My father was late that night. He was never late – even on payday.
"How is he?" my mother asked before he had his coat off.
"He can't stand the pain in his stomach; it's pretty bad I guess . . . I don't think he's gonna' make it through the night." This was 1928, and pain like that – doubling up pain that never went away – could only mean only one thing.
My mother was firm. "Well, he ain't comin' here. I got enough to do!" There was no question about it; he was not coming here, and she certainly did have enough to do. The apartment was crowded; clothes hung everywhere. My father's brother and sister had moved in with us, and I had to sleep in the parlor on a horsehair sofa next to an old upright piano.
Nobody had a good word to say for the old man anyway. The highest rung he reached on the ladder of life was weekend bartender at Shorty's over on Clausson Avenue. Part-time steam-fitter, part-time fireman, part-time drunk, and full-time gambler. His wife, my paternal grandmother who had four children in the shortest possible time, died in the great flu epidemic of 1919, and as a part-time husband, I think my grandfather was tending bar at the time. He never remarried and left the upbringing of the four children in the hands of the eldest.
But my father was fond of him. He was the only one of the children with a son of his own. He was also the youngest, and he probably never got to know him as well as the others did.
"I don't want him here neither," my father backed away. "It's just that we gotta do somethin'. I think we should put him in a hospital maybe . . . Is Fred home yet?"
Fred, his older brother, slept in the bedroom that should have been mine. He wore an undershirt to the dinner table. It was rare to see him without a Camel in his mouth, one behind his ear, and a racing form under his arm. In an emergency like this he was of no use whatsoever.
Fred was home, and together the two of them walked over to my grandfather's flat to see what they could do about getting him into Saint Theresa's Hospital. They were too late. The pain in the stomach was gone and had left the part-time husband and father in peace. Fred nervously lit another Camel, and my father, with a soggy Muriel clamped in his teeth, decided they couldn't handle this alone. They got the super. Supers could do anything . . . fix a faucet, snake out a drain, or speed the departure of a deceased tenant. By tomorrow afternoon somebody else would be living there – none the wiser. In the blink of an eye, the man from O'Dell's funeral parlor was on the scene with a canvas bag, a coffin brochure, and the medical examiner. Within an hour the old man was turned over to O'Dell.
My father later blamed the decision to have him 'laid out' at home on Fred, and he in turn said he had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was O'Dell's decision. You know how men are – a few of them get together and decide something and then can't remember whose idea it was. One of them decided anyway, and that was the end of my childhood innocence concerning life and death. I was going to have a roommate for a day or two. Old grandpa never got invited to our house while he was alive. Now that he was dead, he was going to share the living room with me and the upright piano. I put up a howl when I heard the news. So did my mother, who never wanted him in the house alive let alone dead.
"It's too late now, goddammit . . . O'Dell's bringin' him over tomorrow afternoon. It'll only be a day or two."
"I ain't sleepin' with him," I bawled, "I never slept in a room with a dead man!"
"He's right, Henry . . . you can't make a child his age sleep next to a coffin. You sleep in the parlor and he can sleep with me."
I could tell from that look on my father's face, a look I had seen so many times – a tightening of the upper lip and a sideways twitch of the jaw – that he knew it wasn't going to work out well at all. I suspect he let O'Dell call the shot. It was late winter, all the funeral parlors were full, and the only way he could handle it was to lay him out at home.
The next day was a landmark day for me. . . the day a dead man came to live with us. I couldn't wait to get out of the apartment and off to school in the morning. My father left first, still nursing the tight upper lip and the sideways twitch of his jaw. He gave my mother a peck and promised to be home early. Fred scuttled out so fast his Camel was still unlit, and my Aunt, knowing we didn't have a phone, said, "Call me if you need me."
It was the first time in my life I wondered what was going on back home while I was away. I could see, in all its gruesome detail, Mr. O'Dell carrying grandpa up the stairs in a canvas bag, powdered and rouged to spend a night or two with his family before taking off for Evergreen. I hoped he'd get there before I did. What would it be like having a dead man in the living room? There would be relatives I'd never seen before – I didn't like it at all!
When school was out I dawdled along, looking in store windows – I even did my homework in the library. It was dark when I finally got the courage to get home. There on the door were the waxy black calax leaves we used to call the "dead man's corsage." Taking a long breath. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.
"Is he here yet?" I asked.
My mother was wearing a black dress I'd never seen before. She was wearing an apron over it, and I could smell something sweet.
"Come on in, wash your hands, and I'll take you in to see him – don't be afraid, he won't bite."
The sweet smell grew stronger as we approached the living room. It was the flowers. There was a giant standing bouquet from the volunteer fire department. I had completely forgotten Grandpa was a volunteer fireman. Mother pushed me up to the coffin, but I was too short to see anything but the tip of Grandpa's nose. That would have been enough for me, but mother picked me up so I could get a better look. There he was in his fireman's uniform – his hat was on the lid covering his feet. He looked the picture of health, much better in fact than most of us did this time of the year. It wasn't so bad, really. But I was glad when my mother put me down.
"I'm hungry, Ma – we gonna' eat soon?"
All five of us ate early. We got the dishes done, and by seven o'clock we were sitting in the living room with Grandpa waiting for the first visitors to arrive. There weren't any. My grandfather didn't have many friends, and those he did have probably didn't know he was dead. Tomorrow night was the big night. That's when Pastor Tremayne and a delegation from the fire department would be there for the wake.
We'd about given up when my grandfather's sister arrived. She couldn't be there for the wake the following night. I don't think she had seen my grandfather since his wife died, but she put up such a show of grief that one might think they had been inseparable. She had a cup of tea in the kitchen before leaving – "What will I do without him?" she sobbed, "I'll try and make the 'layin' in' . . . day after tomorrow, you said, right?" Then she had to go.
Here it was nine o'clock, and Grandpa hadn't drawn much of a crowd. O'Dell came in with a little black make-up kit to check on his appearance and said he'd be back again tomorrow night before the service. That's when my father closed the lid on the coffin abruptly and said, "Let's all go to bed."
I lay next to my mother and wondered how my father was getting along in the next room. I could hear him sneezing, and I nudged my mother and said, "That's not grandpa, is it?"
She went in to see and came back with my father. He got into bed, with me between them – just like old times. He never realized he was allergic to gardenias. It took him a while to quiet down.
"Did'ja ever sleep between your mother and father, pop?"
"Shut up and go to sleep," he answered.