by Dani Lamia
I look over at the priest, who seems to be both encouraging and confused in equal measure. I don’t believe in God, but I know that our dad did somewhat and that he went to mass every Sunday, as well as on the extra holy days of obligation. What a fucking waste of time.
I sigh and glance up at the ceiling before continuing.
“The world is a shittier place now that our dad is dead. That is just a fact. We have all been robbed of so many new games and toys, and those of us here who were actually his sons and daughters and grandchildren and friends have all been robbed of future good times, of future demented laughter, of future immeasurable joy. We are all going to have to work very hard from now on to give back everything that he gave to us. But he taught us well. Thanks to him, all of us here celebrating his life know how to kick back, to slack off, to play hooky, to procrastinate, to dawdle, and to fritter away a lazy hour in the company of the ones we love. Now we get to give it all back. He had his turn, and he spun the wheel and he made his move. And now it is our turn. Thank you all for coming. We will miss him so much.”
I sit back down to thunderous applause, but I hardly hear it. Giving a good speech makes everyone grateful because we all feel so terrible and embarrassed when somebody gives a bad one. Olivia and Jane lean against me, snuggling, and even Ben gives me an appreciative nod. We settle in for the long Catholic mass that follows.
When it’s finally time to go to the cemetery, Bernard refuses to ride with us. He doesn’t trust Phoebe to drive his champagne-colored convertible—a hideous antique testament to dwindling testosterone, and about as energy-efficient as a coal-burning steamboat—so he says he will follow us.
“The point of not driving yourself is that you might be too broken up with grief to drive safely,” says Henley. Bernard gives him a withering look.
“I’m sad,” says Bernard. “Same as you.”
“Of course, you have your sweet family to take care of,” adds Henley. “You have to be strong for them and not show any emotion. We get it.”
Henley, Gabriella, Alistair, and I pile into a limousine that takes us to Calvary Cemetery, to the family plot where Mom already lies buried. Olivia and Jane ride with Ben. All three of my siblings look nervously at me as soon as I sit down and get situated, as if expecting me to rip off my own face and then spray them with acid saliva from a set of razor jaws extending from my neck hole. They know my moods better than me, sometimes.
“Good speech, sis,” says Henley after I grow bored and start looking out the window. He begins rooting around inside the door of the limo, in search of snacks.
“Hey look,” he says. “Free animal crackers.”
He opens the box and bites the head off each animal, then puts the half-eaten cookies back in the box.
“Why are you being gross?” Gabriella asks.
“I just want the heads,” Henley says. “You know, at Chinese funerals, everybody gives the family money. And then the family is supposed to burn joss paper to give the dead person ghost money that they can spend in the afterlife.”
“I could burn some incense,” says Gabriella.
“Please don’t,” I say.
“So what’s going to happen now?” Henley asks.
“Well, we are going to put him in a box in the fucking ground,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I mean with Nylo.”
Alistair and I look at each other.
“Dad has talked to us already about what will happen at Nylo when he dies,” says Alistair. “As far as the company is concerned, Caitlyn will just keep running it and nothing will change.”
“Nothing will change,” I agree. Although my statement comes out sounding more despondent than firm.
We arrive at the cemetery and the limo driver parks in the gravel lot. All around us, other mourners that I vaguely recognize but don’t feel like acknowledging are slamming doors and finishing hushed cell phone conversations.
“Look at all those grackles,” says Gabriella, pointing at the sky over the tombstones. “They’re coming this way.”
We watch the birds swoop and swarm for a moment. I see a glint in Henley’s eye.
Bernard has parked his convertible so that it takes up a whole row of spaces. I suppose this is an effort to keep it from getting scratched. It looks like some kind of Roman chariot. I’m certain that Bernard’s will decrees he is to be buried with his car, and I think for a moment how satisfying it will be to lower him into the ground with his moldering priapic corpse sprawled against the Italian leather.
Henley walks over to the convertible as if mesmerized, staring at the oncoming birds. The path to the gravesite is in the other direction and we all wait for him.
“Henley!” I finally yell, as he stands there with his back to us, leaning over the car as if in a trance. He jogs back and we all begin walking to the big finale of the day’s entertainment. Olivia and Jane and Ben catch up, and we form a nucleus of family. I notice Henley wiping cookie crumbs from his hands and slacks, and he gives me a malevolent grin that I don’t quite understand.
During the ceremony, I keep looking at Henley, who keeps looking at Bernard. Every once in a while, his eyes dart up and he stares again at the swarming birds, which seem to be covering the sky like a Biblical plague.
As the oldest child, it falls on me to toss the first shovelful of dirt onto the mahogany coffin. I do so dutifully, just wanting to be done with this horrible day. I can easily imagine Dad making a lame joke from down there. “Hey, knock it off! I’m trying to sleep!”
We all throw some dirt on him and then file back to our cars. Olivia and Jane seem relieved that it is all over. They lean against me as we walk. Ben hangs back, giving us space. As we near the cars, Henley grabs my arm, cackling with glee.
“Oh, goddammit,” we hear Bernard shout. He begins running. We see birds leap out of his car and disappear into the sky, covering the smooth leather and glossy paint with ropy streams of gritty feces. They must have been feasting on Henley’s scattered crumbs.
Henley jumps up and down. He is so proud of himself. Honestly, I am astonished. I bark out one small laugh and then catch myself, not wanting to sanction Henley’s sociopathic behavior.
8
That night I sleep at the office, which means I am awake at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. I wait around in the conference room kitchen, wearing a bright pink dress, hovering over a carafe of civet coffee with my head low until an assistant arrives with a plate of muffins and bagels at 6. Her eyes widen when she sees me sitting there already, but she recovers quickly and gently sets down the platter. I chow down on a carrot muffin that’s more like a piece of cake while finishing the pot of coffee.
I take the elevator up to Dad’s floor. In his empty office, I feel his absence acutely. I lie down on his couch and let myself cry a little. His smell lingers, haunting the place: the smoky sandalwood of his aftershave and the sweet lime coconut of his hair oil, the secret cigarettes that have soaked into the wallpaper and wood paneling. Sneaky smoking is a habit we share, but neither of us ever managed to acknowledge it in the other.
Then it hits me: I never got to smoke a cigarette with Dad and now I never will.
Why didn’t I ever just stick a Dunhill in the corner of my mouth and ask him for a light? Why did we have to be so close to each other but so far apart? What good is that kind of dignity of distance now?
I wipe my eyes and stand up. I guess this is all mine now. I go through his drawers, looking for any messages or sealed envelopes with my name on them. I’m not sure what I expect to find. I lie back down on his sofa, curling into fetal misery. No mom, no dad. I am an orphan.
When Devi arrives, bleary-eyed and puffy, we give each other space. I ask her to bring up more breakfast food: plates of bacon and poached eggs, pitchers of orange juice, cookies-and-cream donut holes from the bakery on the corner. She is glad for the distraction, glad for my e
xacting demands. I am happy to have someone to order around so early in the morning who seems to like it. We make common cause.
At 8 a.m., Angelo Marino comes in. He seems startled to see me. He should know better. He knows my habits. He immediately becomes even more clandestine and circumspect than usual. His long jaw clamps shut, and his wiry limbs become springy and coiled like a rangy leopard.
Angelo Marino has always been here—a handsome cadaverous presence who knows all of our secrets and seems indifferent to them—and I’ve always enjoyed the way his name rolls around in my mouth, the words frothing out like waves on the Sicilian shore: Angelo Marino. He and my father went to college together. My father was the engineer and Angelo Marino was the lawyer. Surprisingly, Angelo Marino never wanted any points in Nylo, but he has been at my father’s elbow ever since they first opened up shop.
He is seventy years old, but so olive-skinned and oleaginous that he has aged with the same tenderness as an expensive wallet. He still has a full head of iron-gray hair, and he has stern, vulpine features that I’m sure have been dropping Ivy League panties all over the Upper West Side for decades. He has never married, but I know from the unrestrained lust with which he looks at every comely assistant or intern (yet he never acts on these impulses—he is a passionate man, but a disciplined one) that he is not gay, as Henley has always insisted. “Prostitutes—very mean ones” is my rejoinder to Henley.
After saying hello to each other, we sit in silence for an uncomfortably long time.
It is Angelo Marino who finally speaks.
“It wasn’t painful, just so you know.”
“Oh?”
“I looked at the coroner’s report,” says Angelo Marino. “It happened very quickly, in the shower. Just turned his head to the side and that was that. The fall didn’t kill him, like we originally thought. I’ve actually never heard of anyone dying so peacefully. Usually, people stagger around, clutching their hearts and shrieking. Or else they fight to the end, eyeballs twitching as they relieve themselves on hospital beds in front of their children. He had a perfect death. A giant stroke. The H-bomb of strokes. I think he would have liked for you to know that. That his death was a good one.”
“I guess that does make me feel a little better,” I lie.
We sit across from each other in my father’s office for another hour. I answer emails about the Playqueen acquisition while Angelo Marino shuffles papers, getting documents in order.
Finally, at 9 a.m., Bernard arrives. He seems bored and slightly irritated.
“I’m the first one here?” he says.
“Uh, second one,” I reply with a mild snort of exasperation.
“I don’t know why we all have to be here,” says Bernard, oblivious. “Seems strange, right?”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Nothing is going to change. You’re going to be just fine for the rest of your damn life.”
“There is ten billion in tangible assets,” says Angelo Marino. “That does not include the investments, property, or company, of course. We are talking about ludicrous sums of money, and almost none of it is going to be taxed in a confiscatory fashion, on account of the various trusts and holding companies that we established together before his passing.”
“His passing,” snorts Bernard. “Where did he pass to? Where is he now?”
Gabriella and Henley arrive together. They are both a little drunk and I can tell that they have been up all night. Gabriella is bowlegged in her short cocktail dress and Henley is wearing a purple velvet suit with a giant purple ribbon around his neck that is tied like shoelaces.
“We are here for the formalities!” says Henley. “We are here for the ceremony of apportionment!”
“Can we please just get this over with?” asks Gabriella.
“I have an announcement to make,” says Henley, drunkenly. “I have decided to produce films. From now on, you must think of me as a film producer. I intend to be public-spirited about the whole thing. We will be adapting modern American classics for the screen, just like Merchant Ivory Productions in the UK. This will be an attempt to fight back against the intrusions into culture of godless China, which seeks to threaten democracy itself with its new cultural imperialism.”
“Is Bernard really going to get an equal share?” Gabriella asks Angelo Marino. “You know he will just gamble it away. Or spend it on mistresses. Or give it to his dumb church. What?” She gives Bernard a withering look. “We’re all thinking it.”
Bernard scoffs.
“I’ll call Alistair up from the basement,” says Angelo Marino, “to let him know everyone else is here.”
While we wait for Alistair, Henley tells us more about his plans for a new movie studio. He will first hire a team of readers to visit every respectable and ancient small publisher in the city and inquire about their forgotten classics, their most obscure masterpieces.
“The more unfilmable the better!” he says. “I want to produce works that mystify and bemuse foreigners. I want to show the real America, the one that exists outside of marketing departments and sales meetings.”
“What the fuck do you know about the real America?” Bernard says. “What the fuck do ancient small publishers know about the real America?”
Thankfully, Alistair arrives at that moment and the conversation halts. He sits down next to me on our dad’s sofa and pats my leg.
“So, you are all here now,” says Angelo Marino. “That means we can officially begin the reading of the will.”
He sends a text and a team of assistants pours in from where they have been waiting in the next room. They set up a projector and bring in five giant steel briefcases, which they stack by the door. One of the assistants shows Angelo Marino how to work the projector. Angelo Marino slots a flash drive into the USB port, queuing up a video that he has preloaded.
“Your father recorded a video message to be played in the event of his death,” says Angelo Marino. “He was very worried about all of you, if you must know the truth. He was more worried about you individually, as people, than he was about his legacy or about the fortunes of his company. Anyway, I’ll let him tell you in his own words.”
Angelo Marino sends the assistants out and locks the door to our father’s office. He presses a button on the wall and the giant windows dim. The room is dark except for the glow from our phones and the blue holding pattern that the projector throws on the wall.
All of a sudden, our father’s face fills the screen. Gabriella gasps.
“Yes, yes, I am dead,” he says, chuckling. “I know this must be a little awkward for all of you, but the simple fact is that now you are all going to have to fend for yourselves without me to settle your disputes or keep you from being damned fools. Henley, I am mostly talking to you here.”
Henley shifts in his seat, crossing and then uncrossing his legs.
“But I’m not only talking to Henley, although it is now all of your jobs to keep him out of trouble. All that you have now is each other. As I’m sure you all know by now, you can’t really trust anyone else in this awful old world. You can’t even trust Angelo. I’m dead now, so I can say it: he’s more snake than man.”
Dad chuckles and Angelo Marino looks at the ceiling, cracking his neck.
“Gabriella, you are the baby. But that doesn’t mean you have to act like it. I know you have a good head for business, but you are easily distracted. I want you to learn to focus, and to reap the fruits of your diligence and goal-directed efforts. I want you to feel the thrill of personal achievement. I know that the Nylo Corporation doesn’t hold much interest for you. I know that you do not like the competitive challenge of games. However, that doesn’t mean that the Nylo Corporation couldn’t benefit from your insights and natural wisdom.
“Bernard! Are you there? I have always admired you, my cold and analytical child, for your fine mind and your skeptical nature. You have t
o keep your siblings down to earth. You must keep them from getting a big head or losing sight of the bottom line. I know that you have your own strange urges and inclinations, and I know that you have always had a very… shall we say… romantic spirit. I know you are lonely. I know you don’t always understand other people. But you are part of this family, and you need to know that no one in the world will ever understand you better than your own brothers and sisters, not to mention your own wife and your own children.
“Alistair, my boy. I don’t have much to say to you now that I haven’t already told you a million times in person. It has been such a gift and a joy and a luxury that I have been able spend so much time with you and to see you grow so much as a creator. Some of the best work I have ever done has been at your side and I have always been so inspired by you. I have marveled at your restless, relentless, inventive mind. I’m sure you will continue to make great things for us. We are very alike, you and I. For that reason, I don’t really know what advice to give you. Certainly, I was often my own worst enemy. Don’t be yours.
“Henley, did you really outlive me? I find that hard to believe. Sober up and do the right thing. And if you can’t do that, at least make sure to share the fun. It’s no good to keep all the pleasures of the world to yourself. I do believe that eventually you will discover that the best feeling in the world is doing things for other people and I do believe that eventually it is the feeling of service that will overtake you as your final addiction. In the interim, please do everything that your older and wiser siblings tell you to do. They know better than you. You are a delightful and charming idiot.
“Which brings me to Caitlyn, my oldest. I guess you expect that you are going to inherit everything that matters, don’t you, Caitlyn? I guess you expect that the Nylo Corporation is now going to fall frictionlessly into your capable hands? Well, I am here to tell you that this is indeed very far from the case. I am here to tell you that if you expect to take over the company, you are going to have to earn it. And I am here to tell you that your sister and your brothers have just as much of a chance to take over control of the Nylo Corporation as you do. Yes, gather round, children. Because you are about to go on an adventure. I have a game for you to play. One last game. And the winner gets everything.”
