The coroner leads us to the basement and slips through a door, leaving us in the hall. After a few minutes a nurse appears, holding the door open in wordless invitation.
There are no windows. There is a clock on one wall, but the room is otherwise bare. The floor is linoleum, olive green and white, and in the middle are two gurneys. Each has a sheet-covered body on it. I can’t process this. I can’t even tell which end is which.
“Are you ready?” the coroner asks, moving between them.
I swallow and nod. A hand appears on my shoulder. It belongs to the superintendent.
The coroner exposes first my father and then my mother.
They don’t look like my parents, and yet they can’t be anyone else.
Death is all over them—in the mottled patterns of their battered torsos, the eggplant purple on bloodless white; in the sinking, hollowed eye sockets. My mother—so pretty and meticulous in life—wears a stiff grimace in death. Her hair is matted and bloodied, pressed into the hollow of her crushed skull. Her mouth is open, her chin receding as though she were snoring.
I turn as vomit explodes from my mouth. Someone is there with a kidney dish, but I overshoot and hear liquid splash across the floor, splattering against the wall. Hear it, because my eyes are squeezed shut. I vomit again and again, until there’s nothing left. Despite this, I remain doubled over and heaving until I wonder if it’s possible to turn inside out.
THEY TAKE ME SOMEWHERE and plant me in a chair. A kindly nurse in a starched white uniform brings coffee, which sits on the table next to me until it grows cold.
Later, the chaplain comes and sits beside me. He asks if there is anyone he can call. I mumble that all my relatives are in Poland. He asks about neighbors and members of our church, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a single name. Not one. I’m not sure I could come up with my own if asked.
When he leaves I slip out. It’s a little over two miles to our house, and I arrive just as the last sliver of sun slips beneath the horizon.
The driveway is empty. Of course.
I stop in the backyard, holding my valise and staring at the long flat building behind the house. There’s a new sign above the entrance, the lettering glossy and black:
E. JANKOWSKI AND SON
Doctors of Veterinary Medicine
After a while I turn to the house, climb the stoop, and push open the back door.
My father’s prized possession—a Philco radio—sits on the kitchen counter. My mother’s blue sweater hangs on the back of a chair. There are ironed linens on the kitchen table, a vase of wilting violets. An overturned mixing bowl, two plates, and a handful of cutlery set to dry on a checked dish towel spread out by the sink.
This morning, I had parents. This morning, they ate breakfast.
I fall to my knees, right there on the back stoop, howling into splayed hands.
THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH auxiliary, alerted to my return by the superintendent’s wife, swoop down on me within the hour.
I’m still on the stoop, my face pressed into my knees. I hear gravel crunching under tires, car doors slamming, and next thing I know I’m surrounded by doughy flesh, flowered prints, and gloved hands. I am pressed against soft bosoms, poked by veiled hats, and engulfed by jasmine, lavender, and rose water. Death is a formal affair, and they’re dressed in their Sunday best. They pat and they fuss, and above all, they cluck.
Such a shame, such a shame. And such good people, too. It’s hard to make sense of such a tragedy, surely it is, but the good Lord works in mysterious ways. They will take care of everything. The guest room at Jim and Mabel Neurater’s house is already made up. I am not to worry about a thing.
They take my valise and herd me toward the running car. A grim-faced Jim Neurater is behind the wheel, gripping it with both hands.
TWO DAYS AFTER I BURY my parents, I am summoned to the offices of Edmund Hyde, Esquire, to hear the details of their estate. I sit in a hard leather chair across from the man himself as it gradually sinks in that there is nothing to discuss. At first I think he’s mocking me. Apparently my father has been taking payment in the form of beans and eggs for nearly two years.
“Beans and eggs?” My voice cracks in disbelief. “Beans and eggs?”
“And chickens. And other goods.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s what people have, son. The community’s been hit right hard, and your father was trying to help out. Couldn’t stand by and watch animals suffer.”
“But . . . I don’t understand. Even if he took payment in, uh, whatever, how does that make everything belong to the bank?”
“They fell behind on their mortgage.”
“My parents didn’t have a mortgage.”
He looks uncomfortable. Holds his steepled fingers in front of him. “Well, yes, actually, they did.”
“No, they didn’t,” I argue. “They’ve lived here for nearly thirty years. My father put away every cent he ever made.”
“The bank failed.”
I narrow my eyes. “I thought you just said it all goes to the bank.”
He sighs deeply. “It’s a different bank. The one that gave them the mortgage when the other one closed,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s trying to give the appearance of patience and failing miserably or is blatantly trying to make me leave.
I pause, weighing my options.
“What about the things in the house? In the practice?” I say finally.
“It all goes to the bank.”
“What if I want to fight it?”
“How?”
“What if I come back and take over the practice and try to make the payments?”
“It doesn’t work like that. It’s not yours to take over.”
I stare at Edmund Hyde, in his expensive suit, behind his expensive desk, in front of his leather-bound books. Behind him, the sun streaks through lead-paned windows. I am filled with sudden loathing—I’ll bet he’s never taken payment in the form of beans and eggs in his life.
I lean forward and make eye contact. I want this to be his problem, too. “What am I supposed to do?” I ask slowly.
“I don’t know, son. I wish I did. The country’s fallen on hard times, and that’s a fact.” He leans back in his chair, his fingers still steepled. He cocks his head, as though an idea has just occurred to him. “I suppose you could go west,” he muses.
It dawns on me that if I don’t get out of this office right now, I’m going to slug him. I rise, replace my hat, and leave.
When I reach the sidewalk something else dawns on me. I can think of only one reason my parents would need a mortgage: to pay my Ivy League tuition.
The pain from this sudden realization is so intense I double over, clutching my stomach.
BECAUSE NO OTHER options occur to me, I return to school—a temporary solution at best. My room and board is paid up until the end of the year, but that is only six days away.
I’ve missed the entire week of review lectures. Everyone is eager to help. Catherine hands me her notes and then hugs me in a way that suggests I might get different results if I were to attempt the usual quest. I pull away. For the first time in living memory, I have no interest in sex.
I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. And I certainly can’t study. I stare at a single paragraph for a quarter of an hour but can’t absorb it. How can I, when behind the words, on the white background of the paper, I’m watching an endless loop of my parents’ deaths? Watching as their cream-colored Buick flies through the guardrail and over the side of the bridge to avoid old Mr. McPherson’s red truck? Old Mr. McPherson, who confessed as he was led from the scene that he wasn’t entirely sure what side of the road he should have been on and thinks that maybe he hit the gas instead of the brake? Old Mr. McPherson, who showed up at church one legendary Easter without trousers?