Robert Swartwood - Legion

My father has died.

Melissa emails me about it, but I rarely check my email. Somehow, she manages to get hold of my cell number and sends me a text to call her ASAP. I don’t. She calls an hour later and I send the call to voicemail, which I later listen to and hear about his death and how the viewing will be Friday night and the funeral Saturday morning and Mom would really like it if we could all be there so please, John, please do try to make it if you can. She even offers to let me ride along with her and her family-her Wall Street husband and two adorable kids-but she probably knows I’ll decline anyway, not wanting to be a tagalong but also dreading the idea of spending hours imprisoned in their SUV (that’s what I picture they have, anyway, some big Mercedes or BMW that they only take out of storage the few times they leave the city each year) with a sister and brother-in-law and a duo of nephews I never talk to despite the fact we both live within ten miles of each other.

When I don’t call her back, she tries once more, leaving the same voicemail, almost word for word.

I delete that message, just like the first.

My father has died and I don’t have much opinion on the matter one way or another. My father was a cold son of a bitch and the world will be better off without him. Even how he went out seems fitting enough, though I’m sure the rest of my family wouldn’t agree. And attending his funeral? No thanks. I think I’d rather bash my head into a brick wall than force myself to participate in that circus.

But then later that Friday night-after the rest of my family, two hundred miles away, sat through my father’s viewing-I can’t sleep. I stare up at my bedroom ceiling, listening to the city sounds through the window. I turn on my right side, then on my left side. I pop in my earbuds, but music doesn’t help. Finally, after two hours of restlessness, I get up and log onto my laptop and pull up the Amtrak website.

I take the first train of the morning out of Penn Station to Hartford. A woman sits beside me playing Words With Friends on her iPad. She smells of cinnamon. At first she tries to engage me in conversation, and I give low, monosyllabic answers until she gets the hint and leaves me alone. My earbuds in place, I stare out my window and tell myself that once the train stops, I will get off and head back to New York.

When the train does finally stop, I don’t head back to New York. Instead I hail a taxi. I tell the driver where I’m headed. He gives me a look, says that it will be nearly two hours to get there and do I have that kind of cash. I pass him my credit card, then sit back and watch the houses and trees slide by as he drives.

And then, before I know it, we’ve arrived. I ask the driver if he minds waiting a half hour or so to take me back. He glances out over the small cemetery, the numerous tombstones, the few mausoleums, the drooping willow trees, and asks, “Family or friend?”

Family, I tell him.

“Old man or old lady?”

Old man, I say.

He nods, chewing this over. “I never much cared for my old man. Used to beat the shit out of me. That why you’re late?”

Outside, down the grassy slope, a small group of mourners is clustered around a tent. The sky is overcast but doesn’t look like rain, though that hasn’t kept a few from carrying umbrellas. There looks to be about a dozen people, all said, and from what I can tell, they’re almost all family.

“Just stay here,” I tell the driver, and open my door.

I head down the stone walkway toward the tent. I take my time. Melissa’s email said the funeral started at ten. It’s now almost ten thirty, which means this thing should be wrapping up. The way the tent is positioned, almost everyone has his or her back to me. They’re all wearing black, either suits or dresses, which goes starkly with my jeans and hoodie.

I glance back over my shoulder to make sure the taxi-my only form of escape-hasn’t left. It’s still there, the driver now leaning against the hood, puffing on a cigarette, enjoying the melancholy view.

In many ways, my timing is perfect. When I’m less than fifty yards from the tent, the reverend finishes his prayer or eulogy or whatever, doing the whole ashes to ashes bit. Everyone who had their heads bowed now raises them. The deep silence that momentarily enveloped the group lifts. A soft and hushed murmur begins.

I spot Melissa and her husband and their boys. I spot Valerie and her husband. I spot Paul and his wife and their little girl. I spot David, who-last I remember-was married, but he appears to be alone today, so maybe his wife couldn’t make it or they’ve divorced.

Finally, I spot our mother. She’s sitting at the front, right near the casket, the usual spot they place the widow or widower. She hasn’t seen me yet, which I take as a blessing. In fact, none of them have seen me yet, surprisingly, which makes me think I can easily turn back around and hightail it out of here without having to converse with anyone. Truth is, I’m still not sure why I’m here. I’ve been trying to come up with a reason all morning, on the train next to Ms. Words With Friends, then on the nearly two-hour taxi ride, and I still haven’t figured it out.

But I have come, against my better judgment. I have come to my father’s funeral because, despite what I may think of the man, what feelings (or rather lack of feelings) I have toward him, he was my father, and if I owe him anything, it’s to at least show up when he dies.

“John?”

I blink. I must have zoned out there for a moment or two, staring at the closed casket nestled in between all those bouquets, because David is now standing in front of me.

“Glad you finally made it,” he says. He wears a gray suit that probably costs more than I make in a month. He extends his hand. “I was worried you might not.”

We shake, and it feels weird, because I don’t remember the last time I shook my brother’s hand. Was it at his wedding? Possibly, because I don’t think I’ve seen him since.

“A shame you couldn’t attend the wake last night,” he says, taking his hand back. It disappears into his suit jacket only to reappear a moment later with a small bottle of Purell hand sanitizer. He squirts a dollop of clear gel in his hand, snaps the cap shut, returns the bottle to his suit jacket, and then begins rubbing his hands together, the entire process so standard and droll he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

“I was working.”

David’s mysophobia (a pathological fear of germs) doesn’t surprise me. He’s a surgeon-either cardiac or neuro, I can’t remember which-so it makes sense he doesn’t want to contract any harmful germs. But I also know it goes deeper than that. It goes way back to when we were in boarding school, the bullies picking on him, holding him to the ground, forcing him to eat gobs of spit, until finally his younger brother stepped in and made them stop.

“Oh yeah? What’s keeping you busy these days? Still riding your bike?”

He says it with sincerity, but I can sense the exasperation just beneath the surface. Saying without saying that it’s a shame I turned out the way I did, what with everything I had been given, all the potential, and wasting it unlike my brothers and sisters who managed to make something of themselves, to use the money our parents gave us to better our lives instead of spoiling it.

Or at least that’s the sense I get, but the truth is I’m probably wrong.