thinking?” Charlie said.
“Well, I made it my business to watch every bit of Dame Edna on YouTube and her Web site and anything else I could dig up, and suddenly I have a much better understanding of what you’re after. Suzanne’s idea, of course,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Forgive this old bee, but I’ve never given two minutes of thought to the difference between drag queens and female impersonators. I live on Sullivan’s Island and the subject seldom comes up in conversation. But coming here and meeting Suzanne and seeing what you’re doing and then Dame Edna? Honey? That guy is the glue that put it all together for me!”
“Hallelujah!” Charlie said. “He’s making wads of money and having a ball while he’s doing it!”
“But here’s what he’s got that you don’t.”
“What?” I said.
Charlie held his breath.
“He’s got a shtick!” Momma said. “That’s Yiddish for having your own act.”
“I know that,” Charlie said.
“Actually, I knew that, too,” I said.
“Well, Suzanne explained it all to me,” the QB said. “We stayed up watching Dame Edna until I understood what it was I was watching.”
“Dame Edna is the gold standard,” Charlie said.
“Agreed,” Bee said. “Suzanne agrees, too. Here’s the thing. Dame Edna’s been entertaining family and friends by dressing up in all sorts of costumes since she was a child. She has extensive history in theater and film, which you don’t have.”
“He was our drum major with our marching band,” I said, hoping to add some credibility to Charlie’s résumé. “And we know he’s a helluva lip-syncer.”
“These are helpful, but they are not the things that will catapult our sweet Charlie to the big league. But we came up with something that might.”
“Well, for the love of all that’s good and holy, spill it!” Charlie said.
“You lip-sync Cher’s songs, and these are your favorites, correct?”
“Yes,” Charlie said.
“What if you were her identical twin sister, who actually wrote all those songs and Cher stole them, having heard you singing them in the shower?”
“What?” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“No, it isn’t. Think about it,” Momma said, stirring cream into her coffee like one of Macbeth’s witches tending the cauldron. “If you have a character that’s only yours, then you can build a shtick around it!”
“Dame Edna calls her fans possums and refers to her outrageous eyeglasses as face furniture,” Charlie said.
“So what if you compared Cher having sex with Sonny to landing on an aircraft carrier?”
“Oh, God!” Charlie said. “That’s priceless!”
“Poor Sonny,” I said, envisioning Sonny’s landing in Cher’s Netherland the way a small plane is snagged by a wire across the landing deck of an actual aircraft carrier.
“You could say you dated him first,” Momma said.
“Momma? You’re right!” I said. “There are lots of possibilities of things you could drop into a monologue, in between songs, or take little pauses.”
“Exactly!”
So, until noon, when Charlie had a block of time reserved with a theater coach, we built a character that Charlie felt comfortable enough to become. His humor surfaced along with his sense of irony and satire. It was like unlocking Pandora’s box, except there were no evils to be released, only humor, and it didn’t take long for that humor to become outrageous.
“Just imagine actually being Cher’s identical twin sister!” said Suzanne, who had come by to help, laden with pastrami sandwiches and the best half-sour pickles I’d ever had, a rare find in the Lowcountry. “You can have costumes for the Sonny stage, the Gregg Allman stage, the Hollywood stage, the Broadway stage . . . I mean, you’ve got a treasure trove. But so you know, you’d also be seventy-two if you were her twin sister.”
“Cher is immortal,” Charlie said. “I could be her twin at every stage of her life, couldn’t I?”
“Now you’re thinking like a superstar!” Suzanne said, and we all applauded.
We gathered at the kitchen barstools, Suzanne helping Momma hoist herself up.
“Wooo!” Momma squealed.
Suzanne must’ve taken a little grab.
“Suzanne!” Charlie said. “The QB is still my mother-in-law!”
“Sorry,” Suzanne said and shook her head to mean no, she wasn’t sorry.
Momma giggled, something I had hardly ever heard her do.
“Cher was born Cherilyn. I could be born Charlene!” Charlie said. “Oh, I knew that was the right name for me!”
“I think you should go by Char,” I said. “Char! Cher’s Long-Lost Twin!”
“Agreed,” Charlie said.
“Now we’re having real fun,” Momma said. Suzanne winked at her.
“You know, Cher actually does have a half sister named Georganne,” Charlie said.
“Let’s not confuse the situation with facts,” Suzanne said. “But it’s worth noting that