A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

  We tour. They have renamed the living room the family room, and vice versa. They’ve removed the wall-to-wall white carpeting, revealing perfect wood floors, and there’s new paint everywhere, the ceilings are fixed, and skylights! We talk, and I ask questions about how they did this and did that. I ask technical questions.

  “Is this new molding?

  “Is this drywall?”

  And I quickly become not the former inhabitant of this place, not some masochistic oddity, but a friendly neighbor with an interest in decorating.

  Upstairs, the bedrooms are cheerful, pinks, light blues for kids’ rooms. My room is unrecognizable. The orange forest wallpaper is gone, my drawings are gone. The carpet is gone, the mirrors on the closet gone. The broken door has been replaced.

  Everything is so neat, so tidy, the toys bright, rounded. The children’s bathroom has special children’s fixtures, little blue and red and yellow toothbrushes. The master bedroom—that’s where the skylight is. We had never thought of a skylight. Good god, a skylight. It is so bright, this room, and where there was a walk-in closet full of my father’s suits, where it smelled so much of him, the leather belts and smoke-drenched suits and shoe polish there is now—there is now a Jacuzzi.

  I ask them how, how all this—

  “We put a lot of time into this house,” the father says. He makes a soft whistling sound, underlining just how much work it had needed.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We kind of let things slide there for a while.”

  We go back downstairs, the kids following us around. The laundry room has been repainted, the carpet replaced. The bathroom by the garage no longer has the wallpaper with the groovy expressions. Through the small tall bathroom window, the backyard looks much the same, white with snow, the hill dotted with plastic toys and red sleds.

  The sky is white. I am at the beach. I’m at the beach because I need a phone, and refuse to conduct this business at the train station, in the middle of town. I call Eric and Grant’s machine to see if the oncologist has called back. He has not. The beach is empty. The cold is savage. It couldn’t be above ten degrees.

  I walk from the parking lot along the brick-sidewalked promenade, inspecting the benches, each paid for and dedicated. I decide that I will buy one of these benches, that I will dedicate a bench to my mother, maybe one for him, maybe one for both—it would depend how much they cost. Most of the benches’ inscriptions simply list a name, but on one, near the phone, it reads:

  Roses are red Violets are blue We like the beach And hope you do, too.

  Good lord. I can do better than that.

  Ill get a bench. Ill get Beth and Bill to chip in. Finally we will do something. We can afford this. We owe this—

  Which reminds me—I gasp, audibly, alone on the beach— that Toph’s high school financial aid forms are due the next day. We have applied to five or six private high schools, and now must submit an application for aid to a national processing center. I did not do it before I left, had left it for the plane, and now here I am, at the lake, with three hours to make it to the FedEx box.

  I go to the car and get my backpack, return and lay the application’s pages out on one of the picnic tables near the guardhouse. As always, I am immediately stumped by the questions. I don’t know or quickly forget everything in this arena—Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, the amount we have in savings. Beth will know.

  I use the pay phone under the awning of the snack bar, soaked from the icicles melting above it. I wipe away the puddles, the water warmer than expected, and call Beth in San Francisco. Beth knows why I am in Chicago, but does not understand why I am at the lake in December.

  “I don’t know. I am. There’s a phone here. It’s cold.”

  “I have to call you back.”

  “Beth. It’s freezing.”

  “I’m on the phone. Give me the number there.”

  “It’s like zero degrees here.”

  “It’s what?”

  “There are no degrees here, Beth.”

  “Ill call you back in ten minutes.”

  I give her the number, and lie down on a picnic table. I experiment with staying warm. Is it warmer when sitting still, or when moving? I guess I know that it’s warmer when moving, but for a minute I entertain the notion that I can lie still, and can will my blood to circulate. With my eyes closed, my breath loud, I direct my blood to speed up, imagine that I am watching it, picturing conveyors and Habitrails... I doze for five, ten minutes, thinking of life on other planets.

  The phone rings. Beth is annoyed.

  “Listen, do we have to do this now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to FedEx it today.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re due tomorrow.”

  “Why didn’t you do it before now?”

  “That doesn’t matter now.”

  “Listen, I’m still at a pay phone. At the beach. By the lake. It’s winter. Winter is cold. Can we just do this?”

  “Fine.”

  We go over the numbers.

  “Thanks. That’s it. Bye.”

  Out of habit—I tend to call Bill shortly after Beth—I call Bill and Toph in L.A. and get his machine. They are no doubt at the beach, a real beach, warm, watching women play volleyball. I ramble into his tape recorder for a while and hang up. Two men jog by, wearing Chicago Bears sweat suits. As they putter by, they watch me, because I am sitting on a picnic table, with a pen in my mouth, surrounded by papers. I finish filling out the forms and stuff them into my backpack.

  On the way to the parking lot, past the snackbar, I put my face against the guardhouse window. Inside, just behind the desk of whoever sits behind a desk at a beach, is a picture of maybe fifteen lifeguards, posed in bathing suits. All in orange, all grinning, all with extremely white teeth, blond hair, silver-white hair. There are a few I recognize. The picture must be five, six years old. And there, in the back row, is Sarah Mulhern. She looks much as I remember her—tan, blue-eyed, sad-eyed, blond, curvy. I knew she was a lifeguard, but had never seen her guarding here, had been at the beach hundreds of times but had never seen her or this picture. And now—

  It’s too weird. I make a note to write that one down.

  At the car, I drop my backpack inside and walk back and call Beth again.

  “Listen. I have a question for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know about those ashes?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh no. Whose?”

  “Both, either.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, you never got them back, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And they never called you about them or anything?”

  “Yeah they did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About a year ago they called.”

  “They did? Who did?”

  “I told you this.”

  “You did not tell me this.”

  “I did. They called, and they had the ashes. Mom’s at least. They’d been trying to track us down.”

  “Where?” ,

  “Chicago, Berkeley, San Francisco, everywhere.”

  “What did you say? Did they send them?”

  “No.”

  “No? Then where are they?”

  “I said we didn’t want them.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. What do we want with some stupid ashes?”

  “But without consulting me or Bill? You just—“

  I have to stop asking questions. Every time I ask a question, of Beth, of anyone, expecting something benign, or even mildly upsetting, the answer is much weirder and more terrible than I could have imagined—

  “I just what?”

  She’s angry now.

  I’m too weak to do this.

  “Nothing.”

  She hangs up.

  This is just too— I had
loved how vague it was before. Where are they? Well, that’s a good question. Where were they buried? Another interesting question. That was the beauty of my father’s way. We knew that he had been diagnosed, but not how sick he was. We knew that he was in the hospital, but then not how close he was. It had always felt strangely appropriate, and his departure was made complete, as was hers, by the fact that the ashes never found us in California, that we had moved, and moved again, and again, dodging, weaving. I assumed the remains had been bungled, that the medical school, or whoever, had neglected their obligation, that someone had erred, forgotten. But now, knowing that Beth knew, and that they’re really gone, discarded, that we had a chance—

  I had actually entertained, however vaguely, the idea that I might actually find them, that at the medical school they might have them stored somewhere, in an.. .ash storage area, in some vast warehouse of unclaimed remains—

  But now to know—

  Oh we are monsters.

  I stop at a pay phone at the 7-Eleven, on the border of our town and the next, now closed. I call Stuart. His wife answers.

  “Oh hi!”

  “Hi.”

  “Where are you? In San Francisco?”

  “No, actually, I’m in Chicago. Highwood, actually.”

  “Oh my gosh. Well then, you’re right near him. He’s actually in the hospital.”

  “Oh God.”

  “No, no, it’s just an infection. He’s fine. His leg. It’s a freak thing. It’s all swollen. He’s just in for a few days.”

  “Well, I was actually hoping to talk to him, or both of you for a few minutes, but I’ll call again when—“

  “No, go visit him. He’s at Highland Park Hospital. He’d love it.”

  I tell her no, I couldn’t, it’d be weird—

  “Don’t be silly. Go.”

  Ten minutes later I’m there, in the parking lot, in the car. From here I can see my mom’s old room, the New Year’s birthday room. I get out and walk around the building, to the emergency room. The doors woosh open. I want to be in the emergency room and have something happen. I want to be back the night of the nosebleed. They took her here first, boosted her white count, stopped the flow.

  The waiting room looks tiny, all peach and pink and mauve, like a Florida condo. I sit on one of the soft, loungy chairs.

  Nothing happens. Nothing returns.

  On the TV, the 49ers are playing.

  The receptionist is watching me.

  Fuck it.

  I leave, walk around the building. In the lobby I get Stuart’s room number and call him.

  He asks me if I am in town and I say that yes, I am. He says that I should come over sometime, that he’s just in the hospital for a few days but after he gets out, should be out tomorrow—

  I tell him that I’m already here.

  “In Highland Park?”

  “Actually, I’m in the building. In the lobby.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  I lie. “Well, I’m supposed to see this doctor here at five-thirty, the oncologist, and I...”

  “Well, it’s almost five-thirty now.”

  “Oh, well, that’s not totally firm. I can see him afterward.”

  “So you want to come up?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s D-34.”

  “I know.”

  He is on the fourth floor. This is the same building that played host to my mother’s various stints, the same building where my father died. The same floor. Probably the same floor.

  The last time I saw my dad I was with my mom, Beth, Toph. We walked down this hall, pushed open his door and were assaulted with the smell. Smoke. They were letting him smoke in the hospital. The room was gray, hazy, and he was sitting there, on the bed, his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands clasped behind his head. Big smile. He was having the greatest time.

  I push open the silent, heavy door and there is Stuart, the only friend I knew my father had.

  The moment I step in I want to leave. The room is dark, and his torso is bare. The only light is above his head, a fuzzy round halo of amber light above his head.

  Oh this is weird. He seems much more sick than he was purported to be. Why is his torso bare? Oh this is weird. Maybe he’s dying too. Gray hair, all over his body.

  We shake hands. He has grown a beard, gray and neat.

  I sit down, in the dark, at the end of the bed, by his feet.

  I mumble for a while.

  I ask him about his infection. His leg is discolored, inflamed.

  It’s gargantuan.

  I no longer feel like asking Stuart the questions I planned to ask him, the ones I was writing down half an hour ago, in the car, in the parking lot, while listening to ‘80s rock on the radio. I force myself to start, stuttering about why I wanted to look Stuart up, ask a few things...

  The first words Stuart says are:

  “Well, I’m not sure how much I can enlighten you about your dad’s soul.”

  His voice is measured, even. His arms rest on his torso, bathed in the room’s ocher light, the room otherwise brown.

  This would be the way to die. This is drama, this is appropriate, at night, with the lighting just so. My father’s way was all wrong, alone, the middle of the day.

  He had fallen again, this time in the shower.

  He called out, to Beth. Beth ran to him, dragged him to the bed. Then the ambulance. He was supposed to be in for a week or so, getting his strength up, not unusual. He had been diagnosed only a few months before. A week after he was admitted, the doctor had called, said things were not looking good, that it could be any time.

  My mother scoffed. She and Beth went in.

  They sat for a time in the room, in the smoke.

  “Come back later,” he said. “I’m taking a nap.”

  They drove home.

  “He’s not going to go today,” said my mother, amused by the worrying. “He’s not going to go today, or tomorrow, or next week. He just went in.”

  In an hour he was gone.

  “He was the best driver I’ve ever seen,” Stuart is saying. “The way he would insinuate himself—that was his word, insinuate— ‘Watch me insinuate myself into this lane...’ he would say. It was incredible. He’d change lanes, drive on the shoulder...”

  I tell Stuart the story about how, when he got that car, the Nissan 280, the only new car he ever owned, the first thing he did was customize it. He put an ashtray on the side door, and cut the shoulder straps on the seat belts. We all knew he was not a fan of the seat belt law, thought it was a violation of civil rights, patently unconstitutional. But the odd thing was that, in addition to cutting off the shoulder strap on the driver’s side, he cut the one on the passenger side...

  The door opens. It’s Mrs. Stuart.

  “Oh, you did come.”

  I look up and shrug.

  “I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes.”

  She leaves.

  The phone rings. Stuart picks it up.

  “Oh hi. Can I call you back?”

  His meal comes. He offers me his cheesecake.

  “No thanks.”

  “Soup?”

  “No thanks.”

  I ask Stuart if he thinks my father felt alone when he died.

  The phone rings. He stays on longer this time. When he gets off, he does not come back to my question, and I don’t ask again.

  Mrs. Stuart returns and we all talk for a few minutes. Then I leave. In the parking lot I talk to the tape recorder for a while, already having forgotten most of what Stuart said.

  In the morning, Grant and Eric and I eat breakfast at a diner, watching people pass, the jeans and leather jackets of Chicago winters. “So what did you do yesterday?” Grant asks. “Not much,” I say. “Went back home, drove around.” I remember that I saw his mom. Grant’s mom walks miles every day, on Western Avenue. I had driven past her.

  “Did you say hi?” he asks.

  “No, I didn’t realize it was her until too
late.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what are you doing today?”

  “Probably going back up.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Not much. Maybe I’ll go to the high school.”

  Grant looks at me for a second. Maybe he knows.

  “Well, say hi to L.F.H.S.”

  Mr. Iacabino, the owner of the funeral home, is not in. The man who is in is younger than me, and wears glasses behind bright, startled eyes. Chad. I step in, stamping the snow from my feet. I tell him that I’m hoping to get some papers, that I’m collecting things, that my parents had come through this way, that I was looking for any paperwork they might have.

  “Let me make a call,” he says.

  He disappears to call Mr. Iacabino at home, leaving me in the coffin display area. There are eleven coffins in the room, each named according to its style and purported quality. The town being what it sometimes is, the coffins are extravagant, each shinier and more elaborate than the other. One is called The Ambassador. Another seems to be made of steel. I write some of the names down in a notebook I will later lose. I will not be buried, I assure myself. I will disappear. Or maybe by the time I die, there will be machines, utilizing advanced laser technology and fiber optics, that will evaporate people shortly after they pass away, without actually burning them. Experts in the operation of the machine will enter shortly after a death, assemble the machine—it’ll be highly portable—and with the pull of a few levers, the person will disappear, instantaneously. There will be none of this interment, no carrying bodies around, inspecting them, embalming them, dressing them up, buying holes in the ground for them, this building elaborate boxes for them, boxes reinforced, double thick—

  Or I’ll be launched into space. Or by then people, dead people, will be raised atop mile-high white towers. Why not mile-high white towers, as opposed to six-foot holes? There would be obstacles, surely, for engineers and architects, and the problem of space. But space could be set aside. There is Greenland, for instance, vast and white like heaven—

  “See anything you like?” Chad asks. He is behind me.

  I chuckle. Good one.

  He has a file folder. We sit down at a table, black and glassy, used for the planning of services.