Swim the Fly (2 page)

“Sorry, I was spacing,” I say.

“Well, focus, man,” Coop insists. “This is serious stuff. I’m talking about our plans for this summer. You have any ideas who we could get to see naked?”

“I want to see Kelly. But alone. You guys don’t get to join in.”

Coop rolls his eyes. “Look,” Coop says. “Whatever you’re thinking about Kelly West, you might as well bring it home to the privacy of your bathroom because you don’t have a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s dating Tony Grillo.”

“Oh.” I suddenly feel like a five-day-old balloon. “How do you know?”

“Sean heard from Cathy, who heard from Reena, who knows a guy on the Dolphins.”

“Huh,” I say. “Well, maybe they broke up when she moved.”

“You’re hilarious, dude.” Coop pats out a drumbeat on the pool ledge. “If she dates guys like Tony the Gorilla, then she dates jocks, which means she doesn’t date guys like us.”

Kelly run-walks from the bathroom. She shivers, her lips blue and trembling, her arms and hands tucked up close to her body. She makes her way to the pool and slides back into the water.

“That’s too bad,” I say.

“Think of it as a blessing, dawg.” Coop claps me on the shoulder. “Now you don’t have to torture yourself
about not having the guts to ask her out.” He laughs. “Hey, Sean and I were talking about seeing a movie later. You in?”

I shake my head. “I’ve got to go to a funeral for my neighbor Mr. Hoogenboom.”

“Bummer,” Coop says. “Have you ever been to a funeral before?”

“No.”

“Is it open casket?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“If it is, you should try to touch his face.”

“Ew, dude, that’s disgusting.”

“It’s not like it’s actually him. It’s just his dead body.”

“Exactly.”

“Just pretend that you miss him and you’re saying good-bye. I’m telling you, dude, it’s freaky. It’s like waxy or something.”

“I’m not touching him,” I say. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m a curious person.”

“You’re a disturbed person.”

“Suit yourself,” Coop says, shrugging. “But you’re going to want to feel his skin when you see him. Don’t ask me why. But you will. Trust me.” With that, Coop turns and starts his next set of laps.

I don’t move yet. I try to get Coop’s gross idea out of my head.

I look across the pool and watch Kelly doing a perfect backstroke. Slicing through the water. Arms windmilling, breasts in the air, long legs kicking.

Man, oh, man. I take a deep breath and let it out. I push off the wall and do the only thing I can do right now: keep facedown and swim.

“I BROUGHT KLEENEX,”
Mom says. “In case anyone needs them.”

My older brother, Peter, laughs and punches me in the leg. “Did you hear that, Sir Whacks-a-lot? She’s got tissues for you if you get choked up.
Not
if you want to choke the chancellor.”

“Look who’s talking,” I say. “They could decorate a parade float with all the tissues
you
use.”

We’re on our way to Mr. Hoogenboom’s funeral. Mr. Hoogenboom lived across the street from us, but I didn’t know him more than being kind of angry all the time. He never said “Hi” or anything like that. He’d just yell at you to keep your street hockey ball off his lawn, and he’d shut off all his lights on Halloween and pretend not to be home. That sort of thing.

Mom’s at the wheel of our rust-bucket Buick. Grandpa Arlo’s in the passenger seat, and me and Peter are in the back. All of us wearing dark suits that don’t fit us anymore.
My sleeves and pants are too short. Peter’s two-sizes-too-small jacket gives him a permanent shrug. Grandpa Arlo looks like a kid playing dress up, and Mom’s buttons are one deep breath from being launched all over the car.

“I find a spanky hanky works well,” Grandpa Arlo chimes in. “Saves on paper and you can rinse it and hang it out to dry.”

“Whoa, TMI, Grandpa!” Peter crows.

“What’s a spanky hanky?” Mom says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Let’s just drop it.”

“No, you don’t want to drop it,” Grandpa Arlo says. “Not before you’ve washed it.”

“Ixnay on the ankyspay ankyhay, Grandpa!”

Grandpa Arlo throws his hands up. “Ateverwhay ouyay aysay.”

Mom just shakes her head.

I turn and stare out the window at the neighborhood passing by. I have to figure out what I should say to Mrs. Hoogenboom. “I’m sorry” sounds weird. It’s not like it was my fault Mr. Hoogenboom died. “I’m sorry for your loss” sounds like I lifted it from a television show. Am I supposed to hug her or shake her hand or what? They should teach you these things in school. Practical things that you can use in your life. Like, how you’re supposed to approach a hot girl. I mean, what are you supposed to say after “Hi”? And how do you hide the fact that you’re not very interesting?

There I go again. My mind drifting over to Kelly like
a misaligned skateboard. Sometimes I feel like I’m not in charge of my own brain.

“You know who I feel bad for?” Grandpa Arlo says out of the blue. “Edith. Left all alone like that. She’s a very special lady. She deserves happiness.”

Mom shoots Grandpa a look that could melt plastic army men. “Don’t
even,
Dad.”

“Don’t even what?”

“The woman’s husband just died, for Christ’s sake,” Mom says. “We’re going to pay our respects.”

“I know.” Grandpa sniffs. “All I’m saying is that Edith is an exceptional lady. And Ray Hoogenboom, however much of a grump, was a very lucky man.”

“That’s all you’re saying?”

“You’re very suspicious, Colleen. I don’t know where you get that from. Your mother and I didn’t raise you that way.”

Mom gestures with her hand. “Okay, fine, whatever.”

A hot quiet fills the car. Grandpa Arlo adjusts his glasses and strokes his white goatee.

“Of course, she won’t be on the shelf very long,” Grandpa says. “That’s for sure.”

“I knew it,” Mom says, slapping the steering wheel. “You’re going to hit on Mrs. Hoogenboom at her husband’s funeral.”

“That’s preposterous,” Grandpa scoffs.

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Mom says. “Everyone sees how you always flirt with her.”

Grandpa shrugs. “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t find Edith attractive. And you don’t let a plump peach like that hang on the tree too long or someone else is going to come along and pick it.”

I lean forward. This is getting good. “Are you going to ask Mrs. Hoogenboom out, like, right there in the funeral home, Grandpa?”

“Well, since you brought it up.” Grandpa twists and looks over his shoulder. “I’ve been giving this a bit of thought and I decided it might be uncouth to ask her out on an actual date at her husband’s wake.”

“
Might
be uncouth?” Mom says.

Grandpa ignores this and works his tongue like he’s got a tea leaf stuck to the roof of his mouth. He does that when he’s rolling something around in his head. “What I
will
do, however, is wait until the end of the wake, then walk her to her car and ask if I might take her out for coffee tomorrow. As friends. To get her out of the house. To get her mind off things.”

“That’s pretty smooth, Grandpa,” Peter says. “A date that’s not a date. It puts her at ease. All the greatest pickup artists say you have to put them at ease before you can pounce.”

“Pickup artists?” Mom looks in the rearview mirror at her oldest son. “What’s happening to my family?”

“There it is.” Grandpa points to the Park Hills Westside Funeral Home sign.

Mom makes the turn into the parking lot but misses the driveway by a few inches and the car thumps over the curb. She pulls into a space between two SUVs and shuts off the engine. Somehow she’s got a cigarette out and she’s lighting it before any of us have even unstrapped.

“Can we just agree to behave ourselves?” Mom asks, taking a puff.

She used to smoke Marlboro Lights, but she switched to these organic ones when she started her own NutraWorld Organics home business. She says the cigarettes taste like crap but they’re much healthier for you and since they’re so unpleasant she only has three or four a day. Mom works at the Lower Rockville Community Center most of the time, but she’s been doing her home business now for over a year and she says that she has the potential to become a millionaire in five years. There’s an entire closet in our house filled with organic products. Not just cigarettes, either. Vitamins and soup mixes and pasta sauces and shampoos.

“Can we agree on that?” Mom repeats, blowing a thick stream of organic smoke out the window.

We all mumble “Yes” and “Sure” and “Of course” as we get out of the car, but I can tell by the secret smile on Grandpa’s face that he has every intention of following through with his plan.

The bottoms of my pant legs hover around my shins as we walk toward the funeral parlor. I’m glad that Kelly
and her family only just moved to the neighborhood, because that means they won’t know the Hoogenbooms and Kelly won’t be here today to see me in last year’s suit. I tug my pants a little lower and run my hand through my hair just in case.

“How did Mr. Hoogenboom die, anyway?” I ask.

“It was his feet,” Grandpa says. “He kept telling everyone they were killing him but nobody believed him.”

“Is that appropriate?” Mom says as she strides ahead.

We approach the funeral parlor and Grandpa Arlo holds the door for us. “Chop-chop. Look alive.”

Peter and I laugh. Mom doesn’t.

“I don’t find that funny,” she says, taking one last, long drag on her cigarette before flicking it onto the pavement and crushing it out with the toe of her scuffed black dress shoe. She blows the smoke out of the corner of her mouth as she enters. Peter, Grandpa, and I follow her inside.

The lobby is all gray and gray-blue and smells like sprayed pine and awkward silence. It’s refrigerator cold in here and my body gives a quick shudder from the sudden shift in temperature.

A removable-letter sign in a pedestal stand greets us just inside the door. It reads:
HOGENBOOM SERVICE
— MOONFLOWER ROOM
.

Grandpa squints at the sign. “
Hog
enboom?”

“They must have run out of
o
’s,” Peter says.

“Maybe they thought nobody would notice,” I say.

“Maybe they knew Ray’s disposition.” Grandpa laughs.

“Of all places.” Mom shakes her head in disgust. “You’d think they’d have some respect here.”

“Death is just another business,” Grandpa says, then leads the way down the hall to the Moonflower Room.

The space is set out symmetrically: a square of seats on both sides with a row down the middle. This could just as easily be the setting for a small wedding if you replaced the coffin at the front with an altar. You could even leave all the bouquets.

There are probably two dozen people here, some sitting, others standing in clusters. All of them in Sunday church dress. Everyone speaks softly, like Mr. Hoogenboom is just sleeping and they don’t want to wake him.

The first thing I do is scan the room for cute girls. You’d think that being in a room with a dead body might push those feelings down deep inside you. But no. It’s like trying to force a kickboard to stay underwater; unless you give it your full, constant attention, it eventually explodes to the surface.

Mom strides right over to Mrs. Hoogenboom, who sits in the front row, surrounded by people with heavy eyes. Grandpa waits in the back. He stands up tall, smooths his hands over his jacket, and combs his fingers through his hair.

“Come on,” Peter says to me, pulling on my coat sleeve.

We head straight to the front. I see immediately that it’s an open casket, and that nearly-missed-hitting-a-parked-car-with-my-bike feeling rushes through my body. Cold, clammy fingers grasp the back of my neck.

Peter and I step up onto the raised platform where the coffin is laid out.

“There he is,” Peter says.

At first glance, the body in the casket looks more peaceful than I’d imagined it would. Mr. Hoogenboom seems like he really could be asleep. Except for the fact that he’s not breathing and is wearing a lot of makeup. The more I stare at him, the more I realize that the face only sort of resembles Mr. Hoogenboom. Like someone didn’t get it quite right. Like in those wax-figure museums. Where you think maybe they used look-alikes for models instead of the actual famous people.

“You almost want to touch him, don’t you?” Peter says.

I didn’t believe Coop, but Pete’s right. You do kind of want to touch Mr. Hoogenboom’s face to see what it feels like. To make sure he’s not there anymore. I remember when Sean and I found my cat Milkshake sprawled out under a bush. She’d been hit by a car and I had to feel her body to make sure she was dead and it felt cold but it also felt empty. Hollow. Like a piñata or something.

Mrs. Hoogenboom has placed a few things around Mr. Hoogenboom in the coffin. There’s a dried, flattened
white rose. There are two Buffalo Sabres hockey ticket stubs. There’s a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Hoogenboom when they were teenagers, laughing and sharing a hot dog at a carnival.

“Can I ask you something, Pete?” I say.

“As long as it’s not for money.”