Generally, Sarah pecks at her food and doesn’t say much during meals.
Over the next few weeks, Sarah seems even quieter than usual. Several times, Paul thinks to bring up Joanie and her condition, but he never does.
Then, unprompted, Sarah announces that Joanie has moved back to her parents’ house in the outer suburbs. Sarah doesn’t drive and it’s too far to go by bus. Will Paul take her to visit Joanie? Paul’s stomach swirls, knots. Of course, he says. When do you want to go?
Joanie answers the door. She has lipstick on. Come in, come in! she calls, her voice loud in the cul-de-sac silence. Her bright smile makes the rest of her face look gaunt and gray.
Joanie pulls Sarah into her bedroom to look at her wigs. Paul sits on the couch. The family room is decorated with portraits of Joanie and her family. Paul stares up at a graduation scene — Joanie and Sarah in cap and gown, arms around each other, free hands clutching rolled diplomas.
Joanie and Sarah return from the bedroom. Sarah sits next to Paul on the couch, and Joanie takes the armchair across from them. The graduation picture is above her head. Paul finds out that it’s been six months since Joanie was diagnosed. During that time, Joanie had one mastectomy, then another. For a while, it seemed like she was getting better. Paul examines the coffee table, adorned with pill bottles and open cans of liquid protein shake. The girls chatter about their former classmates, who’s working where, who’s getting married, who’s getting divorced. No way! Joanie keeps exclaiming.
Paul sits on the couch with his arms drawn in and crossed against his chest. He squints, tries to make out the tiny labels on Joanie’s medications. Xeloda. Percocet. Nolvadex.
Finally it’s time to go. Joanie gives Paul a big hug good-bye. He feels her thin bones pressed against him as he gingerly hugs her back.
On the way home, they stop at the grocery superstore. There isn’t one in the city. A superstore.
Paul is the last of the two of them to talk with Joanie. She calls for Sarah. He tells her Sarah is out. Joanie’s voice is low and husky. She speaks slowly, audibly gasping every third word. Paul knows from Sarah that the cancer has spread to her lungs. Sarah isn’t home, Paul says loudly, almost yelling into the phone. She’ll be back in an hour.
Okay, Joanie gasps. She seems to be as cheerful as ever. I’m . . .
on . . . my . . . cell. . . .
He can hear her clawing at air.
I’ll tell Sarah to call you, he says.
Thanks . . . Joanie wheezes.
Paul hangs up the phone.
Later he tells Sarah that Joanie called.
Did you talk to her? she asks.
Uh, no, he says, pretending to scan the headlines of the newspaper.
So how do you know she called?
She left a message.
Sarah steps toward the answering machine.
But, he says quickly, I erased it.
You erased it?
I meant to save it but erased it. By accident. I pressed the wrong button. Anyway, she said she was just calling to say hi.
How did she sound?
Okay. Paul shuffles sections. Finds Sports.
On the day before Joanie’s funeral, Paul goes online to get directions to the funeral home. Everything has a website these days. Looking for the directions, he skims through “our chapel’s history” and “testimonials” before landing on “funeral broadcasting.” What comes up on his screen is a list of names and dates. Above them, the text reads: “To view a funeral you need to have Real Player installed on your computer. Please click on Real Player logo to begin your free download.” Paul already has Real Player on his computer. He picks a name — Cooper — and waits.
The funeral loads and begins to play.
Paul watches the rabbi address the mourners. Then Paul calls for Sarah. Sarah comes into the office.
What? she says.
You’ve got to see this.
Sarah peers at the computer screen.
What is it?
They both watch in silence as a man in his thirties — the woman’s son — speaks of his mother’s love for her grandchildren.
It’s a funeral, Paul says. They have them online now. You watch them if you can’t make the service, I guess.
The rabbi intones an ancient, not unfamiliar blessing. Prayer for the dead. The same words were said last year over Paul’s uncle Arnie.
He turns to look at Sarah. She is staring at the screen.
The funeral home is on the edge of the city. Sarah reads Paul the directions he printed out from the funeral home website.
Turn right, Sarah says.
Paul turns right, parks the car in the lot and takes off his seat belt.
Sarah doesn’t move.
We’re here, Paul says.
Sarah looks down at her hands, folded in her lap.
They sit in silence.
It’s going to start soon, Paul finally says.
Sarah covers her face with her hands.
Hey, he says, putting his arm around her. It’s okay.
Sarah shakes silently.
We don’t have to go in, he says. It doesn’t matter. Do you want to go home?
Sarah nods, her face hidden.
Are you sure?
Sarah nods.
That night, Paul takes Sarah to the deli. Paul says that Jews always have deli after funerals. Who are they to circumvent tradition? Paul says that even though they didn’t actually go to the funeral, they should still have deli.
Paul orders the reuben. Sarah says she isn’t hungry, but Paul orders her fries and a dill pickle anyway.
The food comes.
Do you want to go to the shivah house in a couple of days, when it will be quieter?
Sarah nods.
Okay, Paul says. Eat your fries.
They don’t go to the shivah house.
All week, Paul makes Sarah her favorite dinners — lemon shrimp, macaroni and cheese from scratch.
Sarah chews slowly, organizes her food into hollow mounds.
Paul finishes his, then starts in on hers.
Fork scraping plate.
Then, out of the blue, an old high school friend calls Sarah and invites her to her parents’ beachfront condo in Florida.
Should I go? she asks Paul. Sarah looks tired. There are bruised smudges under her eyes. The deal is that Sarah’s friend’s parents are away for a week. All Sarah has to pay for is airfare.
You should go, Paul says, touching Sarah’s cheek gently.
With Sarah gone, the bed feels empty. Paul wakes up on Saturday morning disoriented, as if he’s the one who went away. He stumbles out of bed and into his home office. Paul boots up his computer, planning to check his e-mail then read the newspapers online — why pay for what you can get for free?
As he waits for the computer to load up, he finds himself thinking of Joanie again. They both knew she would die. And yet, somehow, her death took them by surprise. What’s so shocking about someone dying — of cancer, or of anything? But it was wrong, Paul thinks. It was wrong for Joanie to die.
Paul types in the funeral home website. He clicks on Broadcasting.
He scrolls down, searching for Joanie’s name.
The arrow hovers.
Hypertext.
Click and play.
The deceased are organized in alphabetical order. Aralson, Cohen, Gromstein, Luup, Poole, Zachowski.
He thinks maybe he’ll work up to it. Joanie’s. He picks a funeral, clicking randomly.
The shot is always the same. There is a wide view of the stage encompassing the closed coffin and whomever is up at the podium. Usually there are two bouquets of white flowers on either side of the stage. There are two rabbis who seem to switch off making regular appearances, three or so others who preside less frequently.
The funerals all seem the same. But the details are, of course, different.
Paul watches “Steiner, Maury.” A fat woman cumbersomely takes the podium. She tries to talk abou
t her husband. Her sobs are from the gut, wracking her whole body. Paul wishes he could see the rest of the family. Are there fat children too? People are getting bigger and bigger these days. The camera never pans the audience. Not an audience, Paul thinks. Not really. They are the mourners. The camera does not show the mourners. Most of the funeral videos end with the coffin being picked up by funeral home employees in dark suits and ties. Sometimes, the camera catches the family trailing behind the coffin as it is carried out to the waiting hearse. “Steiner, Maury” has extra men picking up his bulky coffin. The group take a few slow steps. Then the screen goes dark.
Paul has unlimited high-speed access, so bandwidth charges aren’t a concern. He spends the entire day watching funerals.
By dusk, he’s ravenous. He drives to the deli and orders a reuben, fries and a pickle. Eating alone shouldn’t be that different from eating with Sarah. But, actually, it does feel different. Somehow illicit. If he wanted to, he could order an entire other meal. Three desserts. Who would stop him?
The phone is ringing as Paul unlocks the door. He hurries to the kitchen, grabs the receiver.
Hello?
Hi! Sarah says.
Hi, he says.
You sound out of breath.
No, he says. I just got in.
Where were you?
Bite to eat.
Who’d you go with?
No one. Myself.
Oh. You should call your friends. Make some plans.
Yeah . . . maybe. So how’s Florida?
It’s really nice here. The condo is huge. And we’re right on the beach!
What’s the weather like?
Well it’s not hot hot. It’s warm. I take a sweater with me when I go for a walk. Anyway, it’s nice. Off season so there aren’t a lot of people around.
Great. That’s great.
So what have you been up to? Sarah asks.
Oh nothing. I’ll probably just stay in tonight. Watch the hockey.
Alone?
There’s nothing wrong with being alone.
Are you okay? Do you miss me?
Sure I do. But I’m okay.
On Sunday, it’s half snowing, half raining. Paul is glad Sarah is in Florida, soaking up sunshine. He goes into his office to watch funerals. There are more on the site than he first thought. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand. It makes sense, he thinks. It’s a big city. There are a lot of Jews. And people die. Paul figures two or three ceremonies a day in that funeral home alone. Closed on Saturday. But otherwise open for business.
Paul is beginning to identify his favorite characters and episodes. The rabbi with the mustache and the slight lisp. The guy in the trench coat who always makes the announcement about driving to the cemetery after the service, just as everyone is about to leave.
Then there are the guest stars.
The fat woman, blubbering widow of “Steiner, Maury.”
And an old man in a tweed suit complete with tight-fitting vest, starched collar. He walks with a cane and almost trips as he makes his way to the podium. The audience — the mourners — all gasp. But the old man is okay. He speaks Yiddish to the grieving. Paul doesn’t understand a word. Probably he’s talking about his dead wife. The old man orates with such passion. Sincerity. Dignity.
Another favorite is the best friend at the funeral of a teenage girl. The best friend is a short blond who carries herself nicely and comes across as well bred and quite pretty. She talks about her dead friend’s love for life and affection for a cat named Missy. She quotes from a popular song of the moment. Paul’s heard Sarah singing its chorus as she listens to her iPod and stares at the television. Fly away my little bird . . . flyawaayyyyyaaywayyyyay . . .
Sarah really is a terrible singer.
Paul takes a break and checks the hockey scores. The home team has eked out a victory despite giving up two first-period goals. They’re having a good year.
Tomorrow is Monday. Back to work. He’s online at work too. But he only has a cubicle. And they monitor what employees look at. Sarah gets home Thursday. He’s alone for three more nights.
The phone rings.
Paul chooses a name.
Clicks.
At the deli the waitress says: Let me guess, Reuben, pickle, fries. Right?
Paul nods.
And a glass of water with a slice of lemon, the waitress says.
You got it, he says.
Work. Paul stares at the gray carpeting of his cubicle wall. E-mails arrive with a polite ding. The phone rings loudly, repeatedly. Paul thinks of the fat lady. The way her belly extrudes wails. There’s something awesome about her grief — its rawness, its savagery. It’s like the world has temporarily stopped existing for her. Is that how he would feel if something happened to Sarah? Paul can’t imagine being able to shut out the world like that. He’d feel embarrassed or ridiculous. He’d wonder if tears can stain suits. He’d probably be thinking about how the rabbi doesn’t even know Sarah, or about how the funeral cost eight thousand dollars, which, at twenty minutes in duration, works out to four hundred dollars a frigging minute.
As soon as he gets home from work, Paul boots up his computer. When Sarah’s back, he thinks, I’ll stop this.
As per fledgling ritual, Paul starts by screening his three favorites.
The old man.
The fat woman.
The teenage girl’s best friend.
Best friend wears a black bow in her blond bobbed hair. There’s a weird burst of quickly suppressed giggling that comes out of the audience midway through the friend’s eulogy. The dead girl’s less composed pals, Paul figures.
Each time, he notices something new. Not something new, Paul thinks, but something he hadn’t noticed before. Strange to think how much we miss just seeing something once. Should all the crucial events in our lives be recorded so that we can experience them in full detail, the way they really were? Things happen so fast. Maybe it’s better that way, Paul thinks.
The dead girl’s best friend breaks down at the end. But she doesn’t rush off the stage like most do when they are crying so hard they can no longer speak. She walks slowly, sniffling, her cute face all scrunched up.
Paul gets to the deli just as the last customer leaves.
We’re closed, a waitress he hasn’t seen before snarls.
Paul looks imploringly at his waitress.
It’s okay, she says. He’s a regular.
New girl, she says, winking at Paul before turning to the kitchen to place his order.
By the time Paul arrives home, he’s exhausted. There’s a message from Sarah. Call me, she says. She sounds happy. His body feels heavy. It’s all those reuben sandwiches. Paul picks up the phone. He holds it away from him, hearing the hum of the line. Through the window he can see that snow is falling. A lot of snow. Maybe even enough snow to justify skipping work tomorrow. Working from home, he’ll say. He gently drops the phone back into its cradle.
Everyday noises sound different alone late at night. A computer whirring to life. Not life, Paul thinks. Not really. Paul navigates his way back to the funeral home, back to that list of online ceremonies. Where do the dead go? Paul has no idea. He wishes he had asked Sarah before she left. What she thinks. They don’t talk about stuff like that. They should have gone to the funeral. He should have gone in. Left her there, crying, in the car. Saved her a seat.
They have them for a reason, Paul thinks. Funerals.
If the phone rings, I’ll answer it. Of course. He’ll answer it.
The mouse arrow wavers over a list of names. The dead. The deceased. Broadcast options.
There it is.
Joanie.
Paul leans forward, his nose almost touching the screen.
The rabbi with the mustache leads the service. You can just make out the sound of people crying. Paul imagines Joanie’s family — her mother and father, the sister who probably looks eerily like her.
They don’t show you the family.
The coffin sits o
n the podium. The body trapped inside.
Mourner’s Kaddish recited in a mumble by the congregation. But the chapel is full, and the words, barely audible individually, come together as a plea.
Paul says them too.
Then Joanie’s brother-in-law takes the stage. He’s a big man in the community. Well-to-do. Paul remembers Joanie describing him. Domineering. Controlling. He runs a company, keeps strict kosher, sends his kids to private Hebrew school, never approved of Joanie’s freewheeling ways. The brother-in-law starts to speak. Paul would have preferred the sister. He pictures her sitting in the front row, wrapped in a black shawl.
Brother-in-law talks about how the entire family gathered around Joanie’s bed in the hours before she died. He speaks in measured tones, his voice strong. He says they all prayed together.
Joanie wasn’t religious. Didn’t believe in God.
But maybe in the end, Paul thinks.
The phone rings.
It’s late.
In the morning it’s still snowing. Paul calls in to tell them he’s working from home because of the weather. He scans down the list of names while talking to his boss. The names all seem familiar. They’re like the names of out-of-town cousins encountered at periodic family gatherings — bris, bar mitzvah, wedding. Funeral, Paul thinks, surveying the names. Has he watched every single one?
Surely there are other chapels, other funeral home websites.
Sarah coming home in less than twenty-four hours.
Paul goes downstairs. Makes a cup of coffee.
The tiny red light on the answering machine flashing.
He takes his mug upstairs. He sits back down in front of the computer. Lets the mouse pointer float over the list of names.
Abrams, Gornisht, Merril, Yankofsky.
He picks one even though he knows he’s seen it before.
A man with gray whiskers says platitudes over a closed box. Paul looks down at the keyboard. Dirt in the grooves between the keys. How do you clean a keyboard?
The man says: He was a good person, you know? — a real mensch.
Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened Page 11
