Merry Monroe #4

We listened to Jill Bolte Taylor being interviewed on NPR on the way to the wake. Charlie's father didn't die of a stroke, but the interview still thickened the air with just enough unease that we hadn't spoken a word since Exit 33, two miles back. We listened the the fuzzy AM station and I began to fall asleep, my neck jerking up explosively at the moment before real sleep set in. I must have found a comfortable nook in the corner between the headrest, window and seatbelt anchor; I woke up to the sound of gravel crunching under the slowing tires.

"U Pick-'Em : $1/pint" was scrawled on piece of cardboard taped to a whitewashed stake in the grass on the side of the road.

"Blueberries?" I asked.

"Yeah, I don't want to get to the funeral home too early." We weren't making particularly good time , but I didn't want to get there early, either, so I went along with the logic.

There was a little card table near a curve of the road with a white-blond boy sitting, wearing denim overalls, with no shirt on, and in my sleepy haze I wondered if I was dreaming some sort of Mark Twain world where young boys actually wear denim overalls. As we got out of the car, I realized he was playing Sudoku and listening to an ipod and my quaint little vision was ruined.

"Hey, buddy, can we pick some berries?"

The boy looked at Charlie, then at me, then at Charlie again. "Um..."

Funeral blacks, not ideal for July blueberry picking. The dust from the road had already dulled our shoes.

"Shit - I meant shoot." Charlie looked around the farm. He turned to me, "I really don't know what to do."

I didn't know what to say. He wasn't the spontaneous type. I knew this wasn't about blueberries - I knew I couldn't recommend getting back into the car and actually going to the wake.

"We have a peacock petting zoo, you want me to take you?" The boy could sense our desperation.

"Petting zoo?"

"Yeah." the kid said, rolling his eyes with a smile, "My dad set it up last year. You can't really pet them, but I guess he didn't know what else to call it."

"Let's go pet some peacocks." Charlie looked at me, nodded, and we walked down the road, my ankles unsteady in my black pumps.

The "Petting Zoo" was remarkably full - home-town tourists, I thought. Maybe these were the people who were taking all the "stay-cations" I kept reading about in articles about how the economy and gas prices were affecting family's summer trip planning. We walked up to the peacock pen, sticking out among the shorts and polo shirts the other adults were sporting. There were three peacocks in the wire pen; it was roomy, almost as big as our studio apartment back in Manhattan. There were one or two families sticking their hands through the wire, feeding the birds seed that was sold out of what looked like the old gumball machines we grew up with at supermarkets.

"Can I have a dime?" Charlie asked me. I've never seen this man so much as smile at the Golden Retriever puppies our neighbors have; I wasn't expecting him to feed these huge, beedy-eyed birds by hand. But I fished through my purse and handed him a dime.

"We really shouldn't be too too late, you know?"

"I know, just - - - , just give me a minute, 'kay?"

I left him alone and sat down at one of the picnic tables. I played with my Blackberry, office emails piling up in spite of my out-of-office reply. Charlie and I have been together for 5 years; he's mentioned his father exactly once, a throwaway comment about how his dad hated tupperware when we were at Pottery Barn furnishing our first apartment. Other than that, silence. I didn't push it, I was pathologically adverse to conflict. When he heard from his brother than his father had passed last Friday, he hung up the phone and quietly told me he needed me to take off the next Monday and Tuesday. He didn't seem upset, just distant. I didn't know what to do, so I just left him alone.

Fifteen minutes later, he came over to me, "Okay, let's go." Just like that. And so we walked out of the peacock petting pen, down the little road, waved at the boy and got back into our car.

We got back on the highway and drove silently to the funeral home. I am not good at this "supportive girlfiend" bit, I realized.

We pulled into the funeral home and saw the placard in the lobby "Charles G. Sinclair, Room 3." They had the same name. I never knew this, a girlfriend should know her boyfriend's father's name, especially if he's a Jr. "You never told me you got your name from him."

"Yea, I would have gone by my middle name if it wasn't Gaelen," he said quickly.

We walked into Room 3 and were greeted by a room that was almost completely empty, except for the closed casket in the front of the room. An elderly lady was in the corner looking at both of the small flower arrangements. She turned around, smiled faintly, "Are you family?"

Charlie didn't reply right away, so I said "Yes, family" quietly. I couldn't believe no one showed up to this man's funeral. Not even Charlie's brothers and sisters (I knew he had at least three). Maybe they came earlier in the afternoon? Charlie sat in the back row of empty chairs, farthest away from the casket. I held his hand.

Two minutes later, he squeezed my hand, "Let's go."

"Um, are you sure you, you know, don't want to...." I gestured at the casket.

"No."

So as quickly as we came, we left.

"One more stop, babe," Charlie said as soon as we got into the car.

"Yeah, of course." We had taken two full days off, no point in rushing home for no reason.

We drove a few minutes through the neighborhood, making a few turns until Charlie pulled the car into a driveway of a little Bungalow. "Is this your house?" "Yea, but I only lived here for maybe six months; we moved here at the end of high school. But I still have the key." He flashed the little brass key on his key chain in my direction. He opened the door and I followed him into the house.

The house was spotless. I didn't know if a family member had come in and cleaned after the death, but I couldn't imagine why someone would do that and then skip the wake. Charlie walked up the stairs, calling behind him, "I'll be right back."

I sat at the kitchen table and flipped through a TV guide that was sitting on the window sill. It was from January, three months back. A smiling picture of Kelly Ripa and her husband (Mark Something?) was on the glossy cover. I heard banging and shuffling coming from upstairs.

He came into the kitchen holding an old cardboard box with the name "Chuck" scrawled on the front in a magic marker. He caught me looking at the name, "Nickname from when I was a kid," he said. Another thing I didn't know.

He set the box on the table. I sat across from him, flipping through the TV Guide, not really reading any of the words on the color-blocked pages. Lots of repeats on NBC in January, I thought to myself.

He started pulling out old envelopes, ten or so tied together with thick twine. After about a dozen of these bundles, he cast the box, still filled with paper to the floor and untied the first bundle. The handwriting on the front was the same on all of them, a heart dotting the "i" on Sinclair. "Charlie, what are those?" I aksed him quietly.

"Letters from my mom." Charlie got up and started looking through the cabinets and pulled out a wine bottle from underneath the sink.

"Your mom?"

"My mom left when I was a baby."

"But she wrote you letters?"

"Yeah, Mikey found them six years ago when he was helping Dad replace the windows in the attic. He said Dad flipped out and told him never to snoop around again. He told the rest of us, but we never wanted to actually spend time with Dad in order to sneak up there. She must have sent one like every week."

"I still don't get why she would write you letters instead of coming back. Or why he would keep them if he wasn't going to let you read them."

"Well, here's to finding out." He placed a glass of wine on the table in front of me and we began to read.