The body held little mass, and the skin of her face had tightened across the bones. Her hair had turned blue. When death took her, the long porcelain fingers had gripped the comforter as though she were startled at the last moment, and then stilled like a snapshot, folded over the blanket as though preparing for sleep.
“Stephen Francis had the largest penis. Nearly killed me,” she had blurted out at one point. Then the last thing she had said was, “Oh, my. There it is.”
The Hospice nurse who lived down the street had left the room moments earlier when she sensed the end was near. She had stepped out the door, almost backing away from the bed, as though she thought it rude to turn her back on her.
Hartford looked at his mother. She resembled a sculpture, a bas-relief, the way the light angled off the tone of her face. Something tensed in his body and he tried to let it go. His sister stood on the opposite side of the bed, staring down at the body and massaging her face.
“She went quick. Thank God.”
Hartford paced, looked out the dirty window once, wondering why with all Pop’s tinkering he could not keep the damn windows clean. “So now what?”
“Where’s Dad?”
“Downstairs drinking his whiskey. Sally told me he’d already said his goodbye before we got here.”
Hartford stared down from the window and moved his nose against the cold glass. He put his open palms on the glass, his arms spread out as though in an embrace with a lover.
The ancient oak’s branches spidered into the sky, its leaves nearly gone. When he was eight he named the tree Pataki, and he talked to her everyday. He would lie on his back in the grass under her branches and talk about his middle school life. And every night before bed he went to his window and said “Goodnight, Pataki.”
There once was a tire swing that his father had hung, and he saw it for a moment nestled under Pataki’s shadow, felt his body rush through the air as he dipped his head back.
“I’m going down to talk to Pop,” he said to the tree.
Lloyd Strathmore sat with his elbows up on the checkered tablecloth, clutching his drink with his full hand, as though someone might try to steal it.
Hartford opened the cupboard and grabbed a glass, then sat slowly into the chair across from him. He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured, refilling his father’s glass then his own. It was probably the only thing they agreed on, good whiskey. “What are you going to do?” Hartford said.
“Stay here.”
“It’s a big place. Pop, you’re almost ninety.”
“Only place I have.”
“What about the stairs?”
His father tightened his jaw. Hartford could see it pulsing where his jaw met his neck.
“I’ll make the den into a bedroom.”
Hartford sipped. He studied his father’s bushy white brows, the hair a mess of tangled wires. He had inherited those brows; his own, although still dark brown, had to be trimmed monthly by his hair stylist.
He looked around the large kitchen. His parents had lived here for twenty years, made the move from the city after his father’s urging won over.
He was never content in the city. Hartford wondered if this was why his mother had gotten sick. She gave up because she missed the city. She missed the ballet and theatre. He wished he’d asked her. “She say anything to you?”
“Get me some ice.”
Hartford stood and obeyed, taking his father’s glass. He tossed two cubes into it then sat again. Hartford always liked his whiskey neat. His father swirled the ice in the glass and sipped, making a loud sucking sound. “Pop? I wasn’t here. Tell me what mom said.”
Lloyd shook his head and stood. “Call Ernie, will you? Tell him to come get her.”
Later, Hartford stood in the kitchen and watched his father out in the yard. Through the screen he could see his tired body moving. He watched him bend over and pick up a broom.
He slowly swept leaves off the stoop, the garden path, and finally laid it against the shed. In front of the house Ernie Johnson had pulled up in the spotless black hearse. He didn’t hide that he was proud to drive it, grinning with his chin high, his gold tooth shining in the sun. Bax Jones had knocked his original tooth out with a liquor bottle one night, back when he was still on the sauce.
Ernie senior had purchased the Cadillac base from a used car dealer in Harrumph, and spent a year fixing it up. He even added the traditional Landau bars and had a “J” scrolled on both doors. Ernie always kept it waxed and shiny. Johnson Funeral Chapel was the only funeral home in Stockton county, so he was always busy.
“People gots to die,” he used to tell Hartford. Ernie had inherited his family’s business when his father died. Before that, his grandfather and great grandfather ran it. They were the first, and only, African Americans to run a funeral home in Stockton county. Just over the county line there were plenty of funeral homes, but it was too far for most to bother. And you couldn’t beat Ernie’s prices.
Hartford watched Ernie get out of the car. He moved as though he had all day, and Hartford hoped this would go quick, but he knew it wouldn’t. Out the back window he watched his father water the globe arborvitaes along the walkway. He poured another drink and watched him clean the bird feeder. Tinkering.
Ernie tapped on the screen door and Hartford let him in. He glanced out the door and saw Harold hunched in the front seat of the car. He nodded to him.
Ernie’s wide dark face was wet, even though he hadn’t done any work yet and it was a cool seventy-five degrees. “Harts. She was a fine woman. She’d alright now,” Ernie said.
Hartford nodded. He wanted to tell him to be quick, but he didn’t.
“Lloyd ‘round?”
“Out back.”
“I wanted to say we sorry.”
“He’ll be there when you’re done.” Hartford listened to himself. He sounded stern and he felt like apologizing. Then he realized he just wanted them to get his mother and be done with it.
If he found Lloyd they’d stand there all day talking about nothing. It was a habit embedded into his father’s pores. When he saw someone in town it was as though the dialogue between them were on an endless loop.
It might be an hour before the other person helplessly broke away from it. It was the same with errands. If Hartford agreed to help him with one errand, it was never a one-destination drive.
His father might make ten stops, each one taking a life of its own; a stop at Mack’s turned into an hour of tire talk and bass fishing. Loops. All of them.
He watched Ernie return to the car, yank open the rear doors and begin to pull the gurney out. He stopped and swatted his hands down as though a fly were in his face. He stuck his head around the rear bumper.
“You gonna just keep sittin’ there on your butt?”
Harold doggedly tumbled out of the car and joined him at the rear of the hearse. Harold was Ernie’s only son. When he was five, Ernie found him in the garage unconscious, a jug of antifreeze on the floor. While they had pumped his stomach and did what they could, he was never the same after that.
Hartford sat with his back to the front door and stairs, and watched his father again. It took a while, probably because they were gabbing with his sister, but he heard Ernie and Harold behind him scraping down the stairs, heard occasional arguing between them.
“Don’t go so damn fast, boy. Miss Charlotte gonna slide off. Then you’d done it.”
“You pushin’ me, I ain’t a cause.”
“Watch them walls. Watch them walls. They ain’t your walls.”
When they got to the bottom of the stairs Harold said, “Can we go get Moon Pie? Lunch. Time for lunch.”
“Boy! You help me push Miss Charlotte out that door.” He swatted his hands down again. “Moon Pie ain’t no lunch.”
When they were in the driveway, Hartford rose, went to the backdoor, and called to his father.
Lloyd stood at the front screen door and peered out to Ernie and Harold.
“Pop,” Hartford said behind him. His father had a habit of unintentional bigotry. He’d stand there all day with the screen between he and Ernie.
Lloyd opened the door and stepped onto the porch.
“Miss Charlotte shore missed already,” said Ernie. When he talked it was like a groan, as though there wasn’t enough air to push the words out.
Harold rocked back and forth on his feet, his head tucked to his chest. “Taught me to dance,” he said.
Lloyd nodded. “That so, Harry,” he said.
“Yep. It so. At the dance.”
He looked away. “She taught a lot of people to dance.”
“Miss Charlotte could dance!” Harold said, doing a jig with his legs.
“She could,” said Lloyd. “She could.”
His mother always liked Harold. Hartford remembered her dancing with him at the fair, the clumsy way he held her waist, hands not really touching as much as hovering about her hips.
His mother would reach back and place them on her lower back, and he would jerk them away as though her back were on fire. She would gently place them on her body, nodding that it was okay, that this was how you danced.
“I know you done picked that rosemary box. That real nice. Ms. Charlotte deserve that, she do. What you got figured for the service?” Ernie asked.
“Thursday will do. We talked about it. Simple. Closed box. She wanted that.”
Ernie nodded and walked to the car. He paused at the rear door and gave the glass a gentle tap. He turned back to Lloyd. “I’ll take her then. Don’t you worry ‘bout bumps or nothin.’ Ain’t nothin’ gonna disturb Miss Charlotte. I’ll see to it.” He yelled to the air above his head. “Get in boy. We gots work.”
When the Johnson Funeral Chapel hearse became a shadow on route 10, Hartford went up the stairs to find his sister. “Pop said the service will be Thursday,” Hartford said. He was glad. That meant he’d be gone in a few days. He watched his sister fix the bed. She had changed the sheets as though her mother would be sleeping there tonight.
She tucked the comforter in and straightened the pillows, her thin back hunched like a coat hanger as she leaned over the bed and swept her hand across it, as though wiping something away. She hesitated a moment and bowed her head, then stood and faced him. “Can you get all these glasses and diapers out of here? Maybe return the oxygen equipment? I don’t know how all that works.”
“Tare, it doesn’t all have to be done now.” But it did. His sister’s eyes were red and swollen.
“You’re leaving. After the service?”
“Thursday. The late train.”
“Always running.”
“Tare.”
“Take the glasses and plates down.”
His father was out in front now, washing the truck. Hartford always found this habit strange; the truck was thirty-five years old, had more dents and pings than a golf ball, and the paint had faded to a light gray. He had done this as early as Hartford could remember, washed and waxed and cleaned obsessively every vehicle he ever owned.
“That thing’s is not going to get any shinier,” Hartford said.
His father made small circles with the sponge, then moved to the fender and the tires. Hartford reached down to the bucket and pulled the other sponge out. He went to the other side of the truck and started on the roof as his father worked the opposite side.
“Reach on up over. I never could get that high,” his father called to him.
Hartford circled and stopped to dip the sponge into the soapy water. He moved down over the door windows. He saw Lloyd through the soapy residue, his face squinting as he swiped the sponge across the opposite window.
When Hartford finished his side, he took the hose and sprayed the truck. When he saw his father was finished he pulled the hose with a snap and walked around the other side. His father began drying the vehicle with the towel. “You up for waxing it? Needs it,” his father said.
Hartford stared at the truck’s faded finish. It used to be a dark blue. The driver’s door was dented where his mother had side swiped Pataki one night. He remembered it well enough. She had flung the screen door open and shouted, “That old oak’s got to go. See what it did to the Ford.”
When his father refused to do anything about the tree because of Hartford’s protests, the entire family had run out the door one morning to find her standing there in welder’s goggles and a hatchet.
Lloyd had managed to get the hatchet out of her hands before she could do any damage to the nearly 150-year-old tree. After, Hartford had gone over and embraced the tree, then snuck out of the house for several nights to sleep under her shadow. When he awoke one morning and crept back into the house clutching his sleeping bag, his mother was waiting for him.
“Hart,” she said. “Enough of that nonsense. I would never hurt Pataki.” She held her hand out and pulled him in. Her embraces were always intense, her fingers sifting through his thick hair. “Just making a statement for your father.”
“Alright,” Hartford said now, “but I think it’s beyond waxing.”
His father made small, careful circles with the wax sponge, squinting his eyes into the finish, straining his body. He had thrown Hartford a towel and told him to follow behind him. “Let it dry some, then buff it out good now,” his father said, as though Hartford was ten again.
Hartford waited until his father had waxed the door and fender before he bent and polished. He studied him, crouched into the truck, his thick, white hair flipped forward into his lined face.
This ritual with the truck was an avoidance. Hartford understood this looking at him. He could go along with it or forget everything and go back to the city. He also understood that his father probably didn’t care one way or the other.
“Staying for the service, are you?” His father had his head tilted towards him, had stopped waxing the truck. When he did this, when he ceased doing whatever it was he was doing and focused his stare on him, it meant that something was on his mind. Hartford dreaded this look.
Hartford snapped the towel into the air, splaying particles of white wax dust. He glared at him. “Goddamn it, Pop.”
And then in an instant his father broke the stare, as though snapping out of a trance. “You going to help me finish waxing or not?”
“Hartford. I’ve been here for a week, and Pop is acting strange. Sometimes he seems to lose his thoughts, and he goes into this trance. And it’s as though he won’t process all of this.”
Hartford paced the room. “It’s probably stress. It’s been an undoing, mom’s illness.”
“He’s bent on staying here in the house.”
“I know.”
Tara walked across the kitchen and stared at her father in the driveway. It had been a struggle trying to get their father to share his plans. They knew he had arranged an assisted living home but he refused to say more.
“I’m working on it, Tare. Hopefully I’ll get the details before I leave.”
Tara saw the strain in her brother’s face, the way he concreted his lips after he spoke. It was a tell of guilt. She knew he didn’t want to leave without settling everything.
“I left Robert,” she said.
Hartford put his hands in his pockets. “It’s about time.” He never liked her husband Robert. He was a narcissist in the classic sense. He never understood why she married him. Love is a fault that blames no one.
She crossed her arms. “I’ve decided I prefer women. For now. I mean, for company.”
“Men these days. Assholes,” said Hartford.
“I think I’ll stay with Van until I figure it out.”
Van was her best friend from college, and she had already divorced twice. She could give her good advice.
“He’s going to make it tough. He’ll try and control and drag it out.”
“I don’t care. I’m not fighting him. He’s been fucking someone else.”
“That makes it easier. Let me know if I can help somehow,” said Hartford.
Tara went to the screen door. “You still talk to that tree when you’re here, don’t you?” Her father was standing in the driveway as though he were lost again. “Think he’s okay?”
Hartford stood next to her. Lloyd was looking at the ground as though he had dropped something. “What the hell is he doing?”
They both stepped out into the driveway. “Pop? Lose something?” Hartford said.
His father straightened his torso and removed his glasses. He turned to them, waving his hands toward the ground as though he were walking blindfolded. “I don’t know. It was here.” He put his glasses back on. “Somewhere. And now it’s gone.”
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