If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go

by Judy Chicurel

  I looked at Luke, amazed. He spoke softly, mechanically, his words slicing the air like small knives. His face never changed expression the whole time he was talking, but I watched his left fist clench and unclench and Mr. Farrell saw it, too, his glance flickering downward. I’d seen the way his face flinched when Luke said “fucking.” You’d think a funeral director would have heard those words before, would be used to them.

  “Luke, now, of course I respect the man’s service record,” Mr. Farrell said. “Of course we all want to do as much as possible for our boys—”

  “We’re not boys,” Luke said, and something loosened in his voice. His body tightened.

  “Mr. Farrell,” I said quickly, “we’re Mitch’s—we’re Mr. Ronkowski’s only people. He doesn’t have anyone else. We’re his people, Mr. Farrell. We just want to remember him well. We’re having a ceremony on the beach, and then we’re having a dinner for him, for his friends who—who loved him. Can’t you help us, please? Mr. Farrell, can’t you please help us?”

  Mr. Farrell looked from me to Luke. He looked back to me again. “Of course I’ll help,” he said, so sincerely you wanted to believe him. “Of course I’ll help you honor this man who sacrificed so much for his country.”

  “Just burn the fucking body,” Luke said, and Mr. Farrell’s face finally collapsed so that all the careful signs of counterfeit emotion came together in surprise and anger and contempt and sorrow.

  • • •

  What’d you tell him?” Luke asked.

  We were sitting in the Treasure Chest Bar and Grill, not far from Farrell’s, by the marina under the bridge. The long, polished bar faced the water and the boats rocking the harbor. It was the kind of local place you came to for birthdays and other special occasions. They were known for their soft-shell crabs. I looked around for Charlie Brennan, Marcel’s father, who practically lived at the Treasure Chest, but it was probably too early for him to be there. I had been to the Treasure Chest before with my family, but I’d never sat at the bar, drinking vodka and grapefruit juice, watching the sun drag the dregs of daylight across the bay.

  Luke was drinking Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. I sipped my drink slowly. I wasn’t used to drinking this early in the evening and I’d had only a coffee ice-cream cone with sprinkles since breakfast.

  “I told him you were really cut up about Mitch’s death,” I said carefully, not looking at him. Luke had stormed out to the car, after telling Mr. Farrell to burn Mitch’s body. “I told him you had both been in the war and he had to make allowances.”

  Luke laughed. His laugh sounded dry, dusty. He fumbled for his cigarettes. “‘Allowances,’” he said. He held the pack out to me and I took one, even though I had my own. He lit us both from the same match. We sat, smoking, and I was surprised at how comfortable I felt, how calm. This is Luke, I thought, watching his velvet eyes staring at the boats outside the window. This is Luke.

  “He liked you,” Luke said suddenly, his eyes on the sunset outside the windows. “Mitch.”

  “I liked him, too,” I said.

  “No, man, you’re not getting my meaning,” Luke said. “I mean, he dug the shit out of you.”

  It took a minute for what he was saying to sink in. “No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Was for him,” Luke said.

  “I never—” I started. “He never—”

  “He didn’t tell you because he thought it would get weird, and he didn’t want that. ‘That little girl is my sunshine,’ that’s what he said about you.” Luke grinned. “Little girl with a big mouth.”

  Tears came to my eyes, fell down my face. Luke looked over at me, startled.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, I was kidding, man, I just—”

  “It’s not that,” I said brokenly. I thought about that last time I’d sat with Mitch, talking about Luke, the construction workers hassling him. All the times we’d hung out, he’d never said a word. Even his eyes had stayed silent. I thought about the rolled-up cuff of his pants, the wooden leg. “Five fingers of love,” he’d said, laughing.

  I wept.

  Luke didn’t say anything. He let me cry. He handed me a stack of cocktail napkins from the pile in the little box on the bar. He dropped some, and as he bent over the barstool to retrieve them, his tee shirt rode up his back and I caught a glimpse of the scar, a shiny crisscross of what looked like tiny hearts sewn together in a jagged line across his back.

  I wiped my nose carefully and stuffed the cocktail napkins in the pocket of my cutoffs. “Do I look like I was crying?” I asked Luke. He laughed. Then he took a cocktail napkin and leaned forward and brushed my right cheek. “Not anymore,” he said. He put the napkin underneath his drink.

  “What about the rest of it?” he asked. “The ceremony on the beach? The dinner? Is any of that really happening?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me,” I said, but the more I thought about it, the better an idea it seemed. I could see us, all our people, on the beach at sunset. Everyone who wanted to saying his or her piece, sharing a stoned memory, whatever. And then we could head over to The Starlight for some kind of buffet supper spread that I’d seen them put on when the Chamber of Commerce held one of their meetings there when they were tired of the VFW hall and wanted a view of the water.

  “I mean, really, man, why not?” I said to Luke. “I think Mitch would have liked it,” and hearing myself say the words, I knew it was true.

  Luke sighed. It had a heavy sound. “What?” I asked, and then it occurred to me, like a sudden hard slap on the shoulder. “Oh God, did you—was it—was it something he asked you to do for him? Like, by yourself? Is that what—”

  Luke held up his hand. “No, man. Really, no. Look, we were drunk. He was shit-faced, which apparently was pretty normal for him, right? Cat kept a bottle in his pocket, a bottle in his room, and lived on top of a bar. Total coverage every hour of the day and night.”

  I asked what had been on my mind and everyone else’s. “Luke,” I said. I stopped to savor the taste of his name in my mouth. “Did he say anything to you? Was it just drunk talk or was he planning to—to kill himself and giving you, like, last-minute instructions?”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “We were talking about body bags,” he said, in the same dry voice he’d used at The Starlight Lounge, which made him sound older than everyone else. “The indignity of body bags. Like how stupid they look, like big, shapeless pieces of shit instead of human beings. That’s what we were talking about, man. That’s what led to his historic statement. Is it what he really wanted? Is it what he would have said if he knew it was going to be last call for real? How the fuck should I know? I mean, dig it, I barely knew the cat. But since it was the only reference to his own demise anyone remembers, and since he apparently never was sober, it’s the only intel we’ve got to go on.” He looked at me with a little half smile. “That’s army talk for—”

  “I know what it means.”

  “You want another drink?” Luke asked, opening his wallet, laying a ten-dollar bill on the bar. I nodded. “Sure,” I said. I looked out the wide windows. The sun was gone but it wasn’t full dark yet. The sky was a deep blue, with splashes of orange on the horizon. I looked up at a lone star glowing so brightly in the sky that it had to be a planet, Venus or Mars, something. I shivered at the beauty of nights like this, remembering other nights as beautiful when I’d looked up at the stars and made a wish.

  I went for my own wallet, an Indian braided piece I’d gotten at Heads Up. Luke put his fingers over mine and pushed them down. “I’ve got it,” he said, as the bartender brought us our drinks. The skin on my knuckles felt electric. I could feel the brush of his fingers along my spine, light as feathers falling from a dream. This first touch. Luke.

  • • •

  Len sighed, running a hand through his silvery hair. “I miss him, yo
u know?” he said, staring out the porthole window behind the bar. “Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, the way he’d get tanked and just go on and on. He used to come in first thing when I opened, I’d be trying to count out the drawer and he always made me lose my count. But now it’s like I’m waiting for him to come through the door, start his infernal yakking.” He shook his head and moved down the bar to his other customers.

  We were passing the hat to pay for the cremation and any extras for Mitch’s ceremony. Everyone was into it, from the derelicts that lived in the rooms at The Starlight Hotel to Desi and Angie, up at Eddy’s. “We used to shoot the shit,” Desi said, handing me a twenty from the register. “He was good people.” Fiona Feeney came into the lounge one night and handed me an envelope filled with bills; the Hitters had taken up a private collection spearheaded by Jimmy Murphy, who’d liked listening to Mitch’s war stories. He himself had wanted to be a Green Beret but was kept from enlisting because of a heart murmur. When he was drunk, he would play “The Ballad of the Green Berets” over and over again on the jukebox. “His idea of a vicarious thrill,” Fiona said. “Listening to tales of blood and guts and bayonets.” The cremation was going to cost three hundred dollars. Len said he’d throw in the buffet, with a couple of pitchers of beer, maybe some sangria. “Tastes like cat piss, but it seems to be popular with the ladies,” he’d said, winking at me.

  “That’ll work,” Luke said. “That’s great, man, really. Thanks.”

  “Really, Len,” I said, and meant it. He was doing everyone a solid.

  The ceremony was going to be on the Friday night of the weekend before Labor Day weekend, on Comanche Beach. I had run into Luke on my way up to Eddy’s for an egg cream and he’d asked me to come with him to talk to Len about the party afterward. It was the third or fourth time in my life, being in a bar during daylight. I felt daring and decadent, even if I was only drinking ginger ale. We were sitting in the corner by the jukebox. Otis Redding was singing “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” It made me think that summer was all but over; you could smell it in the lift to the wind at night. You’d wake up at five in the morning, looking for blankets, when for months you’d slept with only your sheets for shelter.

  “Here’s something, though,” Len said, making his way back down the bar to us. “The wife called, what’s her name, Rosemary. She wanted to know what was happening with the, you know, if there was going to be a funeral or some such.”

  “Fuck her,” Luke said serenely. I loved the way he said things like that, as though he was just making conversation. “I mean, pardon my French, but what’s it to her?”

  “Well, technically, they’re still married,” Len said. “She’s entitled to his benefits. Maybe the thought of his disability check softened her up, made her more sentimental.”

  “Does she want a funeral now?” I asked. “Does she want to take him back to—”

  “I told her about the, you know, the cremation,” Len said. “Reminded her of our previous conversation, in which she wanted no part of it. Asked her, did she have other plans before we went ahead with the actual, you know, the cremating. She said she was just looking for some kind of closure.”

  “Closure,” Luke said, snorting a laugh. “We should have sent her his wooden leg.”

  “What about Mitch’s leg, man?” I asked suddenly. It bothered me, now that I thought of it, what would happen to his leg. “Did they—did they take it with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said, sounding as surprised as I felt. “Shit. Len, did you—”

  “I didn’t notice at the time,” Len said. “And what does it matter now? It would be a kind of creepy souvenir.”

  “I guess,” I said, after a minute. I had the insane thought that Mitch might miss his leg, and then I thought about the wood burning and I shook my head because the sun was high in the sky and such thoughts seemed out of place.

  “Though I was wondering,” Len said hesitantly. He reached underneath the bar for something and came back up with Mitch’s cane. I stared at the silver dragon’s head and my eyes flooded with tears. I took a deep breath and blinked them back. It wasn’t the time, I told myself. This wasn’t the time.

  “You think he would have minded—” Len looked at both of us. “I don’t know who to ask,” he said apologetically. “Maybe the wife, I don’t know. But I was thinking, maybe I could give this to my brother-in-law? The one that’s a vet as well? He’s had some trouble walking, and I was thinking—” He broke off, staring down at the cane. He ran his hand over the wood. “Maybe I should ask the wife, you think?”

  “No way, man,” Luke said firmly. “I mean, who was closer to him at this point, right?” He turned to me. “What do you think?”

  I loved that Luke had asked me. I no longer felt like crying. “You take it, Len,” I said, just as firmly. “He would have liked to know it was going to another soldier, don’t you think?”

  “You think his wife is really coming in all the way from Frisco?” Luke asked skeptically.

  “Fresno,” Len said, putting the cane back beneath the bar. “And I got to tell you, the way it sounded, she just might show up. Asked me what time things would start happening, how far we are from Kennedy Airport.”

  “You talking about that one-legged nut job? One was in here mouthing off a couple weeks ago?” We all swung our eyes to the voice. It was familiar to me. I saw it belonged to the fat construction worker who had been in the lounge that day with me and Mitch.

  “Shove it, Jimmy,” Len said quietly. I watched his shoulders flex. “Guy passed away last week, so lay off.”

  “Yeah? What from?” another voice asked. They were clustered at the far end of the bar, by the door that led to the piazza.

  “Choked on his own bullshit,” Fat Jimmy said, chortling fatly, meanly. Nobody else laughed.

  “You know them?” Luke asked me in a low voice.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I whispered.

  “I said, lay off, Jimmy,” Len said sharply.

  “Hey, hey, rest in peace, all right?” Fat Jimmy said. “But you got to admit, the guy was a—”

  “He was an American,” I said loudly. “An American who fought for his country. And now he’s dead and we’re planning his funeral, so please, man, show some respect, okay?”

  It was quiet again. Jay and the Americans were singing “This Magic Moment.”

  Luke put his empty bottle of Bud down on the bar. He paid for his beer and my ginger ale. “Let’s cop the breeze,” he said. On our way out, the younger construction worker who had sung along to “Fly Me to the Moon” that day when Mitch was still alive stepped out in front of us.

  “You gonna wake him or what?” he asked quietly.

  I explained about the ashes, the party afterward. “He had a lot of friends,” I said, making sure Fat Jimmy could hear. “A lot of people who loved him.” Luke and I walked out to the patio, where we paused to light cigarettes before heading to the beach. He cupped the match so that when we bent over together for the light, our foreheads touched. We heard someone call, “Hey!” The match went out. The young construction worker walked toward us, quickly, and when he reached us, he handed Luke a small wad of rolled-up bills. “For the, you know, whatever,” he said. Close up, he looked older. In the sunlight you could see the wrinkles around his eyes.

  “Thanks, man,” Luke said. “But I do believe we’re covered.” He didn’t want to take the money. He tried handing it back, but the construction worker pushed it hard into Luke’s hands. He looked from me to Luke and back to me again. His eyes were sorry. “Must be something,” he said. “Buy a round, after. Maybe some bagpipes, right? Something.”

  • • •

  The day of the ceremony, a soft, light rain was falling. There was a strip of gold light lining the horizon, which meant the rain might stop, and it did. The afternoon fog rolled out to sea and the air was dry and
smelled like clean clothes and seaweed. All our people were there and some others. Len had closed the bar for the occasion and Desi and Angie came down from Eddy’s. There were some regulars from the lounge at The Starlight Hotel who Mitch would drink with during the day, men and women with bad teeth and putty-like complexions who may have been meant for better things but never moved far enough off their barstools to find them. And Mitch’s wife had shown up after all, had taken a cab from Kennedy Airport and was staying in Mitch’s old room until Sunday. She stood now at the edge of the half circle that had formed close to the shore, near the jetties, a faded-looking girl who used to be beautiful and whose eyes told you that she knew it and missed her beauty. She wore a long granny dress and a fringed shawl with delicate flowered patterns across the back. She was barefoot and so were most of the rest of us, though the sand was damp and cold. Our flip-flops lined the seawall at the Comanche Beach entrance, a delicate barrier proclaiming the privacy of the occasion.

  “So. You and Luke, man,” Liz whispered, as we shared a cigarette before.

  “There is no me and Luke,” I said, though there had been other remarks over the past few days, raised eyebrows, knowing glances.

  “Oh, please,” Liz said, rolling her eyes. “You think we’re all blind? You think we never noticed the way you act whenever his name comes up? I’m just happy you finally got up off your ass and did something about it.”