Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

I remember taking my time opening the envelope. There was a single sheet of blank typing paper inside, folded to enclose a small newspaper clipping. This was an obituary notice, and I read it through twice without having the vaguest idea why it had been sent to me. I even turned it over but the reverse held nothing but a portion of a department store ad. I turned the clipping for a third look and the name, “Youngdahl, Leo,” suddenly registered, and I gave a shrill yelp of laughter that ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Evans said, “What’s so funny?”

“Leo Youngdahl died.”

“I didn’t even know he was sick.”

I started to laugh again. I really couldn’t help it.

“All right, give. Who the hell is Leo Youngdahl? And why is his death so hysterical?”

“It’s not really funny. And I don’t know exactly who he is. Was. He was a man, he lived in Bethel. As far as I know, I only met him once. That was six years ago at my father’s funeral.”

“Oh, that explains it.”

“Pardon?”

“I never felt more like a straight man in my life. ‘You say you met him at your father’s funeral, Gracie?’ ”

“There’s really nothing to it,” I said. “It’s a sort of a family joke. It would take forever to explain and it wouldn’t be funny to anyone else.”

“Try me.”

“It really wouldn’t be funny.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “You’re really too much, you know that?”

“I just meant—”

“I think I’ll get out of the house for a while.”

“Hey, you’re really steamed.”

“Not exactly that.”

“Come on, sit down. I’ll get you another beer. Or would you rather have some scotch, because I think I will.”

“All right.”

I made him a drink and got him back in his chair. Then I said, “I honestly don’t think this is something you want to hear, but God knows it’s nothing to start a fight over. It was just an incident, or rather a couple of incidents. It must have been ten years ago. I was home from school for I think it was Christmas—”

“You said six years ago, and at your father’s funeral.”

“I was starting at the beginning.”

“That’s supposed to be the best place.”

“Yes, so I’ve been told. Are you sure you really want to hear this?”

“I’m positive I want to hear it. I won’t interrupt.”

“Well, it was nine or ten years ago, and it was definitely Christmas vacation. We were all over at Uncle Ed and Aunt Min’s house. The whole family, on my mother’s side, that is. A couple sets of aunts and uncles and the various children, and my grandmother. It wasn’t Christmas dinner but a family dinner during that particular week.”

“I get the picture.”

“Well, as usual there were three or four separate conversations going on, and occasionally one of them would get prominent and the others would merge with it, the way conversations seem to go at family dinners.”

“I’ve been to family dinners.”

“And I don’t know who brought it up, or in what connection, but at some point or the other the name Leo Youngdahl was mentioned.”

“And everybody broke up.”

“No, everybody did not break up, damn it. Suddenly I’m the straight man and I’m beginning to see why you objected to the role. If you don’t want to hear this—”

“I’m sorry. The name Leo Youngdahl came up.”

“And my father said, ‘Wait a minute, I think he’s dead.’ ”

“But he wasn’t?”

“My father said he was dead, and somebody else said they were sure he was alive, and in no time at all this was the main subject of conversation at the table. As you can see, nobody knew Mr. Youngdahl terribly well, not enough to say with real certainty whether he was alive or dead. It seems ridiculous now, but there was quite a debate on the subject, and then my cousin Jeremy stood up and said there was obviously only one way to settle it. I believe you met Jeremy.”

“The family faggot? No, I never met him, although you keep thinking I did. I’ve heard enough about him, but no, I never met him.”

“Well, he’s gay, but that hardly enters into it. When this happened he was in high school, and if he was gay then nobody knew it at the time. I don’t think Jeremy knew it at the time.”

“I’m sure he had fun finding out.”

“He didn’t have any gay mannerisms then. Not that he does now, in the sense of being effeminate, but he can come on a little nellie now and then. I suppose that’s a learned attitude, wouldn’t you think?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sweetie.”

“What he did have, even as a kid, was a very arch sense of humor. There’s a Dutch expression, kochloffel, which means cooking spoon, in the sense of someone who’s always stirring things up. Jeremy was a kochloffel. I forget who it was who used to call him that.”

“I’m not sure it matters.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t. Anyway, Jeremy the kochloffel went over to the phone and got out the phone book and proceeded to look up Leo Youngdahl in the listings, and announced that he was listed. Of course the faction who said he was dead, including my father, started to say that a listing didn’t prove anything, that he could have died since the book came out, or that his wife might have kept the listing active under his name, which was evidently common practice. But Jeremy didn’t even wait out the objections, he just started dialing, and when someone answered he said, ‘Is Leo Youngdahl there?’ And whoever it was said that he was indeed there, and asked who was calling, and Jeremy said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, I was just checking, and please give Leo my best wishes.’ Then he hung up, and everybody laughed and made various speculations as to the reaction that exchange must have caused at the Youngdahl household, and there the matter stood, because the subject was settled and Leo Youngdahl was alive and well.”

Evans looked at me and asked if that was the whole story, and how my father’s funeral entered into it.

I said, “No, it’s not the whole story. I’m going to have another drink. Do you want one?”

He didn’t. I made myself one and came back into the room. “My father’s funeral,” I said. “I don’t want to go into all of it now, but it was a very bad time for me. I’m sure it usually is. In this case there were complicating factors, including the fact that I was away from home when he died. It happened suddenly and I felt guilty about not being there. What happened was he had a heart attack and died about fifteen hours later, and I was in New York and was spending the night with a man and they couldn’t reach me by phone, and—”

“Look, why don’t you sit down.”

“No, I’d rather stand. Let’s just say I was guilty and let it go at that. Feeling guilty. I wish you would stop it with those wise Freudian nods.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“I’m sorry. Where was I? Another thing, it was my first real experience with death. Both of my grandfathers had died when I was too young to understand what was going on. This was the first death I related to personally as an adult.

“The point of this is that we were all at the funeral parlor the day before the funeral — actually it was the night before — and there was this endless stream of people paying condolence calls. My mother and brother and I had to sit there forever while half the town came up to take our hands and tell us how sorry they were and what a wonderful man my father was. I didn’t recognize more than half of them. Bethel’s not that large, but my father was a rather prominent man—”

“So you’ve told me.”

“You’re a son of a bitch. Have I told you that?”