The church is a sweet little affair, built, I would guess, in the 1840s – certainly before the Civil War. Pressed tin ceiling, but high, and the acoustics are good, in spite of the awful carpet in the aisles, so I brush away the silly microphone and project. Carmen, well what can I say, knew her when we were teenagers…
The gentle roast element takes maybe five minutes, and I do get a few small discreet laughs – these are Presbyterians, after all – and then I get serious and speak of her unswerving faith, which is completely true, and wind up before people get bored. Generally speaking, eulogists go on too long. Keep it short and sweet, is my advice. Eight minutes max.
Afterwards, at the reception, I feel distinctly out of my element. Sharon, Carmen’s daughter, has been very kind and introduced me to everybody, but still, I’m the guy who left the old home town the minute he could and has lived in New York ever since. I thought I had kept my Southern accent – so New Yorkers say -- but it seems I really haven’t, or not entirely, so my speech is neither fish nor fowl, and though everybody is very polite, I’m clearly a foreign body.
The pastor, a fetching, perky young woman, is a Godsend in every sense of the word. She intuits my loneliness in the best pastoral way, and we chat and drink bad coffee – did I mention, Southern Presbyterians? And then Carmen’s son Sean heaves into view. The pastor takes the occasion to go pastor in pastures new.
Sean, let’s just say it, is a cop. I mean a literal cop, a policeman. He was there, in the front row, during the service, wearing his awful fash uniform and I swear to God a pistol at his hip. In case any Arminians showed up, I suppose. The uniform and the shootin’-iron do not tend to my peace of mind. Sean and I have always loathed each other, above and beyond my general loathing of cops.
He’s especially worrisome just now; pale, a cold greasy sweat on his fash shaved head and his glabrous slabby cheeks. “You disrespected my Mom.”
Bold is the right line to take with cops, I’ve always thought. Shoulders back, head erect. “On the contrary. I respected her very much.”
“That stuff about the hair, the makeup…”
“Come on, Sean. You know that was all completely true, and everybody in the church knew it too. And they liked remembering it. As I do.”
“As” rather than “like” is a red flag to Sean’s rather dim bull. I should have known that and avoided it, but I was improvising. Not very well.
“Did you sleep with her?”
Now this is a slightly tricky topic. The technical answer is “no” but it’s purely technical.
“Sean, you have no business asking me that question. You must know that.”
“I’m her son.”
“Right. So you could have asked her. But you’re not mine, so you can’t ask me. Did you ask her?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said no.”
“Then you have your answer, and it’s the only answer you’ll ever have. You’ll have none from me. Though I will say that your mom was a pretty truthful person. And really, I don’t understand why you’re so… concerned about it. Anything romantic between Carmen and me was long before she got together with your dad, may he rest in peace, and you must know they were the love of each others’ lives.”
“Why did she keep calling you on the phone?”
“I can only guess. I listened to her stories, which were occasionally rather long, and I made her laugh, and I actually liked her, and she knew that. If you ever need any dating advice, and I hope you don’t, there you have it.”
This is a mistake. I don’t like his damned impertinence, and it has nettled me, but I have, after all, patronized him, which I shouldn’t’ve, and worse, suggested there might be some cracks in the domestic foundation. Which is pure speculation on my part, and thoroughly de trop. Sean is married to a lovely intelligent young woman, Clarissa – I can’t imagine what she ever saw in him, except he’s tall and pretty fit – and they have three lovely daughters, so for everybody’s sake, except perhaps his wife’s, I truly do hope that he won’t be doing any dating. But Clarissa does seem inexplicably OK with him, so maybe I haven’t appreciated his finer qualities. The uniform and the pistol do rather get in the way, for me.
Rubor mixes with pallor on Sean’s cinderblock face. “I don’t need any dating advice. And if I did, I wouldn’t go to you for it.”
This is a fairly shrewd hit, from a guy whose intelligence I may possibly underestimate. My own romantic life has not been an unblemished record of success, let’s say, and leave it at that.
Oil on the waters. “Sean, I have to agree. I’m no model. I shouldn’t have said that, about dating advice. I’m sorry.”
Sean, in my private taxonomy, belongs to a male type that reminds me of those nature programs where some alpha-lizard lifts his head and inflates a colourful pouch under his jaw, pour effrayer les autres. I am relieved to see Sean’s pouch deflate a bit. Perhaps the likelihood of gunplay has diminished.
“I never understood it. Why would she want to spend any time talking to you? Mister New York. I never liked you, trusted you. I guess you know that.”
“I do. But truly, I appreciate your candor. No, don’t get worked up again. I mean it. I don’t like you much either. Cards on the table, good thing. As for the why – well, did you ever ask her that?”
“Yeah. She said you used to talk about the old days a lot.”
“We did. That was nice for me, actually. She kept in touch better, with all the old crowd – all those cousins and uncles and aunts of yours. I could barely keep them straight, but she was like a… an encyclopedia.” I almost said “a fucking encyclopedia”, but caught myself in time.
I don’t mention how much she talked about what pests both her children could be, now and then. The two of them have what is, to my mind, a strangely intense sibling rivalry, which has survived and thrived well into middle age, and I’ve heard a lot about it. Nor do I mention her venting about her husband, Gary, Sean’s dad. Gary and Carmen were a very tight couple and they stayed married for a long time, until he died a few years ago. But Gary had a roving eye and a tendency to schtup young women in his office. I know for a fact that Sean is aware of this but it seems impolitic to mention it. L’homme armé, il faut doubter!
“Sean, I don’t get where the trust comes into it. I get the dislike; lots of people dislike me, and I even understand why.” This actually gets a small smile from Officer Skinhead. Much more of this beta-male shit and I’ll have him eating out of my hand. “But trust? When did I ever ask you for trust, or put myself forward to you as someone to rely on for something?”
“It was disloyal to my dad. You were taking advantage of her.” The smile has vanished like the snows of yesteryear.
“What advantage? Did you think we were having, or going to have, an affair, or after Gary died I was going to swoop in and marry her and steal your inheritance?”
“Yeah. All of that.”
Well, now the Freudian pfennig drops. New York habits die hard. To wax Rothian: impermissible Oedipal rivalry with the adored Dad, displaced onto me. Over-identification with Dad – hence the cop thing – and defining me as the antitype, sneaky urban Snidely Whipsnade to Dad’s small-town salt-of-the-earth Dudley Doright. What did I ever do to deserve this? Nothing, that’s what. But it’s not a Rorschach blot’s fault if some twisted loon sees it as a scene of dismemberment.
At this tense moment, thank God the pastor pops up again. I bet her radar, or sonar, or pasdar, has sensed a disturbance in the aether and guided her to a very welcome intervention. “Sean, your third cousin twice removed is over here, and he’d like to be a police officer too. Maybe you could speak with him for a minute?” And she guides him away, as he stiffens back into his R. Crumb rigid position.
Dave, Sharon’s husband and Sean’s brother-in-law, materializes at my elbow. “That didn’t sound like fun.”
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough. Dude is batshit.” Pause. “This coffee is really bad.”
“Indescribably.”
Dave taps the breast pocket of his jacket, evoking a pleasant, hollow, but not too hollow, metallic thunk. “Time for a breath of fresh air?”
“You read my mind.”
'L'homme armé, il faut douter!' I was waiting for you to say something to Sean in French, but it's probably best you didn't.
nice. perhaps there's envy of easy discourse with another human being that you two shared. don't underestimate how lacking such things are in Americans' lives.
but his own frickin' mother can't speak for herself? he's the man, the sunbeam, who caught mom in adultery with love discovering sin. your restraint is admirable. some might have been tempted to wind him up by imitating Darth Father and saying, "Sean, Carmen never told you the truth...I am your father." or mutter something vaguely about how even DNA tests get mixed up, esp by commie saboteurs, who just might have some Jew or Haitian in them from the unpassed past. but then you might not be watching his head explode. "No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize". The question, "who's your/my daddy," is asked looking down the barrel of a gun. what is he in control of if he can't control his dead mom's libido? We can't know if we were born, or at any rate, bred in a handbag if we don't know who the owner of the seed is. Fatherhood = ownership of sperm. if not, we might be a replicant, born in an alchemical retort. we might not be the true heir but rather a dumpster baby. like Moses.
and thanks for making me look up glabrous. maybe calvous was too obvious for Calvinists? anyway, here's to gunplay leading to a full head of hair! eternal damnation may be predestined, inherited from old Adam and all that, but baldness? part of the unbearable curse of the mother. what do we do when stuff starts to fall out? what will we ever do? there's a reason mercy is an unclenched butthole (r-h-m) that lets things go, not strained, movement not constipation, if the anus in the cerebrus ever grasps that fact. it sounds like Sean's wife gets to let things go for the both of them.
and there is no better place to out the accused adulteress (or ancient fornicator) than a church if the goal is a stoning. in this, sean is in touch with the spirit of the age. and how many armed, off-duty, IDF-bred Houston cops does Joel Osteen, Inc. keep on the payroll? Sean may have a bright future ahead of him, keeping the temples of mammon secure, where the word "father" gets bandied around a lot and Mexicans branded as illegal.
And now Aeneas saw a secluded grove
in a receding valley, with rustling woodland thickets,
and the river of Lethe gliding past those peaceful places.
Innumerable tribes and peoples hovered round it:
just as, in the meadows, on a cloudless summer’s day,
the bees settle on the multifarious flowers, and stream
round the bright lilies, and all the fields hum with their buzzing. (Aeneid 6, Rome's future :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkYBJId7WZs
here's to you trying to keep this dickhead's mother's memory fresh and green, for his sake.