Eddie's Bastard Page 40

  After a time I turned from the window and leaned against the sill. As it happened, there was a mirror next to me on the wall, and another one on the wall opposite; it was an arrangement Grandpa had insisted on, saying that this confluence of reflections would allow his soul a clear path to escape. I looked into the far one and saw myself stretching away into an endless corridor of windowsills, curving off to the right into infinity. I saw myself repeated endlessly out of sight, like the line of generations that had created me. It was like my own history; I could only see so far before it disappeared, before I lost the trail.

  When I was sure that enough time had passed, I got two pillowcases from Grandpa’s closet and placed them over the mirrors. Then I opened the door and admitted Enzo and Mildred. In the time that had passed, the undertaker had arrived; there were two brawny young men bearing a wicker basket sitting in the parlor opposite Grandpa’s room, wearing dark suits and looking somber. I greeted them with a flip of the hand. They nodded in return and stood up politely. I took another armful of pillowcases from the linen closet in the hall and went from room to room, covering all the mirrors, until the house was completely invisible to itself, and all the paths out, once taken, were closed. The old farmhouse had had enough of ghosts. Grandpa was on his way home.

  13

  Grandpa’s Wake; the End of Some Things, and the Beginnings of Others

  We Manns bury our own in the old-fashioned way.

  According to Grandpa’s stories, there was once a time when there was no such thing as a funeral home. People were waked in their own homes and then carried up to the church on the shoulders of their family. That meant you had a dead body in the house for two or three or sometimes four days. I guess that was normal then; it’s hard to imagine anybody doing that today. Except for us Manns, of course. But we’ve always done things a little bit differently than everyone else.

  I did some figuring—I don’t know why I was thinking about this, just trying to distract myself, I guess. I came to the conclusion that there had to have been at least twenty or so wakes in the old farmhouse even before I came along, and before that, God only knew how many in the tiny shack that had existed before Willie found the Rory money.

  So once again, history saved me. If I’d sat there thinking I was the first of us to go through this, that it hadn’t ever happened before, I might have lost my mind. But I thought of how many of us had gone before Grandpa, and how many Manns had sat around them in mourning, and that even those Manns had eventually passed on and lain right where Grandpa himself was now lying—well, it made it easier on me. And I knew that someday I too would be lying there, and people would be sitting around me having the same thoughts I was having now.

  Concessions to the times had to be made, of course. Grandpa was embalmed at the funeral home—you’re not allowed to have unembalmed bodies just lying around the house anymore—but then they brought him back and laid him out downstairs, right where he used to sit in his rocking chair.

  No. Not Grandpa. Grandpa’s body. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

  So that was how it came to be that early the next afternoon Grandpa lay in his casket in the living room, his eyes covered with two heavy silver coins. The room had been cleared of furniture, and the walls were lined with rented folding chairs. A large brass candlestick stood at either end of the coffin, each holding a white candle, which in turn nourished a tiny yellow flame. Mildred had cleaned the house yet again, and every inch of it gleamed; one could nearly see one’s reflection in the polished wood floor, and the old farmhouse smelled of lemon oil. I sat in one of the folding chairs, staring dully out the window. I’d been up all night reading the diary. My eyes burned with fatigue, and my head swam with confusion. A small voice in me kept repeating, Grandpa is dead.

  Shut up, I would reply silently. And it would obey for a moment, but soon it would come back, more insistent, whispering, Grandpa is dead. What will you do now?

  I don’t know, I thought miserably. I don’t know.

  In death, Grandpa achieved a state of relaxation that life had never granted him. The lines of tension around his eyes and forehead had melted, and the yellow pallor of illness had disappeared and been replaced by waxy whiteness, which, though indisputably the color of death, nevertheless suited him much better than jaundice. And there was something else, something odd about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. It wouldn’t occur to me until later, when the house was full of people and I was drunk, that he was missing his fedora.

  When I asked the undertakers about it later, they seemed confused. They hadn’t seen it, they claimed. I searched the entire house but it was never discovered. Finally I gave up. It seemed that Grandpa had, just maybe, been allowed to take something with him, in defiance of the rules. We Manns have never been much for rules anyway. We prefer to make our own. In any case, the hat was gone, and I never saw it again.

  Mannville being the small town it was, word of death—anyone’s death—spread quickly. It was almost unnecessary to print an obituary in the Megaphone. The news that Grandpa had departed, and that there would be an old-fashioned wake in the house, was across town within hours. To tell the truth, I was afraid nobody would come. Grandpa hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to be friendly in the last forty-some years. Since he’d sobered up, he’d been getting out a little more, reestablishing some old acquaintanceships, but you can’t erase four decades of isolation in just a couple of years. So at first it was just Mildred, Enzo, and I.

  And Grandpa, of course.

  No. Not Grandpa. Grandpa’s body.

  But around one o’clock, the first tentative knock came at the door, and Mr. and Mrs. Gruber entered. They spoke with Mildred in undertones, their voices flitting in and out of my fatigued mind like bats. Enzo was introduced. The Grubers came to me and I shook their hands, Emily’s small and bony, Harold’s large and warm, and their condolences echoed fuzzily in the bright room. In addition to the absence of flowers, which he hated, Grandpa had insisted on open windows and natural light. “I don’t want a bunch of gloomy Gusses sitting around in the dark,” he’d said. “Funerals are depressing enough already.” And so the living room windows were unshuttered, and the sun, which shone uninterrupted, illuminated the proceedings with a warm, soft yellow glow.

  An Irish wake means whiskey and food, and the old wooden table in the kitchen was laden with bottles, casserole dishes, silverware, and clean glasses. Mildred flitted about with a bottle of Bushmill’s and a tray of glasses. She wouldn’t touch it herself, she promised me, but she saw no reason why her broken love affair with alcohol should ruin everyone else’s good time. Mrs. Gruber didn’t drink either, but Harold cheerfully accepted a dram. Enzo joined him, wordlessly holding out his glass for Mildred to fill. Harold looked askance at Enzo for a moment; no doubt he was wondering where this tiny Oriental had appeared from and what he was doing there. But the two of them being old men, having the weight of years in common, they soon fell into conversation.

  I ignored them. The voice had come back to me again. Grandpa is dead, it reminded me.

  I considered screaming out loud to shut the voice up. Instead I forced myself to listen to Enzo and Harold.

  “So this is Irish whiskey,” Enzo was saying. He sniffed at his glass, tasted it. His eyebrows shot up. “My goodness,” he said, and muttering in Japanese, he threw back his head and tossed the contents of the glass down his throat. Then he smiled broadly.

  “My goodness,” he said again.

  “What was that you said just now?” asked Harold.

  “It was something in my own language,” said Enzo. “I think it means something like the English ‘Here’s mud in your eye.’”

  “Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a long time,” said Harold.

  “We used to say it to each other in college,” said Enzo. “But we never drank anything like this.”

  “Well, you know, I’m not Irish,” said Harold, “but I sure do appreciate what they’ve done for booze.
”

  “It’s very fine stuff,” said Enzo. “And I’m certainly not Irish either.”

  “Say, Billy,” said Harold, “how old are you now?”

  I roused myself.

  “Twenty-one,” I said.

  “Well, I know damn well you’re not twenty-one,” said Harold, “not that I care. This boy’s been lying to me about his age ever since he was twelve,” he said to Enzo, “except he never thought I knew it.” To me he said, “Go and get yourself a glass, and drink a toast to your grandfather with us men.”

  “Now, Harold,” said Emily, “I don’t know about that.”

  “Emily, please,” said Harold, “he’s not a kid anymore. He can have a drink with us if he wants to.”

  “You be careful, Billy,” said Emily, and from the look she shot her husband I knew he was in for it later.

  “Okay,” I said. I got a glass from the kitchen. Enzo poured the whiskey for me himself, his gnarled and spotted hands steady despite his great age.

  “Here’s mud in your eye,” I said.

  “Here’s mud in your eye,” said Harold.

  “Here’s mud in all of our eyes,” said Enzo.

  I drank the whiskey down, all of it. It was the first whiskey of my life. It burned as much as I remembered from my clandestine sip as a boy. I coughed.

  “My goodness,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Enzo.

  The doorbell clanged again and Mildred went to answer it. I poured myself another shot and offered the bottle to Enzo and Harold. Enzo declined a freshener, but Harold accepted a small one. Mrs. Gruber frowned at me, but I ignored her. The whiskey warmed me from the inside out.

  “Man,” I said to Harold, “this makes you feel all right. No wonder Grandpa liked it so much.”

  “Normally I never touch it,” said Harold, “but at funerals…well, you know. Funerals were made for drinking. Or drinking was made for funerals. One or the other.”

  “Our condolences, Billy,” said a voice. I turned to see the Greenes.

  Mr. and Mrs. Greene were in their late sixties and wore twin crowns of silver hair. I delivered groceries to them once a week. They shook my hand, went to the catafalque, and knelt in front of the coffin, where they crossed themselves.

  I observed this with curiosity—I’d never prayed in my life, but it seemed as if this would be a good occasion to learn. When they were done they crossed themselves again and stood. I made a mental note of the order of things, of how it was supposed to go: cross, kneel, pray, cross, get up. But what was praying?

  I crossed the room and knelt where they had been. Awkwardly I made the sign of the cross on my chest. I rested my elbows on the velvet pad of the catafalque. Only then did I permit myself to look at what was left of my grandfather.

  I’d glanced only briefly at the body after the undertakers had brought it back from the funeral home. Grandpa had died before my eyes, and so the sight of him in his coffin was not so terrible as it might have been. But I hadn’t yet given myself time to take a long look. And I hadn’t said anything to him. Or about him. Now, I felt, would be the right time for that. If I was going to pray, I ought to do it now.

  But I couldn’t. I just knelt there and looked at him. I thought of reaching out to touch his hand, but I knew it would be cold and lifeless. He wouldn’t feel it.

  Pray, already, I said to myself.

  Right. Here we go.

  Dear God, I prayed. Here is the man who raised me from my infancy. He did the best he could, which I think was pretty good. He knew he had to die someday, and I knew it, and someday I will be dead too, so there’s no point in going on about that part of it. The point is, I don’t want him to linger. I want his spirit to go free. That’s why I covered up all the mirrors. I want him to go on to whatever the next thing is, and I want him to tell every one of us Manns he sees over there, wherever he is, that I will be all right. They don’t have anything to worry about. And I promise to tell all the old stories to my kids, when I have them. I promise to tell them about him, too. So if you would pass that message on for me, please, God, I would be very grateful. I would do it myself, but I don’t quite know how.

  That was all I could think of.

  Amen, I added, as an afterthought.

  I wondered if I was supposed to wait for a response. After a moment, though, it appeared that none was forthcoming. Grandpa remained silent in his coffin, and God didn’t reply—not that I was seriously expecting him to, but one never knows—so I crossed myself again and stood up.

  The room had fallen silent and everyone was watching me. When I turned around they looked away; I heard sniffling. It was then that I had a moment much like the one Grandpa had experienced at the funeral of Jack Simpson. I don’t mean I left my body, as he claimed he’d done. I mean I was able, just for an instant, to see myself as other people saw me. And I could tell it was a poignant moment for them—the young orphan boy saying good-bye to his only known relative. At that moment I understood how I’d always been seen by the people of this town, by the people who loved me. I was never just Eddie’s bastard to them. I was the kid who’d made it mostly on his own, and I could see they respected me for that. And something changed in me at that moment, something impalpable and difficult to describe. But here is the best way to say it: Looking back on things now, if I had to pick a moment when my childhood was clearly and definitively over and I started looking at myself as an adult, I would have to say it was right then, standing next to the body of my grandfather.

  The Greenes had joined the small knot of people in the corner and were holding paper plates of food. Mildred came in from the kitchen with another bottle of whiskey and a tray of clean glasses. Everybody took one except for Mr. Greene.

  “Bushmill’s, is it?” said Mr. Greene.

  “It is.”

  “I mustn’t, then,” he said. “It’s a Protestant whiskey.”

  “Oh, what does that have to do with it? This is America,” said Mrs. Greene. To the room at large she explained, “He likes to pretend he’s all wrapped up in the troubles in Northern Ireland. It makes him feel important.” Thus shamed, Mr. Greene took a glass after all and nursed it silently, glowering at his wife.

  Silence reigned for a time. It was my first wake, and I didn’t know what to do next.

  “He was a grand old man,” said Harold.

  “I alwuz did feel bad about them ostriches,” said Mr. Greene.

  “Hear hear.”

  Another toast was drunk by everyone, including me. It was my third. The doorbell rang again, and I went to get it myself. After ushering in Officer Madison and his wife, I hit upon the idea of propping open the front door with a chair. That way nobody would have to worry about answering the bell. I thought this a very intelligent plan and congratulated myself for having thought of it by pouring another drink. But Emily caught my eye and I set it off to the side, guiltily, to be consumed later.

  “Great idea, having a home wake,” said Madison. “They used to do this all the time.”

  Despite his complete ineptitude as a police officer, Madison had detected exactly what was needed to get people talking: nostalgia. There were memories abounding in those ancient gray heads. Madison had jogged them, and they came flying out.

  “I remember when my own grandfather passed on,” said Harold. “That would have been when I was about seven. People didn’t live as long then as they do today.” He aimed that last comment at me because I was the youngest and therefore logically the most ignorant. Harold didn’t know that I was more immersed in the past than any of them. I nodded, feigning interest. “It was in nineteen nineteen. Course everybody had home wakes then.”

  “What kind of customs do you have in Japan?” asked Mildred of Enzo.

  “We cremate,” he said. “Then we keep the ashes in a shrine.”

  “Now there’s a hell of an idea,” said Harold admiringly. “Save on space, right?”

  “We worship our ancestors,” said Enzo. “We like to have them close by u
s.”

  “How beautiful,” said Mrs. Greene.

  “Where exactly you from in Japan?” asked Mr. Greene.

  “I am from Nagasaki,” said Enzo.

  There was another long and silent moment, during which I think everyone had the same image: a malevolent mushroom cloud glowing red and black in the Japanese sky. Someone coughed, and another person shuffled their feet.

  “Friend of Tom Mann’s, were you?” asked Harold finally.

  “Oh yes,” said Enzo. “We met during the war.”

  “Is that right,” said Mr. Greene. “How’d that happen?”

  “I shot down his plane,” Enzo explained.

  Mr. Greene began to choke on his whiskey. Mrs. Greene patted him on the back.

  “You were the fella that shot down Tom’s plane?” said Harold, his eyes wide.

  “Yes,” said Enzo. “That was I.”

  “My God,” said Mr. Greene, recovering. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “It’s all right,” I said hastily. “This is the man Grandpa was marooned on that island with. They got to be good friends.”

  “I apologized to him afterward,” Enzo assured Mr. Greene. “He understood. There was a war, after all. I had to do it.”

  “I remember when Tom come home after that,” said Harold. “He was kind of a hero.”

  “Good American boys died on that plane, mister!” said Mr. Greene.

  Enzo cleared his throat.

  “My wife and children,” he said, “were killed in Nagasaki by the atomic bomb.”

  The silence that ensued now was eons long. My face burned from whiskey and embarrassment.

  “Well,” said Mr. Greene finally, “I am sorry about that.”

  “It was a war,” said Enzo, “and it was a long time ago. Things like that happen in wartime.”

  “Did you fly one of them Zeroes?” Harold asked.