By Lisa Scottoline
They say that the past isn’t even past, and that’s always true when Mother Mary is around.
It all begins with a call from Brother Frank.
“I got bad news,“ he says. “We’re bastards.”
“Wha?” asks I.
“Well, we went to get mom’s driver’s license renewed.”
So far, I’m following. Mother Mary doesn’t drive, but she carries an ID card that the Florida DMV issues. Her last card expired, which I found out on her last visit after I tried to put her on a plane back to Miami. They wouldn’t let her fly until they patted her down, which she enjoyed way too much.
“The DMV says we can’t renew her ID card without her marriage certificate.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s a woman who’s using her married name.”
“So what?” I’m trying to understand. I don’t see what a driver’s license has to do with a marriage certificate, especially at this point in my mother’s life. My father passed in 2002, and my parents have been divorced for ever. They were married in 1950, a time when people balanced spinning plates on TV. Now that’s entertainment.
“It’s a new law, since September 11th.”
In the background, I hear my mother yelling, “Those terrorists, they should be ashamed of themselves!”
I nod in approval. That someone should be ashamed of themselves is the worst thing she says about anyone. And when she’s really mad, she’ll shout, “Out of my sight!” I fear for the terrorists if they ever meet Mother Mary. She’ll order them out of her sight, take off her shoe, and throw it at them. She always hits her target. There are missile-launchers with less accuracy.
But to say on point, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Frank, can this be true?”
“Yes. We were in line behind a 92 year old woman whose husband had been dead for fifty years, and they wouldn’t give her an ID card. She had taken two buses to get there, so we gave her a ride home. She said it was a mikveh.”
I wince. “You mean a mitzvah, which is a good deed.”
“What’s a mikveh?”
“Forget it. Tell the story.”
“So we called the hall of records back home, and they can’t find her marriage certificate anywhere.”
“Do the records go back that far?”
“Yes, but the certificate is lost. Or it never existed.”
I blink. “It has to exist. They got married.”
“Yeah, but they’re’s no proof.”
Behind him, my mother’s yelling, “It’s all because of the terrorists!”
I let it go. “So what now?”
“She can’t visit you until we straighten this out.”
Which would be the good news.
Just kidding.
I ask, “What about a passport?”
“She needs the ID card. She’s gonna show a passport to write a check? And we’re illegitimate.”
“Does it matter?” I wonder aloud. In the olden days, they used to call it being born out of wedlock, but I never liked the word wedlock. It has a faintly incarcerated air, which fits my marital history to a T.
“I don’t know if it matters. It seems like everybody’s illegitimate, these days. I feel kind of cool.”
I laugh. “I know, right? We’re Brad and Angelina’s twins.”
“I’ll be the boy.”
“I’ll be the girl.”
Mother Mary shouts, “Bastards!”
But I don’t ask which ones she means.
Copyright © Lisa Scottoline