Sweeter Life

by Tim Wynveen

  “So maybe I won’t go. I find that shit kind of gruesome.”

  Izzy exhaled loudly, and then said nothing, as though she were counting to ten. Then, in a tone that was calm and matter-of-fact, she said, “Can I tell you something? If you don’t join us, I may never speak to you again. You understand?”

  “But Iz, that religious crap is so hokey.”

  “Maybe you should try telling Ruby that. Anyway, I don’t have time for your teenage bullshit. I’ve already called Samuel’s and told them to expect you. If you’re there by noon, they can have the alterations ready by closing tonight. And don’t worry about the expense, it’s on me. This is important, Cy, whether you know it or not.” Then she hung up.

  In the music business, it was normal for thirty-year-old men to act like teenagers, and when Cyrus was in his world, doing what he was meant to do, it all felt good and right and natural. It was only when he came back to Wilbury that he felt odd in any way. Izzy never gave him any slack, of course, never considered how hard it was for him to be out of his element. But then she’d never been much of a teenager herself, one moment a young girl, and the next married to Gerry Muehlenburg. She was bitter, he figured. Even so, her words had gotten to him. After all, Ruby’s offer to buy him a suit twelve years ago had led him to the Les Paul and Ronnie Conger, to Jim and Sonny and Eura, to the road up and the road down, and now, with his record half-finished, a road pointed toward the stars. Who could say what surprises this new offer might bring?

  Downstairs, the sight of Janice puttering in the kitchen further complicated his mood. For a fleeting moment he saw what it might have been like had he taken Ruby’s cheque and bought that suit, if he’d finished his year of school, say, then gone on to university and married Janice the way everyone would have predicted. Here she was, a healthy mind, a healthy body, the closest friend he’d ever known. They could have had kids and gone on vacations and done great things. And it would have worked out, he had no doubt about that. They had always been great together. And while you could make a case that he’d never been more alive than when he’d been with Eura, he could also say that he’d never been happier than with Janice.

  He sat quietly at the table and let her bring coffee, let her fiddle with the toaster and bread, the butter and jam. When she sat facing him, he asked what she’d been up to the past while; and she told him about her art classes at the recreation centre, how liberating she had found the move from Toronto. She was thinking of relocating permanently, she said. For his part of the history lesson, he restricted himself to professional matters—putting his band together, recording in England with a famous producer.

  “That is so great,” she said.

  And Cyrus should have been happy, should have been full to bursting with pride and a sense of accomplishment. But he wasn’t.

  FOR MORE THAN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS Samuel’s Fine Apparel had been clothing the Wilbury elite—the doctors and lawyers and dentists, the wheelers and dealers like Isabel Owen. You could get Burberry there. You could get Aquascutum and Lacoste.

  Cyrus had never set foot in the store (he’d always bought his school clothes at Feldman’s Men’s and Boys’ Wear down the street) and was glad Janice had offered to tag along. Her parents had bought most of their clothing from Ben Samuel. She shopped there too, occasionally, for kilts and cashmere and fine cottons. So Cyrus let her do all the talking and, except for the odd shrug from him now and then, make all the decisions—about the colour, the fabric, the length, the cut. Even so, he didn’t breathe normally until they were back on the street again.

  “I guess I owe you lunch for that,” he said. Taking her by the elbow, he led her along the main street to their old hangout Marlowe’s, where they sat in the window booth and had the Teen Special, which unfortunately was a disappointment. The burger was mealy, the fries weren’t real, and the shakes were thin and tasteless. Of course, Junior Marlowe wasn’t manning the grill these days. He’d been dead for several years.

  After lunch they drove aimlessly around town, ending up at Memorial Park where they lazed in the sun and took turns pushing each other on the swing. As the day wore on, they spoke more freely, moving gradually from safe and sanitized topics until they were floating freely in the ebb and flow of who they were and what they thought. By the end of the afternon Cyrus was able to breathe another sigh of relief. She was still his pal. She still laughed at his jokes.

  At six o’clock they returned to Samuel’s for a final fitting. Even Cyrus had to admit he looked good. When he moved toward the change rooms to get back into his jeans and T-shirt, Janice grabbed him by the arm. “Leave the suit on. We’ll go back to the house for five minutes so I can change. We should go to the funeral parlour.” In response to his pained expression, she buttoned up his jacket and said, “Come on, pop star. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Isabel was so happy to see them walk through the door together, and to see Cyrus looking so handsome and respectable, that she rushed across the room to greet them. “My goodness,” she said, “don’t you look swell.”

  “Don’t push it,” he warned. “I’m here against my will.”

  “That’s fine. Against your will looks good on you.” Then she led them over to Ruby, where they spoke a few phrases of condolence.

  It was downhill from there. The very idea of modelling his grief for everyone in town seemed ghoulish to him. He couldn’t get the hang of it. And Janice, not officially part of the family, had made herself scarce, loitering in the wings and smiling encouragement whenever Cyrus looked especially bleak. When Frank Pentangeles walked into the room, however, the whole mood changed.

  In most ways that mattered, you could say that Frank and Clarence were good friends, though they seldom moved in the same circles. There had been mutual respect and affection and a long history of shared labour. And fun. Frank loved to tease and fool around. But there was no joking now, no levity. He dragged himself toward Ruby like he was the heaviest man on earth. Then he knelt beside her and wept, occasionally wiping away the tears with the heel of his hand but mostly just letting them flow. The rest of them exchanged uneasy glances, and Cyrus wondered what would happen if Frank couldn’t stop. Worse, this open display of grief had already brought tears or the threat of tears to everyone else in the room—what if they all lost control? What if this contagion of tears spread down the street and along the block, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, until the town lay down in sorrow?

  Cyrus should have known better. Frank was many things, sometimes too loud, too sentimental, too emotional for his own good, but he was not a man to lose control. This was a matter of openness. And when he had finished pouring out his grief, he rose, squared his shoulders and walked directly to the open casket where he placed his hand over his friend’s heart, made the sign of the cross, then turned and walked away.

  Once everyone had regained composure, Izzy quietly suggested to Hank that he, Cyrus and Janice go and have a drink. “Ruby and I will stay awhile longer,” she whispered. “Then we’ll join you for a nightcap.” When he resisted, she gave Cyrus a look that said she needed his help. Hank had slept most of the day, but even now, trussed up in his suit, he seemed dopey and depressed. It was hard to believe that Clarence’s death had laid him so low.

  With a nod of acknowledgement to Isabel, Cyrus got behind the wheelchair and started pushing his brother toward the exit. “Come on, bro. Looking at you in that monkey suit is getting me spooked. Let’s get hammered.”

  But no one was in the mood for a drink, and Hank least of all. He glowered darkly at Cyrus and Janice and was unable to rouse himself to even a few words of chit-chat. A few minutes later, he rolled himself into the den, flopped on the sofa and fell asleep in his suit. Cyrus took that as their cue to leave.

  At Janice’s they were able to breathe more easily, speak more freely about the evening. Janice agreed the spectacle of Frank’s sorrow had been deeply affecting, but in some ways, the stilted platitudes of everyone else spoke to her most clearl
y. It was as if they’d been so shaken by Clarence’s death that they completely lost the ability to express themselves and had to lean on stock phrases and sentiments like so many prosthetics.

  The biggest surprise of the day, she thought to herself, had been Cyrus’s uneasiness that afternoon in Samuel’s. He had let a small-town shopkeeper and the simple act of buying a suit unnerve him. And while it was true that he lacked the language for such a transaction, she still found it laughable, as though he were a stranger to civilization.

  He’d matured in other ways, of course. Back in high school, he’d grow pink and flustered whenever female classmates acknowledged his presence. But that afternoon he’d made wisecracks with the waitress at Marlowe’s, chatted amiably with a young mother at Memorial Park and watched with unmistakable appreciation as women passed by on the street. The idea that the scope of his personal growth over the past decade extended no further than sex, drugs and rock and roll made her bristle with sarcasm, and she was wondering how to broach the subject, when he reached over, placed his hand on her knee and squeezed it affectionately. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember, Janice.”

  “Ah,” she said, her index finger held up as a warning.

  “Maybe we should go upstairs and, you know, snuggle a bit.”

  “Yes, well, we’ve been there before, remember? A long time ago.”

  He leaned closer. “But look at us. We both need comfort.”

  With Jonathan out of her life, Cyrus was the only person she might conceivably love right now. She never doubted that for a moment. She had loved him almost as long as she’d known him, even when she and Jonathan were together. That didn’t mean she was without reservations. For one thing, Clarence’s death had reawakened her own sense of loss over her father’s passing, and unlike people in the movies, she had never found grief that romantic. No amount of touching would heal these wounds. Only time.

  She took his hand off her knee and dropped it in his lap. In response to his inquisitive look, she shook her head.

  “Is that ‘No, not right now,’ or ‘No, buzz off’?”

  “Not now,” she said.

  AFTER BREAKFAST, Janice took Cyrus out to the warehouse to see her monument. All morning he’d been working hard to show her there were no hard feelings. He was loose and goofy and as talkative as she had ever known him. The effort on his part made her feel better about everything.

  When she showed him the sculpture, he circled it repeatedly, running his hand along its contours, at one point even embracing it. “Wow,” he kept saying, “this is cool.” He looked through the lenses. He backed away from it and moved closer again. “What do you call it?”

  “2B Young.”

  “Byron Bradley Young,” he said. “That’s neat. A happy tombstone.” And unable to restrain himself, he hugged her with all his might.

  After an early lunch, they headed to the United Church. Cyrus wanted to sit at the back with Janice, but she dragged him up front so he could sit next to Ruby. Isabel was on the other side of her, and Hank was fidgeting in his chair at the end of the aisle. The service was so dreary that at one point Ruby leaned over and, in a voice that wasn’t as whispered as it ought to have been, said to Cyrus, “The Mennonites do it better. Those people know how to sing.” Not long after that, the men from Worrell’s Funeral Home wheeled the casket down the centre aisle and out to the hearse. The family followed in a limousine, and behind that was a long line of other cars, including Janice’s Volvo.

  Cyrus had sketchy memories of his parents’ funeral. He remembered the feel of Clarence’s big warm hand surrounding his that day, and how his uncle never let go of him throughout the service, as if he thought Cyrus would try to follow his parents if given half a chance. He remembered, too, how Izzy had winced each time Ruby tried to hug her, how sharp and flinty she’d been in her grief.

  At Lakeview, the men from Worrell’s set the casket on a sling-like contraption above the grave. Cyrus felt kind of wobbly on his feet, and he searched the crowd for Janice’s face. He could have used her stabilizing presence just then. People were crying softly, dabbing quickly at their eyes. Reverend Jansen said a few more words. Then the casket was lowered into the ground.

  Cyrus watched the long, slow descent of that polished box, caught the hollow sound as it came to rest in its concrete enclosure. He might have tumbled into the gaping hole, if Izzy hadn’t grabbed his elbow and said, “Steady.” And that one word, more than the service, more than the limo ride, more even than the final moment of Clarence’s life, brought a lump into his throat. It was what Clarence had said, he remembered now. They had stood just like this, a ten-year-old boy and a sorrowful middle-aged man, as Riley and Catherine were laid to rest. His parents had driven off with no special farewell, no meaningful looks. They just walked out the door like it was any other day and not their last, leaving Cyrus to stumble blindly through days of bewilderment and pain, coming in the end to teeter at their graveside until his uncle drew him closer, his arm around his shoulder, and in a calm reasonable voice said, “Steady.” That was all he said. Steady. A man as good as his word.

  Now Izzy had said the very same thing, served the very same purpose, and he felt so grateful that he turned and kissed her pale powdered cheek. That caught her completely off-guard, and they both would have tumbled into the open grave if she hadn’t been standing so squarely.

  Janice rushed forward to help Izzy edge him into the shade of a large sycamore. The rest of those in attendance took that to mean the service was over. Some drifted slowly to their cars; others offered Ruby one last handshake or smile of condolence.

  When Isabel was satisfied that Cyrus would be fine, she looked around to see how her aunt was bearing up and noted that Ruby was her usual tower of strength, from the looks of it offering more comfort than she was receiving. When Isabel saw Hank, however, or rather the person talking to Hank, she had the biggest shock of the day. There, kneeling on the grass and waving his arm, was Gerry. Believing this to be a crisis that needed her attention, she marched directly over to the two men.

  “I was sorry to hear about Clarence,” Gerry said, hoisting himself to his feet. “I always admired him.”

  Over the past decade, she had kept tabs on Gerry—it was hard not to in a town like Wilbury—and she’d been a little annoyed that he seemed to do just fine without her. He and Ginny Maxwell had stayed together, not at all what Isabel would have predicted. She had thought Gerry would bounce down a long line of tramps and end up a sad and solitary man who couldn’t look after himself. Luckily for Ginny, he had gotten out of pigs altogether and had started a small greenhouse operation—seedless cucumbers, with one house producing geraniums and marigolds for local gardeners. Ginny had quit her job at the Gaslight Room and worked beside Gerry in the greenhouses or out in their little booth on the highway. To her credit, she had always had an artistic flair. Most people in town now owned one or two terracotta pots that she had hand-painted.

  “Well,” Gerry said, as though he was working up to an unpleasant task, “I guess I better talk to Ruby.”

  As he turned to leave, Isabel touched his arm and said, “Clarence admired you, too, Gerry. He liked the way you ran the farm.”

  Those words stopped him in his tracks. He knew they were untrue. He could remember clearly the way Clarence had treated him, always so critical, and remembered, too, the more painful part: how dearly he’d wanted the man to approve of him. So he closed his eyes and searched Isabel’s statement for hurtful edges. But for all her faults, she’d never been cruel. She had simply been blind about this fact, the way she’d been blind about others. Gerry said, “It was good to see you again, Hank. And you take care, Iz.” Then he did what was right and walked over to Ruby, who’d always been kind.

  AT FOUR, THE FAMILY WENT BACK to the house, and Izzy poured them each a stiff drink. She hauled out platters of food and put on soft, inoffensive music. She had decided it was time to get plastered. But first they needed a toast.


  For as long as she could remember, even when her parents were still alive, it was Clarence who said something to commemorate an occasion. But he was gone now, and her brothers had never shown a talent for choosing the right words, so Izzy assumed that this task, too, would fall on her shoulders. It was Ruby, though, who held her glass high and said, “This is one sight your uncle didn’t get to see enough of, the three of you together like this. He didn’t show it sometimes, but he loved you all very much. And I can tell you, this would mean a lot to him.”

  That was all it took to begin the ritual of remembering the dead. Isabel talked about those lazy summer nights of Tiger baseball and Coca-Cola and the rich perfume of the apples in the packing shed. Cyrus offered a hymn of thanksgiving that culminated in the purchase of an electric guitar. Even Hank, whose relationship with Clarence had been strained, was able to share a memory of his uncle coming to help Riley one day, the three of them up in the loft of the barn and discovering a wasp nest, or rather, being discovered by the wasps and chased yelping and cursing all the way to the house. What he remembered best, he said, wasn’t the sting or their comic skedaddle but the way they sat on the screened porch afterwards and dabbed themselves with calamine lotion, and how Clarence kept talking about the looks on their faces, the sight of them hightailing it across the yard, until he had them all laughing till their throats were sore.

  Long before the stories ran out, Ruby excused herself. She was tired, she said, and would see them in the morning. Then she kissed them each on the forehead and went off to Hank’s room. It was barely past six o’clock and the sun was still high in the sky.

  Izzy poured herself another drink, then looked at each of her brothers in turn. “You know,” she said, “for once, I think the Owens actually did the right thing.”

  Cyrus finished his drink and helped Izzy clean up. As he walked back to Janice’s house that night, with the setting sun deepening the green of the lawns and trees, with each house, even the poorest, emanating a wholesome glow, he considered what Izzy had said. Was there for every moment in life a perfect word, a perfect action, something that not only fulfilled that instant’s potential but transformed it into something larger and more uplifting than anyone had imagined?