A DAY IN A GREAT TRADITION

1 2 4 Y A D A Y I N A G R E A T T R A D I T I O N A N N B E A T T I E We’re the people who are gossiped about. We live in the yellow house with the pink bougainvillea by the cemetery, and every day the Conch Train drives by with a recording telling the tourists that one of the tombstones says, ‘‘I told you I was sick.’’ We’re also gossiped about because we’re sick, though we’re going to live through it, both of us, and I’m optimistic that everybody isn’t going to remain as interested in the two of us as they are today. There’s a new mailman on the route, and he doesn’t even say hello, let alone try out a nervous joke. Also, there’s been a so-called Cemetery Burglar who’s captured the headlines repeatedly in the local paper. He/she/the transgendered robber, whatever this person is – let’s say he – has taken money out of people’s billfolds at night and replaced the billfolds in the pockets from which they were taken, nothing else disturbed. He’s taken computers (of course) and a famous photographer’s favorite camera, an old Leica. People still resist locking their doors, this being Key West. They install motion detectors, cameras, floodlights – but they’ll be damned if they’ll lock their doors. It’s not that kind of place, and giving up, giving in, might bring the whole island bad jujus. Yesterday a doctor’s prescription-drug pad was taken, though his 1 2 5 R money clip remained in his backpack, untouched. Maybe the guy didn’t know it was there, on the bottom. So the burglar has been a good distraction, and many months have passed since we first came to a lot of people’s attention, and right now the Olympics are on, and before that of course there was the Superbowl. That sort of thing also gives people something to talk about. When I used the word sick before, it was a word chosen for convenience. I did have surgery for a bleeding ulcer that wouldn’t heal and, almost simultaneously, while still recovering, a root canal , but that isn’t why people talk about me or my husband. Some think my husband is ‘‘sick’’ because he was approved for transgender surgery. That wouldn’t be unheard-of here, but my husband is quite famous. Before he got rheumatoid arthritis, he played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Seiji Ozawa is a frequent house guest, as YoYo Ma has been, and as Justin Bieber will never be, though Madonna once came to visit during the time she was having a relationship with her personal trainer Carlos Leon and they wanted to get out of New York for a long winter weekend. She was delightful, and he was simply stunning. We would not have met them if not for being invited to the home of a famous chef who had a beautiful house near the Casa Marina, but we were invited, and because Madonna was interested in some LPs my husband had, she and Carlos stopped by the next day. The day after that, they were gracious enough to invite us to their private rental condo for champagne at sunset. Carlos had found a way to make a digital copy of my husband’s jazz records that interested her, and he also gave us copies, in case anyone asked in the future. At that point, my husband had longer hair, with a little help from a rug that covered his small but still noticeable bald patch. He also dressed in what you might call a unisex way. I think he was wearing a sarong and a tank shirt. I was wearing a drainage bag under one of his white shirts and low-cut jeans that didn’t a√ect my surgical site. Nobody would have known I had the drainage bag attached around my middle, I don’t think. We both had on flip-flops, though my husband’s were a little fancier...