Funeral with a View (4 page)

“Glen? Glen!”

“Yes, Dear.”

“Get ready to leave,
sweetie. It’s getting late”

Once my mother was ready
to leave, that was it; argument was an exercise in futility.

The sky had turned dark a
while ago and the bugs started their chorus. Things turned out to be more
pleasant than expected. Sure, plenty of laughs were had at my expense, mostly
from embarrassing stories my mom spun, but it was all in fun. With the aid of a
few beers, I’d joined in on the laughter. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Mom came in for a quick
and fierce goodbye hug.

“C’mere, Baby Boy. I hope
I didn’t embarrass you too much?” She held me tight then, poised on tip-toes,
whispered in my ear. “And I’m sure you’re going to tell me what bug has crawled
up all your asses. Sometime soon, I hope?” I tensed. “Yes, I noticed it. The
three of you can’t hide shit from me.”

I kept my trap shut as
she turned to Bill.

“Come here, studly.” She locked
her fingers behind his neck and gave him a big kiss. “Nummy nummy. You take
care of yourself. Be good, but not
too
good.”

“I gotta be who I gotta
be, Beth. I’m too much man to be anything else.”

Mom laughed and smacked
his ass one last time.

“And you,” she strutted
over to Catherine with her arms outstretched, “are a doll, and don’t ever let
anybody tell you any different, or they’ll have to deal with me.” They hugged.
“I’m trusting you to take care of my Richard. You can do that, can’t you?”

Cat smiled. “I’ll make it
my sole purpose in life, Beth.”

Glen shook hands with
Bill, then me, before rushing to catch up to my mother. She chatted about
something, arms flinging this way and that. If she didn’t take it easy on him,
the thin, bald guy would end up in an early grave. I didn’t envy him trying to
keep up with my mom.

Bill helped Catherine in
the kitchen while I cleaned up the grill, and fifteen minutes later, I heard a
car door slam, followed by the rumble of a high-tuned sports car and loud
music. With a screech of tires, the car pulled out of the development.

Back in the apartment,
Catherine stood rigidly at the sink, elbows locked, her palms on the counter.
Her head hung low, looking into the sink as if studying the mating patterns of
lemon-scented soap bubbles.

“Cat, did Bill just
leave? Jerk didn’t say goodbye.”

With a snap of her head,
Catherine turned and hurled a dish sponge at my face.

I ducked out of the way.
The sponge missed my head by inches and hit the wall behind me with a wet
splut
.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“You told him,” she said.
Her tone was venomous, her eyes smoldering. “I can’t believe it. Dammit, Rick,
I can’t believe you fucking told him!”

That sneaky shit. So much
for him keeping our conversation a secret. I vowed to tear him a new asshole
once I got a hold of him.

“Look, Cat—”

“Why?” I felt the calm
before the storm. Things were going to get ugly.

I shrugged and shook my
head.

“
Why?”
she
shouted.

“I don’t know why, Cat. I
felt like I had to get it off my chest. And he’s my best friend.”

“And what am I? Don’t you
give a shit about my feelings?”

“Of course I do. You know
that.”

“You have a funny way of
showing it.”

“How did this even come
up?”

Cat uttered a short,
mirthless laugh. “He said he knew about our,” she gestured air quotes, “‘
situation
,’
and that his father knows a guy if I wanted to get rid of it.”

That jerkoff.

“Okay,” I said. “I fucked
up. I blabbed when I shouldn’t have, but still, it’s not like he wouldn’t have
found out eventually anyway. You know how Bill is. He probably thought he was
helping. I understand you’re bent out of shape, but aren’t you overreacting
just a little bit?”

“Don’t tell me how I
should and shouldn’t react, Ricky.”

I slowly walked to her
and took her shoulders gently in my hands. She turned her head, avoiding eye
contact.

“Look, Cat …”

“Stop, Ricky,” she said,
shaking her head.

“I’m sorry I let the cat
out of the bag. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Ricky …” She clamped her
eyes tighter, her lower lip quivering.

“Whatever it is you
decide, I’m behind you one hundred percent.”

Cat placed her arms
between us, her hands on my chest. “Ricky, please.”

“It’s your decision.”

She shook her head
faster, pushed my chest harder. “Stop.”

“I’ll be here either way,
whether you want to keep our—”

“Stop!” She thrust her arms
up, breaking my hold, and shoved me away. Her face was contorted. Tears flowed
freely down her cheeks.

“Jesus, Cat. Why are you
being so difficult?”

“Because I don’t know whose
baby it is!”

The sentence floated in
the kitchen and bounced off the walls, hitting my ears as if it had been said a
thousand times.

Eventually I whispered,
“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Say it again.”

Her voice trembled. “I
don’t know which one of you is the father.”

The walls of my small
kitchen closed in on me. The air felt suffocating despite the air conditioning.

“But … That doesn’t make
any sense.”

Cat took a breath, her
arms around her stomach. “I went online and found a conception calculator. It
gave me a range of dates. The night we fooled around with Bill was smack dab in
the middle.”

I staggered backward,
almost tripping over my own two feet, until I ended up with my back against the
wall, palms pressed tightly against it to keep myself from collapsing to the
floor.

The baby. Not mine? The
possibility made my head swim. I didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe
it.

My spread fingers turned
into fists. “You knew about this for how long, and you’re just telling me now?”

“I wanted to tell you.”

“But you didn’t.”

She wiped at her
tear-streaked face. “Are you still behind me one hundred percent?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“That’s what I thought.
Fuck this.”

“What?”

“You hesitated, Rick.
That tells me everything.”

She tore past me into the
TV room.

I followed.

“Where are you going?” I
said, more out of habit than anything else.

“Where do you think I’m
going? Home. I’m sure as hell not staying here tonight. I can’t even look at
you right now.”

She grabbed her purse and
keys, ripped open the door. Before leaving, she turned to me, her eyes
radiating anger and pain.

“I don’t need either of
you, Ricky. I’ll do this on my own if I have to. I didn’t tell Bill, by the
way. You can if you want. You seem to be good at that.”

Words hurt, and hers
pierced my heart with the cold, alien sting of a knife to the chest.

As much as it pained me,
as much as it turned my insides to jelly, I let her leave. I watched her turn
her back on me and storm out of my apartment, impotent and unable to say or do
a single damned thing.

I collapsed on my rundown
couch with my head resting in my hands. The door shut behind me with a quiet
clack
that sounded like one thing.

Finality.

I pounded on the door of
Bill’s Plainsboro condo. For the entire half hour it took me to drive from my
place in Lawrence, I entertained notions of what I’d do when I saw him, thought
of what I’d say. Would I stare him down, expecting him to wilt under my withering
gaze? Would I sucker punch him? Better yet, maybe I’d give him the
ever-dramatic backhand to the mush. I was pissed beyond measure. I’d nearly
slipped on the sponge Cat threw at me the night before. That dumb, innocuous
sponge served as a gritty reminder of the bombshell that blew up my life.

But why was I so angry at
Bill? Truth be told, part of me felt that if he’d kept his mouth shut none of
this would have happened, that I’d move along in ignorant bliss thinking the
baby was mine and dealing with it accordingly. Cat had said she wanted to tell
me that it may not be mine, but I wasn’t so sure.

I wasn’t so sure of
anything.

Three minutes of straight
knocking later, I heard some rustling from inside and a muted “Yeah, yeah. I’m
coming.”

Bill opened the door,
wearing boxers and a scowl. His hair stood on end.

He rubbed his eyes. “Rick?
It’s eight-thirty in the morning, man. What’re you doing here? You know I sleep
in on Saturdays.”

“You,” I poked him in the
chest, “are a fucking
dick
.”

The building had been in
the process of waking up, and one of Bill’s neighbors, a short, fat man from two
doors down looked at me through dirty glasses as he picked up his
Times
.
It wasn’t a pleasant look, but I didn’t care.

“What the shit are you
looking at?” I yelled at Neighbor Guy. “Can’t you see I’m having a dialogue
with my
friend
here?” The man jumped, fumbled his newspaper, and ran
into his apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Bill was too surprised
and sleepy to speak. I shoved my way into his condo, giving him a solid
shoulder check for good measure. He scoped out the breezeway in either
direction then closed the door.

“Jesus Christ, Rick. What
the hell are you doing?”

“I thought we were
friends, Bill.” He stood, red-faced and fuming. Bill could pound me into the
ground like a railroad spike straight out of
Looney Tunes
, but my anger
blocked out all concern for my personal safety. “I thought you could keep a
secret. What I told you about the pregnancy was said in confidence. You know,
like a non-disclosure agreement? You get that, don’t you, Mr. Wannabe Gordon
Gecko? But noooo. Big mouthed Bill had to go and run his mouth.” I flopped onto
his recliner.

He ran a hand through his
nappy hair and sat down across from me.

“I was only trying to
help.”

I had to laugh. “Helpful
would have been keeping your pie hole shut.”

“Come on, man. A kid?
Which one of us is ready for that?”

“What makes you an expert
on what I’m ready for or not? Don’t project your bullshit onto me, man.”
Puffing out my chest, I laid on my best Bill voice. “Hey, I’m only
twenty-three. I don’t want kids. Ever.”

Bill launched himself out
of his seat, two hundred-forty pounds of coiled muscle and agitation.

“Fucking A right I don’t
want kids,” he seethed. “I have sack enough to admit it, too, unlike you who
think you’re some kind of world beater.” His chest heaved as he stared me down.
Bill was close enough to reach out and snap my neck like a chicken’s. “Shit,
Rick,” he sighed. “My dad didn’t want kids, but my mom forced him into it. No
matter what I did, football, school, work, it was never good enough. I was
always just a nuisance to him. Sure, he puts on a good front for people, but
it’s a crock of shit. I know how he really feels. It drove him and my mom
apart. I don’t want you and Cat to go through that, and I wouldn’t wish that
kind of shit on any kid’s shoulders. Other than my mom, you and Cat are the
closest thing to family I’ve got, and I wanted her to know I’m willing to help
in any way possible.”

“Any way possible, huh?”

“That’s what I said,
isn’t it?”

“Even if it’s yours?”

Bill stopped breathing as
the void of silence swelled throughout the room.

“What are you talking
about?”

“Just what I said.” I sat
forward. “That’s why she was so pissed, Bill. She has no idea which one of us
is the father.”

“You’re kidding,” he
said, his voice high and squeaky.

“Do I look like I’m
kidding? She used one of those conception calculator things online. The night
we all screwed around came up as one of the possible dates.”

Bill landed hard in the
recliner opposite me, glazed-over eyes staring at nothing. Eventually he
covered his face with his hands.

“Oh my God. I can’t
believe this.”

That made two of us. “I
don’t want to believe it either, but it’s the truth. Apparently, we weren’t
careful enough.”

“This is
in-freaking-sane.”

“I told her I’d be there
for her one hundred percent. Then she dropped all this on me out of the blue.
When she asked if I’d still be there for her, I couldn’t make up my mind, so
she left.”

His eyes met mine. “She
left
you, left you?”

“I don’t know, man. I
just don’t. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”

“Holy shit. Holy
shit
.”

“Still sure about paying
for that abortion?”

Bill said nothing.

“That’s what I thought.
Easy to say when you think you’re not involved.” I stood to leave. “I have to
go.”

“What happens now?”

I paused, my hand on the
doorknob. “No idea. I still want to be with her, but this changes everything.
It’s her decision.” I shook my head. “I have a lot of thinking to do, but I’m
not sure things’ll ever be the same after this no matter what happens.”

“Things?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Okay.”

“I want to know one
thing, Bill.”

“What?”

“If it pans out that this
baby’s not mine, are you going to step up and do the right thing? Even if by
some miracle Cat and I are still together?”

He paused. “I can’t tell
you that and be honest about it, Rick. A kid. Jesus. I’ll have to cross that
bridge if we get to it. That’s the best I can do right now.”

I nodded, not bothering
to look back.

A sudden wave of sadness
came over me as I stepped out the door. All of the bluster and anger
dissipated, leaving me hollow inside. I couldn’t help but think that I’d just
lost my best friend and a future with a great woman simply because of a bad
combination of hormones, booze, and thoughtlessness.