Page 309 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 279

Ryan suddenly felt a surge of jealousy, something he really never felt
around Kick—even since Logan. It was a strange mutant, green emo-
tion. Ryan, firstborn, had always felt like Charley-Pop’s real and only son.
He didn’t think of Thom as Charley-Pop’s son. Thom was no more than
Ryan’s little brother, a tagalong, an afterthought. He could not bear to
think that people thought of Thom and him as equals, as a pair, as Charley
and Annie’s two sons.
Thom had finally upstaged him.
“De profundis,” Uncle Leslie intoned. “From the depths, we cry unto
you, O Lord.” He looked magnificent standing at the head of Thom’s cof-
fin. He wore the ironic white and gold vestments of hope. Ryan squinted
in the bright summer sun and saw a soft-focus vision of the priest he might
have become if he could have worked the accord of conscience his uncle
must have found in his closeted service to the narrow tenets of his faith.
The month after good old Uncle Leslie died, Solly Blue received back
in the mail the last video brochure he had sent him advertising his tough
young hustlers. It was marked deceased.
“The Reverend Leslie O’Hara wasn’t my best customer,” Solly said
to me and not to Ryan, “but I like doing business with the clergy. Their
checks don’t bounce.”
The funeral was all too complex; but some things were clear. Ryan
saw little need to put his arm around his mother. This wasn’t Imitation
of Life. She wasn’t Susan Kohner throwing herself on the coffin. She was
Annie Laurie, self-possessed, strong in her own presence. She stood by
herself, sad and indestructible, glancing only once at Charley-Pop’s grave
next to Thom’s.
Kweenie was another story. She was swathed in a plastic Myoko dress
sprayed with Japanese graffiti. On the plane she had wrapped herself in
three antique shoulder-foxes and a long feathered boa. Behind her Yoko
Ono shades, her eyes looked permanently bruised. She could not stop
crying. Suicide, not abortion, moved her to Drama-Queen tears.
Sandy stood with the triplets directly opposite Ryan and Kweenie and
Annie Laurie. She had already run up her charge cards against Thom’s
life insurance settlement. Abe and Bea and Sie looked for the first time in
their lives as if they had stepped out of a bandbox. Sandy had rehearsed
the role of military widow often enough to pull it off. If she wasn’t exactly
Jackie Kennedy receiving the folded flag at the end of the ceremony, at
least she remembered the TV-version of national widowhood and didn’t
embarrass them. If she truly hated Thom’s family, the feeling was mutual.
Ryan hoped her appearance with them was her last.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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