The Good Atheist

by Michael Manto

  I ordered pizza instead. It was easier than arguing with the fridge. While waiting for the pizza to arrive, I emailed my boss about the funeral to let her know that I would not be into work in the morning.

  2

  We took an early morning ramjet to Boston. From Boston we caught a connecting flight to Burlington, Vermont, where we had booked seats with a small regional airline that would take us to Aylmer. When we landed in Burlington and saw the size of the plane waiting for us, we decided to rent a car instead. It would take longer, but we felt more confident of getting there alive. And it would allow us to take in the scenery. Neither one of us had been to this part of the country before.

  We rented a small convertible at the airport. It was a glorious June morning, and we drove the small highway with the roof down. I also kept the tires down, preferring to drive the old-fashioned way, with rubber, instead of hover-mode. Younger people seemed to like riding on the cushion of air that hover-mode gave you, but I still preferred to feel the road beneath me.

  Selene looked wonderful. She wore dark sunglasses, and her long dark hair streamed behind her in the breeze. We followed the highway as it twisted and turned through the green mountains, passing through a few small towns. There were no cities in this remote corner of the state. Around noon we stopped at a roadside diner for lunch, and made it to Aylmer an hour later in plenty of time for the funeral.

  Arriving in Aylmer was like stepping back in time to another century. We drove slowly through town along Main Street on our way to the motel. I had to drive slowly because people kept crossing the street in front of traffic, although I seemed to be the only driver on the road bothered by this. Half the time the pedestrians and drivers waved at each other, and often stopped to chat through the driver’s window.

  Old two-story red-brick buildings lined both sides of the street with small shops, diners and specialty stores. Pickup trucks outnumbered cars and white clapboard homes filled the side streets. High green hills soared above the tops of the buildings in every direction.

  Main Street took us through the town square at the heart of Aylmer. There was a public park, surrounded by shops and restaurants. The City Hall, a couple of banks, the courthouse and an old church building all faced the park. I was gratified to see that the church had been converted into a Temple to Gaia.

  We found the motel Ellie had booked for us on the far side of town. We checked in, unpacked, and changed out of our travel clothes into funeral attire. I wore a traditional dark-blue suit. Selene put on a black knee-length skirt with matching black blazer. On our way out we asked the clerk at the front counter if he knew where the Bloom & Osteen funeral home was. As it turned out, Bloom and Osteen was the only funeral home in town, and the clerk’s sister-in-law worked there. Gotta love small towns.

  • • •

  The open casket rested on a pedestal covered with white linen, surrounded by wreaths and bouquets of flowers. To the left was a small round table covered with framed pictures. A baby grand piano sat on the right side. The front row was reserved for close family members, which we had to ourselves. The hall was packed with strangers, standing room only. It seemed like the entire town had arrived.

  My grandfather looked blissfully serene, as if enjoying nothing more than a good nap. I found it hard not to picture myself lying in the casket, with my own face superimposed over grandfather’s, and I wondered what right he had to look so blissful, serving as he did such a stark reminder of my own inevitable death. He looked so peaceful in the face of oblivion, and it seemed to me that he was expecting all of us to face our own end with the same composure.

  I tried to shake off the dark brooding thoughts, reminding myself it was just the result of the mortician’s art. I reached over and clasped my wife’s hand tightly for reassurance. Funerals are intended to be memorials to the one deceased, but it seemed to me they served better as reminders of our own mortality.

  A moment later the funeral director walked over to us. He introduced himself and outlined how the service would proceed. He asked me if I would like to say a few words during the service. But I hadn’t seen Grandpa in years, and no longer felt I knew him well enough. I declined politely, saying that I hadn’t had time to prepare anything. He apologized for the last-minute notice, and then asked if I would like to serve as a pallbearer. “Of course,” I answered.

  As soon as the director excused himself another man approached me. His clothes hung loosely over his tall, lanky frame, and his face was long and thin, accented by a shock of dark brown hair that seemed unacquainted with a comb. He looked to be in his fifties, maybe a bit younger. He thrust out his hand and said, with a surprisingly deep voice that sounded like gravel pouring out the back of a truck, “Jorge Alcantara. You must be Ben’s grandson.” I shook his hand and introduced my wife.

  “Your grandfather was a good friend of mine,” he said. “I’m very happy to finally meet you, although I wish it could have been under different circumstances. He spoke often of you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He tapped me on the arm, as if a thought suddenly occurred and he wanted to remind me before he forgot. “You know, I’m hosting a small reception back at my place after the service. Why don’t you come over? I’d love the chance to talk and get to know you a bit. There are a lot of people in town who knew your grandfather and would love to meet you.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but he didn’t exactly wait for an answer. A young woman walked up to the front, took her seat at the baby grand, and started to play, signaling the start of the service. Jorge quickly told me his address and returned to his seat.

  The girl at the piano could not have been more than thirteen. She played beautifully, although I did not recognize the piece. I made a mental note to find out the name of the song so I could download it.

  When she finished playing an old man walked slowly up to the front and took his place at the podium next to the casket. He cleared his throat and introduced himself simply as Bill, a friend of Ben’s. But I had the feeling that everyone else in the room knew who he was and the introduction was a formality. He spoke for a few minutes of my grandfather’s life, of his kindness and generosity, of his good heart and selfless service to the community, and used a few old-fashioned religious euphemisms of his passing into another life. The religious language flirted dangerously with intellectual anarchy, but in this setting I took it as harmless. There were a few sniffles, and a woman behind me started to cry.

  After a few minutes he vacated the podium and someone else took his place, this time a middle-aged woman. She didn’t give a name, only that she was a friend and had known Ben for almost ten years. Again, I had the same sense that the whole room knew her and introductions were unnecessary, and she spoke in much the same religious vein as Bill. Selene and I glanced sidelong at each other, a little shocked at the impoliteness of the religious talk, and she gave my hand a gentle squeeze.

  One by one neighbors and townspeople took a turn at the podium. A few read poems. Someone played a piece at the piano. One even sang a song, rather badly, claiming it was one of Ben’s favorites, and the dam of tears in the room finally burst open. Half the town, it seemed, had something to say at the microphone, sharing stories about Grandpa’s kindness, faith, and generosity. By the end there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Several cried openly. Clearly my grandfather had many friends in this town that loved him well, and he would be sorely missed.

  The realization that all these people had known my grandfather so well came like a knife twisting in my gut. I had once been close to Grandpa, and that made the distance of the past few years all the more painful. I felt cheated and robbed by these strangers who had enjoyed a closeness with him that I had been denied. They had something with him that I once had and lost, and I couldn’t help but feel jealous. For me, he’d already been dead for two decades, but their friendship with Grandpa only served to make the pain of my separation from him hurt all the more deeply. As the memorial service procee
ded, their words felt more like cruel arrows aimed at me.

  Not all of them, but many of them, had the same curiously odd thing to say in their own way, that Ben was in a better place, had moved on to something better in heaven. I wasn’t at first offended because I took them to be the kind of mild euphemisms we so often employ when speaking of death. But as it went on, I came to realize with a shock that they were not meant as euphemisms. They really meant it. They really believed it.

  And then Jorge walked up to the podium, the lanky one who had introduced himself before the service. He started off much the same as the others, but then said something so shocking, so offensive to the modern ear, that at first I wasn’t sure I was really hearing what I heard. He spoke, matter-of-factly, in terms even more concrete and real than the others, of heaven and salvation in Christ, and of Grandpa passing on to a better place to be with his God. He said it so naturally, so uncontrived, with a smile on his face, that it took me a moment to realize that this was no mere salve. It wasn’t just the sort of nicety that people often say when they feel compelled to say something comforting in the face of tragedy. He spoke of heaven and of Grandpa’s presence there with such assurance that for a moment it seemed believable even to me.

  I felt Selene stiffen next to me, and her hand gripped mine a little tighter. I’m sure she felt the same offense at the religious words, and if he had been talking like that in any other setting, I would have called him out for the stupid fool I believed him to be, and then called the police. I found no comfort in such falsehoods. Talk like that was for the weak, those who were not brave or strong enough to face the ultimate realities of life and death. Funerals, I wanted to tell him, were no place for religious placebos, but for remembering the dead and facing the harsh reality of mortality.

  But what did I believe? According to my own creed, nothingness. Oblivion. I struggled to find comfort in that as the service went on, but what comfort could be found in nothingness? Good atheists assert, often gleefully, of the ultimate meaninglessness of life. We are accidents, nothing more than insignificant specks of chemicals adrift in a vast indifferent cosmos. But we would never speak of the dearly departed as meaningless sacks of chemicals, even though our creed leaves us with nothing more than that.

  Polite atheists just don’t talk like that at funerals.

  When the service concluded the funeral director walked up to the casket, his every move unhurried and dignified. I looked into the face of my grandfather one last time, and he seemed to be smiling back at me from wherever he was.

  The funeral director closed the casket, and my grandfather passed from sight forever. I found myself asking again, what right had he to look so serene?

  The director invited the pallbearers to come forward, and the six of us took positions around the casket. We lifted it up from the pedestal and followed the director out a side door where a hearse waited. Its back doors were open and we slid the casket inside.

  Selene and I rode in the back seat of the hearse. We drove at a dignified speed slowly through town, leading a long procession that must have included every pickup truck and half the cars within a hundred mile radius. In a brief and solemn ceremony, at a small cemetery at the edge of town, we committed my grandfather to his final resting place.

  Afterwards, the funeral director gave us a ride to Jorge’s house in his hearse. He dropped us off and we stood on the sidewalk in the warm sunshine, debating whether or not to go through with it. I could see down the driveway into a large backyard where already a large number of people mingled around barbeques and tables laden with food. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go, for a number of reasons.

  “Are you sure you are ready for this?” I asked Selene, shamelessly projecting my own uncertainties onto her.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Like you said, we can’t spend the rest of our lives hiding.” Her hair was combed over on one side, partially covering the side of her face with the worst scarring, but it couldn’t hide all of it.

  “They’ll be a lot of strangers in there who’ve known Grandpa for years. And they’ll want to meet us,” I said.

  She fixed her eyes on me. “Sure. So, are we going to stand out here and yak all day?”

  “Let’s go then,” I said, taking her hand. We walked down the driveway into a spacious yard behind the house. Fifty or sixty people milled around and talked in small clusters. A long table spread with finger food and a punch bowl was setup in the middle of the yard underneath a bright yellow awning.

  Jorge detached himself from a group and made his way towards us. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  “Thanks for inviting us,” I said. A few other people standing nearby gravitated towards us. Jorge told them who we were, and their eyes lit up at once. Others came over, and soon we were surrounded by a couple of dozen friends of my grandfather’s. They took turns telling us how much they loved my grandfather, how much he will be missed. I loved my grandfather too, but it was hard not to feel jaded. A whole town full of people had something with my grandfather that I’d been robbed of.

  “Seems like the whole town knew my grandfather really well the past few years except me,” I said with a smile, but my tone was petulant. Whoever said I couldn’t make polite small talk?

  Selene gave me a sharp look. I’m sure she would have kicked me if she could have done it unnoticed. If Jorge was put off by my display of childish temper, it didn’t show. “How long are you in town for?”

  I told him that we were staying overnight and would return home tomorrow.

  “There’s a bunch of guys that meet for breakfast at Rosie’s almost every morning. Your grandfather was a regular. Why don’t you join us tomorrow?”

  I decided that it might be nice to meet some of Grandpa’s friends, and agreed. Selene said she was hungry and went over to the buffet table to look over the cornucopia of barbequed chicken, finger sandwiches, and dessert squares spread across it. The others standing around drifted away until Jorge and I found ourselves alone.

  “He tried to get hold of you, you know,” Jorge said.

  I didn’t say anything and waited to see where he was going with this.

  “He tried to contact you after your mother moved away with you. But she blocked all his emails and returned his letters. After a while he gave up. He had to, or he faced legal action and possible imprisonment. She threatened a lawsuit if he kept trying.”

  “Lawsuit? Imprisonment? That makes no sense,” I objected.

  He just looked at me for a moment. “Interesting. I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  He paused thoughtfully, as if weighing his response, before he spoke. “Religious people have no rights when it comes to children, and can be incarcerated for Cerebral Terrorism. He was a Christian, you see.”

  It would have been easier on me if he’d simply said Grandpa had been an axe murderer hiding bodies in the basement. I shook my head. “That can’t be. He was a good atheist.”

  “He converted around the time your father disappeared.”

  “I had no idea,” I said.

  This was going too fast for me and neither one of us spoke.

  “There was a young girl playing the piano during the service,” I finally said. “That piece she played was beautiful. Do you know what it was?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “What is it called? I’d like to download it.”

  “Oh, I think you might have some difficulty with that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She was playing ‘Amazing Grace.’ It was one of his favorites.”

  I gave him a blank look. I’d never heard of the song. “And?”

  “And it’s an old Christian spiritual. And therefore banned and highly illegal to play.”

  Selene chose that moment to return with a plate of pickles and finger sandwiches. “Try the salmon ones, honey. They’re delicious.” She held one up to my mouth. I wasn’t interested, but I took a bite to humor her.

  Selene must
have seen something in my face. “What’s wrong?”

  Jorge excused himself. “Good talking to you. I should see to my other guests. I hope you can make it for breakfast tomorrow.” He left to mingle with the other guests.

  “Jack?” Selene said, looking concerned. “What is it? You look like you’ve just swallowed a sour pickle.”

  “Jorge just told me something disturbing about my grandfather.”

  “What was that?”

  Before I could answer a familiar face made his way towards us. It took me a second before placing him. Richard Abrams, the lawyer who’d been waiting for me in the lobby yesterday. The look of relief was palpable in his face. “I hoped to find you here.”

  I nodded my head slightly. “Mister Abrams.”

  “We need to review your grandfather’s will and estate. Are you free this afternoon? I’d like to take you out to see the cottage.” Selene and I looked at each other. She shrugged slightly. Sure, I said to the lawyer. We agreed to meet later at his office.

  • • •

  Selene and I stayed a while longer at the reception, getting hugged by a lot of strangers until the steady stream of names and faces became a blur. Half the town must have come out to greet us. And there was no one, it seemed, who didn’t know my grandfather.

  After a while we found Jorge to say our goodbyes and make a gracious exit, and asked him if there were any cabs in town. A burly farmer-type standing with him asked me, “You need a ride someplace?” He had managed to squeeze himself into an old suit for the occasion, but he looked like he’d be much more comfortable in work jeans and a red plaid shirt.

  “Yes. We need to get back to our motel.”

  “You can take my truck. It’s the red Ford F350 pick-up with the supercab out front.”

  My jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon.”

  He jerked a thumb towards the street. “Be my guest. The keys are in it. Just leave it at the motel and I can pick it up later.” He didn’t have to ask which motel. There only was one.