Funeral Platter

by Greg Ames

  I nodded, stonefaced.

  We volleyed for serve. He won and held the ball up for me to see. “Pontius Pilate to serve,” he announced.

  The match was finally underway.

  Pilate hit with remarkable power. I noticed that he changed his grip on almost every serve to prevent me from anticipating his next move. He grunted over every swing. The ball came fast and high, taking me by surprise. Serves blew by me. “That ball is gone,” he said as I chased the ball halfway across the room. “It was banished, driven from the table. Gone: like religious faith, like romantic love, like an unattended plate in a Chinese buffet.”

  Once he got rolling, it was hard to shut him up. Pilate was a master shit talker.

  “Under certain circumstances,” he said, blinking at me, “can a rock be both igneous and sedimentary?”

  I said nothing.

  “I think it can,” he said.

  Still I said nothing.

  We played without speaking for six or eight points. Pilate calmly flicked his wrist to return my serves, singing quietly to himself: “Hot blooded, check it and see… .” The ball kept coming back at me. “I got a fever of a hundred and three.”

  No matter what I threw at him, hard or soft, he returned it. Pilate was a “reactor.” He recognized all variations of spin. He was savage with my short serves, merciless with side topspins. If I stood back too far he would drop a short underspin return just over the net, where it would die quivering. If I crowded the table, he’d bounce a high smoker into my sternum.

  The score was 12–8, Pilate. Ball in hand, he swayed over the table, taunting me. “I am going to serve now. But where will it go? Nobody knows. Look out. Could be hard, could be soft.” He lurched forward, grunted, and served up a short sidespin that slid off my end of the table like a cube of Jell-O.

  “Thirteen for me,” he sang, “but only nine for you.”

  “Eight,” I said, low.

  “Oh, right. Eight. You’re so honest. How commendable.”

  “Just serve the ball and stop yapping, old man.”

  “Heavens, am I bothering you? Terribly sorry.” And he rifled a quick serve into my abdomen. “Fourteen,” he said.

  I battled back and won seven consecutive points. The ball streaked over the net, a flash of white. Soon I had him on his heels. He committed his first unforced error. “Christ,” he said. At 17–16, my lead, with the momentum clearly in my favor, Pilate cried: “Ow, wait, I stubbed my toe. Time out,” and he hobbled over to a nearby chair.

  He sipped a plastic cup of water and fanned a towel in front of his face. Grimacing, he twisted his foot up and closely inspected his filthy, wrinkled arch. A minute passed. I refused to show any reaction. Rubbing his toes, he smiled at me and said: “Let’s get to know each other a little better. Okay? These tournaments are always so impersonal. I’m Pontius. And what’s your name again?”

  “Nick.”

  He squeezed his big toe. “Pleased to know you, Nick. Are you Catholic, by any chance?”

  I knew I shouldn’t answer, but I did. “My parents were,” I said.

  He nodded. “Funny how Catholics have such a burning desire to embrace Rome, although Romans were their greatest persecutors for centuries.” He kneaded his toes. “Ever been to the Vatican? Jeezum Criminy, that’s a sight, huh?”

  One thing was clear: he would stop at nothing to defeat me. He hoped to make me question my faith right there in the Tony Carlucci Memorial Room. But I didn’t have any faith—none that I was consciously aware of, anyway—so his little salvo missed its mark.

  “No more talk.” I headed back to my side of the table. “Time’s up.”

  “If that’s how you play the game, Nick.” He winced. “My foot really hurts. I think it’s swollen. But if you cannot allow me another minute of rest, I understand. I shall limp over and try to compete.”

  I didn’t reply. Pilate remained seated. He rubbed the sole of his foot.

  “I’m curious,” he said. “Do you like me?”

  “Aw, man. Give me a break.”

  “It’s a reasonable question. Theologians portray me as reluctant and weak.” He looked up at me. “By vilifying me, they neutralized the conflict between the early Christian Church and Roman authority. They knew they would have to iron out their differences eventually, and they needed a scapegoat. Et voilà. C’est moi. I’m the fall guy.”

  It made sense, but I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to win the match and continue on to the quarterfinals. I wanted to keep going to my meetings, climb the ladder at my job, marry a woman, start a family.

  Pilate lowered his eyes. “You know, I am a person too, Nick. And I have made some mistakes, but …” He waved his hand. Sniffling, he turned his head. “Sorry,” he said, rising unsteadily to his feet. He came over to my side of the table. “My mother passed away a few years ago, you see, and I moved here for work last year and haven’t made a lot of connections yet. Do you know what that feels like, Nick, to be so alone in the world? Won’t you be my friend?”

  For a moment I was tempted to console him, but I remained silent.

  “What was your childhood like, Nick?” He had not yet picked up his paddle. He leaned his right hip casually against the side of the table. “I’m interested. You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

  I examined the paddle in my hand. “It’s not important,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. I know all about it. And I want to help you, Nick. The question is, will you let me help you?”

  In Hurley House, they told us to seek a higher power—meaning anything greater than ourselves—to stay right sized. My sponsor said I could live a rich spiritual life without pledging allegiance to any particular religion, but I needed to find a God of my own understanding. At first, it sounded like a load of hot steaming crap. You want me to build my own God like some kind of divine Dagwood sandwich?

  But what were the alternatives? My best thinking usually landed me in the holding center or the emergency room. For years I’d looked for God in bottles and books and women and sex. None of those options worked for me.

  I sat through our daily meetings in Hurley House with my arms crossed on my chest. Couldn’t they see that I was not one of them? But every day I listened to others talk about their higher powers, and I became envious. Anything that helped me get outside of myself and become useful to others could be considered a higher power, my sponsor told me. Trying to diminish my ego, I mopped the floors and took out the trash. I made my bed every morning. And I waited. God never cradled me in his smooth palm and stroked me like a beloved pet hamster, but one morning I woke up and did not hate everybody and everything I saw.

  “Are you considering my offer of friendship?” Pilate’s chapped lips parted to reveal a warm generous smile, the smile of a kind uncle. It confused and frightened and intrigued me, but I knew the ways of manipulative men. They had been my teachers, and I had become one of them.

  He spun the paddle in his hand. “Did you learn my name, Pontius Pilate, in Sunday school? Did they talk about me quite a bit? I bet they did.”

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said to him, trying to be compassionate.

  Pilate let loose a huge laugh. “Oh, I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You want to be a more spiritual person, yes? A responsible, caring, sober adult. It’s part of your recovery, this spiritual awakening. Is that not what you were told? I know you better than you think, Nick, you bad boy. Listen to me. They are lying to you. AZnd deep down you know they are lying. They tell you to find a God of your own understanding, but how can you have a religion, or a God of any kind, along with this burning anger? You want to let it out, and it must come out.”

  “Enough,” I said, scraping my paddle on the edge of the table. “Let’s play.”

  “Let’s play,” he echoed in a vicious voice. “Oh, I’m sorry, make way for the only person in the whole world. His majesty, King Baby.” He glared at me. “Dammit, I know you, Nick. Hell, I am you.
You live for the buzz you get from acting out—drinking, sex, gambling—but you can’t sit with your feelings, can you? We’re getting to the Core of Nick and you can’t handle it, can you?”

  I steadied myself against the table. If I attacked him, I would be disqualified. If I remained silent, he would think he’d rattled me.

  Pilate stroked his beard with his filthy thumb and forefinger. “You were a terrible embarrassment to your family for years, Nick. I have heard many stories in these corridors, but none sadder than yours. And you think it’s all different now? Your parents died, one after the other, before you could reconcile with either of them. You stole so much from them. You betrayed them. But how can you make amends with dead people? It’s too late, Nick. You missed your chance.”

  “It’s my serve,” I said.

  “No,” he said and waved his hand, flourishing the white ball. “It is not.”

  He bounced the ball once, twice on the table. His hand closed over it. “The death of our loved ones is traumatic, Nick,” he said. “Perhaps a drink would take the sting away. You pass a dozen bars every night after work. Who would know? No harm in one cold beer. Is there?”

  And he served.

  We battled back and forth. Winners, volleys, and unforced errors. We were tied at twenty-one, tied at twenty-seven. My wristbands were drenched with sweat. My thin T-shirt clung to my back. I lunged and skidded around the table. The soles of my Adidas squeaked on the polished hardwood floor. Tok, tok, tok. The ball flew over the net.

  For a moment, Pilate held the ball and watched me with a mocking smile on his face. “Nick,” he said, “please know that I want to help you. I’m here for you.”

  I looked up at the plaster swirls in the water-damaged ceiling. The custodian had done a nice temporary patch job but he’d left the crumbling sheetrock foundation untouched. The whole thing would have to come down eventually.

  “I’m curious,” Pilate said. “Do you take wine at Communion?”

  I wanted to pound the living shit out of him. He was a confused little man in a reeking Salvation Army bathrobe. I could have easily slammed him to the floor. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  “Tired?” Pilate asked. He looked dry, rested, self-assured. Barely winded.

  “No,” I said. But I was. I had never felt so drained.

  Smiling, Pilate opened his mouth and revealed a clutter of stained, crisscrossed teeth. “There’s no need for us to be so competitive, Nick,” he said. “Some night we should go out for a few beers and perhaps a fish fry. How’s that sound?”

  “Not interested.”

  Pilate was hiding inside his body, peeking out at me. His teeth were like cracked pottery shards wedged into his gums. I imagined yanking him out of himself with forceps and dragging him to a mirror. I wanted him to stare into his own weathered face. I almost felt sorry for him until he sent a spinning corkscrew serve into my abdomen when I wasn’t looking. “Heads up,” he said. “Stay alert.”

  We continued to trade points back and forth. When the score climbed to 31–30, my lead, Pilate dropped his paddle on the floor. “I see a hairline crack,” he said, bending over it. “I’m afraid we’ll have to suspend the match.” He extended his arm to hold me back, even though I had remained where I was. “Don’t touch it, Nick. We need to get this paddle analyzed by an outside panel of judges.”

  “Pick it up,” I said, remaining where I was. “This will be a good lesson for you.”

  Pilate pouted and kicked the leg of the table. “You have no idea what it’s like for me,” he said. “God doomed me to walk the earth for eternity, engaged in mindless activities with fools. I come to this Y only to be ridiculed and—Don’t you see? I did all I could for Jesus Christ. I did all I could for mankind. Read the Book of John. I did not want him to die.”

  “That’s a sad story,” I said. “Get ready.”

  “Look at me, babe,” Pilate said. “I’m a mess over here. I picked up this awful robe at an Amvets. Even the drifters in Judea wore better threads.” He clasped his hands before his chest as if in prayer. “Have mercy on me.”

  I bounced the ball on the table. I liked to believe that I thrived under pressure. “Pick up your paddle,” I said.

  “I’m sorry for how everything has turned out in your life,” Pilate said. “I know you’re suffering, Nick. I can see it on your face. Your pain rides shotgun when you drive, pushing your passenger up against the door.”

  I bounced the ball on the table. “Pick up your paddle,” I said again. “I’m about to do you a favor.”

  In Hurley House, a guy named Florida Frank, a “graduate” who visited us weekly to share his story, told us that he performed one act of service each day. He wouldn’t let his head hit that pillow, he said, until he’d done something good, however small, for somebody else. He’d open a door for someone, or he’d send an email saying he was thinking of someone, or he’d listen to a sponsee drone on about his problems when all he, Florida Frank, really wanted to do was watch the damn TV. Hey, he said, this was a small penance for being such a selfish prick for so many years.

  Many nights I lay in bed thinking about what he’d said. Had I done anything that day, I wondered, to make life a little better for someone else? The answer, more often than not, was no.

  I thought a lot about heliotropism, how plants turn toward what keeps them alive. How amazing! How natural! The majority of human beings probably do the same, but there are some of us—and for a long time I counted myself among them—who stubbornly refuse to take in what we need to thrive. And then we get to say, “Look at what the world has done to me,” though we have done it to ourselves.

  “Let’s quit together.” Pilate stepped around the table and stood beside the net. “We’ll both walk out. A double forfeit. I’ll buy the first round at the bar.”

  The desire to lose on purpose, to burn my whole life down again, was still so alluring. The hardest drug to kick was righteous indignation. Look at what has been done to me.

  “Go back to your side of the table,” I said. “Pick up your fucking paddle. Don’t make me say it again.”

  Eyes lowered, Pilate did as he was told.

  “My serve,” I announced, and I held the ball up over my head. “Match point.”

  He clutched his paddle with both hands. “You can’t win,” he said, getting into his stance. “I’ll rip you apart, kid.”

  Pilate was stubborn. How much longer could he hold out, furious and resentful at the world? Ten thousand years? Until he couldn’t even remember why he was so angry in the first place? I doubted that he would ever be honest with himself. He whined and sulked like a child. He pointed his finger at everyone but himself.

  To what lengths would he be willing to go to change his life? That was up to him. I could only share the most hard-earned lesson of my life, the idea that was only just then finding its way into words.

  “You have to earn forgiveness,” I said, and served up a beauty.

  RETIREMENT HOME

  Ryder carries a slop bucket of grub out to his parents. He unlatches the clanking gate of their chain-link cage and sets the bucket down in the dirt. Dressed in hip waders and a black winter coat with a fur-lined hood, he leans against the doorjamb and smokes a menthol cigarette. Overhead the sky has turned dark, overcast. It looks like rain again. Before he serves the meal, he sprays down the previous day’s mess with a garden hose.

  “Good morning,” his mother says.

  With a sharpened stick Ryder stirs the corn chowder. It was hot a minute ago, bubbling hot, but now it’s lukewarm. He hoists the ten-gallon bucket and pours the chowder into their red plastic bowls, sploshing it over the sides so that it mixes a little with their water bowl.

  “Your mother is speaking to you,” his father says.

  Crouched in the corner of the cage, his parents hug each other for warmth. It must have been cold last night, but Ryder didn’t feel anything. He had his electric blanket cranked to 6. Toasty.

  “I
didn’t sleep all that well,” his mother says to him. “Your father and his snoring.”

  “That wasn’t me, dear. Must’ve been your other husband.” The old man grins at the punch line of a family joke.

  “See you tomorrow,” Ryder says and turns back toward the house.

  They wave to him.

  “Good seeing you, son,” his father calls out.

  “Thanks for visiting,” his mother says. “The chowder looks wonderful.”

  His folks built this cage themselves. Nobody’s making them stay inside. One morning Ryder and his little sister, when they were still small children, found their parents in this contraption. Ryder’s sister cried and begged them to come out, her little fingers curled around the galvanized steel of the cyclone fence. Like penned animals they grunted back at the child, unable to make themselves comprehensible. Fine. Nobody gets a perfect childhood. But when Ryder caught his little sister building her own cage next to theirs, a sad structure made of wire hangers and twigs, torn linen, paper clips and doll hair, he felt responsible for her future.

  Now he handles the daily feeding duties only after he has walked his sister to school. She is not allowed to play in the backyard when she returns.

  Wet leaves and candy wrappers have blown against the east side of the cage and have clogged up several of the diamond-shaped apertures of the chain-link walls. Inside, the two grownups stagger across the dying grass, stepping over the jagged shards of green glass embedded in the dirt. There was a time when Ryder allowed them the privilege of a wine bucket and a case of beer, but after one too many incidents of violence, he had to cut them off. It was for their own good. During the first days of this prohibition they rebelled and pouted, but in time they came to recognize the wisdom of their son’s decision.

  Each morning Ryder sits in the gazebo and drinks hot chocolate from a purple ceramic mug. He’s almost fifteen years old. He smokes three or four cigarettes and messes around on his laptop. From here he can monitor his parents’ activities to make sure they’re not hurting themselves.