The Forgotten Road

  As I read over the obituary, an idea lit my mind. What if I attended my own memorial service? Isn’t that what everyone fantasizes about? And the Crystal Gardens was the kind of place I could pull it off. The Navy Pier was always crowded, but it would be even more so this Sunday because it was Mother’s Day, making it easy to blend in with the masses.

  Still, I would have to go incognito. There was some risk of being seen, but I doubted that anyone would recognize me. Mostly because they weren’t looking for me. Half of recognition is expectation. Also, by then, I’d be four days in on growing my facial hair. Add to that my hat and dark glasses, I would be just another mourner in the crowd. I could attend my service, then start my walk.

  My walk. Maybe it was the sudden excitement of thinking about my own service, but suddenly walking seemed like a bad idea. Wasn’t there another way to look at things? Against all odds, my life was spared. This was a time to celebrate my life, not run from it. Didn’t I have everything people wanted—friends, fortune, celebrity? Why would anyone in their right mind walk away from all this? That’s the point, I thought. I wasn’t in my right mind. The last three months, with the weird dreams and drama, I had felt as though I had been taking crazy pills. But that’s all it was, just a few bad months. A few bad months followed by a wildly traumatic experience.

  Clearly, I was being rash—a victim of the turbulence of my life. Everything would be okay. I just needed to get back into the swing of things.

  My memorial service would be the perfect place for my triumphant return. What a story. It would make national news. All the newspapers and morning shows. Especially considering how much press the plane crash had generated and was still generating. There wouldn’t be another article that didn’t include the story of the one survivor of 227.

  I looked again at my obituary. I couldn’t have created a better media buildup myself, and I was an expert at building hype. I was a showman. What better show could I give my fans than a return from the dead? I mean, it had been done once before, right? Two thousand years ago. People were still talking about that.

  I could imagine it—hundreds, maybe thousands of people at my memorial service, everyone who knew me, everyone whose life I’d touched, all gathered together to mourn the demise of the great Charles James. Then, when Amanda got up to say something sweetly sentimental, I would walk up, take the microphone from her, remove my hat and glasses, and . . . what would my line be?

  My mind reeled with possibilities. You know what they say, it’s hard to keep a good man down. Or What a landing, folks . . . (Probably too soon for that one.) Or Twain’s classic line, Sorry, friends, but news of my death has been greatly exaggerated. Or how about a line that had never before been spoken: So glad you could all make it to my funeral.

  I smiled. No matter the line, the shock value was going to be off the charts. It’s what we call in the seminar business an “epic reveal.” That’s exactly what Sunday was going to be—an epic reveal. Easily one of the most epic reveals of the year. Maybe one of the most epic reveals of all time.

  Turns out it would be. But only for me.

  Chapter Four

  I’m not just ready to get back in the saddle—I’m ready to ride this thing to the Triple Crown.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  SATURDAY, MAY 7

  Saturday was a blur, the calm before the squall. Emotionally, I felt the best I had in months. I was excited for the first time in a long time. I was going back a winner.

  I spent the better part of the day looking over my calendar and planning my return, not just at my memorial service, but in life and business. I was ready to get back to work. I was ready to make, as I preached from the stage, mega-money. Private-jet, private-island money.

  In my hiatus I had missed three shows in two cities. They could be rescheduled, but now with better press. Who wouldn’t want to interview the man who cheated death? And I’d have a better stage story. A much better one. One that people would pay to hear.

  For the last five years I had shared my “near-death” experience—an exaggeration about almost drowning on Flamands Beach in Saint Barts. My new story blew that one out of the water, pun intended.

  I would start my machine back up in Denver. I had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if we spun this right, we could make that up and then some in one show with all the added media.

  My notes and plans for my trip across Route 66 sat abandoned on the hotel table. I had already moved on. The idea for the trip had been a detour—a distraction until the real plan unfolded itself.

  After the sun set, I ate a celebratory dinner of escargot, prime rib, and a bottle of 2007 Corison’s cabernet. Then, under the cover of night, I walked back to my home and retrieved a suit, dress shoes, shirt, and tie. My nicest.

  I was tempted to just sleep at my house and pick my stuff up from the hotel in the morning. It really didn’t matter whether anyone saw me. By Monday I would be back among the living, continuing where I had left off.

  In the end, I decided to go back to the hotel, mostly out of convenience. I hung the suit up in the closet and went back to working on my speech. Tomorrow would be one of the greatest days of my life.

  Chapter Five

  I once read that unrequited love is never lost—rather, the Universe returns it to us. I don’t think mine came with the boomerang effect.

  —CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY

  SUNDAY, MAY 8 (MOTHER’S DAY)

  Mother’s Day was always complex for me. It had started at a young age. Amid the mass dysfunction of my childhood, there was one incident that stood out. When I was in the fourth grade, in Mrs. Drake’s class, Mother’s Day was a big production. Usually elementary school teachers would have their kids make something kitschy for their mothers, like a gold spray-painted macaroni necklace or a handprint in plaster, but Mrs. Drake was a professional potter. She helped us make heirlooms.

  Several weeks before Mother’s Day, Mrs. Drake brought in a block of clay and gave us each a slice. Following her instructions, we sculpted little plates and tea cups, carving our names in the bottom with toothpicks. Then she took our crooked little tea sets home and glazed and fired them. We were all excited when they came back, hard and shiny. But we weren’t done. We still got to decorate them.

  We wrote HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY in the center of the plates, then we painted around them. I painted my plate with flowers (my mother loved flowers) and then put two big hearts on the teacup. Then I painted little hearts around the rim of my cup with a vine running between them connecting them. I was proud of my work, especially when Mrs. Drake held up my cup to show the rest of the class.

  Then Mrs. Drake took our creations and again glazed and fired them. When we got them back, they were magnificent. Michelangelo could not have been more proud of his David than we were of those cups and saucers. I couldn’t wait to give my mother her gift.

  That next Sunday, Mother’s Day, my little brother gave my mother a hand-drawn card and an unwrapped Reese’s peanut butter cup. I remember looking at his feeble offering and feeling vastly superior to him.

  Then I presented my tea set. I had put it in a shoe box. My mother carefully lifted it out and looked at it. She smiled at me and said, “Thank you, Charles. It’s beautiful.”

  I beamed. I had pleased her.

  Two days later my father told me to empty all the garbage cans. As I poured the plastic garbage can from my parents’ bathroom into the outdoor trash can, my cup and saucer fell out. I reached into the trash and lifted the cup out. My mother didn’t want it. It was a stupid present. I was stupid to think she would like it.

  I threw the cup in the street, listening to it shatter into a hundred pieces on the asphalt. It wasn’t just that it wasn’t good enough for her. I knew that I wasn’t good enough for her. That night my father beat me for not taking out all the garbage. It wasn’t nearly as painful as how I felt about my mother’s rejection.

  I spent most of my life trying to earn my mother’s love bef
ore I learned that love can’t be earned. Earned love isn’t love; it’s an emotional wage, a paycheck for time served.

  I was fully twenty years old before I learned that. My wife, Monica, was my teacher. She cared, unconditionally, for that broken little boy in me.

  Several years before I blew up our marriage, Monica and I had talked about having children. She always said, “I hope I have a little boy who looks just like you.” She got her boy but lost me. I had completely failed another mother.

  For a brief, insane moment, I thought of calling Monica, but I convinced myself that that was a bad idea on many levels. First, she no doubt thought I was dead. Second, I hoped she would be at my memorial. And third, there was the possibility that she might be happy that I was dead.

  With all that in my head, I got ready for my memorial service.

  It felt good to dress up again. I looked nice in my suit. I should: it was an Ermenegildo Zegna and cost nearly thirty grand. Then I put on my hat and sunglasses. With that and my newly sprouted facial hair I hardly recognized myself.

  I got an Uber for my ride into town. The driver arrived promptly and dropped me off on Grand Ave. As I expected, the pier was teeming with people. I put on my hat and sunglasses and got out of the car. I casually looked around to see if I recognized anyone. I wondered how many of those around me had come to pay their respects.

  Navy Pier was originally designed to be a commercial dock for freight and passenger boats with additional space for public recreation. Since then it had had a mercurial history. As commercial docking declined or moved to other ports, alternative uses were proposed for the space.

  Then, in 1989, the City of Chicago created the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority to oversee the property. Five years later the Navy Pier was opened to the public as a waterfront promenade featuring restaurants, shopping, and world-class entertainment along with the Crystal Gardens, a one-acre, indoor botanical garden designed for weddings, receptions, and corporate events. The Garden’s pavilion is an impressive six-story atrium with a fifty-foot arched ceiling above more than eighty palm trees.

  The revitalization succeeded and today the Pier is Chicago’s number one tourist attraction. The Pier, along with the Crystal Gardens, were familiar to me. My company had reserved the venue for several of my wealth seminars as well as a few other functions.

  The Crystal Gardens are located near the front of the pier, and as I walked toward the building, I passed a woman selling roses from a kiosk. I stopped and bought a dozen red roses, just in case Monica was there. It would be my first Mother’s Day present for her and an interesting twist, since she might have brought flowers for me. Bouquet in hand, I got on the escalator and stepped off on the second floor into a large, open lobby leading into the gardens.

  I had expected to encounter a crowd upstairs but the room was nearly vacant. I wondered if I’d gotten the wrong time or day, so I took the obituary out of my pocket and checked the information. It was the right place, day, and hour. It was five minutes to noon.

  There was a chrome, free-standing event sign near the front doors that read in forty-point type:

  Charles James Gonzales

  Memorial Service

  Where was everyone? There was no security by the door, just a bored-looking young woman I’d never seen before with long blond hair and a dark-navy velvet dress sitting on a folding chair. She had a small stack of programs in her lap and what looked like a full box of them on the ground next to her. She was engrossed in her smartphone.

  I walked up to her. “Excuse me. Could I have one of those?”

  She looked up from her phone and grabbed a program from her lap. “Sure. Here you go.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Hand out a lot of these today?”

  “No. Like six, maybe.”

  I stepped past her into the massive atrium. The room was warm and humid and the muted tones of organ music echoed throughout the space. The Crystal Gardens atrium can hold more than a thousand people and it appeared that Amanda had optimistically booked the whole of it for my service. From what I could see, she could have fit everyone in the coat closet.

  There were hundreds of white slipcovered chairs tied with satin bows fanning out before an oak lectern adorned with an elegant funeral spray of white roses, chrysanthemums, and Asiatic lilies. Next to the lectern were two colorful, medium-sized bouquets of flowers and a pinkish-orange carnation and gladiolus wreath on a three-legged stand. In front of the flowers, on an easel, was a picture of me.

  I glanced down at my watch. It was now one minute to noon. If this were one of my seminars, I’d be apoplectic by now. As it was, I was speechless.

  There were fewer than a dozen people inside, not including the catering staff. Tuxedo-clad waiters with wingtip shirts and black band ties roamed the space carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres. There were more servers than guests.

  I found myself nervously looking for Monica. Had she come? Had she been invited? The only person I recognized from my distance was Amanda, who was, in her usual way, bouncing from place to place, making sure that everything was going as planned.

  One of the waiters spotted me and decided to make the trip. When he got to me, he held out a tray with cracked crab claws.

  “Would you like some crab, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.” I took three portions. I might as well. I was paying for it. “Thank you,” I said again.

  “Don’t mention it. Here, take more,” he said, pushing his platter toward me. “It looks like there’s going to be a ton of food left over.”

  I shook my head. “No thanks, I’m good.”

  He turned and walked back toward the kitchen.

  I sat down on the very back row of chairs, setting the bouquet of flowers on the seat next to me. I took a bite of crab, then looked down at the folded program the girl had handed me. The front of the program was a picture of me—a glamour shot I’d just had taken for my new tour and the same picture the newspaper had used with my obituary.

  The information about me printed inside the program was pretty much a rerun of my obituary. On the inside right-hand page was an outline of a short, organized program conducted by Amanda.

  I looked back toward the front of the room, where what there was of a gathering had now settled into the chairs. Amanda sat down in the front row between her secretary, Laura, and Stephen, my company’s CFO. That was it from my office. Apparently the rest of my two dozen staff had something better to do. This piqued my anger. I planned to remind them of their absence when they asked for their jobs back.

  And no Monica.

  Seated next to Amanda’s group was an older gentleman whom I didn’t recognize—a tall, bald man wearing a light-blue suit with a navy or black scarf. To his side was a beautiful younger woman with long, strawberry-blond hair. There were two young boys next to her sitting remarkably still.

  Then I realized that the man was McKay Benson. He had told me at our last meeting that he had cancer. He had lost his hair since then. But more surprising than his physical appearance was that he had flown with his family all the way from Florida to be here. The man whose business I had stolen, whose life I had upended, had come to my memorial service. He was far more of a class act than I had given him credit for. I suppose that’s not surprising. We tend to demonize those we inflict pain on. It lessens our guilt.

  Amanda glanced back down at her watch. Then she smoothed her hair, stood, and walked up to the lectern. She softly tapped the microphone, then leaned forward toward it. “Is this working? Can you hear me?” Amanda hated speaking in microphones. Actually, she hated all public speaking, which is why she stayed safely behind the curtain at all of our events.

  McKay gave her a thumbs-up.

  “I guess we’ll get started.” She looked around the vacant room, then all the way back at me. “Sir, you’re welcome to join us up front.”

  I slightly panicked at being noticed. I just raised my hand to imply I was good where I sat.

 
Amanda continued. “Thank you, everyone, for coming. I thought there would be a lot more people here, but it is Mother’s Day.”

  Nice spin, I thought.

  She looked down at the lectern. She had typed her eulogy.

  “We are here today to honor a remarkable man. A good man, a good boss, and most of all, a good friend. No one could say that Charles James Gonzales didn’t leave his mark on this world. Still, I think that he was sometimes misunderstood.

  “Some people thought he was uncaring, because he was so demanding. But that’s precisely why he was demanding, because he cared about us enough to not let us fail. Failure was never an option for him. And his success wasn’t just for him, it was for all of us. It was for the team.

  “I probably knew him better than anyone in this world.” She hesitated, then reached for a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “I trusted him implicitly. I trusted him with my career. I trusted him with my time. I trusted him with my dreams. I always knew that he had my back. I miss him.” She paused again. “Charles, if you’re here today in spirit, I miss you, my dear friend.” She wiped her eyes again, then walked back to her seat. She blew her nose. McKay reached over and patted her on the back.

  I was moved by the sincerity of her emotion. I wiped my own eyes with a napkin that smelled of crab.

  Next McKay stood. He was a little unsteady on his feet, and his wife handed him his cane. Then he placed on his head a wool Ivy Cap. He had always liked caps, and he looked good in them. He was one of those rare men who could pull them off.

  He leaned on his cane as he walked to the lectern. Even as far back as I was, I could see that his health had deteriorated severely.

  “Good afternoon,” he said warmly to the small group, taking the time to make eye contact with each of them. “We have come here today to memorialize the life of a very special man, Charles James Gonzales. By way of disclosure, Charles and I didn’t always see eye to eye.” He smiled. “But geniuses rarely do.”