Evelyn would have been so happy with the funeral. It’s just like she always said about Michael’s Everyone was there Allison took care of everything—the casket, the cemetery, the obituaries I did not know that my mother had already chosen and paid for her plot, next to Eva’s. The crowd at Greenwood Cemetery is overwhelming, three hundred at least I can’t feel anything All I can think is that my shoes hurt. It’s not until the ceremony ends that I realize, this is real, and I start to cry and cry and then, I think, I faint and someone, I don’t know who, carries me to the car and up to a bedroom in Allison’s house in Park Slope, where the reception takes place on the parlor floor below I wake up and Veronica is in the room with me, sitting at a Victorian dressing table and drinking white wine “It’s okay, honey,” she says “It’s all okay.”
Downstairs, everyone wants to pay condolences. Round-shouldered Columbia men in their sixties take my hand and then turn away so I don’t see them cry. Women with short hair and lined faces hug me close. People say, She published my first story, She introduced me to my husband, She was my best friend in high school. They say, She was my best friend in college, She was the smartest woman I ever met, Your mother was a genius. She gave me a job when no one else would. She lent me money when no one else cared. She called when my mother died, when I had the heart attack. She called when my son passed away, my Jonathan, the light of my life She gave my daughter an internship, She gave my son a job, She introduced my husband to his agent, She got my wife a book deal. It’s a tragedy. It’s such a loss to the world. It’s a tremendous loss to the city. The city won’t be the same without her
New York won’t be the same without Evelyn Forrest.
The world will never be the same without her.
Jake, our old tenant from Twelfth Street, takes me in his arms and won’t let go. I never imagined I would see Jake at fifty-five. He introduces me to his wife and his sullen, respectful, teenage sons.
“They did everything for me,” he says. “Everything I knew nothing when I met your parents. I didn’t know books, I didn’t know art. My life was like this.” He puts his right hand in the air and puts his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Look at you. Michael would be so proud.” His wife nudges him. “I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t say it, but he would. You’re a beautiful young woman. I saw Allison, she said you handled everything so well. He would be so proud.”
“So listen,” says his wife, as Jake deteriorates into sobs. She’s pretty, and I’m so happy that Jake married this kind pretty woman. “Jake wants you to come to the house sometime We’re out in Montauk He’d love to see you again, I would too Really Will you call?”
I promise I will call, which I think is true, and they leave. A piece of my heart breaks when I see them walk out the door, and for the first time I know how much I’ve missed him.
A fortyish man, maybe a hippie, maybe poor, comes to me on the couch where I’ve been all evening and asks me if I’m Mary I tell him I am. I think he might be one of the homeless men in the West Village who Evelyn gave her pocket change to.
“I’m Leopold Bloom,” he says with the gravelly voice of a life-long smoker “Your cousin ”
Cousin? I give him a look
“I changed my name,” he says. “I was born Norton Forrest the Third I’m Chub and Meredith’s son And I’m so sorry about your mother”
Leopold Bloom gives me a hug and his sandy beard is rough against my forehead. We sit on the couch together and light cigarettes. He tells me he saw the obit in the Times and wanted to pay his respects With a little prodding I get him to tell me the whole story
“I changed my name when I was sixteen It wasn’t legal until the first time I was arrested, when I was twenty-two. Then it becomes a legal alias and you don’t have to go through the courts. I never read the book, Ulysses, I just flipped through it once at a friend’s house. I needed a name to use because I had run away and I thought my parents might find me, so I got a fake I D made with Leopold Bloom I just liked the sound of it.
“My father hated me,” my cousin tells me. “I was hyper-active when I was a kid. I was always going nuts, bouncing off the fucking walls. I was so angry, man. I would be running around the house screaming at the top of my lungs, and everyone would pretend not to notice. I was invisible unless I acted out in the worst way I could. It was like I was a dog or a cat. No one would pay any attention to me unless I did something horrible, and so I did horrible things. I attacked my sister with a fountain pen She had to get ten stitches in her face I beat up the nanny I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it was. I was fucked up. And then he would beat me until I was fucking unconscious, and I’d be good until I was all healed up, and then it would start all over again.
“I can’t believe you don’t remember when I met you before. We came over for dinner to your house in the Village I was maybe twelve. Your parents, man—that house I was so jealous of you. They were so cool You must have been four or five My dad was a pig, you know. A real glutton It could really be disgusting. So we sit down to dinner and my father ate like, everything, and then he told my mom to shut up. Now, I was just at the age where I was starting to realize that that wasn’t normal So my mom said something, I don’t remember what, something totally benign, and my father turned around and told her to shut up And then he goes on talking like nothing happened. And your parents—it was like a cartoon. Their jaws dropped. So your mother, she waits for my father to finish talking, and then she turns back to my mother and says ‘So, Meredith, you were saying?’ That fucking pig I can’t believe you don’t remember that!”
I tell him about the time I remember meeting his mother, at the house in Connecticut. He says he was away at school
“They sent me to St. Christopher’s It was a school for kids like me, kids whose parents refused to deal with them It pisses me off now, just thinking about it. These parents, you know, they beat their kids, they emotionally abused them, they treated them like shit, and then when they acted out they sent them off to St. Christopher’s and forgot about them. And the people who ran that place, it was like something out of a movie. ‘More porridge, please.’ ‘More porridge? Ten days time out’ Time out was like detention. I remember one kid, Stevie Stewart, he used to start fires. Once he burned down a whole fucking dorm, a firefighter died from smoke inhalation. And still, no one cared. His parents threw a little money at the school and everyone acted like nothing ever happened He still got no therapy, no counseling, he just got like, a millennium of time outs
“So I ran away when I was thirteen. The cops found me in New Haven—there was a little scene there—and they brought me back. Time out for the rest of the year. After that I stayed on my best behavior—well, the best that I could, given that I was nuts—and by the time I was sixteen I had privileges. Privileges were like the opposite of time outs The main privilege was to leave campus on weekends. So I waited for three years, got my weekend privilege, and split for good.
“I had gone home for Thanksgiving a few weeks before and I had taken some stuff to sell Bullshit little things that I knew were valuable but they would never miss. A little silver sugar bowl, a little cameo portrait, some jewelry
“So my first privilege I went right to the bus station and got on the next bus to New York Oh, man, my heart was like, ready to burst I had never been so fucking happy before. The only part of the city I really knew was the Upper East Side, because of course my mother had some friends there, so that was where I went first. I had remembered seeing some antique shops up there and I wanted to sell this stuff for a good price. So I walked around until I found a place that looked good This guy, first he really tried to rip me off. He offered me like, one hundred for everything I knew it was worth at least a few grand, everything out of that house was worth at least that much. So I haggled and finally he gave me a good price. He was a cool guy.
“‘Son,’ he says to me, with this Yiddish accent, ‘I don’t know where you get these things, but you look like a smart guy, and I want that sugar bowl, so I’m giving you my best price.’ No one had ever called me smart before. Ever, even in an offhand way like that It was like my life was beginning. This was it And I’ve been in New York ever since.”
Leopold won’t tell me how he’s made a living, then or now, until I guess correctly that he sells marijuana. He’s the president of the New York branch of MOFUG—Marijuana Out From Under Ground—a legalization advocacy group
“Looking back,” he says, “I can hardly blame him ”
“Blame who?”
“My father. You know, after what they went through With their own father”
“Like what?”
My cousin gives me a funny look “Your father never talked about him?”
“No,” I tell him. “My mother told me a little.”
“Huh Our grandfather was like, the sickest son-of-a-bitch I ever met, anywhere, and this includes living on the Bowery, on the streets, for three years, this includes Riker’s, he was the fucking worst. He was brutal. When Chub was bad—and bad meant like, spilling a glass of milk—he got the belt. Late for dinner, out came the belt, talking out of turn, up past bedtime, whatever, he got the belt. My dad’s back was scarred by that fucking sadist. He used to tell me all this stuff, stories about Grandpa, to threaten me. Like I was getting off easy And by comparison, I was I never really believed any of it, but my mother said it’s all true. But Chub was the oldest, he got the worst of it. Your father, he never pulled any of this shit on you, did he?”
“God, no. He never laid a hand on me. Where’s the rest of your family?”
“My brother and sister, they’re around. I don’t talk to them. I know they both have kids, which is a frightening thought. But maybe they’re not like that Look at your father He came from all that shit, and he turned out okay. Or, at least he turned out to be an okay parent. Sorry. That was pretty insensitive ”
“No, that’s okay. What about your parents?”
“My father’s dead, thank God I never saw him again. I actually just started seeing my mother again a few years ago. I’m going to see her this weekend, as a matter of fact. She wants to rewrite her will now that we’re speaking again. I said fine, I’ll help you, I’ll do whatever you want, as long as you leave me out of the fucking thing I’m trying to convince her to leave the whole thing to charity, at least my share It’s a fucking curse.”
We sit for a while in silence, and then I ask him. When he moved to the city, why didn’t he call my mother for help? Did he think she would turn him in?
“Well, yeah, I was scared of that.” He laughs a little nervous laugh “I thought about it I mean, I looked up Evelyn in the phone book—Michael was already gone, unfortunately I even walked by your house on Commerce Street a few times. But you have to understand. At that point, all anyone in my life had ever told me was that I was shit, I was worse than shit. I knew she probably wouldn’t call my parents, because she knew what I went through there, and once your father had actually told me I could come over anytime I wanted to He sent me a letter at school after I ran away the first time and he told me that, which was really nice. But I thought I was like, a monster. My own parents had sent me away. I didn’t think Evelyn would want me around ”
Of course, Evelyn would not have sent him away, she would have let him live with us as long as he wanted. And I would have had a brother, and Leopold would have had a home, and maybe with a man around Evelyn would have shown some interest in our home life. But he’s here now I hug him again, because he’s the only family I have left and I love him, I want to stay against his rough, sweet-smelling beard forever, or at least until my mother comes back
When Leopold gets up to get me a plate from the buffet—everyone offers me food, continuously, at this reception, everyone is extremely concerned with the fact that I’m not eating—Crystal comes over and takes his seat next to me on the couch
“I’m sorry,” she says, putting her arms around me. “I’m so fucking sorry ”
“I’m okay,” I say. I’m thinking, I’m not okay at all A line from an old country song I used to hear in the Lower East Side bars is in my head: “I feel like I’m fixin’ to die.” I’m thinking that I will never be okay again, I will forever be swimming through this black quicksand of missing her.
“I know you’re not,” Crystal says, pushing my hair out of my face, “but you will be. It’s gonna be a long time, it’s gonna be really fucking hard, but you will be. Just remember what I told you.”
“What?”
“You’ll make it. You can make it through anything You’re tough.”