by Thomas Weedman
You see the sea of mourners bundled in black fill the small Mission Basilica for the evening wake. Extended family and familiar faces, A to Zed, flow from the past like shivery spindrift. You pray not all of them come though, not him. Not again. Please, not him; you are in no condition to cope, mourn, and make nice. Or kill.
Eventually, to the muddy tones of the pipe organ, the tide slacks to a neap of latecomers like beachcombers, dangling rosary beads low as metal detectors or divining rods for souls of the dead. In this case, the sudden, untimely passing of dear Auntie Zamora—a wife of a dirt-poor farmer, a mother of two, unabashed couponer, and the best cook on a penny-ante budget who served decadent desserts with ice cold nonfat milk. Especially with that chocolate birthday cake. Back then, he went back for seconds, then again, trying to stretch it into a kind of baseball triple-bagger or play.
Ten years ago, in this same Catholic church, it was the funeral of matriarch Grandma Tita, also a stellar cook with her candied yams, which he gobbled up two Thanksgivings in a row while football was playing on the TV. He even joked he was a thigh man while eating a turkey leg. And so was the quarterback, whose name he pronounced Thighsmen. Then he touched yours lovingly like you were consenting adults. But on both holidays, Tita had a cold and Kleenex tissue tucked under her stretched bra strap and a hanky up her sleeve like a magician or an NFL ref. She drunkenly jabbered of being injected with sodium pentothal by the authorities once. Wish you knew what the hell she was talking about and that she had the authority to throw a penalty flag on him with her hanky instead. And he was here for her memorial service back then in the back pew but vanished after, slipping away like a magician. Now you are here again, after trying to block a childhood of horrible memories, still hell-bent on looking over your shoulder for his pocked face and shaggy hair.
Finally, the last seat in the back pew is taken. But not by him, thankfully. Like last time, there is no more gathering room in the narthex, where the front doors made of oak and iron are closing. The place and process seem so familiar, so routine, so nostalgic. Even the open casket sprayed with white carnations—the never-expiring clove-like scent of Auntie Zamora’s shag-carpet bathroom.
He always smoked clove cigarettes. Especially after a Big Brothers event or Little League baseball practice, like when he drove you home to the surprise party.
“You two smell like my bathroom,” Auntie Zamora said, slicing the three-layer double-fudge double-icing mouth-watering cake. Next to it was the carton of ice-cold nonfat milk.
Meanwhile, sweet Grandma Tita hunkered at the head of the table, curly jet-black wig on crooked as a postiche crown, fogles in reserve, slurring happily. “Jimmy, who’s your friend?”
“Mom, this is Earl,” your mother said, standing at the sink in nylons and proper black-and-white office attire covered by a spotless apron. She was hand-washing dinner dishes. “You met him last Thanksgiving. Remember? Tu sabes.”
“Sí. Oh yes, I know,” she said, nose dripping, reaching for wads of tissue. “El entrenador.”
Nudging you, he asked, “What’s that mean?”
Auntie Zamora butted in. “The coach,” she said. Then she said, “Ma, did you take the entire toilet roll?”
At the marbled nave, you stand chilled to the bone, still hungover from drinking alone while doing schoolwork. You are in a fitted navy thrift-store suit, standing next to your venerable and age-wobbly Hispanic mother and her rickety cane. All is still. Then suddenly, she tilts. She tilts more, then she jolls and stretches, and you grab as gently as possible to keep her from falling. Still, she slips what looks like clean-cut grocery coupons into her elder sister’s open casket. You do a double-take. With stiletto-long delicate fingers, she smartly tucks the wad of super savers into Aunt Zamora’s chiffon coat side pocket a la a made mafioso. Indulge, buy something nice. Or maybe use them as a church indulgence instead. And instead of a soft kiss or tap on the rosy embalmed cheek, she fixes a rogue silver curl on her waxy forehead near where the embolism occurred. There’s a tear in Mother’s black lace mantilla where there should be a tear. Seems like déjà vu and Grandma Tita’s funeral, minus the coupons—she was no queen of the savers. Tita didn’t like coupons, which she pronounced q-pons, because they made you question your budget and buy more unnecessary stuff. Your mother straightens from her sister’s casket, composing with purpose. Weight on her rickety cane and under gnarly and nearly foggy breath she coldly exhales, “It’s the second happiest day of my life.”
What the hell? you think. Did you hear correctly? No one in this church would ever believe she could say such a thing, except one. But you don’t see him, and this no baseball game. Your mother is elegant, she is tactful, she is demure, she is revered and pure as Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Still you think, How can you say that about your own sister? And what does that say about your two dead husbands and five living kids? Where do you and the rest rank in happiest days? Just in case, You look up to see if anyone heard and agrees.
Not even a raised eyebrow.
In any case, naive you didn’t see that coming; she never complained about Auntie Zamora to you. Or about anyone, for that matter. Didn’t see the coupons coming either. Right up her bailiwick, though; she’s always bundled a cache with cash in a thick manila letter envelope with a string to wrap around the button closure. Here, the coupons reeked cute and tender as beef shanks on sale because Aunt Zamora was a self-titled BOGO queen like your mother. Neither cheap, they budgeted frugally as if sibling rivalry and cost-saving one-upped either or trumped soul-saving in God’s eternal ledger. They even competed at cooking. But your mother is no saucier or baker like Auntie Z or Grandma Tita. Your mother could follow a recipe to the T but never astounded. But she still fed five kids on her own by stretching a budget or pot of soup further than chewed bubblegum. And you all ate well. And there was always enough when he stopped by unexpectedly for a late dinner, bearing coupons. Or to tuck you in. But second happiest day? Could it be a mistranslation or misuse of a Mexican idiom? Did she mean she was relieved for Auntie Z? Or herself? Or just being mean? Or worse: wicked. What could inculcate and prompt such a cold statement? You all have secrets and horrors. Like you have with him. It’s enough to kill over. But your mother and aunt? And what would their mother say?
You never saw them argue in person. Over the years, there were phone calls and eventually slamming the receiver when hanging up, but you never knew if it was Auntie Z or Grandma Tita. And you never asked. Or what it was about. There was an occasional handwritten letter. And it was no Christmas greeting card, by all guesses. But you always went to the next weekly family function or hosted it after everything like silverware was polished and bathrooms were spic and span and all seemed peachy.
In grade school, you had your tonsils out. You were home from the hospital procedure and woke in your bed to cotton mouth and a sore throat as though there were a peach stuck in there. It was a weekday, and you stumbled into the kitchen. Your mom had stayed home from work, though she was still dressed for it. She was on the phone, sitting at the head of the table, the coiled cord from the receiver taut to the point of snapping off the wall mount. She was speaking rapid-fire Spanish. It was definitely an argument; she had a cross look on her face, maybe seeing the matter through a reticle of crosshairs, as though the person on the line were heretical. You couldn’t understand a word, but you knew it had to be Auntie Z or Grandma Tita. Your mother didn’t speak that way to anyone else. And no one spoke to her that way. You stood in front of her and said your throat hurt. Or tried to. You just pointed.
“Have some water,” she said as a matter of fact, even curtly, lowering the receiver below her jaw and then raising it, jawing back in Spanish. You felt caught in a war zone, felt caught in family crossfire, and almost cried. You drank a cup of tap water from the faucet, and the cobwebs and soreness went away. But the fighting didn’t; they were still at it, so you sulked back to bed. You woke hours later to a soft hand rubbing your back under your shirt. You thought it was your mother come to apologize or check in, maybe with some peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream. But it was him doing the rubbing.
You were so mad and sad it wasn’t your mother. You wanted to kill, even as a boy. Or hit. But you knew it wouldn’t make you happy. Or for a happy day or the happiest. And after you realized it was him, you eventually went numb.
“You missed practice. How are you feeling?” he said.
You made light and nice and said fine.
You rub your throbbing forehead, then tug and straighten your dark vest, do your best to remain expressionless like your mother. You don’t shake your head or make a scene. Instead, as you escort her back to the pew, you make light, whisper, “Weren’t those coupons expired?”
“Nothing expires in the afterlife,” she says as a matter of fact and sits with a thud. She hooks her cane on the back of the pew in front of you. You are hooked by the notion of afterlife. It almost seems like a dodge or an intimation of where she thinks her sister is going or has gone. And it’s not cold. Besides, Catholics don’t necessarily say afterlife; they say heaven or hell or even purgatory. They say everlasting life or eternal life. And are coupons eternal? Are souls in heaven and hell eternal? At the end of time, do souls in hell eternally burn or is there one final furnace blast and they just cease like decomposed or ashy coupons? Meanwhile, is it the happiest day for the rest who cash in their coupons, cutting the price of suffering, and make it into heaven?
Your mother says in a hushed tone, “Are you coming over for a late supper?”
You almost heard last supper.
“No. Have a paper to write. About the afterlife.”
“If you paid attention the first time twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have had to go back.”
Your ranking in her happiest days probably just took a nosedive, but this is not the time or place to explain the difference between undergrad and grad school. And frankly, instead of supper, you’d rather go home and make like you woke from your tonsillectomy but have something stronger than water to make the hurt go away. Like water turned into wine.
Then, brushing the brushed wool fabric on your sleeve, your mother says, “How does a starving student afford a suit like this?”
“Coupons.”
She rolls her eyes behind that mantilla.
“So, what was your happiest day?” you whisper, eager to know, thinking you’ve miraculously bounced back into contention, say maybe the day you were born?
“When Grandma Tita died,” she says without hesitation.
You shake your head, dumbfounded. And as usual, you didn’t see that one coming either. You hope there are no more reveals and surprises. Or ruined expectations. It’s like getting a back rub as a child thinking it’s your mother only to find out it’s not.
And then she says softly, “Oh look, Earl made it.”
Category: Fiction