by Tariq Shah
Possibly we are both shook, and still shaking. And I consider whether I have simply come to feed off the shame of being a walking tragedy. And I wonder what Dan and Marcy wonder in their bed, how they keep from quaking the whole night through, if they even bother trying now.
And before I crash out I’m recalling all of them—Grandpa, blown mind. Grandma, bum ticker. Kid brother/sister-to-be, lost on the vine. Mom, Dad, dead, and dead to me, Wendy—and how each and every time, it left me a little more nerve-dumb, wracked with shivers, more familiar with the cold-blooded wash that seizes up the body, leaves me blue as a newborn just before the smack. I could see it coming, my being the last one left—over here was me, and over there? Everyone else, a million battalions of strangers—and what that all implies, and how crazy simple it is, finally, to convince myself I am just a weird remainder. How zero times anything always equals zero, and why more than anything else that makes me feel somehow special, which would probably make Wendy chime, Sure, just like everybody else, I think, and I’m just about to counter that part of me playing Wendy that I’m arguing with, the part of me I know I’ll lose happily lose to once again, when Vince emerges out of the gloom like some deep-sea monster and shakes my shoulder in the groggy panic of a tranquilized kidnap victim just now coming to, asking me, “Hey, Ant, hey—they’re okay, right? Everything’s fine, right?”
“Who? What do you mean?”
But I know.
II
It was a Wednesday and I’d gone to the Food Bazaar, even though it was farther than Food Town, because it had a weekly special on gourmet frozen pizza. My groceries had shifted in the bag—the pineapple juice was squishing the donuts, but I was just about home. I got the door open right in time to catch the phone ringing.
Michael, her older brother. He was a Lutheran pastor. I listened and adjusted my food, chinning the receiver. Michael notified me about Wendy. First thing I said, “But she’s going to be okay, right?”
He goes, “Beg your pardon?” But I lost the phone then, and my groceries next, and it took until the next morning, when my roommate Bob found the mess, to recall my stomping them both into the kitchen tile.
The day after I learned that Wendy Malone passed away, a fog crept into the city. It felt true. I, like the city, found myself in the throes of an endless opacity that made me and everyone else rub their eyes as they left their homes, so akin was the effect of that haze to cataracts, or night blindness. This all, I reasoned, was a natural phenomenon.
I sat down in my thinking chair, absorbing the news. I calculated the length of time since I’d last seen her. It came to around one year four months and that’s as far as I got before I grew frantic and took off. I started to wander. The streets, overnight, had become ghostly basins inundated by that fog. I leapt as high as I could. Surely, someone, gazing out from some taller building’s higher floor glimpsed my hand, I hoped.
Driving in this was lunatic, people muttered aloud to no one in particular at the bus stop by my house. Someone even yelled it at me from her ten-speed, seeing me plunge my car key into its lock. I smiled as I passed them, joyless.
I’d driven in worse, weather magnitudes worse than a dumb fog, I told myself. Through cold snaps, torrential downpours, beneath roiling green skies and lightning storms that assembled and struck at random.
I needed movement. Being stuck in the same spot turned my stomach. There was someplace I needed to be, inclement weather or not.
I was mostly lying to myself, naturally. I’ve never had an errand so urgent it called for chancing life and limb. But that was what it was—a vague tugging in my gut toward serious risk.
I got in my car and drove. Of course the funeral was a couple states away. Though it was mildly daunting to just leave everything and go, escaping the fog would be a comfort, I told myself, though that proved immaterial—night had fallen long before that cloudy broth dissipated.
By my sixth hour of straight driving, through two rush hours and one traffic snarl, my joints were too creaky and I was too famished to sustain even my aimless death wish, strong as it was, and found a motel with free HBO somewhere just inside the Pennsylvania state line.
All that time in the car left me feeling filmy and stale. I parked, paid, daydreamt about endless hot water. It felt like I was still driving when I finally got out, the landscape parallaxing as my feet hummed me past the motel’s revolving glass doorway.
“That was some fog, wasn’t it?” I said to the old woman at the desk, as I waited on the elevator.
“I think it’s still there,” she replied, engrossed in her word search. “You just can’t see it.”
I had a good, hour-long shower. The pressure was feeble, but it refreshed me to scrub off a bit of the distance I’d traveled. I felt a little regular again.
I remembered I had Dwight, my old friend. We used to work together at a brokerage—Bachman & Furth. Fellow office drones, him and I, doing what we could for rent money. He even met Wendy once or twice.
Dwight was right when he intoned, over the phone, “The roads are cake, it’s the miles that rough you up.” I asked if he knew of a bar somewhere near where I was. Once his daughter was born, he and Cindy, his wife, made for the hills outside the Poconos, thinking it a cleaner, safer, more sensible place where they could raise her up right.
“There are a few places, sure,” he said.
“Grab a drink with me and let’s catch up.”
“Tomorrow’s an early day for me. I would though.”
“You’ve gone soft, old man. C’mon, how often am I out here?”
“Really, I can’t. Cindy’s got jury duty.”
“Where’s the bloodlust, Dwight? The old apex predator of yore?”
“I’ve got to get Daisy to school. And you have no idea how picky she eats. I’ve got to make her lunch—”
“What’d they do to you? What happened to Dwight? Put Dwight on, Dwight the night rider, the high stakes gamblin’ man.”
“Ant—”
“I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
“You know me, always agitating…” Catching the desperation in my own voice, I doubted I would want to drink with me either.
“Yeah, don’t take this the wrong way. You’re my boy, you know that. Maybe you ought to stay in though. Maybe try going soft on yourself, a little bit. It feels nice, believe it or not.”
“Go hide out in the sticks the rest of my life, you mean? Blow off old friends when they come knocking?”
“Ant, listen to me—it truly sucks, what happened to Wendy. Take care of yourself. Clear skies are coming your way, I can feel it. You hear me? Hit me up on your way back through here. We’ll get drunk as mops and go tie a hoe to a post.”
I stayed up watching some talking heads dissect Iraq, mulling over what all Dwight said on the phone.
I had nothing left to lose. That’s what it all boiled down to, and that began contorting the entirety of my grief, the more I continued focusing on it, what it really meant. I felt nausea like a cold tongue lick me. Getting up for a glass of water, my knees wobbled, but held out. I was standing, that felt like proof of something important. The last one standing.
It was as if, from out of nowhere, a supercell had gathered in the skies overhead and just as fast, just as inexplicably, dissipated. Wendy was gone. Just gone.
Who was left? I had sort of instinctively crouched, as though bracing myself for a beat down. But the storm never broke. Not a drop fell. It all felt childish. She was the last one. And everything I had hoped for, feared, wrestled with, regretted, day-dreamt—it all fit snug in a kind of suitcase I’d kept in a closet in my heart that I was now free to hurl off a bridge. No one would see. There was nothing left to worry about. I was made whole.
The next morning I went home. If the fog was still there, I didn’t even notice. The sickening hurt, the ten-ton depression, the vulnerability that left me hugging myself like a leper trying to stay in one piece as I dr
ifted around town—it was all gone. I could breathe. I could see. I was almost too relieved to trust how I felt, expecting a relapse every ten minutes. But it endured. I was cured of it all. Everything but the death wish. The death wish blossomed. Laureled me in its pig-iron flowers. They were perfect—just the thing for funerals.
*
The sun is on the rise. I haven’t really slept. Doubt Vince has either. On the little balcony, out over the rooftops, I watch chimney smoke flutter—ragged little white flags knotted to the pipes and stacks rising into the sky. Gray predawn winds drive a slab of clouds off.
I used to hate funerals—they were so sad.
So suffocating, really. A klieg light under which I had nothing to perform. No material. I would wander that agonizing stage, sweating buckets, dodging gazes seeking mine. So many hugs I still hate them, even now.
Mom, hollow-cheeked, a fixed-up mannequin, wig and all. The crowd surveilling me, waiting for me to do—what? I wanted to scream at them: Don’t you get it? I was the one who clapped. The starlet is there, in that pine box. Is no more. Show’s over.
I have all sorts of responses to the questions I ask myself as to why I go. They all nick the bull’s eye. Specific, isolated reasons all cluster and gang up on me into this kind of preternatural, instinctual pull. Off I go, like a picnic basket carried away by a black river of ants, not caring why. Ambling through the wake, a kind of graduate, an old retired pro. Idling in the parlor, mute, holographic, negative space, loitering in the nave, burning the clock.
But there is something honest involved in each of my answers, to a varying degree, about The End, in the end.
Grandpa in the casket, hands folded at the waist, wearing what looked like Grandma’s lipstick. Grandma smelling like talcum powder.
When I think about the truth involved in that answer, the answer to the big question of what’s left after rendering down all these answers, I feel too close to a cliff within myself.
Everyone I thought invincible: shattered. Shell-shocked, asking each other what to do. All of them absolutely, in all honesty, clueless. We were all at a loss.
*
“I’ve attended three wakes in the past nine months or so,” I say.
“Shocked you had three friends,” Vince says, wrapping a black plastic bag around his bandaged hand before heading into the bathroom to shower.
He closes the door on me, but I keep talking. “Mr. Bachman, my old boss, in October, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He was one of those slick Manhattan real estate giants. Place was crawling with agents and sharks. Everyone handing out business cards with their condolences. My bud Dwight made me go, to be honest.”
“Shut up. Let me shower in peace.”
“—But it was autumn, the city was gorgeous. The tree leaves were butterscotch, practically. Bachman was 93 for god’s sake. I had no skin in the game. I left feeling like I’d just finished a perfect gourmet lunch. All nourished and fulfilled. I was happy, that afternoon. Glad I moved.”
I continue. “Suzette Morelle was buried around Valentine’s Day.”
“Cousin Josef’s wife. Heard about her,” Vince calls from the shower.
“Third wife. I don’t even remember ever meeting her before then. The Bachman service spoiled me. I got off the train that morning so stoked I had to talk myself down a little bit. Didn’t want to spoil it. It was a great time though. They had a polka band, the catering was top flight, and drinks were on the house.”
I hear him shut off the water.
“Too great, actually. A food fight broke out. Someone even hired a stripper. Suzette’s brother-in-law suffered a coronary at the tail end of the night. Ambulance came. He ended up being okay, but it was almost a twofer.”
When he finally gets out of the bathroom, Vince is clean shaven, wearing a two-piece charcoal suit a little too tight on him, and a pair of oxblood cowboy boots. It all somehow works.
“Those don’t stick out at all.”
Vince clears his throat. “Ray and me were into watching old Westerns when he was little. He was Clint, I was the bad dude. I dunno.”
He stops me from heading in to shower myself.
“Let me tell you something: Suzette was a real person. She was actually really great,” he says. “She was kind to me, even though she had no reason to. I didn’t know her much at all. You got a big mouth, Ant. Keep it zipped if you got nothing good to say. It’s hard being third anything. You bring any good clothes, or are you going to the chapel looking like a street person?”
“My dress clothes are in the trunk still. I forgot to bring up my bag.”
“We’re already running behind. Change on the way.”
“What got into you?”
Vince starts to pack up his things.
“Let me brush my teeth first at least.”
“You got two minutes.” He sits on the bed, knots his laces.
“You got a brush I can use?”
“Packing is not a strength of yours, is it.”
“Mine’s also in my bag…”
“Wash it when you’re done,” he says, and he whips it at me and misses. I find it brush-side down in the scuzz circling the shower drain.
*
While Vince warms up the engine, I grab the blazer, tie, and button-down from my bag, along with a sweater, get in, and start changing. The windshield’s just a couple portholes of defrosted glass, but Vince takes off anyway as soon as I shut my door.
“We’re already late—let’s grab coffee real quick,” I say.
Once he finally feels like talking again, he says, “You’re lucky it just so happens that I’m a vegetable without my morning jolt.”
We hit up a drive-thru spot down the street. For the first time in memory, Vince actually buys.
We’re waiting on our order and I go, “You know what you smell like?”
I see his jaws grind. He twists at the leather steering wheel like he’s giving it an Indian burn.
“—A fresh blooming alpine meadow.”
I smile and give his shoulder a couple love taps.
Right off the bat, we hit morning rush hour, and Vince lights up in frustration. Before long, we’re at a standstill.
“Well, what about the third one?” he says, sighing out smoke.
“Third what?”
“Bachman, Suzette—who’s was the third wake?”
“I don’t know why I brought all that up,” I say, and try the radio.
… traffic and weather together, on the eights, WBBM news radio seventy-eight!
I click it off. “Forgot there’s only AM…”
“Finish your story,” he says. “Or not. I don’t care.”
“It’s nothing. You don’t know him—Vlad Popov. This was back in April. I forget the day. He was just a piano player I knew. Played for ages in St. Petersburg, moved out to Brighton Beach sometime after the Cold War. Him and his two boys. We got to be friends playing this weekly gig at a jazz bar in the village. The owner told me.”
“Took the kiddies, left the wife behind, huh. That it?”
“I get to his place out in Brighton pretty late. His son, Peter, answers the door, leads me into the kitchen. But before I sit, before we shake hands, or even take off my jacket, he puts this Dixie cup filled to brimming with vodka in my hands. Says to me, ‘The latecomer takes full glass, as penalty.’
“The kitchen gets silent and grim. Everybody watching, making sure I take my penalty. But that stuff was so pristinely distilled, it went down like cold liquefied air. And the liquor was chilled to the point it was viscous, like corn syrup. Couple minutes later, my jaw falls out of my head.”
“Russians. When it comes to vodka, they do not kid around.”
“He poured another round for everyone. Goes, ‘You see, my father was from old country, we have it old country tradition—’ His voice cracks; he gets all teary. One man at the table comes over to us, clutches Peter to his chest while he sobs, ‘—for to honor papochka.’”
“I c
an respect that. People don’t give a fuck about traditions anymore, but without them, we’re just, dunno, like—filth.”
“They bring out food and we all start porking out on blini. And then drinking more after that. And his other son, Niko, this blubbery mountain in Adidas warmups, who’d been keeping to himself, wolfing down knish and meat dumplings in the corner, practically swallowing them whole. We’re in the hall, waiting in line for the bathroom, and he starts talking. I ask him what happened with Vlad. ‘It was embolism,’ he says to me. ‘He inject air in his jugular vein. It is a bad death. In this situation, proper burial, it is not permitted. For this, Peter weeps.’”
“A bad death,” Vince says.
“According to Niko, at least.”
His face falls.
“Ah, cheer up, Vince. That’s just a bunch of superstition. Truth about deaths—they’re all bad.”
“Okay for real, Ant—seriously, tell me—what is the matter with you?”
“This is getting old, man…”
“Huh? You tell me right now—should I be worried? What’re you—robbing graves out there? You need some kind of help? Therapy? I don’t understand.”
I just gulp down coffee. It’s hard to know where to begin certain things.
“Answer me,” he says, and shoves me in my face.
“You do that again…”
Vince re-grips the wheel. “I will do whatever the hell I like.”
He and I go mute. On his side, Vince plays the role of calmest man on earth, but the shaking fingers fumbling for another Camel Gold give him away. On my side, I try to ignore the two kids in the van on my right, who saw it all, but still keep looking.
*
Suzette’s funeral wasn’t quite as sensational as I let on. I embellished heavily because Vince hates it when I do. If he finds out, of course. Third wife Suzette’s funeral saw no food thrown. There was zero charisma from the family members gathered there that day. They were frustrating; it was boring. I left crestfallen, though the coronary did occur. It was while I was on the train back to my apartment that it dawned on me that, after this whole time, it had never crossed my mind to read the obituaries. That made my spirits rise.