Funeral with a View (33 page)

“That,” Cat says,
pointing at the mirror, “is what I’m talking about, young lady.”

“I didn’t do that.”

Catherine closes her eyes
and shakes her head. When she speaks, her voice is frayed around the edges.
“Celeste, I’m not mad that you wrote it. I’m just upset that you won’t admit
it. You could have fallen and gotten hurt climbing up on the vanity like that.”

“But—”

“And I don’t appreciate
that you snuck into my room and nosed around my nightstand.”

“It wasn’t me!” Celeste
pulls her hand out of her mother’s grip and juts out her chin.

“Then how did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I’m not in the mood for
games,” Catherine snaps, and Celeste tears up. Cat takes a moment to collect
herself. She kneels down and takes gentle hold of the little one’s shoulders,
which are beginning to shake. “Celeste, please tell me the truth. Please.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to. Forgive me?”

“Okay,” Celeste whispers,
nodding.

“So, the truth?”

“Mommy,” Celeste pleads,
“I didn’t snoop in your room, and I didn’t sneaky sneak in here and write
anything.”

Celeste begins to cry.
Cat pulls her into a hug and whispers soothing words in her ear. I almost don’t
hear them, keeping my distance as I am.

“Shhh, it’s okay, sweetheart.
I’m sorry. I believe you.”

“Really really?”

Cat pulls away and offers
a tired smile. “Really really. I’m upset because I miss your father. If you’d
fallen and gotten hurt … I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. I can’t lose
both of you,” she adds quietly, almost to herself.

“It’s okay, Mommy.”
Celeste chews her lower lip. “Maybe he wrote it.”

“Who, Celeste?”

“Daddy. You know, since
he’s an angel now.”

“Celeste …” Cat’s
sentence comes to an incomplete, sluggish end, as if she doesn’t have the energy
to discuss it right now. I can’t blame her. From slumped shoulders to baggy,
bloodshot eyes, I can tell how tired she is.

“Can I go back to bed?”

Cat pauses, then nods.
“Sure.”

Back in Celeste’s room,
Cat tucks the tired little girl in.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,
Pookie Bear,” Cat says, placing a kiss on her forehead.

“It’s okay, Mommy.”
Celeste pulls the covers up to her chin. “Mommy?”

“Yes?”

From beneath her princess
blankets, Celeste produces the crumpled drawing. She hands it to Cat, who looks
a bit confused.

“Here’s my angel picture.
You can have it, you know. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

Catherine looks from Celeste
to the drawing, turning it so it catches the dim light from the hallway. She
takes in a breath and says, “Celeste, this is amazing. You drew this? At the
funeral parlor?” Celeste nods. “When did you get to be such a good artist?”

Celeste shrugs. “Dunno. It
was, like, all of a sudden. Maybe I inherited it from Daddy or somethin’.”

My wife nods, bewildered
as she stares at the prodigious sketch. Something glistens on her cheek,
leaving a sparkling trail behind it.

A tear.

Cat goes to the doorway.
I follow at a safe distance.

“He’s not gone, Mommy.”

Catherine stops in the
middle of closing the door. “I’m sorry?”

“Daddy. He’s not gone so
long as you keep him right here,” Celeste is pointing a finger to her own chest,
“in your heart.”

With a slight quiver in
her lower lip, Cat says, “Love you.”

“Love you, too, Mommy.”

Just before the door
closes and shuts out all but the faintest of ambient light from the room, I
catch Celeste looking in my direction. On her face is an almost imperceptible
smile.

Then she turns and lays
her head on the pillow.

I’m nearly through the
door when her sleepy voice stops me.

“It’s okay, Daddy.
Mommy’ll figure it out. Grownups are slow sometimes is all. They can’t help
it.”

I’m stunned, frozen in
place, my mind going in a hundred different directions at once, and before I
can even think of concentrating on a reply, she says, “Love you, Daddy.
G’night,” and falls fast asleep.

“Alright, Catherine.
You’re doing fine. It won’t be much longer now.”

My wife lies in her
hospital bed, feet elevated by cold metal stirrups. Her brow is sweaty from
effort, and she holds a fistful of bed sheet in each of her clenched hands.

It’s been five hard
fought hours.

“You can do this, Cat,” Jude
says. “Piece of cake, baby sister. You got this.”

Paper spools from the
bedside monitor. Dr. Ann reads it, nods her head.

“This is it, Cat,” she
says confidently. Tiny beads of perspiration cover her round face, her
expression steely and sure. “One more time. I need you to bear down and give me
one last good push.” Dr. Ann situates herself at the foot of the bed between my
wife’s legs. “Ready? One. Two. Three. Push!”

Catherine grips her
sister’s hand and grunts. Her face contorts from the effort, teeth bared, body
shaking.

And when I think it’s too
much for her, when it seems the effort is greater than what she can endure, she
emits a loud yell.

A messy, screaming, amazing
human being appears in Dr. Ann’s arms.

“It’s a boy!”

“It’s a boy, Cat! A boy!”
Jude cries. “Celeste has a baby brother.” Tears streak down her face like
tributaries.

The nurse cleans out the
baby’s airway and hands the beautifully dirty bundle to Catherine.

“I know,” Catherine
breaths. She doesn’t say it condescendingly. She says it as if she’s known all
this time. She’s glowing, absolutely radiant. Despite the pain and exhaustion,
she beams with pride as she holds her new son,
our
new son, against her
chest. “I’ve known for a long time.”

Jude kisses Catherine’s
slick brow. “He’s a little angel, Cat. You’re such an angel,” she coos to the
newest addition of the Franchitti clan, “aren’t you, little—”

“Ricky,” Catherine says.
“His name is Ricky Junior.”

~~~

At six-seventeen in the morning
on June nineteenth, Richard Franchitti Junior came screaming into the world … all
nine pounds, fourteen ounces of him. Now that’s a big boy.

The hours after my son’s
birth were like a scene from a familiar memory. The recovery room became a revolving
door of family and friends. Mary Jo and Pat were once again happier than pigs
dipped in shit. The Colonel’s moustache tilted at such a steep angle I
questioned its recovery.

Jude, Rob, and the twins
were permanent fixtures until Catherine was released to go home. And yes, Rob
adjusted his glasses no less than a thousand times. If he’ll ever get a pair
that fits remains one of the universe’s great mysteries.

Bill and his fiancé
Angela paid a visit. That’s right. I said
fiancé
. It turned out that
their tumultuous on again-off again relationship had gotten stuck in the on
position during my wife’s pregnancy. Only took most of a decade. Better late
than never, right? Not to sound self-centered, but I wonder if my death hadn’t
had something to do with it. I like to think so. Something had passed between
the couple during Bill’s eulogy at my funeral. He faltered and she was there to
pick him up from the ashes and brush him off despite their rocky past. I don’t
know what the Urban Dictionary says, but that’s what I call love. Regardless of
how they got there, I couldn’t be happier for them both … even if it meant
losing another over/under pool.

And what would a family
event be without my mother and Glen?

“Glen? Glen!”

“Yes, dear.”

“Isn’t he the spitting
image of Ricky?”

“He sure is, Beth,” Glen
said, tickling Ricky Jr.’s chin.

Mom dabbed at her eyes
with a tissue. “I wish Ricky could see this.”

Catherine raised her
brilliant hazel eyes to the ceiling. “Somehow I think he can, Beth,” she said
with a palm pressed firmly over her heart.

Her reaction didn’t
surprise me, nor did the baby’s name. You see, I had a bit of a hand in it
myself. All it took was a foggy mirror and enough concentration and
determination to write the words ‘Ricky Jr.’ on it. Like my daughter said,
adults can’t help being a little slow at times, but I knew right then and there
that Catherine had it all figured out.

Really really.

Ricky’s in his crib,
holding a chubby fistful of mommy finger.

Tomorrow they both go
home. Correction: they all three go home.

Celeste is staying the
night with her mother and her brand new brother.

She’s standing on her
tippy toes with her nose hovering over the crib, studying the baby’s face
intently.

“Are you happy with your
little brother, Celeste?” Catherine asks.

“Yeah, I think so, Mom.”
No more lisp, no more ‘Mommy’. When you’re seven going on eight some things
just aren’t cool anymore I suppose.

Catherine laughs. “You
think
so?”

“He’s okay I guess. Kinda
wrinkly. Really tiny, too.”

“You were even smaller.”

“No way. Really?”

“Really really.” Catherine
picks up Ricky Jr. He’s not sleeping, no way, no how. He’s too curious for
that. Awful newborn eyesight or not, he looks as if he’s drinking in his new
world with vigor.

She pulls him close to her
chest and sits in the chair.

Cold isn’t good for the
newborn, but this is too precious to miss. A quick peek won’t hurt. I hover in
closer. Catherine and Celeste shudder. My wife smiles.

“Mom?” Celeste asks
tentatively.

“What’s up, Pumpkin?” She’s
rocking the swaddled boy now.

“Did you really mean what
you said to Gramma Beth? That Dad was watching over you?” She’s very serious.

“I did,” Cat says without
a hint of doubt.

Celeste smiles in a way
that tells me she’s proud of her mother.

Just then, little Ricky
looks directly at me. He reaches out a tiny hand and tries to grab my nose.
Celeste stifles a shudder and her eyes find me.

“I think he was, too,
Mom.”

“Hey, buddy.”
I
imagine my lips placing a kiss on my new son’s button nose. He blinks and coos.
They say children this young can’t smile. I call bullshit. “
Love you, Baby
Boy. I love all of you.
”

A tear builds in my
wife’s eye and trickles down her cheek. She can’t see me, but I know she senses
me. Why Celeste is more attuned to me than her mother I’ll never know. That’s
not important. What’s important is that I was successful in my attempt to share
with Cat my knowledge of Richard Franchitti, Junior.

My son.

Our
son.

A tug pulls at my being.
It’s growing stronger as my world turns fuzzy around the edges, a sensation not
dissimilar to when I’d try to move too far away from my body in the funeral
parlor. It no longer scares or confuses me. It simply
is
.

The last thing I see
before it all fades away are my wife and daughter, smiling and misty-eyed, and
Ricky Jr., his hand seemingly holding onto nothing…

… the nothing where I was
only a moment ago.

Here Lies Richard
Franchitti: Best Damn Looking Spirit In The Whole Cemetery.

Wouldn’t that make a
great line on my headstone? I’m kidding, of course. Carved into my marble grave
marker are my name, dates of birth and death, and a line beneath that says,
“Loving Son, Father, And Husband. Gone But Never Forgotten.” Cherubic angels
atop billowing clouds hover on either side of the inscription.

It’s simple.

I like simple.

I like simple because
simple things are often the most impactful.

I am gone, but if I’ve
learned one thing during all of this, it’s that I will never,
ever
be
forgotten. I’ll live on in the hearts of my family, my children, my friends.
I’ll live on in the tiny form of Ricky Jr., my legacy and the reason I’ve been
stuck between here and wherever I’m going.

A lot of time has passed
since that overcast October evening when the love of my life called to tell me
she was pregnant with my child. Tragic? Yes. Still, I’ve accomplished something
in life, in death. My life wasn’t perfect, but I made of it what I could. I
loved, forgave, even hated for a time, but I realize now that I was all in for
what little time I had. That’s all anyone can ask for.

I don’t know what’s next
for me. You may be wondering if I can reveal to you all the secrets of The Great
Beyond, The Ever After, Heaven, Valhalla … whatever you want to call it. Have I
seen anybody? Is there a God?

You’re probably wondering
a lot of things.

So am I.

If I knew the answers to
the questions you seek (and I’m not saying I do) I couldn’t give them to you.
They’re not mine to share. Chances are I’ve said too much already. Death is
life’s greatest mystery. It’s something you have to experience for yourself.

But …

There is one thing. I
don’t see the harm in it.

I know it to be true that
I’ll see my family again. Whether it be on earth or wherever it is I’m heading
now, the fact remains that I do know it. I harbor no doubts. It’s as factual as
birth, living, and death. The vast expanse of everything and nothing before me
should be frightening, but it isn’t, thanks to that knowledge. Even if I wander
it by myself for all eternity, I am not afraid. I’ll never be alone as long as
I keep my family and friends in my heart and soul, and that douses my fear.

It’s okay.

Everything
is
going to be okay.

A-okay.

Off the charts okay.

Wait a second. Is that … ?
I swear I hear a voice that hasn’t touched my ears since I was ten.

I know this must seem horribly
rude of me after we’ve spent so much time together going through my life and
death, but I really have to go now. I hope you don’t take it personally. If you
do, I apologize. Maybe you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me one day for
leaving so abruptly. Just make sure you mean it.

Until then, thank you.
Thank you for coming to my funeral and listening to my story. I won’t forget
you either. And remember, this is all between us, right?

I won’t tell if you
don’t.

Really really.