by Max Monroe
Luckily for me, I’ve got a group of family-like friends—one made up of a band of misfit billionaires and their much-too-good-for-them women—to turn to when I need a support system. Though, as much as I love them, I didn’t invite them here today.
I know they would have been understanding, but sometimes a man needs to find his way through grief in solitude. Especially when that grief looks nothing like the usual sort. Like a woman’s heart attack, my feelings about my father are quieter, stealthier, bubbling just around the edges and in the cramp of my jaw.
I lick my lips and release the tension I’m holding there. If it weren’t for the soreness at its apex, I wouldn’t have even known I was clenching it.
The symptoms are subtle, but I know better than to avoid treating them. Sadness, even over an idea of a person who never truly existed—the father I wished I’d had—left unattended would eventually lead to some kind of systemic failure. Sepsis of the heart, I suppose.
The reverend lifts his head from its previous bowed-in-prayer place and surveys the small crowd that’s amassed. Mostly people my dad worked with—and almost definitely there for the purpose of assuring themselves the bastard is really dead, rather than paying any form of last respects—the crowd at large didn’t participate in the ritual. Perhaps they’re agnostic, but I also think, conceivably, they all prefer to save their God save the souls for souls they think actually deserve them.
Courtesy of my mind’s morbid sense of humor, a smirk threatens one corner of my mouth as the reverend continues the funeral, speaking a whole lot of very kind words a man like Hall Hughes most likely didn’t earn.
“Hall’s earthly body will be missed by many, but his spirit will live on among us. His lessons, his kindness…”
I think I hear a snort from somewhere behind me, but whoever’s responsible has the decency and good sense to cover it up with a secondary cough.
“His impact on the community. We won’t forget, even as Hall moves on to live out the life God intended, free of worry and free of pain.”
I stare at the hole in the ground under the fancy wooden coffin and drown out the rest of the scripted speech.
I can’t help but marvel at the simplicity of our process when the people around us die—the quickness with which we dispatch a sometimes century-long life. Prepare the body, encase it, send it below ground at a level capable of preventing the ruthless hunting of all manner of animals. Which is really ironic, if you ask me. We spend decades upon decades taking from the nourishment of the earth but refuse to give any back. It just confirms how greedy we are as members of the animal kingdom. Even in death, we refuse to sustain the species around us.
I imagine there’s something really profound and symbolic about it all, but I can’t pick out the details. All I know is that my father paid half a million dollars of his money for this spot in the ground—one of the only two plots left in New York City—so his body could be where he wanted it to be for all of eternity. A body he’s no longer connected to.
If what the reverend said was true, if he’d truly been an impactor of lives, he would have used that money on something other than his corpse.
Lord knows he didn’t spend it on my mother. Ellie Hughes was buried in Teaneck, New Jersey, the damn cemetery only a half mile behind a ShopRite—and he loved her. According to my mother, they were both completely head over heels—silly, goofy love—when they were younger; I guess it took time for him to turn into the asshole we’re parting with today. I can’t even imagine where she would have ended up if their marriage hadn’t been strong in its foundation.
Behind a fucking bowling alley? Internally, I laugh at my own morose humor.
“And it’s with this prayer that we say our final goodbyes,” the reverend directs, bowing his head once more. I follow suit this time, but when I make my silent speech to the Big Guy on the top floor of this world, I do it in the name of a whole bunch of someones who are much more deserving.
Please, God, I ask that you grant my mother happiness and eternal safety. That you give her the life she so deserved here and never got around to having. I miss her, but I know she has to be living a much more peaceful existence with you.
At the end of her life, my mother’s body was ravaged. The chemo, the surgeries, the radiation—she was a shell of the woman I once knew, and she held on way too long, just for me.
She suffered for me. Which, I suppose, is what most mothers do. But I never wanted that for her. I wanted only the woman who never stopped laughing.
And while I’m at it, I guess I’ll ask a few favors for some people on this side of your gates. My friends, as ornery as they can be, are the best guys I know. They and their wives know what the real meaning of life is and have carved out their place in happiness. Please protect that for them for as long as you can. I know I’m the last loner, but I’d rather you focus your energy on them than me.
Give their children health and their lives happiness.
My shoulders shrug as I struggle to finish it out, given the lack of frequency with which I engage in the practice of prayer.
So, uh, thanks. Hope you have a good day or whatever.
It’s not eloquent, but I’m trying, at least, and I think that’s what counts. If not, maybe my thoughts will fall on some other spiritually helpful ears.
“No matter your connection here on earth,” the reverend continues, “your relationship with Hall will live on. In your head and your heart and in the spirit of Jesus Christ our savior.”
A few quiet moments later, he nods to the funeral director behind him, and all at once, the interment begins.
Slowly, inch by inch, my father’s casket makes its descent into the open ground.
The reverend looks out to the small crowd and gestures his hand toward the casket. “I invite you to come up and say your parting words to Hall’s earthly body. Take a rose from the basket and drop it in as a veil of your love and affection.”
Stepping forward, I bury the complicated concoction of emotions threatening to bubble to the surface and grab a rose from the basket.
From this angle, above my father’s casket as it unhurriedly lowers into the ground, he doesn’t feel nearly as big anymore. In fact, it’s an amazing reminder that almost nothing is as big as it seems at one time or another. It’s all relative, and when it comes to people, we all end up in a hole in the ground—or a mausoleum or an urn or whatever, but you get my point.
My aunt Shirley—my mother’s sister—is next. And her daughter, my cousin Irene, is right by her side. They both grab roses and stand above my father’s grave, silently offering up prayers that I have a hard time believing they actually mean.
Hall Hughes wasn’t really kind to anyone during his life, and my aunt Shirley was no exception.
Yet, she doesn’t hesitate to take part in saying goodbye, bowing her head and tossing a rose from her hand toward the casket.
And her daughter begins to follow suit—bowing her head and lifting her arm to toss a rose toward my father’s descending casket. But just before Irene releases the flower from her hand, she teeters on her sky-high heels a little too long, her body tilting precariously toward the burial site.
Oh God, no.
My eyes go wide and I reach out my hand to try to stop her forward momentum, but I’m too far away to be of any help.
Aunt Shirley shouts.
Irene screeches.
And everyone in attendance, including the priest, watches as Irene’s body falls directly onto my father’s casket—that is now a good five inches inside the grave—with a thud. The cables jolt and creak, and I swear on everything, the priest mutters “Holy shit” once his huge, shocked eyes take in the insane scene that lays before him.
My cousin continues to shriek at the top of her lungs while she tries to adjust her black dress that’s now edged its way up her waist, revealing way more of her than I’ve ever wanted to see.
Aunt Shirley cries for someone to save her daughter’s life.
; Thankfully, including me, some people run toward the proverbial fire, but a whole lot of other people run away from it too. Out of their seats and toward their waiting cars on the other side of the cemetery, attendees move so fucking fast, it’s like they’re afraid if they step any closer to the grave, they’ll end up like Irene.
A few minutes later, and with the help of two other men in attendance, we manage to get Irene off the casket and back to her feet.
Aunt Shirley wails as she grabs her daughter and holds her tightly in her arms. It doesn’t take long for them to follow the majority of the small crowd, hurriedly leaving the burial site and heading to their car.
And all I can do is just stand there for a good five minutes, staring at my father’s still-descending casket, utterly confused by the whole damn day.
When I finally look up, I find that other than me, the only people left include the reverend and the funeral director.
“Well,” the reverend mutters and runs a hand through his pepper-gray hair. “This was a first.”
A laugh almost bubbles up out of my throat, but I manage to swallow it back. I’m pretty sure the good priest has endured enough trauma for the day.
But, mentally, I can’t stop the silent laughter that rolls through my mind.
The emotion and stress of today combined with Irene’s near-death experience on top of my father’s casket and the way almost everyone in attendance ran off like it was a five-alarm fire has officially taken their toll.
Ironically, Hall Hughes’s reputation was that of a tornado. He could make employees run out of his boardroom crying with a blink of one fucking eye.
Apparently, his funeral is no different.
With one last nod toward the gravesite, I say a final, silent thanks for everything my father gave to me and step away without looking back.
I don’t linger in the empty tent to explore my feelings.
Instead, I step out of the shelter and into the sprinkling rain to wander the streets of New York with unknown purpose.
I haven’t picked a destination, but I don’t have to—I know I’ll know it when I see it.
I walk slowly in the rain, wandering past cafés and bookstores with little interest. A toddler makes faces at me through the window of a diner when I have to stop at the corner to cross the street. It’s always weird, how life keeps going on around you, no matter what. An impact on my day has little to no impact on theirs, and it’s obvious—more so than anywhere else, here in New York City—as cabs rush past, splashing water up from the street in their wake and punctuating it with the blare of their horn.
When the signal changes, I make my way across the street and right into the path of a vendor with a booth full of umbrellas.
He smiles, seeing me as a prime mark and dives into his speech. “No water, no wind, no-thing is damaging this umbrella, buddy. Twenty bucks to change your life. Out of the rain and into the sun. Come on, fella,” he continues as I walk right by him.
It’s almost unfair, I guess, sending his pitch up against me. I’m an unshakable opponent because unlike everyone else out here today—unlike myself on any other day—I’m actually looking to get wet.
To let the water bleed through my clothes and into my skin—to wash away the day so I can start anew tomorrow without the veil of pseudo-grief hanging over my head. So I can go back to my life with the knowledge that I don’t have to hold on to what my father might have been.
Tomorrow, with a fresh layer of dirt over his casket in the grave he paid half a million dollars to have in New York City, there will only be what he was.
Tomorrow for me, however, can be anything I want it to be.
But today, I shall find the nearest fucking bar and drown out these goddamn emotions.
Raquel
Eggs Benedict are the work of the devil himself. I’m convinced of it. Full-on satanic pods of protein sent on an express elevator from hell to make me hate every-damn-thing.
I’m talking Jim Carrey in The Grinch-level loathing of all things in existence.
Light? Hate. Porcelain? Despise.
The human digestive system? Loathe.
“Ugh,” I groan, sinking down even farther on my knees to rest my head on the surface of my toilet seat. The really funny part is I don’t even have the energy to be disgusted.
My only thought about it, truly, is ironically hopeful. Will E. coli buy me a couple days in bed? I mean, Christmas is only four days away… Maybe I could simply spend it in my bed, watching movies and doing absolutely nothing? Good God, that sounds nice…
When my stomach jolts with unease, I shut my eyes tight, and a pitiful moan escapes my throat as I try hard not to puke again.
Let me be clear. I haven’t always been so anti-egg. In fact, I never would have even entertained the thought that eggs were put on this earth as anything other than a good source of nutrition a year ago.
Pamphlet pushers on the evil of eggs? I would have ignored them.
Proponents of a plant-based diet? Fools.
But now—now, I know the truth. Eggs—and the recipes that go with them—are all stroked by the hands of Satan upon entrance to the world.
“Raquel,” my manager, Heidi Morris, calls cheerily through my master bathroom door. “Raquel, doll? Can you hear me?”
I groan as my head sags farther now, beyond the seat and into the toilet bowl, and lift a perfectly executed bird into flight behind me.
“We’re supposed to be in the car in five minutes for the meeting with Hugo Schwin.”
Famous director or not, who the hell really cares about Hugo Schwin right now? Certainly not me.
Another wave of nausea rolls through me and lands right in the toilet. Again. I’m half convinced this meal multiplied inside my stomach with the amount of time I’ve spent puking it back up. Honestly, I only dream of being able to eat this much actual food. I’m a woman in Hollywood, for God’s sake.
I reach up to find the lever to flush and watch as the churned-up mess swirls its way around the bowl and down the pipes.
Fucking gross. It’s safe to say that’s the last time I’ll be having hollandaise sauce for a while.
“You know we’ve been fighting for months to get this meeting, sweetie. We can’t afford to miss it regardless of your…situation.” They’ll be hoping I miss Hugo Schwin when I blow chunks all over the freaking room.
I roll my eyes at Heidi’s word-gymnastics.
My situation, as it were, is that I’m unexpectedly pregnant from a one-night stand with an unnaturally attractive almost-stranger a little over four months ago.
Oh, and I should probably mention that said one-night stand was my first one-night stand. My first, well, one-night anything that involves sex. Think the Virgin Mary, but only, instead of an immaculate conception, there was a one-time condomless-cherry-popping scenario that led to a certified knocking up.
Thoughts of a handsome smile and sexy green eyes and the kind of kissably perfect lips I didn’t think were possible start to fill my mind.
Harrison.
A little over four months ago, he was such a needed breath of fresh air. He made me feel all the things I’d been wanting to feel for so long, and for one night, I allowed myself to feel all of those things.
But when the next day came to fruition, I had to leave it all behind and go back to the reality of my life. Yet, as it seems, I didn’t exactly leave everything behind. I took a little piece of Harrison back to LA with me in the form of an unexpected pregnancy.
I’ve thought about trying to reach out to him exactly one million times but have never found the courage. I just…can’t. The night that led me to my current situation was fueled by my decisions. My choices. My lies.
Flashes of said night start to fill my head, and I push the visuals out with a tight blink of my eyes. I can’t think about him. Not right now. Hell, probably not ever.
My stomach twinges and aches, and I tell myself it’s from all of the puking. Lord knows I can’t let myself realize it’
s anything but that at this point. Any other reason—anything relating to him—would just set me up for disappointment and pain.
After I peed on a test that came back pregnant, I spent the first month and a half crying myself to sleep over the fear of what it would do to my life. Thankfully, though, now that I’m further along, I’m not nearly as hysterical.
With the amount of time I spend throwing up, I don’t have time to be.
I swallow hard, trying to find my voice in the depths of my scraggly throat. “I…I don’t know if—” I sputter as more vomit threatens its debut. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go today.”
Goddamn, am I puking the lining of my stomach now? There’s nothing else in there, Satan!
“I’m sensitive to you, sweetie. Really. I care about your problems,” she says with little to no conviction. “But this meeting is too important to put off. Splash some water on your face, brush your teeth, let Roberta in to style you up a bit, and then we have to hit the road.”
Roberta is my hair stylist, and to be honest, she’s some kind of genius. She can always turn whatever coif I’m sporting into a do worthy of my celebrity status in a heartbeat. But I’m not sure even she is a match for the unwelcome glob of regurgitated hollandaise sauce I’m going to have to wash out of the front of my now-matted locks.
“I need more time. Roberta can’t come in right now.” No one can come in right now. I’m not even sure I’d allow Eve herself to come in right now, and the universe’s first rebel was my original girl crush as a child. Not in a, like, anti-God way, of course. Just in a woman who was willing to stand up to the man way.
It doesn’t matter what I think about visitors, though—I’ve barely even finished the sentence when the door swings open abruptly.
“I said you can’t come in!” I turn to shout embarrassingly weakly.
Heidi just rolls her eyes and leans against the vanity counter, phone in hand. As always, her features are severe—a sharp, pointy nose, icy blue eyes, and a blunt, shoulder-length blond bob doing nothing to counter her personality’s critical nature. “Don’t be absurd, Raquel. We’re all professionals here. Roberta will style your hair while you lie there on the floor. Then you can still have your moment.”