Blind Date at a Funeral (7 page)

As everyone waved farewell, my eye caught hers and she smiled. I'll never forget that smile. It was warm and sincere and beautiful.

Oh my God!

That's when I remembered the silk heart.

I turned around and rushed inside.

People thought I was upset and didn't want to say goodbye, but I was actually running to get the heart and the note I'd written to go with it.

The car pulled off as I reached the gate. I can still see her face looking back through the rear window.

I scrambled inside and hurried into my room. I grabbed the envelope and made it outside just in time to see the car turn the corner.

The group continued waving at the disappearing car, even after it was gone. Then one by one they lowered their hands.

After the group dispersed and everyone went back to their homes, I stood waiting, just in case they came back.

I still have the silk heart.

(Soundtrack: ‘Private Eyes' by Hall and Oates)

I knocked on the door.

The girl opened it.

‘Do not mention my mother's eye,' she whispered as I walked into the house. ‘And for God's sake don't stare at her. Okay?'

‘Errr … okay,' I said, having never met her mother and not knowing what on earth she was talking about.

Earlier in the week, she told me that she didn't think I should accept her mother's invitation to dinner, but my dad told me I had to go and meet her parents. It was the right thing to do when you have a potential new girlfriend. Especially because she was only in Standard 9 or Form 4 or Grade 11 as it is now called.

I was in matric and still listened to my dad. So I went.

I had only seen the girl a handful of times, but we spoke a lot on the phone. I was hoping the dinner would cement the relationship.

Although I arrived at her house on time, the family were already seated for dinner.

The girl's mother was sitting at the head of the table. I was placed opposite her, on the other end. The girl's dad, who was quiet and shy, and totally controlled by his wife, sat on one side while the girl in question sat on the other side with her little brother.

I was expecting a nice family dinner, at a possible girlfriend's house, but it turned into a version of the Spanish Inquisition.

Before the food even came, the mother started firing questions at me.

‘What does your father do?'

‘He's an architect.'

‘What does your mother do?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing?'

‘I mean it's not that she doesn't do anything. She's a housewife.'

‘That's not nothing,' she grunted. ‘It's a hard job.'

She looked over at her husband with a strange look on her face. I think he blushed a little.

‘I know it's hard,' I said, trying to make light of the situation. ‘I couldn't do it. Especially grocery shopping and getting all the stuff for kids to cover their school books in brown paper and plastic. That's a lot of things to remember. And then sewing those labels with our names into our school shirts. I couldn't do that.'

‘You're in matric,' said the girl. ‘Do you still have labels with your name inside your shirt?'

‘No,' I lied. ‘I mean, like, my little sister and stuff.'

The evening was not going well.

‘Do you play a sport?' asked the mother.

‘Yes, rugby,' I replied, proudly. Finally we were going to talk about something I was passionate about.

‘Aren't you a bit small for rugby?'

‘I play scrumhalf,' I said. ‘You don't have to be that tall.'

‘Mom,' said the girl, ‘he's an artist and he wants to be a writer.'

The mother ignored her totally.

‘You're not very … um … solid,' she said, using her hands to emphasise what she was saying. ‘Do you get hurt a lot?'

‘Nah,' I said, ‘I only play in the sixth team. That's where all the skinny, little guys play. But I go to King Edward. It's one of the best rugby schools in the country, so our sixth team is like other schools' fourth teams. I'm actually the captain of the team.' I loved rugby and I sat back pretty proud of the fact that I would have been a fourth-team player at any other school.

Nobody was impressed.

I suddenly started to feel insecure. I had started off so well. I tend towards anxiety in situations like that and find it hard to appear calm, collected and in control, which is what I was so badly trying to do. When I get nervous or in trouble, I try to joke my way to safety. It often works, but not that evening.

‘Trevor, what are you going to do after matric?' the mother said, leaning forward and resting her hand on her chin.

‘I'm going to start a Trevolution,' I replied, with what I thought was a very funny answer.

Crickets.

The dad was squirming in his seat. The poor man tried once or twice to rein in the interrogation, but the mother was having none of it.

Just then, the food was brought to the table and that's when I saw it.

Her eye.

The left one.

Oh my God.

It kept watching me while the other eye looked down at the food. I'm not telling a lie and I write this with the utmost respect, but it's exactly what happened.

Those eyes were not identical twins. They were independent contractors.

The more I was aware of her wandering eye, the more apparent it became. My jaw must have dropped slightly, because the girl nudged my foot as a clear signal for me to stop staring.

I tried to make small talk with the brother. I turned to talk to him and in my periphery, I noticed the eye following me while the other eye focused on carving the chicken.

The dad asked me a few questions about writing and school, which helped to distract me from this incredible urge to get nearer to the mother so I could observe the phenomenon close up. I wanted to put my hand up in front of her face and say, ‘Follow my finger.'

The small talk around the table eased the tension. The mother seemed to relax a bit while we were eating and the dinner conversation mellowed substantially. Without staring, I noticed that, to a certain extent, her eyes seemed to have made friends again.

The girl told me later that her mother had some kind of condition that caused her eyes to freak out when she was under stress. I also heard that she was an angry woman and very tough on the kids.

The more gin and tonics the mother drank, the more she left me alone. Her eye did follow me once though, when I excused myself to go to the toilet.

After a while, the parents wandered off to the veranda and had some more drinks.

The girl and I sat in the lounge and listened to records. Although we liked each other, we both knew this wasn't going to be a future romance. There was no mention of her mother's eye during that conversation, even though I was aching to ask about it.

My dad arrived a short while later and the mother opened the door for him. He did not say anything as we walked back to the car.

We got into the car and he turned and looked at me.

(Soundtrack: ‘Première Gymnopédie' by Erik Satie)

Hendrik was a great man. He was a general factotum who worked on my grandfather's farm in Vredefort in the Orange Free State.

Hendrik used to do something very interesting every morning before he began work. Carefully and methodically, he would wash his hands and his face in a galvanised tub outside the room where he lived. Then he would put Vaseline on his face.

After that, he would open a green chest and carefully remove a supermarket plastic bag. Inside the bag was a neatly folded pair of smart pants and a nice, long-sleeved, button-up shirt.

In the early morning light, we would wait patiently outside his room, under the big mulberry tree, while he changed from his overalls into the smart clothes from the bag.

Then he would come out, nod in our direction with a smile, and walk over to the tree next to his room. Without hesitation, he would climb halfway up the trunk on some little planks he had hammered into the tree. Then he would sit in one of the tree's forks. He would look up into the sky, close his eyes and say his daily prayers.

We were fascinated.

‘When I am up in the tree, I am nearer to God,' he would say. ‘He can hear me better when I am closer to Him.'

We'd wait patiently for Hendrik under the tree.

I'll never forget how peaceful he'd look ten minutes later when he came down from the tree. He'd go back inside his room, change back into his overalls and then get to work.

We were amazed by the fact that he changed into his best clothes, just to climb a tree and pray. He told me once it was simply a matter of respect.

I shared Hendrik's story with my little friend Megan many years ago. She was an amazing twelve-year-old cancer patient I often visited at the hospital.

Megan loved my stories of growing up in South Africa. She made me tell them over and over again whenever I visited the children's cancer ward. She desperately wanted to go to my grandpa's farm.

One day I told Megan that I had just finished writing a book about kids in South Africa.

‘I'm going to dedicate the book to you,' I said.

‘Awww, thanks,' she said softly, with parched, dry lips. ‘That is so cool.'

Megan was a beautiful child with a smile that could reach across an entire room. The effects of chemotherapy and gruelling radiation sessions did not dampen her wonderful demeanour.

‘As soon as the book comes out, I'll read it to you,' I offered.

Megan said nothing for a few seconds. Then, ever the jokester, she said, ‘You'll have to read real loud if I'm in heaven.'

She turned to me and smiled.

‘I will,' I said. ‘If you pass away before this book comes out, I'll climb onto the roof of my house when it's published and read so damn loud you'll hear me all the way up in there.'

‘Ha,' she said. ‘You promise?'

‘I promise,' I said.

Megan fought an incredible battle, but she was no match for the savage cancer. It ripped her body apart from the inside out. She died only days after our conversation.

Megan's mom Becky spoke to me after the funeral. ‘You are going to keep your promise to Megan, aren't you?'

‘Of course I am,' I said, fighting back my tears.

Becky called me later that day and asked if the family could come over to my house when I climbed onto the roof to read the book. She thought it would be a good memorial to Megan.

‘Absolutely,' I told her.

Becky called me the next day and asked if I wouldn't mind very much if Megan's class came to the reading on the roof.

‘I would love that,' I told her.

A few days later the principal of the school called and asked if the entire school could come to the reading on the roof.

That's when I said, ‘I don't think it's possible. My garden is too small.'

Well, that did not stop Becky. By the next morning, she had arranged for me to do the reading on the roof of the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Texas, where I now live. The location was ideal. The two-storey building had a flat roof with a deck on it and was surrounded by a beautiful garden and a manicured green lawn.

It rained the entire week before and we were fearful that the reading might not take place. Then on the morning of the event, as I climbed the stairs to the roof, the sun came out and bathed the entire garden in a warm golden light.

Once on the roof, I turned on the sound system that had been set up. I leaned on the little wall surrounding the deck and looked over the edge.

My heart stopped.

Sitting on the lawn, on chairs and blankets, were hundreds and hundreds of people looking up at me. I still don't know how so many of them heard about the reading.

The entire crowd was completely silent. The only sound I heard was the chirping of happy birds in the woods surrounding the lawn and the occasional barking of a dog way off in the distance.