by Ivan Jenson
Now his two big brothers hoisted him up from the grave.
Chapter Thirty-Three
So this was what became of the marriage and funeral ceremony.
It was a travesty as expected. Ray had once again shown his dark colors and had lost control and ruined everything.
The moment, that hot, yet lovely afternoon prior to Ray's rude interjection of crude talk was perfect in its way, until Ray had shattered it. There was no going back. No pretending it had not happened. And anyway, going backwards was no bargain either.
Once Milo was safely hoisted and standing above ground, the whole group that had followed the ruckus now found themselves precariously huddled around some stranger’s grave site. In fact it was the grave site of: Mr. Lee Ronsen, beloved husband, and father of Dotty, Celia, and Dora. Rest in Peace with today's date.
Milo read these words on the grave stone and felt an eerie intimacy with this unknown man who once was a husband and a father and who was still beloved, and whose body was probably on its way from the morgue or the funeral parlor.
He thought of his own father...still dead.
Samantha helped Milo dust himself off, but his gray suit was browned and soiled.
“What happened there?” Samantha said to Milo.
“Ray happened.” was Milo’s answer.
“Does he always do that?”
“Yes he does, I should have warned you.”
Ray was attempting to withdraw his anger and now make up for what he had done. But he was still acting erratic and high strung and just plain drunk when he made an announcement using his cupped hands as a megaphone. He spoke in abrasive staccato, breaking up the syllables of his speech for emphasis. And this was as equally disheartening to witness as the scuffle that had resulted in Milo’s butt first fall into Mr. Ronsen’s waiting gravesite.
Ray said, “Please ev-er-y-one, I ap-ol-ogize- with all my heart, please let us go back to what we were do-ing before I..well..I blew ev-ery-thing. Come now, I pro-mise I won’t act up a-gain!” Then he went back to a more normal speech pattern when he added, “I guess I just had a long uncomfortable flight here. There was a stop over in Chicago, or Detroit, I can't remember, that was really annoying. I had an Arney’s roast beef sandwich that really turned my stomach and gave me gas and bile. I know that’s no excuse, but I sat there at the airport for six hours and all I had to entertain myself was a Nicholas Sparks novel...anyhow please everyone, right this way.”
The crowd, like meek sheep, slowly waddled back to the folding chairs and the podium, where the interrupted ceremony had taken place. Mrs. Sonas sat alone. Milo was deeply disappointed in Consuelo for leaving his mother alone. He turned to her and said in broken English, “Why you no stay with my Mother?”
Becky who was equally upset translated for him, and Consuelo was visibly ashamed of herself. Her only response was to shrug her shoulders in shame.
Now Milo was losing his temper. “That woman can be so damn stupid.”
“Hey watch it,” Becky said. “She can understand more English than she lets on.”
“I don’t care, she just left our terminally ill mother in the sweltering heat, totally alone.”
The guests began to take their seats in the folding chairs, and Milo walked over to his mother to console her, but she didn’t seem bothered by what transpired. She looked to be doing what she often did around this time and that was taking a siesta, a cat nap. Milo sat on one side of her and Samantha on her other and Milo said this while pushing back his mother’s dry white hair, “It’s okay now Mom. Ray said he was sorry and I don’t mind, I really don’t. This always happens with him...and with me. Now let’s try to enjoy the part of the ceremony that you requested. Okay? It’s time for your service. Becky and Amelia have something prepared and so does Luna, I do too and I am even sure that Ray has his two cents he wants to add.”
Mrs. Sonas seemed to be sleeping, her body bent over like a deflated balloon.
“Look, it’s okay now,” Amelia said joining them. Becky and Paul also stepped close.
Milo with two fingers lifted her face up by the chin. What they saw on their mother's face was disquieting. For it was then that her children witnessed again that same facial expression their grandmother had at the end. On their mother’s face was a frown so exaggerated it looked like a velvet painting of a sad clown. It was that singular expression that comes over a person when they are expecting a loved one or a dear friend at the door during a holiday, and instead at the door stands a ski masked maniac with a pistol aimed directly at their face. Yes, their grandmother had exactly the same fearful and heartbreaking distortion of her features which told of ultimate fear, disappointment and doom all mixed together. Suddenly Sonia Sonas exhaled and her face seemed to lose its elasticity as if she hit the wall of oblivion. Everyone around her began to cry and scream as if they could stop her passing or perhaps they simply wanted to let her know that they were here for her. But it was too late.
“Mother?” Milo said, and then like a crash of a cold wave in the Pacific Ocean, he felt a chill overcome her and she shook, as if from an aftershock. Then she was still. She was gone. It was over. And then just as that truth overtook him, next came the anger at his brother. Ray was to blame! Ray had destroyed everything! Ray! It was always Ray who killed things!
Milo got up and walked over to Ray, who had been oblivious to what just happened, and to his mother’s passing and was instead attempting to make small talk with a female guest he had just met for the first time.
This time Milo swung first.
Ray took the blow directly to the face then turned back to face Milo head on, “Why did you do that?”
“You killed her.”
Milo swung wildly again, this shot hit Ray squarely in the left eye. Ray lost his balance for a moment, but he neither raised his hand to defend himself nor to retaliate.
“She is gone now,” Milo said.
Ray looked past Milo and saw his mother slumped in her seat, surrounded by desperate family and friends. They fumbled with her, not knowing exactly how to tend to somebody that was already gone.
“Oh my God,” he said.
“Because of you she spent the last moments of her life watching us fight and everyone left her alone.”
“Well, wasn’t that nurse supposed to stay with her?”
“It doesn't matter now. She died alone.”
“Maybe she wasn’t alone at the moment when she died. Maybe she was experiencing a memory, perhaps she was thinking about something nice?”
Milo couldn't believe that Ray could be that flippant. But still his comment made Milo wonder, “Like just what do you think she was thinking about?” Milo felt tears cloud his eyes.
“Oh it could have been so many things. Maybe she was thinking about that tree over there and how Uncle Allen could take something like that and carve and sand it into something smutty, like a woman's ass.” Ray was actually in his demented way, trying to soothe Milo’s overflowing emotions, as he tried to control his own.
Milo, Samantha and Luna overhearing this, couldn’t help themselves from chuckling. Then Amelia stood between the two feuding brothers and said, “Come on, let’s get her out of here. Let’s take her home. You know how much she loves....ah loved...her dream house.”
Milo:
Mother is gone now, forever.
I am leaving Gold Haven now for good, there is nothing here for me anymore. Samantha understands that what happened between us was, nothing, really. Just a facade of completeness, a parade of an illusion just for mother. The truth is my life is still wonderfully incomplete. I am back in New York again. I guess I have come full circle. This town is jam-packed with people that seem to know me. I am approached often, they ask if I am Milo Sonas, and I say that I am. I am liked. Is this “posanoia” or is it just fame? Sometimes I wonder.
New York City coffee is good, and strong, it feels like it is pushing me, no, not shoving me as my brother did onto the hard soil, but instead I feel I a
m now falling forward into life and into my true self.
Samantha is a friend now. Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay this way. She has a lot of time to find someone. She doesn’t need me. I have less time.
We laugh a lot when we think about our love making in the past. And when I walk through Union Square it seems everyone is selling stuff, vending anything from artwork to jewelry to handbags. I feel like I was once a pioneer, it used to be just me selling my art at Union Square. Waiting. And now it’s here, all that I have waited for. The fame. I enjoy it. The attention... sure. And now I do what I have always done. Charge up on a good cup of coffee, fill a plate with paint, blue, yellow, orange, and on and on. There is always enough paint now. And more than enough space and light to paint in this loft. Pablo just couldn’t handle it anymore, watching me paint, while he was unable to do anything but drink espresso and smoke. So Pablo stepped out to buy a pack of cigarettes from the Korean grocer on the corner and never came back. Vincent really hit it off with Samatha’s friend Carly. The two of them are always spending time together and neglecting their friends, which is almost as total a disappearance as Pablo's, except some times I see Vincent and his girl walking out on the New York streets, her hand in his back pocket. Lucky Vincent. Maybe when they finish this initial bonding period they will spend more time with me. I don’t know. From the look he had on his face, I sense that Pablo might have been mistaken when he told me that dead artists can’t feel touch or affection. I believe that Vincent can feel love now. I really do. I hope so anyway.
I was so surprised they hit it off. Carly seemed like such an standoffish girl to me at first. But Samantha explained the reason her friend got along so famously with Vincent was because, well, Carly was involved in a fatal accident years ago. A drunk driver swerved at midnight, on a Thursday night. Carly did not survive long enough even for the paramedics to have a chance to revive her. I guess maybe if you don’t find your soul mate in this life there is still hope in the next.
Dead girl loves dead artist.
Dr. Hyatt and I are still in touch, but ever since he lost his license and because there is a now a law that dictates that he cannot practice without one, it makes it impossible for us to meet in person. But we once and for the last time broke that the law and met face to face. I consider him like Vincent and Pablo, to be one of my many fathers.
But he is still alive. Quite old, but still here in this world.
Chapter Thirty-Four
This is what Milo and Dr. Hyatt talked about:
Milo said, “I keep wondering what she was thinking at the end of her life. It’s just awful that she had to see her two sons fighting and then she was just left there in the searing heat to die.”
“It’s okay,” Dr. Hyatt said, a simple glass of milk on the iron table in front of him. They were meeting at a place on Avenue A right across the street from Thompson Square Park called Cafe Pick Me Up. He was all bent over from advance scoliosis, but dapper in his second hand suit and tie. “I believe people just want to be alone when they die. I know I would want to be..ah, well... “
“What?”
“Alone.”
“When you die?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder what I will be thinking about in my last moments.”
“It's hard to know. By the way, do you still see Picasso, and Van Gogh around?”
“No not really. Picasso just kind of skipped town, and Van Gogh is in love. I set him up you know.”
“It’s probably for the best. That phenomena of yours was not really something you could share with many people.”
“Samantha could see them.”
“Oh yes, Samantha. How is she?”
“She is getting her Masters in photography, or something, I am not sure.... And, she is happy.”
“That’s nice.”
“You know Dr. Hyatt, I have had many fathers in my life. And you too have been like a father to me. I just want you to know that.”
“Thank you. I am flattered.” He sipped his milk, a bit got on his upper lip. Then he asked Milo, “Tell me, how many mothers have you had?”
“Only one.”
“That's nice,” Dr. Hyatt said. “With so many fathers, how do you know which was the real one?”
Milo just smiled.
“By the way, I guess that makes you a bastard.”
“No, it makes me what my mean ex-girlfriend used to call me... a bastardo.”
“From now on I will call you Bastardo.”
And like two old friends, they shared a laugh in the afternoon.
#DeadArtist
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About the Author
Ivan Jenson's Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine and he has sold several works at Christie's, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Jenson is also a Contributing Editor for Commonline magazine.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
#DeadArtist
About the Author