After

by Francis Chalifour

  On the kitchen wall there’s a clock in the shape of Elvis Presley playing his guitar. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The hands seemed to move madly, grabbing the minutes. The more time that passed, the more I wanted to vomit. I dreaded the funeral and all the eyes that would be looking at me: “That’s the kid whose father hanged himself.”

  Aunt Sophie arrived in a cloud of perfume, wearing a big green hat and silk scarves. She wrapped her soft, heavy arms around me. Aunt Sophie is a non-stop laugher. Her laugh is the soundtrack of her life. This morning the laugh was present, but muted, and her eyes were red and puffy. She was speaking to me, but I could not make sense of her flood of words. Finally she stopped, and we sat silently in the kitchen.

  A man from the funeral home picked us up in a black limousine.

  “Hello,” he said in a practiced, warm voice. “My name is Jerry.” I hated the limousine. It was freaking ugly and cold. I also hated every Jerry in the world. This Jerry drove slowly. I wanted him to drive fast, to skid through red lights, to smash us all into a big wall, to sail off the mountainside. That way, there would be no funeral and no eyes looking at The Suicide’s Family.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon–a bright and sunny day, the kind of day you would normally enjoy because it’s June, and the air is soft and scented with lilacs, and you know that school will end soon. It was not the kind of day you should spend going to your father’s funeral.

  Another big man met us at the door. His name was also Jerry. He smiled at us. I would have liked to pull his freaking smile off his face and stomp on it.

  “Welcome, madame. I want to warn you right now: your husband is not…” His voice tapered off. “Death by strangulation, you know.” He nodded his head and pursed his lips. “You are quite lucky to see him once again. If you had not discovered him when you did, it would have been impossible to have an open coffin. You understand, we can’t leave the body exposed for very long.”

  The body. My father was nothing but a dead body, a piece of meat you can’t keep on the counter for too long because it will turn. I wanted to punch the guy right in his big, soft, white-shirted stomach.

  There were flowers everywhere, carnations mostly. Their sharp smell was nauseating. The funeral home was freezing. Everything was cold and everything was beige. I hate that color. Beige is boring. It’s ugly. I hated the people who chose beige for the funeral home. The thought of them filled me with fury.

  We approached the glossy oak coffin slowly, Luc, Maman, and I. Maman held our hands tightly. Hers were freezing. I didn’t want to look into the coffin, but I couldn’t help it.

  He lay on white satin with a paler face than usual, and a turgid neck. For some reason I couldn’t stop looking at his eyelashes lowered against his gray skin. Someone had curled them. I stared at him for a while, to see if his eyelids or his nostrils would move. They didn’t. Luc climbed up on the prie-dieu and looked at Papa.

  “Papa, I’m tired of you being dead. Get up! Play with me, please, Papa. Just for a bit. I’ll help you get out of your bed. I promise I’ll be a good boy.”

  Maman took Luc in her arms, and kissed Papa, first on the forehead, then on the lips. A chill ran through my body. I couldn’t make myself touch him, not even with my fingertips.

  We were alone with him for a few minutes, until the Jerrys opened the doors and people streamed in. Houston came with his father. Though Houston’s been my best friend since third grade, this was the first time I’d seen him in a suit. I didn’t know what to do. Should I shake his hand, hug him, kiss him?

  “Francis, my sympathies.” His father shook my hand.

  “Thanks.”

  Thanks. That’s all I could say. I saw my friends, Eric, Caroline, and Melanie, standing together at the back, looking uncomfortable. Melanie is the same kind of chronic laugher as Aunt Sophie, but she had a Kleenex crunched in her hand, and her eyes were red. Caroline looked pretty in her black dress. Her head was on Eric’s shoulder. She’s crazy about Eric; that’s what she told me before we left for New York. A million years ago.

  When the time came to close the coffin, one of the Jerrys took off Papa’s watch and wedding ring and handed them to Maman. She gave them to me. I slipped the watch on my wrist. The ring was loose on my finger, so I put it in my pocket. The watch and ring seemed to throb as if they were charged with electricity.

  A Jerry drove us to the cemetery. All the limo seats were the kind of white leather that hurts your eyes because it’s too bright. Maman sat between Luc and me. I saw the three of us reflected in the rearview mirror. This was my new family.

  They asked me to drop a handful of soil into the grave because I was the oldest son. I felt sweat running down my back. Afterward, Aunt Sophie took my hand, though it was all covered in dirt. Her perfume made my head ache.

  Luc leaned against my leg, wanting to be picked up. I held him and he put his head on my shoulder, just like I used to with Papa when I was Luc’s age. Luc knows a lot of things: he can tie his shoes, he can count to twenty, and he can sing a song in Spanish, but he’s pretty much in the dark when it comes to the concept of death.

  “Is there light in his coffin after they close it? Can he hear me if I talk to him?” he whispered in my ear.

  I wanted him to shut up, but I didn’t say anything. I buried my face in his hair.

  My mother calmly dropped a handful of soil on the sleek varnished coffin, but when the cemetery guys took over and heaved dirt into the grave, she started to scream: “WHY, MY LOVE? FOR WHAT? WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT YOU? MY GOD, WHY DID YOU DO THIS TOME? YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! I HATE YOU! NO!”

  People craned to get a good look at The Grieving Widow. I could see Houston reaching for his father’s hand. His eyes were fall of pity.

  You could almost taste Maman’s pain in the air that we were breathing. One of her brothers wrapped his arm around her shoulders and led her stumbling to the black limousine. I helped Luc inside and slid onto the white leather seat beside him. I would have liked to hug Maman, but my arms were too weak. I wished I could dry her tears, but I was scared I might drown in them. I didn’t have a shoulder for her to lean on: mine wasn’t strong enough. I was only fifteen years old, skinny, weak, and scared. I sat silent and still and watched the early summer city slide by as we drove away.

  After the cemetery, we went to a restaurant somewhere in Old Montreal for the reception. It could have been a five-star restaurant or a chip wagon for all I cared. There was a lot of food, and Aunt Sophie was in her element, balancing a plate of pork pie, potato salad, and party sandwiches as she stood guard beside Maman. Everyone wanted to tell my mother and me that my father was too young to die, in case we hadn’t realized it. Then they helped themselves to food from the buffet, and talked and laughed as if we weren’t there. My godfather, Uncle Ted, sat down next to me with a beer in his hand. He isn’t my favorite uncle. In fact, I don’t much like any of my uncles. They’re all about as warm as the St. Lawrence in January when the ice blocks the Seaway. Ted is impossible to talk to, as if he counts out the number of words he is allowed to say in a day, and if he says more than that, he’ll be punished by some vengeful god.

  “Well, Francis, now you are the man of the house, eh? You have to take care of your mother and your little brother. You have lots of responsibilities, you know.”

  Wow! Three complete sentences in a row. That’s the most he’s ever said to me.

  “Your father was a good man,” he continued. “Time will help you to forget about this.”

  “I guess.” That’s all I could think of to say. Did I inherit word-hoarding from Uncle Ted?

  He patted my arm and hoisted himself to his feet. “Good luck, eh!”

  Good luck. For what? Did I just buy a lottery ticket? What am I supposed to say? Thank you? Bless you? I wanted to knock over the table with its plates full of crust-less party sandwiches and tourtiere and potato salad. I hate potato salad. It’s gross. I found Luc sitting by himself at a table, an untouched plate of
food in front of him.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I want to go home now.”

  “Me too.” He crawled into my lap and fell asleep.

  I could see my grandpa–my father’s father–heading toward us. By the time he got from point A to point B with his walker, I could have played three games of Mario Bros, at the slowest speed. I didn’t want to talk to him. I had had enough comfort from Uncle Ted.

  “Francis. Your father is dead now.”

  Yes. I know. I freaking know! I thought that maybe I could pretend to faint, or pretend that I couldn’t understand him. Looking back, I realize that he’d buried his son that day and could have used a big dose of comfort himself, but I had no sympathy for him. I was too shattered to comprehend anyone else’s pain.

  “Sorry, Grandpa. Luc has to go home to bed.”

  Grandpa looked at me, I think. He has a lazy eye, so I wasn’t sure. That day his lazy eye enraged me.

  Finally, Aunt Sophie drove us home. I put my father’s wedding ring and his watch close to his picture on my desk. Luc slept with me in my bed. He curled up tight against me as if he were afraid I would vanish.

  I walked through the last days of school on automatic pilot.

  It felt wrong to be with my friends. Houston, Caroline, Eric, Melanie. They all kept offering me reassuring smiles, but the smiles simply puzzled me. What’s the point of smiling at anyone? Who wants to smile? It felt wrong to smile.

  We’d been friends from the time we were kids and played on the swings at the park. We could spend all day together and then go home and spend hours on the phone. We knew all the tricks in Mario Bros.; we knew exactly what each one of us would order when we hung out at Deli Delight, home of the finest bagels you’d ever want to eat. We all knew that Houston had a crush on Caroline. He loves dancing–you should see him moon-walk, picking up static from the shag rug in the living room, all for Caroline’s benefit. The problem is that Caroline didn’t care about him at all as a boyfriend. She had a long-standing crush on Eric who is serious and quiet and favors black turtlenecks. Eric the Brooding Poet acts like he’s oblivious. All of this had been a big deal that fascinated me. Now all the drama and intrigue and giggling scraped my nerves raw. And these were my best buddies.

  I gave up going to rugby practice. My father used to love rugby.

  Of course, the biggest changes were at home. After the funeral, we stopped talking about Papa. Our sorrow tunneled underground, secret and private. Luc stopped waking me up at dawn to play with him and his stupid Lego blocks.

  My father’s slippers waited where he had left them, side by side under the beat-up brown couch facing the TV, as if he were coming back to pull them on again. His denim jacket was still slung over the back of the rocking chair where he sat after dinner. It had muddy paw prints on it from where Sputnik had jumped up for a pat. I offered to wash it, but Maman was furious.

  “That jacket is not dirty. It doesn’t need to go in the washing machine,” she said firmly. “It smells like him. Pine.”

  “But it’s been there for a month.”

  “I said it doesn’t need to be washed. Point final”

  Luc was a newborn and Maman wanted some quiet, so Papa and I walked up to the top of Mont-Royal. It’s a small mountain in the middle of Montréal. It was crowded. People love the mountain during fall, especially people with dogs. They go there to breathe when they’re fed up with traffic jams and stuff like that. That day, my dad taught me how to recognize petit thé des bois. It’s a kind of grass you can eat when you’re hungry and lost. I ran ahead and when I retraced my steps, looking for him, he jumped out from behind a tree, yelling Boo! I hated it when he did that, but he loved to surprise me.

  Right after Papa died I went back up to the top of Mont-Royal and sat under the same tree, waiting for him to jump out and yell Boo! I sat under that tree until it grew dark, but nothing happened, maybe because I was fifteen and when you’re fifteen you’re too old for scary games.

  It’s funny, the things you miss. In those first few weeks I fretted, because Papa had promised to show me a trick for holding my poker hand and he was going to give me a tip on bluffing. He took all his secrets with him.

  Montréal features January Sundays so cold that the only thing you want to do is stay home with a bowl of soup and a piece of warm apple pie. The Seaway was frozen over and Papa was on shore leave with time on his hands. After lunch he made an announcement. “You are seven years old, son,” he said solemnly. “The time has come for you to learn how to play poker.”

  Maman was at the sink washing the dishes with lime dish detergent. I have always loved that smell–I don’t know what it reminds me of, but who cares. Whenever I smell limes I think of the time before Luc was born when the house was snug and the roof was sound and outside the frosty windows the garage and the garden were neat and well-kept.

  Papa cleared off the chipped table and made a pile of pennies in the middle. He cracked open a fresh deck of cards.

  “Ben, why are you using new cards with the boy? Those are for company.” Maman didn’t sound angry, but it was true. During weekdays, when my father was at home and my parents played cards, they used an old grimy deck. For special guests, they brought out slippery fresh cards.

  “Because today I’m teaching the boy to play poker. Fish is for babies. It’s time to show him how men play.”

  I was thrilled. I thought that once we played a hand, I would get up from the table a foot taller and I’d know all my multiplication tables by heart. It didn’t happen, of course. In fact, I’ve never learned the multiplication tables–that’s why I rank the calculator at the top of the list of the world’s greatest inventions. I watched Papa make the cards waterfall through his hands in an orderly ribbon. I wanted to be able to make them obey like he did, but my fingers were too short and awkward.

  Sometimes Maman played with us, but she wasn’t very good at it: she wasn’t observant enough. When people play poker, it’s important to observe them, especially their eyes, when they are dealt their new cards. Papa said that learning how to play poker is like getting an education in a human being. You have to learn about his strengths, his weaknesses, his nervous tics, and his moods. I guess I didn’t play enough poker with my father to realize that he had hidden cards up his sleeves. I didn’t know that he could cheat.

  At first, we only played for pennies. But after a few weeks, when I learned how to hold my cards close enough so that no one could see them, Papa taught me how to play “real” cards like straight poker and blackjack. He let me use the pennies in my little china piggybank. He often won, but even when I lost, my penny pig never grew lighter. Papa always replaced my coins. One day when I was twelve, I couldn’t find my pig. It wasn’t on my shelf or my desk. When I asked my mother where it was, she said: “It’s been magically changed into groceries.” She didn’t laugh.

  I never asked about my little pig again. She didn’t have to tell me that Papa had no work. Life had begun to change.

  3 | INJUSTICE

  The long, hot summer finally ended. Luc wore new shoes to kindergarten, and we took his picture standing proudly at the front door. I didn’t want to take the shine off his day, but I dreaded going back to school. All I wanted to do was hole up in my bedroom and play guitar. I needed to be lonely.

  The first shock of the day was that Mr. Enrique had left the school. We didn’t know why, but apparently, his blind cat, Rococo, had died. We got a new Spanish teacher.

  When the First-Day-of-Class commotion was over, Mr. Lunes rapped on his desk.

  “What is a preposition?”

  I had no idea and hoped that he wasn’t calling on me. He was.

  “Young man. What is your name?”

  « Me llamo Francis Gregory. »

  « ¡Muy bien! ¿Y qué es el nombre de tu padre? »

  I could feel everybody looking at me. There was an embarrassed shuffling of feet.

  « Mi padre se llama Ben. »

  « ¡Muy bien! ¿Que hace
tu padre en la vida? »

  What did my father do? The class sat in frozen fascination as if they were watching a trainwreck.

  « Por favor, ¿qué hace tu padre en la vida? »

  I wanted to grab Mr. Lunes by the throat and break his neck, but I didn’t. When I was little and I didn’t like a Christmas gift, I would throw it at the wall. I’d learned not to do that anymore, because when you’re fifteen you’re kind of a part of adult society, and you have mastered the art of pretending to love nauseating Chia Pets or gray woollen socks or a book on saints. That lesson stood me in good stead for staying in my seat and answering Mr. Lunes’ questions. As opposed to committing murder.

  « Mi padre es marinero. »

  « ¡Muy bien! »

  I had said, “My father is a sailor,” instead of “was” I couldn’t say my father was dead even though the whole class knew the truth, and Houston and Caroline and Eric and Melanie had all been to my father’s funeral. They would have had to have some sort of group amnesia to have missed the big news that my father had committed suicide. I was Son of Suicide Man. I could picture the cartoon on TV: Suicide Man Against the Terrible Smiley Face, Suicide Man and the Magic Rope in the Attic, Ugly thoughts. Unbelievably, nobody ever mentioned that Spanish class to me. I was grateful.

  At our school people sniff out differences like killer sharks going for blood. You’re supposed to be free to express yourself, but you’d better be the same as everybody else–or else. You’d think I was used to being different because we were poorer than my friends. I’d never been one of those kids who could afford expensive clothes, and have the latest gizmos as soon as they came out. We didn’t have a second home in Florida or a cottage in the Laurentians. We didn’t have a boat or a second car in the driveway. Nothing like that. We didn’t even have a computer. Still, being poor was not as big a deal as being Son of Suicide Man. Now, that was something different. Looking back, maybe the other kids teased me or talked about me behind my back, but to tell you the truth, if they did, I didn’t notice. Grief is an anesthetic, but I don’t recommend it.