“I’m not,” Peter insisted. Then looking at Hannah he said, “Ask him yourself. Ask him if he’s started down my path. Go ahead. Or are you afraid.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Hannah said and wrapped her arm around Lewis in such a way that she turned him around as she turned her back on Peter and walked away.
“Tell her I’m right,” Peter called out.
Lewis turned his head just enough to make eye contact with Peter before Hannah ushered him out the door, and somewhere past the confused, guilty, and forlorn look, Peter managed to see a piece of himself in his son’s face: weakness. He trembled as he listened to Hannah’s voice in the hallway telling his son to stay outside until the arrangements had been made. He noticed the funeral director again. The man had leaned back in his chair patiently, and not said a word throughout the entire episode.
“You must see this a lot,” Peter said calmly.
“Death always brings these things to the surface,” the man replied coldly.
“But most families aren’t as bad off as we are,” Peter sighed.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Most families?” Hannah asked, reentering the room. “We’re not a family,” she said to the funeral director. She turned back to Peter. “We used to be married, but if you hadn’t drunk away the memory of the last year, you’d recall our separation and all the legal proceedings. You might even remember finding out that Lewis isn’t your son.”
“I’m his father!”
“And I won’t let your influence ruin him like Thomas.”
“My influence?” Peter shouted.
“Just stay away from my son.”
Peter looked back at the funeral director who had reassumed his role as a nondescript professional spectator.
“I’m sorry, we’re probably making you uncomfortable,” Hannah said when she realized that Peter had directed his attention away from her.
Julia noticed Lewis’s head peaking in through the cracked door, but remained silent.
“This is a hard time for her,” Peter said softly. “Death is hard to deal with when all you believe in is DNA.”
“Please forgive my husband the philosopher,” Hannah said snidely. “Everything is hard to deal with when the only way you can cope with life is by drinking away your problems.”
“We don’t want any flowers,” Peter said to the funeral director. “And we’ll have the body cremated.”
“As you requested I’ve made arrangements for your oldest son to call here,” the director said casually. “We have a room prepared for you where you can wait together.” He stood up from the desk and led the family into a small sitting room.
Hannah and Peter sat as far away from each other as possible, and neither of them spoke. Julia intentionally found a seat equidistant between the two and waited in silence. The director pointed out the phone that sat on a small table in the middle of the room and excused himself, leaving them alone.
“I’m going to go get Lewis,” Hannah said, in a barely audible voice.
Julia just caught the glance that she shot Peter before leaving the room.
“Is there anything I can do?” Julia asked her father once they were alone.
“Do you believe that somewhere past all of this there’s still hope?” Peter asked.
“I do,” Julia answered.
“I understand everything now, but I can’t believe for myself. Can you believe for me too?”
“I’ll try my best,” Julia told him.
“I’d rather believe something and have hope, even if it is foolish, than to end up where he is,” Peter said pointing towards the room where Thomas’s body lay. “And what if you’re right? No matter the odds the payout should be worth the risk, but then it’s nothing more than statistics and probabilities. Statistics aren’t enough for me.
“I know that I don’t have anything to lose if I believe. The whole world knows I don’t have anything to lose. And I understand perfectly how I stand to gain everything. It doesn’t make sense not to believe, not to have hope. But I don’t believe. And when I heard about Thomas, I felt certain that there could be no hope for anyone. I know I should believe, but wanting to believe isn’t real belief. How were you able to believe?”
“It was a gift,” Julia answered.
“Of course. You couldn’t have willed yourself to believe? You were given the gift of belief.” Peter stopped for a moment as if to think something over. “I’ve been given a gift too, but my gift is a curse without belief. I understand everything; I know that I’ve told you that already. I see all of the little cogs that turn bigger ones, and how each of them is connected, and all of the forces that act upon them, and how they in turn act on others. I know what people think, what they feel, and why they act. I’ve been to the bottom of myself. We’re all the same at the bottom, and when you understand yourself, you understand the whole world. But I’d rather know nothing and have your hope.” Peter paused again then asked almost frantically, “Do you forgive me?”
“Yes.” Julia answered without hesitation.
“Of course you do. It’s easy to forgive when you don’t understand,” Peter replied. “But you should know that I conspired against you. Thomas and I together, and then when I became convinced that he wouldn’t do it, I tried to conspire against you with my father. I didn’t succeed, but you must judge me by the motive in my heart and not by my inability to succeed. I despised you even though I didn’t have any reason. I hated you even though you were the only one who really cared about me. Knowing that, do you still forgive me?”
“Yes,” Julia repeated. “You only acted out of weakness. You said so yourself. We’ve all done monstrous things, but we’re not past hope. That’s what makes forgiveness so easy.”
“I don’t forgive you,” Peter interjected. “You haven’t wronged me at all, and I still don’t forgive you. I’ll never forgive you for the money or for my son’s body. I want to forgive, but I can’t do that either.”
Julia was about to speak when Hannah and Lewis entered the room, bringing with them a deathly silence that pervaded the room until the phone rang. Hannah calmly leaned forward and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” she asked.
The rest of the family watched as Hannah held the receiver to her ear.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “He wants me to put him on speaker phone.” She pressed a red button on the phone and set the receiver down again.
Silence.
“Hello?” David’s voice said through the phone.
“We’re all here,” Hannah replied.
“I guess I don’t know what to say,” David said. “I wish I could be there.”
“So do we,” Hannah answered.
“How are you all holding up?” David asked.
“It’s been difficult for all of us, but we’ll pull through,” Hannah said.
“Dad, are you there?” David asked after another brief silence.
Peter said that he was.
“How have you been?”
“I’ve been better,” Peter admitted.
“I can relate to that,” David said. He went on to tell Lewis to do well in school and asked Julia about college. They all made a little more small talk, going from one topic to the next until they’d discussed every subject under the sun, except one.
“We’re all so proud of you,” Hannah finally said.
“Thanks. It was good to get to talk to everyone. And like I said, I really wish I could be there,” David responded.
Desperation overtook Julia; she wanted to say something more, but couldn’t find words to express her sentiment.
“Come home soon,” Peter said.
“We all love you.” The words poured out of Julia before she realized that she’d found them.
“I love you all too,” David answered.
Julia could hear relief in his voice, as if that had been all he’d wanted to say but hadn’t known how. Hannah picked up the receiver and let it down again to end the ca
ll, and the family waited in a somewhat easier silence.
Chapter 11
When Sara arrived at the funeral home, the director led the family into a small chapel. The family sat together on the third pew from the front. Hannah kept Lewis on the far edge acting as a buffer between her son and Peter. Julia sat next to her father and Sara came in last and sat in the fourth row, just behind Julia. An open casket had been left on the stage in the front of the chapel, presumably with Thomas’s body inside, though the pew was so low in comparison to the stage that nobody could see inside to be sure.
The ceremony lasted only a few minutes. After a few words were said about life and death, and Amazing Grace was played over the sound system, the director, without any frills or fanfare, offered to leave the room so that the family could view the body alone. As he walked down the aisle nobody else moved.
“May we look at him together before it’s done?” Julia asked as the doors in the back of the chapel closed behind the director.
“Haven’t you already seen it?” Lewis said from the far side of the aisle.
“No,” said Julia. “And I’d like to see the body one last time as a family.
“There’s no need for that is there?” Hannah said pleadingly.
“It would mean a lot to me,” Julia replied. “We all drift apart and then collide back together. We never comfort each other; we’ve never mourned together. Can we look at the body, all of us together, as a family, even if it’s only for a moment?”
Hannah and Peter assented. Lewis followed as one who had no choice in the matter, and Sara crept to the back of the room. Julia led the family down the aisle and up to the stage where the casket had been left. She stared at Thomas’s plastic features as the rest of the family fanned out around her. The mortician had closed the eyes and painted the face in such a way that the body hardly had the appearance of the brother she’d known all her life. She looked intently into his artificially tranquil face, but couldn’t detect any of the pain that the officer had told her about.
“Oh Thomas,” Hannah muttered.
“I’m sorry, son,” Peter whispered.
Lewis stood frozen, peering into the casket with his eyes glazed over as if they couldn’t relay the gravity of the image before them to his brain.
Julia felt Abraham’s words burning inside of her. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
“Oh Thomas,” Hannah repeated.
“I’m so very sorry, son,” Peter whispered again.
Lewis opened his mouth, but no sound came out of it.
“Wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness,” Julia said under her breath.
Hannah put her hand on Julia’s shoulder and stepped back from the open casket. Julia followed her mother’s lead. Peter came right behind them. Lewis lingered a little longer, peering into the casket before catching up with the rest of his family as they walked down the narrow aisle that led back out into the hallway.
When they arrived in the hallway, Hannah pulled Julia aside.
“Do you think that Peter’s right about Lewis?” she whispered. “I’ve never smelled anything.”
Julia nodded her head in affirmation.
“Why?” Hannah asked.
“I could smell the,” Julia began.
“No, why would he do that. There’s no hope for him either is there? There’s no hope for any of us. We’ve all made our beds. But he’s so young, just like Thomas. How can it be his fault? He’s just a kid. He’s supposed to be happy and carefree. That’s what kids are supposed to be like when they’re growing up, but look at him. He can’t even look me in the eye. He’s grown up too fast, and in all the wrong ways. Why can’t he just be happy like he should be?”
“Why can’t any of us just be happy?” Julia asked.
“We’ve all made decisions,” Hannah sighed. “But nobody should have to make any of those decisions when they’re so young. I can’t help thinking that maybe all of this is my fault. Maybe Thomas was right; maybe this world shouldn’t exist. Oh, I can’t believe I just said that, but I’ve been thinking it for so long now. It’s too late now isn’t it?”
“Too late?” Julia asked.
“It’s too late to change anything. We’re all stuck in our ways. We’ve all made our beds.”
When Julia didn’t respond, Hannah motioned for Lewis to come, and he dutifully obeyed.
“Why?” she asked him.
“What?” Lewis responded.
“Why did you start?”
Lewis looked away. “It’s none of your business,” he said, but the words escaped from under his breath and without any trace of the emotion he’d rehearsed.
“I would’ve told you,” Peter said to Lewis from a few feet away. “If I’d known that you needed someone to tell you, I would have warned you. I just didn’t know. I mean I knew, but I thought you were so young. Why did you all have to grow up so fast? If we could all stay children forever, but don’t pay attention to me. I’m sorry son. I’ve been a horrible father.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Hannah said into Julia’s shoulder. She didn’t cry, but Julia could tell that she wanted to. “Why would anyone, he was so happy; he had everything and he just . . . he was a smart boy. It doesn’t make any sense; it’s not logical.” Julia embraced her mother, not sure if she was talking about Thomas or Lewis. “Can you just tell me why?” Hannah repeated as if speaking past her daughter, addressing some entity whose existence she had never found credible.
“I have something for you,” Julia said. “It’s a paper that Thomas wrote last semester. I found it in his room yesterday. It might be difficult for you to read, but it might help you understand.” Julia produced the document from her purse and handed it to her mother. “You can see that he got a ‘B’ on it, but that was mostly for using too many citations and not enough of his own thoughts. But I’ve read it, and everything on those pages are his thoughts.”
Hannah accepted the pages and tucked them under her arm. “We’ve had more than our fair share of disaster,” she observed.
Peter shook his head, and Lewis stood silently, unsure of what he should do. Julia saw Sara, who had been waiting patiently a few feet away, and went over to embrace her friend. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that nobody was close enough to overhear her, and she whispered into her friend’s ear.
“There is a belief and a hope, but I don’t quite know what it is. I only know that it gives me peace.”
“Maybe you don’t always have to know what you believe in,” Sara offered.
“No Sara. I do. Thomas was right about that one thing. Maybe I’m just afraid of the answer. When I realized what Thomas had done I wanted to cry. I needed to cry, but I couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come no matter how hard I tried to make them. There wasn’t anything left inside of me to cry out,” Julia confessed.
Sara looked away as she spoke. “I cried for him last night. I cried for your brother even though I hardly knew him.” Sara spoke softly and Julia had to strain to hear. “I cried out of pity because he seemed like a lost little boy.”
“He doesn’t deserve to be pitied. He worshipped nothingness with more zeal than anyone I’ve known. If anyone worshipped your God like that they’d be first of all the saints.”
“You really don’t think he deserves to be cried over, not even the least bit of pity?”
“He doesn’t deserve it,” Julia said, but her lips quivered as the words passed out of them, and she clenched her jaw shut. Sara wrapped her up in her arms and neither of them said anything. Julia cherished the moment: Sara’s soft sweater under her chin, the sickening sorrow in her gut, her best friend’s arms holding her, the congested sinuses, and the salt stains left on her cheeks as the tears dried. And as time passed she soaked it all in; she wished that the moment would never end. It was as if in that moment all the broken pieces of her life came together to form something whole, as if she had touched something bigger
than the present, something eternal, and that moment became her entire life, more than her life and she held onto her friend even tighter.
“You say that he doesn’t deserve pity or tears, and here you are crying for him,” Sara said. Julia didn’t detect the slightest hint of mockery in her voice, but rather a tone of confirmation.
“He doesn’t deserve to be cried over,” she said again.
“But you cry for him anyway?” Sara asked.
“Yes. I guess I do.”
“Even though he doesn’t deserve it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re more noble than I am. I cried for him because I thought that he deserved to be cried over, and here you are with puffy cheeks and a runny nose on his account even though you know he doesn’t.”
Julia didn’t know what to say. Sara wiped her shoulder with her hand and Julia noticed that her runny nose had left snot on Sara’s sweater. As she tried to apologize she couldn’t help laughing. It was the kind of awkward and relieved laugh that can only come from a spirit crushed with grief. The laughter was genuine as it mingled with the sorrow, and the two emotions bred something entirely new in Julia.
“This is joy,” she said and stepped back from Sara. She knew that this sensation was what her grandfather had been looking for, what everyone had been looking for all their lives. “This is joy,” she repeated. She didn’t know how she had found it, or rather how it had come to her in such a dark place, but she cherished it. And then going back to where her family stood she quietly announced, “I am going to look for suffering.”
At this Peter looked at her intently and said, “I know I haven’t been a great father, and I’m in no position to give you or anyone else advice on life or the human condition, but I can promise you that I know this one thing.” His right index finger trembled as he held it up less than an inch from his daughter’s face. He leaned in close to her, and for the first time since she’d arrived at the funeral home, she could smell the traces of alcohol left on his breath, his clothes, and coming out of the pores of his skin, but she waited for his response.
“You don’t have to go looking to find suffering, or pain, or death, or any of those things. You don’t have to go downtown or even leave this room. I promise you it’s in this room.”
“I believe you Dad. I want to be here for you. We’ve all suffered so much, and deep down we’re all the same. The whole world is suffering, and I want to feel all of the pain and suffer with everyone. I don’t want to make the world better. I just want to share its suffering, and do what little I can to help. We’ve all suffered so much, but it hasn’t been enough.”