by J. J. Martin
“I wish I’d gotten to know your father better,” said Padre. “He seemed like a decent man.”
“Thank you,” Clare said, slipping her hand in Jamie’s. “It’s a kind thing to say.”
I stared at the wall, my eyelids half lowered to keep my eyes from rolling. Jamie and Clare were far, far better at small talk than I was. Leagues ahead of me. My strict interest was getting this over with, and getting back to sorting the house so we could sell it. This, I vowed, was my first and last visit to this church, ever.
“Your father wanted a full funeral Mass. You can say a few words after the Gospel if you like. Not a eulogy, but maybe some comments before my homily.”
My brother took a breath and reached up to pat me on the back. “My big brother’s going to say a few words.”
Padre looked me up and down. “Great! You’ve prepared remarks? Fond memories are always good. Funny stories.”
“Just gonna wing it,” I said.
Jamie grimaced. “My guy’s not big on prep.”
“What’s the point?” I said.
Clare’s face tightened. “What can go wrong?”
“Well, you’re sending off your dad the right way,” said Padre. He put his arms around us. “I’m sure he’s here in spirit. He’d want you to carry on. Every day above ground is a good day. Right?”
“Thank you,” said Jamie.
“Typical churchy horseshit,” I whispered to Jamie once Padre had de-coupled from us. He moved to the wardrobe and pulled out a cassock.
“I’ll tell you when the time’s right for you to come up and say your piece,” Padre said to me.
It was Jamie’s idea I say a few words. He’d been pushing me to do it for days. I didn’t even want a funeral Mass, but Jamie insisted this is what Dad would have wanted, which I agreed was true. Well, it was true that he would have wanted one of us to say something. I was a massive disappointment to our father, there was no denying it, so I had no idea why Jamie wanted me to give the speech. Dad probably would have wanted something at the cathedral, I thought, and a send-off from the bishop. And colour guard; the casket being piped in. And a choir with horns.
That wasn’t true, I thought. Dad was not a showboater. Where was this coming from? Why was I angry at him? He was just a Catholic soldier, and, if anything, he probably would not want the pomp.
The petty thought made me blush with guilt. I’m not being fair, I admonished myself. The man was dead. All his faults were going to be in the ground soon. Mine I still had to lug around.
It’s okay. It’s okay. This will all be done and finished and over soon enough.
“Thanks for organizing all this, Clare,” I said to her. “You’re amazing.”
Half-hearted, she gave a two-fingered salute — almost a Scout salute — glancing at me nervously. “Thanks for trimming your beard,” she said.
I hadn’t trimmed my beard. It wasn’t even a beard, per se. I just hadn’t shaved in three weeks. But I did take a shower before putting on a suit and tie. I tried hard to smile and she fake-smiled back at me. Her husband’s dirtbag brother.
3
I hadn’t set foot in a church in decades.
To begin the ceremony, the three of us — Jamie, his wife, and me — stood at the open casket with Padre and received guests, shaking hands at the back of the church. It was almost a wake before the Mass. A short visitation. But, unlike a good Irish reception, no booze.
Jamie was not comfortable with dead things, never had been. Even meat gave him the creeps until it was cooked. He could not eat roast bird of any kind because it resembled the carcass of the animal too much. So, he did not look at our father when the casket was opened, and he stood to the side in a way he would not accidentally catch a glimpse. Jamie was a master of tact and diplomacy. No one would notice that he wasn’t standing near our dad or that he had not looked. Clare might not even have noticed. But I knew. I did the looking for us both.
They did a good job with Dad. He looked more placid than he ever appeared while alive.
I found the visitation uplifting and surprising. It had the air of a neighbourhood Christmas party, and it nearly made me cheerful. Many people I recognized from the old neighbourhood, school, or church. Brian Birk brought his mother, and she took my hand sweetly.
“Where is your mother, dear?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“She’s not well enough to come, Mrs. Birk,” I said. “I doubt any of this would register with her, and if it did, probably only upset her.”
“Good to see you, old boot,” said Brian. “Bad circumstances and all that.”
“Brian,” I said, “you’ve gotten incredibly fat. And you’re hideous.” He laughed before moving along to Jamie and Clare.
The next pair were two Indigenous men. One walked with a cane, looking ancient as an apple doll. The other was a broad man about my age. The old gent was transfixed by Dad’s chalky and stretched face, ignoring me as he approached.
I introduced myself. “Thank you for coming.”
They hesitantly shook my hand.
“Did you work with my father at Indian Affairs?” I asked.
“Nope,” the old man said. He bobbed his head as if trying to see my father’s whole body through his trifocals. He stood wide-eyed and huffing like a horse for a good while. “Yep. That’s him.”
The younger man nodded and frowned, he squeezed the older man’s shoulder in a gesture of support. They exchanged a few quiet words.
“Sorry for your loss, eh,” the younger man said to me.
“How did you know our dad?” Jamie asked.
The old man inhaled shakily, and then he regarded me. “I came to see it,” he cried. “To see that he’s dead!” The old man burst out crying.
Clare gasped.
After a pause, I said carefully, “He’s definitely that. Watched it happen myself.”
The two men nodded in unison. “Good,” said the old man. He seemed satisfied to see Dad lying out.
The younger man winced at me as if to kind of say sorry, I guess, and helped the older man off. They shuffled to the pews without more explanation. There were more hands for us to shake and people to hug, but I watched where they sat.
“What was that about?” Clare did not lower her voice. “That was rude,” she said.
But before any further could come of it, there were faces from the tennis club, the bridge group, the Blackburn Arms (which the old bully, Squirm, now managed), our street, and people from work.
One of the two funeral ushers closed the casket and Jamie sighed with relief. He and I helped push Dad toward the sanctuary.
We settled into our front-row pew, and Mass started with Dad’s casket at the crossing, a huge bouquet of white blossoms on top.
“You okay? You look like you’re not feeling well,” Jamie said.
“I wish you’d quit asking me that,” I said.
Behind us, at the entrance of the church, I heard the door open and turned to see someone enter, then stand idly at the exit with his hand on the door bar.
Mass began with an adult altar server helping Padre.
The time came up. Padre nodded and pointed at me. You’re up. Here was the opportunity to say a few words before the homily. As I rose to the chancel podium, I saw who it was standing at the back of the church. It was Mike Racine, the old Scout leader, in jeans and a flannel shirt. Mike was grey now, with a paunch, but he still had the same granite mien I remembered. The sight of him was both shocking and reassuring. Disorienting.
I traced my fingers along the edge of the podium and stared at all those faces watching me. Someone coughed.
“Uhm,” I said, looking down at the red liturgical tome as if it could tell me what to do. I had no notes for my speech.
“Eulogies aren’t a thing at Catholic funeral Masses,” I said, eventually. “But Padre said I could say a few words about our dad. So here I go.”
From the front pew, my smiling brother flashed a “be strong” fist
pump. I felt nauseous.
“My brother and I knew our dad our whole lives.… Well, obviously.… But, really, I don’t think we ever knew the guy. I don’t think any of us know anyone. He didn’t talk about his upbringing with us, and he spoke so little.… All I can really remember are the times that he was angry. Heh. Right now, I’m thinking he’s going to come out of that box and glare at me or correct my grammar. Ha-ha.” I cleared my throat. “I want to talk about happy times we shared as a family, and even times when I saw him happy, but I can’t think of any. He wanted Jamie and I to grow up into men, and I guess we did that.… He was mad at us most of the time, and constantly giving us advice, and punishing us. I don’t think he thought we ever did right. He sometimes spanked us, but I can’t say we had a beating from him, not really, so that’s good. My mother got yelled at, too, but he never hit her or anything.”
My brother’s eyes were cartoon-wide now and his mouth low. Speaking extemporaneously was, probably, not a good idea. My brother slowly shook his head, gobsmacked.
“But,” I said, trying to win back the crowd. “I know he loved us. He must have loved my mother. And he loved his job. Because those were the things he seemed to focus all his energy on. When my mother had her first stroke, he kept her in the house and never complained about the extra workload. And I can tell you that my niece, Kitty, and nephew, Harry, are his little sweeties, and for them he was their sweetie Grandpa.” Where was I going with this? I felt the heat of the crowd on me. “There was … a lot unsaid, you know?”
My throat constricted.
“But what can you do?” I croaked, and stepped down from the chancel, and trudged the long march back to the front pew, carrying every heavy eye on me.
I sat down next to Jamie, who leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That was … fucking terrible.”
I sighed.
Padre took the podium and thanked me.
“When someone passes away,” he said, “there’s always a lot unsaid. A lot undone. Unfinished business. In a way, that’s what we heard in the gospel today. Lives don’t seem long enough, do they? Because they are always evolving. There is always a tomorrow, isn’t there.… Well, one day there will not be a tomorrow. Funeral Masses are here to remind us that when we say goodbye, we should recommit ourselves to a meaningful life, in Christ. Let us use our time here, and enrich ourselves to the fullest extent in the everlasting life guaranteed us by the death and resurrection of the Lord. God invites us to live a meaningful life, and to help each other do so. We’re saddened by the departure of our brother. But we thank him for the gift he gives us today. Praise to you, Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whom no living man may escape. A reminder to treasure our lives, treasure each other, and to continue the work of building the Kingdom here on Earth.”
At the end of Mass, as we moved Dad’s casket out to the hearse, I saw Mike Racine speaking with the two men I saw earlier. I wanted to go over. The older man wept as he limped along. Mike showed no emotion and bowed his head to listen to the younger man.
By the time my role was complete, and the hearse had gotten on its way, I was swamped by well-wishers as they headed from the church.
I craned my neck to find them, but Mike and the two men were gone.
4
It was five o’clock on an autumn afternoon and the sun was nearly down. The roads and pavements were carpeted with yellow and red maple leaves blowing and collecting in piles. My brother met me at the Blackburn Arms for a pint. We slid into a booth across from one another.
“Dad’s favourite place,” Jamie said.
“Did you come with him, too?”
“Plenty of times. All his buddies knew the kids. You never came here with him, though, did you?”
I shook my head. I had never once entered the pub with him. I had never once bought my dad a beer. I was not even aware he frequented this place.
“To Dad,” Jamie said, raising his glass.
I sighed and elevated my pint an inch off the table, nodding before taking a huge gulp.
“To things unsaid,” I said.
“Like what?”
“After we’re done selling the house, I don’t ever want to come back here.”
He nodded. “Don’t see why you’d ever have to.”
“Good riddance.”
“It’s not all bad. You and I had a lot of fun here.… I was thinking about what you said at the funeral. It’s true we don’t know anything about Dad. He had a forty-year career I know nothing about. Strange, no?”
“Don’t care.”
“Clare knows everything about her parents. I don’t know how Mum and Dad met, I don’t know what Dad did at Indian Affairs, I don’t know anything about their childhoods. For that matter, I don’t know a lot of whys. Missing all the whys.”
“Too late to ask Mother anything.”
“She might remember early stuff, like her childhood.”
“Jamie, she doesn’t even know who we are.”
“I regret it,” he said. He wasn’t emotional, but his eyes were blank and I saw his sincerity. “I do. I wish I had gotten to know him better. Before he died. I don’t know my dad. Not really. Now he’s dead.”
I caught the waitress’s eye and gestured for two more pints.
“You?”
“Me?” I drained the last of my ale then rubbed my fingers, waiting for the next one to arrive. “If I had one more day, I don’t know. I only regret not asking him … why he was such an asshole.”
Unexpectedly, I found my throat tight and tears in my eyes. “Shit. What is wrong with me?”
My brother squeezed my arm. I pulled it away.
The beer arrived, and I sucked it up.
5
The next day, I was alone in the basement.
Two dozen banker’s boxes were piled like a half-ruined ziggurat, collapsed from age in the corner of the crawl space. I had brought my old pickup, a small Datsun Sport truck, specifically to unload everything at the dump.
The house was clearing out. Ghostly dark rectangles showed where pictures hung on the walls. The Swedish kitchen wallpaper was ravaged by nicks. In the living room, that revolting orange shag carpet had patches that looked brand new, where furniture had loitered for decades. Odd slips of paper and receipts lay everywhere. A few coins. Mother’s smoking saturated every material so thoroughly it smelled like she might peek around the corner to criticize the way you lifted her china cabinet. Now, almost emptied, the house didn’t resemble a home where you felt welcome to live your life. It’s arguable it ever did.
I crouched and pulled the string in the crawl space. On flashed the light bulb. Propping up my spine by leaning on my knees, I waddled to the boxes and grabbed a waist-high one. It was heavy with paper and I could feel my lower back trigger and pop at the strain.
I hobbled into the laundry room, which was unfinished concrete illuminated by a high basement window and decorated with dust and spiderwebs.
Labelled 1964, the box was stuffed to overflowing with files. It weighed a ton.
I eased it onto a folding lawn chair next to the dryer and lifted the lid.
Inside was a stack of folders, and I grabbed the top one.
The first page was a letter between my father and an Oblate priest running a school in Saskatchewan. Two things caught my eye.
The first was that my father’s role at that time was as an “Indian Agent.” The second was that the priest’s name was Father Aloysius Gast, a name that tasted gross and familiar to my mind in an unspecified way, at first.
Then I remembered. I needed to sit down.
… Suffice it to say the two brothers were frozen to death by the time we found them. This fad to run away is yet more evidence of the incorrigibility we discussed. Also, I regret telling you our bet regarding the number of tubercular deaths this winter was won by you, and so I owe you a hot dog and a glass of milk when next we meet in Saskatoon. Fifteen of the little devils died before the final melt, just as you predicted. W
e lost track of which body was which, so we buried them last week all together after having them in cold storage. Sister Bartholomew will send you a list presently so you may alert any next of kin when you do your next “tour” through their encampments, if you see fit.
I slid the box to the floor and twisted my lower back on the nearly broken, yellow lawn chair. I opened another letter from Gast to Dad, dated 1972.
… I considered what you said about the word “school” to describe our humble little abbey. It’s true we make no pretence to a proper British education such as you and I may know it, but consider these pupils. Their souls may yet be saved. We do our best to have them learn a trade, if possible, and of course never to speak that gibberish again. Is it not enough? Would they ever know any differently?
The crawl space next to the laundry was an especially creepy spot for me, since it was where our dad would punish us. If we failed him in some task, or were too loud, down we went. He would obligate us to kneel, and say decades of the rosary. We could hear life going on in the house above through the creaking floorboards. I always kept my eyes tightly shut and I quaked, imagining evil spirits around me. I don’t know how Jamie felt because we never spoke of it once either of us could return upstairs.
So, the next letter I came upon from Gast seemed particularly chilling.
… when I arrived, they were using a wooden box to force contrition in the hearts of the especially naughty. Runaways, stealing out of the kitchen. The usual. I found the contrition excessive. And so, I have simply made our bad boys kneel in the dark cellar. Their expulsion to this lesser Hades near the coal room is enough. Juvenile Indians seem especially frightened of the dark and being alone …
I wondered if Gast gave our dad his ideas. Or if they had come the other way around.
There were no letters from my dad, so I could only read Gast’s side of the dialogue. This glimpse into a one-sided discussion was jarring. I could not imagine him — as I knew him — having so in-depth a discussion with anyone to warrant such detailed responses. I had only ever heard Dad say enough sentences in my lifetime to fill a newspaper column. Yet here was evidence of a long, long correspondence outlining projects and politics only the wordiest of schemers could manage. It wasn’t the man I knew, because the man I knew never said enough that I might know him.
