Mark Jacobs
The Quiet Discovery of Delight
Of course you know this means war.
Didn’t say it. Wished I had.
We were on Welch Avenue, in front of the church, our breath rising like condensing souls in the frigid air. Pat Esposito from the funeral home of the same name was lining up the vehicles of the recently bereaved. Mr. Vince Castellano, age 89, was making the journey to Angels Rest in the company of forty family members and friends. As was my custom, I nosed my Rav4 in at the end of the line. Unobtrusive and respectful, that was my style.
Pat dresses the part. His leather face has a calling-appropriate pallor. His bespoke suits are conservatively cut. The pocket square in his breast pocket is soberly blue. He puts on the look for professional reasons, of course. Nothing wrong with that. You make good money, but it’s a tough job. A couple of times, I’d caught him out back with a cigarette hanging on his lower lip, his long-fingered hands telling a dirty joke to his assistants.
Now, as a city police car, lights flashing, took up its position at the head of the procession, one of those assistants, a nephew with a cowlick who dropped out of college to work funerals, was going down the line placing funeral home flags on the hoods of the cars. It was when he got to mine that Daniel Snooker pounced. Out of nowhere, as it were, in a cashmere topcoat, a plaid scarf, glossy black leather gloves. Did I say this was February, and our city is in the Northeast, our winters are brutal? He wagged his officious finger at the Esposito kid.
“Not that car.”
The kid knew who I was. Everybody at Immaculate Conception knew who I was, if not my name. This was a dilemma he lacked the work and life experience to address.
“Family and friends only,” Snooker told him.
Snooker was one of Columbus’s most enthusiastic Knights. He had the knack of projecting male authority, down to the reproving lips.
My window was down. I was listening. I didn’t need the damn flag.
I stuck my head out and called to the kid, “Never mind, I’ll go without it.”
Snooker glared at me. He’d thought he had me.
Goddamn busybody, you should live so long, that was what I was thinking.
So I drove flagless at the tail of the procession out to Angels Rest, near Cassidy Creek, on the west edge of the city. It’s a massive cemetery, sprawling because land used to be cheap out that way, before the city began spreading into suburbia. Some of the graves go back to the early decades of the 1800s. In the old days, they were grouped together by nation of origin, just like our neighborhoods were. The Italian section is the biggest, and then the Polish.
The afternoon was sunny, light breaking on the headstones like waves on a beach. The trees’ bare arms were stiff in the windless air. The interstate was far enough off that the drone of traffic was only a minor irritant.
I stood suitably distant from those who knew and loved Mr. Castellano as Father Juan Diego conducted the ceremony and the deceased man’s grandchildren solemnly placed red roses on his casket. Nobody paid me the slightest attention. They never did. Mid-interment, a murmuration of starlings passed overhead. Why the sight of those scientifically synchronized birds was a comfort, I can’t say, but everybody looked up and smiled.
I drove home feeling content. Duty done.
The feeling didn’t last long.
That evening Daniel Snooker sent me an email. How he got my address was a mystery. I’ve always been a private person.
Dear Albert,
In view of your showing up continually, uninvited, at funerals in our parish I think it would be a good idea for the two of us to sit down and have a conversation. We need to come to an understanding. Your presence, when people are paying their last respects to their loved ones, is inappropriate. The Father agrees.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at 1 p.m. in the common room of the rectory.
Yours in Christ, Daniel Snooker
I hated the way Snooker always said ‘the Father,’ as though we were living in a Bing Crosby movie.
As it happened, I had a previous commitment. Another one of the parish oldsters had passed away. I had a funeral to attend.
You’re thinking I’m a crank, right? And a geezer to boot. Not so. I turn 41 this coming May. It was my conservative manner of dressing that made me come across as an old guy. But you weren’t going to catch me at a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt, or loud shorts, or a windbreaker with Happy Lanes on the back and a picture of tumbling pins. These are all forms of attire I have observed at I.C. funerals over the past twelve months. Not to mention a polka dot umbrella, and one featuring circus animals, both carried by people purporting to be adults.
Give me a break.
That night I prepped for Mrs. Lena Adamczyk’s last Mass. I had my rituals, I won’t deny it, nor the fact that I relished them. I shined my black Oxfords, placing them on a piece of newsprint on the floor in the kitchen while the polish dried. I pulled out and brushed my second best suit. Put out dark socks, clean underwear, a burgundy tie with tiny gold chevrons, and my cufflinks with ebony stones. I was partial to French cuffs and always had my shirts done at the dry cleaner; they looked sharp. In the event of precipitation, I pulled out a plain black umbrella with a brass ferrule. Understated traditional, that’s the effect I strived for.
I live alone. Used to be married. Now I’m not. Any other questions?
Next day I half expected Daniel Snooker to show up at Mrs. Adamczyk’s service, decked out in his Knights of Columbus regalia and wagging his censorious finger. But he must have been at work. He was a lawyer of some sort in one of the large city firms. I breathed easy, and when the cowlicked Esposito kid plunked a little black-and-purple flag on the hood of my car at the end of the procession we both grinned.
I thought that was it. A passing whim on Snooker’s part. Especially when Father Juan Diego nodded pleasantly in my direction at the cemetery. He’s Philippine. You probably know the American Catholic Church is short of native-born priests. We all know the reasons.
I was wrong about Snooker, of course. It snowed later that week. I was outside shoveling the walk when his BMW came to a confident stop in front of my place. I own a duplex on 7th Street. I live downstairs and rent out the upper level.
Haven’t had great luck with renters, let it be said. Right now my tenant is a scarecrow of a man with wild hair who claims to work from home although I’m not real clear what he actually does for a living. He’s heavy into country music; the contemporary Nashville sound, worse luck. It’s loud enough I sometimes have to tell him to turn it down. On the plus side, his excuses for being late on the rent are fairly creative.
So anyway here came Snooker up the walk. He was dressed more casually this time, in a blatant attempt to gain my confidence. Fat chance, I thought to myself. I invited him in for a cup of coffee. We sat in the living room, which looks like anybody else’s living room.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Albert.”
How lame can you get?
I can be assertive when I have to be.
“I’m not going to stop paying my respects to the dead,” I told him.
He frowned. Stirred his coffee. Changed his tack.
“There are people at Immaculate Conception who are worried about you.”
“Please convey my thanks for their concern, but it’s not necessary.”
“Maybe you’re not aware of some of the resources available to parishioners.”
“Gold bullion, cryptocurrency options, that the kind of thing you’re talking about?”
“I’m talking about counseling.”
“Why would I be interested in counseling?”
He had no answer for that.
Many of the long-time parishioners at I.C., Snooker included, knew about my accident. The insurance settlement was in the paper. Naturally they got the numbers wrong. I’m not a closet gazillionaire. I have enough to live on, and a little more. Coming out of the hospital I gave an ill-advised interview which, as these things go, was printed verbatim and circulated on the web. You try coming within a hair’s breadth of being crushed by several tons of crumpling metal at a high rate of speed and see if you can avoid thoughts of death.
Some days I experience difficulty walking. Some days I don’t.
“I was speaking with Father Juan Diego,” Snooker said.
“A good man.”
“He is, Albert. He’s a very good man, and a good priest. He agrees with me.”
“About what?”
“This obsession of yours.”
“What obsession? This is about freedom.”
“I’m sorry, Albert, I don’t follow you.”
“I have a constitutional right to pay my respects to the dead. Use it or lose it, isn’t that what they say? About rights, I mean.”
He shook his head slowly. He had no idea what to say. The conversation exceeded his brief, and I felt halfway sorry for the guy. We went around and around for another half hour, more or less civilly, but I gave no ground. And the man had no threat to hold over me. What was he going to do, excommunicate me? When he left, I finished shoveling.
Amazingly, nobody from our parish died during the next three weeks. It’s amazing because the demographic at Immaculate Conception skews ancient. A handful of times Father Juan Diego had arranged to bring in a busload of Hispanic teenagers to swell the congregation at Sunday Mass. Their parents, for the most part, work at a massive plywood factory. You might think the old-timers from the parish would have a bad reaction to that, feelings being what they are in today’s America. But it was just the opposite. The presence of all those adolescents perked everybody up, and when it came time to sing the hymns you heard more voices, and more enthusiasm in the voices.
Bring them back, people were always pleading with Father Juan Diego, but for one reason or another the teenagers’ visits were few and far between. Our aging parish languished.
I was having some bad days, pain-wise. Sometimes it feels as though the pins they put in my legs after the accident are made of fire. It’s unpredictable. I never know when I’m going to wake up burning. So I wasn’t in the most hospitable mood when the woman from Social Services knocked on my door.
“Good morning, Albert.”
Don’t people use surnames any more? Mine is Bourse, if you’re interested.
I won’t take any cheap shots at Ms. Blythe Sitters. A sitting duck, she was. Tall and gangly with prominent elbows, long brown hair going gray, a shape-defying dark dress. Only curiosity made me invite her in. She preferred tea. With milk. She used her wristwatch to time three minutes’ steeping.
I was not a churl. I had no animus against the woman. I tried to make it easy on her.
“I’m guessing somebody from Immaculate Conception sent you.”
She nodded, relieved, not having known how to start.
“I thought.. that is, we thought… well, perhaps you’d like to know about some of the services the city provides for people in need.”
A bridge too far, that. Blow it up.
“I’m not a person in need.”
She nodded thoughtfully. She sipped her tea. “Do you ever feel lonely?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Well meant.”
“Are you saying Social Services has a Department of Loneliness?”
Her back went up. She could be stubborn. I admired stubborn.
“In a way, you could say that, Albert. In a certain way.”
“And my tax dollars pay for the amelioration of loneliness in unhappy residents of this city?”
“We do a lot of good. There are people who need and want and are grateful for what we provide. I’m proud of the work we do.”
The conversation had the potential to go on indefinitely. I was beginning to feel disgusted. Mostly with myself. I put an end to it. Going out the door she left me her card, on the back of which she had written her direct number. If I changed my mind I could bypass the phone robot, damn its digital eyes.
When she left I stewed. Was this the kind of person I was becoming? A misanthrope? A snapping turtle? A solitary boor? I looked in the mirror. The man looking back stuck out his tongue.
The pins in my legs burned. I had to sit down. It’s not as bad when I sit.
The upshot of Ms. Sitters’ visit was this: I had to admit that something was wrong. With me.
This is perverse. But true. I was longing for a funeral.
Nobody at I.C. died just then.
March in our city still adheres to the traditional weather rhythms despite the inroads of climate change. Days of encouraging sunshine and mild weather are followed by a return blast of winter in the form of a snowstorm. It was on the heels of one of those snowstorms that I learned that Daniel Snooker was in the hospital. A heart attack. He couldn’t be more than fifty, fifty two.
It was probably the unsettled feeling I’d been plagued with since Blythe Sitters came by the house that sent me to Sacred Heart, the recently renovated Catholic hospital downtown. Strange, and passing strange. Snooker and I were anything but friends. In a muddy way, we were adversaries.
He was out of intensive care. They were letting visitors in. I found him in a private room whose walls were painted a restful green. Floral bouquets from well-wishers took up all the available surfaces. There was a television, but it was blessedly off.
Snooker’s son was with him. Tim looked like the hockey player he was. Trim athletic body, at ease with himself and his seemingly unlimited potential, he had his father’s good looks. A face with squarish but not blocky features, lips that knew how to be generous when they smiled, green eyes with some fire in them.
As for his old man, he was surprised as hell to see me but too weak to show it. He introduced us, and Tim excused himself. He had some studying to do; an AP history test tomorrow. Scholarships hung in the balance.
On his back, hooked up to monitors, his face somewhat pasty, Snooker waited for me to say why I was there. He thought I had come to gloat.
“Good looking kid,” I said. “He’ll go far.”
He nodded. In his own green eyes there was new knowledge. It had to do with frailty, proximity, close calls.
“Just wanted to say hello,” I said. “Pay my respects.”
That was obscure, and not quite right, but I was at a loss for more accurate words. A silence then. It was not as uncomfortable as you might imagine. It was Snooker who broke it.
“I had a dream about you.”
I said nothing.
“It was around the time of the heart attack. Maybe a little before, maybe after, I’m not sure.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what I was apologizing for.
“It was a funeral. You were there. You had on one of your nice suits.”
I nodded.
“Dark red tie. Burgundy, I guess.”
This dream, which seemed important to him, was going to emerge in driblets.
“Maybe it was at the church. Maybe not. It might have been a funeral home. There was a casket.”
I didn’t want him to go on. But he had to, and I had to listen.
“The casket was open. I remember the handles. They looked expensive.”
I nodded. I put my head down.
“You were there.”
My head stayed down.
“I wanted to ask you if it was me in the casket, but I couldn’t work up the nerve. The damn handles. They were gleaming. The handles scared the life out of me.”
“You wanted to get away.”
He nodded. Gave me an odd sideways look as though thinking I knew, somehow, how the dream was going to turn out. Maybe I did. There are more unexplained things in this world than explained ones.
“I tried to get away, sure. Couldn’t move. Something was stopping me, I didn’t know what.”
That was it. It was enough. He seemed tired. His eyelids went down like the curtain in a theater, and he began snoring lightly. I watched his chest rise and fall reassuringly for a minute or two and then left.
I won’t lie to you, I had some restless nights after that. A string of them. My dreams were feverish when I did manage to fall asleep, but nothing stayed with me when I woke. I thought about sending flowers to Snooker, but there was no room left for them to sit in that green room of his.
Then someone died. A Puerto Rican man. Manuel Santos. Eighty seven. A long-time usher, and until he got feeble and went to a home he was the guy who ran the machine on parish bingo night, turning the wheel on the wire basket out from which the numbered balls popped, lucky or unlucky for the card in front of you. He called the numbers in a firm but playful voice, making puns and jokes and giving the players a good time. People loved him.
Nothing was different. Everything was different. Both true statements. The night before the service I went through my getting-ready ritual. My best suit, a subtle dark gray pinstripe. A navy blue tie with a muted stripe. My black shoes gleamed.
During the Mass I sat in the back pew. Manny had a large extended family, and I gave them the space they deserved. Nobody even noticed me, which was how I liked it. After the service, when the hearse was respectfully loaded and Pat Esposito and his assistants were forming up the procession, I eased into position at the end of the line.
And we waited. There appeared to be some kind of hold-up. I didn’t mind waiting. I wasn’t on any kind of schedule, and I’d had a fairly decent night’s sleep. When Pat’s nephew came down the row with the funeral home flags, I asked him what was going on.
“Hello, Mr. Bourse.”
“Call me Albert.”
I don’t mind using first names, but let me be the one to propose it.
“The cop got called to the scene of an accident. My uncle says we’ll give him a couple minutes. If he doesn’t show, he’ll lead the procession himself. He drives a dark gray Lincoln, maybe you’ve seen it? It’s a real nice car.”
“I hope the cop shows. People like having a police escort.”
He nodded. “That’s what Uncle Pat says.”
I got out of the car. The sun was shining. I can tolerate just about anything when the sun shines. I want to say the clouds were ebullient, but that’s stretching it. They were happy being clouds, leave it at that.
“Can I ask you a question, Albert?”
“Sure.”
“How come you go to all these funerals?”
“Funny you should ask. For me, this is the last one.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m moving.”
What I meant was moving on, but I wasn’t going to burden the kid with my backstory. I asked him his name.
“Ken. Kenny.”
“What about you, Kenny?”
“It’s my job.”
“Long term?”
He shrugged. He had the Esposito family look, a loose-jointed body, dark unruly hair, a crooked smile that linked him to his uncle and probably a dozen other close relatives.
“Sometimes…”
“What?”
“I get tired of being around dead people.”
“Can’t say as I blame you.”
He gave me a funny look. Wasn’t I the guy who was here by choice?
“I’m thinking about going back to college.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
Another funny look.
“Study something lively,” I told him.
And then here came the cop car, siren on and lights flashing. It took its place at the head of the procession, and off we went.
