“Sukie bought a lot of her clothes in thrift shops and later donated them back again. In that sense, she only borrowed her wardrobe for the various roles she had to play. She lived on the fast track but feared high-speed highways; she believed the heaviest traffic was in the outside lane which made life there very perilous. She cared about kids and justice, disarmament and art. She was a liberal, a humanist, a feminist and a friend. She cried about prejudice and poverty, injustice and indignities.
“Sukie was part of a generation that has been called many things: Depression Babies, the Silent Generation, bohemians, hot properties, beatniks, hippies, peaceniks, women’s libbers, gray divorcees, late bloomers and crazy ladies. They can call us what they will. We are twentieth-century survivors. Every morning we reinvent ourselves according to that day’s demands. We have to go with the flow because we don’t know how to dam and control it. Perhaps there is no way.
“Sukie read and Sukie wrote. She worked, she protested, she married, she mothered. She gave, she took, she tried, she failed, she loved, she lost, she despaired, she triumphed and then she died.
“She was a woman.
“We are going to miss Sukie in a big way, but somehow we will have to continue on without her. We always thought that when we got old, our gang would live together in some huge communal house out in the country where we would each have a private room where we could work and write and receive visits from our aging lovers and growing-up grandchildren. Downstairs would be a common room, no, two—smoking and nonsmoking—where we would share meals and memories. Maybe we’ll all still do that, but it won’t be much fun without Sukie there. She was the best and the brightest that we had.
“She was our friend.
“We were such good friends. Really.”
I leave two little damp handmarks behind on the lectern when I return to my seat.
Then Carol takes my place and wraps her hands around the microphone.
“I have lost my mother and I feel … lost. She was everything, my mother. She was a million different emotions and feelings all rolled up into one. She was wild sometimes and frustrated and ambitious and aimless and interested and bored. She was everything.
“This didn’t make her easy to live with. We certainly had our fights and quarrels. I don’t even want to pretend that our relationship was smooth and without conflict. But no matter what went on, she never stopped loving us and never stopped giving us—herself. I loved her so much. We were good friends, too.
“My mom was a very modern woman. She lived and loved and lost a lot and I’m sure whatever she left us, she’d think it wasn’t enough. But all of her losses happened because her life was full of living and loving. I know every thing she left unaccomplished, the books she never wrote and the failures that plagued her. I know all the things she didn’t get to do, that she postponed, and how sometimes she’d go to get her hair straightened instead of working on an article that was due or go charge a dress at Bloomingdale’s when she didn’t have a dollar in the bank and should have been writing a book.
“But I also know all the different people she helped in different ways, and all the dreams she dreamed for David and me, and how much she laughed about the world, which she thought had gone crazy, and all the political things she cared about. She thought the Mary-knoll sisters were the bravest nuns ever and she really admired them. For us, maybe her greatest gift is that I’m not afraid of being a woman and my brother David is not afraid of women.
“That’s important for people.
“But maybe the best thing about my mom was the great books she wrote. She was funny, and her books sound just like she did. This fall I’ll be getting her new book ready for publication. It’s called Death Sentences and it’s much better than any eulogy I can give her.…”
Carol trails off. She is struggling to control herself. Finally she shakes her head and begins walking off the stage toward Neil, who has come halfway up the stairs to meet her.
David, too, is shaking as he passes Carol on his way to the lectern. The suit he is wearing is too large for him. It fits as poorly as his new role, his new manhood, which hangs, like the too-large jacket, from his still-ambivalent frame. His tentative maturity is clearly threatened by this crisis. Carefully he keeps his head turned so that he will not see his mother’s coffin. When he first attempts to speak, he makes no audible sound, but after clearing his throat several times, he finally begins to talk.
“Today I can only say a few things, because I don’t really believe this is happening. I can’t believe my … mom died. She was really a great mother. We always had a lot of fun. I had a lot more fun with my mother than most of my friends did with their moms. I remember once when we went to see a certain movie. We’d waited all week to see it on Sunday, but when we got there, the projectionists were on strike and my mom … she just couldn’t cross their picket line. I knew she was upset for me, but she just couldn’t do it. So she started to say things like there was really a much better movie back at one of the Circle Theatres, one that was a lot better than the one we went to see, and that this other movie had gotten these great reviews and that even though she didn’t say so before, she’d really wanted to see the other one right along. And she kept on talking like that and acting so excited the whole time we were walking back to the Circle until, honest to God, I really wanted to see that other movie instead.
“So that’s one way she always used to make my life real fun—acting all excited like that about everything all the time. But I could always see right through her.
“And when we first … started living alone together, my mom went to Sears and bought a Ping-Pong set and strung the net right across the middle of our dining room table. And then she said we were going to have a year-long worldwide Ping-Pong championship tournament that would go on every night after supper. And we did, and it was really great therapy for her. Anyway, there was no chance of inviting anyone over for dinner anymore, which I really liked a lot because I don’t like having company. And finally I beat her two hundred eighty-nine games to two hundred twenty-four.
“We were sort of poor, though. She never made much money from being a writer. Once she tried to make some guy in a Mercedes pay her a quarter for the time left over on her parking meter and when he said no, she said then she’d just stay in the space until her time was up and the guy started laughing real hard and gave her a five-dollar bill so we went out to McDonald’s for dinner. A lot of times she dressed sort of weird, but she said people would just think she was too rich to care.
“And once we were at Woodies buying me some school clothes and the salesclerk looked at Mom’s charge plate and said she should get a new one because it was getting old and wearing out even though it still worked and my Mom laughed and said ‘Perfect. Just like me.’ And another time, when two of our neighbors said that our house needed painting, we didn’t have any money left that month at all, so Mom just went out and charged four gallons of housepaint and we painted just the front of the house ourselves with a little strip going around the sides so nobody’d know it didn’t go all the way around the back.
“She always cared about me, and even when … she had some problems, she still tried to pretend she was paying attention, even if she couldn’t, right at that minute. And after … she got separated, she really learned all about pro football and watched the Redskins with me all the time.
“The other thing I want to say is that she had some really good girlfriends and I’m really glad …” he chokes up, stops, waits, goes on—“that they want to carry my mom’s coffin, because really she’d like that a lot and I don’t think me or even my dad or any of my friends who are here today could do it, because even though we might be stronger, we’re all too shaky. But I know my mom’s girlfriends can do it, because”—he chokes again—“they’re pretty strong for women.” He looks down at us, surveys the row in which we’re sitting. “What I mean is that they are pretty strong women.”
Then he staggers off the stage and
back to his seat beside Max, who has covered his face with his hands.
Now the four funeral directors, somber men in grave gray suits, surround Sukie’s casket and motion us out of our seats. In a ragged line, Joanne, Elaine, Kate, Mary, Marlene, Aileen, Sandy Ratner and I walk up the stairs to the stage where the men are waiting. In a lightning-swift maneuver, two of the men rearrange us, probably according to height, and place us in proper position so that there are four of us on either side of Sukie’s casket.
I feel weak. My legs are trembling and there is a tingling sensation in my arms.
Down below, I see row after row of anxious faces. I see Sukie’s friends, watching and waiting, wanting and willing us to do this right, to do justice to Sukie and to avoid any disaster. An enormous expectancy radiates up to us from the women down below. Each of us, of course, wants to carry out her self-assigned obligation. Moreover, we want to do it well. We want to carry Sukie to her grave with all the dignity she deserved, the dignity that often evaded her during her lifetime. We want to bury her with all the glory she never captured on her own. We want to carry her high with pride, but gently with love. We want to show that even though she harbored greater expectations of herself than she achieved, she did—and was—enough for us just the way she was. She was the most user-friendly friend we ever had.
Silently the four men close in on the coffin and then there is a startling scraping and scratching of metal as they first dislodge and then lift the coffin off its bier before lowering it down again so that it is even with our shoulders. I see one of the men nodding at me, so I reach out to clasp one of the ornate carved handles jutting out from the side of Sukie’s casket, assuming everyone else is doing the same.
And then suddenly, unexpectedly, the men move away, withdraw their support, and there is a shaking, rattling, plunging moment when all the weight falls upon us, so that the burden of Sukie’s coffin does, indeed, rest solely upon our shoulders.
And that is when I feel the weight—yes, the dead weight—of our dear friend (she’s not heavy, she’s our sister), and realize that somehow we have to bear this horrendous burden. (But who else should carry Sukie? If not us, who? If not now, when?) So I take a deep breath and try to transmit strength to my arms from some other, unknown center within myself, cursing the sedentary life I indulgently lead, the lack of fitness and form I allow myself.
And it is at that moment that Sukie moves, shifts recklessly and restlessly within her coffin, as if seeking some escape, and then our slippery hands slide sidewards, crazily seeking a more secure grip while we fight to stabilize and re-steady the coffin on our shoulders.
Now we are silently trying to soothe Sukie, to quiet that always restless body and soul, so she will lie still. We want to calm her spirit one last time so that we get a grip on her (on ourselves) and assert control over the coffin. All I can hear is the suctioning of fleshy palms skidding across the surface of the coffin.
Above the gentle curve of its cover, across from me on the other side, I see Elaine and Joanne and Marlene and Aileen. Their faces are damp, beaded with drops of sweat and tears.
But we cannot move; the weight of the casket is too much for us.
Again Sukie shifts, and each of us presses up flat against the side of the coffin, seeking stability, trying to anchor the weight. But Sukie is tipping and tilting toward me, so I know I am not holding up my end of the bargain, not carrying her weight well, not holding up my end of the deal. (Can it be that Sukie’s weight, as she always claimed, is not well distributed?)
Hush, I whisper silently to Sukie, trying to calm her soul. Lie still, dear friend. We have you. We’ve held you up before and we can do it again. We can hold you up now, just like you held us up so many times. Rest, Sukie. Hush. Go with it. It’s your turn now to lie down in darkness.
“Oh God,” I hear Joanne gasp.
I am grappling with the handle, hanging on with both hands, feeling the coffin slide against my body.
Behind me, Mary is struggling.
“It’s too heavy,” Elaine moans. “It’s too heavy.”
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Mary Murphy prays.
But above all else, this is frightening. Someone we loved, someone like ourselves, is inside this box, this heavy crate. Sukie is now an inanimate object, a sliding weight, a heavy weight, a pun playing itself out like all the puns played in plays.
So we falter, each of us chained in our own cell of uncertainty, manacled as always by a sense of inadequacy, insufficiency and inexperience.
Down below, there is a rustling as people, stiffen in their seats. Now they are afraid we might allow our insecurities to prevail so that we will indeed fail and let down our friend.
But then, mysteriously, there is another reversal and somehow we recover control, restore order so that, after a few seconds, we are greater than the weight we carry and we now can raise high that coffin, finding our strength from below and beneath it. And then we are able to steady it, steady its contents, quiet our sweet friend, absorb encouragement from the women waiting below, willing us the strength to carry this burden.
And then I see Elaine and Joanne and Marlene and Aileen take their first short, trembling step, pausing like the tightrope-walkers-without-nets so often used as metaphors in feminist fiction, to reclaim their balance and then slowly repeat the motion with another baby step forward.
Suddenly, surprisingly, we are all moving, all walking toward the edge of the platform, down those two treacherous stairs, straining to keep the coffin flat, straight, level as a buggy with a baby inside, which each of us so often found the strength to lift and carry up some dark flight of stairs while our purse thumped like a heart against the side of our thigh.
And then we are down, down, down and moving up the wide, wide aisle, holding tight with our damp hands to the slick surface of those handles, but doing it, doing it, doing it, carrying our friend, at great cost, to her too-early grave, to her final, or perhaps first, place of real rest where we shall all—in the end—lay down our burdens to assume our dreams of sleep.
We pass the rows and rows of faces, the hurt, frightened, injured faces of the friends Sukie left behind, frightened by her dying, her thoughtless leaving of half-grown, still-needy children. And then I see my daughters, clinging to the seatbacks in front of them, half swooning, half swaying, their eyes fixed upon me, pleading and praying, aiding and abetting me.
I cannot tell if my ears are ringing or whether I actually hear a faint ripple of applause for us and for Sukie as we move down the aisle. Are we finally being applauded for our effort, for our strength? Are Sukie’s friends applauding her for the life she led? For the death she died? Or are my ears ringing, my brain buzzing, my body roaring for relief?
Then suddenly we pass through those double doors that open mysteriously before us, so that we are outside in the midday heat, in that hot flash of sunlight that temporarily blinds us so we instinctively stop where we are at the top of the stairs to look down across a wide ribbon of green grass to the rhinestone-studded sidewalk and that long black hearse about which we sang songs as children … the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, your stomach turns to sauerkraut.…
It is hot, hot, hot. I can no longer distinguish between internal and external heat. And, anyway, what is the difference? Is a hot flash any different than the sting of the sun? Does it matter whether heat is engendered from within or without? Can’t a white-hot flash shed as much light and illumination as a steady glow of lower intensity? And aren’t hot flashes, perhaps, really spiritual awakenings—or reawakenings—metaphysical messages masquerading as menopause?
The same four men, still stiff and starched, are now below us, waiting beside the hearse. They talk quietly among themselves as they watch us push through the hot, heaving heat of this September afternoon with the sky sagging from the weight of its own heavy humidity, dropping its dazzling jewels, its bright pendants of light down upon us.
I feel a trembling, a deep, fundamental trembling insi
de myself as we begin moving again, still holding high the coffin as we descend those last harsh stairs.
Our faces are wet. Our hair, shrunk from the humidity, is flattened like yarmulkas against our skulls. Our dresses, our proper, prissy dark fall cottons, are wet and wrinkled. And yes, yes. There is a human odor arising from our bodies, from our own carefully deodorized parts. Like Nadine, I can suddenly smell myself, a sin of such magnitude that a drunken dizziness rises up to engulf me. A hot flash of shame rushes from my heart to my head.
So we carry Sukie’s castle, casket, over the curb, into the street.
Once again there is the scraping and scratching of metal as the back doors of the hearse open, harsh sounds like the clang of prison doors in jail flicks—the fateful clang of eternal captivity.
The men are closing in upon us, stealing the air I need to breathe, creating a climate that causes another hot flash to race through me.
Then the men are helping us lift the coffin into the back of the hearse, hurrying us.
And now we know the funeral directors are taking Sukie away, sliding her casket into the rear of the hearse onto rollers like the ramps in repair garages, so that instinctively we all steady it from underneath its silky belly, guiding it into the tracks, keeping it on track, staying on track.…
Suddenly, I do not want to let go. I do not want to release my last hold on my friend. I reach out to feel her coffin again. My shoulder aches for its weight once more.…
But now I am so weak, so faint, so shaken because she is gone … going, going, gone.…
I see one of the men walk toward me to take my arm.
I surrender to another burning hot flash that threatens to consume me with its fire. Perhaps I shall sacrifice myself upon the pyre of my own person.
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