There were bugs, she remembers. Bugs, and strange phantom sounds that kept her up at night. Wind brushing the loose fabric of the tent. The sense of a million eyes watching her when she crept out to pee. She hardly slept. She wishes she’d chosen another picture.
The priest speaks about Bill fighting admirably against the sickness that took him, about him being in God’s hands now, and about faith being a bedrock. His voice is too lulling. Donna worries that the hundred or so people who’ve gathered to pay their respects to her husband might drift off and fall asleep. She tries to remember the last time she and Bill were in this church. A decade ago, probably. Could easily be more. She wonders how the priest cobbles together his eulogies in situations like this: if he has a stash of ecclesiastical Mad Libs for those occurrences when he has to preside over the death of a total stranger.
She thinks of her children. She wants to drill inside their heads, to split them open and excavate their thoughts. She wants to know what they are feeling, and what forms those feelings take. Are they enduring the same bowel-loosening cocktail of heartbreak, memory, grief, and, above all, regret? Do they, too, feel daunted by the years of obscure and shapeless loneliness that now lie before them? And amid all that, do they find themselves clinging to the unexpected and sickening bits of pleasure that come from having a dead father? All that wonderful sympathy and attention?
Eloise reaches over to hold Alice’s hand: Alice, whose eyes are enviously dull, Donna thinks, like she’s watching a rerun on mute. Over a sullen breakfast that morning, Paul accused her of taking more Klonopin than what her doctors in Mexico City had prescribed.
“I saw you this morning in the bathroom,” he yelled, throwing two cold eggs and a piece of toast into the trash compactor. “It’s like you want to look like some dead, lifeless fish at your own dad’s service.”
“It’s a funeral, Paul,” Alice had said. “What were you hoping I’d do, the fucking Macarena?”
Donna had tried halfheartedly to prevent a fight from erupting, and when Eloise stepped in to play peacemaker, she’d slipped upstairs to the bathroom that Paul and Alice shared. She rummaged through the amber vials in her daughter’s toiletries bag until she found one labeled Clonazepam (generic for Klonopin), and, unscrewing the childproof top, she shook three of the tiny yellow pills onto her palm. Paul and Alice continued fighting directly below her—their voices pressed up against her feet—as she neatly lined the Klonopin up along the center of her tongue. In a moment she felt the tablets melting, mixing with her saliva. They tasted sweet, which surprised her, not at all chalky and medicinal, like aspirin, but more like cheap drugstore candy. But then something gripped her. Responsibility, she figured. Or, perhaps more accurately: guilt. She spit the pills into the toilet bowl and watched as they danced toward the bottom, staining the water gold.
“And now it’s my understanding that we’ve got some folks who’d like to say a few words about Bill.”
Feedback whines over the speakers.
The priest adjusts the microphone pinned to his robe.
“And so first I’d like to introduce Bill’s son, Paul Wesley Wyckoff.”
Contained and apprehensive applause ripples through the church. At the far end of the pew, Paul stands up and quickly brushes the wrinkles from his suit. In his right hand he clutches a set of papers—a speech—folded in half.
“Hello,” he says, once he reaches the podium. “I, uh. Excuse me.” He unfolds the speech. His voice cracks.
Donna wishes she’d taken Alice’s pills when she had the chance. Because now her spine sweats and bile churns at the base of her throat. She swallows hard, and worries that she might vomit.
April 5, 2008
Donna hangs up the phone.
“Well, there you have it,” she calls into the kitchen. When Paul called, he asked if both his parents could be on the phone. Donna took the old one in the living room, and Bill cradled the cordless next to the stove.
She looks at the vase of hydrangeas sitting on the coffee table and waits for her husband to say something.
When he doesn’t, she says: “At least now we can stop pretending to be interested whenever he talks about some girl he’s just met.”
Looking at her nails, she frowns: they’re a mess. A bunch of chipped paint and shreds of ragged cuticle skin. She’ll drive to the Charlestowne Mall tomorrow and get a manicure.
Bill appears in the doorway that leads from the living room to the kitchen. He’s poured two glasses of red wine, big ones, and she can tell he’s already had one without her. He frowns at something imperceptible; he moves with drunk determination.
“I can’t believe it,” he says.
“What, that Paul’s gay?” Donna reaches forward and readjusts the vase; the hydrangeas were off-center. “Oh please, Bill. He collected My Little Ponies as a kid. His favorite movie was Sister Act.”
Bill collapses into his armchair—an old leather mound with a torn back that Donna’s been waging a war of attrition against since they got married.
“Maybe he’ll grow out of it,” he says.
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.”
He swallows half his glass of wine and sets it on a side table, next to a copy of the second volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson.
“He needs to grow out of it,” he says this time.
Donna balks. “I’m sorry, what is this? Nineteen fifty-seven? Is Eisenhower still president? Our son’s gay, Bill. People are gay. THERE ARE GAYS AMONG US. You were fine when Dick and Judy Parsons’s daughter came out as a lesbian, why—”
“That wasn’t our own kid. And lower your voice.”
“What, you’re afraid that the neighbors might hear us?” She stares at her glass of wine, but she doesn’t touch it; she’s too infuriated to drink. “We’ve talked about this. When he was sixteen and we thought there might be a chance, we talked about what we’d do if he ever came out.”
Bill shakes his head. “That was all just speculation. It wasn’t real. This—this is real.”
“He was hoarding copies of International Male catalogs beneath his bed!”
“You were snooping.”
Donna wants to scream. Instead, she grabs the nearest throw pillow and presses it against her face, breathing into the frayed silk. That tone that she so hates has begun to creep into his voice; a cadence and tenor that reminds her of the way her own father kept her mother in check. You and the kids can play like you’re in charge—that’s what she knows he’s actually saying. But at the end of the day, I pay the bills.
Bill clears his throat.
“He needs to figure this out before he comes home again.”
Donna lowers the pillow.
“Figure what out? This is nuts.”
“He needs to get over this ‘I’m gay’ crap. Until that happens, he’s not welcome here.”
She doesn’t know whether to laugh or throw the vase at him, hydrangeas and all. Studying his face, she waits for him to take it back, to soften the blow, to realize his own sudden absurdity.
And when he doesn’t, she simply says: “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no, Bill. No. He’s our son. He can come home whenever he damned well pleases.”