My mother, who I’m sure gives advice to God since she gives it to everyone else, says the fire talk is just to scare people. In reality, it’s cold and lonely. Eternal boredom—which sounds right, because that’s worse than the roasting version. At least when you’re burning, you’ve got something to occupy your mind.
There is a third option, called Purgatory, which is a kinder, gentler version of the place down under. Purgatory is God’s version of a time-out—temporary flames of woe. I find this idea most appealing, although to be honest, it all bugs me a little. I mean, God loves us and is supposed to be the perfect parent, right? So what if a parent came up to their kid and said, “I love you, but I’m going to have to punish you by roasting you over flames of woe, and it’s really going to hurt.’’ Social Services would not look kindly upon this, and we could all end up in foster care.
I figure Hell and Purgatory are like those parental threats—you know, like, “Tease your sister one more time, and I swear I’ll kill you,” or “Commit one more mortal sin, and so help me, I will roast you over eternal flames, young man.”
Call me weird, but I find that comforting. It means that God really does love us, He’s just ticked off.
Still, none of that was comforting when it came to Gunnar Ümlaut. The thought of someone I know dying, who wasn’t old and dying already, really bothered me. It made me wish I knew Gunnar better, but then if I did, I’d be really sad now, so why would I want that, and should I feel guilty for not wanting it? The whole thing reeked of me having to feel guilty for something, and I hate that feeling.
Nobody talked much on the return trip from the Roadkyll Raccoon incident. Between what we witnessed and what Gunnar had told me, there just wasn’t much anyone wanted to say. We talked about the football games we were missing, and school stuff, but mostly we looked at subway advertisements and out the windows so we wouldn’t have to look at one another. I wondered if Howie and Ira had heard what Gunnar had told me, but didn’t want to ask.
“See ya,” was all anyone said when we got off the train. Howie, Ira, and Gunnar all went off to their Thanksgiving meals, and I went home to find a note from my parents, with exclamation points and underlines, telling me to be at the restaurant ON TIME!!!
My dad runs a French/Italian fusion restaurant called Paris, Capisce? He didn’t always do this. He used to have an office job with a plastics company, but he lost it because of me. That’s okay, though, because he got the restaurant because of me as well. It’s a long story from the weird world of Old Man Crawley. If you’ve heard of him, and who hasn’t, you’ll know it’s a story best kept at ten-foot-pole distance. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, because running a restaurant is what my dad always dreamed of doing.
We all quickly found out, however, that when you have a restaurant, you don’t run it, it runs you. We all got sucked in. Mom fills in when there aren’t enough waitresses, I’m constantly on call to bus tables, and my little sister Christina folds napkins into animal shapes. Only my older brother Frankie gets out of it, on account of he’s in college, and when he’s home, he thinks he’s too good to work in a restaurant.
My particular skill is the pouring of water.
Don’t laugh—it’s a real skill. I can pour from any height and never miss the glass. People applaud.
Thanksgiving, we all knew, was going to be the big test. Not just of the restaurant, but of our family. See, Thanksgiving has always been big with us, on account of we got this massive extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and people I barely know who have various body parts resembling mine. That’s what family is. But these days more and more people eat out on Thanksgiving, so Dad decided to offer a special Thanksgiving meal at Paris, Capisce? instead of the usual big family meal at our house. That got the relatives all bent out of shape. We told them we’re doing Thanksgiving at home one day late, but they flatly refused to postpone the holiday. Now we’re family outcasts, at least until Christmas, when everyone will, in theory, kiss and make up. Dad knows better than to keep the restaurant open on Christmas, because Mom told him if he does, he’d better set up a cot in the back room, because that’s where he’ll be sleeping for a while. Mom says things like this very directly, because my father is not good with subtle hints.
As for Thanksgiving, Mom was very direct with the rest of us as well. “None of youse are allowed to eat any turkey this Thursday, got it? As far as you’re concerned, Thanksgiving is on Friday.”
“Do turkey hot dogs count?” I asked, because no direct order from my mother was complete unless I found a way around it. Not that I had plans to eat turkey hot dogs, but it’s the principle of the thing. Mom’s response was a look that probably wilted the lettuce in the refrigerator.
Part of her laying down of the law was that we weren’t allowed to have a turkeyless Thanksgiving at friends’ houses either—because if we did, our own family Thanksgiving would feel like an afterthought. I didn’t think I’d really mind, but right now I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I was still feeling funny about the dead raccoon wrangler, and Gunnar’s terminal confession, but it was still a while until Mom and Dad wanted me at the restaurant.
I tried to watch some football, and took to petting Ichabod, our cat, who was ninety-one in dog years, although I don’t know what that means to a cat. But even Ichabod knew I was distracted, so he went off to watch Christina’s hamsters run endlessly on their wheel. I suppose that’s the feline equivalent of going to the market and watching the rotisserie chicken, which is how my mom entertained me at the market when I was little.
In the end, I left early, and took a long, wandering path to the restaurant. As I passed our local skate park, I saw one lonely soul sitting outside by the padlocked gate. I knew the kid, but not his name—only his nickname. He used to wear a shirt that said SKATERDUDE, but the E peeled off, and from that moment on he was eternally “Skaterdud.” Like my nickname, he had grown into it, and everyone agreed it suited him to a tee. He was lanky with massively matted red hair, pink spots all over his joints from old peeled scabs, and eyes that you’d swear were looking into alternate dimensions, not all of them sane. God help the poor parents who see Skaterdud waiting at the door for their daughter on prom night.
“Hey, Dud,” I said as I approached.
“Hey.” He gave me his special eight-part handshake, and wouldn’t continue the conversation until I got it right.
“So, no turkey?” I asked.
He smirked. “I ain’t gonna miss not eatin’ no dead bird, am I?”
Skaterdud had his own language all full of double, triple, and sometimes quadruple negatives, so you never really knew if he meant what he said, or the opposite.
“So ... you’re a vegan?” I asked.
“Naah.” He patted his stomach. “Ate the dead bird early. What about you?”
I shrugged, not wanting to get into it. “This year we’re celebrating Chinese Thanksgiving.”
He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “Year of the Goat. Gotta love it.”
“So,” I asked, “isn’t the skate park closed for the winter? What, are you gonna sit here and wait till it reopens in the spring?”
He shook his head. “Unibrow said he’d come down and open it for me today. But I don’t see no Unibrow, do you?”
I sat down and leaned against the fence, figuring that chatting with Skaterdud was as good a mental distraction as any. Kind of like playing Minesweeper with a human being. We talked about school, and I was amazed at how the Dud knew more details about his teachers’ personal lives than he did about any given subject. We talked about his lipring, and how he got it to stop him from biting his nails. I nodded like I understood how the two things were related. And then we talked about Gunnar. I told him about Gunnar’s imminent death, and he looked down, picking at a peeling skull sticker on his helmet.