didn’t last year,” Annie says firmly.
“But we will this year.”
“No thanks, I’d rather not,” Peter says quietly.
“Me neither.” Annie looks at Maloney, defiant, but Maloney’s focused on holding his sandwich, which threatens to fall apart. “Why the hell didn’t you ask them to put a toothpick in it, Peter? Look at this shit.” He leans forward to snatch up a piece of greasy bread from the floor.
Peter slurps his cola. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down with each gulp. “Well, I’m going back to work,” Annie says, tossing her crumpled sandwich paper in the trash on the way out. Maloney belches and says: “We’re off in ten minutes. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Thomas opens the window and sucks a pleasant breath of fresh, mild air into his lungs. “Did you order a new coffee automat?” he asks Maloney.
“Haven’t ordered shit. Who would I call? I don’t give a flying fuck about ordering so much as a glow-in-the-dark turd from that company, let me tell you.”
“A glow-in-the-dark turd?”
Maloney begins to whistle. “What do you think we’ll sing today? Jenny’s got some tearjerkers in store for us, no doubt. Will there be a wake?”
“I hope not,” Thomas replies, suddenly nervous. He expressly told her that he wouldn’t spend a dime on this service. The city’s covering it. They’ve refused to pay for the funeral director and the burial plot—Jenny because she can’t, and he because it makes him happy. The old man’s ashes will be heaped in the cheapest wooden urn they could find, and then dumped in an unmarked grave. But a wake? He hadn’t considered that. He figured it was completely out of the question, that in the very least they would agree on that. And since Jenny doesn’t have any money, he convinces himself that the probability of her arranging anything behind his back is minimal.
They take a cab, and Maloney’s remarkably silent the whole way, as if he’s told himself that the situation calls for it. Thomas glances at him, but he’s pretending to be deep in concentration, his attention firmly and piously focused out the window. The city floats, still bathed in light, a kind of sunshine-rain, and they pass all the old haunts: Here he once sat with Patricia on his lap (the green bench under the linden trees); here he and Jenny picked up their father at a bar one morning; here the department store and his faint recollections of standing with their mother on the escalator, on the way up to buy a new dress for Jenny; here their grandfather’s nursing home, which their old man referred to as the End Station (“Are you going out to the End Station to visit the old psychopath?”); and here the soccer fields, the big library, the music venues, the garages where one of their father’s friends sold “used cars,” the speakeasy in the back room, outside of which Thomas and Jenny hopped in puddles one interminable autumn day. Then the hospital emerges with its attractive, old central building and the newer additions of gray concrete. The network of trails and moss-covered lawns. Now they’re close. The car slows on the smaller streets, with their row houses and simple one-story villas, and there’s the cemetery with its headstones and crosses, with its evergreens and weeping willows and copper beech, half-rotten bouquets of flowers, the recently dug graves and their fresh wreaths. The car swings through a gate and follows the gravel road to the chapel. The crematorium is in the far back of the cemetery, as though hidden from the road. Thomas catches a glimpse of it behind some small, whitewashed office buildings, and he can’t help but look for smoke furling over the bricks. But there’s no smoke. Not yet, he thinks. The driver stops the car. One of the chapel’s wing doors has been flung open, leading into the darkness. Jenny stands on the stairs wearing a dark-blue jacket. And a hat. “She’s wearing a hat!” Maloney says, stifling a laugh. “Wow . . .”
“What did you expect?” Thomas mumbles, climbing out of the car. Jenny’s cheeks are already wet with tears, she’s wearing heels that are much-too tall, and black gloves. Her mouth glistens on her powdered face, orange-red and vulgar. Alice and Ernesto lean against the wall in the sunlight, smoking. Sharp, sharp sunlight now, very defined shadows. Alice raises her hand in a limp wave then lets it drop just as limply. A group of men stand a short distance away. At once Thomas recognizes one of them, Frank, their father’s buddy of many years. He’s grown thin and sallow. The obese man in sunglasses must be the one they always called Fatso. He’s lost most of his hair, and has combed a few black wisps over his bald dome. Another, much younger man is wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead, which nearly hides his face. He’s smoking intensely, continuously lifting the hand holding the cigarette up to his mouth and then down again. He’s tall and slender, muscular. Frank gives Fatso a playful shove, and they grin. A car rolls up in front of the chapel, and out steps Aunt Kristin and Helena followed by the twins, who must be twelve or thirteen years old by now. Two shy girls in matching windbreakers. It occurs to him how much Kristin resembles their mother. There’s something elegant and practiced in her movements, her smooth full-bodied hair, now silver-gray, like a helmet atop her heart-shaped face. Jenny has already hugged Maloney and squeezed Thomas’s wrist. He pulls himself free and goes to Kristin. She wraps her arms around him and holds him tight. “Thomas,” she says into his jacket. “How are you?”
“Fine,” he says. “And you? The twins have gotten so big.”
She looks at him. “You never visit us. But we’ll have to change that. I just told Helena that now we’ll have to invite you to the house. We’ve reconfigured the barn, and there’s room for all of you to spend the night. Or rather: I’ve reconfigured. Helena’s not much for manual labor, as you know. Of course she’s also been busy recently, you know, she got an order for a huge tapestry. We’ve put the big loom out in the barn . . .” She lets go of him: “My God! Is that Alice over there? She’s all grown up!” Then he says hello to Helena, who’s packed in something resembling a poncho, out of which she pokes her narrow, friendly face, a warm smile; she kisses his cheek. The twins shake his hand politely and regard him with their identical gray-green eyes. The expression in their eyes is different, but he can’t tell which is which.
“Congratulations on your tapestry. Kristin just told me how busy you’ve been.” Helena lights up. “Thank you so much. Yes, it’s an overwhelmingly massive project, but I believe I’ve finally figured out what to do. It’s an alter tapestry.”
“Christ on the cross?”
Helena smiles. “No, the Holy Virgin at the well. And I’m actually happy about that.”
Suddenly Patricia’s at his side. “Are you okay?” she whispers, clutching his jacket. She says hello to Helena. The twins have sat down on the lowest step. Thomas wants to say something to Patricia, but a tall man with sharp features and a jacket a little too outsized for him approaches them with long strides. He introduces himself and offers his hand. “My condolences,” he says. “You must be the son? I don’t want to intrude, but my colleagues thought it’d be a good idea if I came. It was a bit of a shock to find him like that. I’d spoken with him only three hours earlier. I’ve known Jacques for many years—he visited us many times in his later years, after all. He looked a little tired that day, but he was in good spirits.”
Thomas thanks him for coming.
“I thought you’d want to know his last words?”
Thomas nods.
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