The Wake
Published Online in Snapping Twig Magazine, April 25, 2015
Clare has just stepped into the kitchen from the yard, where she's been picking up fallen branches.
“Ricky Elliot just called,” I tell her. “We’ve been invited to a spontaneous grill and wake.”
It’s Friday, late afternoon, and my cabin fever has me walking in circles and searching my bookshelves for a great read. Hurricane Ike’s big blow came through four days ago. Six hours of eighty-mile-per-hour winds. Still no electricity, still only one route out to the highway.
“Sounds intriguing, but what exactly is a spontaneous grill?” Clare says.
“Everyone’s running out of ice. The meat in their freezers is starting to thaw. Ricky says it’s going to be a carnivore's delight at his place.”
“Count me in. Let’s be sure to take some wine. How about a bottle of that Cabernet we had last week? And I'll take the big sirloin with us.”
“Sounds perfect. It'll be good to get out and see some people.”
*
On the drive to the Highlands, Clare recalls the second part of the invitation.
“You mentioned a wake earlier,” she says. “What's that about?”
“Ricky said he'd tell me later. Probably a dead goldfish. We'll gather around the composter and 'Amen' in unison when the creature is deposited.”
Clare smiles. “I hope it’s nothing much more than that. I’m looking forward to a celebration. Five days without electricity isn't much fun. Not yet, at least.”
We find a parking spot a block from the Elliots' house and count ourselves lucky. This section of the Highlands is a tangle of uprooted trees, a few still balancing on flattened car roofs at the curb. Massive hardwoods incline at strange angles like surly teens lazing against the front of neighborhood coffee shops. Tattered green leaves cover every inch of ground. Chainsaws drone from four directions as we pick our way through the fallen debris.
When we get to Ricky and Rita’s place, a pampered three-story Victorian, the yard is spotless. A cord of firewood has been stacked next to the walkway leading to the back, from where an aroma of kielbasa and steak is mingling with other unidentifiable but succulent odors.
I turn to Clare. “I'm happy to be out of our house and back into the land of the living, but I wonder what we're walking into.”
“Smells like we're walking into a fabulous barbeque.”
We step into the open front door. On our way through the house we encounter Lawrence in the dining room with a full goblet of red wine in one hand and a missal in the other. He has a last name I can never recall, though I remember his first because he’s an ex-monk from Gethsemane and I’m a high-school English teacher whose students love Romeo and Juliet. Many of them want to blame Friar Laurence for the tragedy. “An adult should've known better,” they like to tell me.
Lawrence smiles his welcome. “Clare, Dan, how are you?”
“We're good,” Clare says. She pauses for a moment. “Lawrence, are you here to bless the thawing wiener schnitzel?”
“Well, not quite, but close,” he says.
This gets my attention. “What do you mean by close?”
“A dead and quickly thawing ferret,” Lawrence says and screws his face up a bit to let us know that he knows it's peculiar. “Of course the electricity’s been out for God-knows-how-many-days now, so Rita told Ricky he had to bury the animal or there would be serious consequences. I mean, can you imagine?”
“I thought the ferret died a few years ago,” I say.
“Oh, it did, but Ricky never buried it. Wrapped it in silk, double plastic-bagged it, and stored it in their cellar freezer. Apparently Rita reached her breaking point with the outage. Pleaded with me to preside over the ceremony and put some closure on the situation.”
“Wait a minute,” Clare says. “You’re going to preside at a funeral for a ferret?”
Lawrence places his goblet on the table and opens his small black missal, pages adorned in gold leaf, to a section demarcated by an ornate red ribbon. He turns the pages our way. “Ricky wanted a Requiem Mass. Well, of course I can’t exactly say a Mass at this point, but I can say the words from the requiem for him. I mean, I’m already excommunicated. What else can they do to me?” He looks at his missal as if considering his own words before he continues. “Really, though, I see the evening as more of a wake than anything else. Where's the harm?”
Clare and I look at each other. When I notice the sparkle of her eyes—some magic that happens when she is tickled—a muffled guffaw escapes through my lips.
Lawrence places his free hand on my shoulder and steps closer to us. “Now I must warn you both: Ricky loved the animal. ‘One of God’s creatures, just like us,’ he always used to tell me. But I think he might be ready to let go and make his peace. He has given me a two-page script outlining the ceremony. Lots of pomp and circumstance. Requiem music in the background, a tape from Gethsemane. You know how Ricky adores theater.” Lawrence reaches for his wine, raises the goblet in a toast, and drinks copiously. “I simply must prepare. Hope to chat with you later.”
When Lawrence disappears through a doorway, Clare turns to me. “Dan, I never laid eyes on the . . . deceased.”
I shake my head. “Me neither. Heard a few stories, but nothing else.”
We enter the kitchen to find scores of candles illuminating the room. Clare spies Rita, our hostess, at the sink and makes her way through the bodies to say hello and give her our offerings. I'm right behind her and open the Cabernet, pour a splash in two plastic goblets and slide one to Clare. I turn and notice James, a colleague at Edison High, who enters and places a huge salad on the counter. A moment later I pull him back into the relative quiet of the dining room.
“James,” I say, “Lawrence seems like an interesting guy. How well do you know him?”
“Lawrence Schimpton, the ex-monk?”
“Right. You have any idea why he was excommunicated?”
“There were hookers at the Abbey. It was in the newspaper a year ago. Next thing I hear, Lawrence has been defrocked.”
“Did you know Ricky asked Lawrence to say a Requiem Mass for his dead ferret? I’m finding some of this hard to comprehend. Is Ricky losing his grip?”
James shrugs. “You know how Ricky is about things dear to his heart. Remember when Phantom came to town? He bought five sets of tickets and invited four couples to join Rita and him. Great seats, I heard. Must have cost him a thousand bucks. Ricky just gets caught up sometimes. He seems to step into a parallel universe for a day or two when he does.”
*
The feast is glorious, a cornucopia of T-bones and New York strips, rack of lamb, pork loin, bison steaks, venison, chicken, turkey breast, and veal cutlets, as I discover after queries to the folks manning the five portable grills out back. The aromas from the yard waft into the open house like an undulating fog. Stomachs are growling.
Everyone has brought a bottle of red or white, or a six pack of beer. At one point I spot a bottle of Pappy 23 being passed among a small circle of friends. All of us manage to find a seat in the big dining room or one of the two other rooms surrounding the kitchen. The meal, with its meats and veggies and mountains of salad and bakery baguettes, is gluttonous. Clare and I toast our good fortune to have found these smart and sinful friends.
As the meal winds down, we hear the sound of knives against glass. When the chatter abates, we look up to see Lawrence, who is wearing an ecclesiastical collar.
“Friends, we’re gathered here this evening to celebrate several life forms. First, our elegant centenarian oaks and maples and sycamores. Many have been taken from us. We will miss them and their benevolent spirit.”
I glance at Clare but see no gleam or glitter. She is listening attentively.
“Next, and more specifically, we commemorate Ricky's special friend, Frankie. I’m asking all of you to file into the back yard, just past the grills, and find a chair for our final ceremony that will celebrate the life and mourn the passing of Frankie the ferret.”
In the yard, a solemn requiem chant ascends from a battery-powered player. The space has been transformed. Beside a narrow walkway to the rear fence, votive candles burn at the bottom of small brown paper bags, like miniscule spotlights rising up from the floor of a stage, a lovely sight on this late-summer twilight. Past the double line of chairs, there's a rectangular grave site, a mound of loose dirt beside a hole in the earth. A long box—maybe something that once held two dozen long-stem roses—rests next to the pile of dirt.
Clare and I become separated when she zigs and I zag, and I end up sitting in a second row of seats across from where she's standing next to Rita on the side of the gathering. In the yard, a hushed expectancy.
Ricky appears and faces his guests. Tall and thin as a split-rail fence, he's clad in a black dress shirt and black slacks and wears his graying hair long, as if still caught in the 1970s. Dark circles puff beneath his eyes. Is it possible that he's been in solitary mourning all this time? He's holding a handkerchief. When everyone settles, Ricky address the gathering.
“Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.” He pauses as if suddenly unsure of how to continue, but he soldiers on, squaring his shoulders. “I'm going to ask each of you to share a small personal story about a memory of Frankie. I'll begin right here with James.”
James stands. “I’m here to support my friend Ricky, who has lost a pet he had grown close to. We humans love our pets and our pets love us in return. Really, that’s the dynamic at work here tonight.” James finds Ricky's eyes and nods. “You've lost a pet and a friend, Ricky, and I want you to know that I’m here for you.”
I wonder if I'll hear a titter from the crowd, maybe thirty people, but all is quiet.
The bereaved next calls on Rita, his wife.
“I love you, Ricky, and your loss is my loss.” She touches her heart and smiles at him the way all men want their wives to smile at them.
Clare follows. “Our pets,” she says, “accept us unconditionally. Never petulant, never petty. Wouldn't it be great if we were wise enough to do the same with each other. Perhaps the rapture of the animals should inform our own lives.”
One by one, the guests offer their words of condolence or empathy or wisdom. I listen, but a small, rough chunk of doubt remains. I feel like a thick-skinned agnostic in the midst of evangelicals. I look up to see Ricky's eyes on me. For a moment I panic. There's not a thought in my head, but I know I must rise.
“Ricky, I never met your pet, so I have no story to share. But I know you as a kind man, and I have seen the kindness of your friends, and I marvel at it all on this lovely summer evening. Thank you for inviting us to this farewell for your friend Frankie.”
I sit. Ricky inclines his head to me and moves on.
When Lawrence appears after a final testimonial, he reads from his missal. He is pastoral, serious, kind. He is the type of person all houses of worship need at their center. For a long moment he looks at us before he raises a hand in blessing. Then he approaches the grave site and bends over it. “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,” he says without glancing at his book. “Give them who have passed eternal rest, O Lord.”
It occurs to me that he is praying for the soul of a ferret that's been in Ricky's freezer for two years.
We all crowd up to witness Ricky gentle the cardboard casket into the grave and let a handful of dirt drizzle down onto the box. He wipes at the corner of an eye with his handkerchief.
I watch Ricky in the thick of the crowd that is milling about the yard. His face gleams in the light from the candles along the walkway. It's as if he has finished his role after a two-years' wait. His smile is beatific. He places an intimate hand on the arms and shoulders of his friends, a man fulfilled as he steps among them.