The Beverly Affair

I wrote about naming my prosthetic leg “Beverly” in a previous post. Here is a quick recap of how that went down. October 2023 my friend Jean and I had tickets to a David Sedaris reading/book signing event. I was still in a wheelchair and our seats weren’t accessible, so Jean took my book with her to be signed. Sedaris signed that book and turned his encounter with Jean into a diary entry, unbeknownst to either of us. A couple months later in December, our mutual friend Maryam happened to be in Las Vegas at a Sedaris reading as he read the diary entry, and she contacted me the second she got out of the theater in Vegas, at 1 am. “Pam,” she gushed, “he spoke about how a woman came up to him after his show for a book signing. He said this woman told him she was supposed to be there with her friend Beverly but Beverly was in a terrible car accident that left her injured and she lost her foot, and then he read the inscription he wrote in the friend’s book. It was YOU and Jean!” It is absolutely the life goal of every Sedaris junkie to wind up in his diaries. I was a tad bummed he didn’t use my real name in the diary entry, but I am in no position to be choosy about someone else’s creative process.

That’s Beverly’s origin story. Little did I know this was going to become a thing. Here is, as Paul Harvey used to say, the “rest of the story.”

I didn’t get my first prosthetic until the end of February, 2024. Ben, dear soul that he is, had custom “Beverly” decals made for my prosthetic. I posted the leg story in March. A couple months after my post, I received a package from an interpreting colleague, Robert, who lives in Massachusetts. When I opened the package I found an autographed Sedaris book and a note from Robert. Robert is also a Sedaris fan, and has interpreted for Sedaris. When he got the book signed, Robert said he told him about Jean, Maryam, me, and my leg–the whole Beverly saga, including his relationship to me.

Well, I was over the moon about it, so much so that when Sedaris made an appearance in Akron April of 2025, Jean and I immediately got tickets. I took my sister-in-law Carol along for the ride. On a raw, rainy spring night we arrived at the Civic Theater early for the pre-show book signing. We got to the head of the line. Sedaris took my book and opened it to the title page, gave us three old ladies a tiny smile and asked which of us he should sign the book to. Giddy, we babbled our story; me, the missing leg, Jean, Maryam, Las Vegas and Robert and I added something inane about not being upset for changing my name to Beverly because it’s better than a one-syllable name. As we talked, the patient smile he used changed into recognition, and his eyes sparkled. “I remember you,” he said. “Honestly, I made your name Beverly because I couldn’t remember your real name. I love Robert, he’s a great interpreter.” I leaned over the table and thanked him for making a really difficult time more bearable. “You have no idea how much this thing lifted my spirits,” I said. During that Akron show, he told the Beverly story live, about meeting this woman who’d brought her friend’s book to be signed. He got a big laugh from the audience when he read the inscription out loud. Jean and I basked in the glow of the moment where we were insiders on the joke.

The story isn’t quite over. Sedaris’ next Ohio appearance was October. It was unusual to have two appearances in the same year, but I got tickets. This time we corralled Maryam–I mean, I had to, right? Without her, we’d never have known. She, Jean, Ben and I put in an appearance. We got in the line for the pre-show book signing. While you wait, an assistant writes your name out as you wish it inscribed in the book. I told her to write “One legged Pam” on the paper and she stuck it in the cover page. When the three of us got up to the table, I handed him my book. He smiled in recognition when he opened the book and saw the note. we blurted out the entire story–Jean, the diary entry which we never would have known about if Maryam hadn’t been in Vegas to hear him read it, Robert sending me a book. I think I said something like “…and THIS is MARYAM who told us about the diary entry..” like I was introducing him to the Queen of Sheba. He apologized, telling us he hadn’t brought that particular diary entry to read that night. I told him that was OK. I said something about we should move along so others could get their books signed. “You don’t have to go anywhere, I can do whatever I want,” he said. I promised this wasn’t going to turn into a groupie stalker thing. He laughed, and I couldn’t tell if it was with amusement or relief. Here’s the most recent inscription:

We were stoked. I poked Maryam in the shoulder and said something pithy like “Fucking A!” She grinned back at me. We left the signing to go to our seats. The lights dimmed, the reading started and we commenced to laughing.

Thus concludes what I’ve come to call “The Beverly Affair.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still go to Sedaris’ readings, I’ll always be a fan, but the most important part of this story is about Jean, Maryam and Robert. There would be no “Beverly Affair” for me to write about without them. They are the reason I have this story to share.

In the two years since my accident, the extent to which friends and acquaintances have taken time to lift me up in ways large and small has been amazing and humbling. Jean is a part of the daily bedrock of my life and has been for decades. I’ve known Maryam and Robert for years, though we don’t see each other often–but we keep up. We’re all sign language interpreters. While I was laid up, Maryam showed up unannounced to weed my garden. Robert and I kept in touch over the years. We both have a love for knock-knock jokes, puns and word play. He’d usually tell me when he’d interpreted for Sedaris (lucky dog) which made me very jelly indeed. So many connections, and now there’s one more that binds us.

I read in an article that there is an epidemic of loneliness in this country. That may be true, but I think one reason people feel lonely is because they don’t see value in everyday connections and don’t realize how they in turn make an imprint on each person. There was a time I felt like that. You hang with people at a two-week conference, were someone’s neighbor for a couple years, had a group you went to happy hour with that was the brightest thing about an otherwise boring job, had former roommates, fellow dog park humans, the matron of honor at your first marriage or people from your Silver Sneakers class. For whatever reason, you share a sliver or a chunk of life with them and go your separate ways. You don’t think about them until your social media reminds you with a “here is a picture from 10 years ago,” and you wonder how you ever let such a cool person drift away. What I’ve learned to do in the last couple years is to feed those connections. Try it. You might find out you’re nowhere near as alone as you think.

P.S., I have no picture of us with Robert, and there’s supposed to be a new book out next year…To be continued???