by Mark Rader
Back at Paul’s house, her mother immediately changes out of her dress into stretch pants and a big striped T-shirt, and Maura wishes she’d thought to bring a change of clothes for herself and the kids too. Jean and her husband have walked over, as has Tim, so Shade starts a pot of coffee. As the kids watch Homeward Bound on the portable DVD player they brought, the adults talk about the service and Paul. Jean’s husband guesses the attendance was between a thousand and twelve hundred. The balloon idea—Jean’s—is praised as a beautiful touch. A decency is on display here that feels like a challenge she’s not up to meeting, but Maura decides it’s okay to just sit and listen.
By six, everyone but their family has left. They order pizza for dinner, and as Maura’s great-aunt Priscilla dutifully does the dishes after, her mom asks her and Shade if they and the kids would like to come downstairs and look through Paul’s things. The estate sale is on Thursday, but she wants them to get first pick.
The ceiling is low: if she jumped even half as high as she can, she’d hit her head. Britta leads Evan to the coin collection she’s already set aside for him, and Maura and Ella look through the books and records, Ella leaning into her, head on her shoulder. The girl’s in no mood to search for treasure now, understandably, and that’s fine. To be honest, neither is Maura. But they’re here and there will be no better time.
From the book pile, she takes an old copy of Roots; from the record pile, some Shostakovich and Dave Brubeck, just in case they ever get a record player. Under a folding table she finds some photo albums, and with Ella half draped over her back, she pages through them.
In the first album are pictures from his India trip; in the second album, pictures of him at St. Iggy’s harvest fests over the years—sitting drenched on the edge of a dunk tank, manning a hamburger grill, posing and smiling with various families, his glasses tinted in the sun. The third album she picks up has Rome written on the spine in marker, and here all the pictures are black and white. There’s twentysomething Paul standing by the pietà, hands clasped behind him. Paul at the Trevi Fountain, a hand over his eyes to keep out the sun. Paul all over the city, taking all the required landmark pictures. Exactly what one might expect.
Except, that is, for the last picture, which is centered all by itself on the last page. It’s a close-up of Paul without his glasses on, propped up on his elbow, on what looks to be a bed. A soft wedge of light falls on his squinting morning face, his mussed hair. His face is in sharp focus, but the background is blurrier: the work of a quality camera with depth of field. He seems on the verge of a smile. Weirdly, it reminds Maura of a magazine ad for cologne: mysterious squinting man in bed, almost sexy. Except the sexy man here is Uncle Father Paul.
Maura stands up and walks the opened album over to her mom. “Have you seen this picture?” she says.
When they look at it together, her mom’s face smooths. “I have. It was loose in a box and I thought I’d put it in there. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Who do you think took it?”
Her mother blinks quickly and looks Maura calmly in the eyes. “He had a friend over there who was a photographer,” she says. “It must have been him.”
When Evan has concluded that all the most interesting things have been unearthed, considered, and claimed, they climb the stairs, a few mementos in their hands, Britta pulling up the rear so she can click off the light. But as Maura’s about to walk back into the living room, her mom says her name.
“Come with me for a second. There’s something I need to give you.”
“What is it?”
“Just come.”
She follows her mom into Paul’s bedroom. Britta moves to the little antique desk near the window and pulls an envelope out of the top drawer. “Paul wanted me to give this to you.”
“What is it?”
“A note for you. That’s all I really know.”
The flap is sealed with thick clear tape. For Maura is written small in the bottom right corner, like a signature on a painting.
“He told me not to read it, and for once in my life, I listened.”
In the living room, everyone is watching America’s Funniest Home Videos on Paul’s old TV. The perfect stupid thing to break the day’s awkward spell: Shade’s idea, no doubt. On screen, a toddler totters around with an ice-cream bucket on his head, walks into a wall, and falls on his giant diapered butt. Evan and Ella laugh, Shade puffs air out of his nose, but Harden isn’t watching: he’s reading things on his phone. She should probably read the note later, when she’s alone. But she can’t wait.
She hurries to Paul’s bathroom, closes the door behind her, and rips the envelope at the top with her house key, ignoring the tape, and pulls out the single piece of yellow legal paper inside. To read it, she sits on top of the closed lid of the little toilet. His hand is a little shaky, the cursive words keening left, like passengers bracing for impact. But it’s easy enough to make out. Dear Maura, it begins:
Your mom has told me what’s going on and I’ve wanted to write for a while. Please know I love and support you and have been praying for you often.
I’m not sure what you’ll have decided to do about your situation by the time you read this. Whether you and Harden are working to save your marriage or not. I know how much your children mean to you and how much you love them. And I know Harden is a good man. Over the years, I’ve advocated for working things out as a rule, and often this can be done and the relationship can recover.
But I want to say this too: there are worse sins than following the call of true love, as long as the love is honest and equal. In fact, to call it a sin at all I don’t think is fair. I want there to be someone who says this to you too.
What are we supposed to do when what we want isn’t possible unless we hurt others?
Scripture tells us: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” But then it also tells us: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a cellar or under a basket. Instead, he sets it on a lampstand, so those who enter can see the light.” I find this inconsistent and confusing.
All this is to say that I have felt conflicted myself on matters similar to yours over the years, Maura, and I may know a little of what you’re going through. How difficult it must be. Your mother can tell you more if she wishes; by the time you read this I won’t be here to have a reaction to it. Lucky me.
Anyway, I love you, dear niece. Please give Evan and Ella a hug for me. Sorry if any of this doesn’t make sense, I’m a bit out of it with these meds. Know that I will always “have your back.”
Love,
UFP
On reaching the end, Maura folds the bottom part back in on itself, like she’s disabling a trap. She looks blankly at the segmented plastic shower curtain in front of her, faint brown speckles of mildew along the bottom. Canned laughter swells and retreats a room away.
Her face and neck are suddenly very warm, her arms and fingers suddenly cold.
I may know a little of what you’re going through. But how could he?
She’d known he was gay for years—that’s what her mom had told her, at least, when she’d asked her in high school. But his sexuality had always seemed…inconsequential. Gay or straight, he’d chosen to live a life where those inclinations weren’t acted upon. To her mind he was as sexless and tame as Mister Rogers. As Jesus himself.
And yet: this note folded in her hands, seeming to offer permission.
When she emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, Maura walks right over to her mother, who’s making a new pot of decaf.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asks. “Outside?”
“Is everything okay?” Britta says. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I just want to ask you something.”
Maura doesn’t want to stand in the front yard—Harden could spy on them from there and ask her a question about their discussion later
, and she doesn’t want that. So she curls around to the other side of the house and her mother follows.
They stop at the edge of Paul’s vegetable garden. And this is where Maura tells her mother about the note and where Maura finds out everything her mother only recently found out.
“Did he tell you why he didn’t leave?” she asks, after the shock has faded a little.
“I think he was afraid,” her mother says. “Afraid of what people would think. Or that it wouldn’t work out, and he’d have nowhere to go. I’m not totally sure. I think the older he got the harder it seemed.”
Maura has such sympathy for all this it makes her want to cry. But it appears she’s all cried out. At least for now.
“I think part of it,” her mother continues, “was that he was a very loyal person. Always had been. Which can be both good and bad, depending, I suppose.”
“It makes me sad to think he felt he couldn’t do it,” Maura says.
“I know,” Britta says. “I felt that too. But I’ve also thought—maybe he was making more of it than it was because he was so depressed at the end. I think his judgment was a little clouded.”
“I guess.”
“I mean, he always seemed pretty happy to me. When I think back to our lives together, I think of him laughing. At least as much as I think of him sad.”
“He always seemed pretty happy to me too.”
“And maybe he was. Maybe this is all overblown.”
Maura nods. She hopes so, but doubts it’s true.
Everyone is still glued to the TV when they return. There’s a free spot on the couch but Maura doesn’t take it; she’s content to stand behind everybody, hands clasped behind her back, a little apart. On the screen now, a boy and a girl are sitting on a blanket in the grass, party hats cocked on their heads. The girl leans in, kisses the boy on the lips; the boy looks around with a huge smile, giggles, and rocks back and forth with joy so hard he tips over. Meanwhile, Harden, she senses in her peripheral vision, is keeping an eye on her again; she looks, and he is. How she wishes he’d stop.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Emotional day. That’s all.”
Once the show is over, Harden slaps his knees as he does when he feels that it’s time for everyone to go, and she thinks, Yeah, probably a good idea. They gather their things, say their goodbyes. They’ll head back to the rectory tonight, and tomorrow morning they’ll drive straight to the airport, so this is it. She and her mom cry one last time as they hug, they can’t help it, and hold on to each other longer than they usually would. “Call me when you get home,” her mom whispers loudly into her ear. And Maura says, “I will.”
As they drive along the long country road that will take them to the highway that feeds into Green Bay, her family, for a change, is quiet. Chastened, almost. Harden looks dead ahead, face calm and opaque. In the back seat, Evan is reviewing his new coin collection again, plucking coins from their sleeves and turning them around inches from his face. Meanwhile, Maura looks to the west at the setting sun, a pink smear over the horizon, as is Ella, her little face visible in the side mirror.
Maura’s glad for the silence because it’s helping her conjure David more vividly. If they were still together, he would have sent a note this morning: Thinking of you today, Maur. Hang in there. Later tonight, she would have slipped outside to call him, to recap the day. Her mom’s eulogy. The out-of-tune, but lovable, choir. How the cheesy balloon release had gotten her more emotional than she’d expected. Though of course, if they were still together, she would have felt something else. Because he’s a curious man who understands that it helps most people to talk about their dead, David would ask her to tell him more about Paul, and she would. She’d talk about how kind he always was to her, what an art lover he was, the awe she’d felt watching him serve Mass as a girl, everyone answering him in unison. Maybe she’d share what her mother just revealed…though she’s not sure she’d feel ready yet—it needs more time to sink in. For a while they’d share memories about their own dads’ funerals, only a year apart. David would have things to say about grief, personal truths he’d worked through, things she couldn’t have expected. Remembering his dad, he might get emotional, as he sometimes did. And after all this catching up, when the subject of grief had started to sag, either she or he would steer them somewhere playful. Try to make the other laugh. And then, before they parted, I love you. I love you too.
“How many people do you think would go to your funeral, Mommy?” Ella asks her now, breaking the silence. Maura looks at her reflection in the side mirror. Their eyes meet.
“Not as many as Paul got today, that’s for sure. I’m not that popular.”
“Would there be a hundred people?”
“I might get a hundred, yeah. But not much more than that.”
She’s never really thought about it, but now’s as good a time as any. The crowd size would depend, of course, on how old she was when she died, how many of her loved ones were still alive. The service wouldn’t be held at a church, but ideally somewhere beautiful and dignified. A small sea of white folding chairs facing forward; a lectern and, behind it, maybe a screen on which photographs or videos of her could be projected. Like Paul’s service, there would be music and eulogies. Shade would give one; the kids, grown up, surely would too. She imagines Ella as a woman, her baby fat gone, small breasts and wide hips like hers. A husband beside her, maybe a few kids. She imagines Evan as a man too, at first alone, but then, no, she gives him a partner too. A woman. Though, of course, for both of them, who knows? She pictures Harden in his seventies or eighties, hair gone white, with a big neck wattle and stretched ears, like his dad. And lastly, there’s her, the star of the show, laid in a casket. She’d have a stylish white bob, the old-lady look she admires the most. Except, no, she wants to be cremated. She almost forgot.
Standing before the little crowd that showed up, her loved ones would attempt to bring her briefly back to life. Shade would lean on funny stories, uncomfortable as he is with anything serious. The kids would be earnest, emotional. But Harden’s speech…for some reason she can’t imagine it. Who would she be to him by then? What would he have to say? Would he mention something about bumps in the road, how it wasn’t always easy? Or would all their trouble be paved over by then?
She tries to hear him saying her name, gnarly old hands gripping the edges of a podium, but something in her balks at even trying. And then—without much drama, the truth pouring into her as pure as water—she realizes why: he’s not the man she wants talking about her up there…he who barely knows her at all.
It shakes her, the bluntness of this wish, and she glances at Ella in the side mirror, as if to check if she’s noticed the betrayal, then at Harden too.
“How many do you think you’d have at your funeral, Daddy?” Evan asks now. He’s holding up a half-dollar to examine it the way a wine snob might raise his glass to the light.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Harden says. “A hundred and one, at least.”
He looks at her sideways, wanting a reaction to his joke.
But she’s sorry—she just can’t.
When they push open the back door of the rectory house, Father Tim is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping brandy and listening to classical music playing on a little black boom box on top of his fridge. Paul’s CD, she presumes. The one from the service.
Tim looks up and says hello, a sad, inward look on his face.
“Sorry for just barging in,” she says.
“Oh, it’s fine,” he says. “It’s not barging in if you have a key.”
The kids stream past him and down the hall to their room, eager to be reunited with their stuff, to take off their uncomfortable clothes. But she and Harden linger.
“Is that the CD from the service?” Maura asks.
“It is,” Tim says. “I’ll leave it on for you if you want. I was actually just about to hit the sack.”
“Oh, great,” Ma
ura says.
He rises from his chair, slightly hunched, holding his glass. Maura feels bad that they’re here tonight, crowding him as he grieves. If she were him, she’d wish she could be alone.
“You’re welcome to the rest of this too,” he says, lifting his glass. “There’s still a half bottle up on the fridge.”
“We just might,” Harden says. “Thank you.”
“Better you help me finish it than I drink it all myself.”
They smile, not sure how much to make of this.
“We’ll do our best to keep it down,” Maura says. “With the kids, I mean.”
Tim swats her concern away. “Oh, don’t worry. I sleep like a log.”
Speaking of sleep, all Maura wants right now is to lie facedown on a bed, totally still, as the dread she feels shivers its way completely through her. She feels unwell. Her mouth is dry; her skin is hot, almost feverish; her arms and legs feel hollow, as if they’re barely under her control. She could beg off child care tonight—it’s her uncle who died, not his. But it’s nearly eight thirty, the kids’ bedtime, and she wants this to be a regular night. For her sake, she senses, more even than theirs.
When she tells Harden she’ll handle bedtime, he says, “Cool,” and a minute later he’s in the kitchen with his laptop, earbuds in, an almost full glass of brandy on ice sweating beside his wireless mouse. In the kids’ room, Maura finds a fresh T-shirt for Ella in the suitcase, picks up the wadded pajama pants from the floor, shakes them out, and helps her daughter step into each leg. Evan has already undressed himself and is in his underwear playing with his Rubik’s Cube. When she asks him to put on his gym shorts and Pokémon shirt, he says not now, like he always does. Which is her cue to give him a beleaguered, insistent look until he says, “Okay. Fine.”
She does all of these things the way she always does, but it’s as if she’s split in two. There’s the mother saying words to her children, and then there’s this other person hovering just a few inches to the side, watching. Crammed together in the room’s one twin bed, the three of them barely fit. She feels her daughter’s warm head pressing down on her right shoulder. A few inches away, Evan with his skinny knees up at eye level, fiddling with his Rubik’s Cube, half listening, half not, as she reads. Her job is to read, so she does. But she’s not keeping track of the story at all, merely reciting words, lilting her voice occasionally to sound convincing.