A Life More Complete(94)
“That’s what I said. Now can you stop sounding like a broken record? My answer isn’t going to change and you repeating it is getting on my nerves.” Grabbing the key I head toward the garage stopping at the junk drawer to pull out a roll of tape. The whole process is bizarre given the fact that I haven’t lived here in close to eleven years, yet it all still remains the same. It’s like I never even left. I can tell you where the scissors are located and where to find the laundry soap and when I opened the back door with the extra key, I remembered to pull up on the door knob to level the key hole with the locking mechanism or the door wouldn’t open. Rachel shouts to me as I walk out the back door.
“It’s Memorial Day weekend. Who works on Memorial Day?” Her tone is flippant as she hounds me to no end. My first reaction is to flip her off and that’s just what I do as I slam the door behind me.
Regrettably, she follows me out to the garage. She obviously has no clue as to the sore spot this conversation already is, not to mention the fact that I already hashed it out with Tyler and gave up. She’s wearing me down and although I’ve never hit anyone in my life she just might be the first.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” she half shouts coming up behind me. “Why do you accept this from him? I get it. He’s the father of your baby. Blah, blah, blah. But seriously, he’s an * and you know it. Paul would never...” I cut her off before I get the lecture about whose husband is better. It doesn’t take a genius to see hers would win the award.
“Listen,” I hiss back, “sorry my husband’s not perfect. This is my life not yours. And don’t think for a second that I’m not hurt, because I am. The last thing I need is for you berate me. So back the f*ck off!” I scream so loudly that I’m sure even the neighbors hear it. I stomp away leaving her silent.
The three of us don’t speak as we climb into my rental SUV to make the long commute from Naperville to Chicago. Our first stop is the Cook County morgue for the identification of the body and then to the funeral home in Oak Park. Our father, up until a few days ago, still lived in the same house the five of us once resided in as a family. That was where he was found five days after his death by a ComEd worker who was there to read the meter and smelled something foul. The story is sad and just thinking about it causes the guilt to grip my chest tightly.
My father just disappeared after my parents divorced. We’d hear from him on occasion, but primarily he stayed out of sight. Most of the contact we had with him was through the Oak Park police department. My mother was listed as an emergency contact whenever he was found unconscious or was arrested. The police visited our house with such frequency that Tom was on a first name basis with them and even hired one of them to work on the Naperville police force with him. My father was in and out of hospitals, jail and rehab more times than any one person should ever be, yet it never seemed to make a difference. He continued down a path of self-destruction, eventually ending with his three daughters identifying his body in the most morbid and grotesque environment I have ever seen.
The guilt has been eating away at me since the phone call from my mother. I keep feeling like if I had tried harder, made more of an effort, that maybe he would have at least died knowing his daughter; instead I hid from him and everything that he had become.
We schedule the wake for Saturday and the funeral for Sunday to take place in the church where my father was confirmed, where he was an altar boy, where he married my mother just after their eighteenth birthdays. A Catholic mass with a luncheon to follow at a local restaurant. It’s by the book and not one of us disagrees with the choices.
My father has no family to speak of, with the exception of my sisters and me. He was an only child to an abusive alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. My paternal grandmother killed herself when my father was only ten years old, a story he liked to share regularly with us as children. She hanged herself using her husband’s tie. He described her dangling from the showerhead in the only bathroom in their small rundown apartment that bordered the edge of the city limits. The showerhead pulled from the wall but not enough to give way as her toes almost touched the bottom of the bathtub. She had made my father a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, placed it on the TV tray and turned the television to The Flintstones before she took her life. This is the only memory I have of my grandmother and as I aged the memory took on a ghostly creepiness. My father lived in that apartment until the day he married my mother.
Maizey cries all the way back to the hotel while Rachel texts obnoxiously from the back seat. The sound of her nails tapping against the keypad of her BlackBerry is one of those sounds that could drive you to complete insanity. I reach over and take Maizey’s hand as the tears begin to fall from my eyes just as quickly as hers. Rachel never looks up and I can’t say I’m surprised.