see who could make the other laugh to crack it. He died before he was even thirty, “off to meet my maker,” as he said. I hope he got a big welcome party, with the disciples greeting him in footless tights with leg warmers and sweet tea. And Frank! You can take your Rambo’sand 007’s; if the apocalypse were approaching and Frank nearby, I’d have hid behind him. He could slay anyone with an actual fencing foil, or build a house from a hammer and some twine. He was Excalibur, Mercutio, and Robin Hood. Had he lived, he would have played every armor-wearing, sword-toting hero that enters on a horse and saves the day. I wish to God I could have seen that.
    •  •  •
    “Hey Cindy Lou Who!”
    “Hey Ladybug!”
    “Hey Miss I Cried at the Harvey Milk High School Awards!”
    “Hey Kay Sedia!”
    We’ll be together in a week. I don’t know what I will wear when we go to see our drag show. I’ll think of you when I choose my shoes. I’ll pick something in hopes that you’ll say: Look at you, Miss Girl, don’t you look pretty?
    Nowadays, months can go by without any opportunity to even say hey there, but the last time we saw each other, you said I walked away and it occurred to you that I was someone always happy to see you. You knew I’d be at your side in a flash. What you’d been looking for in a boyfriend was not as important now that we were older. Sex was not hard to find, you thought, but the other stuff? Maybe it was right there, walking across the street in a Gucci trench, and you said
    Why am I such a miserable cunt that I want more?
    All the things I want and need are right there in her
    It’s true, Scarecrow. I’ve been in your own backyard all along.
    Next week we are going to par-tay, we’re going to have the kind of night where you come home still giggling when you’re brushing your teeth. Before you fall asleep you’ll check to see if the cute boy you met has sent you a text. When you pick up your phone it will be lit up to alert that someone is thinking of you at one thirty in the morning and when you click messages, there will be one and it will say
    HEY MISS WOMAN

Dear Big Feet,
    I never saw your eyes since they were closed, but your feet captured my attention. They poked out from under a sheet. I’m assuming they were wider than the norm because they seemed in proportion to their length, which obscured your face and an inch or so of afro above it. I have projected a lot onto those feet, not knowing anything about you other than the fact that you were a big deal on the basketball court. You may have been dreaming of life as an NBA star the day I spied you there. Obviously I don’t know if you were a medium or big dreamer or if your mother did the dreaming for both of you. I don’t know any of that.
    I understand that everything I observed about your mother over those few days was colored by the fact that she was alone in a hospital waiting area. She sat on the couch like some rare species of sparrow, fine boned and immobile. I never saw anyone with her and I don’t know how long she’d been there. My dad had just been moved to that floor of the hospital. He was recovering frombrain surgery for a neurological disorder with the odd burlesque name of “tic douloureux.” My dad got through every stage of his procedure without much drama. It went as well as brain surgery can go, but we stayed close by and were in and out of his room, the waiting room, and the cafeteria numerous times a day. It was one afternoon while making my way to the waiting room that I saw your feet and that little corner of your face, with doctors around you in a tableau that did not look promising. When I got to the waiting room I saw your mother perched