“That’s Wisconsin.”
“What’s Ohio got?”
“Buckeyes.”
“I’m not even goin’ there.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mary White smelled of sweet perfume and mixed feelings when she greeted me at the door of her house. I think she was glad to see me as I was one of the few living connections to the best months of her brother’s life, but unhappy about why I’d come. I wasn’t too thrilled about that part myself.
“Come on in the kitchen. I’ll make us some tea.”
Jews are comfortable in the kitchen. As a people, we find vast comfort in food. We aren’t great cooks, but we are great eaters. I sat at the Formica table and watched Mary fuss with her pot and cups. She seemed out of sorts. But what did I know about her, really? We’d only met once before-at Patrick’s funeral-and spoken a couple of times on the phone. I did think having me there made her a little nervous. As heavy as Jack had been skinny, Mary wasn’t the type of woman to have had droves of gentlemen callers. She kind of reminded me of my Great Aunt Florence. Nice, but a bit socially awkward. A spinster, my mother called her. What an odd word, spinster.
The little brick house on the outskirts of Dayton was a 1950s museum piece: neat and clean and with all the original equipment. Mary caught me staring.
“This was our folks’ house and I inherited it. I suppose if Jack had lived longer, we might have sold it eventually. When you’re done with your tea, I’ll show you Jack’s old room.”
Walking around Jack’s perfectly preserved boyhood room was more than a bit spooky and only reinforced that museum feel. It was also reminiscent of my first visit to the Maloneys’ house. It was the second time Katy and I were together. The first time, we’d stood over a floater that had surfaced in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. The cops thought it might’ve been Patrick. I couldn’t help thinking things might’ve been easier if the body had been Patrick’s. Anyway, Katy showed me Patrick’s room that day much as Mary was showing me Jack’s.
But in the Maloneys’ living room, there’d been a shrine to the family’s real pride and joy, Francis Jr. There were glass display cases that held all of the dead pilot’s high school trophies, his game balls, ribbons, loving cups, and assorted memorabilia. The cases also held photos of him in his dress Navy blues, his wings, and posthumously awarded medals. Katy had since given the game balls and other sports memorabilia to the high school and packed most of the other stuff away. There were no such displays here. Jack told me once that when he came out to his parents, they thought the solution was for him to go to more Reds games with his dad. They weren’t the kind of people to build shrines to their gay son.
I offered to take us over to the cemetery, but Mary insisted on driving. We made small talk on the way, Mary chatting about the nearby Air Force base, indicating local points of interest. Given the circumstances surrounding my visit, I wasn’t terribly interested. As we neared the cemetery, her conversation took a more serious turn.
“I don’t know what you hope to find, Mr. Prager. Like I said on the phone this morning when you called, I got rid of all the roses and I scrubbed the painting off the stone myself.”
“Why’d you do that, scrub the paint off, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I was angry, I guess. I want Jack to rest in peace, not to be part of…” She collected herself. “I just want peace is all, for Jack and myself.”
That was easy enough to understand. I had been pretty vague with her that morning about what had been done to Patrick’s grave, but I thought the time had come to tell her all the details.
“My lord!” Mary slammed on the brakes. And to her credit, it wasn’t lip service. She seemed utterly horrified by what I described. “I’m so sorry, so very sorry.” She repeated it several times as we made our way slowly to the gravesite.
“It’s okay, Mary, it wasn’t your doing.”
“This is it.”
We’d stopped along the way to buy some flowers-not roses-to lay on Jack’s headstone. When Mary turned off the car, we both reached into the backseat to collect our bouquets. I asked Mary for a minute by the grave alone. She hesitated, her earlier discomfort once again showing through.
“Go on,” she said, if not happily.
I wasn’t a grave talker. I took no solace in speaking to bones, grass, and granite. Besides, it’s not like Jack and I were old buddies. I liked what little I knew of him and he had seemed really in love with Patrick. No small accomplishment. Although I didn’t know Patrick, I’d learned a lot about him during the course of my search for him. Much of what I learned, I didn’t like. I didn’t care that he was gay: not then, not now. I even felt sorry that he suffered from paralyzing OCD, but he could be a bully like his father. He’d even gotten physical with a girl he dated while working through his sexual identity. No, I hadn’t requested the time alone to chew the fat with Jack about his old boyfriend.
Like Mary said, the roses were gone, but I could see where she’d scrubbed the paint off the back of the small headstone. It wasn’t a grand thing, Jack’s tombstone. It was a low chunk of beveled granite: tasteful, modest, Midwestern. I liked that. I liked that a lot. I laid my flowers down and extended my hand to Mary.
While not exactly Father Blaney, Mary wasn’t much for touchy-feely either. She sort of winced when I held out my hand. I remembered her being warmer when we had her to New York, but this was her home turf and this was her brother’s grave. Patrick had been an abstraction to her, someone who only existed in her brother’s phone calls and letters. So his burial, twenty years after the fact, was almost surreal. Jack, on the other hand, had been very real to her.
“Hi, Jack,” she said, laying down her flowers, “Mr. Prager, Patrick’s brother-in-law, has come all the way out from New York to see you…”
I sort of tuned out to the rest of her chat. Mary was right, there wasn’t much to see. But sometimes you have to see for yourself that there’s nothing to see. It was like when I looked at the envelope in the office. I didn’t figure there’d be anything on it, but I had to look for myself. Suddenly, I was feeling pretty beat. There’d be time to rest that night. I was going to stay over in Cincinnati and fly out early in the morning.
When Mary was done, I picked up a pebble and placed it on Jack’s headstone. I did it without thinking. I noticed Mary staring at me and not with a glad expression.
“Why did you do that?”
“Habit. It’s a Jewish tradition.”
“But what is it for?”
“You know, Mary, I think it serves a lot of purposes. It shows other mourners that the person buried by that headstone isn’t forgotten. I guess it also lets the spirit of the person buried there know too, though I don’t think that’s in the Talmud. But a wise man I loved very much once told me it was symbolic of adding to the mound, to show that a memorial was an ongoing thing and would never truly be finished.”
“Oh.”
“I meant no disrespect. Would you like me to remove it?”
Her mouth said no, but her body language said yes. I chose to take her at her word. That’s what Israel Roth would have done. For the second time in two days I remembered our visit to the cemetery all those years ago. I was smiling as we pulled away, remembering Mr. Roth. I also saw that Mary could not take her eyes off that pebble.
I asked Mary if she’d like to go to dinner, on me, of course. She said no. I tried to contain my disappointment. It meant I’d have time to get a lot of rest and maybe call one or two of Jack’s old students. Not that I thought talking to them would get me anywhere, but again, I just wanted to hear it for myself. At first, Mary was reluctant to share any of the names or numbers with me, though she eventually relented. Again, I understood. Mary just wanted this over with so she could get back to the way things were. She liked her routines. The older you get, the less you like change. And the disturbance of her brother’s grave was a little more serious a change of routine than her dry cleaners moving to a new location.