In the Midst of Life

The title of this wry tome by Marc Hess is taken from the final lines of the Episcopalian funeral liturgy. As death washes away guilt, our protagonist experiences a release from shackles of her own design.

 

In the Midst of Life

 

This whole graveside thing just chafes me. Had I the better fortune to be born in the next generation we’d be done with this barbaric ritual and these acres of idle tombs could be used to house the living; condominiums and high-rises for the homeless. Ha! Raul would have loved that. Had we stayed friends, I could have brought this idea to him, he could have made a campaign out of it, and—in his inevitable political style—gone on and screwed it all up. Instead we’re now going to stick him under one of these archaic markers, making what’s left of him part of the problem.

What am I doing here with these long-faced pretenders unfolding themselves from parked cars, popping up their black umbrellas and tromping off across this soggy headstone patch just so they can be done with their colleague? I, too, have to walk across this wet lawn, ruining forever my only pair of black peep-toe pumps. And, to be honest, I never liked that man.

“You okay?” Thomas leans in to ask. The perfect husband, he holds our umbrella at an awkward angle to keep the light mist off of me.

There is a sincerity in his eyes that I don’t deserve so I force a weak smile to reassure him. It’s not what he thinks. But that’s my fault. I let him invent his version of this story, encouraged it actually: that Raul and I had been college lovers. Maybe Thomas imagined that Raul was my first fuck and that it had ended badly, which provides a perfectly believable explanation for forty-some years of overt bitterness toward this dead guy, along with some perverse fascination that has always had a hold on me. Yes, I had been a close follower of Raul’s raucous political career but I never, not once, voted for him. I nagged Thomas to never vote for him either. Once, over Sunday morning coffee and newspapers I went off on a rant about Raul’s antics on the City Council as Thomas just peered over the top of his Sports pages and said sheepishly, “Baby, I, too, had some flings that I would prefer to forget and I am so happy that I ended up with you.” Always protecting me. Always letting me off the hook. I let him go with that because the truth is so much more unforgivable. Even now, as we squish our way toward the huddle of raincoats and umbrellas punctuating this mushy cemetery, that recollection has my stomach churning, feeling like the lie that could rear up at any moment and be the absolute end of me.

A dark green canvas awning covers only a small part of the gathering and bears the name of the funeral home along with that peculiar silhouette of a Victorian horse-drawn hearse. Protected somewhat from the drizzle, a somber crowd is packed under it shoulder to shoulder, but still willing to shuffle over to make room for another. Thomas, his firm hand under my elbow, guides me under the cover more forcefully than I would have liked. I hadn’t intended to be so front-and-center. Good grief, these people are so sad. Choked sniffles and tears burst out here and there like an aging water heater trying to tell you it’s about to blow. Between slouched shoulders I can now see the coffin on its gurney, and the hole in the ground—steep and neatly dug with a carpet on each side. That sends a chill down my spine. A phalanx of granite-faced men in dark coats and neckties stand behind a row of chairs, each with their hands clasped over their groins, suitably somber—the suits from City Hall now making a show of mourning the very man that they had spent their careers trying to bury. They could never out-politic the old maverick; no one had the balls to assassinate him; they just had to wait for him to die. Standing with them, their obligatory wives each wear outfits perfect for the occasion. I rise up, just a bit, on my damp toes and cock my head but I can’t see what they do for footwear when the occasion calls for heels on damp lawns.

 

“O God whose mercies cannot be numbered . . .”

 

The priest’s opening words draw the attention to the bier which allows me the opportunity to sneak a look around. I am surprised, even impressed, at the number of people, most of them outside the awning in the rain: tradesmen, spiffy young socialites, moms with their kids, leather-vested bikers and gangster-types, and old geezers from Raul’s university days—of which I am one. Raul would have been proud of the coalition he has finally pulled together. I have a fair view of a rough fellow in leather and chains, tattoos crawling up his neck, who is crying uncontrollably—probably a bit out of character for him. I strain to make out a red patch in the folds of his jacket that may bear the red-fisted symbol of the old SDS. Such things have become meaningless kitsch over time but, who knows, this guy may be one of those fervent followers that Raul had so often let down. Perhaps this one still believes.

 

“Accept our prayers on behalf of our servant William Richard Matthew Alpert,

and grant him . . .”

 

All eyes rise when the priest speaks the name as it is written on the deceased’s Baptismal Certificate. Everyone here had only known him as Raul; Raul Alpert; or in the headline that he preferred: “Raul the Firebrand”. The trio directly in front of me – a woman flanked by two men in high-collared coats—trade inquisitive whispers with each other. I am one of the very few who had known him before he renamed himself Raul.

“Gives me more revolutionary cred,” he had told me way back then.

“And who’s going to follow a guy named Dick to the barricades?” I had sassed back. A rising chuckle overcomes me at that recollection. At a funeral? How inappropriate, and now welling up into a full giggle. Choking the laugh releases something of a snort. My hands rush to cover my face and fend off the condescending, over-the-shoulder glance from the lady in front of me. Thomas’ arm around my shoulder helps with my cover. I take a deep breath and give another peek at the old SDSer who is still over there crying away, poor soul. He is really hurting and I am over here trying to suppress my laugh.
“Into thy hand, O merciful savior, we command thy servant, William, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming.”

Had he not been nailed down inside that coffin, the Raul that I knew would have leapt up and torn those words apart. He so enjoyed disrupting things: heckling speeches, shouting down opponents and drawing attention to himself. The church funeral had to have been at the insistence of his older sister, Charlotte, whom I had never formally met. That must be her over there in the row of chairs, chin-high to the coffin. A lady of more traditional values, from head to toe in proper black, she dabs at the mascara beneath her veil with a tissue. Raul had told me that she vehemently objected to his lifestyle and politics but the only public statement I heard from her was “he is my brother and I love him.” I like her for that. With her in the seated section are Raul’s two younger sisters—I had met one of them but I can’t remember which. The rest of the chairs are taken up by three of Raul’s wives. That must be embarrassing for them. The youngest of them, with the dark hair and the squirmy children must be the current Mrs. Maria Alpert, the official widow.

“Thomas,” I whisper, “Are ex-wives widows, too?”

Glancing about as if I’m disrupting the funeral he whispers back, “I’m not really sure.

The lady in front of me rolls her head back with her answer. “Certainly not if they remarry.”

Even in mourning, the widow is pretty. I imagine that she loves Raul and is proud to have his children. For Raul, I had discerned, it was a marriage of political convenience. They hooked up right after Raul had taken a well-earned drubbing at the polls. In his subsequent absence the Council passed a resolution aimed directly at him mandating that all future candidates for City office must be ad valorem tax paying residents of the precinct that they represent.  So Raul purchased a bungalow in the barrio of one of his fringe constituencies, married Maria, the daughter of a local car dealer, somehow repositioned himself as a champion of Latino rights and came roaring back into office with a landslide victory.

“Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return. All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

Thomas keeps an expressionless face through this ordeal and I am trying my best to mimic him. My feet are wet; I am getting tired of standing so I take his arm. He smiles down on me for the briefest of moments then returns to his stoic pose. Thomas would have stood on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He didn’t care for Raul’s kind at all. Once he said to me, “I’m glad that you grew out of your radical daze.” Yes, he had used the word daze like it had been some kind of stoner phase of my life. Thomas had meant to be cute, and I wanted him to love me but I still can’t shake off the feeling of resentment. Oh, Thomas loves my pluck, and the way I raise his children, and charm his family, and how my liberal attitude plays out in bed. But he doesn’t take me seriously.

For my part I didn’t like Raul even back in that ‘radical daze’, rather we shared a cause. At least back then I believed in something. Sure, something that went so terribly wrong, something—as Thomas said—that I grew out of. But, damn it, it was important to me, and I cared. That was the last time I felt I was really alive—doing something that mattered. And Raul took me seriously. Very seriously.

“Into paradise may the angels lead thee,

and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee . . .”

My God, is this priest never to stop? He’s dead, already, let it be over.

The one and only time I went out with Raul I was a twenty-one year old humanities student. I wore a skirt and make-up so it would look as if we were on a date. We came up from the shadows behind the townhouse with two gasoline bottles stuffed inside my hippie shoulder bag. We both wore gloves. When Raul cocked the first one over his shoulder and I put a match to the rags, his wild hair and unshaven cheeks were illumined in a flickering halo of yellow and bright orange—as if I had brought a gilded saint to life. Raul galloped out of the shadows and up the sidewalk, pulling the flare over his head. I watched as the torch whirled in a semi-circle the length of his arm, crossed over the top of the wrought-iron fence and splattered against a trash can. A stream of blue flames oozed harmlessly along a back alley wall. Even, now, standing at his graveside, I can feel the cold silence of that moment, the nauseous odor of spilt gasoline and the adrenaline that surged through the two of us. Saints no more, in that moment we became mere street vandals.

“The other one!” Raul returned, panting hard. “Light the other one.” We fumbled. Our hands shook. Somewhere a dog barked and we both froze and stared into each other’s wide eyes—my most intimate moment with him. Finally, after a long and frightening nano-second Raul was off again with a flame held high over his head. This time he crossed the sidewalk in long, athletic strides like a footballer. From a wild round-house pitch the second fireball arched through the air followed by a crash of plate glass and a bright orange glow that crept up the inside curtains as if in a celebration. Raul sashayed back to me, grinning ear–to-ear, silhouetted by the flaming window. He put my hand on his arm and we just strolled away as if nothing was amiss.

At the exact same moment we torched the townhouse three other members of our cadre ignited a pipe bomb at the garage door of a little-known police office just two blocks away. One garage door, one trash can and some burnt-up window curtains—our blow for the oppressed of the world.

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord:

Even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.”

I remember the evil feeling that came over me soon after the action when the first of our cadre died. A car ran over his bicycle killing him instantly. The first thought that ran through my head was “he won’t be telling anyone.”

It got scarier for me as we all went our separate ways. Who knew what changes we’d go through: who might want to brag about it or need to purge their guilty conscience? For my part, I just disappeared inside a meaningless life; got married and had my children—as if all that would wash me clean.

At my twentieth class reunion—all of us successfully mediocre and responsible parents by now—I heard that another of the cadre had died in a freak industrial accident someplace up north. I inquired no further but I mentally checked him off my list.

Some years after that I heard that Sally, our “Sally the Red”, had cancer. Like Raul and me she had stayed in the city. Unlike me, she stayed involved as a community organizer. It took a great deal to gather the nerve to visit her and I’m happy that I did. We didn’t speak of the action and I didn’t even know that she died until Thomas read me her obituary. That just left Raul and me.

Until last Tuesday that is, when he made his final speech and certainly his most memorable. Forty-seven years after our ‘date’ Raul keeled over with a massive coronary in a City Council meeting while railing against one of his colleagues as the Chairman ferociously hammered his gavel calling “Out Of Order! Out of Order!” All of it captured on the CCTV.

So I totally got away with it. The mantle of secrecy falls to me and me alone. I am lighter now, less in need of my husband’s shoulder.

“In the midst of life we are in death.”

The ladyship before me is attempting to share some observation with her two escorts, craning her neck then whispering alternatively to one then the other. The high collared men tip their ears to her in turns, each one picking up every other a piece of her story “. . . so many girl friends . . .” I catch random bits from each side of the conversation, “. . . wasn’t more of a scandal . . .”  before she cranes her head further back to catch me eavesdropping.

I smile to her and say, in a full normal voice, “I never had sex with him.”

She quickly turns away as the two men on either side of her, in one choreographed motion, turn their wanton eyes around to me. As does the couple to my left. And Thomas.

Matter-of-factly I add, “We set a building on fire.”

I watch their mouths drop. Thomas shifts his body toward me and says in a scolding whisper. “Karen!”

“It was the Chancery House. We torched it. Raul and I.” I nod to assure him that he has heard correctly. “Back in our radical daze.”

As if on cue, everyone snaps back into their face-forward funeral poses.

The priest drones on. The widows continue to weep. That old SDSer is wiping his eyes. I bow my head in an effort to stifle my rude chortle. My good shoes are ruined and the big toe on my left foot is beginning to poke through a small tear in my stocking. I press my toes to help it push through—this, too, is amusing to me. Then slowly, almost mischievously, I use my right foot to free my entire left foot from that ruined black peep-toe pump. I quietly remove the other one, kick it aside and stand flat on the damp grass, wiggling my toes in the slosh. I am so much more comfortable now.

“Funerals are for the living,” Marc Hess was told at a young age. “Not until I put my own wife and daughter in their graves did I realize that it was all about the secrets that will haunt me until I find my own resting place.” Marc raises his family in Fredericksburg, TX where he writes about gardening and planting things. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Writer’s League of Texas.