A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents

by Liza Palmer

  “Yes,” Huston answers.

  “You’ve been served,” the young man says, putting a blue-backed legal document, instead of a sympathetic handshake, into Huston’s hand.

  “What? What did you just say?” Huston fumes, grabbing the guy’s hand and pulling him back. His entire body resembles a volcano. Time stops as we are all helpless against his imminent eruption.

  “You’ve been served,” the young man repeats, his voice dripping with unfounded righteousness.

  “The fuck I have,” Huston yells, swinging his fist around and connecting with the young man’s face. The young man is thrown back against the floor. The crowd scatters—gasps of surprise and screams of horror fill Abigail’s living room.

  “Whoaaa, okay… okay.” I jump in between the two men as John holds Huston back. The young man wheels up, lunges at Huston and connects with the right side of my face. A flash of pain shoots through my body and I hear my voice cry out, but far away. Somewhere out there. I hit the living room floor and immediately bring my hands to my face. Wet. Something is wet.

  “Get the kids out! Get the kids out!” Abigail shouts at Manny. He gathers the little ones quickly. The crowd herds into the kitchen.

  “Take him. TAKE. HIM,” John yells, handing Huston over to Leo and quickly “escorting” the young man outside.

  “Serve me at my father’s wake?! You’re going to SERVE ME AT MY FATHER’S WAKE?!” Huston screams, crawling over Leo—his voice now cracking and wrenching.

  As Abigail hunches down over me with a wet rag from the kitchen, I hear what sounds like someone hitting a side of beef. Over and over again. Grunts and moans from just outside. And then a slammed door.

  “You okay?” John says, coming into focus.

  “Something’s wet. Someone spilled their drink,” I say, looking at Abigail. Fix it. Fix it, Abigail.

  “You’re bleeding, sweetie,” Abigail soothes, taking a bag of ice from Manny and putting it on my eye. I recoil.

  “Yowwww,” I mewl, grabbing John’s hand. Pulling at him. Tugging at him.

  “Okay… you’re going to be okay,” John soothes.

  “Where’s Huston?” I ask, looking around the room. Abigail presses the ice bag against my face and scans the room as well. No Huston. She motions to Manny to get things back on track. Leo is crouching on the floor, picking up the scattered papers. No Huston.

  “Wine, anyone? Anyone want wine?” Manny offers, grabbing a bottle of red wine off the table. Everyone jumps at the offering. Leo passes the papers to John. He takes them and helps me off the floor as we all follow Abigail into another, more private part of the house.

  “Was I just punched in the face at my father’s wake?” I mumble, pulling the bag of ice off my eye. John is seething. All he can muster in response is a low growl. We file into the twins’ bedroom just off the living room. I re-situate the bag of ice as Abigail closes the door behind us.

  Huston is slumped against the wall, his face hidden in his now bloodied hands. His sobs are wrenching and bottomless. Abigail immediately goes to him.

  “Oh, Huston…” she starts, sitting down next to him. He crumbles into her, sobbing.

  “I really thought he was going to get better,” Huston says, over and over again.

  “We all did,” Abigail says calmingly, smoothing his hair, cradling him. Huston looks up, his face wild.

  “They’re both gone,” Huston cries. Leo claps his hand over his mouth. He’s paralyzed. “We’re on the front line, Abby. If she wants to come at us, we’ve got no one. We’re it. Dad’s gone,” Huston wails. I set the ice bag down on the alphabet rug on the twins’ bedroom floor and kneel in front of Huston. Abigail watches.

  “We’ve got this,” I say, my face close to Huston’s.

  “Grace… it’s just us,” Huston sobs.

  “And that’s plenty. We can do this,” I say, pulling his face up. His tearstained face is red and blotchy. I lock eyes with him. I am focused. Resolute. And my goddamn eye is killing me.

  “He didn’t make it,” Huston whispers.

  “I know,” I say, pulling him in for a hug. He envelops me. I can feel his body shuddering and convulsing, but I hold tight.

  “We’ve got this,” I whisper, over and over again in his ear. I break from Huston, sitting next to him on the floor of the bedroom. Leo hands me the ice bag and I put it back on my eye, acting like I’m not about to vomit from the pain. Huston picks up a Transformer off the floor and busily changes it from Optimus Prime to a semitruck, Optimus Prime, now back to a semitruck, and on and on. The transformations are violent and brutal. His nervous energy clicks with each and every transformation. Tears still stream down his face as I set my hand atop his. I pull Optimus Prime away from Huston and take his hand in mine. We look at John.

  “It’s a will contest,” John reads, focusing on the papers. Huston tries to catch his breath, shaking out his fists. Each one of us was served with a subpoena by the interloping (now bloodied) party crasher—a single-page document that compels us to testify at the hearing on Connie’s will contest. I can’t help but think about dinner at Huston’s. We were so naive. John was the only one who saw this coming. “It’s in Ventura court. In less than a month.”

  “What… I don’t understand,” Abigail says. We all try to focus. Huston wipes at his face, taking a long deep breath, and stands. He attempts to collect himself as he walks over to John. Even his gait is modified by his anguish. Everyone takes note that Huston may have survived the Big One, but we’re all in for a few more of his emotional aftershocks before the night is over. Huston settles in and scans the documents over John’s shoulder. We all warily look on.

  “She wants to invalidate Dad’s will, so she gets everything—like there was no will at all,” John says, wincing at the sight of what must be my quickly swelling face. Or it could be the stench that fills the room from a giant red-and-blue guinea pig cage, along with the squealing whistles of the furry bag of an animal now cowering within.

  “What? How?” Abigail asks, now standing. She’s begun picking up the twins’ strewn clothes off the floor.

  “She’s basing her petition on the grounds that we exerted undue influence over Dad,” Huston reads, his voice now steady.

  “What does that mean?” Leo blurts, pacing the tiny blue-and-pink room.

  “It means she’s trying to say that you somehow cajoled Ray into leaving you everything. She… well, here in her declaration, she states that you threatened to withhold your love and—” John stops and shakes his head, his eyes continuing to scan the following lines.

  “Withhold our love… what?” I press.

  “That you basically held your love hostage until he folded and guaranteed you an inheritance,” John explains.

  “That’s what Dennis was blathering about in the hospital room. Remember?” I say, placing the bag of ice back on my eye.

  “Well, it’s not true,” Leo says. Thank you, Professor Einstein.

  “Of course it’s not true, but she’s a little old lady and—” John explains, going into lawyer mode again.

  “I know, and we’re the gold-digging ne’er-do-wells,” I finish for him bitterly.

  “We talked about how that’s how she’s going to paint you,” John reminds me.

  “But we weren’t in contact with Dad. That’s so… He didn’t want anything to do with us,” Abigail finally admits, flipping Emilygrae’s comforter up and over her unmade bed. The throng of stuffed animals, books, and action figures strewn around that tiny bed is staggering. Even a girl as tiny as my niece must have to do contortions to get a comfortable night’s sleep in it. With one swoop of the comforter, though, all the child paraphernalia disappears. As we all watch Abigail fuss with Emilygrae’s bed, she looks up. “I cleaned the rest of the house. I… I didn’t think anyone would come in here,” she apologizes, fluffing Emilygrae’s pillows. Leo pats her shoulder and I shoot her what I hope is a comforting look—though with my now swelling eye, it probably missed the mark to
tally. I almost certainly look like Popeye the Sailor Man beseeching Abigail for a can of spinach.

  “Connie doesn’t know we weren’t in contact with Dad,” I say.

  “Connie doesn’t know shit,” Leo spits, taking the legal document from John. He flips page after page. Huston folds his arms and watches.

  “We’ll call Dad’s attorney. He can speak to Dad’s state of mind and the whole process,” I say. Huston nods.

  “Can you handle this?” Huston asks John.

  “Hell, yeah,” John says.

  We are silent except for the crowd noise from just outside the twins’ bedroom door and the settling ice. Leo reads on.

  “She claims we stole her money… that we broke into her home and stole property from her and changed the locks. Oh my God, she’s talking about the Madonna,” Leo says, looking up from the document.

  “She’s not talking about the Madonna. She didn’t even notice the Madonna. She’s talking about the documents we took from Dad’s office,” I answer.

  “She says that we banned her from seeing Dad. That we intentionally moved him a hundred miles away so they couldn’t be together,” Leo reads, his voice growing more and more hysterical. Huston takes the document back.

  “Don’t,” he urges, trying to calm Leo.

  “Oh my God, that’s why they never came and visited him, we should have guessed what they were up to,” Leo realizes, flopping onto Emilygrae’s toy-riddled bed. I sneak a look at John. He knew.

  “Honey, it’s all lies,” Abigail soothes, sitting down next to Leo and wrapping her arm around him. Abigail’s eyes implore Huston to say something.

  “What do we do now?” Leo asks, his voice tiny. All eyes fall on Huston.

  “We have to prove that we didn’t influence Dad,” I say. I look to Huston with my one good eye. He’s right there with me.

  “The only way we can argue we didn’t exert undue influence over Dad is to prove that we weren’t in each other’s lives,” Huston adds, still looking at me.

  “We have to prove that he abandoned us,” I realize, shaking my head at the terrible irony of it all. Leo whimpers on the bed.

  “And that he wanted nothing to do with us while he was alive,” Huston adds.

  “What? Wait… what? We have to do what?” Abigail asks.

  “How can that help?” Leo demands.

  “Undue influence means that absent your taking such unfair advantage of him, Ray would have left everything to Connie, his rightful heir,” John explains, taking the document from Huston and going through it.

  “How can she even say that? Dad was clear that he wanted her left nothing,” Leo says.

  “Of course, but she’s going to stick with the scenario I painted back at the hospital. They were the loves of each other’s lives, spent every moment together, yet had some understanding about keeping separate residences,” John explains, flipping another page of the document.

  “But, what about the will, though? He omitted her, remember,” Leo interrupts. John looks up.

  “Undue influence. She’ll say that Ray went into his attorney’s office in a fugue state, willing to do whatever it took to woo you four back into his life. That you all conned him into drafting that will and, in so doing, cheated Connie out of her rightful inheritance as his wife,” John recites automatically, his eyes trained on the document.

  “Right,” Huston agrees, nodding to John. “It’s going to take more than that.”

  “We have all those documents,” I say, looking at John. He nods, but…

  “We’re going to have to prove that Dad was a shitty father?” Leo asks, imploring us to shake him out of this nightmare.

  We are silent until a quiet knock on the door startles us back into reality.

  We’re at Dad’s wake.

  Evie pokes her head in. “Mom?”

  “Hi, mija.” Abigail smiles, perfectly composed. She approaches the door.

  “People are asking where you are,” Evie says, her eyes falling on me and my ice–bag–covered face. Her entire face creases with worry. Abigail quickly herds Evie out into the living room. Huston is seething. His anger fills the room.

  “What is it?” I finally ask.

  “Probate court is a court of equity. That means the judge can do pretty much whatever he or she wants—to make it come out the way he or she wants. And Connie’s a very sympathetic figure. She’s going to try to drag this out as long as she can. We can’t prove any of it,” he says flatly.

  “We have all those documents and the will. The attorney can testify to Ray’s state of mind,” John argues.

  “Yeah, but we can’t. She’s right, we don’t know him!” Huston shouts, his voice catching. His breakdown too soon in the past and this aftershock hitting sooner than anyone thought.

  “Huston,” I say gently. Leo quickly closes the door to the hallway.

  “We barely know each other anymore,” Huston adds.

  “We got to know Dad… in the end,” I offer.

  “Yeah, and then he…” Huston stops, motioning into the living room.

  “He wanted us to handle his affairs. And that’s what we’re going to do,” Leo says.

  “Then why… why did he leave us with this mess? And how are we supposed to go up there and swear under penalty of perjury that we know anything about Ray Hawkes? I don’t know the first goddamn thing. Do you?!”

  “Ironically that’s just what we have to testify about. That we don’t know anything about him and that we don’t know why he left us everything. But he did.” I am alone in my fearlessness of Huston. I approach him readily.

  “What kind of man does that? What kind of man does that?” Huston repeats. Abigail comes bursting back into the room. John and I lock eyes—or eye, as the case may be.

  “I can hear you out in the living room,” she hisses.

  “What kind of man does that?” Huston repeats. Abigail immediately softens. John gives me a quick nod and exits the twins’ room, closing the door behind him.

  Just. Us. Four.

  “I guess we’ll never know,” I say. If only that mythical trunk of journals existed.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be some deathbed confessional? Why didn’t he tell us why?” Huston erupts.

  I set the bag of ice on the bedside table and approach Huston. I don’t quite know how to comfort him. He’s so physically large, there’s no way to encircle him. I take his hand, and he grips it tightly, looking down at me, his eyes pleading with me to just leave him alone. From the other side, I see Abigail taking his other hand and looping it around her shoulder. She holds him tightly around his waist. Huston pulls her in closely. Leo walks over, wraps one arm around Abigail and the other around me, pulling me in snug. I let go of Huston’s hand and thread my arm around Huston’s waist, resting my head on his chest. Huston breathes deeply and gives Leo a quick kiss on the top of his head. He tightens around us all.

  “My eye,” I whimper.

  “He’s going to get lost, you know? The Dad we were starting to know is going to get lost in all of this,” Huston whispers, his voice rumbling in his chest. We all look up from all around him and it’s a race to see who can say it first.

  “No, he won’t,” I say first.

  “We won’t let him,” Leo adds.

  “That bitch is going down,” Abigail proclaims.

  And Huston smiles… just a little.

  chapter twenty-five

  Swear the witness in,” the judge orders.

  Connie steps into the witness box at the front of the courtroom, remains standing and raises her right hand.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the clerk asks.

  “I do,” Connie answers. I half expect her to burst into flames.

  “You may be seated,” the judge instructs.

  “State your name for the record, please. And spell it,” the tightly wound clerk says.

  “Constance Hawkes,” Connie answers.
>
  “Spell it, please,” the clerk says. Leo shifts on the bench next to me, his foot kicking, kicking, kicking me. All the time. I see that Dennis is in the front row on the other side. I wonder what he’s going to say… he was like a father to me?

  “C-O-N-S-T-A-N-C-E. H-A-W-K-E-S,” Connie rattles off. I’m surprised she can even spell it, she probably never uses it except when she thinks it’ll help her case.

  “You may proceed, Counsel,” the judge urges, looking at Connie’s attorney. I crane my neck past Abigail and Huston to get a look at the guy who filed declaration after sob-sister declaration that each sound like a spurned lover’s late-night wine-soaked rant to nowhere. They’re so personal, I imagine turning to the last page and finding that her attorney has scrawled, “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you!!”

  “Mrs. Hawkes, where do you reside?” the attorney starts, his stark black hair unmoving, his wattle moving enough for everyone.

  “Nine twenty-four Dean Street in Ojai, California,” Connie answers, her voice calm.

  “And are you married?” the attorney asks, leaning up against the bar that separates the courtroom from the seating for the masses.

  “I was married. I’m a widow now,” Connie says, moving her body forward so she can speak clearly into the microphone.

  “To whom?”

  “Ray Hawkes.”

  “How long have you been married to Ray Hawkes?”

  “Almost five years,” Connie answers, her voice catching.

  “Were you happily married?”

  “I searched my whole life for Ray, found him when I was… well, let’s just say I found him when I was no spring chicken. I didn’t think I’d ever find true love, but I did. We were everything to each other,” Connie oozes.

  “So, you’ve lived together all those years?”

  “Yes.” Liar! Ignoring my silent accusation, her lawyer continues smoothly.

  “Why don’t you describe a typical day for the two of you for us?”

  “Well, we’d sit and have coffee and read the morning newspaper. Talk about our day, what we had planned, maybe do a little shopping. Sometimes in the late afternoons we’d play board games in front of the fire, take walks through town. Every once in a while we’d entertain, have dinner parties for our friends, go out to a movie or the playhouse. I just love the art shows, and God bless him, Ray would just let me drag him anywhere. It was idyllic. We were inseparable.” Connie’s voice cracks. Our four mouths drop open in unison.