Funeral: A short story
Sunday 9th September 2001
Today is Sunday, which means that yesterday was Saturday, but today doesn’t feel like a Sunday. Last Sunday, I was in my study finishing up notes on my students’ recent submissions of their analysis of the character development of Derek Vinyard in David McKenna’s ‘American History X.’ Today, I am burying my mother, and I am relieved. Now, you’re waiting for me to describe the turmoil that I’ve been enduring ever since I discovered my mother was ill; you think that I’ve surely only reached this point after helplessly watching her deteriorate from the side-line for months and months. Really, I simply don’t like her. Never have, never will.
My existence was a mistake. Not the genuine forgot-to-take-your-pill or split-the-condom type of mistake that befalls most young parents who possess more sex drive than sense. No, my conception was more of a wrong-turn-down-a-one-way-street kind of mistake. My mother had deliberately stopped taking her contraceptive pill and continued to sleep with her husband — my father — without telling him. I was a last-ditch attempt to save her marriage, to put it bluntly. If you haven’t already guessed, it didn’t work. I prefer to think of myself as rather a last hurrah, the supernova of my parents’ love affair before it faded into nothingness.
Today was arranged by my sister, Meredith, the nucleus of the nuclear family that I never got to be a part of. Meredith’s childhood was punctuated by birthday parties around tables adorned with fancy cloth and later, at the local cricket club with the sophisticated edge of an alcohol-serving bar. She could rely on a lift to school each morning, and one of our parents would be waiting to pick her up at the gates when the bell rang at the end of the day — their precious cargo. By the time I was born, Meredith had married and moved out, and she had young children of her own that eclipsed any possible need for a little sister. Growing up, I saw her once a month, when she’d visit with her twins that were my technically my nieces, but they were four years ahead of me in school, and obviously never referred to me as their aunt.
When my father discovered my mother’s pregnancy and — worse — her unwillingness to terminate, he walked out. When I was old enough, he explained that this wasn’t a denial of his responsibility as a parent, but rather a staunch refusal to raise a child in what he deemed the “Domestic definition of the bleedin’ Cold War”. Instead, the father figure in my life was given weekend shifts, when he’d pick me up in his battered British Leyland and take me to the Odeon on Oxford Road in the city centre, or to feed the ducks some stale Warburtons bread in Heaton Park. Each Friday, I’d rush in from school and position myself by our bay window — hours before he was even due to collect me — the Stockport edition of a classic princess-rescue fairy-tale.
It’s not as though my mother was stubbing her cigarettes out on my bare skin or throwing me down the stairs — although perhaps if I was the theatrical type, I’d tell people my childhood was an abusive one. Anyway, I’m not. My issue with our relationship was only ever the lack of it. After I failed my purpose as the plaster for her crumbling marriage, I was no use to her, she’d lost interest in me before I was even born. As you can imagine, the inconvenience of having to push a screaming, bloody, rugby-ball-sized mass she no longer had any desire to nurture out of her vagina gave me even less of a case for likability. In one of my earliest memories, I’m stood on my tiptoes at the edge of my toddler pen, clutching its flimsy rail with both of my hands. My face has that horrible itchy feeling that comes from salty tears drying your skin like clay; I’m still wailing, but my tears dried up a good hour ago. My mother is a few feet away, seated on the sofa with her legs curled beneath her. Every so often, she turns the volume on the television up a notch to drown out my longing for her: I can’t hear you.
My mother’s love for me existed at her own convenience. Dates with her various boyfriends could take place at the park or the local bowling alley, so long as I excelled in my supporting role to her doting mother act. When I became old enough to go out independently with my friends, I’d leave the house promising that I’d “Be careful!” as mum clutched her left hand to her heart while her friends looked on in awe, her vodka tonic clutched in her right. From the date of my acceptance, my place at Oxford University was her go-to weapon in an argument, “Oh, little Sandy thinks she’s so much better than us lot because she’s going to bloody Twatford” — but for the benefit of anyone outside of our family, she was delighted for me. My name is Cassandra, by the way. No one ever calls me Sandy.
“Mooooooooooom! Did you pack my toothbrush?”
“Right hand-side pocket, your dad’s rucksack!” I call back down the stairs to my perpetually disorganised fourteen-year old. I was born in Manchester and spent my entire childhood here, up until dodgy part-time jobs and evenings spent buried in my schoolbooks equipped me with just enough bread and brains to cash my ticket out of the North and put as many miles between me and my mother as seemed possible at the time: Oxford University. At St. Hilda’s, I was free to reinvent myself away from my mother’s prying eyes; I cut my hair into a pageboy crop and pierced my ears, painted my lips red and took up drinking glasses of wine in the same shade. I waved a swift and unsentimental goodbye to the days of drinking mugs brimming with vodka tonic and stale limes on the rare occasions when mum deigned to offer me some of her stash — usually after a particularly bad break-up, or a run in with the next-door neighbour over our eternally overflowing bins.
One Friday night, a few too many glasses of Rioja sent me sprawling into the lap of my now-husband: “Whoa! If you wanna sit, all you gotta do is ask, lady!” Jerry hailed from Williamsburg, and he was Oxford University’s poster boy for New York. He didn’t walk across the campus to my halls of residence, he schlepped; the corner shop was always a bodega; and he quickly developed his own definitions of what constituted ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown’ in the city. Essentially, if I had to order my life partner in a sandwich shop, I’d opt for pastrami beef on rye, with Swiss cheese, a generous amount of lettuce leaves, slices of fresh tomato, and just the right balance of mustard and mayonnaise. When Jerry tells the story of our first meeting, he insists I’d had “Just enough glasses of the good stuff.”
I left Oxford with a seasoned taste for red wine; a PhD in Classical Languages and Literature; a small treasure trove of gold pendants, chain-link bracelets, and hoop earrings in various sizes; and a boyfriend who seemed to reserve a limitless pool of adoration just for me. Armed with my degree and a weighty duffel bag filled with my jewellery, some clothes – and most importantly, my books — I did what any besotted twenty-five-year-old writer and consequential dreamer would do. I moved to New York. Like my own, Jerry’s father passed away before Jerry finished high school. Perhaps to compensate for this lack, Meg Margolis’ love for her only son existed in parallel to our boundless love for one another. After spending my first evening with her, I finally understood the phrase, “Come Hell or high water”; Meg greeted each new day as an opportunity to walk over hot coals for Jerry. Contrary to my experience with my own mother and all of the horror stories I’d heard regarding friends’ relationships with their in-laws, Meg cherished me. I was important to her son, which made me important to her — it was as simple and uncomplicated as that. When we crossed the Atlantic and emerged into the arrivals of JFK, Meg greeted us with a homemade sign that read, ‘Welcome home from the Big House, son!’, then she bundled our belongings into the boot of her Fleetwood, and instructed us to “Sit tight!”, while she expertly weaved her way through JFK-to-Manhattan traffic. I was home.
There was no question of where we would stay while we slowly hauled ourselves up the rungs of our respective career ladders. Jerry’s childhood home was a three-bedroomed loft with a combined kitchen and living-room area that was welcoming and airy, it boasted a 11211 area code, and Meg wouldn’t hear of anything else: “I wrote the book on New York, honey. The least I can do is give you kids a leg-up.” I was lucky to gain a position filling the shoes of a New York University English professor who was taking a six-year sabbatical beginning in the Autumn; Jerry knew someone who knew someone, and secured a role as an analyst for the New York State Department of Transportation; and Meg spent her days as a commercial artist who sold her work to some of the biggest advertising companies in the city, and her evenings cooking cholent with kneidlach, chorusing on loudspeaker to anyone who would listen: “My son works in the Wuh-rld Tra-y-de Cen-nah, did ya know? The Wuhrld Trayde Cennah!”
“Cass! You sure pulling up to a funeral in a taxi is proper mourning etiquette?” Jerry’s voice bounces into the en-suite of our family hotel room, where I’m sat observing my reflection in the mirror, wondering if my triangular gold-plated bamboo-style earrings are also inappropriate for the occasion.
“We can tag along with Meredith and Gaz, if you’d prefer”, I call back in response.
“I’m Googling the taxi number now.” Jerry has no time for my sister and her husband, nor their air-head Zumba instructor daughters. In the 25 years we've been together, they've probably spent no more than 25 hours total in each other’s company: just enough time for me to fulfil my familial obligations at events like the one we’re attending today, and more than enough time for the twins to earn Jerry’s nicknames for them: Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.
Furiously smoothing the lint off the skirt of my simple black knee-length dress with my hands as the three of us tramp up the steps to the church, I find myself wondering again if I should remove my earrings.
“Cass, stop.” Jerry chastises me firmly, he must have caught me biting my lip.
“How did you know?”
“I always know.” He reaches behind my ear and, with a flourish, pulls out a Werther’s Original in its wrapper, and then drops it into my palm, as if to confirm his status as my magician. In return, I kiss him on his own ear, my thoughts drifting successfully from my jewellery doubts and settling instead, on this: How many times have I kissed you in this spot in 25 years? How many more times will I kiss you in this spot for the rest of our lives? God, I love this man.
“Can you guys quit being gross for at least five seconds? I mean, isn’t that like, sacrilege, or something? I can’t believe I have to come to this thing anyway.” Jess’ newfound commitment to his carefully crafted, super-cool teenage boy persona usually irks me, but today, I let it slide. Truthfully, I can’t help but admire his casual disdain for this event, these people, this place. You are a little bit of me, is what I say in my head as I playfully bat his shoulder.
As I lead the way through the entrance and into the church, I find myself being held back by a strong arm on my wrist, which pulls me sharply through the arched doorway. The arm belongs to a burly man seated behind a desk, his hand resting protectively atop a large folder. He’s wearing a black suit and white shirt without a tie, and looks to be… a bouncer?
“Name, please?” He barks at me.
“Cass Margolis”, I offer.
“I’m going to need all three of your names, please. Full names.”
“Cassandra Margolis. Jerome Margolis. Jesse Margolis.” Jerry speaks through gritted teeth. Already, he is irritated, and the ceremony hasn’t even started yet. Jesus, the ceremony. For some reason, I keep forgetting that this is actually my mother’s funeral we’re attending. Maybe it just hasn’t dawned on me yet. Maybe I really don’t care. I wonder why on Earth the bouncer is necessary; it’s exactly the type of stop that Meredith would pull out if just to suit her own bloody delusions of grandeur, but it’s also quite possible that one of my mother’s behaviours would incense someone enough for them to gate-crash today. Who knows.
After we've been admitted entry into my own mother’s funeral, we're greeted at the door by my sister, Meredith. Gaz is nowhere to be seen.
“He’s probably off looking for the chocolate fountain”, Jerry whispers into my ear, reading my mind as per.
“I see you brought the Yank.” This is Meredith’s greeting to me. I note her casual reference to Jerry, as if he's a one-night stand I picked up the previous evening and just decided to bring along for the ride, rather than the man that’s been my husband for more than 16 years, and the father of my child for 14.
“Delta had a special offer on. Buy one ticket, get a Jew free.” The retort that I fire back is such a Jerryism, a Margolism. I am not like you, it screams. Meredith balks, she hates this type of humour; as she shows us to where we’ll sit in the pews, her arm hovers above my back, as though she’s afraid that touching me might cause her to catch it. More than that, she’s furious with me for booking our return flight to New York for 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. 'You have no respect', she’d typed to me via E-Mail when I sent over our itinerary. I replied detailing that Jess has a school commitment. Surprisingly, this is actually true. For the week commencing Monday 10th September, students are required to shadow a parent or similar figure of influence in their place of work, keeping a diary of their experience. Normally, we’d let Jess use a week free from the shackles of school to do something fun, maybe we’d have travelled from Manchester to Oxford after the funeral to show him some of our old haunts — but he’s excited to spend a week in the city shadowing his father, and it’s hard to get him excited about anything these days. The funeral today and our flight tomorrow morning mean he'll miss Monday in the office with Jerry, but he can easily fabricate some meetings in his diary. I’m sure all of the days will roll into one by the end of the week, anyway.
Once everyone has filed into the church and taken their seats, someone boots an ancient stereo system to life, and Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ sounds out from the speakers, ominously. I’m trying my utmost not to erupt into hysterical peals of laughter. I concentrate on distracting myself, my eyes boring into the whorls of the wooden benches in front of me. I begin to wonder how Jess will feel one day burying me, his own mother. Nothing like this, I hope. Jesus, I hope he never has to bury me. I know they say a parent shouldn't ever have to bury their own child – that this timeline simply isn't how our life cycle works — and I don’t dispute it. I cannot even begin to comprehend the gut-wrenching heartbreak that I’d endure if I lost my son. But at the same time, I hope to God that Jess will never have to bury me. I turn my head slightly, to catch him and Jerry in my field of vision. My boys — or ‘guys’ — as they’d say. “A couple of guys are heading to Cherry Street to kick a ball around.”
I can’t wait for this day to be over. For us to wake up tomorrow and call a taxi to the airport. Hoard far too many flight snacks in our hand luggage before we board the plane. For Meg to pick us up from JFK, blasting Springsteen through the crackly speakers of her ageing car stereo, with Jess singing along even though he swears he doesn’t like Springsteen now. For Jerry to mirror my position in bed in the evening, in our bed, home. I want us to remain untouched, in our snow-globe scene of the perfect family, forever.