The End of FUN (8 page)

I'd forgotten to pack them. So I put on my Osmos
™
IV running shoes—neon green with the bright white laces—and, long story short, although the church was only seven blocks away, by the time I arrived I was already ten minutes late.

I paused for a moment in front of the big wooden doors to catch my breath and steel myself against the frosty glare of the congregation, and then I stepped inside.

But the church was empty. I mean completely empty. No priest, no casket, no congregation, no nothing—just a milky light filtering through the stained glass windows and good old JC, savior of the world, standing at the end of it all, arms raised up in frustration like,
Hey. Where'd everybody go?

There was a time in my life when I believed in the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit and all that noise, but around age 10, after my mom left, I pretty much stopped going to Mass. Still, in all my life I hadn't had a single experience with the Catholic Church that clocked in at under an hour. So where was everybody? Had I missed the ceremony?

Homie
™
popped up.

“Go away. Actually, wait. Maybe I should call Evie. Oh, wait. Never mind.”

I saw him now. At the back of the church, near the altar. Blue jeans, gray hoodie, baggy jean jacket with a lot of buttons on it. He gave me a wave. “You made it.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Funny story. Who were you talking to?”

“What?”

My dad started down the aisle. “Just now, you were talking to yourself.”

“Um, well, yeah. I was just talking to myself. Where is everybody?”

“Like I said. Funny story.”

I'll say this: a dad is a big thing. When you're little, you think he's a god. He
is
a god. But really he isn't. He's just a dude with a broken dream. In my dad's case, he wanted to be a drummer in a famous rock band. But that didn't happen. I think it
almost
did, but then it didn't. Then Mom left.

From my discussions with psychiatrists and counselors over the years, I've pretty confidently diagnosed my dad as your classic narcissistic Irish Catholic erratic-cycle semifunctioning alcoholic. I'm not saying he was the worst father in the world—certainly a better dad than my mom was a mom—but then again he wasn't the best, either. I mean, he could have been better, though from what I hear
his
dad wasn't exactly father of the year, either.

“Where is everyone?”

Dad scanned the pews like he was seeing it for the first time. “Yeah. Looks like it's just the two of us.”

“What about Evie? Where's she?”

“Sick. Caught a bad case of superpox.”

Pretty convenient if you ask me—catching a deadly infectious disease just in time to miss our grandpa's funeral. But Dad seemed to be buying it. Evie just has that power over him. Some kind of special father-daughter bond that remains a complete mystery to me.

He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “You didn't stay at your sister's last night.”

“Nah.”

“You should've stayed at my place. I wanted to talk about some stuff. What happened? You were busy with other commitments?”

I shrugged. It was all I could think to do. As for my dad, he just kept on looking at me. There's this one look he has, like,
Oh, right, you're the reason I had to not become the next Johnny McDrummerson
or whatever.

“How's school?” he asked at last.

“Fine.”

“You like Sacramento?”

“It's OK.”

He nodded. “And your mother? How's she?”

I gave it some thought. At some point I was going to have to come clean and tell him what happened, so why not now? For a moment there, I almost told him the truth. Almost.

“Mom? She's fine. She's, um, you know—fine.”

His gaze wandered down to my neon-green Osmos
™
IVs. “Interesting choice of footwear.”

“Where
is
everyone?”

“Funny story. Miscommunication in scheduling. The service was held at nine instead of ten.”

“Really? It's over?”

“Not quite,” he said. “If we hurry, we can still make it in time to bury the old goat.”

Now when my dad said,
If we hurry
, what I thought he meant was,
If we hurry…and get in my nice warm car and head on down the road in the accustomed style
. But he didn't mean that. He meant
if we hurry…and jog ten blocks to the cemetery…

At first I didn't want to do that because I had my bag with me, and although it wasn't very heavy, it was definitely cumbersome. What with the broken zipper, you had to squeeze it to keep everything from falling out, and the whole situation was pretty awkward. I could tell Dad thought it was amusing, but then after a couple blocks the joke was on him, because who was the one wearing running shoes? Then the joke was back on me again because I was the one who tripped on a curb and spilled all my crap on the ground.

Speaking of jokes, we arrived at the cemetery to find three people—a priest, a lawyer, and a cowboy—standing around an unmarked hole in the snow, like the setup of one of those jokes old people tell. It was cold out there, and it looked like they'd been waiting for a while, and that they weren't exactly happy about it.

As we got closer, however, I saw I'd been wrong—for one thing, the hole in the snow wasn't a hole. It was a mound. Of dirt. Second, the lawyer wasn't a lawyer. He was a rep from the funeral home. His lapel pin said
NORTHERN NEVADA MEMORIALS, CATERING & FLORAL
. The cowboy wasn't a cowboy, either. She was a cowgirl. Or more like a cowoldlady: this tiny little woman in a cowboy hat. The priest was a priest, though, and he was the one who spoke first, thanking us for joining them on this solemn day, etc. When he spoke his mouth barely moved. You could tell he was pissed.

“What's going on?” said Dad. “You already buried him?”

The funeral rep stepped forward. “I'll apologize for that one. We thought you were a no-show.”

“A no-show at my father's funeral?”

“It happens more than you'd think.”

“What about the rites? Those over, too?”

The priest cleared his throat. “I can do them again.”

“Yeah, why not?”

I'm telling you, that guy should've been an auctioneer. I'd never heard a person speak so fast.
Our-father-who-art-in-heaven-hallowed-be-thy-ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-dust-bless-and-console-us-and-gently-wipe-every-tear-from-our-eyes-in-the-name-of-the-father-son-and-holy-etc.-amen.

But it was freakin' cold out there, and he couldn't go fast enough, and all I could think about was how could some all-powerful god arrange for a day like this?
Why
would he? What's the point? Here's some dude, cold and pissed, talking on behalf of this
other
dude who he probably didn't even know, and definitely doesn't give a shit about, while all these other dudes (+1 old cowlady) who barely give any more of a shit freeze their butts off. And that's it? That's how you say good-bye to a life? Awesome work, God. Thanks for mosquitoes, too, by the way. And hey, when are you gonna get around to starving more homeless African kids?

A moment of silence, no tears that I could see, and then the old lady stepped forward. She pushed back her hat, cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and began to sing. It was “Amazing Grace.” It's a slow song, and her interpretation was even slower than usual. I mean
crazy
slow. And her voice? How can I describe it? She hit the notes OK, but it was like her throat was full of gravel, and listening to her I realized that this was about the last place I wanted to be, and so I tried to bring up
Tickle, Tickle, Boom!
(YAY!) but Homie
™
popped up and was all,

Right. I'd almost forgot. So I stood there and listened to the old lady sing. She kept stopping to cough and clear her throat, and it was like,
hurry up, hurry up
—and yet by the end of the song, she kind of had me. I hadn't known him very well, not really, but after all he
was
my grandpa, and now here he was under my feet. It's weird what music can do to you. YAY! for “Amazing Grace.” It's a pretty powerful song. One moment I was all,
This sucks I'm cold hurry up let's get it over with
, and then suddenly it was like:
Holy shit, we are burying one of our own
.

After it was over, we walked back to the cemetery gates, and the priest and the funeral rep shook everyone's hand and got into the same car, and it was just me, my dad, and the little old lady. Dad was ready to go, but I told him I'd catch up. I didn't feel like leaving yet, and I didn't feel like walking with him for ten blocks, because then we'd have to talk, and I didn't feel like talking.

He gave me another one of his looks. “How do I know if you're telling the truth?”

“Where else am I gonna go?”

“Just come over, OK? I've got something I need to show you.”

“What is it?”

“You come over, you'll see it.”

“Just give me a while.”

“Fine,” he said. “Don't take all night.”

So then it was just me and the little old cowboy lady. Turned out she was my grandpa's neighbor. I'd never met her before. Like I mentioned, she was short. Probably no more than 4 feet 9 even with the hat, but otherwise fairly normally proportioned—not like a gnome or anything—except that her skin was kind of gnomelike, all wrinkly like an old glove left out in the sun.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” she said.

The question caught me by surprise. I didn't want to offend her or anything, so I said, “Yeah, sure.”

“Your grandfather didn't.” She had a voice like a frog, like you might hear a frog singing across the swamp, all low and gravelly.

“He didn't?”

“No. He was a smart man, but he didn't believe in Jesus. I told him he better get himself straight before he died. We used to joke about which of us was going to go first….I used to tell him, ‘Henry, when I die just dump me in the river. Just roll me into the water. That's all I ask. No service, no burial. Let the Lord take me as I am.'” The woman coughed. “Know what he would say? ‘Well, what if it's winter, Anne?'”

“OK…”

“If it's winter, the river's frozen. I hadn't thought about that.” The woman coughed again. “I told him, hoist me up into a tree and let the vultures have me, then. Know what he said? ‘There aren't any vultures in winter, Anne.' He was a smart man, your grandfather. But he didn't believe in Jesus.” The woman paused to hawk a speckled loogie into the snow. “Tell me your name again?”

“Aaron.”

“I'm Anne,” she said. “Anne Chicarelli. And are you Catholic, Adam?”

“Not really.”

She nodded. “It's a dead end if you ask me. A husk with no kernel. Tell me, Adam. Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and savior?”

“It's Aaron.”

“Yes, and have you asked him to come to you and light you on fire so that you, too, may come stumbling out of that cave on the third day, clapping the dust from your hands?”

I try to respect my elders, because they've been through a lot and supposedly know all about life—but mainly because I don't want to deal with their shit. Better to just mumble something and let them go on with whatever it is they're doing, but this was getting ludicrous.

“Can I pray for you, Adam?”

“Pray for me? I guess…”

What I didn't understand was that she meant
pray right now
. She took my hands in hers and bowed her head. Tiny bones squeezing me tight.