I sat at his side, shaking, not sure if I should touch him. But then he turned his head. “My Gen.” He smiled weakly. “My Gen,” he repeated.
“Daddy,” I whimpered. “Chad said the ambulance will be here any minute.” I heard the sirens as the words left my mouth.
“Granny and Mom… Honey…we all love you.” He closed his eyes, and I begged God for them to open again. “I have to go, honey. You know how your mom doesn’t like it when I make her wait…” His eyes opened once more. “Love you so much, my Gen,” he said, softer than before. “My Gen,” he whispered.
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
It wasn’t until much later, when Chad carried me away, I saw that they’d laid my mother’s body next to my dad. He’d died holding my hand…and hers.
****
I sat in the waiting room of Marin County Hospital. From what they could tell, Adam Finnegan either had a heart attack or a stroke. They couldn’t be sure until the autopsy was carried out. I only half heard what people were telling me, which wasn’t much. I wasn’t family.
Ahren’s cousin, Clark, arrived a few hours after I did. Rocky, always my Rock, sat across from us while he explained what was happening. He said things like, “Touch and go there for a while…” and “induced coma.” Finally, a man in scrubs came in and led Clark and me down a hall. Ahren wasn’t Ahren. He had tubes and machines all around him. His swollen face and head were bandaged. His arm was in some kind of cast thing. And he was unconscious.
Rocky tried to get me to talk, just like Ahren would. He’d made a habit of forcing me to express myself since my family’s funeral. It would have been easy to live in our happy bubble, to just be thankful that he was alive and I was, I definitely was. But something, that thing that had been sitting there inside me in wait to wreak havoc on my happiness… shifted.
They let me stay. I don’t know who called who for permission, but I was allowed to stay for four days. I didn’t shower or change my clothes. I drank coffee and caught naps on a two-seater couch someone had found for me. Sleep was hard to come by. Between the machines doing their thing and the nurses doing theirs, I never had more than a half hour at a time.
Day five.
He woke up.
Day six.
He turned his head and reached for my hand.
Day seven.
“Love you, Gen.”
Three weeks later, he was strong enough to attend his dad’s funeral. Adam Finnegan had bought a double plot for himself and his wife when he worked as a groundskeeper at Evergreen Memorial Park. It was a beautiful place, right on the edge of Mt. Tamalpais, overlooking Marin County on one side and San Francisco Bay on the other. I stood by Ahren the entire time, saying very little, just making sure he was eating, sleeping…breathing.
One month later, exactly four weeks since I’d first sat in his hospital room, Ahren curled me into his side. We were in my bedroom at Eden Hills. His aunts and uncles cleaned his parents’ house and prepared it for sale. Things were labeled, put into boxes, and moved into storage. Ahren said, when he was ready, he’d go through everything, but he’d never step into his childhood home again. I understood that, even though I thought it would help him say goodbye.
“You know,” he began. “I know you like photography…” I did like it, but I’d only ever taken pictures of houses. “There’s a permanent exhibit, down in The City at the photography museum…and they have all these post-mortem pictures. Turn of the century, I think, something like that. Pictures of kids with their dead baby brother. We should go.”
I moved from his embrace and looked down at him. “I’ve always wanted one of those pictures! They’re called Memento Mori”
He smiled. For the first time in four weeks, he smiled. “Glad I’m here, Gen.” After a long silence, he took a shuddering breath and told me, “You were the last thing I thought about.”
I could have said a million things, but they would’ve all been inadequate.
His head was on the pillow, his left arm still in a sling. I sat to his right and lifted my hands to his cheeks. I don’t know how long I did it, but all I could do was stare and study his handsome face. For three months, I’d battled wildly different emotions. Every day was a tug-of-war between grief and giddy. Grief was like the little devil on my shoulder, taunting me to give in and wallow. Giddy was shouting at grief, calling him an asshole while giving him the finger. Three months, I’d renewed and rekindled a flame that burned brightly for the man who was lying in my bed. I squeezed my eyes closed at the vision of him swollen and bruised. I knew what he was saying to me. I knew what I’d become to him. I’d become what he’d always been to me.
I kissed him softly, not wanting to hurt him. He still winced and moaned in his sleep every night, and every night since his accident, I would lie awake. I’d hear my heartbeat against my pillow, his slow and steady breaths much like my own. I’d stare at the shadows on the ceiling and become aware of every inch of my body. I wouldn’t blink and I wouldn’t breathe. I’d lie there and wonder, is this what will happen when I die? The last thing I’ll see will be the shadows of redwoods near my bedroom window? My mouth will fill with saliva. My eyes will burn because I can no longer blink? These dark thoughts began to eat away at me each night.
But one thought was relentless. What would happen if Ahren had died, too?
When I pulled away and looked at him again, something in me changed. There was a gradual shift that began when I lost my family, the intense, emotional pain that stole my ability to breathe, to think…to feel anything at all. It was too much, and because of those dark thoughts that visited me at night, I knew I could no longer be a comfort to him. Any feelings I had for anything or anyone, even Ahren, had been replaced by ambivalence. I thought I was handling things, able to cope so much better because the man I’d loved for so long was at my side. I had six books on grieving and dealing with loss, and I followed all their advice. But now, all these months later, I suddenly felt…
Nothing.
A month later, I asked him to leave.
And he did.
Ten Years Later
Ahren
Ahren flicked his cigarette off the cliff looking out onto the Pacific. “Fucking fog,” he quipped as he heard footsteps come up from behind. He looked over the headstones of his parents and made a decision. It was time. He loved Genevieve, and time hadn’t changed that. No matter whom he fucked, whom he even dated, he never forgot her. There would never be room in his heart for another woman, because Gen filled it completely. They’d both been broken by grief, essentially useless to each other; they just didn’t realize it at the time. She was healing from her loss, and through it, they were starting a relationship, getting reacquainted. Then his accident changed all of that. He knew she was shutting down, he watched it happen, but he’d also just lost his dad. He wanted to be strong enough for them both and fight to save what they were building, he just didn’t know how.
“Mr. Finnegan?” one of the cemetery staff called behind him. “Your taxi’s here.” He always used the same guy, a former trucker named Jimmy.
“Thanks,” he said to the man’s back as he walked away. “Bye, guys. Thanks for the talk.” He laid his hands on the flat, marble surface and closed his eyes. “I’m done with this shit. I’m gonna get her back. It’d be great if you could talk to your people about making sure death doesn’t come knocking when I do. I’m thinking we should be in our nineties, at least.” He smiled, even though tears fell from his eyes onto the smooth surface below him. “Love you.”
Ahren made his way to the waiting taxi. Jimmy “Hazz” Hazzard had a permanent booking with Ahren the third Saturday of each month. He went to the cemetery and stayed for an hour, sometimes longer and once, he stayed overnight. He’d arrived with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and pale pink roses for his mother in the other. The following day, woken by the sound of sprinklers, he stumbled back to the waiting cab. Jimmy had been there all night and that was when Ahren knew, Jimmy was a
friend. He told Ahren that when he was driving a truck, he’d seen abductions, murders and suicides. Driving a cab, the worst he saw were broken hearts and drunks.
Jimmy asked, “Where to?” taking him out of his memory of that drunken day.
“Home,” was all he had to say. Jimmy knew “home” was not the house where Ahren lived. He turned out from the cemetery and headed to the little riverside town of Greer’s Rest.
I sat across from the pissed-off looking females who had hired me for a combo package. I always met clients somewhere that had decent coffee and a good dessert menu. If neither of those were available, I told them to meet me at a Denny’s. A waffle would work in a pinch if I couldn’t get decent cake. Or pie.
“So,” I said with a pen in my hand as I went over everything they’d filled out. “You want The Banshee and the Dancing on your Grave, Motherfucker.”
The four women exchanged glances. The two youngest were sisters, Emma and Anna, and they were openly hostile toward one another. But the voice of reason, their mother, seemed to calm them down with one word. “Ladies…” She glared and disarmed them instantly.
“Fine!” The youngest crossed her arms like a spoiled child and huffed. “Just to say, I would like to hire a hitman instead. We’re like, ten miles from a state penitentiary. I’m sure we can just go on visiting day and ask around.”
“Anna!” the older women scolded.
“Are you stupid or something?” her sister asked. “Everyone knows, you want a hit, craigslist is the way to go.”
The other older woman turned to her own sister and stated, “This is how you raised my nieces?”
“Becky,” she said in a warning tone to her sibling.
“Rachel,” she mocked in the same tone.
Emma addressed her mom and aunt in a quiet voice. “It wasn’t right. What Cathy did. And Dad didn’t know because we never told him. We love Dad, but she…”
Some clients were straight forward cases, and I didn’t have to ask them to elaborate. But with some, I felt it would be in my best interest to get all the dirty history before I found myself being followed for two weeks by someone I assumed was a private detective.
“Here,” I said, sliding my waffle topped with strawberry compote and whipped cream in front of Emma. “Trust me, the only thing better than a good waffle is a good piece of cake. Followed, of course, by pie.”
“Thanks,” she said softly.
“No problem.” I smiled. “Okay, so the funeral is on Wednesday at two. Just so we’re clear. Humiliation and embarrassment, but not until his mother leaves. Correct?”
“I can’t believe Grandma outlived Dad. She’s like, a million years old,” Anna said with a giggle.
“I know, right?” chimed her sister.
Their mother closed her eyes, praying for patience.
“Sign here…and here…and here.” I waited as the woman penned her signature, then I closed the folder and slid it into my messenger bag.
“Dude, you look nothing like those pictures on your website.” This was Emma, eyeing me from head to toe.
“Amazing what the right accessories can do,” I commented. “See you ladies on Wednesday.”
I waved just outside the window as I walked back to my car. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining at the Denny’s in Vallejo. I didn’t make it up to Napa nearly enough. It reminded me how much I liked to consume wine.
On that thought, I let the sun kiss my pale skin for three-point-five seconds before I took cover inside my car. Then I drove straight to my favorite Italian restaurant where I ordered ravioli, garlic bread sticks, a side salad, Mrs. Santucci’s vanilla bean panna cotta, and three bottles of Merlot. I told her I was having friends over later.
I lied.
First order of business when I came home was to go upstairs and have a bath. I could hear birds chirp, chirp, chirping away with their little happy song outside my bathroom window and wondered where I might be able to buy a BB gun. I didn’t want to kill them, just scare them a little.
I took a sip from my wine glass – I owned just the one – and tried to find comfort in the sounds of the afternoon, but I couldn’t.
“Fuck it.” I was glad I’d only had the one glass. The plan had been to have the first bottle as an appetizer, the second for my main, then the panna cotta, and hopefully, I’d be happily sloshed by the third. I wasn’t an alcoholic. I didn’t drink every day, or even every week. But today was a special day, and on this day in particular, I found it more tolerable when I was intoxicated.
Ten years ago, bad things happened in my life. I’d ended a long term relationship with a nice guy that I didn’t love. Then, my mom, dad, and grandmother died in a car accident on their way to meet me for dinner. At their funeral, my childhood crush, though he was so much more than that, showed up. He helped me through those first few painful months after their deaths, only to get into a serious car accident himself, which left his own father dead and him fighting for his life. A few weeks after that, I shut down completely and made him leave. I was utterly and completely broken.
Now, years later, I knew why I’d reacted the way I did. For me, it was better I lost him then than to constantly worry about the heartache I’d endure if or when he left me for good. At least this way, I might hear of his passing from a local and be able to cope. But I knew myself, and I knew the intensity with which I loved that man. It wasn’t just that I’d loved him since I was a girl; being with him felt as natural as breathing and because of that, I knew that I would never, ever recover from that loss.
Today was the anniversary of my parents’ and grandmother’s deaths. I’d already left a bottle of top-shelf Irish whiskey on their graves with three glasses filled to the brim. I hoped that, one day, I’d go out there and find those glasses and the bottle empty…that they had finally decided to come back and haunt the cemetery next to my house and help themselves to a drink.
When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me stories about the sneaky leprechauns as Saint Patrick’s Day approached. Our ancestry was Irish, and my dad carried on the tradition his parents had done when he was a kid. I woke on the morning of “pinching day” as I called it, and everything in the house had turned green. The “leprechauns” made the milk green, the eggs Mom cooked were green, even the water in the toilets had turned green.
When I was old enough to understand that Mom and Dad were behind it, I also realized that my suspicions that the Easter Bunny and Santa were all a big fat lie were true. Still, I didn’t let on for another few years, and now, ten years after their deaths, I just wanted, one time, to come out the next morning and find the glasses empty.
I got dressed in tight jeans, black belt with a silver buckle, my black, sixteen-hole, red patent Doc’s, and my beloved Two-Tone black tee. I threw a red cardi over the ensemble and drove to Richmond.
****
In my valiant efforts to stay single for the rest of my life, I gave myself two rules: never date anyone in town and never give out my number. I had a Shake N Bake the next day at noon, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t meet up with my bestie for Skankin’ Sundays at the Deep Fried Dance Hall. The old movie theater-come-nightclub was not a restaurant, nor did it serve food, fried or otherwise.
I’d heard the four guys who owned it used to have a ska band together. They were famous for a song that had received a lot of local radio play with a particular line that went something like, “And after that after-noona, my dick smelled like deep fried tuna.” When the guys decided to invest their earnings into the run down theatre, it was named after an ex-girlfriend of one of the members who apparently had “stinky snatch,” according to one of the bartenders. I was sure glad I wasn’t her. Aside from their vindictive name, the club played the best music, and Sunday night was Ska Night.
Rocky was my single friend. A double meaning in that she was single and pretty much my only friend. I became an island unto myself after Ahren left. I did not return calls. I did not accept visitors. I didn’t even answer
the door. Guava and Rocky took turns bringing me whatever I was low on, until almost a year later, Rocky announced we were going out.
She came prepared with wine, which, out of all alcoholic beverages, made me quickly compliant. She brought her Doc’s—the red patent ones—which she gifted me and said never quite fit her right. Guava did my hair for the night in big barrel roll bangs and a nice wavy ponytail. I’d lost a lot of weight, and, by a lot, I mean, I could count my ribs. My stomach never looked better than it did when I was barely a hundred and ten pounds. However, I was now a sturdy one-forty-three.
The three was very important.
Rocky brought me overalls and searched my closet for my Two-Tone shirt, a twenty-first birthday gift. I wore a pair of lacy, black briefs, because I knew they wouldn’t ride up my ass when I danced. When we arrived that night, the place was absolutely packed. Rocky and I pushed our way inside to discover a few local bands were playing. The opening act began to play the minute we stepped inside, and it was wall-to-wall punkers everywhere. I was more worried about the guy behind me with the spikey bracelet impaling me than navigating the pumped-up crowd. But thirty minutes into the set, a fight broke out, and Rock and I were pushed into the circling mosh pit.
I wasn’t a stranger to a mosh pit, per se. I knew what it was. I’d seen it from a distance at shows. I’d just never been an active participant of one…until that night. The only way out was to be lifted and crowd-surf our way to the front where security would usher us to the safety of the sides, out of hot tempers and harm’s way.
Rocky went first, laughing and shouting, “Fuck yeah!” The guy in front of me gave me a lift up, but not before he and what seemed like at least four, maybe five other digits found their way into my lacy briefs on my journey over the pit.
When I’d landed, I asked Rocky, “Dude, did you get fingered on the way out of there?”
The Morbid and Sultry Tales of Genevieve Clare Page 4