The Guest:
A Comedy in One Act
They were saying winds 15-35 out of the Southwest that late summer morning. I suppose Mark had already gone to the beach because I was alone getting ready for my aunt’s funeral. I was just pulling on dress clothes over my bathing suit when the doorbell rang. "Geezus, who the hell can that be." I mumbled to myself. I was pumped to go sailing, a bit weirded-out by my aunt’s sudden death, and the quadruple espresso I had just finished was kicking in. I was definitely in no mood to deal with some GreenPeace-veggin-Jesus-freak stumping for the Fascist Family Party. As soon as I opened the door he pushed past me and grabbed the remote for the t.v. laying on the table, no hello, just a muffled "Mig langer til ao sja islenzka glimu" as he plunked his big ass in one of my comfy chairs.
I’d seen his work many times, but have only actually seen him in person twice. The first time was in Kentucky when I was 15. I saw him watching from an overpass as my well fueled lover and I finished the curve off the on-ramp doing 115 mph on his Harley. I saw him once again in Illinois, standing in a wheat field. I was 16 this time, riding with a new boyfriend in his street-rod doing 105 mph into oncoming traffic as our passing gap squeezed smaller and smaller. Now after 18 years, here he was again, installing himself in my living room. I’m not afraid or anything. It’s just that, I had never seen him up-close before, and wasn’t planning to for several years yet.
He wasn’t really at all what I had expected. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Bergman films and Bergmanesque metaphors derived from classic Teutonic literature and folklore. He was supposed to be lean and imposing, ethereal, menacing. And well, rather more Swedish anyway. Yet there he sat. "Big boned" is how he would be described in polite company (but in his case it should be taken more literally), legs sprawled immodestly, flipping frantically through the channels looking for, oh yeah, "What the hell does ‘Mig langer til ao sja islenzka glimu’ mean!?" I barked.
"Oh, like, sorry. I just got done with a gig in Iceland, I just said ‘I should like to see some Icelandic wrestling’ - you don’t have cable do you?" he asked dryly.
"Look I really don’t have time for this" I snapped again, not trying to hide my annoyance.
"Oh no, YOU have plenty of time" he smirked, managing a wink.
"Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really must be going. Help yourself to a drink or what ever" I pointed to the kitchen, "then leave through the garage, it’ll lock itself behind you." As I left I saw him riffling through the liquor selection, I could hear his brittle fingers clicking on each bottle as he moved them. God, I hate that SOUND!
My aunt and I were never super close. Though living only a few miles away at this point, we simply lived in different worlds. I think we’ve shared maybe 10 full paragraphs of conversation spread out over the past 34 years. But I always really liked her, we're family, and I was really sad she passed. She had gone to sleep, and just never woke up again (aneurysm). Now at the funeral, my cousins (her children) and I engaged in idle chit-chat in front of her open casket. ‘This is too weird’ kept running through my brain on some continuous loop as we discussed the pitfalls and rewards of packaging design as a career choice. The loop would be occasionally underscored with injections of piped-in organ music and the drone-like hum of the pump which supplied the Gurgling Waters Weeping Wall (tm) behind the coffin stand. Was my uncomfortable chatter of "any" comfort to my cousins? My religious training is Christian Science, there is no such thing as death. I am the first to admit, I suck at the whole funeral thing.
On my mother’s side of the family (a strange mixed bag of Presbyterians, Universalists, and Christian Scientists) we don’t do funerals, just reduce the body to ashes, and dump it somewhere. Some of my relatives are in pots under little brass plaques in a cemetery, others are part of the silt at the bottom of their favorite lake. As a memorial, the living get together, eat, and tell bad jokes about the deceased. Apparently my aunt’s family is into the more formalized send off.
Keeping true to his nature, my uncle got his wife the package deal: lacquered coffin with modest detailing, "reviewal prep," rental of the wake chapel, rental of the service chapel, nameless clergy to deliver the eulogy ("and though I never knew [decedents name here], she was my age and it [freaked me out that it could be my ass laying there] made me think..."), hearse service to and from the funeral parlor, grave excavation, headstone, and grave filling. All for $5000 (or was it $8000). The souvenir programs were free, courtesy of my aunt’s (now) former employer. My mother and I agreed, the whole thing was both an unnecessary and expensive burden on my uncle and, well frankly, a little too much reality, done in a very surreal way.
After the last rites, as we walked away from the grave site, my uncle told me he was happy I had come. I gave him a big hug and told him I was going to go home, get my boards, and go windsurfing, "That’s good," he said "have some fun, she would have liked that. I wish I could go too, but all these people are expecting me at home. You know." I gave him another hug and made a beeline for my car, imagining my uncle (built for comfort, not for speed) clad like a waaaay overstuffed sausage in neoprene (think more haggis than sausage), sheeting in and flying. "It's already 2:00," I mummbled looking at my watch. If I was really lucky I could be on the water by 2:45, I thought.
As I loaded out my boards from the garage I could hear HE was still upstairs, right where I had left him. He had the t.v. on too loud and I could hear "Championship Wrestling is brought to you by... ‘ENOUGH WITH THE COMMERCIALS ALREADY!’....it’s the real thing, and by....". I shut the garage door quietly and finished tying down my boards, hoping he wouldn’t notice I had been there, and headed for the beach.
As I had hoped - and feared - the wind was raging and there wasn’t a parking space to be had. I circled the parking lot for half an hour before one of the mindless lumps who like to park, meander around the lake, and ‘watch them perty windserfboards’ moved their car. We boardsailors go around and around with people who HAVE TO take the few places we have near our launch sites because they want to park close to the lake when they go for a stroll. They don’t seem to grasp that it is the same distance to walk around the lake from ANY of the lots at the lake, but for the people carrying 50lbs of gear it’s quite different.
One time when our lot was full and the pedestrians were trolling our places, as each big-haired bimbo (of both sexes) would pull up and ask "Ahhh, are you, like, leaving?" I would point to the nearly vacant lot on the other side of the lake and try explaining the upwind-downwind launch preference thing and that there was always parking where the windsurfers weren’t, as their eyes glossed over. "Well why don’t you guys, like, just park up there all the time?" they’d say thinking they were very, like, clever. "No I’m not ‘like’ leaving." I’ll be buried in this spot before I give it to you, you lard-brained dweeb, I’d add in my head.
As is my custom, after obtaining a parking place, I scope out the wind, unload my board choice (I usually bring at least two), put on my wetsuit and knee braces, then unload my rigging. Always in that order. It was a rather warm day though, so I skipped the wetsuit and braces for a moment while I unloaded. I guess I was a little too preoccupied from the morning, because I turned my knee on the gear I had left on the ground. I did it good too. I could hear THAT SOUND of bone on bone grinding and pulling out of joint - GOD I hate THAT SOUND!
Though I managed to reduce the dislocation myself, I was in real pain and rather unceremoniously wedged between two cars and a pile of gear. A guy who was rigging nearby kept asking if he should get help as I sat weeping in the pavement in frustration and pain. But I finally got up and convinced him I was o.k.-ish, at least in the more immediate sense. I reloaded that which I had just unloaded and left the still windy lake, my knee throbbing as I tried to use the clutch.
Of course, when I got home HE was still there. I could hear him rattling around upstairs as I unloaded my boards. He had both the t.v. AND the stereo going full blast. I HATE that! This guy has got to go!
I gimped up the stairs and opened the door. In the few short hours I was gone he had managed to trash the place. Two bottles of Madeira, a bottle of Bombay gin, dozens of cigar wrappers, and a jar of pickled herring lay empty on the floor. By this point he had returned to a heap in the chair, sucking on a particularly nasty smelling cigar and channel surfing while the stereo blasted ‘My Bloody Valentine.’ I just stood watching in amazement. I suppose if you weren’t already dead, the combination of gin, Madeira, cigars, and herring would never cross your mind. Well certainly not as a nutrition option anyway.
"Look man, I don’t know what your deal is...." He doesn’t hear me. "HEY!" His hollow eyes look up slowly "I don’t know what your deal is but I want you out’a here."
"Oh you won’t be rid of me that easily. I have more business in this area" he quipped. Oh great, now what? "I just thought I’d hang at your place ‘cuz you have a nice big t.v. and good taste in booze - I’m really disappointed you don’t have cable though, oh and could you get some of that nice duck pate when you’re out next time, no hurry" he said in one breath.
What do you do when death plunks his big bony ass in your living room, drinks up all your alcohol, and stinks up your house with big nasty cigars? In my case, you literally learn to live with it. I guess it could be worse. I mean, he keeps mostly to himself, and doesn’t have any friends over. As I see it, though he’s taken one family member by surprise, the other, my grandmother, was probably the one who told him about my new t.v. to get him to visit sooner. And since these things work in threes (don’t they?) his work is almost done, but that one will be a gift. Not because we don’t love the future decedent, but because it will be a long deserved release from frustration and pain, watching his own body die, inch by inch, for 20 years. For that service I think I can put up with this rude guest a little while longer. I just wish he’d lay off my neighbors in the mean time. I’ve lost TWO since I started writing this. And I really wish he’d.... "Hey, quit freaking-out my cat!..."I said HEY!..."
© 1996 by Wendy Jedlicka
