Hope to Die (5 page)

"I'm glad you could come," Michael said. "The service was okay, don't you think?"

"It seemed fine," I said.

"Are you going to ride out to the cemetery? I could see if there's room in the limo with us, or you could just join the parade, except they don't call it that. What's the word?"

"Cortege," Andy supplied.

"And afterward we're all going back to Graham's house. Uh, their house."

"I think I'll pass," I said. "On the house, and on the cemetery. I think I'd be out of place."

"Well, that's up to you," Michael said. "Strictly your call."

Andy said, "Whatever, we've got a job to do." He was pulling on a pair of black silk gloves. "We're pallbearers," he said. "It's hard to take it all in, you know?"

"I know."

"They're going to close the casket. If you want to take a last look at Mom..."

I didn't much want to, but then I hadn't really wanted to come out to Syosset, either. There are things you just do, and the hell with what you want or don't want. I went over and looked at her and was immediately sorry I had. She looked dead, waxen, looked as though she had never been alive in the first place.

I turned away and blinked a few times but the image was still there. It would stay with me for a while, I knew, and then it would fade, and eventually I would remember the woman I used to know, the woman I'd married, the woman I'd fallen in love with once upon a time.

I looked for my sons and there they were, both wearing the black pallbearer's gloves now, both with expressions that were hard to read. "Maybe we could meet someplace afterward," I suggested. "It's what, two years since I last saw you, Mike? And I can't remember the last time I saw you, Andy."

"I can," he said, "because it's the last time I was inNew York. Four years ago, and I met Elaine for the first time, and the three of us walked to a restaurant and had dinner."

"Paris Green."

"That's the one."

"Well, is there a place here in Syosset where we can meet? A coffee shop or something? After the cemetery, and after you've had a chance to see people back at the house."

They exchanged glances. Michael said, "Once we get back to the house, I think we have to stay there. There's a lot of people who'll be dropping in, and I think we'd be missed if we slipped out."

"Mom had a lot of friends," Andy said.

"Maybe between the cemetery and the house," I said. But they'd be riding in the limo, Michael said, and Andy said the limo'd bring them back here, that was the plan, and they'd get their own cars.

"So June can drive your car back," he said, "and I'll run you and me over to Hershey's."

"God, not the Hershey Bar," Michael said. To me he said, "It's a beer bar, it's all high school and college kids, it's crowded and noisy. You wouldn't like it. As far as that goes, I wouldn't like it."

"You used to," Andy said. "Before you turned into an old man. Anyway, it's an afternoon in the middle of the week. How rowdy do you think it's going to be?"

"Jesus, the Hershey Bar," Michael said.

"Well, pick someplace better, if you can think of one."

"I can't, and they're waiting for us, so I guess it's the Hershey Bar." He gave me quick directions and then the two of them let one of the mortuary staff guide them to their places on opposite sides of the now-sealed casket. Anita's brother, Phil, had the spot behind Andy, and there were three other men whom I didn't recognize.

I left them to their work.

I drove out to the cemetery after all. I hadn't planned on it, but somehow my car wound up queueing along with the others, and I sat there and followed the car in front of me. We had a police escort, so we didn't have to stop for traffic lights, and I told myself the cops out here had it easy, with nothing to do but take an occasional run out to the cemetery. But I knew better. They have crime onLong Island, and people selling drugs and other people using them, and men who batter their wives and abuse their children, and others who drive drunk and plow head-on into a school bus. They don't have Crips and Bloods and drive-by shootings yet, not that I've heard, but they probably won't have long to wait.

I stayed in my car at the cemetery while everybody else walked over to the graveside for the service. I could see them from where I was parked, and as soon as the service was over I started my engine and found my way out of there.

I hadn't paid close attention to the route to the cemetery- you don't when all you have to do is tag along after the car in front of you- and I took a few wrong turns on the way back, and a few more finding my way to the Hershey Bar. I parked and went in, expecting my sons would already be there, but the place was empty except for the bartender, a blue-jawed skinhead in a Metallica T-shirt, its sleeves rolled up to show health club muscles, and his sole customer, an old man in a cloth cap and a thrift-shop overcoat. The old fellow looked like he belonged on a bar stool at the Blarney Stone or the White Rose, but here he was at a college kids' bar in Syosset, drinking his beer out of a heavy glass mug.

There were college pennants on the rough wooden walls, and beer steins hanging from the exposed beams, and the bar and tabletops held bowls of miniature chocolate bars. Hershey bars, of course, in several varieties, along with foil-wrapped Hershey's Kisses. It was consistent with the name of the joint, to be sure, but why would anyone want to nibble chocolate as an accompaniment to beer? I could think of several bars that used to set out complimentary bowls of peanuts in the shell, and I remembered the chickpeas at Max'sKansas City, but who'd want to pair a Dos Equis or a St. Pauli Girl with a Hershey's Kiss?

The bartender was looking at me, eyebrows raised, and I didn't want a beer or a chocolate bar. I wanted bourbon, better make it a double, straight up, and leave the bottle.

I patted my pockets as if I'd lost something- my wallet, my car keys, my cigarettes. "Be right back," I said, and got out of there and sat in my car. I turned the key so I could play the radio, and I found a station that featured what they called Classic Country, which Elaine would call a contradiction in terms. But they played Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and Red Foley and Kitty Wells, and then Mike and Andy pulled in and got out of a gray Honda Accord. When they reached the entrance Mike said something, and Andy gave him a poke in the shoulder and held the door open, and the two of them disappeared inside.

I waited for the last notes of "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Then I went in after them.

Mike ordered a Heineken's and I said I'd have a glass of Coke. The bartender asked if Pepsi would be all right, and I said it would be fine. Neither one was what I wanted, but I wasn't going to have what I wanted, and the fact was I didn't really want it anymore. The urge had been strong enough to get me the hell out of there, but wanting a drink is a world away from having one, and now the wanting had passed. A Coke would have been fine, and a Pepsi would be fine, and so would a glass of water, or nothing at all.

Andy said, "What the hell, we're onLong Island, right? I'll have a Long Island Iced Tea."

They thought that one up after I stopped drinking, so I never learned what's in it, but I gather it contains a mix of liquors, and that tea's nowhere to be found. The name's ironic, and I suppose it's a reference to rum-running during Prohibition, which would make it doubly ironic, since the kids who get wasted on it can't even rememberVietnam.

The drinks came. Andy sipped his and pronounced it a stupid drink. "Who thought this up?" he wondered. "It's supposed to have a kick like a mule but it doesn't taste like anything at all. I suppose that's the point, especially if you're nineteen years old and looking to get your girlfriend drunk." He took another sip and said, "It grows on you. I was going to say this is my first Long Island Iced Tea and it's going to be my last, but maybe not. Maybe I'll finish it and have six more of them."

"And maybe you won't," his brother said. "Gray needs us back at the house."

"Is that what you call him? Gray?"

"It's what Mom called him," Andy said. "I never had much occasion to call him anything, really. Just if he answered the phone when I called, or the couple of times I visited."

"Which would have been four years ago," I said.

"Plus once since then."

"Oh?"

"I guess it was last Thanksgiving. I never did come into the city, I just visited here for a couple of days and flew straight out again." He looked at his glass. "I called you a few times," he said unconvincingly. "I got the machine every time I called, and I didn't want to leave a message."

I said, "He seems like a nice enough fellow, Gray."

"He's all right," Andy said.

"He was good for Mom," Michael said. "He was there for her, you know?"

Unlike some people. "I never thought I'd see this day," I said, surprising myself with the words, evidently surprising them as well from the looks on their faces. "I always assumed I'd go first," I explained. "I didn't think about it much, but I guess I took it for granted. I was older by three years and change, and men generally die first. And all of a sudden she's gone."

They didn't say anything.

"Everybody says that's the best way," I said. "One minute you're here and the next minute you're gone. No pain to speak of, no long-drawn-out illness, no standing at the brink and staring out at the abyss. But it's not what I would want for myself."

"No?"

I shook my head. "I'd want time to make sure I wasn't leaving a mess. My affairs in order, that sort of thing. And I'd want time for other people to get used to the idea. A sudden death may be easier on the victim, but it's harder on everybody else."

"I don't know about that," Michael said. "June's got an aunt with Alzheimer's, she's been hanging on for years. Be a lot easier on all concerned if she stroked out or had a heart attack."

I said he had a point. Andy said when it was his turn he wanted to be lowered into a vat of lanolin and softened to death. That seemed funny, but not funny enough to laugh at, given the mood at the table.

"Anyway," Michael said, "we had a warning. Mom had a minor heart attack about a little over a year ago."

"I didn't know that."

"I didn't hear about it right away. She and Gray didn't exactly call a press conference. But she had diabetes and high blood pressure, and- "

"I didn't know that, either."

"You didn't? I guess she developed diabetes about ten years ago. I don't know about the blood pressure, how long she had that. I believe you can have it a while without knowing it. The diabetes was mild enough so she didn't need injections, just oral insulin, but I guess it affects the heart, and so does the high blood pressure. She had the one heart attack, and it was just a question of time until she had another one, but I didn't expect it this soon."

"I thought she'd beat it," Andy said. "She seemed fine at Thanksgiving, and she and Gray were full of plans. There was this riverboat cruise throughGermany they were going to take."

"It's next month," his brother said. "They were going to leave right after Labor Day."

"Well, I guess that's out," Andy said. "Maybe you can use their tickets, you and Elaine."

There was an awkward silence, and then he said, "Sorry, I don't know why I said that." He picked up his glass and looked at the ceiling light through it. I thought of all the times I'd done that myself, though never with a glass of Long Island Iced Tea. "This stuff ought to come with a warning label. I'm sorry."

"Forget it."

"Anyway, I don't suppose Elaine would want to go toGermany, would she?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she's Jewish, isn't she?"

"So?"

"So she might not be that crazy about going toGermany. She might be worried about getting turned into soap."

Michael said, "Andy, why don't you shut up?"

"Hey, it was just a joke, okay?"

"A stupid joke."

"Nobody likes my jokes," Andy said. "Soap, lanolin, I can't win. Nobody likes my jokes today."

"It's not a great day for jokes, bro."

"Just what is it a great day for, bro? Will you tell me that?"

"I guess you guys'll want to get back to the house," I said, not knowing what they wanted to do, not caring much, knowing only that I wanted to get the hell out of there. "Gray can probably use you for the next few hours."

"Gray," Andy said. "You ever meet him?"

"Just now, at the funeral."

"I figured you were old friends, calling him Gray and all."

I turned to Michael. "I think you'd better drive," I said.

"Andy's all right."

"Whatever you say."

"He's upset, that's all."

"Talking about me like I'm not here," Andy said. "Can I ask a question? One fucking question?" He didn't wait for permission. "Where do you get off having the long face, talking about how you thought you'd be the first to go? I mean, where in the hell does that come from? Who appointed you chief mourner, for God's sake?"

I could feel the anger, moving up my spine like an army. I kept a lid on it.

"You didn't give a shit about her while she was alive," he went on. "Did you ever love her?"

"I thought I did."

"But I guess it didn't last."

"No," I said. "The two of us weren't very good at being married."

"She wasn't so bad at it. You were the one who left."

"I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought of it. It's easier for a man to leave."

"I don't know," he said. "Past few years, I've run into a few women who didn't find it so goddam hard. Pack a bag, walk out the door, easiest thing in the world."

"It's not always as easy as it looks."

"Especially if there's kids involved," he said. "Right?"