“The First Couple told me,” Tal says to the others who come visiting, condolences in mouth. Parked in my living room, nibbling at the donuts they just brought as an offering. Nodding their heads solemnly. She means that as a joke, I want to say. But it isn’t funny. Nobody sees the humor in it.
I am trying not to feel any sense of relief about the passing of Irving Karp — but there will be the inheritance, that condo alone should be enough to pay for Whitman College and all the books and fees that entails, and any life insurance settlement on top of that will be an extra blessing to Tal’s economic future. She will be left with more than a large, decaying house to depend on. I feel the relief of that like someone who has taken sharp stones out of their shoes. This feels so good, so buoyant even, that I have to force myself to think of Irv’s face before I become giddy. Of the way he swung his long neck to look at you, or that laugh that sounded like years of smoking had added to his morbid sense of humor. Of what Tal lost, and what he lost in Tal’s mother. And what the world has lost now that he’s no longer walking in it.
We go to the funeral together. Sunita, Tal, me, all wearing matching outfits: black. We’re in the Bug. And I’m driving. And in the echo of my head, we are finally a family. As real as any family I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of since my own short-lived childhood unit. I even start humming as I drive the Beetle to the funeral home. A tune I realize is far too pleasant for the occasion when Sunita pinches my knee wordlessly.
The service is depressing, but quick and efficient. The rules were set millennia ago. Soon we’re back in the car, on the highway, off to the cemetery. Only family are at the grave site, and there’s not even a headstone, which won’t come till a year later at its unveiling.
“Everybody does burial differently. My dad didn’t even want a funeral. No memorial, nothing,” I say as I wait with Sun, down by the cars, for the family to say goodbye.
“I’m going to die in New Orleans,” Sunita Habersham tells me.
“No one knows where they’re going to die.”
“I do. I’m going to go there, eventually. Definitely when I get older. Bask in the music, get fat on the food. But mostly, so I can die there. So I can get that jazz funeral, that’s what I want. A second line band, marching down the street. Just make it a celebration, right? All life ends in death — you can’t let it be framed in tragedy. That’s how I’m going out. Also, I want to be dressed as The Dark Phoenix. Just in case the zombie apocalypse kicks in.”
“Do we do the pebble on the tombstone thing?” I say, looking over at them.
“I think that’s next year. Every year after till there’s no one to remember. That’s beautiful too. Look at them.”
I do. They’re over there. There’s Dot, and Art, and Dot’s daughter, Elissa, and others woven together with unseen bonds. Tal’s got her cousins. They stand together, watch. One lanky kid stands a few feet off, texting.
“In the end, we just have our people, our tribe,” Sun says, and she grabs my hand, squeezes it. “Even when you’re gone, when your biological family’s gone, your tribe’s still there. Keeping your memory alive.”
Dot is not very observant as a Jew. I know this because Dot says “I’m not very observant, as a Jew” to me when she gives me directions, and again when she answers the door at her house. Still, all the mirrors are covered, and she’s sitting shivah, although she’s not sure she’s sitting it properly, which she also confesses. Dot’s an excellent host, though, and a damn good cook. Or her friends are. And many trays and delights are offered for consumption. I stand with Sun. Tal, she flutters by every few minutes so that I know that despite the fact that I recognize almost no one here, I’m in the right home. I poke her shoulder at one passing, ask how’s she’s doing, and she snaps, “Fine!” annoyed at the suggestion that she would be anything else. As if this whole occasion were merely a house party with old people.
“She’s drifting apart. From me. Already. And we just met, really.”
Tal has her phone out. It’s way too big for her. It’s nearly a tablet. The others, the teens, the twenty-somethings, they gather around Tal to look at what’s in her hands.
“Oh God, she’s showing them her damn ghost movie.”
I put down my little plastic plate on a breakfront and take a step toward Tal, when Sun’s hand falls on my arm and stops me.
“It’s morbid,” I whisper to her.
“It’s helping her cope,” she says back. “She needs to feel special. It helps with the loss. Like Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man after he lost Uncle Ben. When I lost Zeke, for me it was helping to start Mélange.”
Zeke. There, for the first time, is the name. The word that defines the wound of her heart. I reach out for Sun’s hand. It goes into mine, but absently. She doesn’t seem to realize that this is the first time she’s told me even that much about him.
Others are starting to leave. Others are, so we should. Before I can start the process though, Art comes over. He gives me a hug like I’m the one who’s lost a brother.
“Tal has you. This was a gift. You are here to be a father. There are no coincidences.”
“God willing,” I say.
“God is dead, but we still have Jung. Forgive me, I get very philosophical at events like these. The next, it’ll be mine — at least I hope so. You start, you’re the youngest one in the family. At the end, you’re the oldest. Then you go. But Tal has you, and I think that’s wonderful.”
He gets a hug from Sun for this. Takes it, squeezes too hard, winks over her shoulder at me. Letting go, he starts to leave, then turns around again.
“And you know there’s no money, right?” I assumed there would be no hat passed, so say yes. He sighs heavily, smiles, walks back to hug me again. Says in my ear, “Irv played the market like it was horses. Nobody wins at horses. Also, greyhounds: he lost on those too. Between that and the medical bills, nothing. But thank Jung, a young girl going to college soon has her real father to take care of her.”
And then he lets me go.
“What was that about?” Sunita Habersham asks me when Art has rejoined his sister in her hosting duties.
“He’s drunk. And Irv was fucking broke,” I say, a little too loud for the room.
—
“It’s got, like, a thousand page views on YouTube,” Tal tells me. “Pops! Look,” she says, leaning over from the backseat and trying to push her phone into my face while I’m driving. I want to point this hazard out but see the image in a flash.
“But it only says 907 hits, honey.” Sun’s hand on my knee starts pinching again, but I don’t bother looking over for the reproach I know is waiting in her eyes.
“That’s like a thousand,” Tal corrects. “And it will be over that when my cousin Nate puts it on Channel Six News.”
“It’s going on TV?” Sun turns to ask. She actually sounds happy about this.
“No. On their YouTube channel. That’s bigger — way bigger. Because I don’t think anyone watches, you know, live TV anymore? Except for HBO?”
“You’re up-speaking.” She’s up-speaking. Lifting the end of her sentences an octave higher. It’s a white-girl affectation, one Tal’d largely dropped over the last few months. A habit, most likely, reacquired in the hours with family before. Her other family.
“Well you’re up your own ass,” Tal responds, then the headphones are on before she has to endure my admonishment. She gets out and slams the door as soon as we pull up back in our driveway.