by Tom Perrotta
The four of us shook hands like football captains meeting for the coin toss. Bernie was a wild-looking guy with porkchop sideburns and a Roy Orbison haircut. Al was barely five feet tall but he had the chest and shoulders of a weightlifter. Neither of them looked comfortable in their suits.
After the brief service, a young guy, not much older than me, wheeled the closed casket into the hallway on a metal table. He had shaggy blond hair and an impressive tan. It was easy to imagine him in a wetsuit, with a surfboard tucked under one arm. I wondered how he'd ended up working in a funeral home.
Mr. Woodley arranged us symmetrically around the polished wooden box. “Gentlemen,” he said, “because there is no formal church service today, our task is extremely simple. We have to transport the deceased from the door to the hearse. That is all. Once we arrive at the cemetery, their people will take over.”
We walked in formation beside the coffin as the assistant guided it slowly down the hallway. Bob and I were stationed in front. Mr. Woodley went ahead of us and opened the wide double doors at the end of the hallway. Sunlight flooded in over his dark silhouette. We paused momentarily at the threshold for the assistant to come around to the front of the coffin. The mourners were gathered on the lawn, watching us. Beyond them, at the curb, the hearse waited, its back gate swung open.
“Gentlemen, please grasp the handles. On the count of three, will you please lift.” The handle was a grooved brass rod hinged to the side of the box. It fit nicely in my hand.
“One … two … three.”
The casket lifted easily off the gurney, almost as though it were empty, but then the weight shifted and we had to struggle for a moment to get it stabilized. It struck me suddenly—I had somehow managed not to think of it until then— that Mr. Norman's dead body was inside the box. I glanced over at Bob. He looked shaken; a drop of sweat slid like a tear down the side of his face. I was glad he had Al backing him up.
We took our first tentative step forward, out into the air. It was a warm, hazy day with a sweet breeze blowing. Birds and squirrels chattered in the trees around the funeral home.
“Gentlemen, please watch your step as we descend the stairs.”
I took the instruction literally, staring at my new loafers as we moved toward the sidewalk, one cement step at a time. I could hear the assistant grunting as he helped us support the front end, where all the weight was concentrated.
It felt like we were moving in slow motion as we passed the mourners. I heard a sniffle and looked up. Mrs. Norman was standing on the grass, her face concealed by a gauzy black veil. I felt a jolt when our eyes met.
There were metal rollers on the inside bed of the hearse. The coffin slid in easily and thudded against the back wall. I imagined Mr. Norman wincing at the impact.
“Thank God that's over with,” Bob whispered as we walked across the lawn to join the other mourners.
About twenty people had attended the funeral, but only seven showed up for lunch afterwards at the Normans’. Besides the immediate family and the pallbearers, the only other guest was Estelle, a skinny, middle-aged woman who lived down the street and spent a lot of time sitting on her front porch in a rocking chair. At the cemetery she cried so hard that Mrs. Norman had to stroke her hair to get her to calm down.
There was a catered buffet of cold cuts and Italian food set up on the kitchen table. I filled my paper plate and headed out to the patio. The women stayed inside, so it was just the four pallbearers gathered around the picnic table Mr. Norman had assembled a few years ago from a kit. I remembered coming up the driveway one day and seeing the pieces of the table scattered on the lawn. It took him a whole weekend to put it together.
Al raised his beer bottle. “Here's to Jerry. He'll be missed.”
We clinked bottles and drank to Mr. Norman. Bernie unknotted his tie. “Man,” he said, “that coffin was heavier than it looked.” He yanked the tie free from his collar and stuffed it in his coat pocket. “It felt like a goddam refrigerator.”
For the first time all day, Bob grinned. Sweat stains had soaked all the way through his dark suit. He looked like a basketball coach whose team had just won in overtime. “No kidding,” he said. “I wasn't sure if we were going to make it down those stairs.”
We ate without speaking. The food was wonderful, and I felt unreasonably hungry, like I hadn't eaten for days. I finished a turkey sandwich and was halfway through a serving of lasagna when Estelle came out and told us that Millie had something to show us in the living room.
“Something about Jerry,” she added nervously. She was standing at the edge of the patio wearing a big pink oven mitt on one hand. When she saw that we weren't getting up right away, she pulled a lawn chair up to the table and sat down.
“I live alone,” she announced. “I don't have a car. It's not easy for me to get around.” She spoke quickly, as if pressed for time, her words tumbling out one on top of the other. Her eyes were moist and slightly distorted behind thick glasses. “Whenever I needed to go somewhere I called Jerry and he said, ‘Estelle, I'll be right over.’” She tried to smile but her lips began quivering. She buried her face in the oven mitt.
All the curtains were drawn in the living room. We had to bring in extra chairs from the kitchen to get everyone seated. Judy, Mrs. Norman, and Estelle were squeezed together on the couch. There was a carousel slide projector set up on the coffee table.
Judy stood up. She kept her head down and her hands folded as she spoke. “My mother would like to thank you all for joining us in this difficult hour. She thought you might like to see Jerry one last time before you go.” Mrs. Norman nodded, and even in the dim light you could see that her face was swollen and blurred with grief. Judy sat down and switched on the projector. It was squat and round, like a miniature flying saucer. A fan started humming and a blank square of light appeared on the wall. She clicked the advance button three or four times before the first fuzzy image filled the empty space. Mrs. Norman adjusted the lens, and her husband jumped into focus. He was walking through the front door, carrying groceries into the house. He seemed happy to be home.
I glanced at Bob. He was sitting next to me, pressing his fist against his mouth, biting down hard on the thumb. Dozens of pictures flashed and vanished on the wall. Most of them were candid shots taken around the house. Mr. Norman stood by the bathroom sink, smiling through a beard of shaving cream. He mowed the lawn in a sleeveless T-shirt. He sat in a chair looking gloomy.
Mr. Norman took out the garbage. He did a wild dance at Judy's wedding, waving a napkin over his head. In Atlantic City, he hit the jackpot on a slot machine; coins poured like water into his plastic cup. Mr. Norman read a magazine. He gave Halloween candy to a child dressed as a ghost. He sat with me on the couch.
For some reason, Judy let that image linger. In the photograph, I had long curly hair and wore a blue flannel shirt. I couldn't believe how young and fragile I looked. Mr. Norman was huge in comparison. He had one arm around my shoulder, pulling me against him. Our eyes glowed red from the flash. Bob found my hand and squeezed it.
“That's you,” he said, his startled voice breaking the silence in the living room.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following people for their help and support: James Linville, Kimberly Witherspoon, Alexandra Shelley, Barbara and Warren Phillips, Lee K. Abbott, and Joe Gordon. Special thanks, of course, to Joe and Sue Perrotta, and to Mary Granfield.
About the Author
TOM PERROTTA is the author of five other works of fiction: The Abstinence Teacher, The Wishbones, Election, and the New York Times bestselling Joe College and Little Children. Election was made into the acclaimed 1999 movie directed by Alexander Payne and starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Little Children was released as an Oscar-nominated movie directed by Todd Field and starring Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly in 2006. Perrotta lives outside of Boston with his family.
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From the reviews of Bad Haircut:
‘Darkly tender, simply written tales about growing up in the Garden State in the 1970s’
New York Times
‘His stories remind me … in their wit and humanity and cumulative impact, of Philip Roth's Goodbye Colombus. Like that book, Perrotta's funny and deeply touching collection marks the arrival of a writer who's here for the long haul’
TOBIAS WOLFF
‘More powerful than any coming-of-age novel I've read recently … These stories of the 70s deserve to be read by everyone who grew up in that blighted decade’
Washington Post
‘A strong, funny debut’
Washington Times
‘Perrotta's novels are sheer pleasure’ San Francisco Chronicle
‘Funny and ingenious … It's tempting to call Bad Haircut an “auspicious” book, but that doesn't say enough; in fact Perrotta has already delivered the goods’ Los Angeles Times
By the Same Author
The Abstinence Teacher
Little Children
Joe College
Election
The Wishbones
Copyright
Harper Perennial
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Visit our authors’ blog at www.fifthestate.co.uk
This Harper Perennial edition published 2009
1
First published in the US by Bridge Works Publishing (1994).
Published by Berkley in 1995 and 1997.
Copyright © Tom Perrotta 1994
‘The Wiener Man’ first appeared in Columbia Magazine.
‘Forgiveness’ first appeared in Crazyhorse.
‘Wild Kingdom’ first appeared in The Gettysburg Review.
Tom Perrotta asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 9780007319428
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