Someone Like Summer (11 page)

“A
MERICANS ARE THE
only ones who ever embalmed the dead,” Maxine said. “We started doing it during the Civil War because we had all these dead soldiers to transport all over the country. They wouldn't hold together if they weren't preserved somehow.”

Larkin said, “You two are my witnesses. When I die, I want to go to Green Pastures.”

“Me too,” I said.

It was Larkin's idea to have two pitchers of
sangria, one without booze in it for Esteban, me, and anyone else who would not be drinking that night, and one pitcher of what she called “
real
” sangria. That one had rum and brandy in it.

Maxine said, “
Real
for me, thanks.”

“Good. Then I have company,” said Larkin. “Kenny won't drink sangria. He calls it ‘punch.' He says it ruins both the fruit and the liquor.”

“I'm already afraid of him,” Maxine said. “Kenyon makes him sound so formidable.”

“He's not,” Larkin said.

“He's not with you,” I said.

While she filled their glasses, Maxine wandered around looking over the screening room. She was tall, with sun-blond hair that spilled to her shoulders but did not hide the tattoo near her shoulder bone. It was a lot of straight red lines. She told us it was a Kanji character for truth, which reminded me of Diogenes, the famous Greek philosopher who was out with his lantern in the daylight, searching for an honest man. I'd done a paper on him for history. He scorned material things and lived in a tub.

I'd received an A for that paper. School seemed so far away now, yet we'd be back there in a few weeks.

Maxine wore a Levi's maxi skirt with a pale-blue short-sleeved tunic, and red lace-up sneakers with white toes and white shoestrings.

Kenyon had warned Larkin and me that Maxine didn't eat meat or chicken, and that she stepped outside now and then to smoke a beadie, an herbal cigarette. He'd never told me what she did for a living. That hurt my feelings a little, because how could he talk about her with Larkin but not me?

Esteban was bringing a large paella as soon as he finished work at six. I'd asked him to make one without sausage or chicken, to fill it instead with lobster, shrimp, clams, mussels, pimiento, green peas, and saffron rice.

Dad, who had no clue Esteban would be there, was arriving late. Another job emergency.

Kenyon was outside showering.

Larkin said, “This is the best part of a mixed-sex evening, you know, when we females get to
be alone. It usually happens after dinner, but I like it before. We have a chance to talk.”

“I'm too nervous to be at my best,” I said. I knew Kenyon had told Maxine this was a dinner so Dad could meet both her and Esteban.

“So let me get this straight,” said Larkin, carrying her drink over to the couch. “Someone dies. The body goes to Green Pastures. It's put as is into a shroud. Then you take it to a field where there's a hole dug, and you drop it into the hole?”

Maxine sat beside her on the couch while I took the ottoman opposite them.

“We don't use the word
shroud
,” Maxine said. “We call it a
linceul
, which is French for ‘shroud.'”

“That sounds so much lighter,” Larkin said.

“Exactly,” said Maxine. “We try to take the old spookiness out of death.”

“Who's
we
?” I asked.

“Me and my ex,” Maxine said. “We met at Cornell, and we always thought we'd get married after graduation. But he discovered he was gay.”

“The Gay Undertaker,” said Larkin.

“Neither of us are undertakers.”

“I was just kidding,” said Larkin. “But if you don't call yourselves undertakers, what do you call yourselves?”

“Facilitators. And we don't call the hole ‘the hole.' We call it ‘the opening.'” Maxine took a sip of her drink. I noticed another Kanji character tattooed on her wrist, green lines and boxes. “We have twenty acres. You would drive by and think it was a woods with lanes and park benches, but no gravestones. Just a tiny nameplate horizontal with the ground. Underneath, everything blends together and feeds what's above.”

“No one knows it's a cemetery?”

“One might know, but not because there are any outside signs, except the ones saying ‘Private. Green Acres.'”

Esteban arrived before Dad. He had washed and ironed the blue
guayabera
, which he wore with jeans and sneakers. (He told me once he liked to iron.) I helped him carry the Pantigo Deli bags from his car to the mini kitchen in the screening room.

“I am back living at the Casa,” he said softly
to me. “Only the documented can live in the new place.”

“Did you remember no chicken or meat?”

“Of course. Do you even
listen
to me, Anna?”

“I'm sorry. I heard you. I'm just nervous.”

“I am not nervous,” said Esteban. “If your father cannot stand me, how can
I
stand
him
and have my self-respect?”

“Later, Swan Man. We'll talk later.” I kept forgetting to ask him what he knew about Virgil and Mitzi breaking up, and why Virgil wanted her to be tested for AIDS.

 

After we got the food in the oven, Esteban put his hands behind his back and said, “Guess which one has something for you,
cariña
.”

I made a guess and he produced another CD. There was a gorgeous blonde looking over her shoulder, which had the tattoo “Laundry Service” high on one arm. Down the side of “Laundry Service” was her name: Shakira.

“Ah! The famous Shakira! I want to hear her with you.”

“Of course!”

“We can listen to her later,” Esteban said. “My favorite song of hers is on this CD. ‘Whenever, Wherever.' You will like it, Anna. It is a song for us. You'll see.”

“Thanks, E.E. You mustn't keep buying me gifts.”

“I feel I must.” He reached up to kiss me. “
Te amo
.”

“
Te amo
, E.E.”

Then we went down into the screening room, where Esteban swooned over Larkin's three-legged table. He told Larkin he had great respect for artists, that he had never met one “in person,” that the creative people he knew were all musicians.

“Where do you paint?” he asked.

“I have a studio in my house. Someday you can visit it.”

“I would be so honored.”

“Sometimes I need someone to put large canvases in my van, or help stretch them. You could make some extra money.”

Esteban shook his head and held his hands up. “No! No! No pay! I don't need money!”

How proud he was! He would never let me pay for anything. I did my best to think of things we could do that wouldn't cost money. Esteban worked every opportunity he could, because his family in Colombia depended on the money he sent. He told me that if he failed to send it, it could mean they would be put out of their house, they could even go hungry. They counted on what he sent to live. The little gifts he was always giving me he afforded by working extra hours and not buying things for himself.

Enter Kenneth Brown.

“Hello, everyone!”

“Hello, Kenny sweet-soul!” Larkin cried out. She ran to him, and they did one of those French-style greetings Dad used to complain about, complicated cheek kissing, one side first, then the other, instigated by Larkin.

Dad stood in the center of the room punching his left palm with his right fist, then the right one with the left. He was wearing his old khakis,
white socks, Nikes, a navy T-shirt, and his old cap that said
BROWN ALL OVER TOWN
.

“Mr. Brown?” said Maxine, heading his way with outstretched hand. “I'm Kenyon's friend, Maxine Segelkin.”

They were shaking hands when suddenly Esteban stepped forward. “Mr. Brown? I'm Annabel's friend, Esteban Santiago.”

Dad actually grabbed his outstretched hand and shook it. He said, “Maybe I should nickname you Nails Santiago.” Big ha ha ha from Dad.

Esteban gave a little bow. Unsmiling.

“I hope you brought some of that
pie-ella
,” said Dad.

“Yes, sir, I brought
pie-yea-ya
.”

“Hail, hail, the gang's all here,” said Dad, and I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or trying to be funny.

Then he said he was going to change clothes.

Staring a moment at Maxine, Dad said, “There's a green smudge on your wrist, honey.”

“It's a tattoo,” she said, smiling with her great white teeth and, yes, dimples. “It's a Kanji
character for hope. Someone once said death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.”

“That is a good saying,” Esteban said. “I will memorize that.”

My father looked at them a moment, gave them one of his now-you-see-it-now-you-don't smiles, and went on into the house. When he passed me the expression on his face said,
Say what?

I wasn't sure if he meant the tattoo or Esteban.

T
HE DINNER DISCUSSION
, of course, centered on green burial. My father usually fought the idea of anything new, growling when he first heard of something that no one
needed
: television in color, an electric typewriter, a computer, a cell phone—all of those things, he'd often proclaimed, were just a way to milk the public. Now he had all of those things.

I was amazed when his eyes lit up as Maxine described Green Pastures, and when he exclaimed, “Book me in! Can I pay for a hole in advance?”

“We call them ‘openings',” said Maxine. “And we do arrange for pre-need.”

“Arrange an opening for my opening.” Dad guffawed at his own joke.

Kenyon, his hair still wet from the shower, his eyes shining when he looked across the table at Maxine, said he wouldn't mind having one too.

“Mom would approve of this,” he said. “She was a conservationist, remember. And an environmentalist. This way, the land stays the land. It doesn't fill up with a lot of headstones.”

He was right about Mom. Dad used to tease her, saying she was a “tree hugger.” My mother would have approved of Maxine's green burial. She'd believed in God but not an afterlife. Dead was dead, she believed, same as I did. She'd been cremated and told us not to ask for her ashes. The whole idea of that gave her the creeps.

I looked across at Esteban. He said very little, except to answer questions Kenyon was polite enough to ask him, when Kenyon noticed he wasn't talking. What position do you like to play in soccer? (Goalie.) How long have you been in
the United States? (Two years.) Why did you choose Seaview? (Gioconda came first to manage a house of immigrants. She told Esteban how wonderful it was here.) That sort of thing. Then came the point when Esteban said something softly to Larkin, and she poured real sangria into his empty water glass.

I'd never known Esteban to drink. He said he didn't like the smell or the taste of alcohol. I knew he was feeling the strain of trying to fit in where he didn't fit in.

“Good. Very good,” he said.

“Too strong?” Larkin asked.

“Just right.”

Esteban ate with his right hand, and rubbed near his neck with his left. It was a reflex action; he always used to touch his holy medal when he was nervous. When his eyes looked up at mine, he almost smiled, his expression saying to me something like
Don't worry, Anna, I'm okay
. I thought he looked adorable with that upper right tooth a little crooked.

Maxine was telling us the bodies were buried vertically, in a fetal position.

“Then you take up less land,” said Dad.

“I think one should be buried in a casket,” said Esteban.

Larkin was following Dad's conversation. “A fetal position! You go out the way you came in.”

“That's a good slogan,” said Kenyon. “‘Go out as you came in.'”

Esteban said again, “I believe one should be buried in a casket. There could be worms in the soil.”

Silence. Was I the only one who had heard him?

No, Dad had heard him. Dad sang, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,” and he chuckled to himself.

Esteban frowned, put down his fork, shoved his plate away, then pulled it back in front of him, as though he'd realized it was a rude gesture. But he didn't eat.

“Speaking of going out,” Maxine said, pushing
back her chair, “excuse me.”

While she walked to the door, Kenyon said, “She smokes.”

Dad said to me, “I left some mail on your bed, honey. There's a catalog from the Jane Addams School of Social Work.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Or do you still like Simmons College?”

“I don't know, Dad.”

“Chicago or Boston. Which city appeals to you?”

“I haven't given it much thought,” I said.

“Boston's closer to home,” he said. “And there are all those Harvard boys in Boston.”

Thanks, Dad!

I wished he wouldn't start on college. In a week I'd be back at Seaview High. Everyone I knew would be talking about college then, getting ready to take their SATs, going off with their folks to see various campuses, everything that would begin to distance Esteban and me. He'd sometimes ask me about college, what I would study, if I would go someplace near, if I would want
to see him once I was there. But we both knew it was a minefield; we knew not to walk in that direction for very long.

Dad finally turned to Esteban. “Where are you boys living now?”

“Some of us are living in a new house and some of us are at Casa Pentecostal. I'm staying at the Casa.”

“But you're moving into the new house,” I said.

“When I came in, Anna, I told you I cannot stay there.”

My father said, “But that's nice of the pastor to take you in there temporarily. You religious?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You go to Holy Family?”

“Here in America I go to Casa Pentecostal.”

“I can see why,” said Dad. “Does the pastor charge you rent?”

“No. I don't plan to stay there.”

“Where
do
you plan to stay?”

“I am at work on that.”

“I guess there are a load of uncertainties in your life, hmm?”

“Yes, sir,” said Esteban. “Not so many I can't handle them.”

Good! Show your mettle, E.E.

“You didn't handle them all that well down on Ridge Road,” said Dad.

“We were working too hard. You know how that is, sir, we got too busy to pay attention to what was going on at the house.”

“Yes, I do know what that's like,” said Dad.

They were having this little word duel when Larkin very dramatically sailed her napkin to her plate and said, “I ate so much I need fresh air, and I have to walk Dalí.”

“I'll walk him,” I said.

“I will go with you,” said Esteban.

“Thanks,” said Larkin. “I'll take the dishes away.”

“Let me help, Larkin,” Kenyon said.

Dad always knew how to clear a room.