Memories of Another Day

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

For Grazia Maria con amore

The last time I saw my father, he was lying quietly on his back in his coffin, his eyes closed, an unaccustomed blandness on his strong features, his thick white hair and heavy eyebrows neatly brushed. I stood there in the silence of the funeral chapel staring down at him. There was something wrong. All wrong. After a moment I realized what it was. My father had never slept on his back. Not once in all the years I knew him.

Usually my father slept balanced on his side, his barrel chest and big belly sinking into the mattress, one arm thrown over his eyes to shield them from the light, a scowl of concentration fierce even in sleep on his face. Now there was nothing there. Not even the hatred of the morning that would come to tear him from his private world. Then the lid of the coffin came down and I never saw him again.

I was flooded with a sense of relief. It was over. I was free. I tore my eyes away from the burnished copper-and-mahogany coffin and looked up.

The minister gestured for us to leave. I started off. My brother, D.J., short for Daniel, Junior, pulled me back.

"Take your mother's arm," he whispered hoarsely.

*'And wipe that stupid smile off your face. There are a million photographers out there."

I stared up at him. He was thirty-seven years old— twenty years older than I—and we were worlds apart. He came out of my father's first marriage and I came out of his last. In between my father had other women but no other children, I pulled my arm free. 'Tuck you," I said.

I walked out into the small antechamber off the chapel where the family was supposed to wait until the funeral limousines were ready and lit a cigarette. Several close friends and associates of my father's were already there.

Moses Barrington, my father's executive assistant, came up to me, his black face shining with the heat. ''How's your mother taking it?"

I sucked on the cigarette, taking the smoke deep into my lungs before I answered him. "Okay."

He watched the smoke curling out from my nose. "You can get cancer from those things."

"Yeah," I said. "I read the warning on the package."

The door opened and everyone's eyes turned toward it. My mother came in, leaning on D.J.'s arm. He had his other arm around her back as if supporting her. He looked more like a big brother than a stepson. Which somehow seemed okay, since he was three years older than she was.

The widow's black made my mother look even younger. It made her white skin seem more translucent and the long blond hair paler. When the door had closed behind them, her widow's frailty disappeared. She stepped free of D.J.'s arm and came toward me. "Jonathan, my baby. You're all I have left."

I managed to avoid her reach. That couldn't be true. Not if I could believe half the shit I read in the newspapers about my father. Somewhere along the line he had to have socked away a bundle. Union or no union.

Justice Department or no Justice Department. Jail or no jail.

My mother stood there a moment, her hands grabbing at empty air. Then she dropped them to her side. ''Give me a cigarette."

I held out the pack, then lit one for her. She dragged on it. "That's better," she said.

I watched some color come back into her face. She was a pretty lady, my mother, and she knew it. "When we get back to the house we'll have to have a talk."

"Okay." I ground out my cigarette in a sandbox. "I'll wait there for you."

"You'll wait there for me?" Her voice was an echo.

I nodded. "I'm not going to the cemetery."

"What do you mean you're not going?" D.J. had come up behind her. "How do you think it will look?"

"I don't give a damn how it looks," I said.

"But it's important," D.J. said. "The funeral will be on the national newscasts. Union members all over the country will see it."

"Then just make sure you're up front where they can see you. That's all that matters. You're the one who is going to be their next national president, not me.

He turned to my mother. "Margaret, you'd better make him come."

"Jonathan—"

I cut her off. "No, Mother. It's just a waste of time. I didn^'t like him when he was alive, and now that he's dead there's no point in pretending that I like him any better. It's a barbaric, hypocritical custom and I want no part of it."

There was dead silence in the room as I walked out. When I turned to close the door behind me, I could see the others cluster around my mother. Only Jack Haney hung back against the wall and watched. There was no rush on his part. He would get her later. In the sack. That is, if he still wanted to, now that she was no longer

the wife of the national president and could no longer do him any good. His eyes caught mine and he nodded. I nodded back and silently closed the door.

He wasn't so bad. No worse than any of the others around my father. I couldn't blame him for what he did any more than I could blame my mother. My father had corrupted the world around him.

I went out through a side entrance to avoid the crowds around the funeral parlor. D.J. was right. There were hundreds of people out there. And the television cameras were right up front with the newspapermen right behind them. I leaned on the wall and watched.

The mourners were coming out of the chapel now and getting into their big black limousines. The Vice President of the United States was first. He paused in front of the TV cameras, his hawklike face arranged in properly somber lines. His lips moved. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but didn't doubt that it was all the proper things. After all, union members were still allowed to vote. After him came governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, other officials and union leaders. One by one they took their turn in the spotlight, hoping that when running the newscast the local station would at least feature the hometown product.

A truck ground to a stop in the alleyway behind me. There was the sound of footsteps, and I could smell the man before I turned to see him. I didn't have to be told it was a garbage truck.

''Is that Big Dan's funeral?"

I looked at him. The small blue-and-white union button was pinned to the pocket of his grimy, grease-stained blouse. ''Yes."

"Big crowd."

"Uh-huh."

"Any interesting pussy around?"

"What makes you ask?" I asked.

"Big Dan was supposed to be big with the ladies too," he answered. "Our shop steward was out with

him a couple of times. He said there was always lots of pussy and lots of whiskey whenever Big Dan was around."

''I didn't see any/* I said.

*'Oh." He sounded disappointed. Then his voice brightened. *'Any truth to the talk there was a young girl in the plane with him when he crashed?"

I looked at him and decided not to disappoint him any more that day. I lowered my voice to a whisper, even though there was no need to do so. There was no one within a hundred feet of us. ''I got the real scoop."

He fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and held it toward me. We both lit up. He looked expectantly at me.

"Ever hear of the Mile High Club?" I asked.

He shook his head. ^'What's that?"

*'If you ball a chick in an airplane, you're automatically a member."

"Sweet Jesus," he said reverently. "Was that what he was doin'?"

"Better than that," I said. "She was a blond chick with big tits. She was kneeling down in front of him, her tits out on his lap, his cock coming up between them, and she was blowing him when they came down out of the clouds with the mountain in front of them. He tried pulling the wheel back toward him to lift the plane up, but no use. Her head was blocking it so the wheel didn't move."

"Sweet Jesus," he said agam. "What a way to go!"

I didn't answer.

He looked over the fence at the crowd. "Big turnout."

"Yeah."

"He had to be the greatest," he said admiringly. "My old man told me during the Depression he got nine dollars a week for the same job I'm doing, an' I'm pullin' down a hunnert and ninety-five per. He was the best friend a workingman ever h^."

"He was a shit," I said. "All the woricingman ever meant to him was power."

"Wait a minute," he said, his fist doubling threateningly. "You got no right to say things like that."

"I have every right in the world," I said. "He was my father."

A strange look came over his face. Then his fist relaxed. "I'm sorry, kid," he said, and went back to his truck.

I watched him climb into the cab and start off, then turned back to look over the fence. Mother and D.J. were coming out. The photographers pushed forward trying to get their pictures. I turned and walked away down the alley just as they were getting into the limousine.

'*Thafs no way to talk about your father.'*

**Go away, Old Man. You're dead.'*

"/'w not dead. Fll be alive as long as you're alivey as long as your children and their children are alive. There is something of me in every cell of your body and there is no way you can get rid of me.'*

* * You're dead, dead, dead.' *

''You're seventeen and you don't believe in anything, do you?"

''No."

"Would you really like to know what happened in that plane before it crashed?"

"Yes."

"You already do. You told that garbageman.**

"Imade that up."

"No, you didn't. I put the words into your mouth. Don't forget your brain is made up of cells too."

"I don't believe you. You're lying to me. You've always lied to me." .

"I never lied to you. There was no way I could. You were part of me. You were my truth. You were not like

your brother. He is a copy of me. But you — you are yourself. You are my truth.''

'*Lies, lies J lies. Even the grave doesn't stop you.'*

**That is nothing they are carrying to the grave. A body, an empty shell. I am here. Inside you."

'7 don't feel you, Father. I never felt you. I don't feel you now."

'*In time you will."

''Never."

''Jonathan, my son."

"Go away. Old Man. You're dead."

I turned the comer onto my street. The first thing I saw was the cars parked in front of my house. Several men were standing there in the shade of the trees. Reporters. Yd thought they would be gone by now. But they were waiting. Apparently Big Dan was news even after he was dead and buried.

I cut back to the street behind my house and went up through the Forbeses' driveway. Our back door was right behind the fence that separated the two houses.

I was carefully stepping over the flower bed against the fence, knowing that Mrs. Forbes was hysterical about her flowers. I had one foot on the fence when Anne called me. Just as carefully, I put my foot down again and turned. She was sitting on the back porch, a glass of wine in her hand.

"I thought you'd be at the funeral," she said.

*'I went to the service," I said. "I didn't go out to the cemetery. It was too much of a drag. I came this way because the reporters are still out front and I didn't want to talk to them."

"I know," she said. 'They came around here this morning. They wanted to know what kind of a neighbor your father was."

''What did you tell them?"

"I didn't talk to them. My mother and father did." She giggled. "They told them what a great man he was. You know."

I had to smile at that. There was no love lost between the Forbeses and my father. When we moved into the neighborhood, the Forbeses had led the fight against him. They didn't want a labor-racketeering Communist polluting their clean Westchester air. "Where are your folks?" I asked.

She giggled again. "At the funeral. Where did you think they would be?"

I laughed. The whole world was full of shit and hypocrites.

"Want a glass of wine?" she asked.

"No. But I'll take a can of beer if you got one."

"I got one." She disappeared through the kitchen door as I climbed up on the porch. She was back in a moment with a cold can of Miller's.

I pulled the tab, and the cold beer came gushing over my hand. I raised it quickly to my mouth. I didn't know how dry and thirsty I had been until I felt the icy tang in my throat. I was halfway through the can before I came up for air. I leaned back against the porch railing.

"You're all strung out," she said.

"Not too bad."

"Bad enough." Her eyes went down to the can of beer in my hand. "Your hands are shaking."

I held up the can of beer. She was right. "I didn't sleep much last night," I said.

"Want a tranq?" she asked.

I shook my head. I wasn't a pill popper.

"I've got some real good shit," she said. "I can roll you a joint."

"No, thanks," I said. "I'm not in the mood."

"Mind if I smoke, then?"

"Go ahead."

I watched her pick up the small Bulldog pouch from the floor beside her chair and deftly roll a ZigZag. She

tamped the ends down neatly and lit up. She took a deep toke, then a sip of wine, then another deep toke.

A bright shine came into her eyes. She didn't need much to trip off—she was into it all the time. 'Tve been thinking about your father."

''Yes?"

"I've been homy all afternoon thinking about him. There's something about death that turns you on."

I took another swig of the beer. "I don't know."

"It's true," she said. "I read somewhere that when the bombs were falling during the last war, everybody turned on. It's got something to do with immortalitv, I think."

"That's deep. Ever stop to think that maybe people just like to fuck and that it was a good excuse for them to break the rules?''

"It's more than just that," she said. "When I woke up this morning I thought how sad it was that he was gone and that he would never have another chance to leave more of himself behind. Then I began to think how nice it would have been if we had made it just once and he had planted a baby in my belly. It made me so homy that I took my self off three times today."

I laughed. "That's homy."

She looked at me resentfully. "You don't understand."

"My father was seventy-four years old," I said. "You're nineteen."