Interstate (7 page)

They speak on the phone for two more years, occasionally a letter or postcard between them and always birthday cards and gifts at Christmas from him, a few times she says she thinks she's coming east for a convention or with one or two of her boys to visit him and then perhaps take in New York City and Washington, D.C., but then writes or phones that her plans were canceled or fell through because of personal reasons she doesn't want to go into when he asks what, “Well, I thought it might have been over me—a dispute between you two, for instance, though I wouldn't know why, I'm really a harmless and mean-well guy—or something to do with stopping you, though there also I'm in the dark about, my lousy memory of last week's things,” and she says no and for the last time about it that's as far as she'll go, okay? and he says sure, “I was only saying, nothing to it, so I'll be speaking to you, honey, goodbye,” and about a month later she gets a call from an official in his city (there were a number of reasons they hadn't spoken since their last conversation when she said her plans had fallen through and he thought it might have been over him: it was midsummer and they were away two weekends in a row at Glen's mother's beach house when he called, another night they were having dinner in a restaurant when he called and then he got tired and took a nap that ended up a six-hour sleep and when he awoke he felt it was too late to call even with the three-hour time difference, another time her son took the message that he'd called but forgot to give it to her, another time Glen took the message after a brief exchange with him, “So how's it going?” “Everything's fine,” “Tell her I called?” “You bet,” but got into an argument with her when she got home from work and after it was still so mad at her he didn't want to tell her anything and next morning he'd planned to mention her father called but they talked mostly how sleep usually irons over any bad feelings still lingering from the previous day's fight and then he forgot till three days later when he thought “Why bother, he'll probably call today anyway?” she called him that day but he'd pulled the phone jack out of the wall because he had a stomach flu or it was something he ate but anyway was too weak to answer the phone and didn't want to be woken up by or even hear its rings, the boys were in day camp and she yelled from the bedroom “You interested in paying me a visit?” “You bet,” and later the phone rang while they were making love and Glen reached for the receiver and she said “Leave it,” and he said “What if it's important?” and she said “If it is, they'll call back,” they got an answering machine that recorded his message but something malfunctioned that first day or maybe it was the way she'd assembled or connected it into the wall, but the entire day's tape was erased and next day without them doing anything new to it except taking the plug out of the wall socket and putting it back in, it worked fine, she called and he wasn't in, she thought she'd call him back in an hour or so but then a number of things happened—Glen called and they had a long talk, one of her sons was invited to sleep over at a friend's house and she had to pack his things and give him an early supper because she knew he wouldn't get fed much there except for sweets and drive him, she decided to make a potato salad now instead of tomorrow for a picnic, a bird feeder fell down and broke and it took some time fixing it and hanging it back up in a tree, the radio was playing a familiar Mozart piano sonata and she wanted to hear it to the end to get the number, she got interested in the last of a series of articles on welfare and the poor and then went through the newspaper pile for the papers of the two previous days for articles one and two—and she never got around to it, he called but their line was busy for hours and he gave up after almost twenty tries and went to bed thinking he'd call her at work next day just to hear her voice again and see how things are going with her and her family after almost a month or even earlier at home if he can remember to call, say, between eleven-ten and -fifteen his time but he died overnight) that he died in his sleep it appears, in no way is there any indication of foul play, and may have been dead three to four days—“Excuse me, but if all this is too much for you,” the official says, “though you are the person I really want to talk to, I can speak to your husband about it,” and she says “No, it's okay, it's been a while since I saw my father, more than a month since I even spoke to him, and we haven't been close for many years and I don't want anything decided about him without my immediate say, so please continue and if it does get too much for me I'll let you know,” and the official says “As I was saying, and if I do get too blunt please excuse me, it's not the job but my manner…three to four days he might have been there—the police had to break in his door as the neighbor he kept a spare set of keys with for emergencies like this one might have been, just as he had a spare set of hers for the same thing, was out of town all that time and because no one else in the building saw him for that long, or the smell—I never got straight which one, but that shouldn't be an issue now—but that's how he was eventually found”—and though he laid out sufficient money with instructions that his body be cremated and for a small ceremony at the cemetery for relatives and close friends where his ashes are to be buried unmarked next to his daughter Julie's grave, does she want anything different done?—“His instructions, along with where his passport is and checking account and union membership number to help with the cost of the funeral and things like that were all in an envelope in his night table drawer but weren't notarized, the instructions, or even properly witnessed, so you can have the final say,” and she says “Why would I want to countermand my father's wishes?” and the official says “By the city's health law we have to give you this opportunity, your being, so far as we know—his instructions say you are and we'll look into it further—his only heir, so we even have to get you to sign a release for the cremation or regular interment or whichever kind you finally decided on,” and she says “That's what I mean—what else could I possibly want that's different than what he said?” and the official says “You might not want him cremated, for example, as it could be antithetical to your beliefs, religious or otherwise—considerations like that, which you might not have thought about yet because of the suddenness of the news,” and she says “No, that's the way I also want to go—it's easier for everybody,” and the official says “You're saying cremation,” and she says yes and the official says “Okay, and that's what your father wrote in his instructions too—he, quote, don't want to cause anyone a fuss, unquote, but another thing is the ceremony—and I'm only trying to be helpful here, this isn't part of my regular job—he wrote he didn't want any professional religious person officiating—someone, quote, lay and unpaid, unquote, as he says, could easily do it and that way too, quote, my daughter's spared the minister's or rabbi's or whatever officiator's expense, unquote,” and she says “There too, it's fine with me, whomever he chose—did he, in these instructions?” and the official says “He has written down here the funeral home taking care of the cremation and graveside service but no one named as speaker or what kind of service he wanted, secular or otherwise, so I assume that's all up to you—maybe, if I can poke my nose in a bit further, this neighbor lady friend of his will know who his closest friends were—
she
, even—and who can speak and be understood and lead a service…but the place of burial might be something else for you to consider—the truth is, my dear, though your father kept up and paid for in perpetuity, it says in his instructions, the grave of your sister and several others alongside hers plus some empty burial plots, you might not even want his ashes buried there but flown home with you,” and she says “Now that you bring it up, it would be senseless for me to come east for only a ceremony with people I mostly don't know and with not even a casket to look at and really nothing much else to see there except the gravestones of my dead sister and some grandparents I never knew, so perhaps I can have half the ashes buried next to her grave and the rest sent to me and buried unmarked in my husband's family gravesite—it would only occupy a small part of the plot so I'm sure my husband's family won't mind, and that way I'll be able to pay my respects to him whenever I want since I don't see when I'll be flying east again now that he's not there, and he'd be, or his ashes would, half of them at least, buried next to or near me since I'm sure I'll end up buried here too,” and the official says “I'm positive all that can be arranged through the funeral home doing the cremation, but one last thing, dear, with your permission: if you don't intend on coming east soon then you better start figuring out what you want done with his apartment, or room, rather,” and she says “Can all his belongings, for a price, be junked, the ones that aren't worth anything, and the rest given to charity or some Goodwill place that might take them?” and the official says “That'll have to be arranged between you and his landlord but I don't see why it couldn't be done—as for his private papers, if he has any,” and she says “Oh I'm sure he has: letters from my mother dating back before they were married, photos of the family and when he was a kid and no doubt some personal objects of my sister Julie from day one,” and the official says “Those, then, plus some more practically important items to you like his bankbook and check book and birth certificate perhaps and deed to his cemetery plots and maybe even some tucked-away savings or stocks and bonds certificates or things of that ilk he might have accumulated over the years though we hope paid income tax on,” and she says “I doubt he had any of those—not only was he just making it, we'll say, so too poor to buy them, but he frowned on that kind of income like playing the stock market, money made on paper and if it turns out to be real money when cashed in, then money made without doing hard labor for it—he was old-fashioned that way, of that, from the little I spoke to him about gambling and livelihood, I'm sure,” and the official says “Whatever, but once you sign and return the documents I send you, if you're truly not coming here, then the padlock will be removed from his apartment and you'll be able to designate a surrogate to go through it and send those things of a more practical financial nature to you the surrogate might find—as for the photos and your sister's possessions and such your father might have had,” and she says “It's not what she possessed but what he might have kept of hers—she died when she was five, you know, murdered by a maniac; we were in the same car at the time—a crazy spray highway shooting,” and the official says “I didn't know and I'm very sorry, dear, extremely,” and she says “Oh yes, that's what started all my father's problems—marriage breakup, in essence giving me up, certain quirks and obsessions, losing his job and so on,” and the official says “I didn't know that either, dear, I'm sorry—anyway, those things, the ones that are only of possible personal value to you, well, unless you come here and claim them or have them sent to you or keep up his lodgings till the landlord thinks, because no one's living here, that he wants the place vacated so he can raise the rent, then I'm afraid they'll be disposed of as garbage too.”

Everything's worked out, papers are sent, signed and returned, half his ashes buried beside Julie's grave but with no ceremony or guests since she didn't see any reason for even a simple service at the cemetery, for the lady-friend neighbor didn't know who else would come or how she'd get there if she was the only one, and what was left of his relatives in the area, Margo remembered him saying, he'd lost all contact with, they never especially liked him in the first place or not since he was a fairly quiet timid kid, and it'd be hypocritical to ask them to attend the ceremony if she wasn't going to be there, other half of his ashes sent to her in a can and buried between two empty plots at her husband's family gravesite after a brief service with only her sons and husband and his parents and the gravedigger there, her husband officiating and saying “He was a good person from everything I heard about him and the few hours I spent with him in a restaurant once and the many phone conversations we had, albeit succinct as a majority of them were—honest and sincere and hardworking and devoted to his daughters, the living Margo, the deceased Julie, surely no man could have loved his children more, and who because of that love perhaps, but anyhow what became a deep misfortune, a disturbing calamity if not tragedy, actually, which perhaps no words can do justice to or describe so why try?”—“Hear, hear,” his father says—“seemed to blow it all, to be colloquial but direct, but he came back from, let's be forthright about it and conceal nothing at a location where nothing should be back door, incarceration—paid his debt to society, as the state would put it, and perhaps undeservedly paid that debt but that's not for us, in our inconsiderable power or whatnot, to say, to live a respectable and meaningful life from everything we know of it, and should be forgiven”—“Amen,” his father says—“he is forgiven from our standpoint I'm sure, and if there is a higher being, which my parents and perhaps my sons believe there is, and who can say? then we plead that he be forgiven by It too, that's all I can say today and I believe is enough, thank you all for coming, and I don't mean to hog this, although I want you to know I was asked by the deceased's sole survivor to conduct the ceremony, so if anyone else wants to speak about Nathan Frey, please feel free to,” and they all shake their heads, his sons look at one another with the expressions “He doesn't mean us, does he?” his father says “What could we say that could add to your words, Glen don?—your eulogy was fine and to the point and summed it up wonderfully, and memorized or off the cuff, no less,” “Extemporaneous,” Glen says, “I thought it would all just come to me and that that's the way it should,” “Well, good job, son,” the lady-friend neighbor says she's too feeble to do any work (“Your dad probably never mentioned me or my condition and age but I'm an old shrunken diseased cow he looked after when he could, going out for groceries and pharmaceuticals and squiring me to various doctors and things”) so a second cousin of Margo's who lives in a suburb not far from her father's building agrees for a certain fee to search through his room and send her whatever she wants from it, “There's a rocking chair here,” the cousin says on the phone, “very old and in good condition, do you want that?—it looks practically like an antique,” “He must have found it on the street; I know it's no heirloom, his wasn't that kind of family and everything of worth from the marriage my mom took, so no, keep it or give it away,” “There's a fantastic espresso coffee machine, really expensive-looking and with one of those spouts for steamed milk, it could be boxed and UPS'd,” “We have one and I'm surprised he did—probably given to him by one of the restaurants he worked at where it was used once—but doesn't sound like my dad the last twenty years: café au lait, espresso, twist of lemon on a demitasse spoon, no; keep it if it's so nice, but without any reduction in what I agreed to give you, you understand,” “A stack of letters to your mother and another stack to you—copies, I saw, from a few of them; do you want them and the ones in a third stack that you sent him?” “I don't see the point, as the letters to my mother I'd find uncomfortably amorous or vituperative if plain poisonous sometimes and the ones to me I probably still have the originals of someplace, stuck in whatever book I was reading at the time, habit I have—every so often when I go through a book I've read, one drops out but I can't say I reread it,” “The letters to you seem to date back to when he was in prison and you were a young girl,” “That's too much of the past, most of which if I haven't remembered or have tried my darndest not to, I want to continue to forget, so thanks but no,” “Photos of him, I suppose, and who must be his parents the way they're smiling and cuddling him so close, and one of him, since the face is the same as in the others or a near lookalike, on a donkey or dwarf horse I think commercial photographers used to lead around the streets to take pictures of kids on—how else could the animal have got there? for it's taken in front of an apartment building and with old cars around, but probably new then,” “Sure, include it, all the photos, since it'd be wrong just throwing them away or giving them to some junk shop for people to go ho-ho over, and my own kids will get a kick out of them for the resemblances to them, if there are any, at that age and maybe to his father and his father's dad and also for the cultural significance and interest—how city people lived then, these photographers without shops and street musicians he used to tell me, when he was a kid, whole rhythm bands of them going down block after block and horse-drawn carts of ice for the icebox and vegetables and fruits and I even think milk, though the last might have been when his father was a boy,” “Lots of pre-'54 coins—a tall jarful, a couple of the pennies are silver and some of the other coins go back to the teens and twenties, from just a quick look, so there might even be better, and I think I saw an Indian-head penny before it got lost amid the others, and I know there was a quarter with a lady with wings, for a second,” “Yes, send them all—he once said many years ago that since he was around coins in the restaurant all day he'd started up a collection for me to help send me through school, so if they're of any value I'll use them for my own kids—insure that box for a few hundred, please,” “Several bills have come in—phone, utilities, a window washer, and a letter from Honolulu just today,” “Send and I'll take care of them, but the window washer's a joke—just that he'd use one with the view he once said he had, other buildings like his, and what's he have, two windows?” “Three, plus the tiny bathroom one but it's smoked,” “The letter, who knows what it means?—maybe a customer who passed through and once he got there he got lonely—if I wrote him my father died he probably wouldn't know who I was speaking of—return it to the addresser saying ‘addressee de ceased'…any books? no, I have all I want to read, or the stores and libraries do, unless one or two look extremely old—in fact, would it be too much to ask you to hold the books upside down one by one and flip through and shake them in that position?—I'll pay you something extra if there are more than a few of them—for like me he might have kept a few treasures and mementos in them,” “A very expensive-looking silk tie, it says, hundred percent and never used for it's still in its box tissue-wrapped and from one of our finest stores and of the rest of his clothes the only thing that still looks good is a leather belt almost brand-new, size 34,” “That's my husband's waistline but I doubt he'd want to wear my dad's belt—as for the tie, since the one he wore last time I saw him was stained and old, it must have been given to him since by a friend—a lady perhaps? I don't think so, he seemed to have become kind of chaste and at home sort of an ascetic recluse, so maybe from his boss as a Christmas gift or one of his steady customers who gives nothing during the year but something lavish like this as an annual gift, but it was a cheap luncheonette from the way he described it, so I don't think so there either—or maybe he bought it for the next time we saw him, that'd make sense for I can see him splurging for us, but I don't see my husband Glen or one of my boys walking around in any of his things—the kids would find it creepy, a dead man's clothes, so do what you want with the tie, decorate a tree with it as long as we're on the subject of Christmas, only kidding…oops, that's something, the ‘only kidding,' he'd say, so it's funny why I picked it up and how come now for the first time?” “An address book with not many names,” “No, past life, and what would those names mean to me if I don't already have them? so to be disposed of, but of his photos, you never said but were there any of Julie and me?—little girls, she had bangs from age one and was exceptionally pretty, like a girl model, and my hair was always combed back long, in a ponytail or braid and I was the taller but also the homelier of the two, brown hair to her bright blonde and glasses from age three to her none,” “Plenty, and you both were adorable, but I already assumed you wanted those so I was going to include them whether you said so or not,” “My mother, another beauty, any of her or the two of them as a couple, and with us, as a twosome or alone?” “A few, in all the possible family combinations,” “Just wondering, but who do you think Julie and I resembled at that time?” “Can't tell for sure, at best parts of the two of you in them both and you also resembled each other despite the glasses and hair,” “There was one of my folks together I especially remember, in fact I'd take it out of the photograph drawer in their dresser and pore over it when there was still the four of us, probably because they looked so happy in it, which is what I wanted, because in truth, okay as their relationship was and seemingly solid, they used to argue a lot and I was often scared they'd break up—but his arm around her shoulder and both of them leaning forward, snapping their fingers to some popular musical number it seemed, something like a rumba but that one reached its heyday before their time, and standing beside the new car they'd just bought, in front of a summer bungalow they were renting,” “No, it's not among the ones I found and I think I've searched all over and your father didn't have much,” “He was in hiking shorts, striped polo shirt and sandals and looked lean and weightlifter strong and with a mess of hair and healthy tan, she, prematernity with me, in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit, really a gorgeous figure, long smooth legs, teeny tummy, midget waist and a large perfect top, her hair tumbling everywhere, and barefoot, and both with these smiles as if they were having and had just had—maybe even had just climbed or fallen out of bed, that kind of fun—the time of their lives,” “There are only three photos of them alone, unless the one you're talking of is stuck to the back of another, and it's not one of them,” “My mother says she doesn't have it either, and why would she unless she wanted proof of what a great body she once had, but why would she? and even at her age now, a bit wrinkled in the legs and such but it's still pretty good, so I wonder what happened to it—maybe in a rage after she left him—well, he was in prison by then but he might have brought it with him, she looked so great—he tore it up, or it could still be in his wallet cut down to wallet size or maybe he looked at it and handled it so much he used it up,” “It's not in his wallet photo section either, which I'm sending you the whole thing as is, by the way, meaning even the little scrap papers and play or movie ticket stubs tucked away, unless this photo, again, stuck to the back of another photo in one of the photograph sleeves, but why'd you, if you don't mind my asking…no, I can probably answer it myself,” “What?” “Your not looking at that dresser drawer photograph again once the family was no longer intact, if I got it right, was because your sister died, no? and you didn't want to see—” “That's right, I suppose—whatever a kid goes through at that age over the death of the person closest to you—to me—same thing my father went through in a different way, I guess—and the way she died too perhaps—bang-bang—I mean we slept in side-by-side beds once she was out of her crib and on vacations sometimes in the same bed for a week and had our birthday parties together though our birthdates were a month apart—my God, we used to play together eight hours a day straight some days, drawing and cutting out fifty or so paper figures and acting them all out in different voices till we were hoarse, starting from scratch whole puppet shows, meaning not only making the papier-mâché characters but the scenery and stage and thinking up the play—I wouldn't—what'd I say, five? maybe it wasn't even to you, but she died at six—but I wouldn't—six years old, of course—I could barely stand sleeping in our old bedroom but it was the only other one we had—in fact I had to have not only her bed removed but mine too because they were twins and a new one put in for me—my dad wasn't even aware of it he was so into his own world looking for the avengers—no, he was the avenger, they were…oh, they were this and that, how does it help? scumbags, rats—but I wouldn't, what I started out saying, even look at the framed photograph my mother had of her by her bedside—Julie, at a beach in a bathing suit, bangs being blown
back above her head, whopping smile, fingers entwined beneath her chin, her eyes, I forgot to mention, dark black to my green—‘Turn it around first,' I used to say and frequently scream at my mother if she summoned me into her room for something or sent me there to get her necklace from the dresser, let's say, and years later, long after she'd remarried and had another child and I not only had a different house and time zone to live in but another new bed and I was still doing this, she suddenly said ‘What're you, crazy?—it's just a picture, a beautiful picture, there for our pleasure, your dearest sister, my darling treasure, get over it already, at least that aspect,' and I swear slapped the photo smack into or maybe just up to my face—must have been up to it or maybe even a foot or two away but facing me face to face, and I could look at it even less after that and maybe I couldn't even look at that one today…but his kitchen supplies, utensils, you know, for he worked in restaurants and might have taken home some very sturdy professional ones, anything?” “Huh, how's that?” “Carving knives, ladling spoons, chopping board, great pans and pots, kitchen stuff, any there at his place?” “Couple of butter knives and forks and spoons, one table and one tea, and a plastic spatula, bread knife, sieve—that what you call it?” “Colander, strainer?” “—with an unmeant hole in it so of not much use, and that's about it—rolling pin, whatever for, for there are no baking or bread pans,” “Maybe to beat off muggers,” “I think he had a bat for that, kept under his bed—oh, a paring knife here, I see, and potato masher, and that's really it, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, really junky stuff, not worth the price of shipping, cheap as UPS is, and same with the dishes, service for two or one and a couple of beer mugs I guess for everything from beer to water to coffee to tea, since there are no, if you can believe, cups or coffee mugs,” “Maybe the carving knife wrapped well so it doesn't slice the shipping box—I have a feeling it's a good one,” “Who said anything about a carving knife?—paring, butter and bread, plus the little one with tweezers and toothpick on his key ring,” “Prints, paintings, art photographs on the wall or anywhere?” “Only magazine stuff, meaning coming from them or possibly art catalogs, reproductions from paintings or pen-and-ink things in a museum or at an exhibition, looks like, but glossy colorful ones on good paper so looking quite real, fifty of them at least, taped or tacked to the walls all over the place,” “But you're sure none are real?” “Picasso, Chagall, Hopper, Matisse, Orozco, Tintoretto, Signorelli, Parmesan Cheese or some Italian name like that of a little angel and his or her little girlfriend—most of the painters' names even I recognize—your father had quite the collection, should go for several mil,” “Then thank you, Jane, I think we've covered it all—send what we've settled on UPS and any little last-moment thing you might think to add and also a note on how many hours you've put in, but you've saved me a hell of a lot of expenses and work besides taking a great load off my mind,” “And what's that?” “Simply to know nothing was thrown out or given away or left for the landlord to scavenge that was worth anything, emotionally or monetarily or what,” “Oh.”