Juicy-warm from the sun, broiled with goat cheese

and honey, a must to bring my dad just to hear him

laugh, recite again from the Carl Reiner-Mel Brooks’

recordings of the “2000-Year-Old-Man.”  The velvet-

caped man reveals he once dated Joan of Arc,

married hundreds of times, had 42, 000 children and

not one came to visit!!

“I don’t care. But they could send a note, write, ‘Howya, Pop?’ ”

True, Dad didn’t date Joan of Arc but he did date

Pearl, his memories kept in a thick album of Kodak

black and whites with their curvy edges slotted into

those triangled black corner holders pasted on dull grey

scrapbook pages with “Me and Pearl” captioned underneath.

Or, “Pearl and Me.”  Or, my favorite, “Guess Who?”

That Mom had no compunctions about this totem

of his life before us said a lot about their marriage

‘til death did them part. My stepmother helped Dad

buy a new suit and tie to meet Pearl and her husband

for lunch following her surprise call. You know what

happened.  A civil conversation. The longer ride home

than to the restaurant. The scrapbook returned to

the shelf. Dad didn’t even reach a century much less

two millennia yet to the end, smiled to see another

fuzz-less peach, that sweet nectar of summer, its tight

smooth skin not unlike Dad’s, with its signature blush

of red. I still miss our calls.

“Is this the writer, or the other one?”

“Howya, Pop?”

 “What’s the secret to your long life?” Reiner asks,

 “Nectarines! I love that fruit. It’s a heckuva fruit.”