A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (39 page)

What? You just jumped.

Nothing. Something just occurred tome. Anyway, when I spoke I filled everyone in on exactly how cheated we felt, / felt. But I was merciful. I said something to the effect that, you know, I
could
stand here and grouse about how she
’
ll never see my children,
about how unfair it all was, her being taken a month after my father, about how hard it all was for us. But then I said, my voice getting shakier, that we shouldn
’
t think such sad thoughts, that we should just pick a bright star in the black sky and think of her, and then, to find another, close by, and think of my dad.

Umm...

Yeah, I know, I know. It
’
s horrible, it
’
s cheap and small. And

worse, I drew a picture of her on her deathbed.

But what does that
—

She was at that point long gone, in terms of consciousness. She mumbled every so often, sometimes sat up with a start, saying something, but otherwise it was just breathing, gurgling, the candles, her hot skin. And waiting, really. We sat there, day and night, trading places, Beth and I, with Toph downstairs usually, Beth and I sitting, watching, holding her hot hand, sleeping there, sometimes draped over her, waiting for the near-end, so we could gather and then wait for the end-end. And during it all, in the dark one night, sitting on a chair to her left, I felt compelled to draw a picture of her, with a red grease pencil on large drawing paper. I sketched it out first, lightly relating the rough shapes, making sure it all would fit on the page, making adjustments. It seemed like I would run out of room on the left. I moved her head farther to the right, so I could fit the whole pillow in the frame. I roughed out the loose shape of the bed, the metal frame. And then I started with her face, actually—I usually don
’
t start with the face, because if you can
’
t find a likeness it corrupts the rest of the drawing, I find—but her face this time was easy, it having a kind of simple geometry in profile, sunken as it was, just barely rising from her pillows, flat from whatever process it was that was making her face sink and flatten, shiny from the jaundice and the excretions coming through her skin, the excretions that would
have been exiting her body elsewhere had the necessary systems been working. Then I drew the tubes, the IV, the bed
’
s aluminum railing, the blankets. When it was done, it was fairly accurate, a nice picture, with a good deal of detail in the middle, less as it reached the paper
’
s edges. I still have it, though it
’
s frayed on its sides... I
’
ve never been good about preserving drawings; I keep them, but abuse them. This drawing, for example, of maybe ten thousand I
’
ve done in classes or otherwise, could easily be the most important one I
’
ve ever done or will ever do, but I just looked for it and found it sticking halfway out of an old portfolio, torn at its corner. How can I be so careless with this memory of my mother? And why did I even draw it in the first place? I mean, what does that mean?

It could be a purely sentimental...

I wonder. But I also remember thinking of taking pictures. At the time, I was painting a lot from photographs, and thought that they
’
d come in handy later, photographs, that I would take a bunch, from different angles, and use them as source material later.

But you didn
’
t.

No. To be honest, I didn
’
t really even strongly consider doing so,

but the point is that I thought of it.

And then you went to Florida.

After the service, we spent twenty minutes or so at a tea and cookies sort of thing in the rectory, and then said goodbye. My then-girlfriend Kirsten was there, and Bill, and my uncle Dan, and after a while we sort of said, See you all later, love you, and then took off, completely wired with adrenaline, driving until midnight, stopping in Atlanta. The next day we drove until there was sand along the highway, and we were in Florida, and we bought new bathing suits, and got sand in the car—the car that our dad would
under no circumstances ever let us drive or allow food into—and watched HBO at night in the hotel room, and Toph and I played frisbee during the day, on a white, white beach, and the wind was warm and wet, and we called Bill at night, and thought about visiting a few relatives we had down there—Tom and Dot, I mentioned them before—but then didn
’
t, because they were old, and for the time being we were done with such people.

And then you
—

I never gave them a proper burial.

Excuse me? What does that
— I don
’
t know where they are.

What do you mean?

They were cremated. They decided, I guess together, God knows why, and from where the idea came, that they would donate their bodies to science. We had no idea why—it didn
’
t really gel with any long-held beliefs that we knew them to have; we had never heard them talk about it. My dad was an atheist, we knew that— my mother claimed he worshiped
“
The Great Tree
”
—so in his case it makes some sense, the body donation plan, but my mother was very Catholic, far more romantic, emotional, superstitious even maybe, when it came to such things. But all of a sudden the orders were there—I can
’
t remember if we knew before or after; it must have been after his death and before hers, come to think of it—and that
’
s what happened. After they were taken to the coroner
’
s or wherever, at some point they were picked up by a donor service, and brought to this or that medical school, where they were used for God knows what.

This disturbs you?

Well, of course. At the time, we thought it was kind of noble. It
surprised us, the donating, so with everything sort of spinning out of control, we just rolled with it, I suppose in part because it made arrangements easier.

What do you mean?

Well, the casket and all. Or lack thereof.

You didn
’
t have a casket?

No. Nothing. We had services for each, of course, but we didn
’
t

bother with the casket, considering it would be empty and all.

So there was no standard funeral ceremony, like at a cemetery,..
No.

They have no gravestones.

They have no gravestones. We have no idea where they are, as a matter of fact. I mean, the people from the body donation company promised that after they were done, they would cremate the bodies and then send them to us, but they haven
’
t. At least not yet. It was supposed to be within about three months. But now it
’
s going on about two years.

So you don
’
t have the remains?

Right. Actually, it
’
s kind of funny—they don
’
t call them
remains;
they call them
“
cremains.
”
But we still think the ashes might be coming. Beth thinks they haven
’
t been returned because we
’
ve moved a few times. She thinks they probably tried to contact us and couldn
’
t find us because we moved to the Berkeley sublet and then again, and so threw them out, or whatever. I kind of think they might still be there, somewhere.

Have you tried to contact the donation service?

No. I think Beth has. It
’
s something that we talk about every
couple of months, actually, but less and less frequently. It
’
s hard, because the later it gets, the farther from that time we find ourselves, the more impossible it becomes to even broach the subject. It
’
s kind of embarrassing, really. For me at least. That and the lack of the gravestones, the lack of funerals, the selling or disposing of most of the contents of the house. It was all such a blur, and we were moving so far, and there was so much to be done. I was trying to finish college, commuting back and forth, three days in Chicago and four in Champaign, all spring, and Beth had to do everything else—trying to sell the house, get the estate sale figured out, finding a school in Berkeley for Toph, paying all the bills, selling Mom
’
s car...We were convinced that we would be forgiven anything, really, any lapses in judgment, any mistakes, all the horrible mistakes. Some of the stuff we sold...

You regret all that.

Sometimes. Sometimes Beth and I agree that it
’
s best, the way we cleared out, the clean break we made from home, from most elements of the.. .you know, it was weird, but a few people frowned upon our taking Toph away and moving to California, thinking that the best support network would be there, in Lake Forest, blah blah. But good lord we could not get far enough away, were sure that we
’
d all end up this sad local legend, these sorry celebrities, and Toph this ward of the town.. .no way. And so we didn
’
t do a cemetery funeral or anything, didn
’
t bother with coffins. Beth always says how our parents did not want a funeral, that the whole funeral and gravestone thing was just a racket, was this ridiculous tradition, rooted in commerce, a Hallmark holiday sort of thing, and besides, it was much too expensive. So we can ease our conscience with that, and by assuming that we carried out their wishes.

Do you think they really wanted it that way?

No, not for a second. Beth does. Beth is sure, Beth was there. But
I.. .1 honestly think they can
’
t believe we haven
’
t buried them yet, that we don
’
t even know where they are. It
’
s appalling, really.

Maybe.

But I really think that embalming dead people, dressing them up, putting makeup on them...it
’
s brutal, medieval. There is a large part of me that really likes the idea of them having sort of disappeared, just gone—with us never really seeing them once they passed on, that they just floated away or something, that because they were not buried, that might be—

Do you dream of them?

My sister dreams of them constantly. All the time, and in her dreams our parents are often cheerful, talking and walking and saying interesting things. I have not seen my parents talking and walking and saying interesting things since they died. When we talk about it, when we are not fighting about responsibility and all, my sister and I sit on the couch and she tilts her head and twirls her hair around her finger and pieces together her most vivid dreams. In most of them, our mother is doing something simple like driving or cooking, and when she dreams of my father, my father is skulking around or has just killed someone or is chasing her. But every so often a dream with him in it is a nice dream. And thus I
’
m jealous, because I
’
d love to see them walking and talking again, even if it was fabricated in a dream. But I don
’
t dream of them. I have no idea why not, and how to remedy that problem.

Why not just think about your parents just before bed? That would seem to be at least one way of doing it.

I
’
ve tried that. I mean, I have tried to try. For instance, right now, I
’
m thinking Yeah, yeah, I
’
ll do that tonight, thanks for reminding me. But somewhere along the line I will forget. It
’
s happened a hundred times. Why can
’
t I remember to think of my parents
before I sleep? Why can
’
t I simply leave a note on the pillow— THINK OF PARENTS? Why can I not do this? I mean, the rewards would be so great—for instance, if I were to think of my mother just before I fell asleep, there is a fairly good chance that my dream would bring her to life—the making of dreams as we all know is often that crudely predictable—and yet I can
’
t bring myself to do it, to remember, to do the basic work necessary. It
’
s flabbergasting. Actually, I have dreamed of my father once, sort of. In the dream, I am driving on Old Elm, a street near our house, and it
’
s winter, no snow, just gray. I
’
m driving down the hill, from 7-Eleven to home, and I suddenly see, maybe two hundred yards away, along a parallel road, through a million bare twiggy trees, a car, exactly like my dad
’
s. It
’
s a gray Nissan something something, and in
it
is a gray-haired man wearing an old brown suede coat, looking almost exactly like my father, except that even in the dream I
’
m sort of doubtful that it
’
s him—in the dream, I know he
’
s gone, and that what I
’
m seeing must be a coincidence or mirage, but then suddenly it occurs to me—this is where, in the dream even, it both conforms to logic and departs wildly from it-it occurs to me that he could very well be alive still, that his death made so little sense in the first place, was so sudden and illogically timed, that...and then the other factors conspire together—that none of us were there when he finally died, that we have not received his remains—cremains, sorry—and in the dream it occurs to me that it could simply be another deception, that maybe he
’
s alive after all...