he was buried. I didn’t know. I didn’t give a shit back then; I was sick of hearing the stories. Only long after I moved away did I take an interest. Now I’ve read a shelf of books about Wyatt and Tombstone and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,and I’ve seen the movie
Tombstone
so many times I can quote it by heart. I’m practically an expert on Wyatt Earp.
He’s buried in a Jewish cemetery, in his third wife’s family plot, although he was the grandson of a Methodist preacher and not a religious man himself. I park at the cemetery entrance and wander the rows for half an hour before I see his stone, tall and black in a field of gray, facing West, bearing his full name: Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. The original marker was small and flat, like the ones around it, but it was stolen in 1957; by then he’d become a legend, so somebody bought him a bigger tombstone. An empty shooter of whiskey, a bullet casing, and a miniature American flag lay atop his grave, a shrine to someone’s idea of him. There’s not much of a view: at the bottom of the hill blank stones wait outside a mason’s shop, and across the street a SuperTarget sprawls along the freeway. I wonder if Wyatt ever thought he’d wind up here.
After the gunfight made him famous, he left Arizona to rove the West, chasing mining booms, gambling, barkeeping, racing horses, bounty-hunting. A decade later he settled in San Francisco, where he had a beautiful wife, a steady job that didn’t get him shot at, important friends. He didn’t talk much about his past in Tombstone, although it caught up with him eventually, as it always would. He later said those first few years in San Francisco were some of the happiest of his life.
I moved here two years ago from Arizona, and I’ve also found a better life: a career, a woman who loves me, smart and successful friends. I take public transportation, eat organic produce, have business cards and a coffee grinder and a roommate from France, hang out at used bookstores and lesbian bars and literary readings. I’ve come a long way from Tombstone, and I should be happy. But this life feels like a lie, because it’s built on one. When I moved here, I denied my mother, lied about her death, kept her pictures in boxes, triednot to think of her. I thought I was leaving all that behind, starting over. It worked, for a while.
Then one night I found myself talking to a friend, Laura. I’d met her just after moving to California, and wanted her right away: big brown eyes and a Tennessee accent, from a factory town in Appalachia, a poet with a wiseass sense of humor who spoke fluent French. She wasn’t single and her parents were still alive, but nobody’s perfect.
We were standing on a fire escape outside a party, talking about relationships. I mentioned a girl I’d been seeing casually, said she was pretty and smart and fun, but her parents were both doctors and she was a slightly different kind of doctor, and she’d gone to Stanford and she drove a Benz, and I couldn’t get past my grudge against people like that enough to date one. Laura said she was going to break up with her boyfriend.
Voices drifted out from the party. Beyond the railing of the fire escape, the gray rooftops of Bernal Heights rose crookedly up the hill. As the silence stretched, I felt my opportunity passing, but before I could bring myself to say how I felt about her, Laura asked about my mother. I’d told her long before that she’d died in a car accident. It wasn’t the time to come clean, standing out there in the gusting wind.
“My stepdad shot her.”
For a moment, Laura didn’t say anything, just stared searchingly at my face. “That’s awful,” she said, and left it at that. We talked about something else and went inside. Soon afterward we started dating. It wasn’t like I’d feared it would be; she didn’t ask a lot of questions or define me by my past.
Afterward, I wondered why, after lying about my family to everyone I met in
Tombstone
so many times I can quote it by heart. I’m practically an expert on Wyatt Earp.
He’s buried in a Jewish cemetery, in his third wife’s family plot, although he was the grandson of a Methodist preacher and not a religious man himself. I park at the cemetery entrance and wander the rows for half an hour before I see his stone, tall and black in a field of gray, facing West, bearing his full name: Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. The original marker was small and flat, like the ones around it, but it was stolen in 1957; by then he’d become a legend, so somebody bought him a bigger tombstone. An empty shooter of whiskey, a bullet casing, and a miniature American flag lay atop his grave, a shrine to someone’s idea of him. There’s not much of a view: at the bottom of the hill blank stones wait outside a mason’s shop, and across the street a SuperTarget sprawls along the freeway. I wonder if Wyatt ever thought he’d wind up here.
After the gunfight made him famous, he left Arizona to rove the West, chasing mining booms, gambling, barkeeping, racing horses, bounty-hunting. A decade later he settled in San Francisco, where he had a beautiful wife, a steady job that didn’t get him shot at, important friends. He didn’t talk much about his past in Tombstone, although it caught up with him eventually, as it always would. He later said those first few years in San Francisco were some of the happiest of his life.
I moved here two years ago from Arizona, and I’ve also found a better life: a career, a woman who loves me, smart and successful friends. I take public transportation, eat organic produce, have business cards and a coffee grinder and a roommate from France, hang out at used bookstores and lesbian bars and literary readings. I’ve come a long way from Tombstone, and I should be happy. But this life feels like a lie, because it’s built on one. When I moved here, I denied my mother, lied about her death, kept her pictures in boxes, triednot to think of her. I thought I was leaving all that behind, starting over. It worked, for a while.
Then one night I found myself talking to a friend, Laura. I’d met her just after moving to California, and wanted her right away: big brown eyes and a Tennessee accent, from a factory town in Appalachia, a poet with a wiseass sense of humor who spoke fluent French. She wasn’t single and her parents were still alive, but nobody’s perfect.
We were standing on a fire escape outside a party, talking about relationships. I mentioned a girl I’d been seeing casually, said she was pretty and smart and fun, but her parents were both doctors and she was a slightly different kind of doctor, and she’d gone to Stanford and she drove a Benz, and I couldn’t get past my grudge against people like that enough to date one. Laura said she was going to break up with her boyfriend.
Voices drifted out from the party. Beyond the railing of the fire escape, the gray rooftops of Bernal Heights rose crookedly up the hill. As the silence stretched, I felt my opportunity passing, but before I could bring myself to say how I felt about her, Laura asked about my mother. I’d told her long before that she’d died in a car accident. It wasn’t the time to come clean, standing out there in the gusting wind.
“My stepdad shot her.”
For a moment, Laura didn’t say anything, just stared searchingly at my face. “That’s awful,” she said, and left it at that. We talked about something else and went inside. Soon afterward we started dating. It wasn’t like I’d feared it would be; she didn’t ask a lot of questions or define me by my past.
Afterward, I wondered why, after lying about my family to everyone I met in
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