Funeral Hotdish

by Jana Bommersbach

  Paul drove like a maniac the thirty miles, Lois crying all the way, expecting to find a body when she got there, rather than a son. Paul never cried—hadn’t even when his dad died—but Lois thought his eyes looked moist.

  Nettie Schlener was the first person Lois Roth saw when she ran into the emergency entrance. Oh my God, Johnny and Amber had an accident, she instantly thought as her mind conjured up twisted metal and broken glass and maimed children.

  The two women embraced. Lois knew Nettie was less than happy that her perfect daughter was dating Lois’ imperfect son. But Lois herself was as pleased as pie about it. Amber was such a good, solid girl. She was no lightweight when it came to brains and the Good Lord had given her an extra dose of common sense. When you’ve got a rebellious son, you couldn’t ask for anything better than an Amber.

  “What happened?” Paul was frenzied, looking for anyone with news. But the emergency waiting room was empty except for nurses and Nettie, and she didn’t know, either. None of them knew that most of the class of 2000 had been here earlier, but had slipped away so nobody had to face these parents.

  “The doctor will be out shortly,” the nurses said, as though speaking from a script.

  So the three parents sat on the plastic molded chairs in the waiting room, wondering if they still had teenagers to raise. Lois thought she should call the other boys, but Paul said that could wait until there was something to report. Her youngest son in the hospital was enough for her, but Lois didn’t contradict her husband. Nettie borrowed the front desk phone to call her brother and her sisters, and Arlene was there within a half-hour.

  There’s no way to describe the kind of dread a parent feels at a time like that, although every parent has a good idea what it feels like. They get enough practice those nights when they sit up, waiting for the family car to come home with the kid who, on second thought, never should have been given the keys. Teenagers always think curfews are meant to limit them. They don’t understand until they’re parents themselves—curfews just limit the hours of fear for the folks sitting at home.

  And too many times, the fearful hours end in terror.

  Paul Roth was prepared for that, as he sat in a room that could use a paint job. He was quite sure his wife wasn’t, but Lois had always been frail. That’s probably why he fell in love with her in the first place—he was strong and would take care of her. Hadn’t done a bad job, either, although riches would never visit the Roth household. Paul never cared much about being rich. He never knew an honest man who was, and he was perfectly comfortable making a comfortable living, although the Good Lord didn’t always let that happen.

  Paul Roth had always provided a solid roof over his family’s head and the cupboard was never bare, and he and Lois had even taken a trip to see his sister in Florida last year. Paul Roth never expected much else. In their twenty-eight years together, he and Lois had brought three sons into the world. Paul Jr. was in The Cities now, working for Honeywell and making a home for his wife and three kids. Jimmy had settled on the home place, with a trailer not far from his folks for his wife and two kids. And Johnny—Johnny was supposed to graduate high school this year and who knew how he’d end up?

  How could his first two boys turn out so good, when the last one was so much trouble? It wasn’t that Johnny got into criminal trouble, just nuisance stuff. Speeding. Poor grades. Expelled once for three days. Staying out all hours. That kind of trouble. The kind that Paul Roth’s quick tongue and quicker fists couldn’t stop. Not since the boy got too big to hit anymore.

  Lois Roth would never admit to having a favorite, but in her heart, she knew it was Johnny. Not that she didn’t love the other boys, but Johnny was such a surprise. Paul Jr. was ten and Jimmy was eight when Johnny was born and Lois couldn’t have been happier. The first two arrived in those awful first years of the marriage, when Paul was waiting for his father to die so he could take over the farm. They lived in a trailer with nothing more than what Old Man Roth handed out. He was never known for his generosity

  But by the time Johnny came, they were in their own house and Paul was the sole owner of the farm—brother LeRoy got land nearby—and Lois had the time, patience, and money to handle a baby. She fantasized that Paul would take a softer hand with their surprise child. Certainly he must share the joy of raising a child now that things were so much easier. And the first two were turning out so well—nice, respectful boys who did their chores and never talked back to their dad and weren’t a bit of trouble, considering they were normal boys. Surely Paul wouldn’t have to be so heavy-handed with Johnny. Maybe he could even show this boy some love.

  Lois never understood that Paul was convinced his first two had turned out fine because his heavy hand kept them in line, so he saw no reason to abandon his winning streak.

  Nor did he see the need to say out loud what must be obvious. He wouldn’t work his ass off on the farm if he didn’t love his family. He wouldn’t be so strict if he didn’t love his boys. He wouldn’t hammer them on their studies if he didn’t care. He’d be out spending his money at Jerry’s Bar if his family didn’t come first. Paul didn’t think you had to be a rocket scientist to know he was a good, loving father. Actions speak louder than words, wasn’t that the saying? Paul Roth had never been very good with words anyway, at least not those soft ones like Lois dished out. The softest words he ever used came every Sunday during mass, when his silent prayers thanked the Lord for giving him his boys.

  If Lois Roth lived to be a hundred, she’d never understand why her husband saw his first parental responsibility as punishment. To her, it was natural to hug first, comfort first, and then dish out whatever penalty was due. Her approach worked—Paul’s didn’t—because unlike her husband, she knew the sweet joy of hearing her children say, “I love you.”

  Even she found it hard to love Paul at times, for a whole list of reasons. The worst one still played out in her memory from ten years ago, when Johnny was seven. His arm got caught in the thrasher and only by the grace of God, did he escape with no more than a gash that thirty stitches repaired. He bled all over the pickup as Lois and Paul rushed him to this hospital, and during the entire drive, Paul never let up on what a stupid mistake the boy had made to get injured in the first place. Lois wanted to tell her husband how heartless he sounded, but of, course she didn’t. She joined Johnny in resenting every word.

  And now who knew what the boy had done that landed him in the emergency ward? How mad would Paul be at yet another stupid mistake?

  It took forever for the doctor to finally come out, looking for the parents that must hear bad news. Nettie’s sister, Arlene, had arrived by then and all four adults jumped to their feet when the doctor walked in.

  “I’m Doctor Clark. And you’re…?”

  “I’m Paul Roth and this is my wife, Lois, and our son Johnny is here. And this is Nettie Schlener and her daughter, Amber, is here. The sheriff called and told us to come.”

  The doctor asked Nettie and her sister to wait in a side room, as he pulled over a chair and sat close in front Johnny’s folks. “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Roth, but your son is in a coma.”

  Lois nearly fainted from panic and shock.

  “We believe he overdosed on drugs.”

  Lois didn’t hear anything else. She didn’t hear that Johnny also had a broken leg—that was irrelevant. She didn’t hear her husband let out a stream of blasphemes. She didn’t hear anything as she lost consciousness.

  Later, Lois would be grateful that fainting kept her from the worst part of all. But Paul heard it, when the doctor left them to join Nettie and deliver the words of death. She was grateful she never heard the screams from poor Nettie and Arlene. She was grateful she didn’t hear the hateful words Arlene spit at Paul.

  A nurse was with Lois when she came to. She broke the news gently. Lois couldn’t believe it. The nurse said the hospital would provide a cot if she wante
d to stay in Johnny’s room, and certainly, Lois Roth wanted to stay. In fact, she had to stay. By the time she’d regained consciousness, her husband had driven off like a bat out of hell.

  ***

  Lois Roth had been sitting next to Johnny, holding his hand and talking to him like the doctors and nurses suggested, for most of the sixty-eight days he was in a coma. The first break was when she went home to attend Amber’s funeral, but at the last minute, she couldn’t face everyone and went back to the hospital. Her cousin told her Nettie let Amber wear the corsage that Lois had sent.

  She had to break for Thanksgiving, as her other children and grandchildren wanted her, but thank the Lord that Jimmy’s wife stepped up and cooked the turkey dinner. Lois adored her sweet daughter-in-law. But she found no relief from the annual dinner of family and abundance. All the healthy faces around the table couldn’t erase the image of Johnny, pale and still. All the laughter of children couldn’t overcome the silence of that hospital room. Even the mincemeat pie—made in her honor, as she was the only one who liked it—went uncut when Lois passed on dessert. As soon as dishes were done, Lois returned to her son’s bedside.

  Paul didn’t share the vigil. He came back the day after “the accident,” as Lois demanded it be called, and stayed an hour. But he couldn’t abide sitting there when the farm needed attending. Johnny’s brothers and their wives each came once, but it was pointless.

  So Lois sat alone, willing her son to wake up. She convinced herself he could hear her, so she talked about the people he knew. She read him the Fargo Forum every day and the News-Monitor from home every week. The nice librarian from Hankinson brought her a pile of books Johnny would like, and Lois cried for an hour at that kindness.

  She’d never been much of a reader herself, but she dived into the books and found some comfort for herself. The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. One day Lois picked up a thick book with an interesting cover and by the time she’d finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, she was hooked. Thankfully, the librarian had brought the next two in the series, and Lois knew she’d read the rest of the books when they came out. The first time she smiled—a real smile over a pleasant thought, not a forced smile to be pleasant to the hospital staff—was when she realized she’d been looking for Platform 9 3/4 her entire life.

  Lois was watching I Love Lucy reruns and relaying the story line to her son when Paul surprisingly walked in the door.

  “No change?” he asked his wife.

  “Nothing yet,” she said. “You look tired, Paul. Here, sit down by him and talk to him. The nurses say that’s the best thing we can do.”

  “No, you stay there.”

  Paul walked around the bed as though he were seeing the scene for the first time. “What are these machines for?”

  “They’re monitoring everything—his heart and brain and blood pressure. That other tube is the IV feeding. I think it’s sugar water.”

  “Hum. Did the doctor say anything?”

  “No, he says we just have to wait. He still thinks Johnny is going to come out of it.”

  They both were quiet for a long time.

  “So, how you doin’?”

  It didn’t surprise Lois that her husband had taken so long to ask. “I’m fine. I’m tired. And the food here isn’t anything to brag about. But I’m fine.”

  Another man would have taken his wife in his arms. Another man would have comforted her with whispered words of encouragement. But Lois Roth didn’t expect that and as usual, her expectations were met. It was a relief when Paul said he was going to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a smoke. Lois went back to Lucy, like she was rejoining an old friend.

  The credits were rolling when Johnny opened his eyes.

  Lois didn’t see it at first. She was looking at the TV screen and repeating the dialogue and all of a sudden, she felt pressure on her hand. It took her a few seconds to realize Johnny was squeezing it—not much, but a definite squeeze. He was looking at her when she turned her head away from the TV.

  “Johnny!” She sucked in her breath. “Oh, Johnny. Oh, my boy. Oh, honey. Oh, God. Oh, thank you, God. Oh my God. Johnny.”

  She sprang up from her chair as she chanted the words, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “It’s okay, honey. It’s gonna be okay.” She’d been instructed to alert the nurses if there was any change, but she forgot all that now as she clutched her son’s hand and stared into his open eyes. Johnny kept blinking, trying to get a clear image and Lois kept talking: “You’re going to be okay now. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. Don’t move, honey. You’re hooked up to machines and there’s a lot of tubes. Don’t move, but you’re going to be okay.”

  What Johnny first heard was this: “oin. be. ow. do. ked.” It sounded like a radio station that keeps cutting out. It took a while before the words started to make sense. By then, the smoke that had covered his eyeballs was gone and he could easily see a woman—she’s so familiar, I know this….Mother!

  He opened his mouth, but the sounds that came out didn’t resemble words, even to his own ears. His tongue felt thick and covered with cotton; his throat was raw, there was a bell ringing in his ears, his right leg felt like it was weighted down with an anchor. He kept trying to say, “Where am I?” but it came out as just a guttural noise.

  Mothers may be the only ones who can understand the noises of their children, and Lois knew enough to ground her son to this moment as he came back to life. “You’re. In. The. Hospital. Honey. In. Fargo. You’re. Going. To. Be. Alright.” She forced herself to say the words slowly, letting them sink in.

  Another guttural noise that was supposed to be “Why?”

  How many mothers in the world faced the task ahead of her? How do you explain what’s happened? How do you tell your child that he might get out of this bed, but things are never really going to be okay again? How do you account for sixty-eight lost days, and the horrible night that started it? Carefully. Slowly. Prudently. She’d practiced it a million times as she sat here at his bedside, how she’d parse out the information. He didn’t need to know much at first. First he had to get strong. Then they’d tell him. Then he could grieve. Lois planned to have the minister here when she finally told him the last awful truth he had to know. But that was way down the line. Right now, he didn’t need to know any of that.

  “Johnny, you overdosed at the barn dance, but the doctors say you’re going to be alright. You’ll be okay, son. Just stay quiet.”

  Lois finally remembered she was supposed to alert the medical staff, and she tried to pull away to go to the hall and call for help, but Johnny’s grip tightened.

  “Am I going to die?”

  “No, sweetheart. No. No. No. You’ll be okay. Don’t worry. Just stay calm. I have to go get the nurses. Just stay quiet and I’ll be right back.”

  Johnny hung on even tighter. “Am…Am….Amber?” he stammered as though a memory had been pricked.

  Lois went from her joyful crying to anguish in a second.

  “Oh, honey,” she whispered. “Don’t think about that now. Just think of waking up. Please, just wake up all the way. I’ll get the nurses.”

  And that’s when Paul Roth walked into the room.

  Lois didn’t know what she feared most, having to tell her son that Amber was dead or watching her volatile husband do it. Her worst fears were standing there, his fists clutched and his jaw working in anger. In her dreams, Lois had prayed this brush with death would touch Paul enough to show compassion, but one look and she knew she’d fooled herself again. Still, she tried her best.

  “Look, Johnny’s woke up, Dad. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Paul never once looked at his wife.

  “Well, you did it this time, you no-good, son of a bitch,” Paul started, and even men more hard-assed than Paul would have flinched at the attack.
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  “I shoulda known you were into drugs. Anything to get in trouble. You’ve been trouble all your life. You had to be a smart ass, didn’t you? You had to mess with stuff that could kill you. Bet you thought you were something. A big man! Well, it didn’t kill you. But it sure as hell killed Amber. What that pretty little girl saw in you, I’ll never know. But you know what it got her? It got her buried six feet under. And it got your whole family tarred like we were some no-goods. You should see how the men in town look at me now. And your brother. Like we’re dirt! All because of you. Now how the hell you going to live with yourself?”

  Lois was flailing her arms at Paul, trying to push away the words, trying to use her body to shield her son from this diatribe, but it did no good.

  The monitors hooked up to Johnny’s body went crazy.

  Paul paced the room, continuing his verbal assault, as nurses and orderlies and doctors came rushing in, panicked by what they were seeing.

  For once in her life, Lois raised her voice to her husband. She screamed at him with a force that astonished them both. “Stop it! Stop it! He just came out of a coma. My God, he’s your son and he’s alive. How in God’s name can you be so damn cruel?”

  Paul was stupefied that his wife would challenge him. He was so stunned, he didn’t have an instant retort. He wouldn’t get another chance this day, as the room filled with people in white who pushed him and Lois aside.

  To a trained eye, the heart rate and blood pressure inside Johnny Roth’s body were heading toward a stroke. Nobody could even interpret what the brain monitor was showing. But you didn’t need medical training to see this boy was in utter agony.

  He didn’t so much scream as burst with a sound both frightening and pitiful. One hand was making a slow journey toward his face. The other was stretching forward, like he was warding off a knife attack. All ten of his fingers were frozen in a curl that reminded one of the nurses of her spastic patient down the hall. He tried to pull his knees up to his chest, as though it were imperative that he return to the fetal position. While all the time his vocal chords made the scream-moan of a dying animal.