Last Call (19 page)

Atop the Empire State Building Rosamond peers with delight through the large coin-operated telescopes in an effort to find all the landmarks with which they’ve recently become familiar—the nearby Chrysler Building, with its gleaming art deco spire, the block-sized Museum of Natural History, and the great green expanse of Central Park. Who would have imagined that so many sober-looking gray apartment buildings were crowned by roof gardens with flowers, trees, and even swimming pools. Off in the distance it’s possible to see the domed Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower with its enormous illuminated clock.

Joey runs from side to side trying to find the best place to take a picture. It also occurs to him that he should ask for a telescope for his birthday since he could then spy on Mrs. Trummel’s daughter Donna, who often comes home on weekends. Hayden briefly considers jumping from the observation deck when his time comes, but apparently insurance companies had already thought of that and carefully constructed barriers, making it impossible to leap to one’s death without employing a rope and grappling hook.

When they pull into the driveway back home Hayden is still reveling in playing the resident curmudgeon. “We get a better view o’ Manhattan from the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower right here in Brooklyn. And it do’an’ cost any ten dollars to stand on line for over an hour just to ride up in a crowded elevator.”

The three tourists enter the house and find Diana leaning over the lacquered maple table with sheaves of papers and envelopes haphazardly spread out in front of her. Hayden’s first thought is that after having left a copy of his will and insurance policy to review, for the twentieth time, she’s finally set out to get organized. However, her eyes are red from weeping and smeared mascara streaks her cheeks.

“Oh Dad! Joey!” She rushes to the entranceway and grabs all three of them. “I didn’t even hear the car pull into the driveway.” Her lips tremble and then her mouth draws tight. “Dominick died this morning! The scaffolding outside his dorm room collapsed—a freak accident.”

Dominick was her younger sister Linda’s eighteen-year-old stepson, who’d been attending college in Washington, D.C. But because he’d moved to Honolulu with his mom and her new husband when he was still in elementary school, they only vaguely knew of him.

Diana clutches Joey and Hayden and Rosamond in a group hug as if they are the ones who just barely escaped a fluke construction accident. Eventually she snuffles loudly, lets her arms drop to her sides, and searches for a tissue to blow her nose.

Hayden examines the jumble of papers she’s been sorting through—old car payment books, rent stubs, canceled checks, and death certificates.

“I’m trying to find a list of our funeral plots,” explains Diana between blowing her nose and wiping away the teardrops that are still forming in pools against her bottom lashes. “Linda said that she thought Grandpa Arthur owned some gravesites at Lakewood Cemetery.”

“But why would they want Dominick buried with
our
family?” asks Hayden. Not that he minds. It’s his view that death is a personal matter and people should do whatever they want.

“It sounds as if Dominick wasn’t very happy in Honolulu. His mother’s marriage is on the rocks again and she’s had another one of her breakdowns,” says Diana. “So they don’t really live anywhere right now.”

“I always thought it was Ted who drove his first wife mental by makin’ her put on those silly hats and gloves when he was campaigning,” inserts Hayden. “The big Jackie O. sunglasses she always wore I understood, what with those teeth of his—”

“Dad, not now,” Diana scolds through her tears. “Anyway, his grandparents, who still live here, are organizing the funeral. It seems that Ted and Dominick had some sort of falling out back when he was in high school. I guess that’s why we never met him.”

“Still, it’s his son,” says Hayden. “And Ted’s mattress is so loaded with money I’m surprised he can sleep at night.”

“Ted wants him to be cremated. Apparently there’s a big flap in New Jersey politics about the land that will be needed for cemeteries if the burial rate doesn’t go down. But the grandparents are Italian Catholic and they’re going crazy. So Linda thought that if we gave them a plot that we don’t need it would stop all the arguing.”

“Well, she’s right,” says Hayden. “I mean, she’s right that Mary’s dad did own half a dozen plots at Lakewood up in Westchester. But he sold them off to foot the bills for your grandma Phoebe’s nursing home. There’s only one left—mine.”

“Oh.” And although Diana releases an involuntary shudder at the mention of Hayden’s grave she also realizes that she can’t blame him for bringing it up, at least not this time. “Oh,” she repeats and begins gathering up the papers.

“Give it to them.” Hayden hands her the cordless phone. “I do’an’ want it.”

“But it’s next to Mom. And what if I want it or . . .” Diana hesitates before she can add “Joey,” wanting to avoid bringing up the worst-case possible scenario, that her son should predecease her. Or else put a curse on him. “Dominick never even met Mom . . .”

“It’s not like being buried is a networking opportunity, Diana.” Hayden solemnly nods his head toward the phone to indicate that she should call her sister. “I loved your mother very much and she’ll always be in my heart, but I just do’an’ want to be buried, simple as that. Not at Lakewood, not anywhere. Your mum and I lived our lives together, ’til death did we part. And even though it’s not going to be eternal, it was nonetheless very blessed.”

Diana is conflicted but finally takes the phone and offers the gravesite to her sister’s family. What follows is a lot of “No, no . . . we couldn’t possibly . . .” by Linda and her husband, Ted, Dominick’s father. Finally Hayden gets on the line to conclude the negotiations, which he does in less than a minute, by making Linda and Ted feel as if they’ll be doing Hayden a favor by taking the plot off his hands. And despite the fact that the circumstances of the conversation are abysmal, in an odd way it cheers Hayden to know he hasn’t lost his touch—since all that is left for him now is the big close, The Final Sale, the one that only pays a commission to your beneficiaries.

After some more to-ing and fro-ing about deed and plot number it’s agreed that the Brooklynites will drive the paperwork over to Linda’s house in Flemington, New Jersey.

The three MacBrides and Rosamond silently clamber into the station wagon. Without saying a word Diana hands Hayden her car keys, a sign that she must indeed be terribly distraught. She knows that he’s still a capable driver, otherwise she would never let him squire around his grandson, but since the diagnosis he’d been relegated to passenger status anytime they ventured out together.

“You definitely don’t want to be buried then?” Diana asks Hayden as they leave the neighborhood.

“Nope!” Hayden glances in the rearview mirror to see if Rosamond displays any reaction to this statement. But she appears not to have heard. She looks serene sitting there and silently gazing out the window, like a dove with its wings folded.

Indeed, Rosamond is contemplating all the unexpected turns that life can take, and how death can arrive suddenly, announcing itself loud and clear, or else sneak in like a bank robber under the cloak of night.

“Joey’s going to scatter my ashes,” Hayden continues. “He knows where.”

“I can only imagine.” Diana rolls her eyes up toward the sun visor and releases a sigh that threatens to fog the vanity mirror.

Hayden knows his daughter is envisioning the ballpark, and not the toboggan run where Diana and Linda used to love to be taken when they were little girls.

“I’d still like to have a memorial service for you.” Diana doesn’t turn to look at Hayden as she says this. Instead, she reflexively checks the intersection ahead for oncoming traffic. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine. But no prayers. Just poetry or a personal memory.” Hayden raises his voice slightly so that Joey can hear him from the backseat. “Joey, how’d you like to recite a poem at Grandpa’s funeral?”

“Do I have to memorize it?” Joey asks.

God, to be eleven again, thinks Hayden.

“No. Just read it out of a book. Anything by Robbie Burns will do.”

“Of course you’ll memorize it!” Diana says curtly to the backseat. “Of course he’ll memorize it,” she assures Hayden in a more soothing tone.

“Then you’d better go with ‘Scotch Drink,’ bein’ it’s one of the shortest.”

Diana’s good humor begins to evaporate with the suggestion of odes to alcohol at Hayden’s funeral. “I’m sure Joey will have no problem memorizing something longer. After all, he seems to have no trouble with Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lochinvar.’ All
eight
stanzas.”

“Whatever you want,” says Joey.

Joey is an easy kid in most ways, muses Hayden. You could give a person like that a job where he has to be on the road and he’ll get the work done without constant supervision.

“Anything else?” asks Diana.

“Yes,” says Hayden. “I just read a new study saying that oncology patients live longer if they have a dog. I’d like to get a dog. Maybe a border collie or a Labrador.”

“Dad, what about Joey’s asthma?”

“So we’ll get a doghouse.”

This time he catches a faint smile on Rosamond’s lips. Hayden steers the car under the viaduct and they pass the Little League fields where boys and girls in brightly colored mesh shirts and white stretch pants dot the neatly mowed baseball diamonds. With the windows rolled down it’s impossible to ignore the loud whoops coming up from the set of bleachers nearest the roadway.

In the rearview mirror Hayden sees Joey trying to catch a glimpse of the game that is providing all the excitement. “Can you see anything Joe-Joe? Is it a double? A homer?” But the light flickers green and Hayden must turn the car in the opposite direction.

Upon hearing her son’s name Diana instinctively swivels her head to check on Joey in the backseat. Who will be Joey’s best friend when Hayden is gone? she wonders. For the first time, Diana considers that she may have made a parenting mistake with regard to baseball. It was so difficult being the single mother of a growing boy. After a moment’s pause she asks her son, “Honey, do they give you one of those uniforms or do we have to buy it?”

Joey suddenly bobs up between the two seats like a hungry seal about to be fed a fish. “They fund-raise. Why? Can I really play baseball?” he asks incredulously. It’s become such a lost cause that he’s even abandoned his regular Saturday morning pleading sessions. He can’t believe what he’s hearing! Thank God that Rosie and his grandfather are witnesses to this miracle. “You heard what she said, right, Grandpa?”

“From her lips to my ears,” confirms Hayden.

“Well, you’d better wear one of those hardhats,” insists Diana.

“It’s a
helmet
, Mom. You wear it to bat,” he shoots back, a result of reflex annoyance and sheer disbelief.

“I don’t care what they call it, you’d just better wear it, the
whole
time. I’ve got enough gray hair on my head as things are right now, and don’t want it to turn white overnight. All I need is a child with brain damage or amnesia. Or worse, a son in a coma.”

chapter thirty-two

T
hey drive through Bay Ridge and over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, giving Joey an opportunity to point out to Rosamond one of the peregrine falcons that nest in and around the graceful suspension bridge. The water below them is alive with choppy white waves and sailboats making good progress as a result of the steady breeze.

Then it’s across Staten Island toward the Goethals Bridge and the turnpike. The industrial parks of northern New Jersey are gradually replaced by double carriageways with jug handle turns, auto dealerships, strip malls, and finally leafy green suburbs with bags of fresh-mown grass stacked at the curb.

A hush falls over the car as they turn into Chicory Circle and pass one starter-mansion after the next, all hermetically sealed in white aluminum siding, made starker by the surrounding bright green chemically treated lawns. Rosamond assumes that the sudden silence is out of respect for the deceased, unaware of Hayden and Diana’s collective dread regarding family visits.

“All the houses are so
white
,” says Joey.

“That’s not the only thing that’s all white,” says Hayden.

“Dad,” objects Diana, “not now.”

By this time Joey is the only one smiling as he strains to peer down the street and make sure that his aunt and uncle’s basketball hoop is still intact. This was leftover from the previous tenants but, Diana presumes, Ted had decided it gave the house a nice family atmosphere and left it up. She also notices that the maroon shutters and garage door have recently been painted and stand out against the immaculate ivory siding. The surrounding grass and hedges are practically emerald-green and so perfectly manicured they could serve as a backdrop for a movie.

The navy blue Lincoln Continental and shiny red Ford Mustang convertible glow in the driveway as if it’s a showroom, thinks Diana, especially when compared to the beat-up station wagon that pulls in behind them like a mongrel dog. In the days back when they’d been getting along better Linda had confided to Diana that she desperately wanted a Lexus but her politically minded husband insisted that they buy American. At least this was true when it came to the items that potential voters could see. Ted had no problem accepting imported Cuban cigars for himself and designer French perfume for his wife from businessmen in need of favors.

Diana sits biting her lip and holding tight to the dashboard even after the car has come to a complete stop in the driveway and been parked for several minutes.

Hayden doesn’t move either, already having visions of being trapped by a decade-long homily from his congenitally campaigning congressman of a son-in-law. Ten minutes with Ted is like listening to every public service announcement ever aired on television without so much as a commercial. The sight of a neighbor washing his car and using a white bucket for the soapy water triggers a flashback to his last visit, when Hayden was forced to collect silt from the nearby Raritan River downstream from the manufacturing plant where Ted’s political opponent was a part owner, so that it could be tested for chemical pollutants.