Traditional Gravity

by Stephen Armstrong

  Chapter Four

  Tuesday felt like any other day at first. I woke up earlier than I did on Monday, despite not using an alarm. It didn't take long for me to remember that my grandfather was now dead. I got out of bed to see what this new development meant for how I would spend the next few days.

  Outside in the living room, my mom talked on the phone in subdued tones. I prepared my breakfast while attempting to discern who was on the other line.

  "Thanks Pastor Hodges. So we'll schedule the service for Thursday afternoon at 10 AM. OK. I will. We'll see you Thursday."

  She hung up the receiver. I assumed Pastor Hodges was my grandmother's minister, because he wasn't the pastor of my parents' church. Grandpa hadn't attended a church in a number of years, so Hodges could have been a previous Pastor who knew my grandfather personally. Either way, I didn't know him.

  "So the funeral is going to be on Thursday?"

  "Yes. We thought we'd get the service in before Good Friday."

  I nodded. The time constraints made sense as many churches would hold services on Good Friday.

  "We're going to have visiting hours Wednesday evening, at Parsons Funeral Home in Hadenburg too." Mom moved from the telephone shelf in our kitchen to the counters, and started clearing them off.

  "Are there a lot of plans that need to be made?" I asked.

  "Well, we made most of the arrangements back when Grandpa went into the nursing home. All the burial details are set. Your grandmother and uncles are coming over in a little while so we can work out the final details for the memorial service."

  She spoke without looking at me, while she straightened up the kitchen. I surveyed the already presentable room. Perhaps her cleaning held some other purpose than making the kitchen look good.

  "Are you all right?"

  My question disrupted her activity, and she turned to face me. She wasn't crying and her voice remained steady.

  "Oh Evan, I knew for a while that this day was coming. And I think I'm even a little relieved for him - his last years weren't easy. Your grandfather hasn't been himself for quite some time. But he's still my dad, and I didn't ever want to say goodbye, you know?"

  This last question might have been rhetorical, but I answered just to be safe. "Yeah, I know."

  I could have offered the well-worn words of comfort people pulled out in moments like these, but like my father, I hated saying things that were obvious. Just about everything I could think of in that moment would have been readily apparent to anyone.

  "Could you help me straighten up the house before company gets here?" she asked.

  "Yeah sure." I deposited my empty cereal bowl in the sink and busied myself putting things away around the house.

  In short order, my mom's family arrived. First came my grandma, escorted by Uncle George and his wife, Liz. Generous embraces, sprinkled with tears, abounded. They sat down in our living room, and my dad joined us while my grandma narrated the final hours of Grandpa's life. He never regained consciousness and did not utter any more words. My grandmother offered her opinion that he seemed at peace, but I knew she couldn't know this for certain. Of course, the only thing that mattered was what she believed.

  As Grandma wrapped up her story, we heard more voices at the door. Uncle Chris and his wife Linda had arrived. The same scene of tears and hugs repeated itself. Grandma rehashed her husband's last hours again. Undoubtedly, Uncle George and Aunt Liz now heard this account for the third time, and it was the second time my mom had. Even still, they listened intently, as if Grandma possessed completely new information.

  Eventually, every possible detail from those last hours had been chronicled at least once. The family turned to the remaining plans that needed to be finalized for the funeral. Aunt Linda volunteered to go through Grandma's pictures and put together a collage. Aunt Liz consented to make the program for the service. Mom said she would take Grandma to pick out some flowers. Grandma informed us members of the church intended to prepare a meal for funeral goers after the internment.

  This time together also gave them the chance to further process Grandpa's death. They reminisced. They related all of the usual platitudes. They also talked about what his death meant - not in a formal way, but through reflections interspersed amidst the conversation.

  "We’ve almost lost an entire generation that was part of the Great Depression and World War II. Pretty soon all we're going to know about those things is what we read in history books," said Aunt Linda when they discussed the military send-off my grandpa would receive at the cemetery.

  "It's going to be real hard to imagine Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter without him," said Aunt Liz, despite his three year absence from those gatherings.

  "I just can't believe we're going to say goodbye to him for the last time. I mean I knew we'd have to, but I still don't feel ready," confessed my mom, reiterating the comment she had made to me earlier.

  Grandma didn't really offer any different slants on his passing, but played off of what her daughter and daughter-in-laws said. Her two sons remained conspicuously quiet, only occasionally nodding their heads in assent. Their relative silence opened up all kinds of possibilities for what was brewing in their minds the day after their father's death.

  For a moment I imagined Grandpa sitting in the living room with us. What would he have said about his life? It certainly didn't end well with his physical difficulties and a cloudy memory. Did he consider the rest of it successful? I never heard my grandfather speak on this subject, so all I could do was to look back at his life and make whatever inferences I could.

  Early on in his marriage, he was swept up in the war, most likely against his will. He lost three years on the battlefields in Europe. Grandpa received many decorations for his efforts in that war, particularly since he was a POW. Grandpa rarely spoke of his days as a soldier and never did so with fondness. When he came home to my grandma and mom, who was only three at the time, he was a changed man. He seemed emotionally distant, and kept his kids at arm's length. He farmed for most of my mom's childhood until that became unprofitable. How many plantings and harvests came and went before he realized the last vestments of his youth had faded away? After he sold off the cows, he began working in a local factory. According to my mom, the family scraped by financially for years. They did manage to live in relative comfort during their retirement years, and did a decent amount of traveling. Somewhere along the line, he buried both of his parents, and all of his brothers and sisters.

  In the end, Grandpa would be most known as a World War II veteran, a husband of nearly seventy years, and the father of four children. Was that enough to qualify his life as a success? I couldn't be sure. I didn't feel like it would be enough for me. That was the depressing part - as much as I couldn't accept marrying someone, having children and growing old to be the sum total of my life, I possessed no bigger dream. Sitting in that room, I couldn't help but think that someday my kin would be formalizing my funeral plans, and this seemed like the absolute best scenario I could hope for.

  Jordan's arrival interrupted my brooding. Lost in thought, I hadn't heard him come in. Everyone seemed excited to see him. I watched closely to see how much more positively my mom reacted toward his coming than she did mine. She got off of her chair and hugged him enthusiastically. I detected an extra energy in her movements.

  He greeted each of our aunts and uncles before he gave me a smirk. If he was in fact my mom's favorite child, I couldn't hold it against him, because I wore a matching smirk. Now I was home, even if it was not quite the same with Jordan as it used to be.

  We sat down again, ostensibly so Grandma could tell her story to the newcomer. By reading Jordan's thoughtful and compassionate looks, I was convinced that his presence reassured everyone much more than mine did. He nodded a few times and offered a couple of insightful remarks that everyone seemingly regarded as wisdom and truth.

  "It's getting kind of late. We should probably get started with what we need to do so we don't wa
it until the last minute," advised my mom. Everyone else agreed, and they got ready to leave.

  "Did you need us to go with you?" Jordan offered, volunteering me as well.

  "No, that's okay. You’ve both had long trips. We can manage this ourselves. Besides, your father can take us."

  My father, who said little while the family planned the funeral, looked at Jordan and I with a touch of envy, but merely grabbed his keys off of the telephone shelf in the kitchen. Within a few minutes, everyone else cleared out of our house, leaving Jordan and me sitting in the living room.

  "Well, I guess we shouldn't be surprised," said Jordan.

  "No, this was coming for a while," I agreed, unsure of what else I could say about his death. Between standing at my grandfather's bed, riding home with my mom from the nursing home, and sitting in the living room with my aunts and uncles, I had exhausted the topic of Grandpa's passing. However, Jordan had not had that opportunity yet, so I indulged him.

  "Did you see him before he passed away?" Jordan asked.

  I nodded. "Mom and I went over there last night - but he wasn't really conscious, so we didn't get to talk to him or anything."

  "How's Mom doing?"

  "I think she's doing pretty well. She keeps saying she knew this day was coming, but he was still her dad. So she's definitely sad, but not depressed."

  Jordan looked out the window at some far off object. I assumed his emotional reaction to Grandpa's death would be roughly equivalent to mine. We had the same experiences to work off of - I didn't have any memories of my grandfather that didn't also include Jordan.

  "You know what this means, don't you?" he asked me. I waited for the answer. "This means that we're getting old."

  I nodded again. When we buried my grandfather, we would bury part of ourselves too. As we lowered his coffin into the earth, we'd realize our memories - of him and of ourselves - were firmly encased in the past. We'd recognize with a higher degree of finality that our childhoods were gone, and every moment forward would only take us further away. My mom and her brothers and sister would be burying a much larger chunk of their lives, and would stare their own mortality more squarely in the face.

  "Do you want to go for a walk in the woods?" Jordan asked abruptly.

  "Yeah, sure."

  Since Jordan and I were very little, we frequently embarked on excursions into the woods behind our house. Our parents owned ten acres of forested land, which blended into the adjacent woods belonging to our neighbors, giving us a nearly limitless expanse to walk through. Whenever we came home for vacation, we would walk the woods again.

  Those ramblings in the forest had taken root in our dispositions, helping to form our present personalities. Since we lived five miles out of town, we tended not to hang out with other kids after school and during the summers. Exploring the vast, open meadows and quiet thickets built within us a propensity toward silence and contemplation, and also cemented our friendship.

  "Do you want to go up the valley or down the valley?" asked Jordan.

  "I guess down the valley."

  Up the valley would take us up the big hill that we loved to ski down in the winter. Down the valley would take us through a large meadow, a smaller section of forest to a point that overlooked the highway running past our house. I didn't have any particular reason for choosing down the valley, other than I hadn't traveled that trail in a while.

  "Anything new?" Jordan asked as we tramped through the dead leaves from the previous autumn.

  "Not really." I could have told him about Samantha, but I felt as if I needed to ease into that subject a little slower. "How about you?"

  "I'm just counting down the days until I stop working and start Seminary."

  "When do you start - September?"

  "Yeah, so only four more months to go."

  "That's cool."

  I was actually not cool at all with Jordan's religious renaissance, which began when he went to college. We both did all of the church stuff in high school, but it never defined us as people. We were just kids who happened to go to church. I left for college and found the confidence to talk to women. Jordan, on the other hand, found religion. Faith became the most important fact about his life, which began to consist of church services, prayer meetings, bible studies and something called accountability partners. He now saw the world - and most likely me - through the lens of his Christian beliefs, and this made me a little less comfortable around him.

  Jordan's decision to pursue full-time Christian ministry made my parents proud. But I envied the fact that he was going somewhere, more so than my parent's pride in his choice. I was completely stuck, and wanted anything that could give me a little bit of momentum. Although I didn't wish to end up at Jordan's specific destination, I wanted to go somewhere too.

  "I'm glad you came home," he said. "After we spoke, I wasn't sure if you would."

  I shrugged. "I figured Grandpa wasn't going to make it. It seemed like I should see him before he died." Of course, that had only been part of my reasoning.

  We moved toward the edge of a meadow, owned by a local farm. A decaying stone wall marked the boundary between the woods and the field. Jordan and I launched a brief career of bird-watching there when we were children. We scrambled up the stone wall and jumped down into the brown grass of the meadow, which hadn't come to life yet in the cold of the early spring.

  I decided to pick Jordan's brain regarding my nagging recollection. "It was weird. Sunday night after we talked I remembered something that I hadn't thought of in a long time."

  "What?"

  "We were at Grandma's and Grandpa's church. Grandma was singing in the choir. I think we were in high school. Anyway, for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about it. Do you remember ever doing that?"

  "Hmm. I think we did that on Easter because Grandma's choir was doing a special cantata. I want to say that I was in college, freshmen year? Something like that."

  That settled it. Jordan had corroborated Mom's theory that it was Easter and provided me a general time frame for the memory. If he had been a freshmen in college, I would've been a sophomore in high school.

  "I hadn't thought about that day in a long time either. But I guess it makes sense you remembered it now, since it happened at Easter and it involved Grandpa."

  That did make sense, though I still couldn't accept the simple explanation. Something else was at work in that memory, I just didn't know what.

  We needed a new topic of conversation, now that the subject of my memory from an Easter long past was temporarily closed. We could talk about Samantha. Jordan was the main person I always trusted with such sensitive information. In that very meadow, I confessed to him my infatuation for Jenny O’Donnell when I was a freshmen. Jordan didn't tease me, or use this knowledge against me. In fact, he told me about Olivia Jones, the girl he admired from afar. Jordan had always proven trustworthy of my confidence, even now as he devolved further toward religious fanaticism. As long as I didn't mention sex, and he didn't tell me what I truly desired was a relationship with God, we would be okay.

  "Yesterday, I was walking through the high school, and I ran into a girl I knew."

  "Which girl?"

  "Samantha Rodgers. She was two years younger than me, and I had a crush on her. I don't think you would know her."

  Jordan stopped walking and just looked at me. "You never told me about any Samantha Rodgers before."

  "I didn't really start liking her until I was a Junior, and you were in college. Besides, I didn't really know her at all, and never even talked to her or anything, so it was kind of silly."

  "All of our crushes were silly. You and I never really talked to or knew any of the girls we liked." Jordan started walking again and I kept pace with him.

  "Anyway, we went out for coffee."

  "Really?" My boldness with women impressed Jordan, even if he wouldn't admit it. "How’d it go?"

  "It was great. Samantha seemed really interesting."

  "So
what are you going to do? I mean, you're only here for the week."

  "I know, I know. But it's not even the most confusing part about this. I found out from Will's wife that she may have a kid. Apparently, she got pregnant in high school."

  "Oh." Jordan emphasized the word as though this last potential fact was the end of the story.

  "What do you think I should do?"

  I don't know why I asked him. Jordan differed immensely in his approach toward women and was likely to tell me something I didn't want to hear. However, as someone possessing no other trusted friends, I had no one else to go to for advice. Perhaps asking Jordan about girls would help our relationship become normal again.

  "I thought you said she has a kid."

  "Again, that's what Will's wife said. But she wasn't 100% sure - or at least I don't think she's 100% accurate. Samantha didn't say anything about having a kid herself."

  "You're asking me what I think you should do? Am I allowed to mention Jesus or the Bible?"

  "No."

  A few years ago I banned Jordan from giving me any religiously infused advice. This was hard for him to do, but I hadn't lifted that restriction yet.

  "Doesn't seem like it’s worth discussing until you find out for sure if she has a kid. I mean, you wouldn't marry someone who had a child already, would you?" Jordan asked.

  "I guess it would depend on the situation, but yeah, maybe."

  Jordan shot a skeptical glance at me.

  "I might. How am I supposed to know if I would or not?"

  "I'm not saying that some guys wouldn't - but I think most guys your age wouldn't. And it's not as if you’ve been wanting kids all these years, have you?"

  "Not really. But I haven't not been wanting kids. I figure it will happen to me eventually. Besides, why are you always thinking in terms of marriage? Don't I need to figure out if she's someone I would want to marry first?"

  This main difference in Jordan's outlook on women bothered me to no end. For him to start dating a girl, he had to believe she was someone he was likely to marry. In fact, he was waiting for a sign from God leading him to the woman he was supposed to marry, which seemed like sheer lunacy to me.

  “Fine. Don't think in terms of marriage. Just think in terms of distance. She lives three hours from you. That could be a big deal."

  "I could move. It's not like I'm that in love with Pennsylvania, or my job anyway."

  "Yeah - why are you in Pennsylvania anyway?"

  "Why is anyone anywhere?" I replied. “People go where they're offered jobs - that's why you live where you live. How else are you supposed to figure out where you're going to live? The only reason you think you're in a better place than I am, is because you have some highly sought after job while I'm just a glorified secretary, and because you think Pennsylvania sucks."

  Jordan hated Pennsylvania, mainly because he despised driving through it. Besides that, Jordan did not look at life the same way I did. When he received his offer to work for the consulting firm in New York City, he saw a deeper purpose in God placing him there. As for me? I just saw a job opportunity and took it. It was merely a way to pay my bills.

  “Pennsylvania does suck. I mean the roads do anyway - I'm sure the people are nice," he said, as if he had offended me and all of the people of Pennsylvania and was trying to assuage our anger. "But you're in Pennsylvania now, so it's hard to see this relationship going anywhere." He paused and looked at me to see how I received his judgment. Then, as if his advice sounded too absolute, he quickly added, "At least the odds are against you."

  I nodded. "You're probably right. I think I'm going to call her."

  Jordan shook his head. "Why do you even ask me for my advice?"

  I wondered the same thing.

  We arrived at a clearing on top of an embankment overlooking the road passing by our house. Across the road, we could see the tiny East Guilford cemetery, and to the west a small country church with chimes that went off on the hour. I always liked this place, primarily because of the small wooden bench placed right behind us that overlooked the bottom of the valley. I actually contemplated proposing to Wendy there over Christmas break.

  I took out my cell phone and dialed Samantha's number.

  "You're calling her now?" Jordan asked in amazement. "Do you have to do that right in front of me?"

  She picked up after three rings. "Hello?"

  "Hi Samantha, it's Evan Chambers. How are you?"

  "I'm good," she said in an even tone.

  "I was wondering if you were free to do something tonight?"

  Jordan manufactured a pained expression. "Sure, abandon your brother for some girl you just met." Unsure of whether he wanted Samantha to hear him or not, I moved away a few steps and gave him a dirty look.

  “Umm, I'm not really doing anything tonight, so yeah, I'm free."

  "Well, I'm eating dinner with my brother tonight, but maybe I could take you out for ice cream afterwards."

  "Aw, I'm touched - you're making time to have dinner with me," said Jordan from a far.

  "Sure, that sounds good," Samantha replied.

  "OK, so tell me where you live, and I'll pick you up."

  She gave me the address, we arranged a 7 PM meeting time, and said our goodbyes.

  "I'm not free to eat dinner until 7 PM, so you're going to have to call her back change your plans," said Jordan.

  "Whatever. We're eating before then."

  We stood at the fence that marked the edge of the embankment and gazed over at the cemetery.

  "Do you think it's kosher to go out on a date tonight even though Grandpa died yesterday?" I asked, considering that angle for the first time.

  "It's a little late to be asking that. Why are you asking me for anyway? It's not like you're actually going to listen."

  I nodded. "Probably true."

  "So now that you've moved on to a new girl, are you going to tell me what happened with the last one?"

  Jordan was referring to Wendy. She and I had dated about a year. Jordan met her on several occasions, and heartily approved of her.

  "I have to say Evan, I really thought she was the one for you. The way you looked at her and everything, it seemed like you really loved her."

  When I didn't respond, he asked a different question. "Actually, what happened with all of the girls you've been with?" My cryptic explanations of my breakups never satisfied Jordan. "And I'll be really disappointed if it’s just fear of commitment, because that would be kind of cliché."

  I had already told him as much as I intended to about Wendy. "Like I told you when it happened, she didn't feel like I was fully invested in the relationship."

  "Yes, I remember that. But you never told me why she felt that way - there must have been a reason."

  I shook my head. "There was no reason." Every other break-up in my life possessed a discernible reason why. Felicity, my first girlfriend, wasn't captivating enough. Kate, the free spirited girl from sophomore year wasn't committed enough. Grace, the pre-med student was too busy. Jillian, the girl I almost followed to New York after college, was too controlling. But Wendy - she wasn't any of those things. After I walked away from Wendy, I began to suspect life had no meaning or purpose. If I couldn’t be happy with her, how could anyone or anything else bring me happiness or fulfillment?

  "What makes you think things with Samantha will be any different?" asked Jordan.

  He was poking again. I wouldn't allow him to talk about Jesus, so he was trying to bring up the subject of faith less directly. The implication was clear - in Jordan's mind, I would never be happy until I got right with God.

  I stonewalled his attempt through feigned indifference. "Maybe she won't be. We'll see."

  Jordan observed me silently. "You know, you haven't seemed very happy lately," he finally said.

  "I'm fine." I said it too abruptly for Jordan to believe me. His opinion had probably been formed already anyway.

  I started walking back toward the house. On the way hom
e we spoke about sports, movies, and random things, but never girls, my relationship with Mom, or the passing of time.