Happily Ever After?

by Debra Kent

  July 17

  I called Omar to let him know about the trip to Medjugorje so he could schedule the custody hearing accordingly. He was out of the office, so I left a message. I hate waiting so long to finalize my custody arrangement, but I don’t see that I have a choice now. I only hope that Roger doesn’t try to abduct Pete.

  I did something uncharacteristically spontaneous today. I called my new friend Donna Gold and invited her and her family for take-out dinner. Donna was as buoyant as ever, but her husband wasn’t at all what I’d expected from my elegant Southern friend. Christopher was quiet, bespectacled, and balding. They made such an unlikely pair that I decided it he must be hung like a donkey and fabulous in bed. After dinner, Christopher took all the kids to play putt-putt, “To give you ladies a chance to talk,” he said, winking.

  “Don’t believe it for a minute,” Donna said, tossing a crumpled paper napkin at her husband. “Christopher’s just a big ole kid. He just wants to play putt-putt and he’s using our kids as a cover.”

  “Okay, okay, you got me,” he said, throwing up his arms in surrender.

  After they left, Donna and I cleaned up the kitchen and talked. I gave her an only slightly sanitized version of my marriage, and she confessed that she’d had her share of problems with Christopher, but survived with the help of an “amazing” therapist (Bonita Loeb, as it turned out. I decided not to tell her that Roger and I were Bonita Loeb rejects). She didn’t detail her marital problems, and I didn’t probe, but I expect I’ll find out eventually.

  I told Donna about Roger’s latest antics. “At least I’ll have permanent custody before too long,” I said.

  She shook her head. “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  “Come on. What judge is going to give that bastard custody of Pete? After everything Roger has done?”

  “Well, maybe not full custody, but the judge might give him joint custody.” Donna saw the incredulity on my face. “Hey, it happens. Especially these days. Fathers’ rights, you know.” She told me about Tamara Parker, a mother in her play group. “Her ex-husband was the worst.” She paused. “Okay, maybe not the worst, but he ran a close second to your beaut. He knocked up their baby-sitter. And he left her practically destitute. Now he’s got joint custody of the kids. Him and his new wife. The baby-sitter.”

  I told her I didn’t want to talk about it. “Let’s talk about something nice instead.”

  I told her about Michael Avila. “When I’m with him I just feel so cared for, so safe, so listened to,” I said. “But …”

  “What is it?”

  I told Donna something I hadn’t yet admitted to myself. “No big fireworks, I guess. You know. There’s something missing. The chemistry. At least for me.”

  “Not nasty enough for ya, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s see. He’s not a cheater, he’s not a liar, he doesn’t have another wife hidden in a condo somewhere, he doesn’t have a yen for teenagers … no wonder you’re not attracted to him!” Donna put her hands on her hips and stared at me. “Listen to me, girl, and listen good. If this detective of yours is as sweet and kind and good-looking as you say he is, you’d be a fool to let him go just because he doesn’t get you all hot and bothered. In my humble opinion”—she shoved the gravy boat into the dishwasher—”I think you need to rejig your definition of sexy.”

  Maybe I do. But how?

  ’Til next time,

  V

  July 21

  My mother told me that over the last few months Dad has been seeking the Divine, “like a wilting flower thirsting for rainwater,” is how she put it. He reads the Bible and watches the TV preachers, and even called once and asked their “prayer buddies” to pray with him, to pray for him. I interpreted this more as an act of desperation than true religious conversion, but I wasn’t about to tell my mother that.

  She has been researching Medjugorje. Apparently, there are special prayers for healing the sick, and these must each be recited seven times: The Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and Glory Be. (I know the Lord’s Prayer, but as for the rest, I’m clueless. My mother has printed them out for each of us but my father already has them memorized.) He will need to fast on bread and water, and when we meet up with our priest, my father will be anointed with some kind of holy oil. Supposedly it’s critical to get the right priest for the job because not all have the “gift of healing.” They say that only priests who pray with forbearance and firm belief will have God’s ear. I only hope that’s the kind I’ve hired.

  I’m still incredulous, but I’m beginning to feel inspired. Maybe there really is hope for my father.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  July 22

  At 5 A.M. I roused Pete and we took a cab to my mother’s house. I asked the driver to wait outside. “We’ll be just a minute,” I told him.

  “No problem. Take your time. I’ve got my breakfast here,” he said, pulling an Egg McMuffin out of a McDonald’s bag. I had no appetite.

  My mother met me on the porch. She was wearing her coat and gloves. “Your father isn’t doing very well.”

  I stepped over the two small suitcases at the door. Pete scrambled down to the basement to explore my father’s old armoire. It was filled with pads and markers and assorted office supplies, playing cards and books about the Korean War. He could spend all day down there and never come up for a snack.

  My father was sitting on the couch, laboring to breathe. His stocking feet looked so small and frail. He managed a smile. “Valerie,” he whispered.

  “It all happened so suddenly,” my mother said, her hands fluttering like moths. “He was up and about yesterday.

  “It’s time to go, Dad,” I told him. “The driver’s waiting outside.” My father sat passively as I gently pulled on his hat and wrapped the scarf around his neck. I could feel his sharp shoulder blades through his baggy beige fisherman’s sweater. His skin was translucent and his eyes were an entirely new color, not the green I’d remembered but the softest blue-gray, the color of the summer sky at dawn. Even as I buttoned up his jacket, I knew we weren’t going anywhere.

  “Tell me about the Blessed Virgin,” he said. “Tell me about miracles. His voice was wispy as smoke. His mouth sagged open and he gasped for air like a fish in a bucket.

  I put his cold, bony hand in mine. His eyes were closed. I glanced at the driver through the picture window. He pointed to his wristwatch and raised his eyebrows.

  “Mom, tell the cabdriver he can leave.” I reached into my bag and grabbed a twenty. “Just give him this.”

  “What are you talking about?” my mother demanded. “You can’t send the driver away! We need him! We’ve got to get to the airport!”

  “Let him leave, Mom. We won’t be going to the airport. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “But Teresa. We have to meet Teresa at the airport. Get his shoes on and let’s get out of here.”

  My father gripped my hand. “You were a beautiful baby,” he said, gasping, and I felt a great sadness roll up into my throat. I didn’t want to cry. My mother stood immobilized in the corner of the room, her knuckle between her teeth.

  “I don’t know why you made me send the driver away, Val, I really don’t. We’re going to miss the plane.”

  “My sweet Valerie, the best baby, the sweetest one.” My father opened his eyes. “How is Peter?”

  “I’m calling the doctor,” my mother said.

  “Peter’s good, Dad. He’s in the basement. You know how he loves to scrounge around in your old junk.

  “He’s a fine young man.” I pulled a tissue from my sleeve and wiped the drool from my father’s chin.

  “Valerie,” my father gasped. “Give him. My camera.” My father was an amateur photographer. All my favorite photographs were the ones he captured with his Leica.

  He looked directly into my eyes. He smiled.

  Something had shifted.

  “Where’s Jack? I need Jack.”
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  “Who’s Jack, Daddy?”

  “Oh!” My mother let out an anguished cry. “Jack was his dog. When he was a just a child.”

  “Here, Jack. Here, boy.”

  I wrapped my arms around my father’s narrow shoulders and put my head on his chest. “Jack’s right here, Daddy. He’s here.”

  “Good Jack,” my father whispered.

  My mother looked horrified. I motioned for her to come over. “I love you, Daddy. We all love you so much, Daddy.”

  My mother knelt by my father’s side. “Don’t go. You can’t leave me now.”

  “Tell him you love him,” I whispered to my mother.

  She sobbed loudly, gagging now. “No. I don’t want to. I can’t let him go.”

  “Tell him you love him.”

  My mother became very still. “I love you,” she sobbed into my father’s chest. “I will always love you.”

  You know how they say that when you’re just about to die, your whole life passes before your eyes? There must be some corollary for the person who sits with someone passing into death, for in the flicker that was my father’s last breath, my life with him streamed through me. Camping at Sleeping Bear Dunes. Being hoisted high on his shoulders so I can get a better view of Cinderella in the Disney parade. Fishing with string and paper clips on the dock at Webster Lake.

  And I see him buying me a purple balloon at the fourth of July parade. My father is on his knees, struggling to tie the string to my wrist. He loses the end of the string and the balloon instantly flies up. We both watch it float higher and higher into the fresh, blue, cloudless sky.

  By 5:25 A.M. my father was dead.

  I don’t have the energy to write any more. I’ve got to go.

  I’m back.

  My father, it turns out, insisted on a traditional Irish wake. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I told my mother. We never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. I never even had one of those “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons.

  “I’m serious,” my mother said. She was already in Action Mode. “Your father was very clear about it. He said that when he died, I should call his great-aunt Finola and great-uncle Tim and they would handle everything.”

  I’d never even heard of a great-aunt Finola and uncle Tim. As I would soon discover, there is quite a bit about my father’s family I never knew.

  “The number for great-aunt Finola is on the board by the phone,” my mother continued. “Then call Richmond Funeral Home and tell them your father has died and we’re having a wake. Do you have your cell phone?”

  “Yes,” I told her.

  “Good. Call the airport. Have Teresa paged before she gets on that plane. I’ll call Julia.” She glanced around the room and shook her head. “This place is a mess,” she said, as if she was seeing the house for the first time. “We’ve got to straighten up.” I was amazed to see my mother so animated, so in control. I realize now that a great black gloom had finally lifted. My father’s death had flipped a switch. She was infused with life now.

  She asked me to help carry my father’s body into the guest room. “I can’t do this,” I told her. “This doesn’t seem right, dragging Dad around like a sack of laundry.”

  “We have to do this, Valerie.”

  I could have wilted and surrendered to my sorrow. This moment was so profoundly awful. I wanted to lay my father’s body to rest, not haul him around from room to room. For a moment I wished I were still married. This was the sort of situation I could depend on Roger to handle. At fidelity, Roger was incompetent. But when it came to killing big bugs, investigating thumps in the night, and handling other assorted domestic atrocities, Roger was supremely capable.

  I stared at my father’s body and somehow found the necessary detachment to grip his lifeless arms while my mother lifted his legs. I had expected him to be as light as a bag of feathers but there was a stiffness and density now that made his body feel wooden and heavy. I left my mother to arrange him while I retreated to the kitchen to call this Finola person, who didn’t seem terribly shocked or saddened to learn that her nephew had died. She said she was on her way and that we should expect someone to help with the wake. I wasn’t sure what she meant, and didn’t ask her to elaborate. I just wanted to get off the phone.

  “Are you sure Dad wanted a wake?” I asked my mother. I was still incredulous.

  My mother pulled open the kitchen cabinet, the one where my parents had kept their important papers, passports, their credit cards wrapped in rubber bands, a cookie jar of cash. “It’s all in here.” She handed me a white envelope. “Funeral Arrangements” was written in my father’s handwriting.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of yellow legal paper. “When I pass,” he had written, “please contact my great-aunt Finola and great-uncle Timothy in Boston. They will make all the necessary arrangements for a traditional Irish wake.” My father had also written his own epitaph, and my heart ached to imagine how that must have felt for him, to contemplate and even plan his own gravestone.

  “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”

  The doorbell rang at 11 A.M. I peeked out the little window in the door. There were two women and a man dressed in black. None looked familiar. I opened the door. “Can I help you?”

  One of the women stepped forward. “Finola Ryan sent us. We’re with the Irish American Fellowship and we’re here to help with the wake.” She was beefy and strong-looking, an inch taller than me, her long gray hair pulled and twisted into a big bun. The other woman was younger and equally sturdy, and there was a tall boy, barely out of his teens, with flaming red hair. Their clothes were worn but clean; the boy’s trousers were crisply pressed and the women seemed to have taken great care in arranging their hair.

  “I’m Rosemary O’Hara. This is Mrs. Feeney, and this is Mr. Kilpatrick,” the woman said, gesturing toward her companions. Each regarded me with a polite nod and I noticed that they were carrying small satchels. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” the young man said. “Terribly sorry,” Mrs. Feeney murmured. By then my mother had joined me at the door. “I am sorry for your loss, Missus,” Mrs. O’Hara said. She extended a hand. “Where is your husband, dear?”

  My mother motioned toward the guest room, and asked, “Can I get you some coffee? Or tea?”

  “No thank you, Mrs. Ryan. We’re fine. Just point us in the direction of your powder room so we can wash our hands.” As she spoke, she reached for the cuckoo clock on the wall and removed the battery. “We stop the clocks as a sign of respect,” she said.

  “The bathroom is down the hall, first door on the left,” my mother directed.

  Rosemary and the others hustled authoritatively down the corridor. “You are welcome to be part of this,” she called out, “even if it’s all new to you. It’s a very special time, you know, preparing our loved ones for the hereafter.”

  My mother took the cordless phone to the basement to begin notifying family and friends. I stood transfixed as these three members of the Irish American Fellowship did their work. They carefully undressed my father’s dead body and washed it, dipping a white washcloth into a small white porcelain basin of water. The young Mr. Kilpatrick used a blue disposable razor to expertly shave my father’s face while the women quickly cleaned the room using supplies they had brought in their satchels. They lit candles on the nightstand beside the bed, then they dressed my father in a kind of religious habit, put a crucifix on his breast, and gingerly positioned a string of rosary beads in his hands. By the time they were done with him, he looked like a bishop. He no longer resembled my father. Mrs. O’Hara saw me staring and said, “His Uncle Timothy will recite the rosary at midnight, and again in the morning.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt as if our house had been conquered by guerrillas.

  “I’ll need several sheets,” Mrs. O’Hara told me, blowing a damp tendril of curly hair off her face. “As many as you’ve got mirrors. Preferably white, but any will do.” I was prepared to offer to bu
y new ones at Walmart; I didn’t think my mother had kept up with the laundry. But I found a stack of clean white and pale yellow sheets in the linen closet and handed them to Mrs. O’Hara. Some of these were hung over the sides of the bed. Others were draped over mirrors.

  Mrs. Feeney set a plate of something brown and dried on the dining room table. I found out later that this was snuff.

  The doorbell rang and Mrs. O’Hara looked at her watch. It was 2:30 P.M. “And so it begins,” she said, smiling. “Visitation will last until midnight. Someone must stay with your father at all times. One of us can spell you if you or your mother needs a break.”

  By six the house was filled with family and friends, a whole generation of Boston Ryans I’d never met, including the notorious Aunt Finola and Uncle Tim. She was thin and tight and humorless. He was her opposite in every way, fat and sloppy and gregarious. At one point, two grown men I’d never seen before were wrestling on the floor of the living room. Tim explained that it was a traditional “wake game.” I heard my mother ask them to “play downstairs, please.” I knew she didn’t think it was appropriate for grown men to play games at such a somber occasion. Finola stepped forward, scowling. “It’s traditional to play games at a wake,” she said, and then she seemed to pull back in preparation for a strike, the way you pull an arrow back in the bow before letting it fly. “If you couldn’t let your husband lead a good Irish life while he was alive, at least let him have it in death,” she said sharply. “He’s back in the fold now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  The room was suddenly silent as my mother seemed to shrink into herself. She bowed her head and retreated to the kitchen. My sisters and I rushed in after her. I turned around to glare at Finola, but she was laughing with another relative, apparently oblivious to the pain her tongue-lashing had caused my mother. I vaguely knew that my father had been estranged from his parents and sister since the day he announced that he would marry my mother. She wasn’t Irish. She wasn’t religious. In fact, she wasn’t much of anything, except a pariah. Today I learned that there was an outright campaign to end my parents’ engagement. The effort was led by Finola herself. And when Dad’s father died of a heart attack, Finola tormented my father for months, insisting that it was my father who killed him by choosing my mother for his bride.