They had assessed each other, grinned, shaken hands and begun a friendship.
When Christopher unlocked the apartment door and turned on the light, all was in order, as usual. To his right the kitchen was neat. Straight ahead, the living room was, too. It was decorated—actually decorated—in off-white and cocoa brown. They had agreed when moving in that there was no reason two bachelors had to sit on beer kegs and prop their feet on wooden reels that had formerly held telephone cables. So the place had taken on a personality—with a great big cream-colored sofa and oversized pillows, a pair of overstuffed club chairs, a snazzy brown leather chair with matching ottoman, a monstrous entertainment center that covered one whole wall and a few odds and ends to make the place homey: a fig tree beside the sliding glass doors (donated by Greg’s mother, along with a few smaller green plants), a couple of framed posters on the wall, some brass lamps, Danish teakwood tables and on one wall their collection of bill caps. They both liked bill caps and had decided right away to put up a couple of expandable crisscross racks and hang them up where they were easy to grab.
Christopher had remembered right—the red Minnesota Twins cap was gone from the rack. He wondered where it was now and what it looked like. Greg’s favorite green one was still there though, the one his grandpa Reston had given him for his last birthday. It said PEBBLE BEACH on it and Greg had always claimed it was shaped the way a bill cap ought to be shaped. Chris shuffled slowly to the rack, took down the green cap and held it a long time. He went to the leather chair and sat down with the sluggish, labored movements of an old man, and put the tinfoil packet on the ottoman and the Pebble Beach cap on his head. He closed his eyes, tipped back against the chair and let memories of Greg flutter over him like film across a screen: playing ball in the summer police league, waterskiing, eating hot dogs—the man had been crazy about hot dogs—riding in his black-and-white cruiser, sitting in the patrol room with his feet up on a table bullshitting with the guys, working around the apartment, turning up the radio when a song came on that he liked, especially anything by Vince Gill.
Memories, memories . . . hell, but they hurt.
In time Christopher rose, put the lasagna in the refrigerator and headed down the hall to the far end of the apartment. Outside Greg’s bedroom doorway he lingered a long time, standing in the murky shadows, working up the courage to turn on the bedroom light and face the emptiness. Finally, he did . . . and stood leaning against the door frame coming to grips with the finality of Greg’s absence. That gun and holster on the chest of drawers would never be strapped on Greg again. The department badge would never be pinned on, not the tie clasp or the radio, none of the police paraphernalia he’d worn for the past two years. He’d never sleep in this room, wear the uniforms in the closet, look at the family pictures in frames on the dresser, finish reading the Robert B. Parker book with the bookmark sticking out of it, pay the bills that were propped against a mug on his dresser, turn on that radio, put on those earphones, yell from this room, “I’m starved! Let’s go out and get a hot dog someplace!”
He used to do that and Chris would yell back, “You and your hot dogs! Gimme a break, will ya, Reston?”
The hot dog jokes never ceased.
For Christmas last year Greg had given him a gift certificate from Jimbo’s Jumbo Dogs, a dumpy hot dog wagon on Main Street that had become a town fixture. When you ate one of those gut-rotters with everything on it you tasted it for two days and everyone around you smelled it for three. Many was the time they were cruising in the black-and-white and as they approached Jimbo’s, Greg would say, “Pull over.”
“Aw, no,” Chris would say. “Jeez, come on, not today!”
“Look at it this way—we’ll save on Mace,” Greg had replied the last time it had happened.
Chris moved into the room, still wearing the green cap. He felt it coming—the welling up, the thick throat, the hot, tight chest and the burning eyes. And he let it in. Let it slam hard and double him over as he squatted on the floor with his back against Greg’s bed, his knees drawn up while he held the sides of the green cap against his skull and bawled as he’d never bawled in his life. Great whooping, heaving, terrible sobs that wailed through the room and probably up through the ceiling into the apartment above. He didn’t care. He let it out, let its force control and wilt him, taking him one step closer to accepting Greg’s death.
It felt terrible.
It felt brutal.
It felt necessary.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted once, then went on weeping until he was spent.
Afterward, he stayed where he was, on the floor, drooping, blowing his nose, wearing Greg’s cap, wondering again why the good ones got taken and the slime kept on beating and raping and robbing and dealing and neglecting their kids.
He sat there with his head throbbing at one o’clock in the morning, turning Greg’s cap around and around in his hands, caught periodically by a jerky after-spasm, feeling weariness steal in and turn him defenseless. He sighed twice—deep, shuddering sighs—looked around the room and wondered why it was said that crying like this made you feel better.
He felt like shit.
Felt as if his head were going to explode and his eyeballs burst like popcorn.
And he admitted to himself that maybe a little bit of the reason he’d wept so hard was—at long last—for himself, for the child he’d been, the loneliness he’d lived with and the painful memories that today had put him through.
ATLee’s house everyone was gone. The children had dressed for bed, where they were reluctant to go alone. As it had been for all of them when Bill had died, the dread of aloneness had returned. “Come into my bed,” she invited, and they did, gladly.
They lay three abreast, sleepless, with Lee in the middle, an arm under each of them.
It took a long while before Joey hesitantly confessed his greatest guilt.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Yes, dear?”
“When you called . . . I didn’t mean what I said. I mean, it was stupid, what I said.”
“What did you say?”
“That Greg was gonna take me and my friends out to Valley Fair next week. Like that’s all that mattered to me, you know what I mean?”
She fiexed her right arm and curled him closer.
“Oh, Joey, have you been worrying about that all this time?”
“Well, it must’ve sounded pretty selfish.”
“No, no, Joey honey—don’t you worry about it. It was just a human reaction, that’s all. It’s hard to believe news like this, and when it comes we simply . . . well, we express our disbelief. You know how it is—we go along day by day taking our routine for granted and all of a sudden something like this happens and we think of the most common things and say, ‘Gosh, how can it be true when the person we lost left unfinished business?’ I remember when your dad died I kept saying, ‘But we were going to go on a trip to Florida together.’ And today when Christopher came and told me the news I kept blubbering about Greg not having fixed the end of my garden hose yet. So you see, I did the same thing as you. When we hear that someone we love has just died, we don’t think, we just react, so don’t worry about it.”
Janice said, “Wanna know what I thought about all the way home on the plane?”
“What?”
“About how much I’d been cheated out of when Greg died, because he’ll never get married and have kids and have a wife who’ll be my sister-in-law, and how awful Christmas is going to be from now on, and that my birthdays will never be the same without him there.”
“I think every one of us had those thoughts today.”
They lay awhile, studying the faint night-light that picked out shadowed objects in the room—moonbeams through a curtain, the bulky presence of furniture, the dresser mirror reflecting the blueblack expanse before it.
Lee’s arms were growing numb. She took them from beneath her children but kept Janice and Joey close to her sides. “Now I’ll tell you what I th
ought—several times today. And when it happened I felt so terrible . . . so . . . well, let me tell you. In the midst of all the planning and the telephoning and people coming and going I’d catch myself thinking, ‘Did anybody call Greg yet?’ And then it would strike me—Greg’s dead. He won’t be coming. And I’d feel so strange and terribly guilty that I could have forgotten he’d died, that he was the reason for all the commotion.”
Janice admitted, “The same thing happened to me.”
Joey said, “Me, too.”
They took comfort from the fact that once again they’d apparently pinpointed a human reaction, then Janice whispered timorously, “Nothing’s ever going to be the same.”
Her mother replied, “No, that’s for sure. But we owe it to ourselves to keep our lives full and good and as happy as possible, in spite of Greg’s absence. It’s what I had to tell myself a thousand times after Daddy died, and it got me through. When things start to get you down I want you to think of that. Your happiness is imperative, and you must work hard at having it.”
In time they grew drowsy. They each slept sporadically, tossing frequently; ultimately, they made it through the first night without Greg.
In the morning they forced themselves to do the things they must: bathe, eat, answer the phone . . . again . . . and again . . . and again. Between the incoming calls, Lee made one of her own, to Lloyd.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “It’s Lee.”
“Little one. It’s good to hear your voice, shaky as it is.”
“I need to ask you a favor, Lloyd.”
“Sure, anything.”
“Will you come with me to the funeral director’s this morning?”
“Of course I will.”
“I don’t want to put the kids through that. Sylvia would have come and so would my folks, but I’d rather be with you.”
“That’s the nicest thing you could have said to an old man at this hour of the morning. What time should I pick you up?”
With Lloyd at her side she felt a sense of calm once again, as if Bill were there with her. Dear, kind Lloyd, the eye in the middle of the storm—how grateful she was to have him in her life.
She had dealt with Walter Dewey before and knew what to expect: a man compassionate yet businesslike, asking the questions his occupation required him to ask.
Death certificate statistics first—birth date, birthplace, progenitors’ names, social security number. Facts were easy. The more difficult questions followed—what day they wished to have the services, the visitation time, did they want an organist, a soloist, did they have a cemetery plot, what about flowers, lunch after the ceremony, printed memorial folders? Did they want an open or closed casket? Did she have a recent picture of Greg? Who would act as pallbearers?
At this point Lee seemed beleaguered so Lloyd stepped in. “Young Lallek spoke to me about it yesterday. It seems there’ll be law-enforcement officers from all over the state at Greg’s funeral. When one of their ranks dies, that’s how it is. Would you want some of his fellow officers to act as pallbearers, Lee? There seems no question they’d be honored if you’d let them.”
“Yes . . . oh, yes. And wouldn’t Greg like that. He loved being a policeman so.”
Lloyd squeezed her hand, smiled his benevolent smile. “And if you’d permit a doting grandpa—I thought about this last night when I couldn’t sleep—I’d love to give a eulogy.”
If it were possible to love Lloyd Reston more Lee would have done so, but all her married life she had loved him for exactly the qualities he was displaying now—lovingness combined with un. appable calm. She had learned so much from this man.
In answer to his question she smiled and turned her hand over to squeeze his. “I know your grandson would approve. Thank you, dear.”
They went into a room full of caskets and tried to be analytical rather than emotional. Lloyd finally pointed at a gunmetal silver one and said, “I think I like that one. It’s about the same color as that first car of Greg’s that I financed for him when he graduated from high school.”
They left the funeral director’s with a promise that they would call back with the names of the pallbearers for the obituary and would return later that day with a set of Greg’s clothing.
There was no avoiding it any longer. This above all pierced the heart—facing the place where he had lived, made happy plans for the future, stored the artifacts of his day-to-day life.
“Well, Dad,” Lee said when they were back in Lloyd’s car. “I guess it’s time to face Greg’s apartment.”
He reached across the seat and took her hand. “Nobody ever said being a parent was easy. You have to weigh the responsibilities against the rewards. This is one of them. Maybe it’ll help to think about all the joy he brought to your life. Remember that time when he and Janice were little and they decided to make you and Bill an anniversary cake? The cake turned out just fine, but, as I remember, they didn’t know what confectioners’ meant so they used plain sugar in the frosting.”
“And we ate it.” Lee grimaced at the recollection.
“And that Mother’s Day when he built you that little birdhouse.”
“I still have it.”
“I predicted then that that kid was sure to end up being a carpenter. He was awfully handy with a hammer.”
“Remember when he was in high school track? Gosh, how I used to enjoy going to those meets.”
They went on reminiscing until they reached Greg’s apartment. When the engine was cut, they sat looking at the building, loath to approach it.
Lloyd asked, “Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
Christopher answered their knock, freshly shaven, his hair neatly combed, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. Lee took a look at his puffy eyes and knew he’d had one hell of a night.
“Hi,” she said simply and took him in her arms. They remained together for as long as they needed, remembering yesterday and how they’d been the first two to know, to console each other, to face the calamity. He smelled like fresh after-shave and felt sturdy yet vulnerable as Lee rocked with him, her eyes closed and her heart heavy.
When they parted Chris said, “Hi, Lloyd, how are you?” The two men patted each other’s shoulders.
“Well, I’ve been better,” Lloyd answered. “I imagine you put in a bad night yourself.”
“Yessir, the worst.”
Lee said, “You should’ve stayed at the house with the kids and me.”
“Maybe,” he replied. “Maybe. But all I’d have done was put off facing this place. There’d still be tonight, and tomorrow and the next day.”
He had, Lee knew as she studied him, the most difficult task of any of them, since he’d been closest to Greg. Even she—mother though she was—had not lived with Greg for over two years. This place was where his absence would be felt most.
“Did you eat my lasagna?” she asked.
“Yes, this morning.” He put a hand on his flat stomach and managed a smile. “It was good.”
She glanced around the kitchen, reluctant to move farther into the apartment, coming up with one more item of business to delay it a few minutes.
“May I use your phone, Christopher? I’d like to call the shop.”
“Sure.”
He and Lloyd moved into the living room while she dialed Absolutely Floral.
Sylvia answered.
“Sylvia, you’re there?” They employed four designers who came in at staggered hours.
“I thought I’d better come down and see how things were going.”
“Everything okay?”
“Just fine. The girls are handling everything. Don’t worry about a thing. Did you sleep at all?”
“Not much. Lloyd and I have already seen the funeral director and we’ve set the funeral for Monday at two P.M. We decided not to have a reviewal.”
“Honey, I would have come with you.”
“I know, so would Mom and Dad. Lloy
d came. We did just fine . . . really. But there is something you can do for me at the shop, Sylvia.”
“Anything. Just name it.”
“I’d like you to call Koehler & Dramm and order three dozen calla lilies, some freesias, gardenias and sword ferns. Everything white and green. Make sure we’ve got sprengeri and tall myrtle, too . . .” She paused and added, “For Monday.”
“Lee, you’re not going to arrange it yourself.”
“Yes, I am.”
“But, Lee . . .”
“He was my son. I want to do it, Sylvia.”
“Lee, this is silly. Why not let one of the girls do it? Or me? I’ll be happy to.”
“It’s something I must do, Sylvia, please understand. Lloyd is going to give the eulogy; I’m going to arrange the casket flowers.”
It took a while before Sylvia agreed. “Very well. Full or half?”
“Full. We’ve decided to leave it closed.”
Sylvia sighed. “All right, Lee, I’ll do it right away.”
“Thanks, Sylvia.”
“Oh, Lee? I thought you’d want to know. The orders are flooding in for Greg. I think I’ll stay here and help the girls, but if you need me, just call and I’ll come over, okay?”
“I’ll be just fine. I’m here at Greg’s apartment with Lloyd and Christopher, and the kids are at home.”
“Okay, but call if you need me . . . promise?”
“I will. Thanks, Sylvia.”
When Lee hung up and went into the living room she knew the two men had overheard, though they’d been talking softly all the time. She was grateful that neither one said a word to try to dissuade her. Instead they each put an arm around her and stood looking up at the collection of caps on the wall.
Christopher said, “He was wearing his red Twins cap, but his favorite one is still here. It’s the one you gave him last year, Lloyd.”
Lloyd nodded, and they all realized it was time to pull themselves out of the maudlin mood. Lee moved away from their arms toward the fig tree. “The ficus looks good.” She poked a finger in the soil. “So does the pothos . . . and the grape ivy.” They made her want to cry, these dumb plants, simply because he’d never water them again. No, it was more than that. They’d been a symbol of his independence, gifts she’d given him when he went out on his own to start his adult life in his first apartment. Only two years he’d had them . . . only two.
Family Blessings Page 6