Hope Idiotic | Part 34
Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.
SADNESS DOESN’T COME IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SUDDEN DEATH OF A LOVED ONE. Shock comes first. You feel nothing. Your mind and body switch to autopilot. If you’re one of the first to hear the news, you get busy making phone calls to other loved ones of the departed. You involuntarily go through all of the other motions that come with surviving someone. You try to maintain the status quo. You eat breakfast. You feed your kid. If you’re Lou, you go couch shopping.
Sadness makes a brief appearance at the funeral or the memorial service. That’s when the reality of the death hits. As you watch the crowd of bereaved friends and family huddle and hug and share condolences, you realize the final truth that someone you cared about isn’t showing up. That person will never show up again. All you’re left with is whatever they gave you before the day they died. And as people tell their stories about the dead, and you hold a service program in your hand with a nice portrait of the dead on the cover, you cry. That’s the sadness. But there’s more. There’s a deeper, unwavering sadness. This sadness comes only after the news has gone cold and the body has been put away. It’s when things go back to normal and you find yourself reaching for that person, expecting to hear them, see them, and you get nothing in return but silence and emptiness. Going about the day-to-day even long after that person is gone is when true sadness shows. The enormity of the loss doesn’t come until later.
So the next morning, Lou didn’t feel much of anything beyond the shock. He called Lexi.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“You okay?”
“As okay as I can be, I suppose.”
Asking people if they are okay after a loved one dies is a stupid question. Has the answer ever been anything but exactly what’s expected? It’s a formality we exercise because we are uncertain of what else to say or do. Because for some reason, doing nothing and just being quiet is unacceptable behavior, but it’s probably what we need to do.
“What happened? How’d you find him?”
“He didn’t show up at work, and no one could reach him. Lorraine called me a little before the end of the day at work, so I tried calling and texting.”
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“Thursday night after work. He was on his way to an alumni event at the university. He said he had a bad day at work and that we’d talk about it later.”
“Did he sound okay?”
“Just tired. Melvin was all over his ass.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“No. After work, I went by the house. I used the garage code and… I walked right past him in the car. Didn’t even see him. I went in the house, called for him, walked upstairs and checked the bedroom because I figured he was sleeping, but he wasn’t there. It was strange. So I walked back downstairs, and when I walked out of the kitchen into the garage… I saw him. In the car.”
“What did he look like? Shit, that’s weird. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. He looked like he was sleeping. But before I even got to the car, I knew.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“The doors were locked and the windows were up. I grabbed a broom and smashed the passenger window in with the handle. I don’t know why, but I tried to wake him up. Then I called Lorraine. Then I called 9-1-1. Then I tired waking him up again.”
“You don’t think he did it on purpose, do you?”
“Hell no!”
“Okay. I don’t either. I had to ask. Maybe you knew something I didn’t. He wouldn’t do that to us. It would kill him knowing we were having to deal with this shit.”
Lexi laughed. “Only you can get away with making me laugh right now.”
“So what’s the plan for a funeral?”
✶
MICHELLE SAID THAT SHE REALLY WANTED TO FLY TO LAS VEGAS WITH LOU FOR THE MEMORIAL SERVICE, but work was just too busy for her to get away. The memorial service was spearheaded by the Employee Events Department at Tigris. It was Melvin’s idea. They had contacted the church he and Lexi briefly attended, and the church agreed to host it.
The room was packed—three hundred people or so. A gentle, masculine-looking woman led the service. She looked like a young Bea Arthur. It was nicely done, and the sentiment was there, but overall, the whole thing felt like a farce. The program listed speakers as me, Neal Harding—friend, Louis Bergman—friend, Melvin Wilson—friend and co-worker, and Cal Keller—father. When I spoke, people laughed and cried. I managed to say what I had to say about my friend without cracking too badly. When Lou spoke, people laughed and cried some more. He didn’t fare so well and broke up twice. A hint of sadness. Melvin prattled on about how dedicated Chuck was to his job and how he always had an interesting approach to getting the work done. The bullshit was thick, and even those who didn’t know the true Melvin and Chuck relationship would have had to know everything he was saying was bullshit. Cal, came without Barbara or Darryl, but instead with a childhood friend of Chuck’s named R.J. When it was Cal’s turn to speak, R.J. stood uncomfortably on the stage with him.
“Thank you, all of you, for coming here to this service today,” Cal said. “Thank you Melvin for putting it together. This is all very sad. Chuck being dead is very sad.”
He began to cry, and R.J., who was wearing an oversized Indianapolis Colts jersey, put his arm around his old friend’s father and walked him back to their seats.
The young Bea Arthur minister returned to the microphone. “Chuck being dead is very sad,” she confirmed. “Let’s remember him in happier times with this slideshow.”
The lights dimmed, the two large screens on either side of the stage came to life with a photo of Chuck taken for his Tigris ID card. He looked like a corporate stiff. It was a terrible representation of him. His name and the years 1980–2009 faded in on the photo. Then the strum of Noel Gallagher’s guitar began. The slideshow was set to “Wonderwall.”
Funeral slideshows and videos are insulting. The intentions are well meaning, as are most things people do when in the grips of grief, but the truth is that those same intentions are just sediment filler in a deep, expansive bleak hole. These videos, which are an easy up-sell for the funeral director, are a collage of photos from the deceased’s life set to music, preferably the person’s favorite song. If the person didn’t have a favorite song, then something sappy and stock goes in its place. Something like “Amazing Grace” or inappropriately, Green Day’s “Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life),” which is about a breakup. What’s worse is that the photos chosen in the video are meant to represent that person’s life. No matter how great the photos are, no matter how representative they are of the different stages of that person’s life, the attempt to summarize a lifetime in a three to fifteen-minute slideshow is futile. A life, no matter how short or uneventful, cannot fit inside of a funeral video. And certainly not Chuck Keller’s life.
After the service, a large group of people—many friends from college Lou hadn’t seen in years—went to the Fish for a few drinks and to try to one-up each other with Keller stories. Lou and I got hammered, and Natalie drove us home to pass out together on separate ends of the couch.
✶
THE NEXT DAY, THE SORTING AND PACKING UP OF CHUCK’S LIFE WAS WELL ON ITS WAY. Lou arrived at his house to find Cal and R.J. loading up boxes into a U-Haul truck. But they weren’t Chuck’s. They were Lou’s boxes with all of his junk that he’d left behind and stored in the garage.
“None of these boxes are his?” R.J. asked.
“Nothing on the left side of the garage, no. This is all my stuff.”
“So we gotta unload everything we already loaded into the truck?”
“Unless you want to drop that stuff off in Chicago, yes.”
“Nah, we don’t want to do that. Just want to get all Chuck’s stuff back to where it belongs.”
“In Cayuga.”
“That’s right.”
R.J. started unloading the boxes. Cal came out from inside the house. “What the hell’re you doin’ R.J.?”
“These ain’t Chuck’s. They’re Lou’s.”
“So we gotta unload everything we already loaded into the truck?”
“You want to drop it off in Chicago?” R.J. asked.
“No.”
“Then yes.”
“What time did you guys get here this morning?” Lou asked Cal.
“We stayed here.”
“What, overnight?”
“Yeah. Didn’t see any sense in renting a hotel room when we got a house to stay at. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, of course not. Just would have been nice to know. How’d you get in?”
“Chuck’s keys.”
“Right.”
“Hey!” R.J. yelled as he walked down the ramp of the truck with a box in his arms. “How ’bout a little help with all this?”
Cal and Lou started unloading boxes and stacking them back in the garage next to Chuck’s car, which hadn’t been moved. The empty bottle of wine was still on top of the cup holder, resting against the passenger seat. There were shards of glass on the driver’s seat, the floor of the car and the floor of the garage. The plastic broom Lexi used to break the window lay next to the car. Lou noticed a crowbar leaning against the wall by the door into the house.
So this was it, Lou thought. That piece of shit car is where Chuck took his last breath. This wasn’t the scene of blazing glory Lou figured would have been his friend’s undoing. Lou imagined Chuck making it until his 70s before his liver gave up on him and forced him into a hospice bed, or he’d have a heart attack on a road trip and drive his car off the side of California into the Pacific Ocean. Or maybe he’d go off the grid and spend his days drinking and writing in some Costa Rican resort bar until one afternoon he just didn’t wake up.
The idea of death is always romantic. The reality is far less so. We’ll never know exactly how Chuck died. We know he drove home. We know he never got out of the car. Everything in between is romantic filler. His favorite song playing to the very end is just how I like to imagine it. The romance helps me all this time later in the quieter moments. I like to think he died having a good time at the moment.
That’s how he died. As Lou stood in his garage, he was thinking more about the why. All evidence for Lou pointed to Chuck’s luck running out. A guy can only drive home drunk and pass out behind the wheel so many times before it catches up with him. And that’s what happened. Chuck had exhausted all of his chances to get out of jail free. Chuck had had a bad day and placed a bet with the gods. But the gods determined that he needed to go. They were done covering his ass.
“Hey, Cal,” Lou said, still staring at the car. “Where is Chuck now?”
“At the crematorium.”
“Oh.”
“It was a whole lot cheaper to have him cremated than buried. Plus, there’d be all these extra charges to have the coroner ship his body home. His boss said that Tigris would pay for it, but I told him no. Just pay for the cremation.”
“What are you going to do with the ashes?”
“I’ll probably take some for a keepsake,” R.J. said.
“Have you thought about spreading them out in Zion? Any of the other national parks? Probably what he’d want done with them,” Lou said.
“I’ll have him buried with me when I go. Think we’ll keep him at the house until then.”
The first bit of proof of how terrible Chuck’s dying was had revealed itself. All that was left of Chuck Keller was doomed to spend eternity in a place that caused him the least amount of peace. It wasn’t right.
Lou excused himself, telling the guys that he’d get to work packing up the stuff inside the house. Upstairs, he saw that the guestroom and second bathroom looked lived in. He ran back downstairs to Cal and R.J.
“Where are you guys sleeping?”
“I’m in the master bedroom, and R.J.’s sleeping down here on the couch.”
“So, whose stuff is in the guest bedroom?”
“Probably that magazine publisher. He’d been living here. Told me he’d be by tonight to pick the stuff up along with that computer in the office.”
Lou was floored. The publisher was living in his house? Why? For how long? Why didn’t Chuck say anything? He called Lexi, and she agreed to meet him for coffee later that afternoon.
“I thought you knew,” she sai
“I had no idea. Was he paying rent?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Jesus Christ. The guy has money. He should have been paying the full amount. Why would Chuck keep this from me? And why was the publisher not living at home with his family?”
“His wife kicked him out,” Lexi said. “It was supposed to be only a week or so until they worked it out or whatever.”
“But how long had it been?”
“A month, maybe. Now I have a question for you? Who’s Gina?”
Lou lifted his head out of his hands and starred at Lexi. “Who’s who?”
“Who is Gina?”
“I’m not… What do you mean?”
“Lou, I know about her. Gina. Well, I don’t know a lot about her, but I know she exists and for some reason has a key to your house because Cal called her last night to let him in after he couldn’t reach me.”
“She still has a fucking key? Cal told me that he used Chuck’s key to get in. What the hell is going on here?”
“Who is she?”
Lou had warned Chuck about the dangers of dating two women at once; about giving them both full access to the house, and he told Chuck that he wasn’t going to help him clean up the mess when the whole thing finally caved in on him. And now it had caved. And that motherfucker wasn’t there to deal with it at all. It was now entirely up to Lou to handle it.
“She’s a girl from Tigris.”
“Did they date?”
“Yeah, briefly. While you guys were broken up,” Lou lied. Then he lied some more. “It wasn’t anything serious.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” That motherfucking fucker.
✶
ON THE WAY BACK TO THE HOUSE, LOU CALLED ME.
“Did you know about the publisher?”
“I had no idea. That’s pretty goddamn funny, though. And that you had to deal with the Gina/Lexi thing. That guy left more shit behind than Tupac.”
At the house, Lou was further surprised and mildly pissed that Gina was there. She was in the office with Cal and R.J. futzing around with Chuck’s computer.
“What’s going on here?” Lou asked. The three of them looked at Lou like they had been caught doing something illicit.
“Just getting Chuck’s files off this computer before the publisher takes it away,” Cal said. “I don’t know how these things work, so I called Gina.”
“I’m really not comfortable with this,” said Lou.
“Why, Lou? What’s your problem?” Gina inquired.
“It’s not that I have a problem, Gina. It’s that this computer isn’t yours to fool around with. It’s property of the magazine.”
“We’re not fooling around with it. I’m just helping Cal retrieve his son’s private files.”
“They’re not private. Not if they’re on a computer that doesn’t belong to him. You need to talk to the publisher about this.”
“Well, I don’t have time to help him later, so I have to do it now. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I’m not comfortable with this. You can’t come into my house and start taking things that don’t belong to you.”
“They’re not for me! They’re for Cal!”
“All the same.”
“It’s not all the same. Cal should have a right to his son’s stuff.”
“I don’t disagree with that. But that’s between Cal and the publisher and me.”
“Why you?”
“Because it’s my house, Gina.”
“Hold on a second, Gina,” Cal said. He walked to the office doorway where Lou was standing. “This is my fault. I don’t want to cause any problems. If you say we should talk to the publisher, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“I think that’s best, Cal, thanks. You say he’ll be by later tonight? I’ll call him and make sure he does come by. Let him know what’s going on.”
Gina began transferring files faster.
“Gina, please stop what you’re doing.”
“Why are you being such a fucking asshole about this?”
“Okay. You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“I was trying to be reasonable about this, but you clearly don’t want that, so please, leave.”
“I’m here because Cal wanted my help.”
“I don’t care. I can help Cal. And this isn’t Cal’s house to invite people into. It’s my house. And I didn’t invite you. And since you’re being rude, I’d like you to leave.”
“Fuck you, Lou!”
“Look, I get that you’re upset and that you want to do the right thing. But you’re a little late for that. You should have tried being more supportive before he died. Now give me my house key and get out.”
She stood up and took the key off of her key ring and threw it at Lou, just barely missing his head. It chipped the paint and made a small dent in the drywall.
“You’re a fucking asshole, Lou Bergman!”
“And you’re trespassing on my property.” He took out his phone. “You have until I count to 10 to get out of my house, into your car and drive away, or I’m calling the cops to have you arrested.”
“Maybe you should go,” Cal said. “I’ll give you a call later.”
She stormed out of the office and screamed, “Fuck you!” right in Lou’s face as she passed. The three men watched her get into her car from the office window and peel off down the street.
“I’m sorry about that,” Cal said.
“It’s fine,” said Lou. He was impressed with himself that he didn’t scream back. Perhaps one of the benefits of being emotionally numb.
✶
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Cal and R.J. had the U-Haul loaded, and all of Chuck’s things were out of the house. Cal replaced the dead battery in Chuck’s car and poured a little gas into the tank from a container he picked up at the gas station. He was going to drive the car his son died in all the way back to Indiana. Lou thought the idea morbidly pathetic.
“You plan on fixing the broken window?” Lou asked Cal before he took off.
“Oh, yeah. I suppose I ought to have that looked at before we get too far.”
“I imagine you’ll sell the thing once you get home, huh?”
“Nah. I’ll hang onto it. Help me remember my son.”
Sadness makes people do the strangest things.
