The Wake

I refused to greet silver-haired mourners or point teary-eyed people toward the casket or absorb touching stories about Mona. Instead, I stayed glued to a metal folding chair at the front of the room, twirling my hair, staring at my mother’s waxy, shriveled body. But then a man stinking of cologne hunkered down in the seat next to me.

“I’m Clark,” he said somberly.

“Darla.”

He looked to be around my age–thirty-eight–and explained that he worked with my mother. Winnie’s Wine Warehouse, a harshly lit discount liquor store, had employed Mona as a cashier for the last two years. “She and I,” he said, “used to schedule our breaks together and we’d play scrabble and she’d win every time. I just loved being around her. I was so upset when I heard. Really devastated.”

I eyed his brown suit. A shiny, out-of-style getup obviously plucked from a rusty hanger at a resale shop and completely inappropriate for a wake.

“Thank you for paying your respects,” I said.

I turned away, hoping he’d move on. But he didn’t.

 “Sometimes,” he said, his face lighting up at the memory, “we’d play poker. See, that was more my wheelhouse–”

“I’m sorry...um, Clark, was it?” I asked.. I knew I was being rude, but I couldn’t help myself. My nerves were shot. “I really need to be alone right now.”

He crossed his long legs and sat back. “See now that would be wrong. The best thing for you,” he said, “is to keep connecting with people. You know you’re not the only one who misses her.”

I didn’t miss her though. Not a single tear since Mona dropped dead of a heart attack on the Brown line train while headed to work. Another rider found her slumped in her seat, her face smushed against the filthy window and her overly made-up eyes closed, as if sneaking in a little last-minute shuteye before a long shift at the cash register at Winnie’s. A nurse with a brisk voice phoned me from Northwestern Hospital and informed me that they’d worked on her for over twenty minutes. I thanked her and hung up, but my eyes remained dry. Shame prevented me from confessing my lack of feelings to anyone–not even Bethie, my best friend–because what kind of daughter doesn’t grieve for her own mother?

“You okay Darla?” a voice said.

Bethie–six months pregnant with her first child and late because of an appointment with her baby doctor–waddled up just then. She pulled me into a hug and moistened my shoulder with her tears. “No words,” she said. “Mona was really something.”

I hesitated. “There was definitely no one like her,” I managed.

“They broke the mold.”

Clark.

We both turned and stared at him. At his lightly pockmarked skin and his tall hair and long sideburns, which made him look like he was time traveling here from a different century.

“Were you a friend of Mona’s?” Bethie sniffled.

Clark offered Bethie a tissue which she gratefully accepted. “I was her biggest fan,” he said.

Bethie wiped her eyes. “Don’t,” she said, “get me started–”

“Don’t,” Clark said, “get me started–”

“Clark! Could you please go?” I asked him.

“Darla!” Bethie hissed. She turned back to Clark, her cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry. This is a bad time for my friend. Please forgive her. Mona’s death has obviously crushed her.”

I tightened my jaw.

“It’s perfectly alright,” Clark said, his dark beady eyes pinned on me. “I completely understand. Grief can be complicated.”

Later that night, after the last mourner finally left, I stood alone in front of the casket and wondered if Mona had alienated anyone in heaven yet. Wondering if she told God how disappointed she was in Him. . How he wasn’t so perfect after all.

Then I went into his tiny office and settled the bill with Mr. Hurley, the funeral director, and then trudged out into the night air toward my car, carrying a bag of day lilies and some of the leftover Jimmy John’s sandwiches from the break room.

“These are long days,” a voice said.

I nearly screamed, my heart racing, but I was able to make out through the darkness that the Clark person from earlier tonight–his bulky arms folded against his shiny suit coat–leaning against a beat-up clunker that must have been his car. He reached into his jacket and retrieved a small bag of popcorn. He plucked a few kernels out and tossed each one to the cement where a squirrel gobbled them up. How long had he been out here?

“Sorry to scare you,” he said. “Sometimes context gets the better of me.”

“It’s fine,” I said, calming myself. I finally resumed walking, but he followed me.

“Listen,” he said, “I was hoping to spend some time with you. Mona told me all about you. How amazing and creative. Raved about what a great artist you are.”

“What?” I asked. I’ve painted for years, water colors mostly of landscapes, some oils. The truth is that I’m my most authentic self when I paint. I’ve always refused to show anyone my work because I’m petrified of rejection.

“Listen, that painting that you sold last year–”

I stopped and faced him. I tightened my grip around the box. “It’s a stretch to say I sold a painting,” I said. “Mona admitted to me that she hounded a store regular, demanding that he use his money for something besides booze and loose women.”

Clark tossed his head back and howled with laughter. “Classic Mona!”

That was her signature move: browbeating people.

“Listen,” Clark said, digging again into his pocket, flashing a business card at me and then pressing it into my palm, “I know this is right out of left field. But is there any way we could have coffee? I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss without Mona.”

* * *

When I turned twelve, a doctor diagnosed Mona as having a borderline personality. That’s a person prone and/or addicted to histrionics and outbursts. They have impulse control problems and are difficult to be around. My whole life Mona caused ugly scenes in public. She raged at dry cleaners, sales people, and quivering waitresses. She got us banned from Dr. Sherman’s office, my beloved pediatrician, because he insisted that I take antibiotics for my bladder infection. Mona shook her finger in his face and said forcing her to fill a prescription was nothing but a cover your ass move! She got me kicked out of girl scouts when I was seven because she insisted that there be a Glock Badge. It’s a crime that none of these girls have fired any weaponry! she railed. She cost me relationships with teachers when she led the charge against homework! My entire life I walked on eggshells. By the time I was sixteen I learned to separate Mona from as much of my world as I could.

The last thing I wanted to do was having coffee with Clark, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting he’d come to a place close to my office so I wouldn’t be put out. I only agreed because I thought if I met him once it would stop him from hounding me any more than he already had.

I work in an art gallery downtown–across from the main courthouse–and a last-minute mix up with a client made me thirty-seven minutes late. When I arrived at the coffee shop, On What Grounds?, I apologized to Clark for losing track of the time.

“You know what that’s about, don’t you?” he said.

I had no idea what he was talking about. I forced myself into the booth across from him, but I refused to indulge his comment with any kind of follow up question.

He clarified anyway. “Losing track of time is a symptom of grief. It’s a medical fact. I learned that when I sought help from a professional. Just to let you know.” Then Clark slid a bright green flyer across the Formica tabletop. “My friend hosts a grief group twice a month at Stroger Hospital,” he paused as if to let something pass through him, “and it really helped a couple of years ago when my own mom died. When she crossed over, I think I cried every single day for a whole year.”

“Are you ready?” a waitress said to me.

I didn’t think I could stomach anything but coffee.

She turned to Clark, her expression brightening.

“Blueberry zinger tea,” he said, “and the key lime pie.”

“You’ll see I’m right about the pie,” the waitress said, grinning and backing away. “Prepare yourself.”

She zoomed right back with our orders. Clark took an enormous bite of pie and looked like he’d died and gone to heaven.

“Okay, you have to try this,” he said, shoving a forkful at me.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s okay. Thank you though.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry. Appetite is another casualty of the grieving daughter.”

I sipped the coffee. Straightened my silverware. “Look, Clark, I appreciate that you have good intentions.”

He set his fork down. Pushed the plate away. “Something wrong with good intentions?” he asked.

“I don’t want you wasting your time.”

“Can you be more specific?” He folded his hands on the table and waited.

I avoided his eyes. “I’m going to be honest. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. About the two of us holing up together blubbering about...I...that’s just not going to happen, okay? So please stop pursuing whatever it is you’re pursuing here. Just to be clear: I don’t want to talk about Mona.”

* * *

Two days after meeting Clark for coffee Jill, my boss, summoned me into her office. She had a funny look on her face and then she told me to go back and close the door. “We got a call about you,” she said.

“Me?”

“Mrs. Dillard.”

She was the gallery’s biggest buyer.

“A few weeks ago, someone named Mona contacted Mrs. Dillard,” Jill said.

“Oh?” I said, a bad feeling creeping into my chest.

“She was calling on your behalf,” she said. “She said she represented you. Your paintings.”

I froze in my chair. The past seven months Mona had harangued me to present my work to Jill, hoping she’d show them in the gallery. At thirty-eight years old, I’d finally had enough of my mother’s drama and refused. Mona surprised me by not fighting back. She got this weird half smile on her face and took another swig of her Zinfandel and then went back to scratching her lottery tickets. I naively thought that was the end of it, but I should have known better. I should have known she was just taking time to reload. To aim better.

Jill studied me. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this woman, would you?” she said. “This Mona person?”

I swallowed uncomfortably. Sat up straight. “I, um, don’t know anyone by that name,” I said.

She eyed me skeptically. “Is that the truth?” she asked.

I glanced down and shrugged my shoulders. I said that Mona was some mentally ill person that I barely knew. That I’d helped out once by giving money to her. And I’d regretted it ever since. No good deed goes unpunished as they say. Jill wasn’t buying any of it. She leaned forward and put her tiny gray hands on her desk, shook her tiny gray head. “Well,” she said. “I suppose you’re not going to like what I have to do.”

I’d never been fired from anything in my life. When I reached my desk, I phoned Bethie. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of an ultrasound scheduled last minute by her doctor. I apologized immediately and hung up and then my cell rang. I answered and Clark begged me not to hang up. I stayed on the line, and he told me that he was cleaning out Mona’s locker at work and he found her old cigarette holder. Did I want it? If I didn’t, could he keep it?

I told him that I didn’t care what the hell he did with it because I’d just gotten fired. I hung up, and then I went into the back room and searched for a box and then carried it to my desk and packed up all my stuff. Years and years of stuff. I could barely lift that rectangular box but somehow managed to haul it outside. The minute I set foot onto the sidewalk I heard a mile-long honk. This shrill, banged-up Honda zoomed in front of the gallery and screeched to a stop. Clark jumped out and slammed the door. Before I could even speak, he yanked open the passenger side door and wrestled the box from me and shoved it into his trunk. He demanded my address. I didn’t know what else to do, so I told him where I lived and got into the passenger seat and strapped myself in. I nearly gagged on an excruciatingly pungent aroma. From the dashboard ashtray protruded a stem from a briar pipe, the kind people used to smoke in drawing rooms in all those pithy British films.

He sped off, barreling down Michigan Avenue in his light brown wreck of an automobile, weaving in and out of traffic (admittedly light at that time of day), and as the buildings passed by in a blur, my thoughts of Mona consumed me. My brain lit up like a billboard with the sudden knowledge that even in death my mother still managed to throw a wrench into my life. Mona went behind my back and left me unemployed. She killed my career. Suddenly, Clark lurched into a parking spot in front of my building, and I assured him I could take it from there. He insisted on carrying my stuff inside for me. Wouldn’t hear of it any other way! It seemed easier not to argue so I gritted my teeth and allowed him to follow me into my building and up three flights of stairs and into my apartment, which stunk, reeking of old moldy fruit. I collapsed onto a chair and thanked him for the ride. I told him he could just drop the box down anywhere and go.

He set it carefully on the coffee table and then put his hands on his hips and glanced around, pleasantly assessing the room while he caught his breath. Clark opened a window, allowing a mild breeze to sweep fresh air into the apartment. He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his brow. Anyone would think he lived here!

“Look, Darla, why don’t you approach getting canned as an opportunity?” he asked, making no move to leave.

I glanced at the door and then back at him. “I need to pay rent,” I said, distractedly.

“Bull. Mona had a few shekels set aside. She told me so.”

Who did he think he was? “I’ve worked there since I was twenty-six years old,” I said.

“Jeez. Mona let you get away with that?”

I was in no mood for this.

“People fire me all the time,” he said, “and I always come out better for it.”

“I work in the art world. You slap orange stickers on cans of beer.”

“I’m going to ignore that because you’re not thinking clearly. Just listen when I say that right now, you’re a beautiful flower who is pushing herself up through the dense soil. You think that’s not going to hurt?” He headed for the kitchen like he owned the place. “I’m going to scramble us some eggs. Do you like horseradish?”

“Jill knows everybody,” I heard myself blurting. “I’m going to be blackballed from working in any art gallery.”

Slowly he reappeared in the doorway draped, somehow, in Mona’s old disgusting apron. The one plastered in turmeric stains from when she helped me with a fifth-grade science project. “You’re an artist,” he said, aiming my own spatula at me. “You need to be painting.”

I walked up to him and calmly removed the spatula from his grip and tossed it onto the couch. “You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am or what I am. You show up at my workplace because I let it slip that I’d just gotten fired and you sensed an opportunity to take advantage of a vulnerable person. Now please get the fuck out of my apartment.”

“What don’t I know about you?” he asked as the door was closing.

* * *

I bolted all three locks, ransacked the kitchen for garbage bags, and stormed Mona’s room. Four months before she died, she had argued with her landlord about other tenants not emptying the lint tray in the laundry room and he’d kicked her out. I didn’t want to, but I cleared the painting stuff from my second bedroom and moved Mona into my place. It had been over a year since I’d painted anyway.

I mercilessly shoved old playbills, cheap gold costume jewelry, used lipsticks, cracked hand mirrors and old photos of me–toothless and skinny–into bag after bag and then hauled them out to the trash in the alley.

Each day after that morphed into the same exact day: I did nothing but watch television and drink at night while leafing aimlessly through dozens of art books–Monet, Van Gogh, Pollak, etc.–until I passed out. Every morning, I ignored the fact that I still hadn’t gotten a job and still hadn’t painted anything. And I tried even harder to ignore the fact that I still hadn’t cried about Mona.

Bethie popped in one afternoon unannounced, complaining that all her calls went directly to voicemail. “Oh my god, Darla,” she said, her startled blue eyes glancing around my apartment. “Look at this place!” She bent over to pick up a Chinese takeout container that had fallen off the coffee table two nights before. “Get another job,” she said. “Do something. You can’t live like this.”

She started cleaning up the rest of the place shoving dirty plates and glasses and coffee cups into the already full sink and then washing them by hand because I’d neglected to buy Cascade for the already packed dishwasher. Then she tackled the living room while I just lay on the couch and mumbled that she shouldn’t be doing this. After an hour of backbreaking work, she stopped to drink a glass of water and swallow a prenatal vitamin. She collapsed onto the chair opposite the couch. She searched and then pulled something from her enormous purse and showed me her knitting project: a teeny tiny sweater for her baby. The ultrasound revealed a girl and they were going to name her Cecilia. After Bethie’s mom. I hoisted myself up from the couch and refilled my coffee cup. When I returned, I sensed something was coming. I’d known Bethie long enough to be able to tell when she is in the process of picking a moment.

“So have you heard from that guy?” she said, eyes fixed on her knitting.

I pretended not to know who she was talking about.

“From the wake?” she said. “The one with the tall hair? He liked you.”

“You really think I’d even consider someone like him?”

“I just thought he seemed nice,” she said. “Don’t get worked up.”

“He’s a clown,” I said.

She set the knitting down. “I thought he was interesting. There was definitely something there and I know he liked you. It was pretty obvious.”

“Is that what you think of me? That I could go for someone like him?”

She looked up, clearly surprised. “Why wouldn’t you?” she said. “He’s vulnerable. He cared about Mona. Sometimes I think you completely miss the point.”

“Point?” I asked.

“To connect with someone. Do you really want to be alone? It’s not about some fantasy in your head about how you need someone to be. It’s about letting yourself be truly surprised by another person.”

I turned on the television.

“Is he not your type,” she said, “because he’s not married?”

In my early thirties I fell for an art dealer who lived in New York. He was sophisticated, elegant, intelligent. He told me I was beautiful and talented (he was the only one I’d ever shown my work to). He said we’d get married and live in New York, and he’d buy a gallery to show my work. A year in I find out he’s married. He explained that he wanted to leave his wife, but he had to wait until his son left for college. Two more years.

Honestly, I respected that he cared that much about his son. I actually liked our plan, but then Mona found out he had a wife stashed somewhere in the East Village and flew to New York on her broomstick and stormed his office and threatened him to make good on his promise. I never saw him again. Bethie took Mona’s side, saying that he was never going to leave his wife and I was an idiot to believe him. It took me a long time to forgive Bethie.

“I don’t need you hounding me to date some lowlife. His best friend was Mona, for God’s sake. You’re my friend,” I said. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side,” she said, shoving her knitting and prenatal vitamins into her purse. She made her way to the door. “Too bad you just can’t see it. But then, now that I think about it, you never really could see who’s on your side. Could you, Darla?”

* * *

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Bethie didn’t call and god knows I wasn’t going to phone her. Then something happened. Mrs. Dillard called me out of the blue. That jagged old busybody who tattled to Jill about Mona contacting her. I turned the sound on the television down. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted. “This is Darla,” I said.

She explained that Mona had shown her a painting that she just couldn’t forget. The watercolor of Mona. It was the one and only time I’d attempted a portrait–and of all people it was Mona!

I painted it a year ago from a photograph taken on the day that another employee at the wine store had died. This person’s death shook Mona and her blatant vulnerability that day made her seem like a different person, so I snapped a picture and stored it away. This was the mother I always wanted: quiet and soft-spoken and harmless. Mona without the Mona.

Mrs. Dillard wanted the painting, and she drove over that same afternoon and we negotiated a price. Twenty-eight hundred dollars. The shock hit me as she drove away with my painting in the back of her black SUV. I sold a painting! Suddenly, I thought about how I’d left things with Clark. I looked around but couldn’t locate his card, and then I tore my whole place apart and finally found it on a windowsill in the kitchen covered with liquid ant poison. I snatched it and washed it off. On the other side he’d scrawled his home address. I decided to bring him one of Mona’s bottles of Zinfandel as a peace offering. As an apology.

He lived above a skanky bar on North Avenue. The broken lock on the outer door allowed me to enter the building and head upstairs. I roamed the dim corridor until I finally located 2 H. I hesitated but then rang the bell. It took a few minutes, but he finally opened the door wearing jeans but no shirt. Despite the no-shirt thing I blurted out my news.

“I knew you had it in you!” Clark said, his eyes lit up. “This is wonderful news.” His face beamed, like a parent watching a child taking a first step.

I started to apologize for my behavior the day I got fired, but then this woman appeared at the door and stood next to Clark. She was pretty. Beautiful, even. Glossy dark hair and a creamy complexion. She smiled graciously at me.

“I’m sorry,” I fumbled.

They insisted that I come inside, saying they’d get some Champagne from the bar downstairs, but I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I babbled some excuse about having to be somewhere, and I backed up and tore down the steps and out the building, still gripping the bottle of Zinfandel. Clark followed, shouting that she’s a friend who cuts his hair which he didn’t do with a shirt on–it galled me that he thought I actually cared! I finally got to my car and jumped in and locked the doors. I tossed the wine on the seat and opened my purse to grab my phone and discovered a bunch of texts from Bethie’s husband.

Their baby was premature. Too early and with a hole in her heart, which they hadn’t picked up on in any of the ultrasounds. They could fix the defect, but she needed to get stronger before they could operate.

I sped over to Northwestern Memorial, and the desk directed me down the long corridor and to her room where Bethie lay in bed, gray and weak from her C-section, her eyes rimmed with sorrow.

Bethie’s husband assigned me tasks. They needed things from their house: a change of clothes, the laptop sitting on the kitchen counter, a bottle of anything from the liquor cabinet. I raced to their tiny row house on Roscoe Street and rounded up the requested items  as well as anything else that I thought might make it a little easier for them to cope.

Day after day I sat with Bethie and her husband and watched as my normally mild-mannered friend turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Bethie morphed into a dark vortex of raging energy while advocating for her daughter. She fought with doctors, nurses, screaming sometimes at the top of her lungs to get proper care for her little girl. For her baby. Every once in a while, a feeling of déjà vu came over me and then evaporated just as quickly while my friend continued to rage at yet another staff member.

At the end of the third day, Bethie told me that I looked like shit and to go home and get some sleep. I went to my car and got in and turned the radio on and just sat there. A memory of Mona forced its way into my mind. The time I didn’t get the part of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Mona showed up at my school and–in front of my entire class–tore into my teacher, actually called her the C-word. The look on my classmates’ faces! A few minutes later I started the car and drove out of the parking lot. As I rounded a corner, I heard the bottle of Zinfandel wine from a few days ago rattling around on the floor.

* * *

This time Clark had a shirt on–an electric orange and olive green print button down nightmare. No doubt his latest thrift store find. I hesitated, but then I offered the bottle of wine.

“As an apology,” I told him.

For the first time since I’d met him, he looked speechless. He insisted I come inside.

His apartment was decorated in early gangster–right out of that movie with Ray Liotta. Except for one thing.

“What...?” I said staring at the wall behind his tacky wicker couch.

He didn’t usually go red in the face. Usually, he said something disarming. Not this time.

“You bought my painting?” I whispered and was silent, but then, “Tell me the truth. Did she browbeat you?”

Instead of answering my simple question, he took a step toward me, and I could smell the tobacco from his briar pipe on his nightmare shirt. I had to admit the hearty earthy scent wasn’t unpleasant. He settled his soulful brown eyes on me. “Do you not understand how talented you are, Darla?” he said.

* * *

Afterward, lying in Clark’s water bed, he puffed on a pipe and said, “Hell of a broad.”

“Umm...thank you,” I said.

“Mona,” he said, correcting me. “Smartest person I ever met.”

His voice carried some new tenor.

“She told me how to play things,” he said.

“By starting arguments?” I joked nervously.

His expression sobered, and he gently set his pipe down on the table next to the bed, and then shifted toward me and gave me his full attention. “Who you are is in every single stroke of your brush. When Mona showed me your paintings, I fell in love with you on the spot! I begged for advice. She told me flat out you’d never go for me as is. Too rough around the edges. Mona said the only thing to do was to stay the course and keep showing up and supporting you and eventually you’d crack the code. In time, you’d see the big picture. You’d realize that in my own brusque, clumsy, unique way, I loved you.”

I stared at Clark. My throat suddenly ached. I pushed down a sob.

“Mona was a class act,” Clark said. “A real dame.”

I managed a small nod, blinking back tears. I felt myself sink into Clark’s comfy pillows, stretching my legs, running them over the soft cottony sheets. A few seconds later I reached over and took his hand and cradled it in my own and finally let myself marvel at how absolutely no one on the planet has a waterbed anymore. “They broke the mold,” I said.