Mom’s Paul Tale
(I love Paul McCartney, so I want everyone who reads this story to know that everything here is FICTIONAL and if Paul has any other kids out there besides Martha and his 4 with Linda, that is his business and your guess is as good as mine.)
I’ve always had my tie with the cult followings that come with music groups. Ever since I’ve been old enough to ask where baby’s come from, my Mom has claimed that she’s an illegitimate child of Paul McCartneys, but I always attributed her claims to past use of LSD.
For one thing she was born in 1961, and the Beatles weren’t even famous then. Another fact is that they didn’t even travel to the United States until the mid-sixties. I also know her parents have never been out of Whitehall, New Jersey, and that my grandmother was never one to cat around, or lie about it.
I thought there was no way she could have been adopted. My grandfather and her have the same thin eyes that make you think twice about them possibly being Chinese. I myself was conceived when my mom was in the eighth grade. I’m lucky I wasn’t born a girl, statistics say that 3 in 5 girls born from teen parents will most likely become one themselves.
Mom says she was taken advantage of by a boy at a party. My uncle told me the truth after a little league game one night, that Mom had been screwing around with her math teacher. I wonder what Paul McCartney would think about having his name thrown around in all this.
I had always been leery about the Paul tale Mom had been telling for as long as I can remember. “My REAL mother” Mom says, “saw Paul McCartney playing in a bar in Liverpool. Her and Paul had sex, and never saw each other again. After I was born, she gave me up for adoption and I was shipped over seas to here where the Garrison’s took me in.”
To this, the person hearing the tale would ask how she knows this to which she would answer, “ I know this is the truth because I had a very vivid dream one night when I was seven in which my birth mother comes picks me up in an old Volkswagen Beetle telling me that my REAL father’s name is Paul and that he is part of a band named just like the car we are in.
Everything else was revealed to me and just flashed in front of my eyes. I put 2 and 2 together and know it is true, that Paul McCartney is my father, and I assume the position of his illegitimate child.”
In sixth grade I heard this saying that goes, “When you assume you make an ass out of you (u) and me.” Growing up, I always though somebody should have told Mom that one.
A few months ago, I decided to go back to Whitehall to visit Mom for Easter. It had almost 2 years since I’ve been out of college, regretting every cent spent on attaining an art degree from a local college. I sat around between cigarettes and re-runs waiting to get inspired, but nothing ever came.
I remember hearing about Muses, but I’d never met one. Either I hadn't been looking hard enough, or they don’t want to waste their time on me. With all the other artistic talent running around in my family, I thought there’s no room for it. My sarcasm got the best of me and I know that Paul just had a new album come out that spring, and they probably spent all their energy on him.
As I walked in the door that day, I heard the clicking of toenails on the linoleum as Govey came running out of the bathroom. Govey is my mother’s potbelly pig. Govey is short for Government.
She bought Govey back in the eighties when potbelly pigs were the newest fad in the pet world. He was no heavier than 10 pounds and was as big as a Cabbage Patch kid, but now he’s close to the size of a garbage can, and smells like one too. I like him for the most part, as long as he doesn’t pass gas when I’m around or poke at my legs when I’m wearing shorts.
I had just made a run to the store to buy milk for Mom’s cooking. Before leaving, I argued with Mom about the ham she bought for our Easter dinner a week ago. “It’s like eating Govey” I told had her, “A processed, born to be slaughtered Govey that never had any freedom.”
My ex-girlfriend once told me that I am on a crusade to save the world when it comes to vegetarianism. I dumped her when she started working at McDonalds.
“I don’t see why you’ve decided to stop eating meat” my mom called to me while peeling potatoes in the sink of our kitchen. One thing about mom is that she never forgets things that she disagrees with. “You’re favorite food used to be Campbell’s Chicken and Stars soup.”
“Mom, I was five, and you were too lazy to cook anything else.” I replied as I threw my tired body on the old green sofa. Mom moved to this apartment when she turned nineteen. I was almost 5 years old, and don’t remember living anywhere else. I know my grandparents let her live at home while she worked as a waitress at a local diner for a bit, but I don’t remember much of a home before that. We did a lot of moving around.
“I had a friend named Nancy who stopped eating meat and she got some sort of virus or something.” Mom said as she walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, wiping her hands against her sweatpants. “Nearly died!”
“Mom, Nancy had Hepatitis B, grandpa told me.” I responded. I also happened to know that Nancy had slept her way around a Grateful Dead tour in the early 80’s. While taking my shoes off, I motioned to the bag I had laying next to me and told Mom, “There’s the milk you wanted.”
“Do you still drink milk?” she asked in a voice much louder and full of sarcasm then it needed to be. I wonder what happened to Mom, I’ve seen pictures of her wearing orange vinyl pants and sequined tops with a fancy looking glass in her hand. She used to be crazy and untamed. Now she’s just crazy. But as for the untamed, her only risk is the 5$ she spends every day on Scratch-And-Win for the New Jersey State Lottery.
Back in the mid-seventies, a couple of months after I was born, Mom clubbed her way around New York City. She left Whitehall with a fake ID and two hundred and twenty dollars she stole from the collection envelope one Sunday after acolyting for church. The head deacon had said “That’s what happens when you let a hussy have a part in the Lord’s house.” My grandparents knew she’d be back, 10 months and many prayers later, she returned.
After a short time home, Mom and her friend Nancy went spent 2 years touring with the Grateful Dead, dragging me and Nancy’s German Shepherd through every part of the United States.
I have one memory of this, and it involves a lady asking me if I wanted a balloon and somebody (my mom or Nancy, I’m not sure) telling her no because I might choke on it. That makes no sense, but it’s all I remember of being a toddler. I guess God lets us forget things for a reason. I’ve never liked the Grateful Dead, and I think there may be a reason for that too.
“Milk? I drink milk, for now.” Remembering her question, I mumbled before rolling off the couch to search for the remote control. I flipped through the channels and stopped it on CNN. There it was. Linda McCartney, wife of Paul, had died. “MOM!” I yelled from the living room “Linda is dead!”
We’re on a first name basis when it comes to any member of the Beatles or Grateful Dead. My mom used to really confuse our old neighbors when she’d sit at the bus stop and talk about how John and his wife were having problems, or how Jerry’s drug use was getting out of hand. She talks like she knows them personally. Mom thanks her lucky stars for the invention of TV, but I just regard it as a peeping tom into the personal lives of the rich and famous.
Mom hurried in front of the TV, and stood spellbound as the reporter talked of Linda’s long battle with cancer. Pictures sporadically popped up on the screen of Linda with horses, with her children, and with Paul. Mom started sobbing, “My father must be heartbroken! When’s the funeral, Orion, did they say anything about the funeral?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t been paying much attention to what was said I was shocked after seeing the picture of Linda with her daughter, Stella, who looked like a well-kept, thinner version of Mom. Stella was hot, and it made me sick to my stomach thinking that any math teacher had wanted to bang my 13 year old Mom at one time.
Mom calmly grabbed the telephone and shut herself in her room. I was never prepared for what happened next, but I didn’t want her going alone. Three days later I found myself on a plane headed to a memorial service in Santa Barbara, sitting next to Mom who was dressed in a cheap black dress and big brim hat.
She said that Linda’s her stepmother, and that it’s only common courtesy for us to pay our respects. I was wondering how Mom and I were going to get into the funeral. Before this, I’d never tried to go to a service for a dead celebrity, but I was guessing that only a select few friends and family members are allowed to attend.
Still, Mom wouldn’t tell how she got the name of the place is was to be held, or, whom she got it from. But the thin-lipped smile of contentment on her face told me that she was ready for whatever hobnobbing in Santa Barbara with her supposed birthfather and his family brought us.
The hotel we stayed in had a nice Jacuzzi, but it was on the bottom floor and our room was on the 5th floor, so we decided to stay in for the night, watching TV. The jetlag made us sleepy, and we nodded off around 9pm California time. This made me wake up around 6, and lay in my bed listening to Mom snore and murmur in her sleep. That day was one of the biggest days of Mom’s life, and I was glad she was getting the rest she needed.
The rental car smelled of cigarettes and oranges as I drove down us the freeway, Mom fiddling with the radio saying, “I want to hear some Beatles. It would only be right to hear some Beatles. Why doesn’t anybody out here play any Beatles?” She stopped on a song by an Alternative Band that I knew a little bit about, and left it at that.
Mom pulled out a piece of notebook paper and called out “You want to take the interstate to exit 5, that’s Santa Barbara West, Orion, please don’t miss the exit”. We drove in silence until we reached where the memorial service was. Linda McCartney was being remembered at a small orchid and rose garden. The entrance was lined with cars and I immediately felt out of place.
I pulled the car up to an available space and turned off the ignition. A strange feeling overcame me, and I hesitated opening my door. “Mom”, I said calmly, “I don’t think we belong here”.
“But of course we do, son” she answered, “Linda is just as much your family as she is mine, she may not be blood but my father….”
“MOM!” I yelled, “PAUL MCCARTNEY IS NOT YOUR FATHER! OK?” I saw her lower lip begin to quiver, so I toned it down a bit, “Mom, your father is back in New Jersey. He never recorded any albums, never traveled around the world, but he loves you. Linda and you have no ties, I’m just along for the ride, so cant we just go home before you embarrass yourself anymore than you already have?”
She looked out the window, and I could see tears welling up in her eyes by the reflection of the rear view mirror. “No.” Mom said sternly as she unlocked the door and ran over to the gathering of people about a hundred yards away from the car. I watched her as I too stepped out of the car and briskly made my way over. I had to save her; I had to get her to come back with me to New Jersey. I didn’t want her making a fool out of herself in front of all these people.
As I approached the ceremony, I saw a vase of flowers on a wood podium with a picture showing blond Linda in her younger years, her chin resting on her weaved fingers and the same smile that I had seen in many magazines while growing up. I had never met Linda, but I still felt sorry for her family, and was sorry she had died. After all, she was a vegetarian.
Paul stood quietly beside the podium with their 4 children. One of the girls was sobbing uncontrollably and trying to find a place to wipe what came from her nose. She had on a sleeveless grey dress, so that was near impossible. Her brother reached into his pocket and offered a handkerchief, which she accepted. Mom started from the back of the crowd and slowly worked her way to the front.
I held my breath. Paul began to recite a poem he had written for Linda in her last week of life and Mom took a step away from the crowd towards the McCartneys. “No Mom” I said silently in my head. “Go back. Come back here with me.”
Not seeing Mom, Paul continued to speak “…and two days before her death she went horseback riding with James and I. It was here that I took some wonderful photographs that will last the rest of my lifetime…” Mom inched closer and closer to the McCartneys until she was standing right next to the daughter that had been having the trouble controlling the output of her nose.
“Mom!” I whispered quietly not to disturb Paul’s speech, “Mom!” She ignored me and stood right next to Paul and Linda’s daughter as if she belonged there herself. Nobody in the crowd seemed to make a stir, they were either crying or hanging on to Paul’s every word.
I wondered where the bodyguards were, and why they had not stopped my mother in her 30$ Sears dress and gaudy black hat from joining this classy group of celebrities who were morning the loss of a dear mother and wife.
“In closing, let us remember my wife Linda for who she was and what she stood for. Thank You” Paul concluded. The crowd stood silent for a while before deciding to form a line to look at the vase and picture of Linda.
Mom continued moving closer and closer to Paul. I lost sight of her when the crowd morphed to a line, I got stuck behind 2 women with short hair and matching black suits and sunglasses. Luckily I’m 6 feet tall, so I stood up on my tiptoes, but couldn’t find her. I played in my head a scene in which an ambulance from the local mental ward pulls up and 2 psychiatrists from General Hospital take Mom away in a straight jacket. In California I’ve always thought of everything being dramatic, just like on TV.
After about 10 minutes of looking for Mom and having visions of her embarrassing where a bouts, I followed in line and reached the podium. Paul stood on one side of it, and his children, including Mom(!), on the other. He reached out shook my hand and I muttered all I could think of for the moment, “I’m sorry for your loss”, and went about my way.
I walked a few feet, and turned back, trying to catch Mom’s eye, but she was busy crying, shaking hands, and receiving hugs and pats on the shoulder. All I could do was smile and watch her. I rationalized by thinking to myself, “What were the McCartney’s going to do. Disrupt Linda’s funeral and shoo this strange lady away?”
The whole procession of viewers took close to an hour. I saw Yoko Ono walk through that line, escorted by her son, Sean. I watched as Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton gave Paul an assuring hug and a few brief words. I could tell that Mom was in her glory when an elderly Elizabeth Taylor embraced her and gave her, along with the four McCartney children a single white rose.
These were the people I had grown up hearing stories about as if they were my own family. It was like a reunion, only I was the invisible relative that nobody knew anything about.
People started returning to their cars and the assembly slowly thinned out. Before too long, it was just the McCartney’s standing by the podium with their swollen eyes and damp cheeks. I gently walked back and linked arms with Mom. “Its time to go” I whispered gently in her ear, “Its time to go”
As I pulled her away, Paul called out, “Gina, thank you for coming.” Paul McCartney knew Mom’s name?!? Mom let go of me, and went back to speak with him, startled I turned around to follow her.
“You’re welcome, Dad” Mom said as she herself embraced none other than Paul McCartney and his other children before turning around and walking back over to me.
“Time to go, Orion” she said, “Linda would have wanted it this way.” Her stepmother would have wanted it this way. Paul and his children waved as we walked to our car. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as if I was going to wet my pants worse than I did walking away from that podium.
The plane ride back to New Jersey was a quiet one. Mom put on her headphones to watch the in-flight movie, and I decided to read one of the magazines they had available. I don’t remember many details about the flight home, but since then I’ve found my Muse and sold a bunch of paintings to a gallery in Manhattan.
After all, who wouldn’t want to own something painted by the grandson of Paul McCartney?
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