Authors: Eric Prochaska
“It was the caretaker who called you in. That’s gonna happen when you go cruising cemeteries half past midnight.”
“Gate was open,” I said. I cast a look over my shoulder to present my evidence.
“Still, you can see how it looks funny.”
“Yeah, sure. Honestly, I expected to have to hop the fence.”
“Why not wait a few hours until the cemetery is open?”
“I just got into town. I’ve been driving around, trying to clear my head.”
“And you ended up here?”
I gestured to the headstone where he had found me. Even if he could read the chiseled letters from that distance, he wouldn’t have been able to connect the name on the stone with my own last name. It was her second husband’s surname on the marker.
“My grandma,” I said.
“You know, your dad’s house is just over there on Nineteenth.”
“No. I didn’t know.” I took note of where he pointed and asked, “You over there often?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “On business.”
I grinned.
“So, you understand why I’m visiting a cemetery instead of knocking on that door.”
“I guess I do,” he said. “Listen, I’m really sorry. Aiden was a good guy. Had a lot of things working against him. But he was a good guy.”
“Thank you,” I said, uneasily. What was there to be thankful for? Still, it was an exchange I would become practiced in over the coming days. And I sensed he wasn’t just sharing his own remembrance of Aiden, but that he was trying to bolster my own. Maybe he knew what lay ahead of me.
“Well, I gotta get back on patrol. Promise me you’ll get out of here right behind me?”
“Yeah.”
He got in his cruiser and I stepped to the driver’s side of the car so he could pull ahead. But as he passed he stopped and told me through his rolled down window, “Listen, if you want, give me a call.” He extended a card he had picked from his chest pocket. “You might not know it, but a lot of people ask about him. Aiden always made a lasting impression. At the bar, at the store, wherever I go. When his name comes up, someone immediately has a story. That means a lot. To have people talk about you like that when you’re gone.”
“That’s—” I said, catching myself before tossing out a flippant reply. “Thanks. That is good to know.”
I said my good-byes and headed back to the hotels. The drive was much quicker with a destination to guide me. I hadn’t made a reservation and was surprised to find the first two places I stopped had no vacancies. Why would anyone want to visit Cedar Rapids? In the winter? A convention, as it turned out. I tried a Red Roof Inn that had few cars in the lot. They had rooms, and the price was half what it was at the other places, though still hard to swallow on what I was making as a teaching assistant. I turned the light on in the bathroom before sitting on the bed to take my shoes off and get ready for a shower. I lay back and relaxed for just a moment and fell asleep before my head had fully sunk into the pillow.
When you’re young, you think you can set off on any journey and the people you leave behind will be waiting in timeless perfection when you return. But I hadn’t seen my brother for five years when he died. Four birthdays for each of us. Five Christmases. Countless conversations. There was no way to tally what had already been squandered. His death was an abyss that could not be plumbed, a void of all that could never come to pass. Summer holidays sitting in lawn chairs with beers in hand, watching the kids we expected to someday have as they rollicked with sparklers and jumped through sprinklers in the back yard.
He had stood at the rolled down window of my Dodge pickup that August afternoon I left Iowa. All my belongings were bundled below a blue tarp in the bed. The beginning of an adventure.
He told me to keep in touch. I promised I would.
He might have said something else as he slapped the side of my truck and stepped back for me to pull away. Maybe I should have impressed that moment more firmly into my memory. But we had no idea what lie ahead. We couldn’t have imagined fate’s grim designs. In the next few years, we talked on the phone and kept in touch, however sporadically, most of the time. But the last image I have of Aiden is in my rear view mirror. His relaxed stance. His aviator glasses beaming a laser of the sun’s reflection back at me.
I opened my eyes and sat up.
I had slept late. I pulled the curtains back to see the bleak morning, turned on the TV. I didn’t own one back in Arizona, or even have time to keep up with shows or news due to my work load in school, so I was mesmerized by watching CNN for the first time in ages and hearing Michael Jordan had come out of retirement a few days before, just in time for the Bulls to beat the Pacers. The next story left me to fathom why some maniac in Tokyo had released poisonous gas on a subway and killed twelve people. As horrendous as that act was, my heart was already racked from the news about Aiden, and I had little concern to spare for strangers.
I took my overdue shower and walked up the road to a Denny’s for breakfast, though it was pushing lunch time. My stomach was in a different time zone, so I picked at an omelet without appetite like dissecting some pale lab creature. Hunger had been a vague concept for days. I ate because I knew I had to.
I cycled through the cable channels to pass the time. When three o’clock rolled around, I was still seated there, watching the same news stories for the second or third time, even after catching the final hour of an old western. I took another shower, long and hot, after the wake had begun. I laid out my clothes and dressed meticulously, even though I was just wearing a long sleeve pullover and my best pair of jeans. I was only in town for the wake and the funeral, but there was nothing I wanted to do less.
I managed to drive to the mortuary on a memory of streets and a mechanical sense of purpose. But when I stepped to the door I hesitated. In that town, Aiden had always opened the doors before me. At every new school we attended, we were identified as brothers, sometimes even mistaken for twins when we were young. And in every neighborhood, Aiden blazed ahead and met practically every kid on the surrounding blocks first, leaving me to be introduced as his brother. I never minded. Aiden was gregarious. I was stand-offish. He did what came naturally to him, and I reaped some benefits. But when I decided to make my own way in Arizona, in college and graduate school, I took the lead. I established my own presence. I could bat around theories with esteemed professors, shoot the shit over coffee with classmates, and lead undergrads in discussions. But when we return to familiar situations we assume our practiced roles.
I grasped the bronze handle and must have expected the mass to glide ahead of me at the lightest touch. But this was the most burdensome of doors. To proceed meant to see and accept what so far was unsubstantiated – that Aiden was dead. But I could not just turn around and go home. I would never feel closure, that simultaneous devastation and acceptance that ultimately abates grief.
Walking into the mortuary also meant stepping back into a past life. When I moved to Tucson, I had closed a door and intentionally shut out everyone who had known me before, venturing forth with no way of foreseeing I would return so soon and unseal that very threshold.
And so the moment. There at the mouth of the mortuary. That door. A boulder of dread.
I amassed my resolve with a deep breath and pressed forward. The weight of the door swung away on its hinge, only to be replaced by a constricting disquietude. The mortuary was bustling. But I didn’t recognize a single face in the softly lit room. Who were these imposters at my brother’s wake, smiling and even chuckling? A few of them were dressed nicely, in shirts and ties or discreet dresses. The only people wearing suits were a few old men who might have been ushers for all I knew. Mostly, though, the guests wore dark jeans with sweaters or pull-overs, even a few pairs of work boots peeking out, and at least one un-tucked blue shirt with a name stitched in red thread in a white oval on the chest. Formality in attire seemed to slide on a scale relative to age. Were these Aiden’s co-workers? His weekend friends? As I scanned their faces, smatterings of conversations cascaded toward me. I realized those smiles must have been reflections of fond memories. And while I can’t say I started to feel at ease, I did acclimate to the flow of sentiments. As I took in bits of conversations, I appreciated how so many people were sharing the ways Aiden had made an impression on them.
Standing there, it settled upon me that I did not know what else to do. How did these things go? Was I supposed to sign a book? I caught someone approaching through the corner of my eye. I turned to intercept him and immediately laid eyes on the first familiar face.
“Ethan,” he said, hesitating in front of me, halted in a gesture that signaled he wanted to embrace or at least shake hands.
“Casey?” I said, though he was practically unmistakable. Aside from the fitted suit, his appearance hadn’t changed much. A short, wiry build and a scrub of rusty steel wool hair.
Casey Porter wasn’t the first person I had expected to see there. He and Aiden had stopped hanging out before I left town. They had never been especially close. Casey was one of those hangers on who liked to bask in a bit of Aiden’s glow.
Seeing him at Aiden’s wake made me reconsider the quality of his friendship. Being there wasn’t easy. You didn’t get anything out of it. If Casey cared enough to be there, maybe I owed him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he and Aiden had grown closer since I’d left town. Looking around that room, there was obviously more I didn’t know than what I did about the last few years of my brother’s life.
A sudden presence of mind came over me and I realized the spot Casey was in, waiting to know what sort of welcome would be appropriate. So I stepped in and we embraced briefly.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, staying close. “Shit. Not like this, you know.”
“I know.”
“He was too young. This is all fucked up.”
“I know.”
“It’s all fucked up!” he said in a coarse hiss of anger and sorrow.
I let him clear his throat. It seemed our roles were reversed, as if he were the bereaved brother. But couldn’t they all be as shaken as I was? Did I think I owned this grief? What claim did I have to it? The brother who hadn’t exchanged a word with Aiden for nearly a year?
“I’m sorry, man. Listen, he’s in there. That’s the viewing room.” Casey pointed to a set of double doors that were propped open. A mere glance in that portentous direction sent my heart plummeting and I had to struggle to inhale.
“Who are all these people?” I asked, stalling. I was not ready to go through those doors. I scanned the faces again. Did these strangers know me?
“I don’t know most of ‘em. But there’s someone you need to see.”
From the tone of his voice, I had a fair idea of who he meant. He pointed to a brightly lit hallway on the opposite side of the room. As I approached, I saw there was a doorway in the middle of the hall. I paused at the threshold to make sense of what I saw. There were two ornate chairs set up on a low platform. One was larger than the other, but both resembled thrones. In these chairs sat a man I had thought I might never see again, and a young woman whose face I was sure I’d never seen before. The man’s face was as familiar as the one I saw in every mirror. I overheard him telling the man standing in front of him, “…the greatest gift God ever blessed me with, and now he’s been taken back home.”
The standing man spoke too low for me to hear. One hand was cupped over the other at his waist and his head was downturned, his stare fixed on the floor between his feet and those of the man in the throne. The scene looked almost like he was begging forgiveness instead of bestowing comfort. But that’s how this king made all his subjects feel before him. Like children caught in white lies.
The standing man leaned forward to pat king’s hand as he said farewell. His head stayed bowed as he turned to leave, shoulders rounded contritely. When he edged past me in the doorway his gaze turned upward and caught mine. I didn’t know him, but there was a gleam of recognition in his eyes, as if he’d seen a ghost.
Through all of this, the woman sat motionless, absorbed in her own meditation. I stepped into the room, whose light seemed too bright for its bleak purpose. The thrones were ivory with burgundy velvet padding, while the carpet was a too-vivid shade of blue, like the fur on a sports mascot. I felt completely revealed. I had been in town all day and hadn’t called him. But now I would stand before my father for the first time since I was in high school. The closer I stepped the more I regressed from an articulate graduate school student to an eleven year-old boy who had been trained not to speak unless spoken to. When I finally stood two feet in front of him, and he lifted his face, I was fossilized in a subservient role, rendered mute.
A full ice age seemed to pass trapped in his scrutiny. Was he waiting for me to say something? My own ignorance of how to proceed in the situation only paralyzed me further. What should I say? How could he not know I needed his permission to say anything at all? Finally, all his curiosity and patience dissolved and he asked, “Can I help you?”
The meaning underlying the polite words came through in his tone and visage. He was telling me I had no business there and I had better move along. That’s when I realized that either the years of estrangement or the beard I had grown had disguised me from my own father. I fumbled for how to explain.
“I—” I started to say, not knowing the next word, when his annoyed expression softened into a slightly embarrassed, unbelieving inspection of my facial features. He started shaking his head back and forth and lifted his hands off his lap to open them into an invitation.
“Oh, shit!” he said. “Come here.”
He stood to meet me with an embrace. It was the first meaningful hug we had ever shared. The first one more significant than a farewell at a six year-old’s bed time.
“He’s gone,” he said, his voice muffled against my shoulder.
In that moment, my universe was turned inside out. A child standing firm to brace up his father’s crumbling stature. But more than that. My father had been so callous all my life that to feel him shuddering in my arms brought the weight of the moment bearing down on me. I wanted to cry myself. I wanted the two of us to discard all that had festered and finally express every beautiful thought we had kept to ourselves for decades. But one of us needed to bolster up the other in that moment, so I measured my breaths and kept my frame rigid. In my peripheral vision, I noted the huddle of witnesses in the doorway. A handful of them, at least, negotiated their positions to gain a view of us. But they remained utterly quiet. Either they were marveling at the miracle of my father shedding his stoic façade or they were respecting the dignity of two men bonding in a common grief.
My father took a few deep breaths to steady himself. He pivoted to keep his right shoulder against me, his back toward the doorway. He produced a handkerchief to dab at his tears and blew his nose as gently as he could. He wasn’t comfortable letting himself go in front of anyone, I knew. Instead of draping my left arm over the top of his shoulders, as if to shield him from the onlookers, I placed my hand between his shoulder blades and leaned my head slightly toward him, to give the impression we were sharing a furtive counsel. I was surprised at how naturally I acted to guard him from seeming weak. He who used to tower above me, who had never shown weakness and would never ask for assistance, now sheltered under my wing.
There was no doubt that our dad loved Aiden. His first-born. His pride and joy. The two of them had squabbled regularly as Aiden came of age, like magnets repel identical poles. There was always a fight, followed by a cooling-off period that could last days or weeks. They would come back together without apologies or explanations. Nothing either of them did could break the bond they shared any more than they could negate gravity. God knows they tested the limits of those physics.
My father drew away and resumed his perch on the throne. “I need to talk to these people,” he said, nodding at the cluster of bodies at the threshold. “Come by the house later. Vickie’s out there. Get the address from her.”
So Vickie was still with him. I had no intention of asking her for anything.
Instead of leaving the small room, I side-stepped deeper inside to allow others to enter. For me, there was still the mystery of the quiet young woman who had been as unobtrusive as a flower arrangement while my father and I had weathered our surge. I wanted to blurt out, “Who are you?” but it seemed I was the one at a loss. Shouldn’t I have known who was close enough to Aiden to sit in this place of privilege at his wake?