by Peter Orner
Alf stands by the fire hydrant at the corner of High Street and Locust and waits in the Waltless rain.
One of Fischer’s two minions, bored of standing there in the rain in his gray suit and white gloves, begins walking toward Alf. The kid hands Alf a mimeographed piece of paper with directions to Beth El Cemetery.
Alf says to the kid, “What? You think I don’t know how to get there?”
“Sometimes people come from out of town.”
A pimply kid in such exquisite calfskin gloves. How does he keep them so clean? Does Fischer issue a new pair for every burial? Come get your gloves, boys, we got another croaker. No, that’d get pricey. Undertakers, even their assistants, shouldn’t come young. Fischer is a good reaper, but this Cub Scout?
“How do you get your gloves so clean?”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Your gloves. How do you keep them so clean?”
The doors flying open. Fischer pokes his head out one way, and then the other, as if he’s looking to make sure there isn’t a train.
“Bleach,” the kid says before he hurries back to his post by the open door of the hearse.
And out the doors, conducted by Fischer—Watch your step, gentlemen, watch your step, it’s wet, quite slippery, gentlemen—the pallbearers carry Walt Kaplan. Alf’s known each of these men his entire life, but there’s something regal about the way they fulfill their office. For the first couple of moments he hardly recognizes them, as if they truly aren’t the individual men he’s lived among since boyhood but solemn, even majestic representatives of the human race gently carrying a fellow sojourner across the threshold. Wait. Wait. Irv Pincus? How in the hell did Irv Pincus get to be a bearer? Oh Christ. Oh Christ…
The rain begins to pound harder.
Alf watches the men thrust the casket into the back of the hearse. Fischer’s men secure it and slam the door. Like a barn door. The mourners pour out of the sanctuary. Slowly, but the truth is they can’t get out of there fast enough. Who isn’t thinking of their own day in the casket? Will I fill the seats? Umbrellas thoop open, one after another. Muted conversations commence right and left, and Alf, cursed with the hearing of a basset hound, takes in the jabber from his spot by the hydrant.
Took it as it came. The good, the bad. No enemies, not a single one. What that says about a man.
True, true. Notta one, not a single one.
I heard Sarah’s penniless, absolutely destitute, truly.
No.
You didn’t hear? Walt was broke as a clock. Word is First Metacomet is foreclosing on the house.
Miriam! You’re even more lovely than you were as a child! And look at your adorable boys! Your father must have been so…
Don’t forget, you’ve got the dentist at two thirty.
Shhhhh, Doris, we’re at a man’s funeral.
You’re not allowed to go to the dentist? Someone dies and you’re not allowed to go to the dentist? It’s a holiday from dental appointments?
Please, Doris, just—hiya, Angelo, Carmela. Sad, sad day, huh, Angelo? Carmela, you know my wife, Doris, don’t you?
His own brother-in-law took him for what, thirty grand? And still the man—
Which brother-in-law? Pincus?
Not Pincus, Sarkansky—but you think Walt held a grudge? Had a smile for everybody, always took a moment. You know what I mean?
That wasn’t smiling. That was thirty grand of biting his tongue, I’ll tell you that—
But it was really I-195 really did a number on him, store was in the wrong place at the wrong—
Right, right, that fuckin’ jackass highway—
Darling Sarah, what can I say? You were the luckiest. And you know why. Because he was kind. How many of these fat nothings forget to be kind?
You should have seen him boot the Alveses’ cat across the lawn.
Oh, Sarah.
Alf looks down at the rain-soaked piece of paper in his hand.
DIRECTIONS TO BETH EL CEMETERY
North on High Street, LEFT on Pearce
RIGHT on North Davol Street
Follow ramp to 79 North (Taunton/Middleboro)
Turn off on Exit 8
LEFT at top of the ramp
At rotary, follow North Main Street
Cemetery is across from the Cumberland Farms
Left on Pearce? And 79 North? You take High Street to Highland Ave and hang a left. Highland all the way, past Royal Crest, up to 24. Take Airport Road to North Main. City streets! You take city streets to the cemetery. But Walt always did get a kick out of the Cumberland Farms being spitting distance. How bad could eternity be if he could get a Herald News and some cheese? Milt rejoins Alf by the hydrant.
“Where’s Pearl?” Alf says.
“Still inside. She wanted a couple of minutes alone. And for Pearl to want a couple of minutes alone—”
“Ruthie, too. Cried half the night. Was he heavy?”
“Of course he was heavy,” Milt says. “Listen, Alf, the rabbi’s looking for you.”
“He doesn’t have anything better to do? Comfort the widows and orphans? Feed the poor? Plant some grapefruit in Israel?”
“You were listed as a bearer in the program.”
“You all did fine without me.”
“You want to hear how much Irv enjoyed saving the day?”
“No.”
“You’re asking me was he heavy?” Milt says. “Yeah, he was heavy.”
“I just thought of something,” Alf says.
“Yeah?”
“You know, the last few years he kept track of every dollar, every penny. Had a spending diary. Kept it in his briefcase. I mean every penny. It all went into the diary. He’d give a forty-cent tip, he’d write it down.”
“I do that. He got that from me.”
“Maybe, but you’re loaded.”
“It’s why I’m loaded,” Milt says.
“Right, but what I’m saying is that Walt could see it all draining away, dime by dime—”
“Poor guy. I knew and I didn’t know, you know what I mean? Who wants to know how broke—”
“No, Milt, see? Don’t you get it? It’s beautiful. The exact opposite of poor because every dime he spent meant something, you know what I’m trying—”
“What are you, a Communist?”
Rabbi Ruderman materializes. Mourners part before him like the waters. Milt backs away. “I’ll see you later, Alf, I gotta find my wife.”
“Rabbi,” Alf says.
“Rabbi,” Milt says. “Pearl, I gotta go find—”
Rabbi Ruderman’s head has seemed out of proportion to his body, so stuffed is it with knowledge, wisdom, criticism, wrath. “Never,” the rabbi says, “in twenty-eight years on the bimah have I ever known a pallbearer to shirk their holy responsibility. His closest friend, hooky!”
“Had trouble parking, Rabbi. Quite a crowd. One way to get people to temple. Anyhow, Walt wouldn’t have begrudged—”
“Now Alfred Dolinsky speaks for the dead?”
Sorrow loosens you up as easy as a couple of drinks.
“Look, Rabbi, I’m only trying to get through the day here.”
“You’re the only one, not his wife, not his daughter?”
“You want the truth? I went back to bed. After breakfast, I told Ruthie to go on ahead and I got back in bed.”
Rabbi Ruderman snorts. But just before he turns away to resume the comfort of those far worthier, Alf notices a glint of a little wetness in his eye. Might be rain. Might not be rain. Christ sake, even the rabbi—
Over somebody’s shoulder (Alice Wolpert’s?), Alf catches a glimpse of Sarah’s face a few bodies away. He waits as she’s hugged, grabbed, pawed at. Melba Kuperchmid, Renda Grayboys, Pearl Feldman, Lois Blattner, Trudy Falk, his own Ruthie. They all want a piece of her. Oh Sarah, oh Sarah. And then, upon a signal from Fischer, the engine of the hearse roars to life, and everybody begins to scatter and rush to their cars. And for a moment, Sarah’s left alone in the rain withou
t an umbrella, a solitary figure in a black dress, the guest of honor forgotten. It’s then that Sarah and Alf look at each other. No need for touch. And it’s never been a well-kept secret that Alf loves Sarah, chastely, of course, but unchastely, too. Has since pretty much the day Walt brought her home from Providence a married woman. Walt was nineteen; Sarah was seventeen. But let’s table this, as it’s been tabled all these years, and just say that here are Sarah and Alf a few feet away from each other in front of Beth El, just loving each other. In grief. They say it’s heavy, but there’s lightness in it, Alf thinks. The man may have been heavy but—
And Alf alone clocks in at two thirty on a good day. So why’s he floating?
Walt could find a joke in here somewhere.
Alf steps closer and pulls Sarah close. She digs her head into his shoulder. There’s a reason we’ve got bodies. In order to hide in someone else’s once in a while.
“Where were you?” Sarah says. “You should have seen the rabbi’s face when he counted the bearers. It was like somebody stole his wallet out of his vestments.”
“In Constantinople. I stopped in hell on the way home.”
“You sound like him.”
“He was my friend,” Alf says.
She releases him. “My chariot—”
And Alf watches the slow procession of cars make their foolish way left on Pearce, heading for 79 North. As she drives by in the Ford, Ruthie reaches over and rolls down the window.
“Need a ride?”
Her hair is up, but a few curly strands hang down past her eyes.
“I knew a guy once said he could always get a date at a funeral.”
“Who?”
“Burt Zifrin. Met him at a sales conference. Said it worked every time unless he went with his wife and even then—”
“You’re not going to the graveside?”
“Isn’t enough enough? Now I got to put him in a hole?”
“Alf, you stood out here the whole time.”
The car behind Ruthie gently beeps. It’s Al and Mary Wasser, waving, apologizing for beeping, But the hearse, we’ve got to follow the—
“I’ll see you at home,” Alf says.
He crumples the paper with the directions, chucks it onto the sidewalk, and walks back up the stairs to the sanctuary. Funny, remove the people, lose the rabbi, and the place does get a little holy. Alf takes a seat amid the discarded programs bearing his friend’s name. He listens to the rain beat against the twelve tribes of Israel. Walt’s bit was something about camels?
29
100 Delcar Street
Rain-soaked afternoon, another one, Fall River sky the color of old mud. Walt’s been gone four months. The sort of day they’d take a drive, maybe see a movie at the mall in Swansea, or a late lunch at Magoni’s or the Lobster Pot in Bristol. And she puts on some rubber boots and goes out to the garage, hoists the door, the little rusty wheels shrieking, and sits in the passenger’s seat of the Lincoln. She’s not waiting. It used to be called waiting. Walt still inside searching for his other galosh.
Is this the plot? The history of Fall River is a man drops dead while zipping his pants, and nobody’s even home to hear him fall? She wants a refund. Where does she cash in ten thousand nights? Loneliness, somebody must have said too many times already, is a physical thing. It’s in the fingers, the palms. It’s in the tightness of your neck because to loosen would be to sink, and the only way to sink, to truly sink (and come back again), is with another, is with the other, arms and legs entangled. Funny thing is they never wanted for anything. You could almost laugh. As if they didn’t know the money didn’t matter. Oh hell yes, it mattered. Still does matter. Now more than ever. Walt said life was 90 percent economics and the rest was inflation. Alf, bless him, paid off the Lincoln so that she could sit in here in her own garage in the rain. She’ll sell the house by the end of the year.
Still. Think about their friends, Milt and Pearl, Dot and Lloyd. Yes, even Alf and Ruthie, they said it, too. They’d always say they envied Walt and Sarah, and the whole time secretly (not so secretly) they thanked God they weren’t Walt and Sarah. Hand to mouth. Can you imagine? But there are times when polite, saccharine-sweet lies are more truthful than what people hold inside, times when the casual lie is the secret. They did envy us, Walt, she thinks. They just didn’t know why. They think it was because we were happy. (And happy’s nice, happy’s terrific, like a Christmas bonus. Let everybody be happy!) But empty pockets? That’s a rough pill to…They can’t see an inch past their noses. They envied us because we never wanted for anything. Two beds not even big enough for one of us much less two? Walt sold furniture his whole life, you think we couldn’t have bought a queen on wholesale?
Because they knew we never wanted for anything.
She waits in the Lincoln. The leather seats have a way of surrendering, of molding to the contours of your body, not at first, but eventually. And eventually, she’ll doze a little. The rain pounds on the little roof of the garage. Still, there’s life. Even today, in this rain, she’s got to pick up a prescription, stop by Ida’s (Norm’s in the hospital again), and meet the girls at Milt and Pearl’s to play bridge at three thirty. Some days, and the man’s still fresh in the grave, she forgets to remember him.
30
Sarah
In the spring of 1989, Sarah went with Ruthie Dolinsky to see Don Rickles at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. She didn’t want to see a show. She wanted to gamble. Or at least give some Pequots her money. She’d drawn out eighty-five dollars cash to squander. And last time, didn’t she take home twenty-eight bucks?
But Ruthie said it would be good to laugh. When was the last time you laughed, honey?
“I laugh,” Sarah said. “I just don’t laugh out loud. You’d be scandalized by how much I laugh.”
What Sarah meant by this Ruthie didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know.
But Sarah went along, and at first she hardly listened to a thing Rickles said. Why would she want to? Still, she laughed, out loud, along with the rest of the audience. Ruthie elbowed her if she didn’t. Rickles’s body was so thin and wiry it was hardly there at all. But his mouth was a gaping horn. Sarah found herself watching him as if for a sign. He seemed the saddest man she’d ever seen. Not angry, his anger was so clearly a gag he didn’t even bother to hide it anymore. He stood up there being sad, not mopey, fundamentally sad from top to bottom, and it was almost too familiar. And he wasn’t trying to be especially funny, which of course made him funny, except that everybody laughed, as people seem to do, at the wrong time. The time to laugh is just before any punch line, not after, because if a joke is funny, what’s funny about it is never, ever the punch line. The punch line is overkill, for dopes who miss the joke. Was it Walt who told her all this? Who else? Who’d bother to concoct such a formulation? But here she was, as if to demonstrate the nontheoretical, practical truth of it, cackling just before the punch line. This confused Ruthie and annoyed the people sitting around them. What? You alone, lady, get the joke? Even so, it wasn’t like she was listening to the bits. She was only waiting for that almost imperceptible moment when Rickles appeared to hold his breath. There, right there, that’s funny. She watched him, his little fishy eyes, that maw of a mouth open but, for milliseconds, silent. A decrepit comic on his last legs. He said he was starting to get booked at funeral homes. At one point Rickles lay on the stage and did a routine from the grave. Listen, worm, only one of us is getting out of this joint alive. You ever hear a worm laugh? It gnaws at you. Ruthie almost bust a gut.
She knows they talk about her, Ruthie and the others. How she never mentions Walt’s name. How in twelve years you could count on one hand how many times she’s said his name in conversation. Some of the girls think she’s cold. They always seemed so close. Goes to show you. Now it’s like the poor guy never existed. Others, like Ruthie, say she’s being superior. That Sarah thinks her grief is somehow purer because she doesn’t say things like what a relief i
t is not to have to live with Alf’s fungus feet. Wouldn’t let him near me unless he washed them in Clorox.
Husbands die. That’s what husbands do. Most of them from their circle are dead now. Alf passed two years after Walt. Pearl’s Milt had a stroke in ’83.
Sarah has dated a couple of the sturdier widowers. She went out a few times with an O’Malley, head of maintenance at the hospital where she still volunteers at the gift shop. And also, twice, a mousy, retired accountant, originally from Fall River, now living in Boston. Slept with both of them. Ted O’Malley was jolly and would call her up at all hours and ask what she was doing. What do you think I’m doing, Ted? It’s two in the morning. You lack spontaneity, he told her, and eventually he stopped calling. The accountant, Sandy Edelstein, would drive down to Fall River and spend the night. But he was too scrawny. It was like going to bed with a bag of sticks. She needed a man with more baloney. She didn’t think that. Walt thunk that. His body up and left, and it is Walt’s body, it must be said, that she still craves. His thoughts? By Christ, didn’t she have enough of those when he was around? There were days, weeks, when his talking was like a radio somebody left on in an empty room, when he was only disembodied noise. It’s his body she refuses to live without. But try telling this to the girls. I just want his sweat, his beer breath. That’s pure? That’s being superior? Like Ruthie going to see Alf, she’d like to stop by Walt’s grave once in a while, leave a rock, and be done with it. But he died and he didn’t die, and she can’t go around explaining this to everybody who wants to know why she doesn’t say his name in public. He’s not hallowed, he’s still here, the part I don’t want.