The Gypsy Moths, page 25
Alex was a lapsed Catholic, so Ronica decided he wouldn’t have wanted a religious ceremony. Thus, there is no Mass. This spares us of not only having to listen to some well-meaning priest who didn’t know Alex eulogize him, it also allows us to avoid Saint Anthony’s and the thing we buried next door. For that, I am eternally grateful, as I’m sure Max and Shawn are.
The funeral is a small and uneventful affair. There are only a handful of people in attendance, including us: Ronica, her son (who is shaved and in full dress uniform, as we later learn he served two tours in Iraq a few years prior and is still active National Guard), and four other people I don’t know or recognize. This shouldn’t surprise me, I guess, but it does. More people should care.
God damn you for doing this, Alex. And God damn me for losing you.
Although Max and Shawn and I were here only a day ago, it feels as if we’re in an entirely different place now. Maybe it’s the rain, or the shiny new casket of wood and metal perched over a fresh grave where only a tarp resided before. It’s real now. Alex is truly gone.
Like the others, we huddle beneath umbrellas as the funeral home director solemnly asks if anyone would like to say anything.
“We love you, Alex,” Ronica says, weeping uncontrollably. “We love you.”
Her voice is barely audible above the rain.
“May you find the peace in God’s arms you never could in life,” her son says. “Thank you for being my uncle.”
Max chokes up, clears his throat, and despite the rain, slides his sunglasses on. I put my arm around him. Shawn does the same.
From the corner of my eye I see Shawn’s bottom lip quivering as his eyes fill with tears. I suspect crying is not something he has allowed himself to do in a very long time. As he glances at me I look away, so as not to embarrass him.
Ronica lays a single flower on her brother’s casket, then is escorted off by her son to a waiting car near the gates of the cemetery.
Everyone else just wanders away, as if mistakenly.
And then it’s just the three of us.
I place my hand on the casket and, in a whisper, say goodbye.
Shawn lights a cigarette and walks away, quickly wiping his eyes as Max leans over the casket, kisses it, then lays his cheek against it.
I give him a moment, then go to him and gently place a hand on his back. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get out of the rain.”
* * * *
Ronica’s son is a member of the local VFW, so we all meet back at the hall in town, which looks more or less like it did when we lived here. Bare bones and basic, there are cafeteria-style tables and chairs scattered throughout a large open area, with a kitchen in back.
By the time we get there, everyone else has already arrived and taken their seats at a long table in the center of the room that is covered with a white linen cloth and set with plates, silver, and glassware. They look to us in unison like the outsiders we’ve become, but try to appear as cordial as possible.
Ronica rises from her chair and slowly approaches us. She kisses and hugs me first, and I feel her trembling. We don’t say anything, because we’ve already done that. But when she lets me go, she turns to Shawn, and with tears in her eyes, places a hand on either side of his face.
They embrace for a long time, whispering things to each other no one else can or needs to hear.
Finally, she looks to Max.
“Maxie,” she says, her tears falling now and her face both a smile and a grimace. “My God, Maxie, look at you.”
He begins to cry. As they embrace, Shawn and I leave them.
The anger and resentment Ronica showed with me is no longer evident now, and I’m glad. She has every right to feel those things, I’m just happy she directed them at me rather than Shawn and Max.
Eventually we join the others at the table. A couple of older women in aprons bring carafes of coffee and water, along with a large tray of scrambled eggs and plates of bacon, sausage, and toast.
The food reminds me it is only midmorning. It already feels like midnight.
No one eats. Everybody just stares at their empty plates.
“To Alex,” Shawn says, raising his coffee.
We all raise our drinks too.
“To Alex…”
* * * *
When it’s time to leave, Ronica walks us to the exit. After another round of long hugs, she wipes her eyes then takes something from her purse. “Do you guys remember that Polaroid camera my mom and Rafe got me for my sixteenth birthday?” she asks.
I do remember the big clunky camera she had and how it shot out instant photographs we’d sit and watch develop right before our eyes. It was one of the most amazing things we’d ever seen, and was very expensive at the time.
“Yes,” Max answers for us. “You had so much fun with that thing.”
“Do you remember those glamor shots you took of me?” she says.
“How could I forget, darling?” Max winks. “Do you remember the ones you took of me?”
“Of course I do, darling.”
“I looked even more glamorous in that boa than you did.”
Albeit briefly, Ronica actually laughs, and I’m sure I have never loved Max more. Even after all these years, and on the day she buried her brother, he’s still able to pull it off. Their connection was always special, and for one wonderful moment, it still is.
“The first picture I ever took with it was of you guys,” she tells us as she pushes the item she retrieved from her purse into my hand. “Alex saved it all these years. I found it in with his things. He would’ve wanted you to have it.”
The minute I lay eyes on it I remember the exact moment it was taken. The four of us smile back at me from so very long ago, standing side-by-side in her front yard, our arms around each other. We were laughing at the moment Ronica pressed the button.
“My God,” Max says, looking over my shoulder at it. “We’re so young.”
Shawn says nothing, but he does smile fondly then reach down and touch the photograph, as if doing so might somehow make it more real.
Taken only weeks before that summer of ’77, I look into our eyes and realize none of us have any idea what lies ahead, and how drastically our world is about to change. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, although grainy and stained, it is one of the most beautiful and moving things I have ever seen.
It blurs before my eyes, and for the first time today, I break.
I cry for Alex. I cry for us all.
And as we group hug near that exit door, I cry for those lost teenagers running on a beach through the dark of night, laughing, out of breath and so certain of their immortality nothing could ever stop them. I cry for Ronica’s gorgeous and mischievous eyes in the rearview of that awful little Volkswagen Bug, and how I wished that night would never end. I cry for my mother sitting alone at the kitchen table, and for my father desperately wandering the house in his bathrobe.
Max and Shawn and I say goodbye for the final time back at the motel. We promise to keep in touch, but who can be sure if we will or just really want to?
It’s a typically awkward masculine farewell, with plenty of long and strong handshakes, some quick hugs, muttered though heartfelt words, and a lot of uncomfortable silences. We don’t want to go our separate ways again, yet can’t wait to do just that. I don’t know why it has to be like that, but I suppose that’s why they say you can never go home again. Maybe because the home you’re trying to go back to no longer exists any more than the people you hope to see there do.
Later, after they’ve gone and I’m alone in my car, I look at the photograph again, grateful they allowed me to keep it. As the rain drums the roof and sluices along the windows and windshield, for some reason I think of the moths that invaded Samoset that summer. Just like the caterpillars that completed their cycle of life with a metamorphosis into gypsy moths, something similar happened to the boys in that picture. Though persecuted, we came full circle. Some of us made it, some of us didn’t. But we were there. We faced our monsters, and though we paid a terrible price and could no longer exist exactly as we had previously, we made it through the transformative storm.
These days, when I awaken from a bad dream, hopeful it will finally be my last, I still cry for those boys. In the solitude of my little apartment, I cry for the children we were back then, and the mysteries and darkness we endured not only then, but now. Sometimes, though, when I remember how magical, frightening, and heartbreaking it is to be a child, it also occurs to me what a blessing it is to be an adult with a childhood to remember at all. However complicated and riddled with screeching monsters it may be.
It is then that I smile for those boys, for who we were, who we dreamed we might one day be, and for those lucky enough to still be here, for who we are and still aspire to one day become.
I find comfort in that.
The same as I found comfort that last day in Samoset, as I drove off through the rain, away from a town I knew I’d never return to. I took that old photograph and stuck it up under the visor, and though I couldn’t see it anymore, I knew it was still there.
In that same way, so are we, all of us.
And somehow, that’s enough.
about the author
GREG F. GIFUNE is a best-selling, internationally-published author of several acclaimed novels, novellas and two short story collections. Working predominantly in the horror and crime genres, Greg has been called, “The best writer of horror and thrillers at work today” by New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice, “One of the best writers of his generation” by horror grandmaster Brian Keene, and “Among the finest dark suspense writers of our time” by legendary bestselling author Ed Gorman. Greg’s work has been published all over the world, translated into several languages, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and others, and is consistently praised by readers and critics alike. His novel THE BLEEDING SEASON, originally published in 2003, has been hailed as a classic in the horror genre and is considered to be one of the best horror/thriller novels ever written. Two of his stories (HOAX and FIRST IMPRESSIONS) have been adapted into short films, and his novel LONG AFTER DARK is set to begin production as a feature film in 2021. Greg and his wife Carol reside in Massachusetts with their dogs, Dozer and Dudley. Greg can be reached online at gfgauthor@verizon.net or on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Greg F. Gifune, The Gypsy Moths
