by Homes, A. M.
“No,” Nate says. “There’s like an after-party thing?”
“From here we go to the cemetery. At the graveside, a few words are said and the coffin is lowered into the ground.” I wonder if I should tell them the part about shoveling some dirt on your mother, or if some things are better left unsaid. “And after the cemetery we sit shiva at Susan’s house. People who knew your mom will come and visit, and there will be food for lunch.”
“I want to be alone,” Nate says.
“It’s not an option.”
“Who sends these cars? And do they work other jobs?” Nate asks.
“Like what?”
“Like driving rock stars, or do they just do funerals?”
I lean forward and ask the driver, “Do you just do funerals, or funerals and rock stars?”
The driver glances at us in his rearview mirror. “Me, I do funerals and airports. I don’t like rock and roll. They’ll sign you up for a two-hour job, and four days later you’re still parked outside of some hotel, waiting for the guy to decide if he wants to go out for a burger. I like regularity and a schedule.” He pauses. “You got lucky with the weather. Hope you don’t mind me saying but there’s nothing worse than working a funeral when the weather is crap. Puts everyone in a bad mood.”
In the limo en route to the cemetery, the children are on their electronic devices. On the one hand, it’s not appropriate to play computer games while driving to bury your mother; on the other, who can blame them? They want to be anywhere but here.
Jane’s plot is between her aunt and her grandmother, between ovarian cancer and stroke. She is with her people. They have died of illness and old age, but never has there been the victim of domestic violence. It’s different—it’s worse.
The children sit on folding chairs behind their grandparents. Despite its being a nice day, it’s chilly, so everyone keeps their coats on, hands in pockets. As the casket is being lowered, a hushed set of whispers, a current of surprise, sweeps through the group.
“Daddy’s here,” Ashley says.
We all turn to look, and, sure enough, he’s getting out of the back of a car, with two burly black men in scrubs on either side of him.
“That takes a lot of nerve,” Jane’s mother says.
All around us people are whispering, rustling, turning.
“She was his wife.”
“Until death did them part.”
“He should at least have waited until we left,” Susan says.
“He still has rights,” someone says.
“Until he is found guilty.”
The timing is off. George should have stayed in the car, hidden until everyone was gone. He stays in the distance, until the graveside service is done.
“Should we go talk to him?” Nate asks.
“Not right now,” I say. “We’ll see him soon.”
As the funeral procession is pulling out of the cemetery, we pass George on his knees at the grave, sunglasses on, his handcuffed hands in front of him. I see him pushing dirt barehanded into the grave, both hands at once, joined at the wrist.
There is someone with a long lens taking photos.
“Grandma and Grandpa hate us,” Nate says.
“They’re upset.”
“They’re acting like it’s our fault.”
The shiva is at Susan’s house. It’s far, an hour from the cemetery. After we’ve been driving for about forty-five minutes, the kids start to complain. I ask the driver if we can make a pit stop. The long limo drops out of the procession, waits until all the cars have passed; then we slip into a McDonald’s.
“My treat,” I say to everyone, including the driver.
“I thought they were serving lunch at the shiva,” Nate says.
“What would you rather have, a hamburger or egg salad?”
“I’ll toss the evidence,” the driver says when we get to Susan’s house.
“I’m assuming you’ll wait?” I say.
“You don’t have a car?” the driver asks.
“My car is back at the house where you picked us up.”
“Usually we just drop the people off. But I’ll wait. I’ll make it a time call; the hourly rate is seventy-five, with a four-hour minimum.”
“We won’t be that long.”
The driver shrugs.
The twins are on the loose. They’re running through the house, chased by a small dog that seems like a trip hazard for old people. The front hall is mirrored tile with gold veins running through. Just glancing at it makes me nervous; my reflection splits into many pieces, and I wonder if it’s a “magic mirror” somehow empowered to display my internal state.
Susan is leading a tour of her remodeled split-level, showing Jane’s friends how she “blew out” the ceiling and “pushed back” the rear wall so she’d have a great room and a dining room, and how they “recaptured” the garage and made a den/breakfast room with French doors and added decks “everywhere.”
“We did everything we could think of and more,” Susan says, proudly.
And it shows.
The visitors are the same people from the funeral, friends, neighbors, do-gooders, and curious assholes who have no business being there. Despite having eaten a double cheeseburger, I circle the dining-room table, where lunch is laid out. Pitted black olives and cherry tomatoes stare at me, expressionless. Avocados and artichokes, deviled eggs with paprika, smoked salmon, bagels, and macaroni salad; I’m looking at it all, and suddenly it turns into body parts, organs: the Jell-O mold is like a liver; the macaroni salad, cranial matter. I pour myself a Diet Coke.
An older man comes up to me with a look of purpose and extends his hand.
“Hiram P. Moody,” he says, shaking my hand, “your brother’s accountant. No doubt you’ve got a lot on your mind, but what I want you to know, fiduciarily speaking, you’re going to be okay.”
I must have given him an odd look. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he says. “Financially–you’re in good shape. George was a bit of a player, he took some chances, made a gamble here and there, but let’s just say he had a good sense of timing.”
“I’m sorry?” I say, finding Hiram P. hard to follow.
He nods. “Let me be blunt. You and the children will be well cared for. I pay the bills; whatever you need, you let me know. I’m much more than a ‘see you in mid-April’ tax guy. I’m your go-to guy—the one who holds the purse strings—and now so do you. I’ve got some papers that you’ll need to sign—no rush,” he says. “I assume you know that you’re the legal guardian for the children, as well as guardian and medical proxy for your brother, and Jane specifically wanted you as executor of any estate—she was concerned that her sister didn’t share her values.”
I nod. My head is bobbing up and down as if I were a puppet on a weight.
Hiram P. slips a business card into my palm. “We’ll talk soon,” he says. And as I turn to go, he calls after me, “Wait, I’ve got something better. Put out your hand.” I do, and he slaps something into it. “Refrigerator magnet,” he says. “My wife had them made—it’s got all the info, even my cell—for emergencies.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Hiram P. takes me by the shoulders and gives a combo shake/squeeze. “I’m here for you and the children,” he says.
Inexplicably, my eyes fill with tears. Hiram P. moves to hug me as I’m bringing my hand up to blot my eyes. Maybe it wasn’t a hand, maybe it was my fist; maybe I wasn’t going to blot my eyes so much as rub them with a closed fist. My fist connects with the underside of Hiram P.’s chin in a small but swift uppercut that knocks him against the wall. The picture hanging behind him slips on its hook, tilts.
Hiram P. laughs. “That’s what I love about you guys, you’re fucking nuts. So—call me,” he says. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I sit next to Ashley and Nate on Susan’s sectional leather sofa. An older woman sits next to us. “I knew your mother. I did her nails—she had beautiful nails. She talked about you
a lot, very proud of both of you. Very proud.”
“Thank you,” Ashley says.
Nate gets up and goes to get something to eat. He comes back with a plate of berries for Ashley.
“You’re a good brother,” I say to him.
A woman bends towards the children, revealing loose, wrinkled cleavage. I look away. She extends her hand. No one takes it. The hand, with its big diamond, lands on Nate’s knee. “I was her hygienist. We used to have wonderful talks—well, mostly I talked, she had the saliva sucker on, but she was a good listener. She was good.”
“Do you have anything?” Nate asks me.
“Anything like what?”
“Like a Valium, an Ativan, maybe codeine.”
“No,” I say, surprised. “Why would I be carrying that?”
“I don’t know. You had snacks—Gummi Bears—and Kleenex. I thought maybe you’d have some medication.”
“Is there something you normally take for upset? Something that a doctor gives you?”
“I just take stuff from Mom and Dad’s medicine cabinet.”
“Great.”
“Okay, never mind, just thought I’d ask.” Nate walks away.
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom.”
I follow him.
“You’re following me?”
“Are you going to look in the medicine cabinet?”
“I have to pee,” Nate says.
“If you are, I’m going to do it with you. We’ll look together.”
“That’s so fucked up.”
“Any more or less so than you doing it alone?”
I follow him into the bathroom, locking the door behind us.
“I really do have to pee.”
“So pee.”
“Not with you standing there.”
“I’ll turn my back.”
“Can’t,” he says.
“I don’t trust you.”
“When I’m back at school you won’t be following me into the bathroom. There has to be a measure of trust. Just let me pee.”
“You’re right, but the minute you blow it, you are so fucked,” I say, opening the medicine cabinet.
“His Prilosec, her birth control, her Prozac; acyclovir—that’s nice, they must have herpes—oxycodone for his back.”
“Oxycodone would be okay,” Nate says. “Oxy is nice.”
“Here, take this,” I say, plucking out a pink-and-white capsule and handing it to him.
“What is it?”
“Benadryl.”
“That’s not even prescription.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work; it’s very sedating.”
“What else is there? Diazepam, that’s generic Valium—let me have two of those.”
“No.”
“How about one? That’s what you’d take for fear of flying.”
“How about four? That’s what you need for a colonoscopy,” I suggest.
“You’re funny,” Nate says, taking one pill and pocketing the bottle.
“Put the bottle back. For all you know they have a camera in here, and they’ll blame me.”
As we’re coming down the hall, Jane’s father catches my arm. “You should cut your dick off. You should have to live without something precious to you.”
The father gives me a little shove and walks off to speak with the caterer. I see the caterer’s big burly boyfriend coming towards me, and I’m thinking they’re going to ask me to leave, and so I start weaving through the crowd, trying to avoid the guy, thinking I better get Ashley, I better tell the kids that it’s time to go. The caterer’s boyfriend gets to me before I reach the children.
“Did you try the tuna?” he asks.
“Uh, no,” I say. “No, I didn’t try it yet.”
“Be sure you do,” he says. “I make it myself from fresh tuna.”
“Sure,” I say. “Will do.” I’m shaken. “I have to go,” I tell Nate.
“Okay,” Nate says. “I’ll get Ashley.”
“Where are we going?” Ashley asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not used to telling anyone what I’m doing. I’m not used to going with anyone.”
“You can’t leave us here,” Nate says.
I pause. “I’m going to see my mother.”
“Are you going to tell her about all this?”
“No,” I say.
We leave without saying goodbye. I tell the limo driver the name of the nursing home and he looks it up on his GPS and we take off.
“Should we bring her something?” Nate asks.
“Like what?”
“A plant.”
“Sure.”
“I think it’s good to bring something you can leave behind, so it looks like someone cares about her,” Ashley says.
When the limo driver passes a florist, I ask him to stop. We spend twenty minutes debating what to bring—finally picking out an African violet, assuming it to be most suited to the hot, dry air of the nursing home.
The nursing home smells like shit.
“Someone must have had an accident,” I say.
The farther we get from the front door, the less it smells like shit and the more like chemicals and old people.
“We moved your mother into a semi-private room. She needed more companionship,” the nurse tells me.
I knock on her door—no one answers. “Hi, Mom,” I say, pushing the door open.
“Hello there.”
“It’s me,” I say. “And I’ve brought someone with me.”
“Come in, come in.” We step into the room, and it’s the woman in the other bed, thinking we’re there for her. “Come closer,” she says. “I can’t see very well.”
I go to the edge of her bed. “I’m Harry. I’m here for your neighbor. I’m her son.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she was in the house when I was growing up,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “What’s in a name?”
“Do you know where my mother, your neighbor, is?”
“They’re having an ice-cream social, make your own sundae, down the hall in the dining room, but the diabetics are forbidden, they make us wear this vulgar bracelet.” She holds up her arm; on her wrist is a yellow bracelet with “DIABETIC” in caps written on it, and on her other arm is an orange bracelet that says “Do Not Resuscitate.” “That’s why my eyes are lousy—it’s the sugar that got them.”
As she’s talking, my mother is wheeled back into the room, holding an enormous sundae in two hands. “I heard I had company,” she says. I notice she too has bracelets, a blue one that says “Demented” and the same orange “Do Not Resuscitate.”
“I was talking to your roommate.”
“Blind as a bat,” Mother says.
“But not deaf,” the roommate says.
“It’s about time the two of you came,” Mother says to Nate and Ashley. “How are the children?”
“She thinks you’re George and Jane.”
“Does she know about Mom?” Ashley asks.
“Don’t talk behind our backs in front of our faces, it’s rude,” the woman in the other bed says.
“It’s nice to see you,” Nate says, hugging Mother.
Ashley hands her the plant, which she places in her lap but otherwise ignores.
“Are you working hard?” Mother asks Nate. “Filling the airwaves with crap? Are the children in school, is the one with problems feeling better?”
“The children are amazing,” Nate says. “Both brilliant in their own ways.”
“Wonder where it comes from?” the roommate says. “Are they adopted?”
“Okay, Mom,” I say. “We wanted to have a little visit; we’ll come back again soon. Is there anything you need?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” I say.
“Next time you come, you could bring me something,” the roommate says. “Bring something
sugar-free; because I’m diabetic doesn’t mean I should be punished. Look at me, I’m not fat, I didn’t overeat. And look at her, she’s eating ice cream.”
“With whipped cream, hot fudge, and a cherry on top,” Mother says, and briefly chokes. “I ate the stem,” she says. “Forgot to spit it out.”
“Serves you right,” the roommate says. “I could tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.”
“Bet you can’t anymore,” Mother says.
“Of course I can,” the roommate says. “Girl, go get me one and I’ll show you all.”
“Should I?” Ashley asks.
“No reason not to,” I say.
Ashley goes to the dining room and comes back with a maraschino cherry. She hands it to the roommate, its red juice dripping like blood on the white coverlet. The old woman pops the cherry into her mouth; we see it vaguely going around and around.
“Harder with dentures,” she says, taking a break, “but I’m making progress.”
And voilà, she spits the cherry into her hand, the stem tied into a knot.
“How’d you do it?” Ashley wants to know.
“Practice,” she says.
“Okay, Mom, we have to go now.”
“So soon,” the roommate says. “You just got here.”
“The car is waiting outside; it’s a long story.”
“All right, then,” she says. “You’ll tell me next time.”
Early Monday morning, the children are driven back to school with lunches I make from what remains in the refrigerator.
With the children gone, the tick-tock of the kitchen clock is deafeningly loud. “Was that clock always there?” I ask Tessie. “Was it always so loud?”
I load the dishes into the dishwasher, give Tessie and the cat fresh water, putter and put things away until there is nothing more to do.
I walk around the house in circles.
Where does one go from here? I imagine leaving—walking out and never coming back. The dog looks at me. Okay, then, walking out and leaving a note for the mailman instructing him to have the pets sent to George at the nuthouse—animals are very therapeutic.
Before this happened, I had a life, or at least I thought I did; the quality, the successfulness of it had not been called into question. I was about to do something.…