Sunday Paper: Ode part 2 of 4, by Daniel Perry.
Molly
I hear him, I’m just ignoring him. God. It’s like he can’t see I’m in the middle of something. Just reading my soul-mate’s last words, jerk-off. But of course, Martin doesn’t stop. He says my name again, drawing it out, with about seventeen Os between the M and the Ls.
And again.
“Molly!”
“What, Martin? What do you want?”
“We’re almost finished,” he says, checking his watch. “We’re just under time and we’ve got lots to say. Let’s do one more read-through.”
A read-through. Like a Tuesday-morning seminar.
What Martin doesn’t know is that you can’t rehearse eulogies. You just stand on the stage and see what comes out – even if you’re left a bawling mess. Crying at a funeral’s not weird; not crying is. You come across like the journalist with the obituary on file, three-quarters written and waiting.
Martin still expects me to answer. In his blazer and jeans, and balding already, he’s pathetic, overcompensating with an expensive silver watch that’s too big for him. I exaggerate a sigh from the back of my throat and hope that I can gas him with disgust. When it fails I say, “Sure.” I don’t look up.
I just want to finish this story.
Reid Watson had a party the night before the final, like he did every year. As usual, Summer School was proving itself an oxymoron, but I was one credit shy and determined to graduate. Watching everyone else move on in April really drove it home, and the sublets in the dingy bungalows on Lester Street were quieter than ever, empty for the summer. I stopped by Reid’s for a beer. Okay, two. The few meatheads who stayed in town to play softball with him were all there: Gary Connor and his girlfriend Stacey, Jumbo Joe Polak – not actually his name, but all anyone could spell – and Brad and Michelle, and Scott, John and–
Of course it’s true. Everything was when he started, and he left nothing out. The list goes on for a while, but things get better when I show up.
She was a year younger than me. Maybe more like two and a half. It doesn’t matter because I never found out. Having failed last summer session because of just this party, I knew I was doomed to leave early, but still I stared, watching her strum Reid’s guitar on the porch and pretend she was shy, singing softly, holding it back. The next morning I wrote an exam worth a bright shining 71, and afterward, instead of telling Doctor Laskey to stuff it, that I’d failed Romantic Lit for the last time, I just bolted to Reid’s to ask about the nightingale.
Seriously. Like in Keats, or The Emperor And The. He only called me that once to my face, and I laughed at him. “What a cheeseball,” I said. “I will never date you.” In China two years later, I bought him the figurine; a peace offering from a long-forgotten battle.
“Fifteen seconds,” Martin says, checking the damned watch. He turns his wrist to show me. “I’m starting when the second hand gets to the twelve.”
“I can tell time, Martin.”
He breathes in. Checks again. Goes.
“Your friend and mine, Paul Weaver, will be sorely missed,” he begins. “Paul’s girlfriend Molly and I are honoured to be asked to memorialize a man who–”
I quit listening and let my eyes glaze over. Memorialize? Is that even a word? It’s so unfeeling. He reads into the mirror with his hands at his sides, making sure to keep them out his pockets. I don’t refocus until I hear “Scout Camp.”
“We’re at this cattle ranch, not far out of town,” he’s saying. “It’s the final year hike, an overnighter, and kids from every troop in MacKinnon County are running around playing war, shooting each other with the sticks they’ve gathered for firewood.
“But Paul, he wants no part of this. He picks up our tent, which is still limp on the ground, and tells me to take the other side. We carry our home into the middle of this flat and set it up. A private camp, for just the two kids from Currie. That night, we make a small fire and cook canned soup, and we spend the night talking about the girls in Grade Eight, all spaghetti straps and nice legs and whose chest is still flat.”
I’ve read this one. It doesn’t go anywhere after the body parts. But everything since undergrad is mine: Teacher’s College, English classes in China, Paul’s first job, and moving a Toronto Girl home with him. Anything before that is Martin’s.
“When we wake up we’re surrounded by a hundred head of longhorn,” he continues. “We didn’t know it, but we’ve pitched our tent in their pasture, and now, all these cows are lowing and grazing and stomping around us, and the two of us are just waiting, cowering in our sleeping bags, hoping they take off soon.”
They do. The end.
A better story would have Paul reassure Martin, or crack a joke, or maybe even get up and chase away the longhorns, but that must not be how it happened. No matter. The mourners will laugh anyway. Easy pickings at a funeral. Martin chose a story and delivered it unflinchingly: off-book, with no tears, and no choking up. Ten out of ten.
“That’s just one of our great memories,” he says.
I forgot about the slam-bang conclusion, for bonus marks.
“And though we might not have seen each other much these last few years, I know in my heart that Paul cherished our childhood just like I–”
“Martin, stop.”
He looks at his watch, to mark time.
“What?”
“When did you last see him?”
He takes his speech from the desk and raps it on the wood, like a news anchor wrapping up.
“I’ve known him since we were six.”
“No, really, Martin. When?”
The hand holding papers drifts to his side.
“I guess it was… almost four years ago.”
“Do you even know what happened the night he died?”
“He was walking home.”
“From…?”
“From Brewskie’s.”
I shake my head.
“No. He had just left our place.”
Martin’s eyes widen.
“So how’d he wind up dead in the river?”
I imagine punching his accusing face. Is he saying this is my fault?
“He had just gotten some bad news. He went out to clear his head.”
“What was it?”
“His dad.”
Martin sits down on the bed. He runs a hand through what’s left of his hair.
“Remarried, and pregnant with a new kid.”
“Right.”
“First call since the split?”
I nod. Gail must have told him.
“And that’s why he killed himself?”
“You’re such an idiot, Martin. He didn’t kill himself.”
“So what, it was an accident? He fell off the bridge?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I do think he jumped–”
“But?”
“But I don’t think he wanted to die.”
Martin looks down at his black dress shoes.
I thought he knew all this.
“Paul talked a lot that night about getting away from old memories,” I begin. “About how good life was in China. He said that he felt like he’d moved beyond this town, and that he couldn’t believe he’d wound p back here. And he said he was sorry, too, for dragging me down with him, and that he’d understand if I went back to Toronto.”
“So what did you say?”
Suspicious. Still blaming me.
“I said that whatever happened, we’d do it together. His contract was just a year –what difference if it was at his old high school? – and I was getting calls for sub work, in London. We were both gaining experience, and before long we’d go somewhere else: Toronto, or Hamilton, or even England or somewhere. There was no rush to decide.”
Martin raises a hand to his mouth. He nibbles a thumbnail.
“So Paul was okay? Last time you saw him?”
I exhale.
“He was upset that Currie was still exactly the same, and that all his old friends were either burnouts or long gone. Hungover on the line at Ritter Pulley every day, or never to be heard from again. He said, ‘Oldest friend and best friend aren’t synonyms.’”
Martin shifts on the bed. I pin him with my eyes.
“Yes. He mentioned your name.”
“I’m sure he did,” Martin says. “I saw him that night, too.”
“What?” I shriek.