But when he braced his hands to the floor and tried to raise his torso, his head swam. It took great effort for him to lower his head and not let it crash to the hardwood. Tom covered his eyes with his arm.
And there’s you. I want to see you one more time, Jay. You son of a bitch.
Tom moved his hand to his pocket and picked out the phone and its separated battery. He pieced the two together, and a few screen swipes later, the phone rang. His oncologist’s office answered, and he explained to the receptionist his need to travel for a funeral on the East Coast. With little need for persuasion, he was prescribed a stronger pain medication, another pill for the nausea, and she pushed his next appointment back a week.
Someone will be glad for that slot. Tom ended the call and stared at the ceiling. The oncologist was in high demand, and it hadn’t been easy to secure him. There’d been a time when Tom hadn’t wanted or expected to die. When, although the prognosis was grim, he truly believed he could be the exception that made it. Instead of dying before he was fifty, he’d be back on the road. Or on a plane. Country hopping to concert halls and doing what he loved.
He looked at the piano, centering on it rather than the pictures. What will they do with you when I’m dead, baby? Sell you to a family with a snot-nosed kid who’ll run greasy fingers across your keys? He sighed. Can you be cremated with a piano? I could only let them burn you if you were whole. They can’t break you apart like a bunch of firewood. But we could go together. You’re the only thing that never left me. And when they’d open the door after we disintegrated and collapsed together, there’d just be my bone fragments and your beautiful, blackened strings to rake out. Now, that is a great scheme. Is there a crematory big enough? Jay would know. He’d find one for me.
But Jay was dead. And it was a stupid idea. His piano would be sold to the highest bidder. His photographs would go in the trash. And his ashes would be tossed behind the crematory for a dog to shit on. Who gave a damn? When Tom was dead, he wouldn’t care.
And that’s where I’ll focus. The end of the caring. About the piano, about Jay, about Jay’s children. And the new silver lining: now I have more choices. I can go by way of the old pain meds, the OxyContin, or we could do a nice mix and leave no fun for any junkies that might go through my medicine cabinet. It will be pleasant to mentally mix my death cocktail on an eight-hour flight to Pennsylvania and back.
Chapter Three
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
February 2038
As Luke looked at his father’s body in the casket, he was keenly aware of the skill his brother-in-law had demonstrated in putting Jay’s face back together. He preferred not to think about Jake having talent or purpose on the planet, but it kept him from contemplating the fact that his father’s face had needed to be put back together.
There’s a reason why Jake does this, he thought. I couldn’t have done it.
But Luke knew how much work had been involved.
There were two problems with the repetitive statements people incessantly spewed at him. Not only did they not have a clue how it’d been to be there, but the death was far from a “passing.” His grandmothers had “passed” in quiet submission. Jay’s mother, Meecie, had had a coveted death—after living with them for several years, she’d died silently in her bed, her son holding her hand. That was passing. Jay had been partially digested by a Civic and thrown up to die in a mass of mangled gore. Luke had barely been able to distinguish his features amid the embedded glass.
Now he found no evidence of the contorted face he’d last seen. It was just Dad. Asleep. His head turned at that fifteen-degree angle. How many heads had Jay turned in this way? And how many hands had he joined and placed over the abdomen? Luke had always believed the pose was stupid. Who slept like this? With their hands clasped and legs together, the toes of their shoes in the air like a tin soldier that’d been knocked over? His father had, of course, answered this question for him years ago.
✩
“They’re not supposed to be asleep,” Jay said. He continued massaging the hands of an older man Luke had helped him place in a casket.
The removing was fine. The transporting. The lifting. But Luke refrained from technical details. They held no appeal. And he had no idea why his father had any interest either. All he could think was that someone had to do it. Someone had to change car filters and clean portable toilets too.
“But that’s what they want. That’s what they all say.” Luke made a face, continuing in a nasal voice. “‘He looks like he’s asleep.’”
This comment made Jay stop what he was doing and face his son. “That’s not funny, Luke.”
“Well that’s not sleeping. The way he slept, he wouldn’t fit in that casket.”
“I told you, they’re not supposed to be asleep.”
“So what are they supposed to be?”
“Not in pain anymore. At peace.”
“People still don’t look like that when they’re at peace. I’m never at peace in a monkey suit. I wouldn’t sleep in a monkey suit. He probably slept bare-ass naked.”
Jay gave a heavy sigh, and there were several uncomfortable seconds with only the rise and fall of “Recondita Armonia” in the background.
“Come on, Dad. I’m stating the obvious.”
“Death isn’t a pleasant thing. Some of these poor people hang on for months, suffering. And it’s not the movies. When they go, the horror they’ve faced doesn’t just evaporate—”
“I’ve been on pickups.”
It seemed since Luke had been old enough to walk, he’d been encouraged to accompany Jay on body removals. He wasn’t able to be of actual help, but he remembered sitting in the front seat of the white van and feeling the back doors open. There’d be the sound of the bag sliding in, the gurney then folded and placed beside it. And he was a little boy, alone with a dead body until his father climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Think about this. If something terrible happened to someone you loved, how would you want to see them? And how would you want your family to see you? What would bring them comfort?” Jay returned to loosening the tension in the dead man’s hands. “Someday, this will be you.”
“I know I’m going to die, Dad, I know that.”
“No, I mean doing what I’m doing. You’ll need to be more sensitive. And think of doing things for others without reciprocity. Even if you don’t fully understand, caring for someone without an ulterior motive is—”
“A ‘good deed of truth.’” Luke cut him off with an exaggerated nod.
“You should build your life with those. You won’t always be the same person, in the same stage of life you are now. Eventually, you’ll be where I am.”
✩
His father had known Luke had goals that were infinitely more important than embalming and cremating bodies, but he still spent time trying to push his son into his footsteps. Luke had shown no interest and, after graduating high school, had remained at home, participating in only quick and unskilled tasks. But he knew Jay believed he’d “come to his senses.”
The final straw had been their fight last year—Luke had declared he didn’t intend to pursue a career in the mortuary industry. He’d continue acting.
And not just any acting—anyone could say words in front of people. He wanted more. Musical theater. Broadway. The Great White Way. That was a show. And he had a gift for it. He danced and sang, working the entire audience into wishing they were him or could be around him. He’d held prominent roles in every stock theater production for the past six years.
For the life of him, Luke hadn’t understood why Jay was disappointed. Unlike other things, Luke went to the trouble of trying to solve this problem. He’d been attempting to make sense of it since that rat bastard Jake had come into the picture and supplanted him. Luke had assumed that with his father’s love for music, his own musical aspirations would’ve pleased him. For certain, Luke’s talent would make him more than just a failed hope. But it had
n’t worked.
And now here Jay was. Scraped from the road. An empty shell, but a serene empty shell. Yes, all the reconstruction and cosmetics were a mask for death. But did he want that horrible sight to be his last image of his father? With the glass sticking out of his face and his skull cracked open? As Jay had once asked, how would Luke want to see him?
Alive. Luke clasped his trembling hands at the small of his back. I want to see you alive. I was hurt and angry that you didn’t believe in me. That you wanted things for me I didn’t. That you replaced me. But I never wanted you to die, Dad. I wasn’t ready.
He could practically hear his father answering how no one is ever ready. “Even if they think they are. Even if the person you love is suffering, and it’s for the best,” Luke imagined he’d say. “There’s always a part of you that thinks, ‘Not yet.’”
If Jay had stayed alive, perhaps an apology would’ve followed. Luke hadn’t intended to make it easy; he wanted to force his father to work for forgiveness. But he’d died at the beginning of this torturous, dramatic episode. Sans absolution. Without Luke telling him that he loved him, and that he’d missed him too.
During his time in New York, Luke fought missing Jay. He struggled passionately against the homesickness and to keep his anger hot. But sometimes, in the quiet of the night, when he was alone except for the roaches racing like greyhounds through the apartment, he remembered watching Robert Cuccioli with his father and wondered if he was wrong. But the memory of the fight came on the heels of any pleasant recollection, and Luke knew he was right. Still, the notion of his culpability surfaced from time to time.
Perhaps if I’d said that I remember being excited with you. But then you insulted what I’m trying to accomplish. You didn’t force me to leave, but you wanted me to! You wanted your embarrassing son out of your life so you could have your collection of everything that does fit with what you want! How can I forgive you for that?
That speech would’ve thrown Jay a bone. And then when he’d gotten mown up by that Civic, Luke could’ve found solace in having tried.
But what had he said?
He’d pulled away from his father’s touch.
“Do you want anything?”
“Not from you.”
What if I’d asked for a candy bar? A fucking Milky Way. You can’t stay angry with someone who gives you a fucking Milky Way.
Suppositions didn’t matter though. It was done. Luke was a slug and felt he owed his dead father: to abandon his Broadway dream, come home, and be a good funeral director.
He wanted to blame Jay for the feelings of obligation, but it wasn’t his father’s doing. It was sick divine manipulation trying to pin him in a corner. Luke didn’t believe in God usually, yet here He was.
It won’t work. I don’t care how many deities interfere. I won’t give up my life for you. You have your fucking son.
As perfectly reconstructed as his father was, Luke expected Jay to open his eyes. To tell him he was being an idiot. People got hit by Honda Civics all the time. God wasn’t trying to strategically maneuver individuals into different career choices. It hadn’t been a specific attack. No one was out to get him.
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Luke,” Jay would say.
Logically, he knew it didn’t, but it felt that way a lot.
Despite whoever the center of the universe actually was though, Dad was still dead. And as contrary as it seemed, having grown up surrounded by death, Luke had never taken into account that eventually Jay would be on his own embalming table. His father had been a permanent fixture. He’d live forever.
There’d been no ticking clock. He could rush to New York, become successful, and be a son a father couldn’t help but be proud of. In the short term, he could exact full control over the reconciliation. He’d prolong it until the dramatic good-bye at the airport where Luke would bestow forgiveness on Jay. And he’d had two weeks to plan. Until two weeks unraveled to less than an hour, and it had been figured out for him.
“You never did say what happened.”
Luke didn’t care to find the source of the voice. People had been approaching him during the viewing, vomiting hollow sympathies and questions that neither he nor they cared about. It was just moving through the expected motions of grief. Jay would’ve reminded him that people didn’t always know what to say, and he should be considerate, not critical of their discomfort. He wouldn’t have approved of Luke ignoring anyone, but his father wasn’t in the position to do anything about it.
“Am I interrupting?”
Luke kept his eyes on Jay’s face and said nothing. Let the visitor think he was in the darkest stages of mourning.
“Hello? Can you pause the keening for a minute?”
Now Luke turned, but only to shut the person up with a glare.
A man stood beside him, and as deep as Luke had been in thought, he might’ve been there for some time. His careworn face made him appear older than Jay, and he had an intimate, friendly feel.
He held Luke’s gaze, and for a moment, something overtook the magnetic amusement that had first dominated the stranger’s expression. It was a sudden shift, and what flashed through Luke’s mind was a fragment of music. The thundering orchestra around him stopped, leaving behind a solitary woodwind. The look in the man’s eyes—
“Ma in altr’uomo qui mi cangio—But here I become another person!”
As quickly as it came, the recognition vanished, and Luke wondered if he’d seen anything notable at all, or if he was just so nostalgic for Jay that pieces of his father’s favorite opera were haunting him.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but he’s not going anywhere.” The man tipped his head in the direction of Jay’s body with a casualness that made the action vulgar. “I, however, am. I have a plane to catch tomorrow.”
“You may not mean to be rude, but you are.”
“Rude is ignoring someone who’s asking you a question.”
The rebuke twinged. “Go read it in the newspaper, old man.”
“Old man? My God, you’re cruel, boy.” He put his hand to his chest. “Your dad wasn’t an old man, and I’m two years younger. I was one grade behind him, only one! If I’m an old man, what is he?”
A dead man, Luke thought, but said nothing.
“A dead man, I suppose,” said the stranger.
“Jackass,” Luke muttered.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
Luke glowered at him.
“It was a car accident, all right? He died in the street as if he were an animal! A Honda Civic mowed him down like a fucking dog!”
But Luke thought of how Jay’s body had actually hung in the air a split second before crashing onto the front of the car.
It wasn’t “mowed down.” It was “mowed up.” He scrunched his eyes closed, and tears spilled from the corners as he tried to eject the revolving image. He wiped his hand across his eyes and rolled his shoulders before glancing at the man.
“Are you happy now?”
His face was unreadable, but his gray eyes were probing as he contemplated Luke. Maybe that was why the man was familiar. His expression reminded Luke of the way Jay used to look at him. His stare moved like hands across a brick wall, feeling for a crack or a leak.
“No one’s happy, Luke,” he said. “It’s fucked-up. Just fucked-up. A boy shouldn’t have to bury his father.”
“I thought it was that a parent shouldn’t have to bury their child.”
“No one should have to bury anyone, in my opinion, until they’re so fucking sick of them, that they’d sooner kill them personally than have to spend another second sharing the same air. I know you were angry, but you didn’t hate him.” His glasses slipped an inch down the bridge of his nose, and he looked at Luke over the frames. “Please tell me you made things right before this happened.”
The odd thing about the stranger’s statement was that no one outside their immediate family had been aware of the rift between Lu
ke and Jay. Everyone else assumed he was just ready to pursue his dream in New York, not that he’d been banished from the house and hadn’t spoken to his parents in a year. Some people who’d approached him today hadn’t been aware he’d left at all.
“Well, did you?” the man asked again.
Who was this person who’d infiltrated their circle?
“How do you know about that?”
“I know many things.”
“Such as?”
“Jay didn’t keep much, if anything, from me. Particularly concerning you and your sister.” He motioned to where Beau stood across the room. “I doubt there’s anything new you could tell me. Except New York. If you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to hear how it’s been.”
Who are you? Luke felt his forehead wrinkle as he tried to place the man. Jay had been friendly but reserved. He hadn’t confided to anyone other than his wife, or perhaps Beau.
“You need to learn to come out of your head, Luke, and pay attention to what’s around you.” He gave a gentle smile.
His father had often given him similar advice, so the chiding felt almost comfortable.
“Who are you?” Luke asked aloud this time.
The look on his face was one Luke was accustomed to seeing—disappointment. He felt that he could’ve discerned disappointment in a pitch black room. The stranger had expected to be known. Luckily, he made a speedy recovery.
“Your mom probably wouldn’t have approved of any pictures of me. I live alone and can do as I please. Though, I’d know you anywhere.” He again studied Luke over his glasses. The smile crept back onto his face, and he extended his hand. “Tom DuBelle. People sound different over the phone, so I’ll forgive the faux pas in not recognizing me.”
The name didn’t help.
Tom removed his hand after a single shake as if he was afraid to be in physical contact for too long. He looped his thumbs in the front pockets of his slacks, and more color came into his cheeks.
Boy Page 3
