Bad Haircut (15 page)

“How's Mrs. Norman holding up?”

He picked a plastic pear from the fruit bowl and examined it closely. He tapped it against the table a couple of times, then put it back. “Not too good. I think Judy's gonna have to stick around here for a few days to make sure she doesn't fall apart. I have to drive back tonight. Can't miss work tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday.”

“I manage a restaurant,” he said. “Saturday's our big day.” He turned his head to check on the coffee. The pot was filling slowly, one brown drop at a time. He wiped his face with another napkin. “Christ, you wouldn't believe what it's like over there. Millie doesn't eat, she doesn't sleep, she just prowls around the house searching for God knows what. Like last night, three in the morning, she
comes into our room, turns on the light, and shoves this can of shaving cream into my face. ‘Here, Bob, I want you to have this. I bought it for Jerry, but he doesn't need it anymore.’” Bob shook his head. “This whole thing gives me the creeps. I mean it would be different if I knew him.”

“You didn't know him?”

“We only met once. Last year at my wedding.” Bob smiled at the memory. “Jerry was crocked. You should have seen him on the dance floor.”

When I was a sophomore in high school, I spent most nights alone in my room learning to play the guitar. After a few hours of staring at my fingers, I'd put down the guitar and go for long walks around town to clear my head.

I used to meet Mr. Norman a lot on the quiet residential streets in our neighborhood. He walked slowly, with his hands jammed into his pockets, whistling melodies I recognized from the “beautiful music” station my parents listened to in the car. At first we just nodded and went our separate ways, but we bumped into each other so often that year that it became something of a private joke between us.

One night in late spring, he stopped at a corner and waited for me. It was earlier than usual, and he asked me if I wanted to watch the Yankee
game at his place. His wife was bowling, he said, and he could use the company. I was glad for the chance to prove that I didn't share my parents’ grudge against him.

It was strange to turn the corner and walk past my own house into his, as though I were another person. The house seemed not to have changed since the last time I was there, back when Mr. Klinghof was alive. It was still dark and cluttered, with the same peculiar smell in the air, a permanent odor of breakfast. There was even a picture of Mr. Klinghof on the TV set. He looked older than I remembered him, and had a sad, kindly expression on his face. I realized suddenly that I'd missed him.

Mr. Norman turned on the Yankees. I pretended to watch the game and waited for him to start a conversation. A couple of innings passed.

“You want something to drink?” he asked.

“Water would be great.”

He pointed to the kitchen. “Glasses are above the toaster.”

I turned on the faucet and let the water run for a while. The sink was filled with dirty dishes. I looked in the freezer for ice, but the old metal trays were empty, coated with frost.

Back in the living room, Mr. Norman said, “Millie tells me you're a big baseball fan.” He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth that bobbed up and down as he spoke.

I took a sip of water. “I used to be.”

He patted his thighs and chest with both hands, then spotted his lighter on the coffee table. “You got a girlfriend?”

“Not really.”

He lit the cigarette and blew a long stream of smoke at the TV screen. He nodded thoughtfully, then reached under the couch and pulled out a thick stack of magazines.

I was used to seeing
Playboy
and
Penthouse
, but these magazines were different. They had names like
Swank
and
Juggs
and
Twat
, and the models in them weren't all young and beautiful. Many were older, tired-looking women who didn't appear to be enjoying themselves.

I was staring at a picture of a woman painstakingly shaving her pubic hair when Mr. Norman got up from the couch and came over to where I was sitting. He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned forward to get a better look, his face so close to mine that I could smell his hair tonic.

“Look at that,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing his chin like a philosopher, “Amazing. Where'd she get those tits?”

We heard a car pull into the driveway. “Better give me those,” he said. “She wouldn't appreciate me showing them to you.” He shoved the magazines under the couch and quickly took his seat. He crossed his legs and looked perfectly relaxed
by the time the front door opened.

Mrs. Norman set her bowling bag on the floor and smiled when she saw me. She was wearing lime green stretch pants and a double-knit top with big orange flowers on it. I noticed that she had a decent body for a woman her age.

“Buddy,” she said. “How nice to see you.”

“Hi, Mrs. Norman.” I felt my face turn red. I remembered that years ago, on our front porch, Mr. Norman had called her a whore. At the time, I hadn't even known what the word meant.

“I better get going,” I said.

“Don't leave on account of me.” There was an odd singsong quality in her voice, and I had the feeling that she was flirting with me.

“It's not that,” I said. “I have some homework.”

She pouted momentarily, but then her face brightened. “Okay, but before you go, just let me get my camera. I want a picture of this.”

She left the room. I looked at Mr. Norman, hoping for an explanation, but he just shrugged. “Millie's camera-crazy,” he said.

Mrs. Norman took two pictures of me and Mr. Norman sitting together on the couch. She used a flash, and when I got home, black spots were swimming in front of my eyes.

On the way to the funeral home, Bob asked me if I'd ever been a pallbearer before.

“Not me,” I said. “You?”

“You probably won't believe this,” he said, “but until two nights ago, I never even saw a dead body.”

“Never?”

He ignored the question and started fiddling with some controls on the dashboard. “Could you roll up your window? I'm turning on the AC. It's like an oven in here.”

The air conditioning came on full blast. I had to adjust the vent to keep it from gusting in my face.

“It's a weird thing,” Bob said. “My father died when I was a little kid, but I didn't go to the wake or the funeral. Ever since then, whenever somebody died, I've always been out of town. Away at school, on vacation, whatever.” He groped in his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a peach-colored napkin. He'd grabbed a whole stack of them as we left my house. He wiped his face, then crumpled the napkin and tossed it over his shoulder into the back seat. “I'm telling you, I wasn't ready for it. It shocked the hell out of me to see Jerry in that coffin. I just didn't expect him to look so goddam dead. Christ, it really gets you thinking, doesn't it?”

It was a beautiful day, and the streets of downtown Cranwood were bustling with people going about their business. I watched them through the car as they put change in parking meters and
checked both ways before crossing the street, and they seemed familiar and alien at the same time, like sea creatures when you visit an aquarium. I thought about Mrs. Kelly, my sixth-grade math teacher, who died of a heart attack before she had a chance to give us our grades for the final marking period. On the night of her wake, a big group of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders met in the schoolyard and walked together to the funeral home to pay our last respects. No one expected us. Adults looked on in astonishment as we filed past the coffin, a seemingly endless line of girls in pretty dresses and boys in suits that didn't quite fit. Many of us were crying, even though Mrs. Kelly had been an unpopular teacher, known for giving pop quizzes and making kids stick gum on their noses if they were caught chewing it in class. I kept my composure until I reached the foot of the coffin; then I froze. I had never seen a dead person before and didn't know what to do next. There was a painful little smile frozen on Mrs. Kelly's face, like she was trying hard to be polite. The girl in front of me, Mary Jane Zaleski, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, so when my turn came I did the same thing. I kept my eyes closed, and her face against my lips felt as cool and smooth as a blackboard.

“You're in college, right?”

Bob's question brought me back to reality. We were driving down a wide, tree-lined street
not far from the funeral home.

“Yeah. I'll be a sophomore in September.”

“You like it?”

“Beats working.”

He nodded. “No kidding. I wish I was back in school.”

The funeral home was a red brick house with a wide front door and a perfectly manicured lawn. Bob pulled into the circular driveway and found a parking space behind the building, next to the dumpster. He left the engine running and turned to me.

“Appreciate it while you can, Buddy. These are the best years of your life.”

“If they are, I'm in big trouble.”

He sat there for a few seconds, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, gazing straight ahead at a sign that read, “FUNERAL PATRONS ONLY.” Then he reached down and cut the ignition. The air conditioning expired with a sigh.

“You'll see,” he said. “You'll wake up one morning ten years from now with a job and a wife and you'll say to yourself, oh yeah, I didn't realize it at the time, but that's when I was really happy.”

The funeral director, Mr. Woodley, was tall, well-dressed, and extremely formal. He reminded me of a butler in an old movie. Bob and I followed him to the end of a dark corridor where the two
other pallbearers were waiting, leaning against a wall on either side of a water fountain.

“Robert and Buddy,” Mr. Woodley said, “I'd like you to meet Al and Bernie, colleagues of the deceased from the New Jersey Freight Company, Incorporated. Al and Bernie, please meet Robert and Buddy. Robert is married to the stepdaughter of the deceased. Buddy was his next-door neighbor for many years.”

The four of us shook hands like football captains meeting for the coin toss. Bernie was a wild-looking guy with porkchop sideburns and a Roy Orbison haircut. Al was barely five feet tall but he had the chest and shoulders of a weightlifter. Neither of them looked comfortable in their suits.

After the brief service, a young guy, not much older than me, wheeled the closed casket into the hallway on a metal table. He had shaggy blond hair and an impressive tan. It was easy to imagine him in a wetsuit, with a surfboard tucked under one arm. I wondered how he'd ended up working in a funeral home.

Mr. Woodley arranged us symmetrically around the polished wooden box. “Gentlemen,” he said, “because there is no formal church service today, our task is extremely simple. We have to transport the deceased from the door to the hearse. That is all. Once we arrive at the cemetery, their people will take over.”

We walked in formation beside the coffin as
the assistant guided it slowly down the hallway. Bob and I were stationed in front. Mr. Woodley went ahead of us and opened the wide double doors at the end of the hallway. Sunlight flooded in over his dark silhouette. We paused momentarily at the threshold for the assistant to come around to the front of the coffin. The mourners were gathered on the lawn, watching us. Beyond them, at the curb, the hearse waited, its back gate swung open.

“Gentlemen, please grasp the handles. On the count of three, will you please lift.” The handle was a grooved brass rod hinged to the side of the box. It fit nicely in my hand.

“One … two … three.”

The casket lifted easily off the gurney, almost as though it were empty, but then the weight shifted and we had to struggle for a moment to get it stabilized. It struck me suddenly—I had somehow managed not to think of it until then— that Mr. Norman's dead body was inside the box. I glanced over at Bob. He looked shaken; a drop of sweat slid like a tear down the side of his face. I was glad he had Al backing him up.

We took our first tentative step forward, out into the air. It was a warm, hazy day with a sweet breeze blowing. Birds and squirrels chattered in the trees around the funeral home.

“Gentlemen, please watch your step as we descend the stairs.”

I took the instruction literally, staring at my new loafers as we moved toward the sidewalk, one cement step at a time. I could hear the assistant grunting as he helped us support the front end, where all the weight was concentrated.

It felt like we were moving in slow motion as we passed the mourners. I heard a sniffle and looked up. Mrs. Norman was standing on the grass, her face concealed by a gauzy black veil. I felt a jolt when our eyes met.

There were metal rollers on the inside bed of the hearse. The coffin slid in easily and thudded against the back wall. I imagined Mr. Norman wincing at the impact.

“Thank God that's over with,” Bob whispered as we walked across the lawn to join the other mourners.

About twenty people had attended the funeral, but only seven showed up for lunch afterwards at the Normans’. Besides the immediate family and the pallbearers, the only other guest was Estelle, a skinny, middle-aged woman who lived down the street and spent a lot of time sitting on her front porch in a rocking chair. At the cemetery she cried so hard that Mrs. Norman had to stroke her hair to get her to calm down.

There was a catered buffet of cold cuts and Italian food set up on the kitchen table. I filled my paper plate and headed out to the patio. The
women stayed inside, so it was just the four pallbearers gathered around the picnic table Mr. Norman had assembled a few years ago from a kit. I remembered coming up the driveway one day and seeing the pieces of the table scattered on the lawn. It took him a whole weekend to put it together.

Al raised his beer bottle. “Here's to Jerry. He'll be missed.”

We clinked bottles and drank to Mr. Norman. Bernie unknotted his tie. “Man,” he said, “that coffin was heavier than it looked.” He yanked the tie free from his collar and stuffed it in his coat pocket. “It felt like a goddam refrigerator.”

For the first time all day, Bob grinned. Sweat stains had soaked all the way through his dark suit. He looked like a basketball coach whose team had just won in overtime. “No kidding,” he said. “I wasn't sure if we were going to make it down those stairs.”