Page 54 - Demo

Uncle Tony’s Funeral (continued from preceding page)
great. She can tell when I’m in a mood and she says, ‘Harry it’s time to go bowling.’ And she’s right. It picks me right up.”
“You two ready for a drink?” Mr. Schultz said. “There must be a bar around here somewhere.”
“He was a good man,” thin man said, dropped his cigarette, and stepped on it. “Let’s find our wives and get out of here.”
Eating my cookie, I thought about what they had said then left the room. In the hall, my mother came to- ward me. “There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
I looked for the moon but couldn’t find it through the urban light. After a while, I went inside and came across a room with coffee tables, armchairs, and little sofas. A young brown woman in a uniform—black dress with white trim—was checking the coffee and hot water urns on a table along a wall. She put more cookies on the tray of cookies and left. I took an oatmeal and raisin cookie and sat in a green armchair near where Mr. Schultz, standing, was talking with two young men. One wore jeans and a beige corduroy jacket. The other, a gray suit, no tie.
When I got home, I Googled Norman Rockwell and saw what Mr. Schultz had said was true.
“Too bad he started late and couldn’t spend more time on his art,” gray suit said.
Tony was cremated Saturday. Sunday afternoon my mother and I went to Millie’s. We climbed the con- crete steps with a window in the red-brick wall on the left and another red-brick wall forming a balus- trade on the right. We rang the bell for the first floor. Buzzed in, we stood in the small entry where shiny brown stairs went up then curved to the second-floor apartment. Millie opened the door. She was pale with dark rings around red eyes. She wore a baggy, faded blue dress and her white socks tumbled down to
“Really?” beige jacket said. “You think so?”
her slippers. Her usually tight curls were loose. I ran through the dining room and the kitchen to the back porch and Tony’s room. I knocked, then remembered. I had forgotten again. I went in and looked at his empty chair and out the widow to the empty back- yard and the green-shingled garage.
“Let’s face it,” Mr. Schultz said. “He was a great guy. He loved art. He had big ideas, a little dated and lacking irony, but great ideas. The problem was he couldn’t paint. He didn’t suffer from an excess of talent.”
“He had noble ideas about being an artist,” gray suit said.
My mother came to the door. “I told you you’d miss him. Come into the kitchen.”
“You mean romantic ideas,” beige jacket said.
I would have liked to have stayed in his room with his books, the view out to the backyard, and my memo- ries, but given the look on my mother’s face I went with her into the kitchen. Millie had started the coffee maker and had put some chocolate chip cookies on
“It was sad,” Mr. Schultz said. “He had ideas about beauty redeeming the everyday or something or other but what he painted was like Norman Rockwell and he didn’t know it. That he unconsciously painted like Rockwell was weirdly amazing, but one Rockwell is one more than enough. I showed him. I held pic- tures of Rockwell paintings next to his paintings and pointed out the similarities. He saw it. After that he stopped coming to class.”
a plate. She poured me a Diet Coke. When the coffee was done, she poured a mug for my mother and one
“It was impossible not to like him,” gray suit said.
“I wish he had come and talked to me,” Mr. Schultz said. “He didn’t have to stop. We could have looked for a different approach.”
“Really? You think so?” beige jacket said.
“It would have been worth trying.”
They didn’t say anything for a few moments.
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