Requiem, Mass.

by John Dufresne

  There were ten towheaded Ludy children, all younger than I, from six months to eleven and a half years, seven boys, three girls, no twins, all of whom would grow up to be handsome and strapping mechanics and heavy-equipment operators. Audrey and Drake busied themselves playing fawning waiter and waitress until they grew bored and organized the littler Ludys into a rousing game of Statue Man.

  BLACKIE WAS filming the day’s festivities, making a documentary he was calling Graduation. His artistic life had taken a recent and dramatic turn when the two of us saw a movie together at Req Tech’s Film at Eleven Sunday morning cinema series. The movie was the Maysles Brothers’ Salesman, the story of four real-life door-to-door Bible salesmen. The movie starts in Requiem County in the snow and the sleet and ends up in the sunshine and warmth of Miami Beach. You might think the radiant geographic shift would suggest a happy ending. And here’s an eerie coincidence: Before the movie was made, Violet had bought a Catholic Bible bound in antique gold Fabrikoid from the skinny salesman in the movie. Mr. Baker. The guy with the bow tie and the three fingers on each hand. Blackie remembered Mr. Baker sitting at the kitchen table with the Bible opened to a page of color illustrations of the Vatican and talking about the Swiss Guards who were taller than most of your Italians. Blackie said, You don’t forget hands like those.

  After seeing Salesman, Blackie talked all the way home about going back to St. Anthony and shooting more of Nora McCabe and Baby, more of the aides and the nurses, and the other old-timers in the rec room. He called the nursing home the next morning and found out that Nora had died about three weeks after we had visited her. Blackie was stirred by our good fortune in talking to her when we did, by his prescience, as it were. But he was also distraught at his myopia. I didn’t recognize what we had there, Johnny. That won’t happen again. Seeing, he said, really seeing, is a moral imperative in this crazy world. Looking hard has to become a way of life.

  Blackie had been seized by the idea that you could make a documentary movie as emotionally compelling as a feature film, but with the extra and extraordinary power of its being absolutely real. Absolutely true, Johnny, true! He didn’t say it then, but I’m thinking it now—this was the difference between fiction and memoir. Blackie hadn’t completely abandoned feature films. In fact, when he made them, he figured to use their profits to bankroll his docs. His important work was now to capture objective truth, to witness lives, not to judge them. It was like he’d had a religious conversion, only his religion was reality, and he was a zealot.

  So now Blackie had a two-and-a-half-foot-long portable camera with a zoom lens balanced on his shoulder like a bazooka. Miss Teaspoon walked beside him with a reel-to-reel audio recorder slung on her shoulder and a microphone shielded with Acoustifoam in her hand. Graduation was going to be Blackie’s calling card for producers. He’d show them what he could do, and they’d hand him money for his full-length project, Convent. The bishop and I are talking, he told me. Sister Casilda is on board.

  I said, But what if nothing out of the ordinary happens today? He said, You trust that life is interesting and that something poignant or exhilarating or spectacular will happen, and it will. If you look at life beautifully, it will reveal its beauty to you. And if you bring a family together, with all the history there, then something wonderful or catastrophic is bound to happen.

  Mom arrived carrying a tray of Vienna rolls stuffed with bologna salad, a favorite of mine. She kissed my head and handed Stevie the tray. She regarded my gloved hands and told Stevie that when I was a kid, my hands were covered in warts, dozens of warts. It was heartbreaking, she said. All the other kids were afraid of him. Children can be so cruel. Stevie said how her mom thought warts came from handling frogs. Mom said she tried everything to get rid of the warts. Witch hazel, castor oil, apple cider vinegar, vitamin this, that, and the other. She prayed. She tried to burn them off. And then one morning he woke up, she said, and they were gone. A miracle, Stevie said. He stopped lying, Mom said.

  She put her hands on my shoulders and held me at arm’s length the way she did when I was little and she’d say, Look into my eyes and listen to my words. She smiled. “Look at you, Mr. Graduate!” She touched my cheek with her hand and nodded. “It wasn’t easy for me to come here today.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “What I mean is I didn’t get you anything.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’m not apologizing.”

  “Okay.”

  “An apology is a step back.” She held my hands like we were maybe going to dance. She gazed into my eyes, cocked her head. “You know why all this has happened, don’t you? You’re an Aquarian. I’m Libra.”

  “Astrology?”

  “You’ve become a little too reliant on me.”

  “But you’re my mother.”

  “I’ve had to give you your space. Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

  I started to protest, but she placed a finger on my lips. She said, “And I think it’s working out. You’re turning out to be a fine young man. A little too conventional for my taste, perhaps, but you’ll grow out of that. Maybe.” She looked to the buffet table. “You guys have a cozy little thing going on here.”

  Dad had his hand on Stevie’s lower back. She had her head on his shoulder.

  Mom said, “You’ve eased me right out of the picture.”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “She’s a malleable sort. The kind your father can appreciate.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “You, on the other hand, are drawn to independent women like me. It’s in your stars, Johnny. But you’ll always feel threatened by us.”

  I wanted to tell her I felt threatened by almost everyone, but she told me she should mingle and joined her friends. I could tell that she saw today as her coming-out party, new boyfriend, new wardrobe, new mind. She had on a silky black dress with gold signs of the zodiac on it. She was shoeless but wore ankle bells. She wore small diamond-shaped sunglasses and violets braided in her hair. Charlie Brown carried a six-pack of Piel’s Real Draft beer in each hand. His hair was in pigtails. He looked at me and said, “I’ve got one word for you, Johnny—information.” He and The Fox wore identical plaid shirts. Must have gone shopping together at the Salvation Army. The Fox’s date was a fifteen-year-old named Crystal, who apparently did not talk. The four of them sat in a circle on the grass, held hands, and closed their eyes. Blackie filmed Crystal as they all returned to earth and opened their eyes. Mom wanted to know who was making a pharmacy run. Crystal worried a loose front tooth with her tongue. The Fox said, I’ll need some cash.

  Even though we were just supposed to be ourselves, whatever that might mean, and not perform for the camera, that can be a difficult challenge for some people, especially if performing is their life. Aunt Priss and Uncle Eudore’s adorable five-year-old twins Kiki and Tsipi sang “Side by Side” for Blackie. Miss Teaspoon smiled, tapped her foot, and mouthed the lyrics. “What if the sky should fall?” And then Uncle Kayo arrived in a sleeveless butterscotch maxidress with a scoop neckline, an empire waist, and a slit up the right leg. He had on a wide-brimmed straw hat, overlarge sunglasses, and a pair of mango pumps with low heels and buckles that I would later hear him refer to as “kicky.” He put down the Pyrex casserole dish with his cottage cheese lasagna, smiled into the camera, and gave me a big hug. “We’re so proud of you, Johnny.”

  “You’re wearing a dress.”

  “Like it?” He did a turn.

  “I’ll get used to it.”

  Uncle Kayo had gone to Holy Martyrs, where he’d been an all-city tailback on their western Massachusetts championship football team. He loved his alma mater, he said. Never punched, not once. He took off his hat. His wig was a black bob sort of thing with bangs. He sang the school fight song for Blackie. “Boola boola, boola boola, that’s the war cry of Holy Martyrs Prep…” After prep school Uncle Kayo turned down a football scholarship to UMass because he didn’t want to lea
ve his older, simpler brother Pete alone. The two of them joined the Ringling Brothers Circus and traveled the country, running a funnel cake concession for four years until Uncle Kayo met Aunt Lottie in Wisconsin and/so (not sure which) Uncle Pete leaped to his death from the Ferris wheel.

  Mom leaned back against her arms, and looked up at the sky. Her eyes may have been closed. Audrey sat between Mom’s legs, the better to study Crystal. Crystal flipped her hair over her ears, and so did Audrey. Crystal rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand. So did Audrey. Crystal sniffled. Audrey said, “When your tooth falls out, could I have it?”

  “I might need it.” Crystal could talk.

  Audrey nodded. “Nice tattoo.”

  “Thanks.”

  Crystal had a homemade tattoo on her left forearm. BORN TO BE WILED. Audrey asked her if it hurt. “Not now but when you got it.”

  “Like a motherfucker.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Richard Cary, my ex-ex-boyfriend, the faggot.”

  “He misspelled wild.”

  Crystal checked her arm. “Nuh-uh!” She shook her head. “No one ever said it was, so I guess it’s not.”

  “It is a word.”

  “There you go.”

  “Spelling’s overrated anyway.”

  “I hate spelling with a passion.”

  “What’s your favorite subject?”

  “History’s cool.”

  “Does your mom know where you are?”

  “She doesn’t even know where she is.”

  I heard Louie howl and tell someone to let go of his arm before he broke it. I saw Red frog-march Louie across the lawn to Aunt Jan and Uncle Joey. Red said, Go ahead and tell your parents what you were up to. Dad put his hands on Red’s shoulders. Red released Louie. He said, We’re waiting, punk. Louie flexed his arm and winced. What had happened was that Red caught Louie in Garnet’s room rifling through her dresser drawers. Louie was not especially repentant nor particularly clever in his explanation—“I was looking for a book of matches”—but he did apologize for being where he was not supposed to be, and Red looked at me (and I looked at the ground) and reluctantly agreed to let him stay.

  Uncle Joey said, “Louie, if you need some money or whatever, just ask. Always ask. Asking is easy and legal.”

  Louie said, “I don’t need anything.”

  Despite that assertion, Louie would always need something. First it was heroin. And then after a second stretch in prison, he needed Jesus. And we all thought, Louie is saved; he has turned his life around; he was blind and now he sees. But then Jesus apparently reneged on his promise of prosperity, so then Louie found what he needed in motorcycles and crank. And then he was dead. Louie had been president of the Lowell chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. He was buried with his Softail Deluxe and his sawed-off shotgun. Eulogies were delivered by bikers who then poured beer over the casket. One freezer-sized guy with a bald head and a white goatee recited a treacly poem he’d written called “Ode to an Outlaw” in which he rhymed “V-rod” with “Gee, God” and in which Louie ended up on a road trip through Paradise with Heaven’s Angels.

  Cousin Dev, by the way, was a tad more fortunate than Louie, lived a far more conventional life, but eventually he did succumb to his vast Typhoean rage. After his second wife left him, Dev bought a bungalow in Newton. His neighbors had an ancient beech tree in their yard that had spread its limbs over Dev’s yard. Dev asked Mr. Mann if he’d call a tree service and have them prune the tree. Mr. Mann wouldn’t hear of it. The tree is magnificent, he told Dev. It’s a treasure. Dev tried the city commission, but they were unable or unwilling to help. After an October storm, Dev woke to find his yard ankle-deep in copper leaves. He was furious and determined to take care of business. He got out his ladder and his chain saw. He put on his goggles and leather-palmed work gloves, climbed the ladder, fired up the saw, and attacked a limb. Well, he must have hit a burl in the limb, and the saw bounced back into his face.

  Veronica arrived finally, but only to tell me she was leaving—not the party, but the city, the state. What? I opened her gift, a copy of Franny and Zooey. “I loved it,” she said. She took the chair beside mine, sat on her hands, and swung her feet. Her mom and her mom’s boyfriend Mike, the guy in the Coast Guard, were moving to Mobile, Alabama, and Veronica was going with them unless she could convince her dad and his girlfriend to take her in, but she wasn’t even sure she wanted to do that. In fact, she was sure she didn’t want to. Life with Lord and Lady Budweiser would be too distressing. Wheelock or Mobile, what’s the difference?

  I said, “Want some cake or anything?”

  She shook her head. “I got to go pack.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Will you write to me?”

  She nodded. (She never did.)

  So what do we do now? I wondered. I said, “Maybe you’ll move back like we did.”

  “I have to go.” She stood waiting for me to say something, do something. I knew I couldn’t very well kiss her in front of all these people. Didn’t want her to catch poison ivy, either. And I couldn’t cry, even, though my erstwhile girlfriend was leaving me before we even dated. I shook her hand with my gloved hand. She said, “Congratulations,” forced a smile, turned, and ran home.

  Stevie took Veronica’s seat and put her arm over my shoulder. I told her what Veronica had said. She pulled me toward her. “I wish I could make it better,” she said. “I’m feeling a little lost myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know the answer right now.”

  “You miss Monroe?”

  “You’ll find another girlfriend.”

  Drake and the little Ludys were playing Red Light Man, the aunts and uncles, Whist. Dad, Red, and the older Ludys were jacking up the shed. Blackie was filming Crystal, who was doing Audrey’s makeup. Coral lips, jade mascara.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Stevie said.

  “Just wondering what’s going to happen to all of us.”

  “The future’s the door we’re always opening, the room we’re always walking into. And we never know who or what’s going to be in there waiting for us.”

  “Dad says people don’t change.”

  “Does he?”

  “You are who you are.”

  “I’ve seen people change whether they wanted to or not. I’ve changed.”

  I noticed that Charlie Brown and The Fox were missing in action. Dev was busy peeling the bark off the white birch. Louie blew smoke rings at Blackie’s camera. I thought maybe it’s best this way. A clean slate. We got what we needed finally, a stable family for Audrey and a cute little brother thrown in. You can have anything, but you can’t have everything. I watched Stevie watching Dad watching Mom. Mom seemed to be asleep on the grass. Or else she was passed out. I told Stevie I’d better check on her. Stevie said she’d start cleaning up a bit.

  I shook Mom’s arm.

  “Johnny?”

  “Where’s Charlie Brown?”

  “We had words.” She sat up.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I was having a nightmare, and now I’m just dreaming.”

  “Hope you wake up soon.”

  “How’s she treating you?”

  “Stevie? She’s nice.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “He’s her problem now.”

  Crystal told Audrey she had to go. She got up with Louie’s help and put her arm around his waist. He whispered in her ear. She took a fifth of schnapps out of her purse and said, “I’ve got my fuckin’ this.” And off they went. Side by side.

  Later that evening, Blackie brought the tape recorder upstairs, and we sat at the table and listened while I opened my gifts and made out thank-you cards. I had a small pile of checks and crisp new bills in front of me. Blackie asked me if I wanted to be executive producer on Convent. I said if he really needed the money…He said he
was joking. On the tape The Fox said, “I wish I didn’t have two wives already.” Uncle Eudore, a landlord, said, “Well, when he dangles those juicy properties in front of me like that, I just get hard.”

  Blackie said, “You can’t write lines that good. People are going to put writers out of work.”

  While Blackie advanced the tape, I opened a card from the Sandilands. Ten bucks and this note: Congratulations! I understand you won’t be needing to babysit any longer. Lucy and Desi will miss you. We’re moving to Nantucket. The Captain (his mark).

  Blackie said, “Don’t look at me.” He stopped the tape and pressed play. “Listen.”

  Aunt Lottie says, “I can’t find a decent pair of size-twelve capri pants, but Kayo can find a lovely pair of size-eighteen shoes. It’s not fair.” In the background you can hear Uncle Kayo telling someone how he’s disappointed with his manicure. He tells whoever it is that the nail color is called I’m Not Your Waitress.

  Aunt Lottie says, “It’s what Kayo wants. Who’s he hurting? No one, that’s who. It’s a phase he’s going through, like golf. Two years ago he was all Titleist this and Wilson that, and match play and bunkers and g-d water hazards. And I’ll tell you what else. He’s not drinking. Knock wood. Watching the figure. And he’s got more zip, zoom, zing, and zest, if you catch my drift. Where it counts.”

  Audrey snuck up behind Blackie and put her hands over his eyes. “Guess who?” she said.

  “I know it’s you.”

  “Gesundheit!”

  Blackie rewound the tape. “Julie Sullivan.”

  “What?”

  “That’s Sister Casilda’s real name.”

  “She told you?”

  “She’s from Springfield.”