A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (68 page)

Jesus.

It
’
s her motherfucking birthday. I cannot believe that this happened again. Why do I not connect these things? Why do I know her birthday is approaching but do not remember on the actual day, do not remember until I am on a jetty in the lake with her— That does it, that
’
s a sign, screw it, that means this is good, no doubt. She loved the beach, her favorite place, loved to come
and set up her chair near the water, her feet in the water, eyes closed, absorbing the sun, me behind her, in her shade, cool, with my blanket and bottle—

I put my hand in the bag and grab a handful it
’
s so light! I don
’
t know what I expected but this lightness I did not I cannot believe I am holding I am sick to be holding—

I throw. In the air it spreads out in a wide diagonal, and drops into the groaning lake with a series of pitititits. I throw again. Some spills. I should not spill. It
’
s spilled, right there, by my left foot, about eight particles—I
’
m stepping on them! Of course I am! Of course I
’
m stepping on them, how fitting! How expected, asshole! I lean over to pick up the particles but I already have a handful in the other hand and as I crouch down some of the other handful spills on my right side—Jesus! Jesus fucking Christ!
Why can I not do this right?

I stand up quickly and throw, this time some of the cremains sticking to my palm, which is now sweaty—fuck! I try to kick the spilled cremains into the water, down below the rocks, through the crevices—what I need is a hose or something—

But should I really be kicking my mother
’
s ashes? I try to pick them up again, too many, too many and then I crouch down again— Fuck, maybe this is illegal. I had heard that this was not legal, that these cremains were not sanitary, that one needed permission or could only do it on the open sea— I turn around to see if anyone is here. No, no other cars. But someone
’
s going to come here tomorrow and find them and then report it and connect it to me, because the funeral home guy, Chad, with his ham radio, will be listening to a police frequency—

With the back of my hand I brush the fallen grains into the crevices—and am suddenly reminded of the way my mom cleared a fogged windshield, quickly, violently almost, with the back of her hand, her rings clicking against the glass, as we drove through
some or other sudden storm, all of us in the Pinto, on our way somewhere, the mall, the Cape, Florida. And for a second I wonder if her rings will be in the bag. Oh shit. Her rings will be there, half-melted, like a prize in a box of Cracker Jacks. No. Beth has the rings? Beth has the rings. Of course.

How lame this is, how small, terrible. Or maybe it is beautiful. I can
’
t decide if what I am doing is beautiful and noble and right, or small and disgusting. I want to be doing something beautiful, but am afraid that this is too small, too small, that this gesture, this end is too small— Is this white trash? That
’
s what it is! We were always so oddly white-trashy for our town, with our gruesome problems, and our ugly used cars, our Pintos and Malibus and Camaros, and our 70s wallpaper and plaid couches and acne and state schools—and now this tossing of cremains from a gold tin box into a lake? Oh this is so plain, disgraceful, pathetic—

Or beautiful and loving and glorious! Yes, beautiful and loving and glorious!

But even if so, even if this is right and beautiful, and she is tearing up while watching, so proud—like what she said to me when I carried her, when she had the nosebleed and I carried her and she said that she was proud of me, that she did not think I could do it, that I would be able to lift her, carry her to the car, and from the car into the hospital, those words run through my head every day, have run through every day since, she did not think I could do it but of course I did it. I knew I would do it, and I know this, I know what I am doing now, that I am doing something both beautiful but gruesome because I am destroying its beauty by knowing that it might be beautiful, know that if I know I am doing something beautiful, that it
’
s no longer beautiful. I fear that even if it is beautiful in the abstract, that my doing it knowing that it
’
s beautiful and worse, knowing that I will very soon be documenting it, that in my pocket is a tape recorder brought for just
that purpose—that all this makes this act of potential beauty somehow gruesome. I am a monster. My poor mother. She would do this without the thinking, without the thinking about thinking—

Oh fuck. I throw more. I do it as fast as possible. I crunch my hand into the bag and grab a handful of the tiny rocks. I pull it out and they spill from my grip. I pull my arm back and more tiny rocks trickle between my fingers, falling down between the huge white rocks under my feet. I throw. The pebbles spread out and ditdtdtdtdt into the water. I consider specifics—should I throw them all in one place, or redirect the throws each time? Should I hold on to some for later, to deposit elsewhere? Yeah, yeah. This seems like the best idea—I can hold on to some, half maybe, and throw the rest elsewhere...in Cape Cod! In Milton! I can spread parts all over the country, at all of her favorite places! I can spread them all over the world! The Atlantic, the Pacific! But then the airport, the plane. I
’
d have to carry them on the plane, would have to explain the box to the airport security people. I
’
d have to put the box on that conveyer, and then— Do cremains show up in that radar machine they run your bags through? Maybe they
’
d ask me to open the box, demonstrate it like they do with laptops. Does it look like gunpowder? Maybe it does. I could check the cremains at the ticket counter. No, that would be bad. That would be worse.

I grab again and throw. This is good. Good enough. No, this is great, this is best. This is where she spent her last years, by the water. I start throwing faster and faster, grabbing and throwing, flailing almost, dust everywhere. My coat is snowed with dust. She is aghast. I am pathetic. This is what I
’
ve done. This is what it
’
s come to—winging her remains into the lake. No, she
’
s not watching me. She
’
s gone. She has an afterlife but I will not, because I do not believe. I
’
ll be exhausted by then anyway. I
’
m exhausted now, I am so tired. I
’
ll jump in the lake. Not to kill myself but just to do it— The drama! I won
’
t survive. If I took off my clothes I
’
d make it. With the clothes on I
’
d sink. My heart would seize up and
I
’
d sink. I could do something else, something dramatic. I
’
ll drive the car into the lake with me in it. Maybe with me not in it.

I throw and throw, into the gray. I know I will slip and fall into the lake and die. Oh the irony! Just like that one woman, who was throwing her mother
’
s or husband
’
s ashes from a cliff and a wave came over the cliff and took her, too. Maybe it was a sister. No waves here. I will simply slip and dribble off, into the lake. I have to shake out of the bag the last bits of the cremains. I should keep some. I could keep just a few bits, as souvenirs. Souvenirs! What kind of asshole— What a fucking sick dickhead, souvenirs, thinking of souvenirs. I shake out the bag. I do not like to have to shake out the bag, like shaking a goldfish out of a baggie. Can the ashes swim? Do they dissolve? I am done and sitting down and my breath, quick and heavy, is visible, because it
’
s fucking cold all of a sudden with me not moving. The water undulates, so slowly, is hundreds of feet deep and there are a million fish right there eating the ashes. There is no difference between the sky and the water, and I can feel the water rising around me, and I am already under the water, and all of the water is inside something larger, and I look at my feet to make sure they are secure because I am inside something living.

I drive to the church. It
’
s only a few minutes from the beach, straight through the heart of town, past the library and the barbershop.

I park and walk toward it, the air damp, cold.

The door is open. It is about eleven. I open it a crack and peek inside, sure that this must be a mistake, that this church cannot be open at this hour.

Inside all the lights are on, though dimly. I walk slowly inside. The church is empty. I stop in the glassed-in back area designed for latecomers, wailing babies.

The church glows red. The nave is tall and white, and in the center is hung an almost-life-sized Jesus, cast in gold, crucified, suspended by wire. So many times I had worried about the Jesus, that the wires would not hold, that it would fall, would land on the priests, the altar boys. I was much more comfortable when the priests were off to one side, during the reading of a psalm or liturgy. When one would stand in the center, right under, doing the consecration, lifting that chalice over his head, oh that
’
s when I was sure it would fall—it was just so precariously hung, just those two thin wires.

This church is so small. I look out over the pews and the church is tiny. The pews are so low, and there are so few rows. It was never so small before. I walk into the church
’
s main chamber. Up the center aisle, on the red carpet.

I walk to the first pew, where I had sat the last time I was here. I had been in the front row and had been turning around beforehand, waving to a few people as they came in. I was sitting with Toph and Kirsten and Bill and Beth. We were huddled together in the pew, on its near end. We had been to the church, but had never sat so close to the stage before. My mother sat us in the middle, or the back, and we were thankful, because then the priest and his coterie could not tell if we knew the words we were supposed to know.

I sat in the pew, holding Kirsten
’
s hand, playing with Toph
’
s, dizzy, wearing my blue blazer, waiting for the service, all the glory. I had known for months what it would be like, had pictured it, the whole thing. There would be light. It would be day. There would be light through the high stained-glass windows, prismatic—no, the light would be direct, direct, clear, wide, golden. The crowd would be endless, the church full like it is at Christmas, at Easter, the side aisles overflowing, the entire town there almost, all of the relatives, her brother and sisters from out East, the cousins, my father
’
s enormous extended family from
California, all her former students, all the other teachers, all my friends, Bill
’
s, Beth
’
s, high school, grade school, college, Toph
’
s, their parents, the grocers, the doctors, nurses, strangers, admirers, everyone in their overcoats, their dark deep colors, silent and reverent, the back entry area crammed, overflowing. Oh but others would be outside the church, a hundred on the steps, in the courtyard, wrapped around the building, down the street, a thousand or so, waiting just to—to know that they were there, to validate, to help prove— In the church the service would start but priest after priest would stand and begin to speak but then would be overcome and would have to give up, would shuffle to their red velvet chairs, yield the podium to the next and then would weep, shaking, their faces resting in their long-fingered hands. We would be there, in the first pew, the beautiful and tragic Eggers children, soaked in blood, stoic, as a hundred or more would stand before us and speak of her, all the gifts she granted them, and her life would be recounted in glorious detail, every moment, all the holding together and sacrificing and—

Then the ceiling would go. The barrel vaulting would rise, and the entire roof would quietly unhinge itself and lift up, would rise straight up, and disappear and the church
’
s huge wooden cross-supports would fly up and away, and would quickly get so small, tiny in the rich blue sky, and would become birds. The church would double in size, would triple, the space expanding, suddenly taking in all those waiting outside, and then become bigger, would take in everyone she had ever known, millions, all with their hearts in their two hands, offering them to her. The angels would come. Thousands, slender, winged and bird-boned, descending and circling, all with sharp, small eyes, and they would be laughing, full of mirth, why not, this was happy, happy. My mother would be there. No coffin, no remains, but her, ephemeral, huge, her head as big as the nave, the angels moving around her, tiny by comparison, her hair, her original hair, feathered up huge
the way she liked it, before she lost it, replaced by the darker, tighter curls. And her squinty smile, all the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, smiling to see us all there, knowing all those she had touched were there, that they were giving back, giving at least this much back. Oh such a celebration. And we and she would all be so happy not to see her as some embalmed thing, some rubbery and gruesome thing, but instead as this wonderfully glowing bright visage, above us all, and she would be first smiling the big closed-mouth smile she smiles, then that big small-toothed smile she smiles, then she would be laughing, someone would say something funny and she would laugh that way she laughed, silently, crazily, out of breath, it was so funny whatever someone said, who said that funny thing? Who? Maybe I said it, maybe I said it, maybe I said it and made her laugh like sometimes we could, really bust her up, so that it was just killing her, this laughing, her eyes struggling to stay open, to see, because when she laughed, my mom almost immediately teared up, and had to wipe her tears with the side of her forefinger— Oh that
’
s when you knew you had really said something funny, when she would be crying, wiping her eyes, you had her then, you really wanted that, there was no greater thing, no achievement so great, so stirring, you tried to play it casual, deadpan, but you were so proud and thrilled, watching her, you wanted her first to say Stop! Stop! because you were so funny but you would continue because you wanted her to laugh more, to really laugh until she would have to rest, to half collapse on the kitchen counter while you were sitting at the table after school, Oh you
’
re awful! she would say. Stop! Oh but to see her laugh you would say anything, and she so loved a good laugh at someone
’
s expense—Bill
’
s, Beth
’
s, yours, her own, and at that moment everything would be wiped away, all the times you feared her or wanted to run away, or wondered how she lived with him, protected him, you wanted only her laughing like she did when she was on the phone with her friends—Yes! she would shriek, Yes! Exactly!—