The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection Book 4)

by Richard Paul Evans

  My father’s casket lay against the east wall. It was partially open, the lid raised from his chest up—half-couch, they call it. The lower half of the casket was draped with a beautiful crimson spray of flowers. Red roses, red gerbera daisies, and red carnations, stark against the casket’s varnished rosewood veneer.

  The casket was nice, which made me think that it was probably chosen by Wendy, as my father would never have chosen, or allowed, such reckless vanity. I once heard him go off on a diatribe about people building monuments to themselves after attending the funeral of a local author.

  He used to say to my mother, Just put me in a cardboard box and bury me in the backyard. I used to hate it when he said that, but I’m not sure he was joking. He did, however, stop saying it after my mother died. And, I remembered, she had a beautiful casket, if there is such a thing.

  My mother’s was a unique funeral, different from most. I remembered that after the ceremony we all walked outside and released butterflies.

  I’ve never liked the idea of a viewing. The idea of people filing past my dead body is disturbing to me—like strangers rummaging through my personal items at a garage sale. Considering that scientists have done studies to see if you spill less coffee walking forward or backward and why older men have big ears (I’m not making this up), I’m sure someone has done research to see if the practice of displaying the dead is psychologically valuable or damaging.

  I can see that there might be a benefit to the tradition, as I’ve read that it provides finality to those left behind. I understand this. Because of the nature of the car accident, my mother’s casket was closed. A part of me desperately wanted to pry open the box and see if she really was inside.

  Wendy turned her attention to me as I approached the casket. I looked down at my father’s lifeless body. The person inside the silk-lined box didn’t look like my father. My father was never still. He was less matter than energy.

  Nestled on top of the spray was a picture of my father, my mother, and me. I was wearing a tutu and ballet slippers. I remembered the moment. I had just come from the Nutcracker tryouts and we were going out for ice cream. As I looked at the picture, I felt a hand on my back.

  “I’m sorry,” Wendy said. Her eyes were wet. Even more than mine. She handed me a tissue.

  “Did you put together the table displays?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

  “Your father told me what he wanted.”

  “Of course he did,” I said.

  “I’ll bring everything back next week.”

  A half hour later the man from the mortuary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. We’ll soon be closing the casket and moving into the chapel for the service. If anyone would like to pay their last respects, now would be the time.”

  I walked back up to the casket. I had returned to Utah to see my father, and here he was. This wasn’t the reunion I’d expected.

  As I looked at him, I was suddenly flooded with memories, rising up in my psyche like groundwater. I remembered a hundred moments together, the times he held my tiny hand on walks, the magic of Christmas morning, his slipping the frosting from his birthday cake onto my plate when my mother wasn’t looking. I remembered him tossing me in the air as I screamed with delight and demanded it again and again until his back hurt.

  Tears streamed down my face. For the first time since I learned of his death, I felt the anguish of grief, just as I had with my mother. I didn’t want to hurt like that again. I wanted to bolt from the place. I wanted to run all the way back to New York. I took a deep breath and said, “Rest in peace, Dad. I hope you find peace.”

  I grabbed another tissue from a box next to the casket. As I turned back, I saw that almost everyone in the room was looking at me. I was embarrassed to suddenly be the center of attention. I quickly moved away.

  Someone else came forward—an older woman I had never seen before. It was obvious that she was deeply grieving. But even in her grief, she moved with elegance. She was exceedingly thin, pretty, with short, dark hair pulled back tightly, exposing the graceful curvature of her forehead. Her high-boned cheeks were streaked with mascara and her eyes, even with the pain they carried, were beautiful, large and deep set. She was immaculately dressed, like the well-heeled women from the West Village. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in her later years.

  The woman reached into the casket and gently touched my father’s arm. For a moment she just looked at him. Then she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, and kissed his cheek. She slid a book into the casket, then stepped back. I turned to ask Wendy who the woman was, but she was already on the other side of the room. Actually, I was more curious to find out what the book was and why she thought he needed it.

  The man from the mortuary looked around to see if anyone else was coming forward, and then he and his associate closed the top half of the casket. There was an audible gasp of emotion. And just like that, my father was gone.

  CHAPTER nine

  If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live… I’d type a little faster.

  —Isaac Asimov

  The dark-suited men from the mortuary rolled the casket into the chapel, followed by a small procession led by Wendy and me. There was no other family. My father had one sister, but she had come down with MS and had passed away several years prior. I had missed that funeral.

  To my amazement the chapel was filled to capacity and the dividers at the back of the room were open to accommodate the overflow. At each of the doors people were handing out programs or ushering mourners inside. One of them handed me a program as I entered the chapel.

  “Who are all these people helping?” I asked Wendy.

  “They’re from the Sugar House Rotary Club,” she said. “Your dad was a member.”

  Everyone stood as we entered the chapel and remained standing until we had walked to the front pew and sat down just a few yards from the casket and the lectern above it. After we were seated a man walked forward wearing the robe of a pastor.

  “Good morning,” he said. “My name is Dave Nelson. I’m the pastor of this church. We’ve gathered here today to celebrate the life of a great man. Or, I should say, a man’s life lived greatly. The attendance here today speaks volumes to the kind of life Robert Book lived.

  “In Ecclesiastes, the preacher taught, ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.’

  “Today is a time for us to weep and mourn. But not for long. Our Savior counseled, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms;… I go there to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’ ”

  The pastor looked out over the congregation. “We can only hope there are many books in Robert’s room.” There was a soft chorus of pious laughter.

  “We are comforted to know that Robert Book is not alone. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Celeste. He will be followed in death by all of us. As we still have time, let us use it wisely and live such that our deaths may too be sweet. May God bless you with his eternal peace.”

  The pastor was followed by a soloist, a thirtysomething woman with a beautiful, operatic voice. She sang the hymn “How Great Thou Art.”

  The reading of the obituary was done by Wendy. She was, as I expected, emotional, and had difficulty getting through the short reading, even though she’d written the obituary herself. I think she’d planned on saying more but was too emotional to continue, so she returned to her seat instead.

  After Wendy sat down, the woman from the viewing—the well-dressed one who had approached the casket after me—walked up to the lectern. I looked down at the program to see who she was. Her name, appropriately, was Grace.

  It was immediately clear to me that she knew my father well, as she spoke
of things I didn’t know about him. She ended her eulogy by reading a quote from one of my father’s favorite authors.

  “The author John Steinbeck wrote,” she said, looking down at a piece of paper, “ ‘It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.’ ” She looked up. “There is no pleasure in our farewell. Robert’s death is a loss to all who knew him.” She furtively glanced down at me then back out at the crowd. “He was, simply, one of the finest men I’ve ever known. It was an honor to be counted among his many friends.” She teared up. “Godspeed, my dear one.” She slowly turned and walked back to the chair she’d risen from.

  A moment later an older Black man dressed in an Army Service Uniform walked up to the lectern. He spoke briefly about their service together in Vietnam and the occasion on which my father had been awarded a bronze star with a “V” device for valor under fire. I had no idea my father had been given the medal. That’s how tight-lipped he was about his service.

  Afterward, the pastor stood and gave the benediction.

  “The God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant: Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight; through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

  This concluded the service. The funeral director gave instructions to the congregation and the casket was lifted by a half dozen pallbearers who carried it outside to the waiting hearse. I followed the casket out. After the casket was in the car, one of the pallbearers—the man who had served in the war with my father—approached me. “Noel, my name is Steve Johnson,” he said, handing me a business card. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, you just call. Your father was there for me. It would be a sincere honor to return the favor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, thank your father.” He turned and walked away. I looked at the card. Mr. Johnson was the owner of a trucking company.

  There is a rarely used word that described the moment to me: apotheosis. It means the deification of mortals. I think it’s natural, especially at funerals, for people to make the deceased more than they were in life—only my father’s funeral felt a little different. The people around me seemed sincere in their praise and love for my father. And, like Wendy, they were authentic in their grief.

  After the service, the cars lined up to drive to the cemetery for the burial.

  “Are you going to join the procession?” Wendy asked.

  “I need to go home and get the car,” I said. “I’ll meet you up there.”

  “Do you know where the cemetery is?”

  “It’s the same plot where my mother’s buried.”

  “Of course. I’ll see you there.”

  I walked home, got into my father’s car, and drove to the cemetery. My mind was still reeling with what I’d just experienced. My father had either done a remarkable job of fooling the masses or he had changed a lot since my childhood.

  When I arrived at the cemetery I parked in the nearest space I could find, which was at least three hundred yards from the grave, and walked up the slick, snow-banked street to the gathering. The snow had been cleared from the site and artificial turf had been laid around the opening in the ground. The granite headstone was already in place. It had been there, with my father’s name on it, for almost twenty years, ever since my mother died.

  I watched as the pallbearers struggled up the snowy hillside, laid the casket down, and then removed their boutonnieres and placed them on the casket’s lid.

  In front of the casket was a canopied “portachapel” sheltering about twenty folding chairs. Wendy had saved a seat for me in the center of the front row. Also in the front row, two seats from Wendy, was the woman Grace. The graveside service was brief; the pastor said a simple prayer and then dismissed the crowd. As I got up to go Wendy said to me, “We’ll need to discuss your plans for the bookstore before you leave town.”

  “Of course.”

  “When you’re ready.”

  I walked back to my car alone and drove home.

  When I got back to the house, there were three large boxes on the front porch. I checked their shipping labels. They had come from my publisher. I could guess what was inside. Natasha had sent my things from my office. Or, more likely, my assistant had, as it was Lori’s signature on the labels. They hadn’t wasted much time in removing the evidence of my former employment. According to the shipping date, my office had been cleared out the day after I’d left town. No wonder Lori had sounded so anxious when I called.

  I brought the boxes inside, soaked a washcloth in warm water, and laid on the couch with the cloth over my face. There was far too much in my life right now to process. Most of all I just wanted to be left alone.

  I had forgotten it was Halloween.

  The onslaught started early, hours before dark. I gave up on trying to rest, made myself some chili, and grabbed a book. For the next three hours my reading was interrupted every few minutes by the doorbell, followed by shouts of “Trick or Treat.”

  Finally, I just put out what was left of the candy and turned out the porch light. It was a surreal ending to an already surreal day.

  CHAPTER ten

  A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

  —Sidney Sheldon

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  I woke the next morning with an emotional hangover. I drank a black coffee, then went out and ran to clear my mind. With the funeral over, it was time for me to figure out what I was going to do. In the last two months I’d lost my marriage, my apartment, my father, and now my job. Maybe this was how women ended up as cat ladies. It’s a good thing I was allergic to cats.

  Running had neither cleared my mind nor my lungs, as the overcast sky was more brown than gray from one of the valley’s inversions. The weather only added to my feelings of suffocation beneath the weight of anxiety and loneliness.

  I bathed and dressed, then drove up the canyon to Park City to get out of the inversion. It was still early in the ski season, but there was enough snow to attract skiers and the resorts’ parking lots were full. Seeing the crowds only made me feel lonelier.

  It occurred to me that if I died at the house, it might be days, or weeks, before anyone found me. My only “friends” were people I worked with. At least I’d thought they were friends. More than likely, Lori had provided testimony for my termination, and Natasha had dropped the axe. And my former colleague, Diana, had kicked me out of our apartment. I really didn’t blame her for this—I was happy that she was working things out with her husband—it was just that the timing was unfortunate. There wasn’t a single person in my life whom I’d called a friend who wasn’t in some way distancing themselves from me.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d felt this way. After my mother’s death, I’d felt like a loner for most of my life. Maybe that’s why I spent so much time lost in books. As Hemingway said, “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” But I knew better. I needed something more than paper. I needed to be around people. Looking back on this moment much later, I suppose that’s the reason I hired myself at the bookstore.

  CHAPTER eleven

  I love walking into a bookstore. It’s like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me.

  —Tahereh Mafi

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2

  My father’s bookstore was located just a few miles north of the house, in what had become a trendy section of the city. It sat on the corner of Ninth and Ninth, across the street from a gelateria, a bread bakery, and a touring bicycle shop.

  His store resembled an old English bookstore, with myriad-paned windows revealing carefully themed book displays. A sign hung across the front of the store:

  BOBBOOKS

  I pulled into the sto
re’s snow-plowed parking lot and parked in a vacant space beneath a sign that read

  Reserved for Robert Book

  There was an employee entrance in back, which I tried but found locked. I knocked a few times but no one answered, so I walked around to the front. A brass shopkeeper’s bell rang as I opened the door.

  Entering was a wonderful assault to the senses. The store smelled of lavender, sage, and old leather. Instrumental harpsichord Christmas music filled the air as richly as the fragrances.

  It had been many years since I’d entered the old store. It had aged well, and those things that had once seemed outdated and old were now vintage and classic. My father had always had an artistic flair, but only now did I understand that the bookstore was the canvas on which he expressed it. On every vacation we took as a family my father would visit the local bookstores, always talking to the proprietors and coming back with a list of new ideas to implement in his own store.

  Even with its struggles, the book business had a rich culture, and my father was one of its guardians as the digital waves of online consumerism crashed around him.

  The store’s shelves were all varnished oak and strategically placed like a labyrinth, creating small nooks and crannies. Comfortable, well-worn old chairs were scattered about for people to sit in as they perused their books.

  One bookshelf ran along a brick wall covered with English ivy that had grown and established itself in the time I’d been gone. There were book displays made from old wine barrels.

  Along one side of the store the shelves went all the way to the ceiling, and there were ladders on brass railings that slid down the length of the wall to reach the upper books.