The Wake Party: A piece of fiction

February 6th, 1959

Here’s something I always assumed: That my dad would never leave us. I was wrong.

I hear them before I see them. The mourners. They came to our house to make me and my mom and sister feel better. Of course, that is ridiculous. Nothing will make us feel better.

I sit on my bed and look at the posters of my favorite rock bands. The Everly Brothers. The Coasters. And my most favorite, Buddy Holly. He died in a plane crash a few days ago. My hero dead. He was only twenty-two. My dad was much older but still too young to have died. 1959 is going to be a really sucky year.

I listen to voices downstairs. A low mumble of people. No raucous laughter like the Labor Day BBQ party my parents threw to celebrate the end of summer and my beginning of high school. My parents loved to throw parties. They were outgoing. Well, my mom is still outgoing. I mean, I hope she will be. You know, in the future. My dad… my dad is dead and all these people are crammed in our house to tell us how sorry they are. And hug us and stuff. How it’s such a shock, yada yada yada.

“Hey, honey, are you coming down?” My mom’s voice sounds tentative, not “mom-like”. The pitch is low and gravelly. Other worldly. Tired. It’s all too much. Too much.

“Yeah, mom, I’m coming.” I tie up my brand-new Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers and head down. Three steps from the bottom, one of my dad’s friends rushes me. He puts his hand on my shoulder and sticks out the other hand for a manly handshake, I guess.

“How you doin’, sport?”

I oblige with the handshake mostly because I don’t know what else to do. By the way, my name’s not Sport. Or Buddy or Pal. It’s Eddie. Edward Francis Savionne. Period. Old guys don’t use your name because they never bother to remember it.

“Your dad loved you so much. Always talked about you kids at the hospital. Your dad was a great surgeon. One of the best. He really cared about his patients and his family.”

This guy still has me in this handshake and shoulder grip. How to get loose? I smile and nod, which seems to do the trick. This comforting is for him, not me. Satisfied that he’s done some good here, he sets me free. I take my opportunity and brush past him.

In the living room, a crush of people mill about. It’s crowded. People hugging and talking in that solemn whispery way, holding plates of food and booze in paper cups. I weave my way through. Even though I’m about to turn fourteen, I’m a short kid. Only a smidge over five feet… shorter than most of my classmates. And skinnier too. I eat like a horse, but I weigh only one hundred pounds. Oh, and to make matters worse, I have unruly, curly, mousy brown hair and large ears that stick out. My only good feature is sort of turquoise eyes. Yep, that’s it for looks. Lucky for me, my school friends think I’m funny or I’d have a helluva time. Once, some kid called me “Dumbo” and Johnnie Alfieri and Larry Graves beat the shit out of him. Yeah, it’s good to have friends.

I head for the dining room. I can smell the food. Eating is good. Eating is something to do. But one adult after another stops to hug me, or whisper their condolences in my ear, or ask me how I’m doing. The most dramatic is Karl Weaver, my next-door neighbor and my dad’s best friend. Karl never married, lives alone, and sort of adopted us as his family. Now he’s hugging me so hard, I think I’m going to faint. He lifts me two feet off the ground, his tears tumbling down my shirt.

“Oh, Eddie,” Uncle Karl says.

He’s not really my uncle, but my mom says we can’t call adults by their first name, but since Karl is dad’s best friend and, like family, we can call him Uncle Karl instead of Mr. Weaver.

“It’s okay, Uncle Karl,” I say. “It’s okay.”

Of course, it’s not okay, but I don’t know what else to do. He’s a grown man, blubbering into my shirt. Karl sets me back down on the ground and turns toward a severe-looking man, tall and now looming over me.

“Eddie, this is Mr. Canister. He runs the hospital your dad, and I worked at.”

I look at Canister’s stern face. Eyes small and placed a little too close together, topping a long pointy nose. Oddly, he has unusually full lips. Lips like a girl would want. He gives me the creeps.

I quickly give a nod to the creep and a hug to Karl, and keep moving. In the dining room, people hover around the table, eating and talking. I don’t see my mom or my sister. I head into the kitchen, full of other food smells. Meatloaf. Cheesy macaroni. Warm breads and cakes. And people smells too. Women’s perfume. Men’s after shave.

It’s a sickening mix. It’s February, so the heat blasts from the radiators. The kitchen is too crowded. Stuffy. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

Men cluster around a makeshift bar on the kitchen counter talking about the news of the day, sports, their new man-toys — anything but why they are here. Meanwhile, the women busy themselves washing and drying dishes, tidying up and pulling reheated casseroles out of the oven to restock the buffet table in the dining room.

My mom isn’t here.

Suddenly, I’m struck with a desperate need to find her. Looking for my mother means somehow taking responsibility for her. Being a man to care for her. To fill in for dad. I rush into the living room and see my mom sitting on the couch, concerned friends advising her.

“Alice, don’t think about what comes next. Give yourself some time.” This from her best friend, Maria Alfieri, mother of Johnnie.

Alice, my thirty-eight-year-old pretty mother with her striking blonde hair and jade green eyes, smiles. I can tell it’s not a real smile. I can tell she’s not even there on that couch. Mentally, I mean. She’s got her polite face on and I feel very sorry for her. I want to pull her away from all the well-meaning friends and scream at them. “Leave her alone! Can’t you understand her husband just croaked? He had a heart attack in his goddamn medical office, and it was hours before anyone noticed, because his nurse thought he was writing his medical notes. Writing stupid med notes and then he croaked. So, go to hell.”

I don’t do that, of course. I don’t say a word, because one: these women mean well and love my mom, and two: it’s not my nature. I don’t say stuff. I just watch. I can never remember being anything but a watcher.

My mom lowers her head as one friend whispers in her ear. It seems very intimate and intense. I notice tears gently flowing down my mom’s cheeks. Silent tears. Not wailing tears and she quietly gets up from the couch and leaves. I follow her to the stairs and watch her go up and disappear into her bedroom. I want to follow her, to comfort her. But then the front door bursts open with a loud bang. I turn.

There, framed in the front door entry, is my sixteen-year-old sister, Sammy, drunk as a skunk. She’s wobbly, using the door frame to keep from falling flat on her face.

Shocked adults rush towards her, but little me can squeeze right through them and I’m at her side in a flash. I use my body to prop her up and stare everyone away from us.

“It’s okay. I’ve got her. She’s just tired is all. I’ll take her upstairs.”

No one wants to mess with this.

Sammy looks at me, pleading for help. Pleading for me to make her disappear. Pleading for me to make things okay. I smile at her.

“It’s okay, Sammy. It’s okay. Lean on me.”

I sling her arm over my shoulder and grab her hand with my left hand, while I slip my right arm around her waist and my hand lands firmly on her stomach. We walk up the stairs and into her bedroom and I plunk her down on the pink chenille bedspread and close the door.

Her legs dangle off the bed. I try to move them. God, they are heavy. I almost have her on the bed when her eyes open with a wild look as her stomach contents rise.

Oh, no. I pull her off the bed and we stumble to the bathroom. Sammy has her hand clamped firmly over her mouth, which is now filling with vomit. Some spills out on me before I can flip the toilet seat up and position her over the bowl.

She heaves violently, stops, then heaves again. The smell is awful. She’s crying and vomiting and I’m holding her, steadying her, making sure she’s okay. This is my best watcher self, when I can watch and help.

After a few more explosions, Sammy and I sink to the floor. I pull off some toilet paper and clean us up as best as I can. She’s woozy still. Now she looks at me. She looks deep into my eyes, deep into who I am, and I look at her and here’s where my dad comes roaring back into the story — right there in Sammy’s face. In her mouth. In her hair. In her lips. My dad. And I cry hard. I can’t stop. I grab Sammy and she cries too, and we hug each other and cry and cry as we lean on the toilet bowl. We didn’t even hear the door open when my mom came in. Here are her two children covered in bits of vomit, on the floor, leaning against the toilet bowl and crying. Mom doesn’t say a word. Instead, she gets on the floor and cries with us. The three of us holding each other in our unrelenting grief.

And thus, begins the official period of mourning.