“It didn’t matter what religion. He’d show up clutching a pan of hotdish or homemade Scotcheroos in his enormous hands. And on his way out, he’d always leave the man of the cloth with a wink, a donation, and a lovely notepad with the name of his parlor stenciled on the top. The next time one of the flock met their maker, guess which funeral home was recommended to the family?”
“Irv the Perv’s?”
“Don’t call him that.”
His smile momentarily faltered.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
“I’m down for crashing potlucks,” I said, “but you don’t know anything about church. They’re going to smell the Godlessness on you.”
“I don’t want to go to churches,” my dad said. “There’s a larger message here, Tessie, if you would just listen for it. You can’t just wait around. Sometimes, you have to drum up your own business. Even in the death industry.”
His leg was bouncing like crazy now. I reached out and took the coffee mug from his hand. Then I waited and listened for the brilliant idea that was surely on its way.
“Nursing homes,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Isn’t that a little crass? Even for you?”
“No,” he said.
I thought he was done speaking. Then he started up again.
“I remember when I was in the hospice with your grandma, one of the nurses was telling me that most of the residents didn’t have a plan. They wanted one, but they weren’t mobile enough to go to parlors. Their needs weren’t being met. They might be our ideal customers, Tess. Practical and quickly approaching their time of need!”
“I don’t know . . .” I said. “It sounds kind of tacky.”
“Just give it a chance,” he said.
“Are you broke again or something?” I asked.
“I may have had some debts to pay with the Ocala money,” he said.
I took a bite of toast and chewed it slowly.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “I made an appointment at Sunrise Commons in an hour.”
Sunrise Commons, as you might have guessed, was a new senior living place in the deep suburbs. And before we got there, we saw a billboard for it off the side of the highway: an enormous photo of a stylish older couple holding up sparkling wineglasses. Above them, a chandelier hung like an oversized halo. They looked like they were about to have athletic old-person sex any minute. And over their smiling faces in five-foot font, the board read: RETIRE . . . BUT NOT FROM LIFE!
“Damn,” I said. “There goes your sales pitch.”
When we actually got to the place, the grounds looked more like my old boarding school than a nursing home. It was all decorative cornices, porticoes, redbrick chimneys. Maybe, I thought, it was a way to bring the old back to their youth. And sure enough, just after we got there, we were almost mowed down by a golf cart full of giggling octogenarians.
Inside, we walked past a fireplace bursting with spring flowers. The rest of the room was just as ornamented. Arched doorways. Wainscoting. At the front counter was a petite birdlike woman with dyed blond hair, and the largest, whitest teeth I’ve seen.
“Welcome to Sunrise Commons,” she said. “How may I brighten your day?”
“We’re here to give the death talk,” I said.
The woman’s face fell like it had been hit with a tranquilizer dart.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. “I’m Duncan Fowler. I’m giving the presentation about end-of-life care decisions. I believe it’s in the Vanderplank Room.”
The woman’s shrewd stare was still stuck on my face as she tapped something into a touch screen on her desk.
“Fowler you said?”
Dad nodded. More tapping.
“Okay. Right. Yes. I see.”
She examined both of us one more time and rose to her feet.
“Well, I guess you’d better come this way.”
She set off walking, and my dad gave me a what-the-hell look. His manic energy had now been replaced by a Zen-like focus. We strolled through the main building of the commons, which was a maze of tiled hallways. Finally, we reached a wing in the back of the complex that actually looked and smelled like a real nursing home.
The decor was plain, and the scent of pureed food lingered in the air, melding with lemony disinfectant. When we stepped through the door of the common room, the assembled audience for Dad’s talk looked like it was composed of the oldest living humans on earth.
So this was where they kept them.
Most were in wheelchairs. Some were sitting on couches with throw blankets folded neatly across their laps. The man closest to me wore a pair of glasses with one eye blacked out. Another woman had hair so wispy and delicate it looked like dandelion fluff that might blow away in a strong breeze. Dad turned to his new congregation, cleared his throat, and pulled out a handful of lined yellow notecards.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
There were a few return blinks.
“My name is Duncan Fowler. Behind me is my daughter and business partner, Tess Fowler. We specialize in unconventional funerals. And today, I would like to talk to you about doing something truly spectacular with the end of your life.”
A man in a stocking cap sniffled.
“It may seem a little odd to you, but I’ve come to realize that I care a lot about death rituals. Rituals for grief are some of the most important ones we have. And I’m trying to find ways to broaden the conversation about them.”
He looked back at me. I nodded. He wasn’t botching this, for once.
“What I really want to do is something meaningful, something that matches your personality. A ceremony that helps people feel like they have experienced something real about you.”
The man with one visible eye had it open wide now.
“All of you have lived long lives, and I’m sure there are many people who love you. I know it would help them to have an opportunity to remember you when your time comes. So, if any of you would like help with your final arrangements, I’m willing to assist you in any way I can. That’s why I’m here today.”
I exhaled and looked around the room. Dad hadn’t said anything stupid. In fact, he had kind of nailed it. But the crowd might as well have been a still photograph. Finally, the one-eyed man adjusted his glasses and raised his hand.
“I have a question,” he said.
Dad looked him in the eye and nodded. The man’s face constricted in anger suddenly, as if some switch on his back had been flipped.
“Why can’t you see that it’s completely useless?” he yelled.
The room filled with institutional silence.
“I’m sorry,” said my father. “What exactly?”
The man looked at him incredulously.
“The salad bar. It’s useless. A waste of space. Why do we have to pay for that when nobody wants it here?”
A dark-haired attendant quickly came over and put her hand on the man’s shoulder. She smiled.
“Okay, Mr. Cole,” she said. “We all know your opinion on the salad bar by now.”
“Dad . . .” I said.
“The real problem is,” the woman with the fluffy hair chimed in, “is that my daughter is supposed to pick me up in an hour. But she’s not going to know which room I’m in. Who can help me with that?”
I walked over to the attendant, a Latina woman with her hair tied back in a tight ponytail.
“What are they so upset about?” I said.
My dad stood next to me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not you. Most of these people are from the Memory Care unit. They have their good days and bad days.”
“Memory care,” I said. “As in . . .”
“Alzheimer’s. O
ther forms of dementia. Many of these patients have a high level of impairment.”
A few more people in the back had their hands up now. My dad looked at them.
“Why are they at my talk?” he asked.
“It’s good to get them out of their rooms. They don’t have a lot of outside interaction.”
I stepped off to the side, wondering how quickly we could leave.
Then I saw the woman.
I’m not sure if she had been in the room before, or if she had just arrived during the Q&A. She had a bright white Betty Page haircut and a lip-sticky smile. It looked like she had gone directly from age nineteen into old age without anything in between. She was motioning me to the back row. When I reached her, she touched my wrist.
“I enjoyed the speech,” she said. “My name is Mamie Lee.”
I looked down at her. Her soft brown eyes darted back and forth.
“Thank you,” I said. “I just need to get my dad, so . . .”
I started to move forward but she tugged on my shirtsleeve.
“I would like to plan a funeral,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “My dad has some forms I can leave with you. Maybe you can go over them with a family member.”
“That’s not what I want,” she said calmly.
Dad was looking at us now.
“I would like to have my funeral in two weeks,” she said.
I closed my eyes. I was starting to suspect the woman at the front desk of sabotage. When I opened my eyes again, Mamie Lee was looking right at me.
“I was just admitted here,” she said. “I’m in the early stages, but I’ve seen it move fast, and that’s how it usually works in my family. I would like to have one of your celebration funerals before I’m too far gone. Is that something you can do? Have it while you’re still alive?”
I looked over at my dad. His mouth was open. He didn’t seem capable of providing an answer, which wasn’t surprising.
“Of course!” I said. “We . . . do that all the time.”
I was not looking at my father now. Only Mamie Lee.
“Do you know what kind of celebration you want?” I asked.
The woman smiled to herself.
“Oh yes, darling,” she said. “I would like a burlesque funeral.”
And then I watched my father’s face turn a shade I had never seen before.
21
“What the hell were you thinking? Saying yes without asking me?”
We were back in the parking lot of Sunrise Commons, watching the fake old people go about their days. Oh, and Dad was kind of pissed.
“Have you had a total meltdown, Tess? Is that what’s happening?”
“I was drumming up business,” I said. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“I’m not happy,” he said. “That room was full of people who barely know their own names. Now a woman wants to have a burlesque funeral. There are some ethical issues to consider here.”
“Oh. You’re ethical now? You were the one who wanted to prey on nursing homes in the first place. I know, Tess. Let’s go to the place where everyone’s slowly dying and sell them some funerals!”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that.”
“Also, Mamie’s different. You heard her describe the situation herself. She’s fine right now.”
“She wants people to take off their clothes at her funeral.”
“We don’t really know the details yet.”
I watched as a robust old man left Sunrise with his golf clubs. He looked like a walking Viagra ad.
“She might have been having a rare lucid day, Tess,” Dad said. “Tomorrow she could wake up with no idea what she said.”
He opened the door to his Volkswagen, but he didn’t get in. He just stood there between the door and the car.
“What’s the point of a living funeral anyway?” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
I stepped closer to him.
“Maybe what doesn’t make sense is having a funeral when you’re dead,” I said.
“Give me a break, Tess.”
“Seriously. Think about it for a second. Why have a party when you aren’t going to be there to enjoy it? What sense does that make? You wouldn’t have a birthday party and not go?
My dad got in the car then and sat behind the wheel.
“C’mon,” he said. “We’re leaving. This was a disaster.”
I opened the door. He went to turn on the ignition, but I grabbed his hand.
“I mean it, Dad,” I said. “Maybe she wants to have a celebration when she can actually see everyone she loves one last time? Mamie’s not dead yet, but she’s dying. She’s losing the personality that she once had. That’s a form of dying, anyway. And she knows it’s happening. Why can’t she celebrate the person she was before she’s gone completely?”
My dad just sat there a minute, gripping the wheel. He tightened his lips.
“What if her family shows up and says I’m taking advantage of an impaired woman? Meanwhile, there are naked people dancing everywhere. That could be bad, Tess. I can’t risk another lawsuit after Nantucket.”
I looked at his face. It seemed like he was actually scared.
“You were all gung-ho this morning,” I said. “What happened? When did you become such a pansy?”
“I’m done talking about this.”
“Just let me meet with her again,” I said.
He shook his head slowly, but he didn’t look at me.
“She wants something outside the norm,” I said. “Isn’t that what we’re in business to do?”
I waited for his answer, but it didn’t come. He just started the car and drove us away without looking back.
■ ■ ■
My phone rang later that night.
I was up watching old-timey burlesque dancers on the Internet, which definitely beat my dad’s Playboys when it came to vintage porn. These women were bosses. There were no airbrushed nipples and cutesy little girl poses. The burlesque ladies shook and shimmied in spectacular clubs full of men in sharp suits. It seemed impossible that Mamie used to do this.
I picked up the phone.
“Was it that bad?”
Daniel’s voice was sharper than usual.
“What?” I said.
He sighed.
“Tess, it’s a little weird to send someone a naked picture and then not hear from them for an entire day.”
“You must be crushed,” I said. “Do you feel betrayed? Like you put yourself out there and got nothing back?”
“I see what you’re doing,” he said.
I looked away from the computer and listened for Daniel’s breath.
“It wasn’t bad,” I said.
“What?”
“Your picture.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
“So . . . Yeah.”
There was another pause.
“I guess we’ve seen each other naked now,” I said.
He was quiet. But the air felt charged with something suddenly. I didn’t want it to be, but I couldn’t make it stop. We didn’t say anything for ten seconds or so. Then I asked the first thing that came to mind.
“How did he do it?”
Another silence. I heard Daniel breathing on the phone.
“Pills,” he said finally. “The ones he hadn’t been taking. You didn’t know?”
“No. Not the details. I never really tried to find out.”
I closed my eyes.
“They tried to pump his stomach,” he said, “but it was too late. He was unconscious in the bathroom in our hall and the RA couldn’t bring him back.”
I lay my head down on my father’s desk.
“Did you have any idea?”
I asked. “That he was capable of that?”
“I don’t know. If I didn’t live with him, I never would have suspected anything. I knew he wasn’t going to class, and eventually I found out he wasn’t taking his meds. But right when I was really starting to get worried, he seemed to get better. I thought he was getting back to normal. The only sign was the park thing.”
“Park thing?”
Daniel took a deep breath.
“It’s kind of a whole long story.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Another breath.
“We were on one of our walks,” he said. “Even when he wasn’t feeling great, he still wanted to walk. And on this day, he said he wanted to go to the Public Gardens. He used to go there with his family on vacation when he was a kid. Make Way for Ducklings and all that. So we walked across the bridge from campus. There had been a lot of rain lately, and I remember the Charles River was really high. We stopped to watch it from the bridge, and the current seemed so much faster than usual.
“There were no boats out even though it was sunny. Jonah was in a decent mood, and he was telling me about the history of the Charles, how it used to be so full of sewage that people who fell in had to get tetanus shots. I wasn’t really listening to him, though. I was watching his face to see if it looked more like the Jonah I knew. And there was something there. His eyes seemed to have more life to them.
“We walked into the gardens, and I followed Jonah to the Lagoon Bridge. The Swan Boats weren’t going yet, but they were parked against the banks. We sat down on a bench near one of the weeping willows. Jonah had been talking a lot, but suddenly he got really quiet. And I noticed he was distracted, looking at something on the other side of the lagoon.
“Somehow I had missed it, but almost directly across from us there was this homeless guy sitting there, dressed in multiple layers of sweaters and suit coats. I couldn’t see his face because he had a hood pulled tight over his head. But I could see a gray beard spilling over his chest. And he was surrounded on all sides by these giant blue translucent garbage bags full of white stuff. He must have had six or seven of these bags, each one full to bursting.
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