Funeral with a View (6 page)

The funeral home is nearing
capacity.

Steadfast Glen walks
in with a cup of water and hands it to my mother.

If you’d have asked me
on that hot July Fourth if I’d thought my mother would still be with the odd
looking guy, I’d have said no. I don’t mind having gotten that one wrong. He’s
put on a few pounds, and what little hair he has left is turning snow-white,
but he’s still the same guy who’d gotten sucked up in my mother’s wake. God
bless him.

Bill hasn’t arrived yet.
It’s pushing twenty past the hour; way beyond the fashionably late period, if
there is such a thing for these occasions. Celeste is still outside with her
cousins under the watchful eye of Aunt Jude.

In walks my wife’s OB/GYN
and old family friend, Dr. Ann Conera. Catherine’s been going to her since long
before I came into the picture, and during the early years of our marriage I
would get to know her better than I’d have imagined.

Dr. Ann (I learned early
on never to call her ‘Dr. Conera’) scans the room. The petite, energetic woman,
bulky frame conservatively tucked away under a well-fitting black dress, sees
Catherine and makes a bee line toward her. She’s put on a few pounds as well; always
did have a soft spot for the sweets.

I hover in, moving closer
to Catherine. It’s my funeral. If I can’t eavesdrop, who can?

Mom shudders. Glen
notices.

“What’s wrong, Beth?”

“I’m not sure. Did it
just get cold in here all of a sudden?”

Glen looks thoughtful.
“Maybe a little. Do you want me ask the director to turn the thermostat up a
bit? What about you, Cat? Cold?”

Catherine rubs her arms.

Is it because of my
proximity? This is the closest I’ve gotten to anybody. It could be a coincidence,
but I’m not sure. I back off a bit. Last thing I want is to make anybody
uncomfortable.

“For a second,” Catherine
says. “But the chill’s gone now. Must have been a draft.” At that moment, Dr.
Ann enters their circle. “Hi, Dr. Ann.” The two embrace. Catherine towers over
the tiny doctor. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“I only wish we could be
seeing each other under better circumstances.” A look passes between the two,
the meaning of which is lost on me. Dr. Ann collects herself and releases my
wife from her miniature bear hug. “Where’s the little one?”

“She’s outside playing
with her cousins. Oh, I’m sorry. Have I introduced you to my mother-in-law and
her partner?”

Partner was the term my
mother preferred. She and Glen had never married, and Mom considered the word “boyfriend”
more appropriate for teenagers and twenty-somethings than for people of their
age.

Introductions are
performed, hugs given, thank yous said.

Dr. Ann excuses herself
and finds a seat, leaving Catherine, Mom, and Glen by themselves; alone amongst
a sea of people.

Depressing. Funerals
suck.

I shift my view to Dr.
Ann.

Consider her a cameo
player in one of your favorite movies. She’d never have top billing once the
credits rolled, but when she entered the scene something important was on the
horizon.

My knee bounced and the
little nubs I’d come to refer to as nails were once again the focus of my
nervous energy.

A daytime talk show
played on the flat screen TV. I wasn’t interested. Nor was I interested in
magazines such as
Motherhood
and
Women’s Health
. The Lawrence,
NJ-based OB/GYN seriously needed to reconsider their subscription list.

Women filled the waiting
room. As one of only two men, I was an interloper in the land of lady parts;
out of my niche and uncomfortable as hell. The other guy, who couldn’t have been
much older than me, sat next to an attractive brunette. Her fingers were laced
across a stomach that looked about ready to explode. My male compatriot noticed
me and gave me the ‘hang in there, man’ nod.

Catherine put a hand on
my knee.

“You’re going to have a
stroke if you don’t calm down, baby.”

Thank God she’d whispered
it in my ear. I’d already gotten a few odd looks.

“Sorry.”

“Catherine Maddox?” A
young nurse in a sea green uniform and white sneakers stood in the far doorway,
holding a clipboard. “Come with me, please.”

She led us through a maze
of hallways to a door designated as Exam Room 3. Who knew what horrors awaited
me beyond that unassuming portal?

“The technician will be
with you shortly.” She handed Catherine a paper gown. “You can go ahead and
change into this then hop up on the exam table.” With a smile, she left.

The exam table, which I
imagined inherited its design from dastardly medieval torture devices of yore,
sat in the middle of the room, its stirrups empty and ready to hold its next
victim in place. A self-contained machine that looked like a computer monitor
and keyboard with unfamiliar dials, buttons, and a large trackball was perched
on a moveable cart off to the side. I took it all in and felt more out of place
than ever before.

“Ricky, relax.” Catherine
patted my cheek. She shed her clothes, put on the wafer-thin gown, and situated
herself on the table. “I’m the one being poked and prodded today. It’s just a
harmless ultrasound. No pain involved.”

“Right. Painless. Relax.”

How was I supposed to
relax? I was surrounded by all things vagina. Diagrams of the female body, from
head to toe and everything in between covered the walls, and a plastic cutaway
model of a generic vagina sat on the counter next to me.

I’m in the freaking
Twilight Zone
.

Green around the gills, I
sat on an uncomfortable beige chair in the corner; surely a refuge from a 1970s
middle school.

A fingernail made its way
to my mouth.

Catherine glared.

Foot tapping would have
to do.

A lifetime later (fifteen
minutes in reality), the door opened and in entered the smiling technician.

“How are we doing today?”

The tech, a tall buxom
blonde who radiated confidence and business, walked over to Catherine.

“Lie back and relax,
please.” Catherine complied and the tech produced two things: an
industrial-sized squeeze bottle filled with what looked to me like primordial
ooze, and a thin, phallic wand that was connected to the ultrasound machine via
a curling white cable. She squirted the sludge onto the instrument and placed
it underneath the gown … in between Cat’s spread legs.

“Um, what’s that?” Bile
rose in my gut. She was going to stick that thing in my girlfriend? Nobody’s
sticking anything in her but me!

The tech stopped and gave
me a patient, if not bemused, smile. “I’m performing a vaginal probe. Trans
abdominal sonograms come later.”

Oh God. Vaginal probes? Trans
abdominal whoosits? I felt like I was observing
Alien Autopsy
. Forehead
cold and clammy, I kept my pie hole shut … in between savaging my fingernails.

“Okay, Catherine,” the
tech said. “Just relax.” Cat took a deep breath as the tech put the
you-know-what you-know-where.

A strange, green-tinted
landscape popped up on the monitor. It was bizarre seeing the insides of my
future wife like that. While she and the tech regarded it as if it was an
everyday occurrence, in my eyes it may as well have been a satellite image of a
far off planet.

The tech manipulated the
wand. “There’s the birth sac.” She indicated something that looked straight out
of
Aliens
.

“Is everything okay?” Cat
said.

The tech smiled. “It
seems to be fine.”

Finished, she cleaned and
hung up the wand. I handed Catherine a few towels to clean up her nether
region. It made me feel useful.

“Once you’re finished you
can go see Dr. Ann. Good luck.” Smile still in place, the tech sashayed out of
the room.

~~~

“Catherine, how are you?”

“Good. This is my
boyfriend, Ricky.”

“Ah, the father. Pleasure
to meet you.”

The Father. If we only
knew.

I shook her hand. “Rick
Franchitti. Nice to meet you, Dr. Conera.”

“Please, have a seat. And
call me Dr. Ann.” She sat down and indicated a cookie jar filled with Dumdums. “Would
you like a lollipop, Rick?”

Dumdums? My doctor always
gave me those. When I was five years old. I shook my head. The good doctor
smiled and took one for herself.

“These things will be the
death of me.”

Dr. Conera—Dr.
Ann
—asked
Catherine a few questions about her mother and father before getting into the
nitty-gritty.

“How is your general
health, Catherine?”

“I’ve been fine, other
than fatigue and a little nausea.”

Dr. Ann wrote a note on
the chart. “That’s entirely normal.”

“I’ve also had a little
spotting.”

Dr. Ann looked up.

Spotting? What the
hell is spotting?
My ignorance astounded me, but I kept quiet.

“The spotting is probably
nothing,” Dr. Ann said. “It may be as simple as having intercourse. It’s not
heavy, is it?”

Catherine shook her head.
“No. Very small amounts.”

“Good.” Dr. Ann looked
back at the chart, her mouth wrapped around a green-apple lollipop. “And I see
we have a heartbeat.”

That’s
a sound
I’ll never forget. The
whoosh whoosh
of the baby’s beating heart drove
home the reality of the situation. It was scary, yet somehow exhilarating.

The room fell into
silence. Dr. Ann flipped through the chart, taking the candy out of her mouth,
twirling the stick, then putting it back in.

“Is something the
matter?” Catherine said.

“Hmmm? No, no, no.
Everything seems to be fine.”

Doctor and patient
discussed diet, exercise, and general-type womanly things. As for me? I sat
quietly and smiled, my hand clutched in Catherine’s.

~~~

“What the hell is
spotting?”

We’d left Dr. Ann’s
office, and were headed north on US Route 1 toward Princeton. After Cat made
the prescribed follow-up appointment we decided to grab a bite to eat in Forrestall
Village. I was thankful to be out of the estrogen-centric world, with its
motherhood magazines and vagina dioramas.

“Minor bleeding during
pregnancy. It happens. Like Dr. Ann said, it’s probably nothing. She’d have
told us if something was wrong.” Cat placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll keep
an eye on it, but we may want to take it easy in bed until then.”

“Gotcha.”

Yikes. Sex causing
bleeding. Consider me freaked out.

We picked a cozy pizza
place. While we ate, I quietly brought up the spotting thing again. Catherine
assured me I wasn’t hurting her … once she’d finished laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“You are,” she said,
smiling. “Your concern is cute.” Cat erased some sauce from her lip with a
napkin. “Ricky. You remember I told my sister, right?”

I nodded as I worked on a
corner piece of Sicilian with sausage. She’d told me she let her sister Jude in
on the secret the night of the make-up sleepover. The two were thick as
thieves, so it hadn’t surprised me.

“Well,” she continued
slowly, “I told my mother, too. Now everybody knows.”

Shit.

“Only a matter of time, I
guess,” I said.

I had yet to meet
Catherine’s family. It was one of those things that was discussed in passing,
but never came to fruition. In a way, we both had deeper reasons for the delay.
My mom was a free-spirited force of nature with a penchant for embarrassing me.

Catherine’s parents were
an altogether different breed.

Her mother was something
of a southern debutant in her youth, and her father, as relayed by Catherine,
was imposing in a militaristic way. She’d told me stories of him scaring off
boys he felt weren’t good enough for her on more than one occasion.

While we both loved our
families dearly, part of us didn’t want to deal with the drama of introductions
and the judgment that inevitably comes along with meeting the significant
other’s folks.

I took a sip of my Sprite
and let the news sink in. Outside, people from all walks of life strolled in
the sun, some smiling, some harried and frantic. Everyday people living everyday
lives. I wondered if any of them were experiencing the same thing I was.

Cat put her hand on mine.
“Ricky? You still with me?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” I
smiled.

“They want to have you
over for dinner this weekend. Sunday night. Can you do it?”

Can you do it?
Simple words, complex question.

Could I?

Hell yes, I could. No way
I would let her father intimidate me.

I brought her hand to my
lips and gave it a gentle kiss.

“Damn straight I can do
it.”

Speak of the devils.
Here come Mary Jo and Patrick Maddox, my mother and father-in-law. Or is that
ex mother and father-in-law? Former mother and father-in-law? Will I figure
this shit out? My phantom money’s on “no.”

They look impeccable; pressed,
primmed, ironed, and combed.

Mary Jo is dressed elegantly,
but appropriately, in her full-length black dress and matching bag, neither of
which is cheap. Her posture is sublime, her makeup perfect. Even after all
these years she’s still a gorgeous woman. The strain on her face doesn’t lessen
her beauty, try as it might.

Close behind her, strong
hand on her shoulder, is Catherine’s father, Patrick. He’s not much taller than
his wife, but his presence is, and always has been, huge; the result of years
of military service. Colonel (Ret) Patrick Maddox is a man who commands
attention. His face is stoic, his bearing ramrod straight, hair close-cropped
and precise. His mouth is hidden behind the large mustache I’d come to know so
well over the years, but from its angle, I know he’s frowning.

They approach Catherine
and company.

“Good morning, Glen, Beth,”
says Mary Jo in her cultured southern lilt. She never did like me calling her
“Mom” or “Mrs. Maddox.” A round of hugs. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” they each say in
one form or another.

My mother begins to stand,
but The Colonel shakes his head. He grips Glen’s hand, hugs Mom.

Yes.
Colonel
. Like
his wife, calling him “Dad” or “Mr. Maddox” was off the table. He was always The
Colonel, and even in death the habit sticks with me.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Daddy,”
Catherine says, voice beginning to break.

“Come here, sweetheart.”
Mary Jo gives my widow a fierce embrace. The pair rock back and forth, and
Catherine’s shoulders shake to the point where it pains me to watch … but it’s
more difficult to look away.

“Hey, Kit Cat,” The
Colonel whispers as he hugs his daughter.

“Do you mind if your
father and I take a look at the montage board again, Cat?” Mary Jo points to
the array of pictures set up on a table next to my casket. “We won’t be long.”

“Yes. Sure. I think Ricky
would have liked knowing people have been enjoying the photos so much. He’d
probably say that even dead he’s still the best damn looking guy in the whole
joint.” She wipes at her eyes, but she can’t hide her smile.

The Maddoxes walk over to
the remembrance board; my life told in still images. Among the family
portraits, graduation pictures, and shots of me with friends and family, one
has stood out as a favorite: a candid photo of me and the Maddox family friend,
Butch.