A Strange Commonplace (13 page)

Rain

THE FATHERS:

and their lost children on gray and hopeless Saturdays: after the puppet shows and the botanical gardens, the parks, the zoos and rowboats; after the ice-cream sodas and hamburgers, the hot fudge sundaes and roller coasters, the Yoo-hoos and Shirley Temples; after the loose change pressed into the dirty, sticky little hands, the dollar bills; after the museums and museums and museums and pony rides, the Cracker Jacks and new sneakers and toy fire engines and dolls and hair ribbons and plastic barrettes; after the thin fake smiles and the small talk with the wives’ understanding and kind and reliable new boyfriends, the sharp words about meager child support and clothes for school; after ruining their shoes in the rain, after their sodden overcoats, the dark bars where nobody knows them but where the children get their 7-Ups on the house; after the introductions to Graces or Mollies or Annes or Elaines or Lindas or Charlottes or Anybodies dressed so as to look serious, so as to look like Moms, to look like Somebodies who could be Moms, who were just like Moms, just as good as Moms; after the long nights later over whiskey and beer and worries about how nothing had gone right; after the movies, the ice-cream parlors, the diners, the melted cheese sandwiches, the pizzas, the aimless walks; after the friends who say how big the children are getting, how pretty, how smart; after the long trips back to the wives’ little apartments in Bensonhurst or Washington Heights or Bay Ridge or Marine Park or Park Slope or the Lower East Side or Sunset Park or Brighton Beach, Ozone Park, Kew Gardens, anywhere; after the buses and the penny arcades, the boardwalks and amusement parks, the hot dogs and lost gloves and scarves and hats; after the boredom and tears and silences and bewilderment, the cheap souvenirs; after Snow White and Dumbo, Pinocchio and Tarzan and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; after the Neccos and Charms and Nibs and Black Crows and Baby Ruths and Milky Ways and Mounds; after the quarrels in hateful whispers because they were back too late or too early or because the children were too tired or over-excited or spoiled again, as usual; after the rages over who had been at fault, who had stopped caring about anything; after the old accusations of adultery and gambling, drunkenness and abandonment, withdrawal and frigidity and contempt, nights with phony friends, days with venomous bitches, yes! on the phone; after the discoveries of other men’s clothes in the closets, shoes, razors and after shave in the bathroom; after the nights watching television, playing records suddenly disliked, held in contempt, hated; after coming across old gifts given them by once-young, once-passionate, once-loving, once funny and warm and caring women who had been, was it possible? their wives; after shouting and cursing and blaming and suffering; after meandering affairs with secretaries and office assistants and receptionists, widowed or divorced neighbors, waitresses and God knows how many faceless unhappy women met at bars and parties and weddings and, Jesus, wakes; after the unbearable old photographs with their images of contentment and joy and love and now-harrowing smiles of optimism and hope and endless and wonderfully stupid youth; after all this, after walking from the subway in the rain, it seemed always in the fucking rain; after all this, the doomed, the hated Saturdays, again and again, the fathers remembered, in a dazzle of candor, the specific moments when the last tenuous links between them and their restless and distracted children began to dissolve, disintegrate, remembered their children in the act of fading away from them, fading into their actual lives: to which the fathers had no access, of which the fathers knew nothing at all and never would.

The fathers would sit with their beer and their whiskey, their Camels or Luckies or Chesterfields, their crossword puzzles and sour jingo political columns and imbecile horoscopes and righteous editorials and think about the time when they were not expected to be anything but simply alive. Alive and waiting for the glittering future: of beautiful wives and happy children and perfect lakes and summers and long vacations and bright beaches. And the absurd, wholly impossible bliss that awaited them, a thing of beauty.

A Wake

H
E IS PROPELLED SLOWLY AND SMOOTHLY ACROSS THE floor of one of the smaller viewing rooms in the Thomas DeRosa Funeral Home, and in a strange yet quite understandable way, he is touching and not touching the carpet. He has on black-and-gray Argyle socks, but no shoes, a dark gray suit, white shirt, and a navy blue tie with a small, dubious heraldic device on its apron. He is wearing shoes, gleaming black bluchers. These articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, are not his, but they are familiar to him. He is at the casket, which sits on a small catafalque covered with a deep-red velveteen spread of some sort; at the head of the casket is a floral spray of white roses, and the satin band that graces the flowers reads REST AND RELAX. He smiles and looks into the casket, and there he lies, dressed in the same articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, as he is dressed in. Or he is dressed in the same articles of apparel, as the newspapers called them, as he, the corpse, is. This is a cliché, such a
cliché,
the man in the casket says: “the man
in
the casket is the same man as the man
at
the casket, God!” He says this to his ex-wife, who is standing next to him, the man at the casket. She is still attractive, quite attractive. In my attractive articles of apparel, she says. Especially the black dress I’m wearing—I bought it for your mother’s funeral, remember? He looks her up and down. Her legs are as good as they ever were. Nice legs, right? you old fuck, yum-yum, some moron with a ponytail and a badly fitting suit says. Not for
you
any more, you old fuck. The young man slowly kneels in front of his ex-wife and pushes his face into her crotch. “So this is the boy genius who was fucking you while I was working eleven-hour days,” he says from the casket, without opening his eyes or mouth. He floats to the back of the room, and stops next to a woman who looks familiar, save for her clothes. My attractive articles of apparel, the woman says, and they both laugh. Especially my purple velvet dress. Who wears purple velvet dresses any more, he asks, you?
That
bitch wears them, his ex-wife says from the casket, where she is lying on top of his corpse. Her boyfriend is on top of her, both of them pretending sexual intercourse, the boyfriend’s ponytail flopping, somewhat obscenely, back and forth on his thick neck.
That’s
the kind of sex she likes, the woman in the purple dress says, dead and fake. By the way, you don’t remember me, do you? I’m Anna. Anna? Anna is his ex-wife’s name, he’s pretty certain. Anna is my ex-wife’s name, he says, I’m pretty certain. You can hear her scream and sob, rather theatrically, I’m afraid, as the lunk of a boyfriend pretends to stick it in her. “Imagine
pretending
to fuck on a corpse, on me—or you,” he says from the casket. Anna? Anna? his ex–wife says, I’m Irene! That whore is wearing my old dress, the one that used to get you all hot and bothered when you could still give it to me every year or so! I had a massive heart attack, he says to Anna, a myocardial infection, just like the one I had when I was a young man at Budd Lake, my bad thumb was the cause. Myocardial events, as the newspapers called them, are very serious and few recover from them, despite elegant articles of apparel worn with panache. What of the intercession of skilled medical personnel, Anna says, in, of course, timely fashion? Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! ohhh! Irene screams, wow! This young fellow, an attractive and virile greengrocer, can ball that jack and make my jelly roll sing and sizzle, uhhh! Anna notes that he didn’t really have to die and that death might well have been prevented by following the advice tendered in certain wise columns on nutrition and exercise found in numerous newspapers and magazines. Old Glory, if wrapped around one’s genital area, is also of immense help, but few know how to employ the sacred banner properly—particularly in the rain or after dark. He, Anna remarks to the few mourners in the viewing room, he
always
liked the way I gave him head, or as the promiscuous Irene probably says, blew him. So
few
women take the time to learn this basic sexual skill properly! In California it’s called oral copulation, Irene says, climbing out of the casket. Whatever it’s called, I like it an awful lot, the boyfriend says, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my mother. Speaking of mothers, you’re not bad, he says to Anna, even though you’re old enough to
be
my mother. It must be the dress. And so am I, Irene says, putting on fresh lipstick and smoothing her skirt, and that’s all part of the
forbidden thrill!
He is at the casket again, looking in at himself, still wondering about the articles of apparel that
they
wear in common. “Exactly alike,” he says. Exactly, he replies, but how come? Maybe you know, Anna? he says, and turns to ask her to share her sartorial expertise, which is considerable, he knows or remembers. Or he may ask Thomas DeRosa himself, for he is—What are you, sir? he asks. An official spokesman for the dead, Mr. DeRosa says, few of whom can speak for themselves. Yet of articles of apparel I know little or nothing—my wife, Rosa, always dresses me, from the skin out. Mr. DeRosa inches out of the room, herding the mourners before him. This little black dress is a knockout, isn’t it? he says. Rosa’s taste is impeccable! Note its simple lines and the perfect skirt length, ideal for concealing my bony knees. He looks around and sees that he is alone with himself in the casket. From behind a sofa come sighs, grunts, gasps, shouts, yells, laughter, and frantic obscenities, issuing from the idiot boyfriend, his ex-wife, Irene, and his pleasant friend, Anna—or from the idiot boyfriend, his ex–wife, Anna, and his pleasant friend, Irene. You women look so much alike! he says, give me a break! He is almost uncontrollably aroused. Like Moon Mullins or Dagwood in the dirty books, he says aloud. In my mind’s eye, he says, I can see, with poisonous clarity, the frenzied sexual perversions that the three flawed, yes, but essentially decent—like the President!—human beings are salaciously delighting in. He stands in the center of the room, longing to join them in their erotic play, along with, of course, his buddy in the casket. He wants, even more than he wants to be alive again, to be dead with them, but he is dead with himself alone.

COLOPHON

A Strange Commonplace
was designed at Coffee House Press in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. The text is set in Garamond. The display font is Birch.

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C
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