A Song for Carmine (15 page)
Without the light behind
her skin, Z’s brown skin looks dull and flat, like the pasty brown used in preschool projects and Spanish architecture. I hate this. I walk around the funeral home with an unsettling energy in my feet, pushing my shoes forward, my son on my shoulder; I’ve not left him or been more than a foot away from him since picking him up from the hospital. He breathes so softly under my chin; it is poetry, the sound of his living. His skin is so delicate and pink and light brown, the smell of him greater than anything I’ve ever gotten close to; there is something so big about him.
I cannot sit still even long enough to answer the funeral director’s questions about the service and about who will speak and for how long and where the flowers should be placed or how many people will ride in the town car to the grave site. I just want him to quit talking. I want to walk out of the old and aging building and back home to my house, our house, and pretend that she will walk in the door at any moment. I just want to pretend a little longer.
“Make it as simple and as beautiful and as quick as possible. That’s what I want. Make that happen.”
He looks back at me, smiles quietly; his eyes blink a few times and he nods. He’s a small man, probably fell into this work, a family’s business maybe; his heart’s not in it. I feel sorry for him, but he’s good at this job, riding out people’s waves of emotion. I can be hard; I try to be easy on him.
“I don’t much care about this part, but others will. Don’t let it stretch on too long—it hurts too much—but don’t rush it either. Play the calypso music I gave you at the end, run the slide show, usher us through it. Show us how it’s done. Can you do that?”
“Of course, sir, of course. Don’t worry about a thing.” When I turn to leave, I think I see him wink at me out of the corner of his eye, his soft brown eye peeking from his thick lid. I wince. He doesn’t know me like that.
Z’s family is sitting down in the main room, and their faces make all of this hard; the resemblance is so strong, especially in the eyes, and you cannot not look at someone’s eyes when you speak to them. They want to hold my baby, and the thought of the cold spot on my chest scares me; without my son, I’m afraid I’ll run down the street like a crazy, grieving husband, and then maybe they’ll take my baby from me.
I try to smile when I see my old friends sitting behind me wearing T-shirts and jeans, Griff looking solemn yet still jolly, Mark’s eyes red, his foot tapping, both with a mouth full of tobacco. My mother sits in the last row, empty chairs on each side of her; there are no other St. Clairs to help us grieve this loss, to help fill our rows and the big, looming space left by this and the other. We make eye contact and she smiles back at me, big but not happy. I remember how I used to look at her from the school bus window and feel comforted by her face. There she is again. I barely recognize the woman she has become since Pa’s death. Kindness, tenderness, love—it all seems to come so easily to her now that she’s free. I wonder if this is who she was all along, buried beneath the weight of Pa.
Busloads of Z’s friends and family come out. A couple of Z’s cousins stand up and talk about spending summers with her, about her laugh and her playfulness and her genuine kindness and her enduring spirit; and when they are done, everyone looks to me. Part of me believes that anything I would say would take away from her, her life, what she meant, what she means. I find strength in my legs and walk up to the podium. My baby stirs.
“I… I just want to say that I didn’t know life could be so good, so sweet. She taught me that. To just relax and to enjoy life and love the right way and… I’m so afraid I’ll forget, that somehow I’ll lose…” I start to choke, feel my knees grow weak beneath me, take a breath and hold it.
“Thank you all for coming.” I stand there for a few minutes looking at everyone, pat my baby’s back as I take my seat. Pastor Stanley comes and takes my place and says some words from the Bible about death not really being death at all. I let out a big audible sigh because I don’t know if it’s true. I look around at others’ faces to see if it makes a difference for them. To see if they believe that once someone is there, they’re always there. This I want to believe. Z’s family comes to me, one by one, leaning into my neck for hugs, patting the baby’s back, crying big messy tears.
“Carmine, love that baby the best you can.”
“Carmine, she loved you, she loved you so much. She talked about you constantly.”
“Carmine, be strong, pray, you ain’t never really alone.”
“Carmine, I’m sorry. Real sorry. Z was a great woman and…”
I stop listening after awhile, gaze off somewhere, blink my eyes and lean into people as they come close, but I’ve already escaped.
I stay in the big empty room for a long time after everyone shuffles out to the lobby for coffee, small sandwiches—what do all the rituals really mean?
I ask that the coffin be left open, that I be the one to close her in the darkness, that I be the last one to see her darling face.
I see Ma at the doorway heading out. She looks at me for a long time. I wave her off softly, hold her gaze for a few seconds; she understands, closes the door behind her.
I put Samuel down in his seat, slide a blanket up to his chin. When I walk up to the coffin, my eyes play tricks; it looks like her eyes are open and she’s looking at me.
I step back a few feet, look at her closer; she’s there but not, her eyes closed completely.
I reach for her hand; it feels cold, so cold. I want to jerk my hand away but I don’t. I want this.
“Baby… why did you have to go? Why did you have to go?” I squeeze her hand so tightly, fold my fingers into hers.
“Come back, baby, please come back…” I cry so hard I choke on my own tears, but then the baby stirs, his tiny hands form fists, and I stop.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Z. We were supposed to do this… I need you so much. Who am I without you?”
Her face seems to change expressions, like some hologram of memories, her laughing, her angry that I’d left the empty milk carton in the fridge, her cheeks full in the last month of pregnancy.
I stand there for a long time, wait for her to respond. Outside I can hear car doors slam, hushed voices making plans.
“Z… this can’t be it. What am I supposed to do here? I can’t put you into the ground. You don’t belong in the ground…” My sobs have grown violent and loud. I look up at the ceiling and want to scream.
Samuel stirs again. His head moves back and forth; he’s dreaming but awake. Suddenly his eyes open, search the sky for something, and he starts to cry.
I run to him, take him out of his seat, fold him into my arms and walk back to the casket.
“Z… look at him, look at you in him. You never even got to see him.” I turn the baby’s face toward hers for just a second, pull him closer.
I feel the funeral director’s stares coming from the back of the room; life keeps on moving. Time can be so pushy and so demanding, and I wonder why we can’t just stop it for a while.
“Mr. St. Clair. The town car is waiting outside whenever you are ready. Your mom will ride with you, and of course, myself. Take your time.” His voice is as black as the suit he’s wearing, and I wonder how he can do this job day after day and how he’s able to separate his own life from all of this death. I believe it’s possible that he can only achieve a sorta gray existence, with death at each of his corners.
“All right. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I don’t take my eyes off of Z as I say it.
“I’ve got to let you go now, baby. I’ve got to keep on moving; I’ve got to somehow accept this.” I lean down and kiss her forehead; it is not hers anymore. I fold her hands over her heart, close the lid as slow as I can.
After a few minutes, I stand up and grab Samuel’s bag and head to the men’s room to change him.
“Baby boy, my son, my child. There’s something we’ve got to go and do right now, and it’s gonna be hard. It makes me so sorry that you have to start your life already burdened by this, but I’ve learned something important that I’m going to teach you. There are just some things you simply have to accept because the only alternative is spending your life fighting with them. Your mother is the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and now we have to go watch as her body is laid into the ground to rest. It doesn’t make any sense but we’ll do it together, and it’ll be okay.” I sigh deep into my chest to hold back the tears as I button his sleeper back up and lift him from the changing table. I’ve got to give him all I have.
The grave site is cold and the wind gusts as if in defiance; even the sun tries to cower behind the clouds before they move across the sky. There is no way around this part. There are only a couple of rows of black chairs set up in front of the prepared ground. Z’s family hold their faces and Ma keeps her head down, but I watch Z’s casket because I feel like I’ve got to keep her safe, even now, and when the preacher begins to speak again about the shadow and the valley of death and about ashes we come and ashes we leave, that is when I begin to cry and hold my son and beg for the strength to mold his life on my own. Beneath the tears, anger tries to boil to the surface, but I no longer have the soil within myself to grow it, and I let it subside and surrender to the pain, softly and quietly, to the love beneath my hands, the warmth of my baby son, the way it is and will be.
The funeral car leaves the grave site when the men have shoveled dirt upon my beloved’s wood box and the flowers have been removed and the tractor to move the earth on top of her has been gassed. The family has gone back to their hotels, and I promise to visit them before they go and apologize again for not having anything further back at the house—food, music, picture collages, a celebration of Z’s life. All of that seems ridiculous to me—the whole idea of celebrating someone’s life after it has been jerked away from them. To me, it is like celebrating someone’s days of walking after they’ve been paralyzed by an accident and their legs no longer work.
When the car drops me off and I tell Ma good-bye in the backseat of it, my bones feel heavy and achy from the day, and even the small task of unbuckling Samuel’s car seat seems laborious and emotional. Z is immediate when I walk through the threshold of our front door: the sweet smell of her lilac skin is embedded in the walls, and when I walk through the living room to the kitchen, I can see her dancing in front of the stereo in cutoffs and praising the sounds of the calypso music while I laugh and shake my head.
I catch a glimpse of my face in the silver refrigerator, and my skin looks pasty and old but I don’t dwell and instead start making bottles, enough to get us through the night, and I walk back into Samuel’s room; the mobile still plays above him while he sleeps. I sit on the floor beside his crib and stay there until I hear him stir again.
* * *
When I go to sleep now, I think about Z, and sometimes I get an erection, but not the same kind. Sometimes with the pleasure of orgasm, I want to scream out in that way again. But without her praise, it means nothing. I get hard like flowers must rise for the sun; at the thought of her, I am longing, yearning, searching, wanting, needing to grow. Beside me, the bed is always empty, and I am still just me, still a man who dreams of leaving this body and flying above the clouds in search of her.
But I go on.
* * *
There are no individual days after that. Only memories that take me out of the present. Only fits of grief and moments of weakness, where I don’t quite know if my body will lead me, hold me, so I can do what I have to do.
In the morning, I get up an hour early just so I can watch him sleep. In the day, I can’t see a thing; he’s a blur of action, emotion, reaching and pulling with every breath. In that hour just before he wakes up, I am one with her, with us, and these thoughts get me through the day.
It has only been three years since that night at that musty bar. I feel a million years older, mummified, strangled, and hung up to dry, but it has only been three years. Time really does nothing for life, adds nothing to the sum of existence. It only forces us to package events, feelings, things that weren’t meant to have such parameters. But without time, everything becomes a breeding ground for hopelessness. Time has never done me any favors this way, but we still live hand in hand.
I think back to that night in her car, mornings watching her sleep, feeling the curve of her breast beneath a dress I’ll always look for in the windows of shops that I pass by.
I get to the shop by nine every morning, but before I get there, I see the wood chips on the floor and smell the sum of my life in short bursts of air that rush in the car window. I live for these things now. All of my senses are alive.
The drive to work is short and familiar, and I take the same route every day because it soothes me. There is still the pull of the drink and the drunk, the whore and the fuck, and I know it will live inside of me forever. I have found prayer to be a useful substitute these days. I’ve found baptism and the church on the poor side of town. On Sunday mornings, I put on one of those old suits and I pray. On my knees, I pray. And when I pray, I cry. And when I cry, big wet tears drop to the floor, and then I’m gone. Before the sermon is over, before the niceties can be exchanged, before the donuts are served, I am gone; and for a week, I am better, able to go on and live and be the thing I need to be. It is still only in front of God that I can release those tears. But this time, I cry another river, another tale, another story completely.
On Mondays, the day after those Sundays, I drive to work and see Eton for the first time. It is drab, I know; it is a useless corner of the earth, I know that, too, but it is ground and dirt and it speaks a million memories, like every other plot of land. And for now, I stay.