Page 28 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

None of us would speak. He decided, on his own, that we would be silent. We would sit in the pew at our father’s funeral and say nothing.
“We are not talking,” my brother announced, as if we had stolen a painting. I didn’t protest and for that, I have felt bad. I have felt bad for nineteen years.
My mother had planned a tag sale for that day, Sat- urday, not expecting my father to die on the Thurs- day before. At five minutes to midnight, the nine- teenth of August, so many Augusts too soon. Linens and sneakers and cassette tapes were piled on tables in the garage, and Mom thought we should just have the sale because we were prepared. We had written prices on stickers, determined whether someone would want a typewriter or a vase that comes to the door when you get a bouquet. We had categorized items by type and made it look like a store and we had nothing else to do that day, that Saturday, as the oxygen tank had been picked up and the dishes rinsed and beds made after leaving in a hurry, a horrible hurry three days before. The ar- rangements were set for Sunday, so we should have the sale, she thought. We should welcome strangers into our garage and take their dollars in exchange for board games and costume jewelry that we did not like anymore. It would give us something to do. It would be good for us. While the people made new life of our old belongings, my brother stood on the driveway and communicated the plan.
I do not understand what he wanted to hide, or what he could not confront right then. I don’t know if he has confronted it yet. But that is his story.
Mine is something different. Mine is about a father who insisted that I perform ballet steps and piano sonatas for guests in our living room, to read poems aloud and pluck harmonies from the strings of my guitar. He wanted them to know what I could do.
He would have expected me to craft a worthy and well-constructed essay and read it at his funeral, so they would know what I could do. I wanted them to know what he had done, to know him the way I did, and still do.
Instead, my father’s first cousin spoke at the ceremo- ny. He cried in the middle and could not finish. He just sat down. I would have cried in the middle, but I would not have sat down. The poor man died, and no one could stand and talk. I have since been to funerals at which people fell apart, but managed to continue.
Every time I go to a funeral, I compare. In the way you might assess the hors d’oeuvres at weddings, I judge the eulogies. Too much oil in the stuffed mush- rooms. Not enough pig in the blanket.
My father deserved better. We deserved better. It is late, I know, but this is the eulogy I should have writ- ten that Saturday. I should not have been in the ga- rage stacking hand towels. I should have been at my childhood desk. This is the eulogy I should have told, standing at the right time, pages in hand, finding my place next to him. Now, I feel the paces from my seat, my feet slipping in shoes, black shoes with heels, my belly quivering, hollow. But my mind clear, and full of purpose. I feel the goodness of it now, the first tide of healing that might have helped, somehow, then.
It is late, I know, and I am sorry for that.
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He let me drive the car when I was nine. Well, I wasn’t alone behind the steering wheel when I was nine, but I certainly had my grip on it, in the ten- and-two position, turning left, then right, hand over hand, thump thump. Dad worked the pedals. It must have been a challenge with a miniature and enthusi- astic body smashed up against your side, but he was highly coordinated. A vision of calm. We’d round the swerve onto Taymil Road on the way home from my piano lesson and if I were lucky, he’d lift his right arm off the wheel and give me the nod.
Each Monday at 4:25, my mother dropped me off in front of Mrs. Rubenstein’s house, a weighty 1920s stucco with a front path that shot to the door like a diving board. I ran inside, the vinyl music portfolio slapping against my leg. Sometimes, another student would be finishing. Sometimes, there was no one before me. Always, Sarah Rubenstein was waiting in
a knee-length skirt and unfashionable shoes. I was never early, even when I was early. Mrs. Rubenstein was a despot, an oppressor with barber-cut hair, gray, edged yellow. She yelled out commands and scrawled emphatic reminders in between the staffs, over the notes, off the margins, even, onto the actual wood of the piano’s stand. She broke nine pencil points a les- son. And ate dried ginger out of a paper bag. She said it helped her heartburn. Once, she became so vigor- ous in her translation of a particular musical phrase that sprays of the root flew from her mouth onto the
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Doctor’s Daughter
paMela gWyn kripke