DURING BOB’S TWENTY-THIRD YEAR HIS MOTHER ABRUPTLY AND unexpectedly died, leaving him the mint-colored house, which she owned free and clear, the Chevy, which was two years old, and an inheritance of almost twenty thousand dollars. He was not very much burdened by her passing but made lonely by his not understanding who his mother had been in life, and why she’d had a child in the first place. She was not in any way a bad person, but disappointed, and so by extension disappointing, at least to Bob she was.
One does not anticipate premature death by disease, but his mother wasn’t surprised by the news. She asked Bob into the living room one morning to speak about what she called a few things, but it was only one thing, which was that she had cancer in her brain and would soon be dead, and this proved accurate: she retired in February and was gone by June. The last time Bob saw his mother alive was at her bedside in the hospital. She’d lost nearly half her body weight and had the attitude of someone distracted by an imminent voyage. But there was a gravity to her diminished stature that she wore well, Bob thought. Her illness was impressive, and she held in her eye a curious glimmer that hinted at the understanding of a mystery. A nurse stuck her head in the room and told Bob, “Five minutes.” The way she’d spoken these words, slow and throaty, and the way her eyes met Bob’s, he felt she was telling him it was likely time for a final goodbye. And perhaps Bob’s mother was thinking along these lines when she said, “We’ve never discussed your father.” Bob had wanted to know about his father in the past, especially when he was a young boy; but each time he had brought it up his mother had shied away. Now, as an adult, and in the context of the hospital room, he thought he didn’t want to know at all. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he told her.
“No, I don’t mind it,” she said.
“Okay, but if it’s a bad story then I’d rather not hear about it.”
“It’s not bad. Or I’ve never felt that it was.” She went quiet for long enough that Bob thought she’d forgotten what she was talking about, but then she began. “It was right in the middle of the Depression, and I was sharing an apartment with two girlfriends, and every Friday we went out somewhere, anywhere, and tried to figure out a way to have fun with about a dollar between the three of us. This night we went to a saloon that served a shot with a short beer for a nickel. So, okay, we had a few, and everything was fine until one of the gals got sick to her stomach, so that the other gal had to run her home, and now I’m all alone, and I noticed a fellow looking at me from over in the corner, there — stealing glances when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. But I was paying attention. He was kind of usual-looking, but he had a nice enough suit of clothes on, respectable — but sad. Well, he did look that way, Bob.”
“Sad.”
“Yes. Like something was the matter in his life. For all I know he was always like that, but I had a hunch he was only blue that night, or that week, and I found myself wondering what the problem was, and if there wasn’t maybe something I could do to cheer him up. So what I did, I got up and took my last ten cents and ordered us a shot and chaser apiece, then went over with the drinks on a tray and I set them down on the table and told him, ‘Hello, I’m buying you a drink. Because buster, you look sadder than an old bandage floating in a cold bathtub!’” Bob’s mother was grinning at her memory of this. “Oh, I got him laughing. He had a nice laugh. And you know, sometimes that’s all it takes to make a person funny — to have someone laugh at what you’re saying. But I hit a streak, the way you sometimes do, and it got so that he was slapping the table, and this was how your father and I made friends. Well, he bought the next couple rounds, then he says he’d like to see me home.” Bob’s mother paused to cover and uncover her eyes. “Next morning, and we were not at our best, but there weren’t any sour grapes there, you know what I mean? I was never any grand romancer, but this young lady lived somewhat, and I can tell you that the next morning sometimes is damned awkward, and even awful. Because there are nasty, unhappy men walking around out there, Bob, and they like to trick you into thinking they’re one way, then when it’s too late they show you who they really are. But this guy? He was still the same in the morning as he was in the night — he was himself, and he was, just, good. So, we talked through the morning, and I made him a little breakfast, and we shared a cigarette and there was the question of, what was going to happen? But then the spell of us sort of blinked off, and he stood up and said he should be going — he had to go, he said. And probably it was wishful thinking on my part but it seemed like maybe he wanted to stay longer, for us to spend more time together.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do I look like him?”
“No, not really.”
“Why didn’t you see him again?”
“I don’t know, Bob. Maybe he was married, or engaged. Maybe he had kids. Who knows?” She shrugged. “But, I wanted you to understand that the story of your father and me is a small story, but that doesn’t mean it’s an unhappy one. I can’t pretend to’ve loved the man, or even to’ve known him, but I liked him, okay? And he liked me too. And that’s not so bad a thing, when you consider all the hell people put each other through.” Bob’s seventy-five-pound mother lay there saying these things to him, her hand folded in a bony clutch, the hospital sheet yanked up to her chin. The nurse returned and told Bob it was time to let his mother rest, and he left.
There were no decisions to be made in terms of the funeral ceremony because every detail had been addressed by Bob’s mother. There were ten or eleven people in attendance; Bob recognized certain of them, women his mother had worked with, some with their husbands, none of whom introduced themselves. It occurred to Bob that these individuals were likely looking at him not as the son of the deceased but as the burden she had shouldered in her lifetime — the infamous bastard child in the flesh. A priest gave a reading of familiar, possibly overfamiliar Bible texts; it was like listening to a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, where the words formed shapes on the air, but the meaning of the words was absent. Bob’s mother’s vessel was witness to this from the comfort of the coffin, which was open just enough that one could view the top of her hair and a small, shadowy segment of the side of her face. Bob had noticed this coffin arrangement when he entered the room but had no reaction to it at first. But soon and he began to dislike it, mildly, then less mildly. There was a funeral matron standing at the head of the pews; when the coffin situation became problematic for Bob, he left his seat and walked up to meet her. “Hello,” he said.
“Well hello to you,” she replied.
Bob explained that he was the son of the deceased and the funeral matron gave his arm a squeeze of sympathy with her white-gloved hand. She asked if he was satisfied with the arrangements and he said he was, but that he was curious about the coffin. Why was it set up like that?
“Like what, sir?”
“Open just a little bit.”
The matron modulated her voice to near a whisper. “The coffin is as requested by the department.”
Bob was alarmed. “Which department do you mean?”
The woman’s eyes suddenly widened and a blush drew up her throat. “Excuse me, my goodness! Not department. Departed.” She exhaled, collecting herself. “The casket is displayed as per your mother’s preference.”