The Joy of Funerals, page 4
“I’m not big on confrontation.” He shrugs and sips his banana daiquiri.
A moment or two pass in silence. Then, in a valiant attempt to raise my spirits, he whispers, “We shall talk only in code.” He looks around the room. “The package is missing.”
“The doorbell is broken,” I say. We break out in fits of laughter, getting disapproving looks from patrons. I’d like to reach for Blue-Eyes’s gun and threaten to shoot anyone who feels inclined to stare nastily at us again—the power of a firearm is a large one, but he doesn’t carry it around. It makes him anxious.
It isn’t long before Blue-Eyes and I fall into a comfortable routine like most couples. We read the Sunday Times, shop for lobster at the fish market, watch foreign films at the art houses. We go to Shakespeare in the Park, we hold hands, he explains the plot to me over decaf espresso at quaint, out-of-the-way coffee shops. He’s perfect except he pays for everything in cash, we have no real conversations on the phone, he’s paranoid about hackers, and I don’t know his last name or where he lives. He never brings me home. I never meet his friends, nor his mom, and he never wants to meet mine. I don’t know what he does when we’re not together. I watch the news, hold my breath, and live with uncertainty. I don’t mind—it keeps everything mysterious. The sad thing is, it’s the best relationship I’ve had this decade.
Sex, however, is fabulous. Blue-Eyes comes alive with the lights off, the room illuminated only by scented candles. Sometimes we make believe I’m his hostage. He ties me up, uses old belts from my closet for my wrists, and some blue tape that comes off walls easily for my legs. One time we used the red-and-white string that came with the box of cookies from the bakery. He pretended to get angry, threatened to kill me if I didn’t behave. He slid a toy water gun from my chest to my navel, got a kick out of seeing it move up and down on my stomach. As punishment he shot vodka into my mouth from it. Another time, he poured sugar over my belly, and we acted out a scene from Scarface, make believing it was coke. Blue-Eyes quoted Al Pacino while licking my body till the stickiness was gone, till I begged him to let me go, till I came. I’ve asked him to wear a black ski mask, but Blue-Eyes doesn’t like his head being covered. He claims it makes him claustrophobic and disoriented.
I like him best when he describes his holdups. Unfortunately, he’s a lousy storyteller. I have to ask the questions like an acting coach. “Describe the room. What do the customers’ faces look like? How did you feel before you went in?” Blue-Eyes does okay, but with a little pressure, I’m afraid he’d confess to being involved with Watergate.
Sometimes he brings me a souvenir from his jobs. These are my favorite, most cherished objects. Tangible evidence of a life worth living. Blue-Eyes’s loving baubles—a gold ring with small diamonds, and mini-Scotch and gin bottles from liquor store holdups—mix with other trinkets from my men: a swatch of fabric from Jed’s parachute, Bruce’s mini-flashlight, the newspaper clipping of how my father died. I twist open the Scotch, clasp the opening between my teeth, snap my head back, and let the golden liquid side down my throat. My body starts to feel warm and tingly. I reach for another and make a silent toast to my father. I sip the vodka and finger the yellowed newspaper article. I kiss the uncomplimentary picture of my father, open another bottle, and find comfort as the contents burn my insides, filling up the loneliness.
My parents met when my mother applied for the job of putting makeup on dead people. She had gone to school for cosmetology but never developed an artistic flair. My father was her last hope. He owned a mortuary and connecting cemetery, given to him by his great grandfather, who had inherited the property in a card game. I’m not sure why they dated, or for how long, except they decided to marry when my mother announced she was pregnant with Gwen. A cemetery was no place for her, she told him, let alone children. They moved to a little white house, the kind my mother had read about in magazines. She had been secretly clipping pictures out for years. Big, beautiful houses with picket fences and maple trees that hung just so. My father sold the property and we moved to Connecticut before Gwen was born. He took a job in the hospital, working with dead bodies. My mother would never let us tell people what my father did, just that he had a big position at the hospital. People assumed he was a doctor.
On Sundays, he would bring Gwen and me to see the bodies. The smell was terrible. We’d wear white powder under our noses and plastic gloves on our hands. He’d wheel out their bloated bodies, arms and legs disfigured, wounds that hadn’t healed, operations that went askew. Then we’d go for ice cream and make up stories about who they were and how they died: a Mafia man who made billions until someone bumped him off, a black-widow woman who married men for money and was murdered by an avenging relative, a coked-up drug dealer eighty-sixed by pimps. On rainy days, we’d go to the movies. We’d sit in the front row, holding each other’s hands. When scary parts came, we’d send quick squeezes to our partners like sparks in a campfire.
In the sixteen years my parents were married, my mother never had a thrilling moment, never lived life on the edge, barely laughed for fear of ruining her makeup. She was a beautiful, squeamish woman who wore bright colors that always seemed faded on her. The yellow, electric blue, bubble-gum pink all seemed dull, like her body was sucking in the color and holding it hostage somewhere inside.
When we moved, she fell in love with the rich folks. She wanted to be like them, live like they did, dress as they would. She’d have her hair and nails done every few days and walk around looking in the windows of the expensive stores. When we were school age, she took a job in the best private school in town, working as a librarian so we could get a free education. Very often she would waltz into the living room with books other mothers had returned for their children. Mindy Grover said her daughter Kelly loved this book. It’s about sisters who live in a magical garden and they have tea parties with the vegetables. Gwen and I would look up from the TV and roll our eyes in our father’s direction. “Jesus, Lydia,” he’d say, coming to our rescue, “these are girlie books. Where’s the scary parts?”
One day, my father didn’t come home.
My mother had labored away in a hot kitchen to make a gourmet meal she’d read about in House & Garden magazine. “Elegant food,” she called it. The kind you could serve at dinner parties: glazed ham, baby carrots and brussels sprouts served in a white-wine-and-butter sauce, chicken cacciatore with cranberry gravy, pineapple upside-down cake. We hated this. We wanted franks and beans, or the types of meals Dad made. He’d name each dish according to color. Red Jell-O with cherries in it was called human eye mold. Spaghetti in hearty tomato sauce became monster brains. String beans in pesto, mold. For dessert, he’d buy chocolate bars and hide them somewhere in the living room. Unable to deal with the banter and endless questions—Are we near it? Is it hidden in something? Can we see it from eye level?—my mother would retire to her room, to her world of magazines with pictures of kittens sitting in baskets or of beautiful gardens on the cover and how-to articles inside: “18 Ways to Become More Mate Compatible,” “48 Holiday Saving Secrets,” and “How Safe Is Your Food?” But this time, my mother’s cooking efforts really went uneaten rather than unappreciated. The brisket turned dry and dark brown, the vegetables cold and hard.
At 8:30 Sunday night, a postman rang our bell and handed us a package. Inside were clues to where my father was. The note read Find me if you can, with cut-out words from newspapers and a tarnished key. My mother thought the whole thing a joke and went to bed. I read the note over and over, tried to fit the words together to form sentences, but the puzzle was too hard for a twelve-year-old. Around midnight, and still seated at the kitchen table, Gwen passed out, her long, brown hair spilling over the pieces of paper. I worked through the evening, chest tight, eyes bloodshot, trying to solve the caper. By day two, still no Dad and severely sleep-deprived, we called the police. They found him at the zoo. He was in the insect hall and had been bitten to death by infected flies. It was accidental and was in all the papers. Supposedly, he had climbed on a ladder to get a better look at the cockroach exhibit. The floor, slippery from a recent cleaning, caused the ladder to slide out from under him, where he was thrown against the encased glass window, shattering it on impact.
My mother had the mortician clothe my father in a black suit, a suit he hated and only wore to other people’s funerals, and his white dress shirt which he claimed itched. The day of his funeral, I woke up Gwen and explained my plan to her, insisting she get dressed and help me change our father out of the “funeral” outfit and into something he’d be more comfortable in. I’d bribed our neighbor, Buddy Connell, with twenty dollars to help, and the three of us rode our bikes at 6:00 in the morning to the chapel, crawled in through the window, and found my father waiting for us in the main viewing room. We opened the coffin. The stale smell of a musty barn hit us instantly.
We dragged my father out of the coffin and stripped him down to his boxers. His body was cold and his lips were blue. His face was badly scarred from where the glass had cut him and much of his back was covered with large, blue-and-purple bruises from the fall. He seemed very small, lying on the floor of the chapel, and I held my hands in his, rubbing them back and forth, trying to warm his body. I stroked his head, stared at his face, all the time expecting him to open his eyes and scream, “Got ya!”
We changed him into jeans, a Star Trek T-shirt, and a safari jacket. We had trouble hoisting his body back into the coffin. He was so heavy. Gwen was standing off to the side, crying, and wouldn’t say good-bye. Buddy had his arm around her and kept saying, “Shhh.” I placed a flashlight and several true-crime novels inside the coffin, ran my hand over his face, as if trying to memorize it, and finally kissed him on his blue lips.
One evening, Blue-Eyes doesn’t come home. I wait, pasta thick and overcooked, dessert melted, candles burned down to stubs. I watch the news. Nothing. No reports, no catastrophes, nothing unusual.
Perhaps my man’s been shot during one of his heists. Maybe he’s hiding out from the feds, wounded, cold, in some dank, deserted place. Maybe he can only send word via pigeon that I’ll find pecking at my window, bloody note attached to its leg. Or maybe a boy will knock on my door, hand me a letter written on a paper towel or McDonald’s napkin: I’m fine. Won’t surface for months. Carry on without me.
I’m actually worried. Perhaps in their feeble attempt to get in and out, B.E. (Blue-Eyes) and his band of merry men have been seriously hurt. A tightness returns in my chest, and I suddenly feel very helpless. I pace the apartment, gather first-aid supplies, and boil water. I collect Neosporin, large gauze pads, rubbing alcohol, even scan the internet Internet for information on how to remove a bullet, should that be necessary. I think about calling missing persons, but what would I say?
As I wait for news from Blue-Eyes, I pull out my box of treasures and line up all of the tokens he’s brought me: rings, earrings, a fake nail, beaded bracelets. I wonder who wore the jewelry he returns with. As if I’m back playing the morgue game with my father, I create tales from what little information I have about how the objects look, their condition and smell. I imagine the earrings belonged to an old lady with no family, the retrieved nail from the pinkie of a recovering coke addict, the insubstantial diamond ring, a measly offering from a bitter, divorced woman who cheated on her husband. Sometimes I wear the jewels. Other times, like a gambler’s lucky charms, I carry them in my pocket, fingering them every so often.
I think about Fisher. About my father, his not coming home, and wonder if I’ve ever mentioned his death to Blue-Eyes. Maybe it’s all one big surprise. Perhaps he’s planning a similar stunt.
Blue-Eyes calls two days later.
“Sorry,” he offers. “One of my friends was driving to Philadelphia and I thought I’d visit my father.”
“You could have called,” I yell into the phone. “Let me know you weren’t bleeding to death. I had no idea where you were!”
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Blue-Eyes and I have fallen into the life of Floridians in their eighties. We eat early at the same restaurants, watch the same TV shows—I opt for Law and Order, he claims it makes him hyperventilate. It’s like being at the office. Couldn’t we watch a soap or game show?—and go to Barnes & Noble. I skim through books on serial profiling, Blue-Eyes salivates in the theater section.
Tonight finds us at the Food Emporium, the place where it all began. Blue-Eyes and I stand in line alongside well-dressed men in three-piece suits, daddies doing last-minute errands, and dowdy, tired-looking women. Surprisingly, there are no children, except for Blue-Eyes.
“We should have gotten here earlier,” he whines, “then there’d have been no wait.” He looks at his watch nervously. “Mother can’t stand it if I’m tardy.”
“Fine. Why don’t you just leave me here. I’ll carry the heavy bags home, stuff that you want—purified water, HoHos, ginger ale, veggie burgers—all so you can meet Mommy.”
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He sighs. “It’s just that …”
Blue-Eyes is in the middle of apologizing when a familiar hush falls over the store.
As if someone’s called our names, we both look up in sync. The doors fly open and four people dressed in furry costumes barrel into the Emporium. Things are moving in slow motion and at top speed at the same time. Each figure is dressed as a well known character: Donald, Mickey, Dumbo, and Snoopy. Masks hang down over their noses, stopping at the top of their lips, covering most of their faces. Dark Ray-Ban glasses protect their eyes, making them look like Disney gone hip.
‘’Jesus, what’s with this place?” I say. “Is robbing it a prerequisite or something?” I smile. Blue-Eyes doesn’t.
Snoopy steps forward and clears his throat.
“Snoopy? Snoopy isn’t part of the Disney group. Can’t they get sued for that?” I joke with Blue-Eyes, but all the color has drained out of his face.
“Shut up, Gail. These guys are serious.”
“You know them?”
“They’re legendary.”
People are still moving about when Snoopy fires a shot into the air. Plaster ceiling bits fall to the floor. The smell of burnt bagel hangs in the atmosphere, mixing with smoke residue. Some customers start screaming and crying. Everyone freezes. Panic and thrill rise in my chest. I can barely contain my excitement.
Unlike Blue-Eyes’s mangy bunch of boys, these fellas have it down. They come armed with tape, a stopwatch, black sacks, massive sheets of bulky wood, the works. Within seconds, the doors are nailed shut and sheets of wood are placed up against the windows and screwed into the metal beams.
“If they should ask for a hostage, I’m going to volunteer,” I inform Blue-Eyes, my attention directed toward the four men racing around the store.
I try to raise my hand to ask a question, but Blue-Eyes wrestles me down. “Are you out of your mind?” he asks, his voice cracking. His hands are like ice, his face wet.
“Calm down, honey, we’re safe. They can’t hurt us. You’re in the ‘biz,’ and I’m a friend of yours. It’s like dating someone and having to be nice to their kid sister.”
Blue-Eyes just stares at me. “You’re sick, you know that?”
“I’m sick? I’m sick? I’m not the one holding up supermarkets and liquor stores for a living.”
“Gail, keep your voice down.”
I look at Blue-Eyes standing limp, face pale, and I fantasize about one of the holdup men slipping on the shiny linoleum, thanks to his padded feet, smacking his head on the floor in the process. Oops, lights out. Perhaps the one dressed as Donald. He looks the most unbalanced. His mask is on crooked and his glasses seem loose. He keeps pushing them up with his gloved index finger. Now a felon short, they’ll need to call upon some outside help. Even out the odds. “Is there another experienced robber in the house?” Snoopy will ask. And out of nowhere, Blue-Eyes can leap from the scared pool of people, stand tall among the big boys, and win one for the Gipper. I turn to share this with Blue-Eyes and find him crouched down in the corner, shaking. For a moment I think he’s kidding. When I realize he’s not, it all ends. Like a drug has worn off and everything I liked about the person is over, as if it never existed. All I see is Blue-Eyes—rather, Mark—metamorphosed into someone I don’t recognize. Even his eyes seem less blue.
“I can’t believe this is happening twice,’’ I whisper to Less-Boy. “The chance of this occurring to the same person must be one in a …”
“For Christ’s sake, Gail,’’ Mark’s lips are pressed together tightly, “shut up.”
We’re shushed by others and the thrill kicks in.
Dumbo runs through the store checking for additional people while Donald trails behind covering him from the back. I watch Snoopy, who, I assume, is the ringleader. He has a charming walk, confident and bold, even with his furry feet.
A minute later, the deli and fish guys appear, their hands held over their heads, aprons stained with blood and smelling of meat and cheese. A few straggly, dazed customers are collected as well.
“Phone lines cut, floor swept, back of the store is empty,” Dumbo informs his fellow men. “Storeroom is cleared out, truck is waiting.”
The four nod in silence.
“Okay, we’re going to do this clean and easy,” Snoopy barks. He has a British, James Bond-like accent. It’s silky and smooth, like velvet. “When I say move, men go on one side,” he points to the wall that houses the chips, dips, and candy. “Women over there,” he points to the frozen food section. Both are far away from the automatic doors and windows. “Okay, move.”
No one stirs. I start to collect my belongings and walk to our designated spot but find I’m the only one following directions. Mark pulls me back.
“Didn’t you hear him? He asked us to move.”
Everyone is looking at me.
“He asked us to move,” I repeat to a woman standing next to Mark, who in turn looks to her right. People look to each other for directions. One woman grabs a plastic bag and begins to fill it with her groceries. A man in a three-piece suit opens a beer. The sound of the can seems unusually jarring.
