Advocate

by Darren Greer

  “A few more minutes,” she says. “And we’ll be done.”

  “Good,” I say.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  the word gay, my mother says, was not common then. David might have planned on telling his parents he was homosexual or queer. The truth, my mother admits, is she and Jeanette have no idea what words David used.

  They were hanging around at the door, the voices were too low to hear, when it was suddenly flung open and David came stomping out. Grandnan and my grandfather followed. My grandmother commanded David to come back, he wasn’t to run off as if he’d just given a weather report.

  “What’s the point?” shouted my uncle. “You won’t listen!”

  “The Bible is very clear, David Owen McNeil. This is an abomination.”

  My grandfather, according to my mother, looked waxy and white. He stood behind my grandmother as she and David faced off in the living room. David was flushed. My mother says she had never seen him angry before that day, but he was then.

  “I told you,” he said, “because I thought you had a right to know. Not because I wanted you to change my mind.”

  “You don’t have a mind,” cried my grandmother, “if this is what it’s telling you!”

  My grandfather put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. Whether it was to steady himself or calm her was unclear, my mother says. She and Jeanette still had no idea what the argument was about. More calmly, perhaps because he seemed to be struggling for breath, he explained to his son that something such as this was not unheard of to him. He had had patients.

  “But David,” he said. “These men live lives of secrecy, even blackmail. Diseases. Never knowing the warmth of a loving family, or having children. Do you want to live your life in that manner? “

  “I won’t hide it,” David shook his head. “I won’t.” He said this was not something that he could just change, like an old pair of socks. There were no treatments. It wasn’t an aberration. Or an abomination. It just was. “And there’s nothing wrong with it either. Even if your Bible says there is.”

  “Blasphemy,” cried my grandmother. “The poor boy is lost already!”

  My grandfather looked pained. He removed his hand from his wife’s shoulder to steady himself on the back of the sofa. My grandmother took a step towards my uncle. She said if this was the way he was then he wouldn’t be that way in her house. He could leave and never come back again, as far as she was concerned.

  “Is that really what you want?” said my uncle.

  “Yes!” cried my grandmother.

  “Millicent,” my grandfather said. “Don’t. He’s our only son.”

  “No son of mine will be this way. Not in my house.”

  “It’s my house too!” my grandfather said, now holding on to the back of sofa with both hands, and his face, my mother says, blanched white. He was wheezing.

  Uncle David looked at both of them unhappily. “I hate this,” he said. “But I can’t be something and then lie about it. I’m not built that way.”

  “You should have lied,” said my grandmother. “You should have gone off and had children and a wife and never spoke a word of it.”

  “You would have me put a family through that?” David said.

  “Yes,” my grandmother said. “I would have.”

  “Well, I won’t,” he said. “I am what I am, and all the arguing in the world is not going to change that. I wish you would just accept it.”

  “Accept it?” cried my grandmother. “I will not!” My grandmother again informed my uncle that if he did not recant and live a normal life he would no longer be welcome in their home. “This is not a home of blasphemy and perversion,” my mother tells me she said. “It is a house of God, and Christian values.”

  It was useless for my uncle to argue, but neither could he allow himself to be kicked out of his home as so many gay men had been before him. He loved his father. He loved his sisters. He loved his mother. He could not imagine living his life without them. He had to make his parents see reason. He asked his father to say something.

  My grandfather did not. He held on to the back of the sofa, his head down, and when David asked him what he thought he only shook it briefly. “I don’t know …” he said, and stopped.

  David pressed him. Did he want him to leave or did he not? Could they not sort this out?

  Many years later, David told my mother it was foolish of him to come into the house and expect his parents to accept what it had taken years for him to accept himself. He was young, he told her. Idealistic. It was the sixties. Europe had taught him that there was so much more going on in the world than Advocate had let on. He had developed his own set of principles and expected his parents to live by them. He realized only later that this was wrong.

  As he and my grandmother waited for my grandfather to answer, Jeanette saw him sag, and stumble. She cried to my grandmother, who turned around and caught him just as he was about to collapse to the floor.

  “For God’s sake, Hal,” my grandmother said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Got to lie down,” my grandfather croaked.

  My uncle and my grandmother assisted him to the sofa, where he lay on his back breathing shallowly with his eyes closed and his hands folded upon his chest. My mother suggested calling an ambulance, but my grandmother refused. She blamed my grandfather’s spell on shock, brought on by the disgusting news her son had brought home. David tried to argue, pointing out his father’s pallor and blue lips.

  My grandfather groaned, and tried to speak. The only word that anyone could make out was “David.”

  As my mother relays the story, I again see how my grandmother could think there was a devil at work in our lives — never more apparent than when my grandfather was stricken at the same moment his only son came out to his parents. I do not think it was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence. My uncle’s news was certainly a shock, but not one big enough to stop my grandfather’s heart — especially as he seemed, even in those brief moments, more willing to accept it than my grandmother.

  My mother admits now that my grandmother may have felt some guilt herself for what happened. If she had recognized right away he was having a heart attack instead of simply reacting violently to David’s news, she might have called the ambulance sooner. Over my grandmother’s protests David checked his father’s pulse. It was weak. He was having difficulty breathing. When he didn’t rebound after ten minutes, she began to get concerned. She shook him gently, and when he didn’t respond, she asked my mother to call the ambulance.

  When the ambulance came, he was loaded onto a stretcher and taken to the hospital. Before getting into the vehicle with her husband, my grandmother told David that when she and his father got back, he would either recant his nonsense or he would no longer be welcome in her house.

  My uncle said nothing. He and my mother and aunt stayed around the house. An hour later they received a call from Dr. Bodsworth, my grandfather’s physician. He’d had a heart attack but he was still alive. Two hours later they received another call from Dr. Bodsworth with the news that he’d had a second one in hospital and was dead.

  When my grandmother returned home, she blamed my uncle.

  “And what did he say?” I ask my mother.

  “Very little,” she says. “He was as stunned as the rest of us. He told me later that even he thought it was his fault, at first. She said your grandfather could not live with what David had told them, and died as a result of it. She truly believed this. She never changed her mind about it. She kicked David out of the house and told him never to come back.”

  “And he listened?”

  “Not at first,” says my mother. “He begged her not to do it. He said he was sorry, and that if he had known he would never have told them. Even Dr. Bodsworth said it was unlikely David’s news had killed her husband, but she wouldn’t listen. While David stood there she tore the Turkish carpet from the wall and burned it in the backyard along with all the things he’d given us. He never
made a move to stop her. He was crying, and Jeanette and I had never seen David cry before. Even as a kid he didn’t cry. The whole situation was awful.”

  “So what did he do?” I ask.

  “He left. When he saw that she wasn’t going to settle down. She threatened to call the police and have him removed. She said, ‘Take your soul sickness and leave here. I never want to see your treacherous face again.’”

  My mother pauses.

  “He was confused. Grief-stricken. Guilty and horrified. He left for Toronto and did as my grandmother asked. He never cashed his college fund cheque. Perhaps he thought she would soften one day, but she never did. Even when he got sick she didn’t forgive him. Now do you understand? Why she hated him so much? Why she couldn’t be there for him, even when he got sick and came home?”

  “It was foolish,” I say, “to think that Granddad died because of Uncle David. And even more foolish to be resentful after he got sick.”

  “Yes,” says my mother. “It was. Your grandmother was. She blamed most of her problems on other people, and she categorized human beings into acceptable and unacceptable lots. But your Uncle David forgave her, because he knew she thought he had killed her husband. He hadn’t, of course. But it explains a lot.”

  “It doesn’t justify it,” I say.

  “Jacob,” my mother says. “The world is not a balance sheet. I’ve given you this information so that you can find it in your heart to forgive her. Your aunt and I have. We think it’s high time you did.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” My mother sighs, and shakes her head. “You’re so much like her, do you know that?”

  “I know,” I say. “Believe me, I know.”

  2

  after uncle david’s body was removed from the house by ambulance, Dr. Fred drove Deanny home, though she hadn’t wanted to go.

  “Go home, Deanny,” my mother said. “You can come back when things settle down.”

  My mother and I and Jeanette sat in the kitchen and drank tea. There were no phone calls, no offers of condolence, though certainly the news must have spread. My grandmother had not left her room. No one checked the extension to see if she was making calls. Once, my aunt checked on her to see if she was okay. “She won’t open her door,” she came down and told us.

  “She’ll have to open it sometime,” my mother said. “She can’t stay in there forever.”

  “She should have said her goodbyes to him,” Jeanette said. “I can’t believe she didn’t.”

  “She’ll regret it,” said my mother. “To the end of her days and beyond she’ll regret it.”

  The phone rang at ten o’clock. It was Dr. Fred. He had signed the death certificate and since there was no need for an autopsy the body was to go directly to the funeral home. It had been refused.

  “What?” said my mother.

  “They’re worried about contagion. The staff is afraid to work on it.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “Still in the ambulance. The paramedics are none too happy about it. They’re afraid the virus will jump hosts once the body is dead.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” said my mother. “Bring him back here?”

  “I’ll ask the hospital to hold him for a while. But we have to find a mortuary that will take him.”

  “It’s ten o’clock at night!”

  “Have you thought of cremation?”

  “David didn’t want that,” my mother said. “We discussed it.”

  “Try Trenton, then. Or Halifax if need be.” Dr. Fred then suggested putting all David’s sheets in garbage bags and burning them. “Just in case,” he said.

  My mother related all this to Jeanette when she got off the phone. Her eyes were irritated from crying. “What about his funeral?” she said to her sister. “How’s that going to go?”

  “Get Mom to call Father Orlis at the rectory,” Jeanette said.

  My mother went upstairs and, after what seemed like a very long time, came down. “She’s calling now.”

  A few minutes later my grandmother’s feeble voice drifted down. Jeanette went up to see her. When she came back she was more upset. Those brief hours of grief had been replaced already by frustration. “Father Orlis says that they will have a memorial for Uncle David. But they can’t have his coffin and body in the church. And they can’t bury him in consecrated ground.”

  “My God!” my mother cried. “Why has thou deserted us?”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  the rest of the morning of my grandmother’s funeral, I pace the house in a welter of nervousness, dreading the noontime. I tell myself all I have to do is get through this day and then I can leave Advocate behind. I am uncomfortable with the half-truths and evasions in the eulogy; I am certain they will ring as false and untrue in the church as they do in my head. I can’t wait to get back to the familiarity of my office in Toronto. Into the comfortable confines of my life in the city.

  I vow that after this I will force my aunt and mother to visit me, rather than having me come home. I try not to think about the story my mother and Jeanette just told me.

  “For God’s sake, Jacob,” Jeanette says. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

  I do. I have already dressed, in the black suit I brought with me for this day. At eleven-thirty Deanny arrives. She is dressed in simple black dress, and she does not mention Pavel, the eulogy, or our argument the last time we talked. She hugs me in the kitchen. I don’t think Deanny has ever hugged me before. I notice that the top of her head only comes up to my chin. She sits with my mother and Jeanette, consoling them until the car arranged by the funeral home comes to pick us up.

  My mother asks Deanny to sit with us. “You are as much a member of this family as Jacob,” she says. “Mom would have wanted you to be with us.”

  Just before we are scheduled to leave, I ask my mother if she has Uncle David’s St. Jude’s medallion. I know she removed it from his neck shortly after he died, but she never said what she did with it. “I think so,” she said. “Why?”

  “I just want to have it with me,” I say, “if I am going to do this. Could you get it?”

  “I’ll look,” she said. “Though God knows if I can find it.”

  Ten minutes later my mother comes down the stairs with the medallion in her hand, and gives it to me. She expected, I think, that I would put it around my neck, but I do not. I drop it into the side pocket of my suit. We do not speak in the car on the way to the church.

  My grandmother had dictated what she wanted for a funeral, but I found myself subverting her by allowing an arrangement of lilies to find its way to the altar. She hated them. She said lilies were God’s way of reminding us that nature isn’t perfect. Jeanette and my mother had also arranged for a bouquet of yellow roses. She had always loved yellow roses, and refused to give away a cutting of the bush that grew in her yard no matter how many times she was asked.

  The only thing for me to do as we enter the church is to act bereaved.

  Even this I find difficult.

  As we step inside, the congregation rises and stares at us as we walk in procession down the aisle. Father Harry stands at the altar, waiting for us to take our seats in the front pew. He wears vestments of grey and white and black that look, I think, like a Halloween costume of a newspaper column. My grandmother lies within the coffin, her body concealed by our angle, and I have no wish to look upon her.

  Once we sit down, Father Harry does not immediately start the proceedings. Perhaps he wants to give us time to survey the casket. The entire town has turned out. There are people standing outside because there is no room. My mother takes my hand and squeezes it. Jeanette and Deanny cry softly on the other side of her. There are others sniffling in the church. My eyes are dry. It is still hard for me to believe, in one sense, she is dead, though the evidence lies right before me.

  Father Harry begins the ceremony. “Eternal rest
give to them, Oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.” An altar boy steps forward and lights candles around the coffin. Father Harry offers a series of prayers known as The Office of the Dead. We sing “On Eagle’s Wings,” a hymn based on Psalm 91. My grandmother chose it. I am not much of a singer, and I don’t know the words or tune. I fumble through it. Father Harry says the Mass for the Dead, then sprinkles holy water over my grandmother’s casket. Finally, he motions for altar boys to blow the candles. All in all, the rites take only a half hour, but prayers, the lighted candles, the music have bewildered and exhausted me. When he is finished, Father Harry nods at me.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  the day after my uncle died, my grandmother did not leave her room except to eat and go to the bathroom. I believe she had some inkling of the difficulty my mother and Jeanette would have in arranging the funeral, and she did not want to be a part of it. Whenever my mother or Jeanette called on her for some bit of information she gave it, but she would not come out.

  My aunt and mother ceased mourning, for they could not be angry and bereaved at the same time — those are incompatible emotions. Both of them thought, naively, that when my uncle died the persecution would stop. But the town was still fearful of him, and since they had shamed themselves by refusing to support him while he was dying they could not very well step out of themselves and offer help now.