Crossing the road, I heard a car horn honk. It sounded like the impatient demand of a motorist insisting pedestrians move faster. In a crosswalk, I ignored the noise until someone shouted for me specifically.
I glanced over. Two men sat in a candy apple red muscle car idling nearby. They waved.
“Now is not a good time,” I said.
“Why not?” the driver frowned, “We’re going to Indiana for hookers and drugs.”
I pointed at the casket propped up on my shoulder. A head nod indicating the procession following me and the other pallbearers as we proceeded from the funeral home across the street into the church.
“Kind of in the middle of something,” I said.
Dim bulbs slowly brightened. Slamming on the gas, the car peeled out, doing an eighty-mile an hour donut. About a half dozen actually; the genius behind the wheel screeching around to zip into a parking spot five feet away. Both occupants jumped out of the vehicle. Adorned in muscle shirts, neither possessed the physique for, they joined the funeral march. Solemn expressions on their faces.
“Can we get going?” my brother demanded.
“I’m not the one holding us up,” I said.
We continued towards the church across the street. We meant to go in the side entrance, but my XXXL brother didn’t fit. As such, the whole procession needed to go around front in order to use the double doors. It felt like a routine out of a British comedy. I could imagine the whole thing – going to one door, the failing effort to get inside, then doubling back to the front – occurring at double speed while saxophones played.
At last, we deposited my mother’s casket before the altar. Pouring sweat, my brother dropped into the front row pew. Climbing over to sit beside him, I patted him on the shoulder. Mom would be proud.
Our father soon sat beside us. The murmur of funeral attendees slowly died down. The organist began playing “Tiger Rag” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, as Mom requested. Dad cracked a beer. I sipped a flask. My brother mopped his brow and chewed on beef jerky. We all have our vices —comforting in times of distress.
The priest appeared out of a cloud of incense. The entrance reminded me of a Vegas magician in a cheap lounge act. I half expected him to prestidigitate a dove when he mentioned the holy spirit.
Although raised Catholic, fully versed in the mass, even more aware, unfortunately, of the funeral variation, I don’t remember much of what the priest said. It sounded too alien to absorb; to connect with any recollection. I kept looking at the coffin wondering how all of my mother, the entirety of her personality fit in so small a box. That her own tiny meat frame held so much never struck me as odd, rather magical in its own way. This defied reason, and I wondered where all of her went when she died. The best of her dissipating out into space like the outer layer of a dying sun.
Opening the Bible, the priest cleared his throat. Dad cracked a fresh beer. The priest glared down from the pulpit.
“Mind ya business,” Dad said.
The priest shook his head. Dad passed me a beer. I’ve been his kid long enough to know when I’m being instructed to join in an act of spite. Also, free beer – I couldn’t say no.
“Sorry Father,” I addressed the priest as I opened the can.
The hiss-crack of the seal reverberated throughout the church. Mom always liked the way sounds echoed in here. She said it made ordinary noises ethereal.
We went through a six pack while the priest read passages.
He recited from the Old Testament, “‘My soul is deprived of peace…’” without any feeling before getting to the New. “‘For it is written: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before me,”’” causing me to think, a funeral is an odd time for god to flex; then finally, “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled…’” which seemed like telling someone in distress to relax. Only the antithesis is possible.
Perhaps cynicism might’ve taken a backseat if the eulogy he delivered didn’t ring so hollow. His words inspiring me to glance at my family in confusion. I don’t know where he got his impression of my mother, but the person he described sounded nothing like her. Not that his words painted her as anything awful. It just sounded like a hodgepodge of generalities one could throw at any stranger, and I wondered why we decided not to say anything ourselves. Then it struck me.
One slender inch between us and the undeniable. Standing on the altar, looking down at the coffin, the past tense would have to take hold. The undeniable truth she no longer existed in this world taking over.
A tear fell.
“Not now,” Dad said.
His eyes aimed straight ahead. His perpetual glare made of stony stoicism, anger his only visible emotion. He passed me another beer. I nodded. Taking a deep breath, I shotgunned the can to distract myself; derail the thoughts taking over. Funerary duties needed to be performed with a certain expectation of dignity.
Standing beside the grave as Mom went down to fill it; another interminable line of hugs and handshakes; every instance of us crying hid or else we risked family members lingering. The less distraught we seemed, the sooner we could escape from them. Each searching for the chance to hang around comforting us in order to make themselves feel less like the shitty people we knew them to be. After all, they were family. Who knew them better? A gathering of hobo high kings, grifter queens, hustlers, and petty criminals with delusions of grandeur, mixed with a sprinkling of suburban isolationists hellbent on ignoring the black sheep blood in all our veins.
Besides, a dread prospect already loomed. Thanksgiving lay a few short weeks away. At the wake offers poured in. Family and friends not seen, or thought of, for years suddenly appearing to deliver condolences. Many throwing out invitations to Thanksgiving dinner – “It’s been so long, and you boys don’t want to be alone. Not for the holidays.”
“Uh huh,” Dad grunted.
As if the biker camped out a low rent motel would still be here in two weeks. A turkey cooked golden brown beneath a hot lamp, and a plastic jug full of miscellaneous wines waiting to help celebrate the holiday. (In all fairness, it might’ve happened, if said biker didn’t leave Ohio while on parole, police swarming that same motel days after the funeral to collect the wild child.) Pleasant as it sounded, that holiday prospect seemed unlikely.
Meanwhile, not having much faith in the other invitations we prepared to celebrate the holiday alone. Dad said we needed to make it thru the ordeal ourselves. He worried that relying on the family to get through the occasion, the somberness of that first Thanksgiving without mom, might make such invites routine. So, in order to maintain a safe distance from the family, we opted to spend National Christmas Kick-off Day alone.
#
I showed up to the house around two o’clock. Smoke filled the air. Acrid black clouds signaling some hideous calamity. Following a stream of swears pouring from the kitchen, I found my Dad regarding a turkey in the oven.
It looked like a war crime. A grotesque tangled mess of burnt meat. I worried the U.N. might already be dispatching troops to arrest him, put him on trail at the Hague, and publicly execute my Dad as a warning to others. However, no sign of choppers in the sky, I relaxed and opened a window.
“Cold out there,” Dad said. “You trying to make it cold in here?”
“I’m just getting the smoke out.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He shuffled away from his culinary defeat. I asked about my brother. Apparently, a flare up of gout confined him to home. My brother suggested we visit him, have Thanksgiving at his place. Dad said sure.
“Yet, here we are,” I said.
“This is easier,” he replied.
“Should I go?” I asked, not sure what I meant.
I certainly didn’t want to drive the hour out to my brother’s, and I knew a few bars open despite the holiday. However, it felt wrong to leave so soon.
Dad shrugged. I followed him into the living room. He plopped into his favorite chair, a recliner slowly collapsing into a pile of duct tape and fabric. The decay visible if photographed with a time lapse camera.
Searching around, Dad grumbled. Sensing his desire, I went to the kitchen. I got beers from the fridge as well as a bottle of chilled vodka out of the freezer.
Returning to the living room, I found him eying the television. He flipped through channels without any regard for the contents. His eyes watery, unfocused.
I handed him a beer. He took it, muttering thanks. I sat on the couch.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. We possessed little to say to one another. Not that we ever conversed much. Our usual exchanges a combination of facial expressions, monosyllabic grunts, and the occasional heated volley of disagreements. Without Mom as a buffer, half the conversation bounced off her, we didn’t know what to say.
“Can you believe your idiot cousin?” Dad said. “He offered to pay for a part of the funeral if I loaned him the money.”
“You know that money is just going straight to meth.”
“Actually, it’s supposed to pay off what he already owes. Like I’m loaning to him, and he’s paying back with his money – the funeral kindness erasing the extra load.”
My eyelid twitched as my brain short circuited. The immense stupidity of that notion risking an aneurysm.
“He’s always been special like that,” I said sipping vodka.
“Hmmm.”
The smoke cleared enough, I went to close the window, a chill already in the house. I returned to find Dad smoking.
He eyed me, “Don’t say anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“These are the healthy kind,” he said.
I held up my hands. I didn’t feel like any quixotic battles. Tilting at windmills felt foolish for the first time in a long while.
We watched television in silence. Occasionally we chatted about the family members who showed up to the funeral; the strange way death reunites people. Folks we never saw, phoned, or hoped to see again, summoned by tragedy.
The jailbirds using a funeral as an excuse to get out for a day. Divorced aunts and uncles secretly searching for a chance to get revenge. Litigious cousins looking to serve papers. Gutter punks claiming to be related and offering neck tattoos as proof – sigils they’d been told marked the family. White trash relations making us happy for the presence of obvious undercover cops there to gather the garbage people. Black sheep sauntering in surprised to be unwelcome; Dad insisting they leave for undisclosed reasons.
“It’s my sister in that box!”
“It’s my mom, Uncle I-Don’t-Know-Who-The-Fuck-You-Are.”
“Kevin.”
“Nice to meet you Kevin, now get the fuck outta here.”
Running out of relatives to complain about, we might soon need to have an actual conversation. Every thread I considered wove a road to ruin. At any minute Dad would ask about my latest romantic failure, or worse, my job situation – unemployed, but I didn’t currently need currency.
As Mom lay dying, I distracted myself by gambling online with her credit cards. While she passed away, several of my more outlandish wagers proved successful. Las Vegas will take a bet on anything, and when pop stars begin incorporating wild animals into acts, well, it’s only a matter of time before Taylor Swifts are pecked to death by ostriches. And thanks to more knowledge folks than I, bets on sporting events paid off enormously. Though, there’s something about such an influx of cash, as a loved one dies, that feels oddly meaningless. No sugar in the victory. It’s as though sixty grand doesn’t make up for the loss – the value of a loved one in stark contrast.
A noise from the kitchen caught my attention. Suspecting a racoon came in the window, drawn to the horrendous turkey, I went to investigate. Let the critter have it, I thought, but there’s always a chance the racoon might bring friends. The last thing we needed today was a fight with a gaze of racoons trying to take over the house. I’ve been in that kind of war before. It never ends well.
Creeping into the kitchen I heard a familiar hum. Peering in I found myself at a loss. The sight easy enough to describe – Mom dancing around the kitchen while glowing a luminous blue like the ghost of a space wizard – however, the impossibility of it frying my mind. I leaned against the door. Watching the specter maneuver gracefully from one side of the kitchen to the other, whipping together sides with an ease that put any other culinary effort to shame – I didn’t know what to say.
“Mom?” I said.
She paused to smile. The ghost tossed me a can of corn.
“Open that then be sure to strain out any microchips before cooking.”
It certainly sounded like her. Not knowing what to do, yet happy to have her around, I did as she told. Straining the kernels, if for no other reason than to humor her, before depositing them in a pot to boil. She flicked a tablespoon of butter into the corn.
About to ask a question, I got interrupted by the doorbell. I ignored it until it rang again.
“Answer the door!” Dad bellowed.
Hurrying to the front I opened it. My brother stood there, leaning heavily on a crutch, staying off one foot as much as possible. He carried a shopping bag which he immediately tossed to me.
“I got a really weird call,” he said.
“Kitchen,” I said, stepping aside.
He hobbled in, looking about with the confusion one expects from a bear invited indoors. Stomping towards the kitchen, I saw him hesitate as soon as he got close enough to hear the humming. He looked back. I nodded. He peeked inside and promptly fainted. His impact shaking the whole house.
“What the fuck?” Dad hollered.
Running in from the living room, he demanded an explanation before the two-minute warning break ended. I pointed towards the kitchen. He hurdled over my fallen brother then returned a moment later. He looked bemused, an expression I never thought I would see on his face.
“She needs the turkey breast?” Dad said, drifting back to his chair.
Sure enough, in the shopping bag my brother brought, a turkey breast lay within. I never realized abject failure summoned spirits. The necessity of their presence proven by the defeats in their absence.
I went into the kitchen. Mom often beamed, so her glowing specter looked oddly familiar. She floated an inch or two off the ground. It reminded me of the time she wore roller skates for a week. An experiment in efficiency she abandoned because it got more boring than detrimental.
The aroma of cooking sides filled the kitchen, steadily drowning out the dismissal scent of the Dad’s turkey Dresden. Taking the breast, Mom eyed it for a second.
“Doesn’t look communist,” she said disappointed.
Shrugging, she put it in the oven. An ordinary turkey would have to do. One can’t expect everything to be perfect on such an occasion.
A million questions filled my head. About to speak, Mom interrupted me without a word. A simple hug silencing me.
“Just enjoy the moment,” she whispered.
I nodded and held her until an egg timer went off.
“Time to mash!” she exclaimed.
Mom’s ghost pushed away. Merrily she went to work mashing potatoes. All the while demanding answers from the spuds.
“Tell me what you know about the horse Shergar!”
All seemed right with the world.
We left my brother on the floor. No sense straining by trying to move a human boulder. Eventually he awoke. His confusion at the situation exacerbated by the relative calm Dad and I possessed, the two of us having had several more (drinks and) hours to process things. He tried to ask a dozen questions at once.
“Just enjoy the moment,” I said, repeating Mom’s advice.
He nodded while shedding a tear.
“Christ almighty, don’t ruin this,” Dad said, surreptitiously wiping his own eye.
We sat in the living room, mocking TV shows, and adding my brother’s observations to our list of relative complaints – “Cousin Myra should’ve brought that nail gun to shoot herself, not Aunt Helena.” – until Mom’s voice sang out, “Dinner.”
The three of us made our way into the dining room. A lavish spread covered the table. In some ways, it didn’t amount to the greatest meal Mom ever prepared. That title would always belong to a Fat Tuesday in 1998. However, this certainly received bonus points for the improbability of its completion. (Also, Ghost Mom could only work with what items Dad bothered to buy. The man is incompetent when it comes to groceries, and a cook is only as good as the available ingredients.) Perhaps I just didn’t want to think of them on the same level – the ghost less than the living.
Dad prepared to slice into the turkey breast.
“Guess I’ll have to fail hard at Christmas too,” he said with a smile.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Mom said.
That matter of fact unintentional bluntness felt familiar. Mom possessed a habit of jabbing harsh truths into situations. No one wanted to hear them, especially when they needed to be heard, yet she delivered them unflinching.
Dad hesitated to carve. A strong implication hung in the air. The notion that the minute dinner ended the ghost would fade, and that would be the end.
“Come on now,” Mom said merrily. “Eat up. You’ll need your strength for the dark days ahead.” – whispering – “The octopi in the sky are angry.”
With that, we ate. We laughed. We said goodbye. We couldn’t ask for much more.
I glanced over. Two men sat in a candy apple red muscle car idling nearby. They waved.
“Now is not a good time,” I said.
“Why not?” the driver frowned, “We’re going to Indiana for hookers and drugs.”
I pointed at the casket propped up on my shoulder. A head nod indicating the procession following me and the other pallbearers as we proceeded from the funeral home across the street into the church.
“Kind of in the middle of something,” I said.
Dim bulbs slowly brightened. Slamming on the gas, the car peeled out, doing an eighty-mile an hour donut. About a half dozen actually; the genius behind the wheel screeching around to zip into a parking spot five feet away. Both occupants jumped out of the vehicle. Adorned in muscle shirts, neither possessed the physique for, they joined the funeral march. Solemn expressions on their faces.
“Can we get going?” my brother demanded.
“I’m not the one holding us up,” I said.
We continued towards the church across the street. We meant to go in the side entrance, but my XXXL brother didn’t fit. As such, the whole procession needed to go around front in order to use the double doors. It felt like a routine out of a British comedy. I could imagine the whole thing – going to one door, the failing effort to get inside, then doubling back to the front – occurring at double speed while saxophones played.
At last, we deposited my mother’s casket before the altar. Pouring sweat, my brother dropped into the front row pew. Climbing over to sit beside him, I patted him on the shoulder. Mom would be proud.
Our father soon sat beside us. The murmur of funeral attendees slowly died down. The organist began playing “Tiger Rag” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, as Mom requested. Dad cracked a beer. I sipped a flask. My brother mopped his brow and chewed on beef jerky. We all have our vices —comforting in times of distress.
The priest appeared out of a cloud of incense. The entrance reminded me of a Vegas magician in a cheap lounge act. I half expected him to prestidigitate a dove when he mentioned the holy spirit.
Although raised Catholic, fully versed in the mass, even more aware, unfortunately, of the funeral variation, I don’t remember much of what the priest said. It sounded too alien to absorb; to connect with any recollection. I kept looking at the coffin wondering how all of my mother, the entirety of her personality fit in so small a box. That her own tiny meat frame held so much never struck me as odd, rather magical in its own way. This defied reason, and I wondered where all of her went when she died. The best of her dissipating out into space like the outer layer of a dying sun.
Opening the Bible, the priest cleared his throat. Dad cracked a fresh beer. The priest glared down from the pulpit.
“Mind ya business,” Dad said.
The priest shook his head. Dad passed me a beer. I’ve been his kid long enough to know when I’m being instructed to join in an act of spite. Also, free beer – I couldn’t say no.
“Sorry Father,” I addressed the priest as I opened the can.
The hiss-crack of the seal reverberated throughout the church. Mom always liked the way sounds echoed in here. She said it made ordinary noises ethereal.
We went through a six pack while the priest read passages.
He recited from the Old Testament, “‘My soul is deprived of peace…’” without any feeling before getting to the New. “‘For it is written: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before me,”’” causing me to think, a funeral is an odd time for god to flex; then finally, “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled…’” which seemed like telling someone in distress to relax. Only the antithesis is possible.
Perhaps cynicism might’ve taken a backseat if the eulogy he delivered didn’t ring so hollow. His words inspiring me to glance at my family in confusion. I don’t know where he got his impression of my mother, but the person he described sounded nothing like her. Not that his words painted her as anything awful. It just sounded like a hodgepodge of generalities one could throw at any stranger, and I wondered why we decided not to say anything ourselves. Then it struck me.
One slender inch between us and the undeniable. Standing on the altar, looking down at the coffin, the past tense would have to take hold. The undeniable truth she no longer existed in this world taking over.
A tear fell.
“Not now,” Dad said.
His eyes aimed straight ahead. His perpetual glare made of stony stoicism, anger his only visible emotion. He passed me another beer. I nodded. Taking a deep breath, I shotgunned the can to distract myself; derail the thoughts taking over. Funerary duties needed to be performed with a certain expectation of dignity.
Standing beside the grave as Mom went down to fill it; another interminable line of hugs and handshakes; every instance of us crying hid or else we risked family members lingering. The less distraught we seemed, the sooner we could escape from them. Each searching for the chance to hang around comforting us in order to make themselves feel less like the shitty people we knew them to be. After all, they were family. Who knew them better? A gathering of hobo high kings, grifter queens, hustlers, and petty criminals with delusions of grandeur, mixed with a sprinkling of suburban isolationists hellbent on ignoring the black sheep blood in all our veins.
Besides, a dread prospect already loomed. Thanksgiving lay a few short weeks away. At the wake offers poured in. Family and friends not seen, or thought of, for years suddenly appearing to deliver condolences. Many throwing out invitations to Thanksgiving dinner – “It’s been so long, and you boys don’t want to be alone. Not for the holidays.”
“Uh huh,” Dad grunted.
As if the biker camped out a low rent motel would still be here in two weeks. A turkey cooked golden brown beneath a hot lamp, and a plastic jug full of miscellaneous wines waiting to help celebrate the holiday. (In all fairness, it might’ve happened, if said biker didn’t leave Ohio while on parole, police swarming that same motel days after the funeral to collect the wild child.) Pleasant as it sounded, that holiday prospect seemed unlikely.
Meanwhile, not having much faith in the other invitations we prepared to celebrate the holiday alone. Dad said we needed to make it thru the ordeal ourselves. He worried that relying on the family to get through the occasion, the somberness of that first Thanksgiving without mom, might make such invites routine. So, in order to maintain a safe distance from the family, we opted to spend National Christmas Kick-off Day alone.
#
I showed up to the house around two o’clock. Smoke filled the air. Acrid black clouds signaling some hideous calamity. Following a stream of swears pouring from the kitchen, I found my Dad regarding a turkey in the oven.
It looked like a war crime. A grotesque tangled mess of burnt meat. I worried the U.N. might already be dispatching troops to arrest him, put him on trail at the Hague, and publicly execute my Dad as a warning to others. However, no sign of choppers in the sky, I relaxed and opened a window.
“Cold out there,” Dad said. “You trying to make it cold in here?”
“I’m just getting the smoke out.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He shuffled away from his culinary defeat. I asked about my brother. Apparently, a flare up of gout confined him to home. My brother suggested we visit him, have Thanksgiving at his place. Dad said sure.
“Yet, here we are,” I said.
“This is easier,” he replied.
“Should I go?” I asked, not sure what I meant.
I certainly didn’t want to drive the hour out to my brother’s, and I knew a few bars open despite the holiday. However, it felt wrong to leave so soon.
Dad shrugged. I followed him into the living room. He plopped into his favorite chair, a recliner slowly collapsing into a pile of duct tape and fabric. The decay visible if photographed with a time lapse camera.
Searching around, Dad grumbled. Sensing his desire, I went to the kitchen. I got beers from the fridge as well as a bottle of chilled vodka out of the freezer.
Returning to the living room, I found him eying the television. He flipped through channels without any regard for the contents. His eyes watery, unfocused.
I handed him a beer. He took it, muttering thanks. I sat on the couch.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. We possessed little to say to one another. Not that we ever conversed much. Our usual exchanges a combination of facial expressions, monosyllabic grunts, and the occasional heated volley of disagreements. Without Mom as a buffer, half the conversation bounced off her, we didn’t know what to say.
“Can you believe your idiot cousin?” Dad said. “He offered to pay for a part of the funeral if I loaned him the money.”
“You know that money is just going straight to meth.”
“Actually, it’s supposed to pay off what he already owes. Like I’m loaning to him, and he’s paying back with his money – the funeral kindness erasing the extra load.”
My eyelid twitched as my brain short circuited. The immense stupidity of that notion risking an aneurysm.
“He’s always been special like that,” I said sipping vodka.
“Hmmm.”
The smoke cleared enough, I went to close the window, a chill already in the house. I returned to find Dad smoking.
He eyed me, “Don’t say anything.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“These are the healthy kind,” he said.
I held up my hands. I didn’t feel like any quixotic battles. Tilting at windmills felt foolish for the first time in a long while.
We watched television in silence. Occasionally we chatted about the family members who showed up to the funeral; the strange way death reunites people. Folks we never saw, phoned, or hoped to see again, summoned by tragedy.
The jailbirds using a funeral as an excuse to get out for a day. Divorced aunts and uncles secretly searching for a chance to get revenge. Litigious cousins looking to serve papers. Gutter punks claiming to be related and offering neck tattoos as proof – sigils they’d been told marked the family. White trash relations making us happy for the presence of obvious undercover cops there to gather the garbage people. Black sheep sauntering in surprised to be unwelcome; Dad insisting they leave for undisclosed reasons.
“It’s my sister in that box!”
“It’s my mom, Uncle I-Don’t-Know-Who-The-Fuck-You-Are.”
“Kevin.”
“Nice to meet you Kevin, now get the fuck outta here.”
Running out of relatives to complain about, we might soon need to have an actual conversation. Every thread I considered wove a road to ruin. At any minute Dad would ask about my latest romantic failure, or worse, my job situation – unemployed, but I didn’t currently need currency.
As Mom lay dying, I distracted myself by gambling online with her credit cards. While she passed away, several of my more outlandish wagers proved successful. Las Vegas will take a bet on anything, and when pop stars begin incorporating wild animals into acts, well, it’s only a matter of time before Taylor Swifts are pecked to death by ostriches. And thanks to more knowledge folks than I, bets on sporting events paid off enormously. Though, there’s something about such an influx of cash, as a loved one dies, that feels oddly meaningless. No sugar in the victory. It’s as though sixty grand doesn’t make up for the loss – the value of a loved one in stark contrast.
A noise from the kitchen caught my attention. Suspecting a racoon came in the window, drawn to the horrendous turkey, I went to investigate. Let the critter have it, I thought, but there’s always a chance the racoon might bring friends. The last thing we needed today was a fight with a gaze of racoons trying to take over the house. I’ve been in that kind of war before. It never ends well.
Creeping into the kitchen I heard a familiar hum. Peering in I found myself at a loss. The sight easy enough to describe – Mom dancing around the kitchen while glowing a luminous blue like the ghost of a space wizard – however, the impossibility of it frying my mind. I leaned against the door. Watching the specter maneuver gracefully from one side of the kitchen to the other, whipping together sides with an ease that put any other culinary effort to shame – I didn’t know what to say.
“Mom?” I said.
She paused to smile. The ghost tossed me a can of corn.
“Open that then be sure to strain out any microchips before cooking.”
It certainly sounded like her. Not knowing what to do, yet happy to have her around, I did as she told. Straining the kernels, if for no other reason than to humor her, before depositing them in a pot to boil. She flicked a tablespoon of butter into the corn.
About to ask a question, I got interrupted by the doorbell. I ignored it until it rang again.
“Answer the door!” Dad bellowed.
Hurrying to the front I opened it. My brother stood there, leaning heavily on a crutch, staying off one foot as much as possible. He carried a shopping bag which he immediately tossed to me.
“I got a really weird call,” he said.
“Kitchen,” I said, stepping aside.
He hobbled in, looking about with the confusion one expects from a bear invited indoors. Stomping towards the kitchen, I saw him hesitate as soon as he got close enough to hear the humming. He looked back. I nodded. He peeked inside and promptly fainted. His impact shaking the whole house.
“What the fuck?” Dad hollered.
Running in from the living room, he demanded an explanation before the two-minute warning break ended. I pointed towards the kitchen. He hurdled over my fallen brother then returned a moment later. He looked bemused, an expression I never thought I would see on his face.
“She needs the turkey breast?” Dad said, drifting back to his chair.
Sure enough, in the shopping bag my brother brought, a turkey breast lay within. I never realized abject failure summoned spirits. The necessity of their presence proven by the defeats in their absence.
I went into the kitchen. Mom often beamed, so her glowing specter looked oddly familiar. She floated an inch or two off the ground. It reminded me of the time she wore roller skates for a week. An experiment in efficiency she abandoned because it got more boring than detrimental.
The aroma of cooking sides filled the kitchen, steadily drowning out the dismissal scent of the Dad’s turkey Dresden. Taking the breast, Mom eyed it for a second.
“Doesn’t look communist,” she said disappointed.
Shrugging, she put it in the oven. An ordinary turkey would have to do. One can’t expect everything to be perfect on such an occasion.
A million questions filled my head. About to speak, Mom interrupted me without a word. A simple hug silencing me.
“Just enjoy the moment,” she whispered.
I nodded and held her until an egg timer went off.
“Time to mash!” she exclaimed.
Mom’s ghost pushed away. Merrily she went to work mashing potatoes. All the while demanding answers from the spuds.
“Tell me what you know about the horse Shergar!”
All seemed right with the world.
We left my brother on the floor. No sense straining by trying to move a human boulder. Eventually he awoke. His confusion at the situation exacerbated by the relative calm Dad and I possessed, the two of us having had several more (drinks and) hours to process things. He tried to ask a dozen questions at once.
“Just enjoy the moment,” I said, repeating Mom’s advice.
He nodded while shedding a tear.
“Christ almighty, don’t ruin this,” Dad said, surreptitiously wiping his own eye.
We sat in the living room, mocking TV shows, and adding my brother’s observations to our list of relative complaints – “Cousin Myra should’ve brought that nail gun to shoot herself, not Aunt Helena.” – until Mom’s voice sang out, “Dinner.”
The three of us made our way into the dining room. A lavish spread covered the table. In some ways, it didn’t amount to the greatest meal Mom ever prepared. That title would always belong to a Fat Tuesday in 1998. However, this certainly received bonus points for the improbability of its completion. (Also, Ghost Mom could only work with what items Dad bothered to buy. The man is incompetent when it comes to groceries, and a cook is only as good as the available ingredients.) Perhaps I just didn’t want to think of them on the same level – the ghost less than the living.
Dad prepared to slice into the turkey breast.
“Guess I’ll have to fail hard at Christmas too,” he said with a smile.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Mom said.
That matter of fact unintentional bluntness felt familiar. Mom possessed a habit of jabbing harsh truths into situations. No one wanted to hear them, especially when they needed to be heard, yet she delivered them unflinching.
Dad hesitated to carve. A strong implication hung in the air. The notion that the minute dinner ended the ghost would fade, and that would be the end.
“Come on now,” Mom said merrily. “Eat up. You’ll need your strength for the dark days ahead.” – whispering – “The octopi in the sky are angry.”
With that, we ate. We laughed. We said goodbye. We couldn’t ask for much more.
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