Roland Goity — Prose 11/13/2010
What We Do Until Then Music played through portable speakers on each side of the open coffin where her mother’s Auntie Louise was displayed for viewing. The woman had been a “free spirit” according to Tanya’s mother. She’d also proudly been a Doors fan for life, and her elegiac soundtrack confirmed that—“Strange Days” into “You’re Lost Little Girl” into “Love Me Two Times.” Tanya was quite surprised—stunned really—to hear such psychedelic tunes in a century-old church. At a funeral, no less. Tanya peeked at her glazed-eyed mother, and remembered an old John Lennon song she’d heard on classic rock stations. What We Do Until Then Music played through portable speakers on each side of the open coffin where her mother’s Auntie Louise was displayed for viewing. The woman had been a “free spirit” according to Tanya’s mother. She’d also proudly been a Doors fan for life, and her elegiac soundtrack confirmed that—“Strange Days” into “You’re Lost Little Girl” into “Love Me Two Times.” Tanya was quite surprised—stunned really—to hear such psychedelic tunes in a century-old church. At a funeral, no less. Tanya peeked at her glazed-eyed mother, and remembered an old John Lennon song she’d heard on classic rock stations. Strange days, indeed. Most peculiar, Mama. It didn’t faze Tanya to get a good look at good and dead Auntie Louise. At least not as much as she thought it would. The woman looked like the figures she’d seen at a wax museum not long ago. Queen Victoria or Eleanor Roosevelt. Maybe Barbara Streisand. Her mother’s auntie no longer seemed real. The embalmed face bore an eternal smile, though, one that would last beyond the sound of Jim Morrison’s voice. The priest’s remarks were short. The sermon was brief. Only some little-known cousins spoke on behalf of the deceased, who’d died a spinster. All told, with the open casket and the music playing, a better time than Tanya expected when she attired herself in black that morning. They were in and out of the church within an hour. Outside they mumbled a few condolences and were on the receiving end of others. Then Tanya and her mother jumped in the Subaru, and queued up behind the hearse. They followed at a speed well below the limit in a northerly direction, toward the smog-choked foothills where memorial parks were abundant and the only flowers were those left at the foot of gravestones. *** Tanya was seventeen. But she thought of death more than anyone she knew, no matter their age. Elements of death and dying held a strange attraction for her. She liked dark poetry and music steeped in dirge. Black make-up and attire, and dog-collar adornments presented a special appeal. And so, the clothes she wore to honor the memory of her mother’s Auntie Louise were favorite items in her wardrobe. Formal wear she’d throw on at the slightest excuse. She liked to dress the way others did who shared such sensibilities, be they men or women, boys or girls. She was attracted to the androgynous. Tanya enjoyed sex with boys, but truthfully there had been just a couple and she’d broken up with her only real boyfriend months before. Recently, she’d made out with an older girl, the manager at the Italian restaurant where Tanya played hostess that summer. It was after they’d gone to a rave together, and danced and laughed as if they were the only two people in the world. This manager, Emma, was especially pretty, with walnut eyes and chestnut hair. Whenever Tanya was around her she felt a strange, all-encompassing energy that made Emma irresistible. Was it love? *** Maybe half of those at the church were also present forty minutes later on the cemetery lawn where park employees, big and ripped like middle linebackers, had dug out a pile of dirt the size of a minivan where Auntie Louise would be buried. Tanya, though fascinated by death, realized that the only burials she’d witnessed had been on TV or in a film, and then, thinking harder, wasn’t sure she’d even seen any on the tube or the big screen. Only in her mind probably, spurred by conversation or words on a page. The air was hot and stale, muggy, and almost unbreathable thanks to a recent spate of wildfires. Tanya felt her blouse cling uncomfortably on her skin, her wool skirt weigh heavy on her waist and thighs. Everything seemed a shade of black, from the coffin to the curbside hearse to the overhead sky. The priest sung one moment and read the next, a hymn and a prayer. He carried a choir-like falsetto, this young priest, wisps of auburn hair disguising his early baldness. Behind dark shades Tanya glanced around at her mother’s distant cousins and the friends of Auntie Louise from who knew where or when. An older man with snow-white hair looked familiar. An actor maybe. It was possible; the cemetery was halfway between Hollywood and Burbank. After the priest had spoken and Tanya’s mother’s cousin had announced the address for the Odd Fellows Club where the memorial reception would take place, Auntie Louise’s casket was lowered and the muscled grave diggers quickly sealed her fate, six feet under. The dysphemistic words seemed particularly harsh now, as Tanya watched heaved soil crash down upon the coffin and smother it. A bulb planted that would never bloom. *** To others, especially adults, Tanya seemed “distant.” That was the word a few teachers and counselors used to describe her. Her therapist, too. But the girl and her mother were close. Tanya was an only child whose father left home long ago, when she was still in preschool. In time her father became barely an afterthought. However, some years ago Tanya got to wondering; she asked her mother what happened to him. “Oh, he’s dead probably,” her mother said, and the subject matter was dropped. But with select friends—ones also adorned in goth cloth—Tanya became a shucked oyster, open and vulnerable. And across the range from their valley home, the rocky shoreline was her sanctuary. She and her friends would ride to the coast on weekends and summer evenings and party out there on sea- and wind-sculpted rock overlooking tide pools. The horizon turned blood- orange at sunset and abundant sea lions barked from perches below. Moved by the atmosphere and the intoxicants, Tanya would talk of being a marine biologist, or maybe even a dolphin trainer at SeaWorld. One time, scampering on wet mossy rocks at low tide, a foul stench came from a cave-like wedge formed by two rocks the size of dumpsters. “Oooh, nasty,” a friend said, and motioned to leave. But Tanya continued on, plugging her nose as she neared the flies circling over a lump of seaweed. She expected to see a rotting seal carcass or that of some fish, but under the exposed kelp she saw the fleshy arm and hand of a young man or woman. White as chalk and just as stiff, but still, the fingers seemed to beckon with the wind. The body floated in the water pooling between the rocks. Tanya called her mom before calling 9-1-1. She and her friends held hands and braved a foggy breeze as paramedics and police investigators arrived and pulled out the body. It turned out to be that of a heavyset woman. She’d been washed up dead for weeks, a paramedic volunteered. “Washed up?” Tanya hoped to clarify, but a detective shrugged his shoulders and quickly looked away. The body was being placed in the coroner’s van when Tanya’s mother drove up at dusk. Her mother opened the door and rushed over. “Okay?” she asked, and Tanya said, yeah, just fine. Still, they proceeded to hug as tightly as they ever had, and Tanya felt a calming sense of warmth. Her mother gazed over Tanya’s shoulder at the rocky silhouettes against an ocean backdrop. “So this is where you like to come,” she said. “Smart girl, you. It’s beautiful here. Breathtaking.” *** And now, entering the Odd Fellow’s building where it’s dark and stuffy and depressingly hot, Tanya’s curious if Auntie Louise had her own special refuge to which she liked to escape. She must have had some place, of course, Tanya decides. Everyone does on some level. Even a prisoner in solitary must drift off into some serene locale in memory. Without such places people would go loco, or further loco, and kill themselves off in droves. “We won’t stay too long,” Tanya’s mother said, to assure her. They fanned themselves with a memorial pamphlet Tanya’s mother picked up at the church. Photos of a smiling Auntie Louise fluttered before them, a woman Tanya had never met. Photos of Auntie Louise as a girl dancing around a maypole, as a classroom teacher, as an amateur beekeeper, as a fighter still battling the final stage of cancer. Tanya now thought it odd that her mother never made mention of the woman until she was dead. Reception hall tables were covered in fine white tablecloths. A buffet table offered all sorts of food options, and Tanya filled her plate with sushi, while her mother piled hers with an assortment of crostinis and falafel balls and hummus. They sat with cousins and second cousins, once removed, from the Northwest they were, and Tanya noticed her mother expressing interest in these relatives’ affairs while she simultaneously avoided any hints or suggestions by these relatives to remain in contact now that they’d reunited to honor the memory of Auntie Louise. Still, Tanya enjoyed the banter, especially as a member of a family of which she knew little. She nodded mostly, but pumped them with questions concerning Auntie Louise. They divulged several anecdotes that testified to the woman’s whimsical spirit. A cross-country journey in a VW bus once she graduated from high school. A door-to-door pet grooming service—parrots included!—after a cash-strapped school district cut her pay. And the fact that she’d taken up parachuting the year before she died—the type of thing people always expect themselves doing but never actually do. Eventually, folks rose from tables and branched out into areas of the hall with glasses of wine or juice or soda. Tanya and her mother quietly perused the framed photographs of Odd Fellows members of various periods as if they were collected works in an art museum. That’s when the man Tanya thought she’d recognized earlier reappeared. “Oh my,” her mother whispered. “That’s Seymour Hartrub. He was our congressman.” Tanya’s mother steered them towards the man, and began chatting him up, introducing the two of them and explaining how much she admired the work he’d done, and inquiring on his recent endeavors since leaving office. A few minutes actually passed before it was Tanya who asked him, “How did you know our Auntie Louise?” Hartrub smiled, putting cracks in his tan face, even as his cropped white hair stood full and pillowy. “She was a dear friend of my sister, Laila. Perhaps you knew her…” “Oh, no,” Tanya’s mother said. “We’d lost touch over the years.” “Well, they were close, very close,” he said, and Tanya noticed the man squint his eyes at her mother in a telling way, but she was oblivious. Tanya, however, understood the subtext. Auntie Louise had her own Emma. “Is she here? Your sister?” Tanya asked. “No,” Hartrub said, dropping his gaze. “She went long ago. Complications during routine surgery, a freak thing.” “I’m sorry,” Tanya said automatically. Her mother put an arm around her, looked at Hartub and sighed. “Yes, well, death comes calling for us all,” he said. “Laila… Louise… and we’ll each have our own day. It’s what we do until then that really counts, don’t you think?” “Exactly,” Tanya’s mother said. They shook hands and parted, and—after bidding brief adieus to a number of long-lost relatives—Tanya and her mother were soon in the car. But instead of turning the ignition, her mother dropped her hands in her lap and wore a blank gaze, as if in a trance or deep in prayer. “Mom, everything all right? I can drive home.” “No worries, dear. I’m fine.” Tanya’s mother started the car and they rolled slowly out of the lot and onto the street. Once they’d hit a stoplight, Tanya said, “Auntie Louise? She was pretty cool, wasn’t she?” “Oh, I don’t know, dear. Like I said, I barely knew her.” The light turned green and they got rolling. Suspension in the old Subaru wasn’t what it once was, and Tanya’s mother drove over an unforeseen speed bump while going nearly forty. They both bounced in their seat, weightless a second. Tanya, hands on the dash, glanced over at her mother and giggled. Roland Goity edits fiction for the online journal LITnIMAGE. Recent stories of his appear or will soon in Fiction International, Necessary Fiction, Raleigh Review, and Grey Sparrow Journal. He is editing a literary anthology on rock music and culture as well as working on a novel. Comments03/11/2012 23:45
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