Absolutely Normal Chaos (6 page)

Tonight, Mom said that there would be a “viewing” (of the
body
!) tomorrow night at DiMaggio’s Funeral Home, which is about two blocks from our house.

“Can we go?” I asked. I’ve never seen a body before. Except on TV.

Mom looked at Dad. He said, “Hmm.”

“Maybe they should, Sam,” my mom said.

“Hmm.”

“Oh, pleeeease,” said Dennis.

“Well, I’m not going!” said Maggie.

“I wanna go!” said Tommy. He didn’t even know where we were going.

Carl Ray, of course, didn’t say anything. He must have been wondering if he was still going to have a job now, with Mr. Furtz dead and all.

“Well, fine then. You can come, but behave yourselves.”

So we’re all going tomorrow. Except for Maggie and Carl Ray, I guess.

Beth Ann finally called. Surprise, surprise. She said she was sorry she hadn’t called sooner, but she’s been so
busy
. I didn’t ask her what she was busy doing.

She asked me what I was doing tomorrow night. Well, I’ve fallen for that one before, so I was happy that I had something to say. “Going to the funeral home,” I said. I knew she’d be surprised. She wanted to know who was there, and I told her it was Mr. Furtz, our new neighbor. She asked if he was dead. Of course he was dead, I told her.

I feel terrible about Mr. Furtz. I keep expecting to see him outside, puttering around his yard. I told my parents they ought to take some vitamins.

Here’s some
Odyssey
notes to take my mind off Mr. Furtz. I’ll write them in red ink.

Sacking Cities

I tried to read the
Odyssey
today, but I couldn’t get past the first couple of pages. Homer writes so strangely. He begins, “Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.” Doesn’t that sound a little much?

Fortunately, I knew what a Muse was from English last year. A Muse is a goddess who sits around inspiring people whenever she feels like it. If you’re telling a story and don’t feel too inspired, you’re supposed to call on the Muse for help. It looks like Homer needed some help right from the start. If I were Homer, I don’t think I’d admit that right at the beginning of the story
.

And then I just can’t warm right up to a character who is a hero (an ingenious hero) because he “sacked” a town! Lord
.

Homer also has a strange way of putting things. For example, instead of saying, “He visited many cities,” Homer will say, “Many cities did he visit.” It reminds me of the preacher at Aunt Radene’s church in West Virginia. He would make his voice really soft and then, boom, he would be shouting and then soft again. And he would say things like “Many people did our Jesus cure,” and “Little did He know.” You
could tell that this preacher really liked to talk and that he was really proud of what he said and the way he said it
.

Anyway, about all I can make out from the first part of the
Odyssey
is that it’s going to be about this man Odysseus who “sacked” Troy and then started on his way home but all these gods are trying to decide if they should let Odysseus get started on his journey home to his wife. Then you find out that back at his wife’s house a bunch of men are falling all over her, waiting for the opportunity to marry her. It’s like a soap opera!

It just kills me the way these gods decide everything. Here’s this big hero Odysseus and everything he does is because the gods decide he should do it.

I keep wondering if there are still all these gods like Zeus and Athene and Poseidon sitting around up there on Mount Olympus deciding if I should go to Mr. Furtz’s funeral or, even worse, deciding when it was time for Mr. Furtz to die. Are they saying, “Should Mary Lou Finney die today?”

“Well, yes, I think she should, because many people has she slighted of late.”

“Well, I don’t agree,” says another one. “She’s a good kid. Let us halt awhile.” Etc.

Also, I have trouble keeping track of all the names. In the first three pages, just to give you an
idea of why I have trouble, here are the names mentioned: Hyperion, Zeus, Odysseus, Calypso, Poseidon, Ethiopians, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Orestes, Hermes, Athene, Cronus, Atlas, Polyphemus, Cyclopes, Thoosa, Phorcys, Telemachus, Penelope, Mentes, Taphians.

I was reading this in the living room after dinner while Carl Ray was watching TV, and I got so frustrated, I just threw the book down and said, “Telemachus! Who the heck is Telemachus?”

And do you know what Carl Ray did? He said, without even looking away from the TV, “The son of Odysseus.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. “And how do
you
know
that
?” I asked.

“Simple,” he said, and he kept right on watching
The Dating Game
.

I didn’t even think Carl Ray knew how to
read
.

Friday, June 29

I will never forget tonight as long as I live (and hey, Zeus, I would like that to be quite a bit longer, please).

We viewed Mr. Furtz tonight.

I don’t know where to start. I never expected anything like this. First of all, DiMaggio’s Funeral Home is really like a
home
inside. I guess I thought it would be like a hospital with green walls and tile
floors and people in white coats. But it was like a house, with a living room where people were standing around talking. There were lamps and tables and couches and all that. When I saw the living room, I thought for a minute that they were going to have Mr. Furtz propped up in a chair with a newspaper in his lap. Dentist-office music was playing in the background.

Oh, I forgot to mention that, surprise, surprise, guess who came along with us. Carl Ray! None of us could I believe it when we were walking down the street (like I said, the funeral home is only two blocks away) and all of a sudden Dougie said, “Hey, there’s Carl Ray!” We all turned around, and sure enough, Carl Ray was following right behind us.

“Now that’s one strange boy,” my father whispered to my mother.

Anyway, Dennis started pulling on my arm at the funeral home, and Carl Ray said, “Come on.” I don’t know why I was so surprised to see Carl Ray lead the way, but we followed him. We went through some curtains and there it was.

The coffin. It was sitting up on a table and it was
open
! Dennis said, “Whooaa.” Carl Ray stepped right up and pulled Dennis beside him. Dennis dragged me.

I couldn’t breathe. There was Mr. Furtz, lying on
this white silky pillow with his hands folded over his chest. He was wearing a brown suit and a white dress shirt and tie. And he had this fancy quilt over him, covering his legs. It seemed strange to see a man in a suit lying in this box that was trying to look like a bed.

He really did look like he was sleeping, and he looked pretty much like Mr. Furtz except he wasn’t smiling as he usually did, and his face looked like it had powder on it. I kept thinking he was going to open his eyes and be real mad that we were all staring at him.

I never saw so many flowers all in one room before. There were flowers in the coffin (“To Charles Randolph Furtz, With love from your children”), baskets of gladiolas all along a shelf behind the coffin, and then about a hundred other baskets of flowers around the room.

I started looking at these baskets, because each one had a card on it telling who it was from. The cards said things like “In loving memory” and “Rest in peace” and “To our Beloved.” They were all pretty depressing. It was as if people were cramming in all these last-minute messages in case Mr. Furtz could still hear. The funny thing was he looked as if he
could
hear. I kept looking at the cards, wishing at least one of them would say the truth: “Oh how
awful!” or “I wish you weren’t dead” or “This is the absolute worst thing in the world.” But none of them did.

When I turned around to show Dennis, Carl Ray was staring down into the coffin and rubbing his finger over this brass marker on the side of the coffin. The marker had Mr. Furtz’s initials on it: CRF. But then I saw Carl Ray reach out with one hand and touch Mr. Furtz on the arm! “Carl Ray!” I said.

He jumped back. And then you know what? Carl Ray was
crying
! I have to admit that I felt like crying as soon as I saw Mr. Furtz, but Carl Ray hardly knows him. For a minute there, I actually
liked
Carl Ray because he could cry over Mr. Furtz like that.

I saw my mom standing by Dad, and they were both crying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad cry, and that made me so sad.

They told us kids to go on home, because they were going to stay awhile, so we started back up the street. I was surprised to see that Carl Ray was holding Tommy’s hand.

“Did you see the body?” Dougie asked Tommy.

Tommy nodded. His eyes were wide open—you could tell he didn’t like what he saw. Then Tommy turned to Carl Ray and said, “So where’s he going now?”

“They’ll bury him,” Carl Ray said.

“Where?”

“In the cemetery, in the ground.”

“Does he stay in the box?”

“Yup.”

“What about heaven?”

Carl Ray looked up at the sky and back at Tommy. “What about it?”

“When does he go there?”

“Well,” Carl Ray said, “soon, I guess.”

Tommy was staring at Carl Ray’s face real hard. “So how is he gonna get out of the ground?”

Carl Ray didn’t even bat an eye. “God will come and get his soul.”

Tommy nodded.

All of a sudden, I saw this image of Zeus swooping down with this shovel and digging down into the earth and pulling open the coffin and taking Mr. Furtz by the hand and flying off with him up into the clouds, sort of like Superman. Imagine.

But now that I am home and it’s dark outside and time to go to bed, I just don’t like the idea of Mr. Furtz being in that box when they close the lid, and of him being down there in the ground while Mrs. Furtz and Cathy and Barry and David go on living in that house.

And I keep wondering what Mr. Furtz
feels
like. I
know, I know, he can’t feel anything if he’s dead, but he must know it’s dark or that he can’t breathe or that everyone is crying and feeling so miserable that he’s gone. Can he dream? Is he just waiting for someone to come and take his soul?

Saturday, June 30

Mr. Furtz was buried today. Only Mom and Dad went. They decided that none of us kids could go because we all had nightmares last night (all except Carl Ray, who if he did have one didn’t admit it, and Maggie, who didn’t go to the funeral home).

In my dream (or nightmare) I was walking through these woods. It was snowing and very cold and I was lost. I kept looking for my parents, calling, “Mom! Dad!” There were no tracks anywhere and it was pretty dark. I thought I saw Carl Ray behind a tree, and I called his name and ran up to the tree, but when I got there he was gone. I was screaming, “Carl Ray! Save me! Save me!” And then I sat up straight in bed and there was Maggie staring at me, saying, “Hey! Wake up!”

Dennis said he dreamed that someone locked him in the garage and people kept staring in the window but he couldn’t hear what they were saying and they wouldn’t let him out.

Dougie said he was picking flowers in this huge
field of flowers when all of a sudden a big black bird came down out of the sky and started pecking at his head.

And Tommy said the “boogerman” was after him, so he climbed in bed with Mom and Dad, and then he wet the bed, which
really
made Dad mad.

Nobody felt like doing anything today while Mom and Dad were gone. When Tommy said he was hungry for lunch, I realized that Dad wouldn’t be going to Alesci’s today, so I started rummaging through the cupboards for something to fix. And then, what do you know? In walks Carl Ray (up before noon on Saturday for the first time since he arrived) with a big Alesci’s bag. He had walked all the way there (about a mile) and back. He had just what we needed: hot bread and ham. It made me feel a little bad about the deodorant and the soap I left on his dresser.

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that Beth Ann didn’t come over. She had to go get her hair cut (all day?). But she did come over this afternoon for about an hour. She seemed real curious about Carl Ray. She kept asking what he was like and where he worked and what I thought of him and which room was his and didn’t we
mind
him staying there and how long was he staying and on and on. She sure can talk.

It was funny, but even though Carl Ray has not
been the most thrilling guest and he has sure driven me crazy, I didn’t tell Beth Ann any of that. In fact I made him sound almost
exotic
. Carl Ray! And when she asked if we minded him staying there, I said, “Beth Ann! What a thing to say. Of course we don’t
mind
—where else would he stay?” even though we all mind a whole lot, especially me.

Finally, I had to ask Beth Ann about Derek. “So how’s Derek?” I asked.

She looked down at her fingernails before answering. “Ohhh, he’s just fiiiiine.”

“So what does he look like?”

“Oh, he’s just gorgeous!”

“I know, but what does he
look
like?”

“Well, he has these cute blue eyes and these longgggg eyelashes and this adorrrrr-able smile.”

“Ah. I can just picture him.” Actually, I couldn’t at all. Her description wasn’t exactly precise. “Is he gawky?”

“
Gawky? Gawky!
No!”

“Does he talk?”

“Of course he does, Mary Lou. You make it sound like you think he’s some sort of jerk or something.” She has a way of pulling down her mouth on the sides like a little kid who’s letting you know you’ve hurt her feelings.

I really wanted to know what they
did
at these
movies. I mean, did they just sit there or did they talk or hold hands or what? But I figured that was the kind of thing she would tell me without my having to ask. She didn’t, though. She seems like she’s bragging more when she
doesn’t
tell me what happened than if she
did
tell me all the details.