Chapter Eight
My dad was a big man both physically and his personality. His funeral doesn’t do him justice. We’re not expecting too many people: a few people from the bar, the man dad had been working for and his family and some of Carla’s coworkers are the only visitors at the wake. It’s strange to be at my own dad’s funeral meeting most of the other mourners for the first time. I feel like an outsider and I wonder if it’s my own fault. I wanted my independence. I pushed him away. Am I paying the price now?
Most of the guys he worked with in Savannah, his friends that I know, can’t make it on such short notice. They send flowers and make donations in dad’s name to his favorite charities and their long-distance love helps me feel a little less disconnected.
Danny stays on the periphery of the event. He’s a quiet man who looks incredibly handsome but uncomfortable in his suit and tie, just like my dad. Not being an actual part of the family he has no role, no script to follow like I do to pass these sad hours. I want to go to him, to stand by him and hold his hand but every time I try someone else vies for my attention.
At two p.m. the funeral director gathers all those present for a brief memorial service. Carla asked me to speak and I struggled with something to say as I lay in bed last night but the perfect speech eluded me. To do justice to the loving, but frustrating and complicated relationship we had, I would need to speak for hours. Even then I’m not sure I could get it right. When my mom died we became a family of two, but two never felt like a family. It felt more like a couple of people who lived together and crossed paths and sometimes butted heads. We cared for each other and took care of each other, but my mom’s absence was like a missing puzzle piece that had tied us together. Big Mike Ramsey, all-American tough guy, did the best he could raising a daughter alone.
I was happy for him when he met Carla and decided to move to New Orleans for her. He had been single for fifteen years (although I learned last night, hardly celibate). There were days I missed him, but I was mostly happy he had moved on and found love for himself again. I was also happy to have him out of my hair.
It hurts to even think that now.
But at the time I was ready to make my own life and stop taking care of him and having him jump into my life at the most inopportune times.
There is no way to express how I feel about my dad in a few minutes to a group of people I hardly know so I let the funeral director say a few generic things--a choice I know I will regret later.
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Only three people stand in silence as the casket is lowered into the ground. There should be thousands; all the people he had helped and mentored and loved. This is some sick twist of fate that he died suddenly and far from home. To keep myself from facing the stark reality of this moment, I focus instead on all the things I might have done to make this moment better. Should I have specifically asked more people to drive to the cemetery for the burial? Would more of his Savannah friends be here if I had contacted them sooner?
The funeral director is saying a final few words and Carla is sobbing, the wad of Kleenex in her hand reduced to mush. I put one arm around her as I search in my purse for fresh tissues. I can feel Danny’s warm presence to my left and for a moment I let myself wish I had someone, specifically him, to hold me up. My super powers are wavering right now.
I console myself with the truth that I’ve never had a shoulder to cry on and it would probably feel kind of odd and uncomfortable. Growing up my dad never knew what to do when I cried. He might pat me on the back and offer a few encouraging words but never a warm embrace. Female tears scared him. I’m better at being the shoulder that others cry on. I may not always know what to say but I’m fantastic at knowing what to do. I focus on Carla, holding her tighter and rubbing her back.
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Danny and I pick up some take-out for dinner and take it back to Carla and Dad’s place. Although I could use a good dose of cooking therapy right now, I don’t want to invade Carla’s kitchen. I have to let procuring the perfect restaurant meals suffice but it’s harder to love people with food you don’t prepare yourself.
Carla’s touched that I remember her and dad’s favorite Chinese restaurant and her standard order; shrimp lo mien, no mushrooms. It makes me happy because not everyone understands how I love; by paying attention, by remembering their likes and the things that matter to them.
We eat in relative silence and it looks like there might be a long night ahead of us until Carla speaks up.
“It’s Wednesday night,” she clears her throat, striving to sound upbeat, “your dad and I always watch Survivor on Wednesdays. Would you want to stay and watch it?”
I love the idea of my dad and Carla and all their rituals; the little things that bound them together. Those were the things that made me feel like I was part of a family when I would come to visit them--Sunday afternoon football games, dinner and a movie every Friday night, Wednesdays watching Survivor. Continuing the pattern feels good.
“Sounds good. I haven’t seen this season.”
“You two go get it started. I’ll bring some dessert.” Bowls of ice cream eaten in front of the TV were also part of every Wednesday night.
I stand and start to clear plates and close take-out box lids but Carla stops me. “Let me. You’ve done so much already. Go, get off those heels and get comfortable.”
She needs to have a job, a task to keep her in motion and out of her head so I go to the bathroom to gather myself and make sure I don’t have mascara pools under my eyes.
When I walk into the living room Danny is sitting where I normally sit on the couch. He has unbuttoned his dress shirt about half way down to compensate for the way Carla keeps the house barely air conditioned. It’s embarrassing how much it affects me, even today. My lust for him has no bounds, no conscience, and obviously no scruples.
I figure I had better play it safe and not sit on the couch with him. Carla’s chair and dad’s recliner surround a small end table on the other side of the room. I decide to take dad’s lumpy, old recliner but I stop before I can cross the room. My heart lurches. I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched in the gut. The stupid chair is my undoing.
My dad and I had had a horrible, screaming argument when I was sixteen and I was going through an HGTV/DIY phase of redecorating. I had a plan for our living room and I wanted my dad’s fugly recliner gone. There was no place for it in my design scheme. As I look at it now, I hear all the ugly things I said to him about cheap-ass furniture and him being stubborn and unreasonable. I called him an asshole that night.
I’m stuck. I can’t move. I’m silently crying when I hear Danny call my name. “Vivey?” I don’t answer because I can’t seem to get out of this sad place. I’m in deep, trying to wish my dad back so I can apologize. I need more time with him.
Then Danny is standing next to me and I know this because I hear him quietly say, “Vivey” in my ear.
The ball of emotion that had been caught in my chest since Palm Springs rises and I can’t stop it. I double over and gasp for breath. Danny is rubbing my back, unsure what to do for me. I collapse on to him as my need for comfort overwhelms me. He pulls me down with him onto the couch and holds me close.
And I sob.
Tears and snot are pouring out of me and the harder I cry, the closer he holds me until it’s almost hard to breathe with his strong arms compressing me. I’m falling apart and he is trying to hold me together.
“He’s gone.” I choke out then hiccup as I try to breathe in.
Danny smooths my hair with one hand while the other keeps me pinned to his shoulder. I feel him breathing unevenly, fighting his own pain and tension.
“I want him back.” I wail. “I want him back.”
“I know.” His voice cracks and I realize that he is crying too.
I fling my arm over his other shoulder and turn my face into his neck and hold him tight. I force a breath in past the hiccups. Danny smells like cologne and the underlying scent of jet fuel, the scent that always clung to my dad’s skin too.
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When I finally calm myself enough to stop crying I’m spent. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt this exhausted. I struggle to lift my head from Danny’s shoulder but he pushes me back down and gently kisses me on the forehead. I muster enough strength to squeeze his shoulder and lean in to kiss his neck. It feels so natural, kissing him, probably because I’ve conjured it so many times in my mind. I do it again and feel a rush of endorphins wash through my tired brain. I turn my head to kiss his jaw. His whiskers feel exactly like I knew they would against my lips; sensual, rough.
I must have shocked him because he turns his head toward me and there they are, the most kissable lips. It’s more instinctual than planned when I lean up and gently kiss them. They feel just as good as I knew they would. I kiss him again and I’m blindsided by a wave of lust. I want more. I want to kiss his warm lips for hours. I want to feel them all over my body, everywhere I hurt, kissing away all my pain and tired.
Just as a little voice starts to remind me that Danny doesn’t want this, that he doesn’t want me, he kisses me back and I shove that little voice away and let myself fall into this beautiful floating feeling. I feel almost drunk, definitely out of my head, for once. I’m only vaguely aware of Carla coming into the room. We pull apart but not before she sees us.
She chuckles and shakes her head. “He always wondered when you two would get together.”
Her words stun both Danny and me and we turn and look at her in unison.
“He would talk to you on the phone.” She gestures to Danny with the bowl of ice cream she’s carrying. “Then after he’d hung up, he would always say that one of these days you were going to pull your head out of your ass and finally grab onto Vivey.”
Danny is too stunned to speak. All I can do is laugh at the irony and the way Carla quoted my dad perfectly.
He turns to me. “Did you?”
“Know?” I shake my head, “No. He never said anything to me.” But it would have been nice, Dad. There is too much left unsaid.
Carla hands us each a bowl of ice cream smiling like a Cheshire cat. She un-pauses Survivor, then sits down with her own bowl.
I eat my ice cream and try to focus on the show but I can’t stop looking back at Danny. He looks like he is going over every conversation he ever had with my dad about me. He’s so lost in his thoughts that his ice cream melts before he ever takes a bite.