Funeral with a View (32 page)

“Hello? Cat?” I had to
shout. Rush hour was in full swing, the traffic so loud I could barely hear
myself think.

“R-i-c-k-y?” Her voice
was still full of static. I checked out the screen and saw only one bar of reception.
A new carrier was definitely in order. Better call quality, my ass. That little
talking hamster that sounded eerily like Andrew Dice Clay was full of crap.

Since the finger in the
ear trick didn’t work, I tried my palm instead. The cacophony dulled, but only
just.

“Cat? You’re breaking up,
baby. The service here sucks.”

“ –at? *ssss* … ear … you
… *ssssssss*”

“I can’t make out what
you’re saying,” I yelled into my phone, lips pressed against it. “I think I’m
in a dead zone.”

I was paying more attention
to my phone than the traffic, surely looking like an idiot to the passersby as
I screamed into the evil device that is the cellular phone. In an effort to get
one more cursed bar of reception, I sidled closer to the curb.

“—ood news …”

“What? You’re still
breaking up, Catherine.”

“ … ant … *ssss* … by …”

“Huh? Aunt Bea? Dammit.”

Almost on top of the
street now, I checked the phone again. Two bars.

“I think we’re in
business now, Cat. What’s this about …”

The sentence went
unfinished. A shout of “Buddy! Look out!” turned my attention from my
conversation. Startled, I spun around to see what the commotion was, but it was
already too late.

“What the shit?”

Two massive halos of
light became my entire world within a split second. They followed on the sound
of a loud pop that turned into a screech of tires. There was a scream. Could
have been mine, could have been someone else’s. My life didn’t pass before my
eyes, but a telephone pole did as I flew through the air after the brutal
impact. Pain, short lived but intense, shot through me.

When I came to a stop, so
numb it almost hurt, all I saw were those dark gray clouds. They swirled and
undulated, and I realized my face was wet. Was it from the tears or the dollops
of rain the clouds shed?

Over the ringing and pulsing
of blood rushing through my head, I heard Cat’s voice, loud and clear. I
couldn’t help but think how typical that was.

“Rick? Ricky! What’s that
noise? What happened? You there?”

No
, I thought.
I
don’t think I am.

People gathered around
me, shouting, looking. They were nothing more than dripping canvases of color
to my failing sight. I couldn’t make out a single feature, and while I heard
them speak, the voices were indecipherable.

All but one.

“Oh my God. Oh my God!
Rick!”

My right cheek crinkled in
something between a grimace and smirk.

Bill.

I sensed him force his
way through the crowd that circled me as he yelled at them, using every curse
word and plea he could muster. He paused over me.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he
said, voice cracking. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Bill …” I managed to
sputter.

“Shhh.” I felt a slight
change in elevation, and I was almost certain my oldest friend, my brother and
father to the greatest gift I was ever given had me cradled in his lap. “It’s
okay, buddy,” he said with forced calm. “Just hang in there, okay?” He turned
to the crowd and pulled out his phone, quickly dialing three numbers. “None of
you fucks called 9-1-1? What the hell is wrong with you people?” To me: “Help’s
going to be here in a few, man. You hang in there for me, Ricky. Goddamnit,
hang in there. Hello? Yes. There’s been an accident. My friend was hit by a …”

My focus switched from
the blurry face of my friend to the sky. Odd. It wasn’t that dark when I’d
first stepped outside, but the clouds seemed to have parted, revealing stars.
Lots of them. Millions of tiny pinpricks sparkled and danced in the night sky.

“Stars …”

“What?” Bill said,
hanging up the phone. “What did you say, Rick?”

“Lots of stars … talking
tonight.”

Bill looked up, shook his
head. “There are no stars, Rick. It’s raining, man.”

“Beautiful,” I said
dreamily.

“Don’t close your eyes,
Rick. Stay with me, okay? Stay with me, you stubborn shit.”

A lightness settled over
me. I felt next to nothing. The perimeter of my vision grew murkier, darker,
but the stars shone so brightly. In that moment, they moved and took shape.
What were random patterns only moments before reorganized themselves into two
recognizable faces.

Catherine and Celeste
smiled at me from the veil of black in the sky, and I wanted to go home and see
them more than anything else I’ve ever wanted in my life.

“Bill,” I croaked over
blaring sirens.

“Yeah, Ricky. I’m here.”

“Home … want to … go
home.”

“You’ll be there soon,
buddy. I promise. I promise we’ll get you home.”

My world faded away as
the sirens drew nearer.

Home.

What the shit is going
on?

Why am I back in my
house?

Where the hell is that Beetlejuice
lady with my Death Handbook, dammit?

Catherine and Celeste walk
in, having returned from the post-funeral ‘feast’.

In a week of strange new
experiences, what I thought would be my final moments were by far the weirdest.

After my casket was
lowered into the dark earth, there was nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. No fade to
black, no white light. No St. Peter standing in front of pearly gates with a
beatific smile. No clouds, winged cherubs, or harps.

Nothing but a total, all-encompassing
lack of anything.

Then, as quickly as the
lights went out, I’m hovering in my house, watching my wife and daughter as
they walk in the door, dressed in black, eyes rimmed in scarlet.

Celeste turns her head my
way. I freeze as her eyes wander around the area I occupy. There’s no possible
way she can see me, I know that, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling like a
voyeur in my own house. I bolt up the stairs to observe from a distance.

Catherine puts their
coats in the closet.

“I think it’s time for
bed, Pookie Bear.”

Celeste nods without
argument, without saying a word. Unusual for the chatty girl, but it’s
understandable given the circumstances. Her sunken eyes and slumped shoulders show
how tired she is.

I dart into the dark end
of the hallway as they make their way up the stairs in preparation for day’s
end. Drawers open, water runs, teeth are brushed. I don’t move an inch.

Preliminaries out of the
way, Catherine leads Celeste into her bedroom. And dammit if I can’t help but
be drawn there.

Sticking tight to the
ceiling, I poke my ‘head’ in.

“Daddy loved you very
much. You know that, don’t you, princess?” Catherine finishes tucking our
daughter in, sits down on the bed, and gently strokes the little one’s forehead.

“I know, Mommy,” Celeste
says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Her voice is so very
tired. Poor thing.

Catherine kisses her
forehead and reaches for the bedside light.

“Mommy? Have you seen my
guardian angel?”

My wife’s hand pauses
over the light switch. “He’s still in my handbag.”

“Mommy—”

“I’ll go get him for you,
sweetheart.”

Leaving the light on,
Catherine slowly walks out of the room, and when she comes back, she’s holding
a piece of paper. “Here you go, Celeste,” she says, handing over the drawing
Celeste had been working on during the funeral. Celeste grips it in her tiny
hand before Catherine can take more than a cursory glance, and a half-smile
breaks through my wife’s weary veil. “Now go to bed. We can read
Ladybug
Girl Goes to the Beach
tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Sounds good, Mommy.
G’night. Love you.” The light of my life turns on her side and burrows into the
comforter.

“I love you, too,
sweetie,” Catherine whispers. Turning off the light, she leaves the room.

More drawers open and
close. More water runs; Catherine’s preparing to take a shower in our master
bathroom.

Cat will be in there for
a while. She’s always loved a long hot shower. Today more than any other day,
she needs it. I take the opportunity to hover over Celeste’s bed, knowing that
she’ll soon be fast asleep, but I keep to the ceiling just in case. Wouldn’t
want to give her a chill.

Moving onto the ‘other
side’ seems lost to me now, but there have to be worse ways to spend eternity
than watching my daughter sleep.

Time passes, her
breathing becomes deeper, more even.

Then she shifts onto her
back

“Daddy,” she says
sleepily.

I pause, more than a
little freaked out, until I realize she’s talking in her sleep. My phantom
heart stops racing. I let a few moments pass before making a move. Now that
she’s turned around, I see the piece of paper she’s holding. I never got a
chance to see it in the funeral parlor, and I’m curious to see what this
guardian angel is all about.

She shudders as I get
closer, but doesn’t wake.

The wrinkled paper
clutched to her chest rises and falls with each breath, but the image is easy
enough to make out. It’s an angel, all right. The image is child-like, yet
somehow mature. Each stroke is broad and sure, almost as if she had a subject
to study. Being an artist myself, I know potential when I see it. I can’t
remember any of Celeste’s previous drawings looking this good. My daughter’s
guardian angel floats in midair, fully-formed arms and legs giving it the
illusion of movement, almost like it’s swimming. No stick figure here. That’s
my girl! Wings, upturned and graceful, are shadowed using delicate cross
hatching, giving them a three-dimensional feathered quality. Atop the
shoulders, the head is more than the mere circle most kids her age would draw.
It’s more realistic and in proportion to the rest of the body.

I’m so proud of her right
now, my budding little artist. I could look at this beautiful picture forever.
And there’s something hauntingly familiar about it. The face. I know this face.
I concentrate on it, letting the rest of the picture blur, and it hits me. I
recognize it because it’s my face. Yes, it’s a bit rough, but there’s no
denying the angel is me. If nothing else, the unibrow perched over the pair of
ovular eyes would have been a dead giveaway.

It couldn’t be, could it?
The glances in my direction all day long, her face scrunched into concentration
as she set to work on her newest masterpiece? All the talk and questions about
guardian angels? Has to be coincidence, right? Simple and inconsequential
conversational threads from a six-year-old mind thrust into a stressful and
emotional situation. Nothing more, nothing less.

If I still had a head I’d
shake it. Eternity’s a long time. I don’t need all the answers now, as much as
I’d like them.

Celeste shivers and pulls
the covers up to her chin. Time to let her sleep.

I float away and chance a
look in the master bathroom, sticking as far away as I can without compromising
my view.

Catherine’s distorted
image shows through the coruscated glass of the shower door. Her head is bowed
down, arms straight out with her palms pressed flat against the tile, letting
the water blast against her back. A fine cloud of steam is building up. She’s
crying. I can tell by the way her shoulders shake and quiver, even though I
can’t hear her over the jets of water. The weird feeling of voyeurism takes
hold once again, so I make my way deeper into the bedroom to leave my wife to
her me time.

On my way through our
bedroom, I stop in front of the full length mirror next to the window to test a
theory, concentrating as hard as I can.

No reflection. Not a
thing, no matter how much I focus.

Damn. Was worth a shot,
though, and it proves that there’s no way Celeste can see me, that her drawing
was nothing more than the work of a creative and talented little girl.

Outside, the sun is
almost below the horizon. So many memories in this room. Some bad, but most
good. Making love in this very bed; curling up with the television on, wrapped
in blankets and each other; sleeping in and fooling around until noon if
Celeste happened to oversleep, which was a rarity, believe me.

The little things. They
add up to a lifetime, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I catch a sparkle on the
nightstand. Light from the lamp reflects off of Catherine’s C & R charm
bracelet. She always takes it off when bathing. I float down to get a closer
inspection of the tiny, inanimate object that, if it could talk, would disclose
the most intimate details of our relationship. This trinket has witnessed
almost every moment of our lives together, good and bad. Amazing how something
so small can be so important.

The little things.

I concentrate, imagining
in my mind’s eye that my hand is reaching out, wanting to touch that small thing
despite knowing in my core that it’s impossible.

My hand is poised over
the shimmering silver, and I see it.

It’s small, the size of a
three-by-five photo. The image is fuzzy; a confusing grayscale. Something in
the shape of a kidney bean sits in the middle.

Oh my God.

With a shock, everything
suddenly comes into focus. Everything now makes sense. It makes sense, and I’m
heartbroken, now more than ever.

This is not fair. It just
isn’t.

I want to clutch my fists.
I want to lash out and punch holes in the wall. But I’m unable to do any of
that. Can’t even scream.

The question of why I’ve
been hanging around all this time has just been answered. Maybe I should have
seen it sooner. All the clues were there, but reliving my life day by day, year
by year, clouded things.

Consider those clouds
parted.

I move to the bathroom
where Catherine still stands under the hot jets of water. There has to be a way
to let her know. My whole world becomes the need to convey the message to her.
But how? Focusing my will to a razor sharp point, I imagine myself waving my
arms as I look into the mirror. Nothing. Not a hint that I’m standing there
pantomiming like a lunatic.

Crushing despair
threatens to whisk me away.

Until …

From nowhere, steam
begins building up in the bathroom, clouding the mirror. I’ve seen this plenty
of times before, although never to this extent. The bathroom quickly fills with
a thick, opaque cloud of heavy air and water particles. It collects on the
chrome fixtures and turns them hazy, clings to the cool silver glass, turning
it a milky vermillion. If I were alive, I’d write something cute and sappy on
that surface for Catherine to find when she got out of the shower, words no
‘manly’ man would ever admit to writing, but secretly did because it’s okay to
be a love-sick fool in private as long as the world-at-large never knew.

Guys are weird like that.

Not that any of this
matters. I’m not alive, and there’s not a blessed thing I can do.

Defeated and frustrated,
I approach the foggy mirror. Maybe going through the motions will make me feel
better. Doubtful, but what else is there?

As if I still have a
body, my hand reaches out.

I don’t expect anything
to happen.

This is once instance in
which I’m happy my expectations aren’t met.

Where I picture the tip
of my finger, the thin film of humidity disappears.

Holy shit.

I don’t know why this is
happening. I don’t know how this is happening. But now’s not the time to ask
questions. Now is the time to roll with it.

Letters form. They’re
shaky, yet legible. It’s slow going, but I have to let Cat know. Failure in
this is not an option. Too much has been taken from me already. I won’t let my
wife live the rest of her life in ignorance. This is quite literally the last
thing I’ll ever do for her, and goddamnit, I’m going to succeed.

I finish as the water
stops running. I’m so, so tired from the effort of interacting with the
physical world. I feel thin, more non-existent than before, drained.

The shower door opens and
Cat sets a bare foot on the mat, wraps a towel around her wet, naked skin. I
drift back to the entry, careful not to give her a chill, and will her with
everything I’ve got left to raise her head and look at the mirror. There’s
nothing I’ve ever wanted more, in life or in death.

Please,
I think.
Please,
lift those eyes and look, baby. Please!

I’m not foolish enough to
think I had anything to do with it when she looks up, but she does.

“What the …” she says,
one hand waving away the accumulated steam, the other holding the towel tight
to her chest.

It’s a start. She’s
looking up.

I concentrate again.

Please. Look at the
mirror, Cat.

She slowly walks through
the fog and rests her free palm on the granite vanity. Her brow crinkles in
confusion. Catherine’s eyes move back and forth as she reads the words several
times. When she reads the writing on the mirror a final time, her lower lip
begins to tremble. Making sure the towel is cinched tightly around her, she
leaves and heads down the hall to Celeste’s bedroom.

I follow.

With a flick of a switch,
the hallway light casts a dim glow in the distorted shape of a rectangle on our
sleeping daughter. Celeste stirs, the white paper she’d drawn on still clutched
to her chest.

“Mommy?” Celeste’s voice
is sleepy, and she stirs. “That you?”

Catherine sits on the
edge of the bed, arms crossed. “Why did you get out of bed when you know you’re
supposed to be sleeping?”

Celeste rubs a small fist
against her weary eyes. “Huh?”

“Don’t try to hide it. I
saw what you wrote on the mirror. Have you been snooping around in Mommy and
Daddy’s bedroom?”

“No, Mommy. And I didn’t
write anything,” Celeste says, sitting up.

Cat sighs. “Celeste, I’m
really not in the mood right now. Please tell me why you wrote it?”

“I swear, Mommy. I’m not
lying. Honest.”

“Celeste Franchitti,” Uh
oh. She’s using full names now. This has become serious business. The last
thing I wanted to do was to get my daughter in trouble for what I’ve done, “you
know how I feel about lying.”

“Mommy, I
swear
I’m not lying!”

“Well, if you didn’t
write it, then who did?”

“Write what, Mommy?”

“I’ll show you. Come with
me.”

Celeste takes her
mother’s hand and they walk to the bathroom. The fog has dissipated. The
message on the mirror is another story. It’s still there and hasn’t diminished or
faded at all in the few minutes since I put it there.