LITMIR.BIZ

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the last bus home…

      And I knew…I knew…

      I knew that you were gonna roam…

      What can I say? I know it’s not Shakespeare, but somehow it touched a chord out there. And all it cost me was an irreparably broken heart.

      I’d say my success was a combination of things—a catchy tune, luck, heartfelt lyrics, luck, good timing, luck, superb management, luck, crafty marketing, luck, a cute face, luck, luck, and more luck.

      And if I had it to do all over again, I’d probably have saved some of that luck for the rest of my life, instead of shooting my entire wad on that one damn song.

      CHAPTER SIX

      When I woke up I wondered why the room wasn’t brighter, then realized that the sapling my father had planted outside my window when I was a kid had grown into a big, droopy-leafed maple tree that blocked the sun.

      By the time I got showered and shaved it was almost nine in the morning. My mother was in the kitchen, and at the sight of me she cracked two eggs into a bowl and went at them with a whisk.

      “You certainly slept. Conked out without a word to anyone.”

      “Yeah, sorry about that.”

      “There’s coffee if you want it.”

      “Thanks, Mom.”

      “It’s real coffee. I got real coffee for you.”

      I poured myself a cup, astonished at how my hand shook. It had always been a nervous house, the nervousness deeply in-grained everywhere. The arguments, the silences, the pouting…it had all soaked into the pores of the walls and floors, like endless coats of wax.

      “Dad at work?”

      “Where else would he be?”

      “Steady Eddie.”

      “In some ways he is, yes.”

      She poured the eggs into a skillet as I sipped my coffee.

      “He going to retire anytime soon?”

      “Retire? What would he do with himself?”

      “I don’t know. Take it easy.”

      “Why are you so eager for your father to retire?”

      Just like that, it was a situation. I spread my hands. “Mom, I’m not eager for it. I just wondered if he was thinking about it.”

      She worked the eggs with a spatula. “He’s only fifty-nine, Michael. It’s not as if he’s an old man.”

      “Mom, if he’s happy working, that’s great.”

      “Who said he was happy?”

      “He’s not happy?”

      “Work is work, Michael. It’s not supposed to make you happy.”

      “It’s not?”

      “Michael. Sit. Eat.”

      I obeyed, knowing I was the problem here, the intruder. I’d splashed down into this delicate ecosystem my parents had developed over the past twenty years, like some crazy salmon who’d swum upstream to rejoin his exhausted parents. I hugged my elbows to my rib cage as I sat there, as if to make myself smaller….

      “I have a job now, too.”

      She blurted the words, then stared at me as if she expected me to burst out laughing. I didn’t. My mouth fell open, and at last I said, “You’re kidding.”

      “Don’t be so surprised!”

      “What do you do?”

      “I’m helping out at Eruzione’s a couple of days a week. I’m on my way there now. I stayed to make you breakfast.”

      She emptied the pan onto a plate and set the fluffy yellow eggs before me. I tried hard to remember the last time I’d eaten eggs—that whole Los Angeles health food horseshit has a way of penetrating, even if you’re not a believer—but mostly I was awed by the idea of my mother working at the Eruzione Funeral Home, which had been planting Little Neckers for more than fifty years. I noticed for the first time that she was dressed in black.

      “You don’t like eggs anymore?”

      “I love ’em.” I wolfed down a forkful. “I can’t believe you’re at Eruzione’s.”

      “Why not?”

      “Well. Kinda depressing, isn’t it? All those dead people?”

      “Everyone has to die, Michael.”

      “I guess that’s true.”

      “You guess?”

      I took another forkful of eggs. “Go ahead, Mom, go. I’m sorry I made you late for work.” The last thing I wanted to do was be responsible for keeping the dead waiting.

      She tied a black scarf over her hair. “Do you remember Ralph Mackell?”

      “Who?”

      “The old man we always used to see waiting for the bus?”

      I had no clue.

      “The old man who limped? He had that black cane?”

      I still had no clue. She was losing patience. “You know. The old man who used to come into church late and sit in the front row?”

      It finally hit me. “The white-haired guy who couldn’t stop coughing?”

      “That’s him!”

      “What about him?”

      “He died.”

      I put my fork down. “That guy just died? He was dying twenty years ago!”

      “Lung cancer. Eighty-eight. A smoker, like your father. We’re laying him out today. Not expecting many visitors. He didn’t have many friends in this world.”

      In this world? When had my mother adopted funeralspeak?

      “I’m off, Michael. Make yourself…” She caught herself, reddened. “You know.”

      “At home.”

      “Yes, well, of course. This is your home. That reminds me.”

      She gave me a shiny brass key, attached to an Eruzione’s Funeral Parlor key ring. It was a red plastic tag, shaped like a little coffin.

      “For the front door.”

      She leaned over to kiss my forehead and she was out the door, eager to run the show for Ralph Mackell’s final farewell.

      It was a relief to be alone, a relief not to have been asked what my plans were.

      But it was also shockingly, embarrassingly lonely. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it hits all thirty-eight-year-old males who suddenly find themselves unemployed and alone in their mothers’ kitchens on a weekday morning.

      I scraped the rest of the eggs into the garbage, washed my plate (she’d already scrubbed the skillet, of course) and walked out of the house, my newly minted key snug in the pocket of my jeans.

      When you walk the streets of your old neighborhood your eye picks out the way things have changed, things you can’t believe you bothered to remember as having been different. The McElhennys had added a new porch to their house. The Spellanes had changed the color of their trim from midnight blue to apple green. And of course the Lomuscios had added another two rooms to their house, one up and one out, eating up the last bit of yard they’d had left.

      When I was a kid the Lomuscio house had been one of the smallest on the block, but every time they got a few dollars ahead they expanded, waking the neighborhood at dawn each Saturday with the banging of hammers and the roar of electric saws.

      My

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