It was colder in the back room than the lobby. It could have been the absence of sunlight, the vent directly above him, or maybe it was to keep the body in better condition. Phillip couldn’t help but run through all of the possibilities, anything to distract himself from the terrible scene surrounding him.
Beatrice, his father’s mother, was laid out in a black coffin lined with white cushions. Phillip stood next to Derek and Neil, his cousins. They had never been close growing up, but they usually spent the family gatherings near each other, if only because of their similarity in age. Derek and Phillip graduated from high school the same year, while Neil went off to college a few years earlier.
“Do you think this is weird for the other old people?” asked Derek.
“Shut up,” said Neil. They stood with their hands clasped in front of them, talking out of the side of their mouths. They wore a different cut of the same suit; navy blue, so smooth it almost looked shiny, and non-descript black shoes.
“What?” asked Phillip.
“I mean, with this whole thing?” Derek dramatically swung his eyes around the room without moving his arms. “Isn’t it kind of like looking into the future for them?”
Neil finally moved his head. “You are such an asshole.”
“Hey, what’s with the language?”
The three of them turned towards the door and saw Phillip’s dad, Beatrice’s son, Neil and Derek’s uncle, enter the room. He was big, almost needing to duck through the doorway. He had intimidated everyone he met since the end of high school not only with his impressive size, deep voice, and often unnecessarily hard stare, but his lack of a sense of humor made him seem like a statue come to life.
“You’re saying goodbye to your grandmother. She didn’t like hearing that language before, and she certainly doesn’t need to hear it now.”
“Sorry, Chuck,” said Neil. The three of them resumed their stance of reverence and the sounds of muffled talking and shuffling feet from the hallway filtered in. Chuck walked up to the casket for a moment, paused, and walked out of the room.
“I can’t believe your dad was never in the army,” said Derek.
Phillip ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah. They’re lucky.”
•
This was Phillip’s first funeral. It seemed like a church service with more crying. Between the awkward conversations with rarely seen family members and awkward jokes from Derek, Phillip didn’t have time to really process the service until he sat in the stiffly-cushioned chair and everyone stopped talking to him. His grandma was now at the front of the room, eyes closed and listening to nothing for eternity, with a podium next to her casket. Prayers were read, speeches were given, but something happened about ten minutes in that blocked everything else out. It started with a puff of sound, the familiar sniffle, and then it disappeared. It came and left quickly but Phillip had seen it: His father had cried.
•
It turned bad around the time he entered middle school. The fights seemed to go beyond the standard incongruence of teenager and parent. One might think they would have been pulled closer together after Phillip’s mother took off a couple years before, but it only seemed to make them skeptical of each other. She had apparently decided that the life in which she found herself was not the life she thought she was living. Phillip thought of it like waking from a dream. Whatever it was, their house had dropped from three residents to two and that might as well have been divided up into one and one. Once Phillip hit puberty and developed the sarcastic and combative attributes that seem to be inherent in the age group, the arrangement they had made fell apart. When viewed objectively, which neither of them did, blame could be split between both sides. Phillip could have been less of an asshole and not taken advantage of the fact that he had only half the supervision as before, and Chuck could have tried to understand the fact that his son was testing limits and lashing out. Instead of doing this, however, Phillip thought of his father as an oppressive asshole and Chuck thought of his son as a directionless slacker.
After his high school graduation ceremony, Phillip rode in the back seat of his father’s car. They were going home, where Chuck would give Phillip his graduation present (a television), and Phillip would tell his father he would never live at home again. But they didn’t know about this for another twenty minutes. As Chuck paused at stop signs, turned his lefts and rights on the way home, they had what could be considered their last conversation with the radio turned off and only the sounds of traffic to accompany them. They were talking about Beatrice.
“It’s too bad grandma couldn’t come today.” Phillip had his graduation cap in his lap and was unconsciously fiddling with the tassel.
“I don’t know why you can’t sit up front,” Chuck said to the windshield.
“I’m wearing a gown. I don’t want people to think we’re on a date.”
“Oh no?” He looked in the rearview mirror. “And why not?”
“You’re just not my type, Dad.”
“I suppose you go for small guys? Hairless?”
Phillip smiled. A rare joke from the old man. “Sure. So why wasn’t grandma there?”
All joviality removed from his voice, Chuck said, “She’s getting old, Phil.”
“Well, it’s not like I expected her to hop on a bike and wheelie her way over.”
“Just make sure you go over there. She’ll want to see you.”
“I know. Sometimes I remind her of a little you.”
Chuck looked in the rearview again. “You are most definitely not a little me.”
“No, she’s actually told me that before. As much as you might hate to think so, Dad, we’re a lot alike.”
“Your grandmother looks at the world like she’s always drunk. I’m not as idealistic as her.”
“Is that, is that a put down or something?”
Chuck shook his head and pulled into their driveway. He shut off the car but didn’t open his door. Neither did Phillip. Chuck looked in the rearview mirror one more time.
“I’m proud of you,” he said before quickly getting out of the car. Phillip followed him inside where they would be arguing in less than ten minutes.
•
That momentary warmness from his father was still faintly present somewhere within Phillip. When he saw his father lose his composure at the funeral, he felt it reignite. It had been a year and a half since their conversation in the car on the way home from graduation, and they had only grown further apart since then. Sure, they saw each other at Christmas and Thanksgiving, but those were out of obligation and diluted by the presence of other family members. His grandmother was the only thing that tethered them together. Phillip would call her once a week and get the update on his father’s life. Beatrice would give her son the weekly updates she received from Phillip. With both his mother and grandmother gone, all that was left was his father. But without Beatrice, Phillip and Chuck were simply two people walking down opposite sides of the street. What else did he have? Drinking buddies? Neil and Derek? He ran his hand through his hair again, and cursed the fact that he had to give his dad the bad news today.
Phillip heard a harsh whisper to his right. “What’s wrong with you?” He looked over and saw Neil shooting Derek a nasty look as he pulled crackers, smuggled from the lobby, out of his pocket.
•
The two cousins hopped in Phillip’s car to head to the cemetery. There was a line of cars leading from the funeral home to the burial plot a mile and a half down the road, but it looked more like a traffic jam than a parade.
“Cemeteries are such a waste of land,” said Derek from the back seat as they waited at a red light. They were four or five cars back from the intersection and there were another four or five cars behind them. Phillip and Neil looked at Derek and waited for him to continue.
“It’s just a hunk of land that could perfectly well be used for anything else, but we use it to bury people.”
“And what else do you suppose we do with the dead?” asked Neil.
“I don’t know. Cremation? Just burn ‘em up and let ‘em blow in the breeze? No waste there.”
“Cemeteries are more for us than they are for dead people,” Phillip said toward the windshield. The light had turned green. “It gives us a place to visit, to remember, to, I don’t know, house our idea of a person even though we know they aren’t really there.”
“But don’t you think it’s fucked up that grandma is going to be in a box? A non-biodegradable box forever?”
The radio was off and they listened to the sound of the engine and the tires rolling across the concrete. Phillip and Neil nodded, but they wouldn’t give Derek the satisfaction of saying that he had a point.
Phillip parked the car along the side of the thin road that winded through the cemetery. Derek and Neil walked toward the growing crowd of people next to Beatrice’s gravesite, but Phillip stayed on the road. His father had parked a few car-lengths behind him.
“Nice service,” said Phillip.
Chuck looked at him and nodded. If it weren’t for all the gravestones, the property would have been beautiful. The grass was a bright green and trimmed well enough to be a golf course. The late-autumn air held onto the warmth of the previous months, but that was probably because of the cloudless sky and mid-day sun. The brisk chill was bound to show itself once dusk started to mute the sunlight. If there was any backdrop where a son could make a confession to his father with a hope of leniency, this was it.
“Dad, I gotta tell you something,” said Phillip.
His father sighed and looked over his head. “Can’t this wait? I have to put my mother in the ground.” And with that, he walked past his son, leaving Phillip standing by the side of the winding road.
•
He had never wanted to play football, really. Phillip enjoyed playing with his friends but when it came to going to practice a month before school even started, six hours a day, there was no joy in it. Chuck had played when he was in high school, so Phillip figured he’d give it a try. The pride Chuck seemed to immediately feel only contributed to the crushing disappoint that would come after the team played their first regular season game five weeks later.
“What do you mean?” asked his father after Phillip had returned home to shower.
“What do you mean what do I mean? I mean that’s it. I’m done.” Phillip sat at the kitchen table, greasy hair and shiny skin. There was a red mark in the middle of his forehead from the front pad on his helmet. It took a while for the old pads to mold around a new head every year.
“But you had an interception tonight.”
“It was tipped right to me.”
Chuck let out a deep breath. “But why?”
“It’s not fun. Well, the game was fun but it’s not worth all the practices.”
“It’s too hard? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No.”
“It’s not about doing something difficult for a short amount of time. A man continues to work hard because that’s what life is all about, Phil.”
“Who cares? I don’t want to play anymore, okay? Shit, shouldn’t that be enough?”
From there, the conversation became more of a series of speeches. Chuck took the position of explaining a life lesson to someone who obviously doesn’t want to listen. Phillip took the position of a person trying to get through each day without a certain level of anxiety. Both of them were right to an extent, but that didn’t matter. The way Chuck would tell it, any time something got a little too tough, to the point where Phillip would have to exert himself past what was comfortable, he would give up. This was unacceptable to Chuck. This was incorrect to Phillip. And now as Phillip stood in his father’s house, a poster board filled with pictures of his grandma to his right and a table covered in various snacks to his left, his aunts and uncles and cousins walking through the living room with their shoes on, his father keeping himself busy so he didn’t have to actually think about the funeral, Phillip began imagining what his father would say when he told him he wouldn’t be going back to college.
He walked to the other side of the kitchen, reached into the cabinet above the oven, and pulled out his father’s bottle of whiskey. Nobody paid him any attention as he made himself his first drink.
•
Even after three semesters of college, it didn’t take much to get Phillip drunk. Neil, however, who joined Phillip as soon as he saw him with the bottle, seemed to be a professional.
“Where’s Derek?” asked Neil. They were standing outside of the house, along the side. There was a window that looked into the living room and another ten feet to the right, another window that looked into the kitchen. Phillip and Neil had taken their drinks outside after Phillip had spilled his previous one onto the side of the refrigerator.
“You guys have shitty names,” said Phillip. His words came out as if holding hands.
“What’s that?”
“Derek. Neil. You guys have nerd names.”
“Sure. Being named after a screwdriver is so much better.”
“Have I told you,” Phillip sat in the grass next to the bushes that lined the house. “Have I told you that I’m dropping out?”
“Only about twenty times. You know, if you keep telling me, you’re going to accidentally tell Chuck one of these times.”
“Oh shit.” Phillip rolled his head back and closed his eyes. “He’s going to kill me. Or no, he’s not going to kill me. He’s never going to talk to me again.”
“Oh come on, it won’t be that bad.” Neil was trying to look into the kitchen window. “Where the hell is he?”
“This’ll be it. I know it.”
“Well then why do you have to tell him today?”
“School’s supposed to start in a few weeks. They don’t usually let dropouts live in the dorms.” He was drunk. He set his cup down and then pushed it over.
“Okay, so what? You walk in there, say ‘Hey dad I’m not going to school anymore,’ and then become a nomad? Go off on your own, whittling arrows and killing bears?”
“No. No, we’re going to be friends again. I’ll live here for a bit.”
Neil took a drink from his cup and walked over to Phillip, who was still sitting on the ground. He put his hand on top of his head and patted him like a pony. “You better find a miracle. Your dad’s a rock.” He turned his head toward the house. “I gotta go find my brother. Sober up and come up with a plan.” He walked inside and left Phillip sitting in the grass. The sun had started to go down and he thought about going inside to grab a coat. Inside, by all of his aunts and uncles. By his father. He couldn’t go near his father, not yet. First, he had to be able to speak clearly. Second, he had to be able to convince Chuck that his son wasn’t a complete screw up. A loser. But without Beatrice around, who would vouch for him? Who would be on his side when his mountain of a father started throwing down judgment from the clouds? He knew he couldn’t stand up to that. He knew he would default to anger once his reasoning failed him. And he knew how that would turn out.
After a failed attempt, he was able to get his feet beneath himself and stand up. The sky was growing dim and the ground seemed to wobble a bit, but he had an idea. The momentum of his plan carried him past rational thoughts about responsibility as his hand seemed to move on its own to find his car keys in his pocket. The plan also carried him out to his car where he opened the door, got inside, and ignored the sudden protest from Derek, who had seemingly been sitting on the front step of Chuck’s house this whole time. Despite his desperate thirst for a glass of water, his unsteady vision, and his cousin quickly walking up to his driver side window, Phillip switched the car into drive and pulled away from his father’s house. With any luck, he would arrive maybe ten minutes later, free of DUIs and car accidents, at his grandma’s empty house.
•
It wasn’t creative, and it definitely wasn’t safe, but it was the way she had done it since moving into the house when Chuck was in elementary school forty years earlier; the spare house key was underneath the welcome mat by the back door. The streetlights had kicked on, and his car was soaked in the orange light by the curb out front. Around back, however, with a large tree shading him from the little sunlight left, and only a little light from the neighbor’s house filtering through the wooden fence, Phillip had a hard time getting the key into the doorknob. He pulled out his cell phone after three failed attempts, and used it as a flash light until he was finally able to open the door.
The house still smelled like a mix of mothballs, potpourri, and stale cigarettes even though his grandpa hadn’t smoked in the house since he died five years earlier. He flicked on the overhead light in the kitchen. The chairs were pushed in at the table. The dishes were all put away. The only thing that had a chance of looking unkempt was the washing machine in the basement, which is where Chuck found her the morning after the stroke no one knew about until it was too late. He slid his phone, the screen showing two text messages and a missed call from his cousin, back into his pocket. He didn’t imagine this would take long, and hoped to be back at Chuck’s house before anyone else noticed he was gone.
The living room looked as though Beatrice had simply run to the store and would be back any moment. The only evidence to the contrary was the thin layer of dust that covered the TV screen. The room was lit by two lamps that were hooked up to a light switch he had hit as he walked from the kitchen. Since Phillip was small, he had watched cartoons on this same screen from tapes Beatrice had made for him, recorded from the TV with the commercials cut out. He stood next to the recliner, on the opposite wall from the couch, where he had helped her find the corner pieces of puzzles laid out on collapsible trays she would scoot up to the chair. Pictures lined the walls. Pictures of family members, vacations, and school photos. There was his father as a child, holding a potted plant in front of the window four feet to Phillip’s left. There was his grandfather in his policeman’s uniform. There was Beatrice on her wedding day, looking like a mixture of his grandmother and some young, beautiful woman. There was a picture of Chuck, Phillip, and Suzy. Phillip’s mother. They were sitting in lawn chairs in the driveway of Chuck’s house. Everyone was smiling, with no hint of sadness, regret, or any clue of what was to come. He forced himself to continue moving along the wall, scanning each picture until he found the one he was looking for. It was a small picture, seemingly taken with a disposable camera long ago. Hid grandmother sat on the recliner, the one that now sat to his right, with a young Phillip on her lap. He was maybe two years old. His legs were hanging on either side of her knee and she held his hands above his head. He looked as though he had just won a game, but at that point in a person’s life, there was nothing to lose. She was smiling and looking at Phillip, not the camera. Phillip had a big, open-mouthed smile stretched across his little face, and was looking directly into the camera. He stared at the picture, studying his grandmother’s face. She looked young, well, at least younger than she did earlier that afternoon. She looked as though she would never be anywhere but right behind him, holding his hands, and smiling. This was the tether that had been lost, and the picture he would bring to his father when he told him the news. He was so engrossed in it, imagining the speech he would give his father, that he didn’t notice the police car pull up outside.
•
Fifteen minutes later, Chuck’s footsteps could be heard slapping their way to the front door. He entered the house like it was on fire with a screaming baby in the back. Phillip sat at the kitchen table, not handcuffed. One police officer stood next to him, while his partner seemed to be wasting time looking around the kitchen. All of them snapped their focus on Chuck as he closed the door behind himself.
“Mr. Bailey?” the officer by the table said.
“Yeah.” Chuck’s eyes were fixed on Phillip.
“Is this your—”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
The second officer walked from the kitchen to the table and glanced back and forth between father and son. He lightly elbowed his partner. “I think we’ll be going now.”
They remained silent as the officers rattled off a few more inconsequential sentences, and then they were alone. The empty house was silent after the police cruiser drove away. It remained this way for a full minute before Phillip opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t,” said Chuck. “Don’t say whatever the hell you are thinking because I know it’s bullshit. You ditch out of your grandmother’s wake, drunk, yeah Neil told me, and break into her house? What were you planning on doing here?”
“Dad, I—”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear it.” He turned around and walked into the living room. A moment later, he returned, running his hand through his hair. “I want you out of here. Gone. Of all days. Of all days for you to pull some shit like this.”
“I dropped out of school.”
Phillip’s sentence echoed throughout the house.
“I’ve been staying with a friend all summer while his roommate was out of town, but now I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Phillip pushed his chair back and stood up. He walked around the table and toward the living room, but his father stood in his way.
“I should’ve guessed this would happen.” He shook his head. “You’ve quit everything else.”
“There’s a difference, dad.” Phillip pushed past his father. “Between quitting because something’s too hard, and deciding what you were doing wasn’t right for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I only went out for football because I knew you wanted me to. I only went to college because I knew you wanted me to.” He grabbed the picture of himself sitting on his grandmother’s knee from the wall. “Lot of good it did, anyway. Here.” He handed the picture to his father. “This is what I came here for.”
Chuck slapped the picture from his hand. “Get out. Leave. Now.”
They stood in the middle of the living room that had housed afternoons of cartoons and puzzles for Phillip, and cartoons and toys for Chuck. In this room, and this room only, they were equals.
“No,” said Phillip.
“Excuse me?” Chuck took another step forward. They were close enough to hear each other’s breaths.
“If I go out that door, we’re done. I know that. And you want an example of me not quitting when it’s tough? Here it is. Why don’t you do the same?” Eyes locked, Chuck stationary, Phillip reached out to the wall once more. He grabbed the other picture without averting his eyes. He handed Chuck the picture of Phillip and his two parents. As his father took the photograph in his hands, Phillip walked around him and out the front door. He sat on the edge of the porch and looked at the front lawn that he used to cut on Saturdays for five dollars. His mouth was dry and he wished for a glass of water and some aspirin.
A few minutes later, Phillip heard the front door open behind him. The same footsteps that had come up the front porch approached him from behind, this time much slower and muted. Chuck sat next to his son, his knees coming up to his chin. In the hazy orange light from the streetlights, he set the picture on the concrete in front of them. They listened to the cars go by for a minute. A neighbor and his dog walked past but didn’t wave. Despite the torrent of thoughts percolating on the porch, no words were said. All that happened was Chuck lifted his right arm and rested it on Phillip’s left shoulder, with his hand lightly gripping the back of his son’s neck. Phillip looked over at his father, but Chuck continued looking straight ahead. Phillip nodded and looked back into the orange street, surrounded by the black night.
Josh Rank‘s stories have been published in The Missing Slate, The Feathertale Review, The Oddville Press, and elsewhere.