The Sweetheart Deal

by Polly Dugan

  “They look terrific,” said Erin. “Both of them.”

  “Thank you.” I hugged her and whispered into her hair. “Thank you so much.”

  She clutched me back. “Of course. We’re going to go grab a snack—do you want anything?”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to buy them each a tie and I’ll meet you outside.”

  There was a customer in front of me so I had to wait. After she finished, I piled everything on the counter and the cashier folded it all and filled the shopping bag. She was very kind, but more reserved than I was used to the Nordstrom staff being, always so predictably outgoing, with their How’s your day going? and high level of genuine professional interest in you for however long you spent with them. I was waiting for her gentle inquiry: Special occasion? But she only said how handsome the boys looked in the suits and what nice sons I had. I was prepared for her to be more solicitous, and I was glad that for whatever reason she wasn’t.

  “Thank you for your help,” I said when we were finished.

  She came around to my side of the counter and handed me the bag. “You’re so very welcome,” she said. “Please, take good care.”

  Erin and the boys were waiting on the corner across the street, outside Starbucks, and the four of us walked in the direction both of us had parked.

  “Did that tall woman working help you guys at all?” I said. “At Nordstrom. Or did someone else?”

  “No, she did,” Erin said. “She was great. That’s why we were practically done when you got there.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” I said. “I was just curious. She didn’t have that usual bubbly chatter they always have, you know? I didn’t want for you to have had any trouble. It was such a huge help.”

  “No, no.” Erin shook her head. “Here. Let me take that.” As soon as she took the Nordstrom bag from me, she clutched my empty right hand in her left. “Sweetie, she was wonderful. I told her why we were there and asked her to not say anything to you. But she told me how very sorry she was. She’d seen the paper.”

  After the funeral, I had my suit cleaned and I donated it to Dress for Success, hoping it would be just the thing for a woman on the cusp of taking her life in a new direction. I thought of a single mom. Maybe she would be only twenty-two or twenty-three. Maybe she’d recently finished school or a class where she’d developed new skills she was proud of. Maybe she’d gotten an interview she was really excited about, for a job she hoped to get. Like Leo’s suit, I wore mine for only one occasion, despite the expense. I couldn’t bear to hang it in my closet, where it would wait futilely to be worn on a happier day for an occasion that would never come. I knew when I bought it that I wouldn’t wear it again. But the suit could mean all the difference for this woman I imagined. She’d be so excited about finding it, she’d call a friend. Maybe the suit would be part of what got her the job she wanted. And whomever it ended up with, I hoped at the very least the woman would feel lucky. She’d have no idea of the sadness it was part of before it came to her.

  Brian

  I didn’t know about Christopher and Andrew, but I was glad Garrett was here. Our grandparents and Aunt Maureen and Uncle Gabe had been here for a few days already, and everyone was a wreck but trying not to be for us kids—it was obvious. As soon as he got here, it seemed like Garrett decided his job was to try to keep everyone from going completely crazy and off the rails, I could tell, even though no one asked him to. Even though he was a wreck too, he’d known my dad’s family forever so he knew how to deal with them the way no one else could have, even though I’m sure he was doing something he never wanted to have to do.

  Both sets of grandparents had come out to visit us right after Christmas like they did every year. They always came in the summer, and then again right after Christmas, so it was messed up to see them not even two months after the last time we did, when we had exchanged presents and both grandfathers had worn Santa hats. I sat with the adults sometimes and listened when they talked about my dad, crying, trying not to cry, my grandmothers hugging each other, laughing about him and how he was, then crying again. It seemed like everyone was always drinking, and Granddad Marty and Grandpa Glenn were usually quiet, and drinking made them both quieter or cry more often, depending on the day. We ate the food that people brought and it was mostly good even if it was weird eating a dinner every night that someone we didn’t know had made for us.

  My best friend, Michael, and sometimes his younger sister, came over with his mom, pretty much every day, and I was always glad even though he seemed as sad as I was and all we did was watch TV with Andrew. Joe Assante came over a few times and he and Chris would leave the house for a while, even though it seemed like nobody else left the house that week, and sometimes Chris looked better after they came back and sometimes he looked worse, although every day he pretty much looked ruined, like he never slept at all.

  Because of Michael and Joe, I felt bad for Andrew that he didn’t have a friend come over like we did. Andrew had a lot of friends he liked the same, not just one super good one. So if he was around when Michael and I were watching TV, I’d ask Andrew to pick the show he wanted, and that’s the one we’d watch.

  Garrett

  The night before the funeral, Matt MacKay opened Leo’s casket for the only people who would see him for the last time: Audrey, the boys, Leo’s parents and sister, Audrey’s parents and brother, Kevin Gallagher, my father, and me.

  When I saw the suit again, I floundered for composure following the shock I hadn’t anticipated. You can still make the suit. While helping Audrey buy it was something I couldn’t forget, in the days since, I must have suspended the memory the way people do during such times. My only thought was that Leo’s body dominated the clothes with far more authority than I had, and I had to remind myself they were the same ones. The suit did look good—it fucking better have—and although I couldn’t say Leo looked good, I had expected him to look far worse. The work the funeral home had done to restore him as completely as possible was evident. And yet despite all the mortician’s care and cosmetic mastery, it was only the final rendition of Leo—not him at all anymore—and I could look at it for only so long.

  It was my father who made me think of doing it. After my mother’s viewing, with Kate and me beside him, my father had taken off his wedding band and slid it onto my mother’s left ring finger—Kate had inherited our mother’s rings—and with that gesture he transitioned to no longer being married, by surrendering the symbol that he had been for forty-one years to accompany his dead beloved into the ground.

  So before we’d left the house, I had taken the signed promise out of my rolled socks and tucked it in the inside pocket of my jacket, and if I’d had the discreet opportunity—which I didn’t, as we were all there together the whole time sharing our last looks—I would have put the note in Leo’s jacket pocket, returning it, to rid myself of the physical thing in the hope that doing so would enable me to forget about it. But since I didn’t have the chance to accomplish something so furtive, all I could do was periodically finger it throughout the night, making sure it was still there. And because I never had a chance to do what I’d wanted to, which would have involved at least a minimum of physical contact, I didn’t know how to otherwise touch Leo for the last time, or where, so I didn’t touch him at all, not even to graze his hand with mine, and after the chance to do something had passed, I berated myself for the inability to muster what his family had. The boys had each touched their father one last time, and Audrey, shaking from inaudible sobs, had leaned into the casket and pressed her cheek against Leo’s. For the rest of the night I had no one to share my insignificant private shortcoming with and no way to lessen its hold.

  The honor guard who’d been assigned stood vigil for the calling hours, which had been scheduled for two but almost exceeded four, the line of people waiting spilling out the front door and curling around the block, appearing to never shorten. In lieu of an open casket, all there was to see of Leo were the thr
ee framed photographs on display: a group photo of the Station Twenty-Five men, one of him and Audrey and the boys that wasn’t recent, and Leo’s professional department portrait.

  The next morning dawned with clouds, and their smudge clung, blocking the sun even as the hours of the day pressed on. We were all up early, taking the quiet, heavy steps to prepare for mass at eleven. Leo and Audrey’s parents, Maureen and Gabe, and my father all arrived, dressed and ready, sitting or standing until they were given a job to do. When I handed them a list and directions, Marty, Glenn, and my father drove to New Seasons for bagels and came back with too much food—pastries, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and the bagels that no one touched. Libby and Claudia tied their grandsons’ ties, and made the boys sit with them. The boys were subdued and exercised restraint with each other, and let their grandmothers fawn over them. Everyone distracted one another with whatever means available.

  I hadn’t shaved since I’d arrived, and my hands shook that morning as I did for the first time. I can’t do this. I just won’t shave. Fuck, I have to shave. I tried to slow down and take my time but gave myself three bleeders anyway.

  We got to the church at ten. Kevin and Alyssa Gallagher and their three girls met us there, and starting at ten-fifteen, the firefighters arrived—the other seven pallbearers among them—and occupied the pews at the back with respect and quiet valor, waiting to be invited closer to the front, the off-duties all in Class A, a hat in every lap, the on-shifts, ready for a call should one come, badge shrouds to a man. Leo’s captain, Dave Bradley, and his wife, Violet, came early too, and after talking with Audrey, showed the same deference, waiting to be told what to do.

  In the half hour before mass, the clouds that had threatened rain surrendered to bleak sun that never brightened but maintained its weak, consistent light for the rest of the day, and by eleven o’clock, when the procession started, the church looked filled to capacity. Kevin read the first reading, from The Book of Wisdom, and the first words, The just, though they die early, shall be at rest, waylaid my attempts to control my emotions, so I was already weeping when I began the second reading, the Twenty-Third Psalm, which I managed to get through, my grief and perseverance each warring to get the upper hand the whole time I read.

  After the committal, at the reception at the Pittock Mansion, I stood or sat with my father when I wasn’t with Audrey, and when I wasn’t, her parents, Leo’s parents, or Alyssa and Kevin Gallagher were. Erin and I made sure the boys ate something, and when it was time to leave two hours later, she didn’t know where any of them were. I finally found the three of them out on the grounds of the mansion sitting on one of the benches that looked east out over the city and toward the mountains. There was nothing good about the day, but I was grateful that while the boys sat, because of the overcast, they didn’t have to see the mountain where their father had died.

  Although the parking lot was at capacity and the guests who’d arrived late had a long walk back to their cars, when the reception was over, everyone behind the wheel seemed patient and kind, making generous spaces to wave in other drivers, no one bullying anyone else to be the first to get home. Before we got to Burnside, Audrey asked the limo driver to wait, so we did, until behind the very last car, the men from Station Twenty-Five drove their truck, followed by the engine, down the hill.

  Audrey

  I thought the calling hours would never end, and that we might stand there all night until the last, patient mourners, after waiting so long, were able to share their condolences just in time for us to leave and go directly to the funeral. There were so many people, strangers I’d never seen before among the hundreds of faces I recognized—police officers, paramedics, firefighters and their families, and families from the school, the church, the street and neighborhood, the boys’ preschool, the sports teams—they all waited for as long as it took for their own turn to talk to us.

  I didn’t think I’d sleep the night before the funeral, but the few hours I did took the edge off enough that I didn’t feel so raw and like I couldn’t cope—but barely. I didn’t know how I could have gotten through it without Erin. I couldn’t have. That morning she asked me if I wanted a Xanax—she was a terrible flier—and I’d told her no, and sobbed in the bathroom alone despite the whiskey I nursed while I showered and dressed and dried my hair. There wasn’t anything that could dull my sorrow, or enough of anything to blunt the ordeal of burying my husband.

  Erin wouldn’t let me do a thing that day, acting as the hostess in her own house refusing offers from helpful guests. She scrambled eggs while the coffee brewed, one pot after the other, as the mugs were drained and refilled. She cooked and fed everyone who would eat. Her son, Michael, had been Brian’s best friend since kindergarten, bringing us together in the process, and over those eight years she had earned the right to take over and to take care of me. Since Leo died, she had been there at least once a day, bringing Michael with her, and sometimes her nine-year-old daughter, Rory, taking charge after people started to drop off meals. She had marked all the containers’ lids with the dates and stacked them in the basement chest freezer, with the oldest ones on top. There were too many flowers to manage—they overwhelmed me—and after covering every possible surface in the living and dining rooms, Erin ferried the ones that came later to the addition, a room I avoided. She put the arrangements on boards laid over the floor joists around the room’s stark, skeletal perimeter; then when they passed their prime, as soon as they started dropping leaves, she got them out of the house and into the compost bin.

  After we had all gotten through the morning and it was time to leave for the church, everyone filed out of the house and piled into the limos the funeral home had sent along with the hearse, but Andrew wasn’t with them. I found him in bed, fully clothed, his shoes still on, bunkered in his comforter, which I peeled away as I coaxed him out as best I could. “Andrew, I would give almost anything right now to crawl in there with you,” I said. “But I can’t do this without you. Please, sweetie, you have to come.”

  With so much grace and kindness it humbled me, Kevin Gallagher had helped Father John and me plan the funeral. Kevin presented the decisions and desires the department offered on its behalf, provided they were acceptable to me. Together we chose the most reverent and ceremonial options. The men had put up the bunting at the station. The protocols reminded me of the rigorous rules for coronating European royalty: they seemed as relevant to my life, and to Leo’s life, and who Leo had been, as a monarch’s taking the throne in another country.

  “It’s everything we wanted to do for him,” Kevin said. “I know it’s a lot of pomp and splendor. Thank you for being okay with it. He deserves the best we have to give him.”

  And without spending more time than I could bear, I picked the plot for both of us in the cemetery Matt MacKay had helped me select. Years or hours from this time—I didn’t know which to hope for—I would be in my own casket next to Leo. I ordered a dark granite headstone with a Celtic cross atop a base, under which Leo’s name, birth and death dates, and five words would be engraved:

  Son

  Brother

  Husband

  Father

  Friend

  By eleven o’clock, when the procession started, the church was as full as on Christmas and Easter—even the balcony was packed. Kevin read the first reading, from The Book of Wisdom, and I sobbed, tucked in to myself, from the first words, The just, though they die early, shall be at rest, my parents and the boys close to me on either side. Garrett read the Twenty-Third Psalm, his voice breaking up as soon as he started. In the church and school parking lots, the fire department’s trucks were queued side by side. The engine and truck from Station Twenty-Five, Leo’s house, were parked in front of the others.

  Leo’s death was a loss not just for our family but also for the community he’d served, and the procession to the cemetery—where his captain, Dave Bradley, spoke at the graveside—clogged traffic. As the hearse, and fire engines and trucks, a
nd cars with headlights on all passed the perpendicular streets, drivers whose routes had been disrupted stood outside their cars and saluted, or placed their hand over their heart, and remained that way until the motorcade passed and they could resume driving. Of everything that day, I didn’t know if seeing those respectful strangers had been the most harrowing, or if it had been the eight pallbearers—strong but compromised men, Garrett the only civilian among them—who carried Leo between them with both the tenderness of holding a newborn and the determination of moving a mountain, all while the bagpipes played.

  Dave and Violet Bradley, who had no children of their own, had insisted on having the reception following the committal at the Pittock Mansion. Because they were longtime donors—part of the elite Pittock Patron membership specifically—not only would they not take no for an answer, but because of how much money they had donated to the estate and since she was a distant Pittock descendant, Violet appealed to both the Pittock Mansion Society and to Portland Parks and Recreation and got them to close the mansion to the public that afternoon—an unprecedented allowance. Violet orchestrated all the catering, and while capacity had been daunting at the church, it was another in the Pittock’s oval social hall. I thought the fire code was clearly breached, but no one seemed to give it a second thought on account of the organization that would have issued the violation being the one committing the infraction.

  The winding road from Burnside up Barnes to Pittock was wide enough for one truck not passing another vehicle coming down from the top until it reached the fire road. So only the engine and truck from Station Twenty-Five drove up, and the other on-duties headed back to their stations. Once the upper lot was full, the overflow of cars was sent to the lower areas until they were full too, and some people had to walk up almost all the way from Burnside, from the closest spots they could find. The bar was ample, and the on-shifts who were still dressed at the ready nursed their tonic waters and club sodas, and the off-duties remained stoic, even as they got sloppy.