THENEWYORKER,MARCH2, 2020 31
While eating, we returned to the
topic of his obituary, and what would
follow. A Greek Orthodox funeral is a
relatively sober affair, sort of like a Mass.
I’d asked if I could speak at my mom’s,
just so there’d be a personal touch. If I
were to revisit what I read that morn-
ing in 1991, I’d no doubt cringe. That
said, it was easy to celebrate my mother.
Effortless. With my father, I’d have to
take a different tone. “I remember the
way he used to ram other cars at the
grocery store when the drivers—who
were always women—took the parking
spots he wanted,” I could say. “Oh, and
the time he found seventeen-year-old
Lisa using his shower, and dragged her
out naked.”
How could I reconcile that perpet-
ual human storm cloud with the man
I had spent the afternoon with, the one
who never mentioned, and has never
mentioned, the possibility of dying,
who has taken everything life has
thrown at him and found a way to deal
with it. Me, on the other hand, after
half a dozen medical tests involving
the two holes below my waist, before
even learning whether or not I had can-
cer, I’d decided I was tired of battling
it. “Just let me die in peace,” I said to
Hugh, after the French urologist stuck
his finger up my ass.
Meanwhile, here was my father,
tended to by aides, afforded no privacy
whatsoever, and determined to get used
to it. Where did that come from? I won-
dered, looking at my fried chicken as it
was set before me. And how is it that
none of his children, least of all me, in-
herited it?
Of all us kids, Paul was the only one
to fight the do-not-resuscitate order.
He wanted all measures taken to keep
our father alive. “You have to under-
stand,” he said over dinner. “Dad is my
best friend.” He didn’t say it in a mawk-
ish or dramatic way, but matter-of-factly,
the way you might identify your car in
a parking lot: “It’s that one there.” The
relationship between my brother and
my father has always been a mystery to
my sisters and me. Is it the thickness of
their skin? The fact that they’re both
straight men? On the surface, it seems
that all they do is yell at each other:
“Shut up.” “Go to hell.” “Why don’t you
just suck my dick.” It is the vocabulary
of conflict, but with none of the hurt
feelings or dark intent. While the rest
of us may mourn our father’s passing,
only Paul will truly grieve.
“Hey,” he said, taking an uneaten
waffle off his daughter’s plate. “Did I
tell you I just repainted my basement?”
He found a picture on his phone and
showed me what looked like a Scandi-
navian preschool, each wall a bold pri-
mary color.
“Let me see,” Amy said. I handed
her the phone and she, in turn, passed
it to Lisa. It then went by the spots
where Gretchen and Tiffany would be
if Tiffany hadn’t killed herself and Gre-
tchen hadn’t fallen asleep at her boy-
friend’s house earlier that evening, and
on to Kathy, then to my niece, Maddy,
and back to Paul.
We were the last party to leave the
restaurant, and were standing out front
in a light rain, when Amy pointed at
the small brick house across the street.
“Look,” she cried, “a naked lady!”
“Oh, my God,” we said, following
her finger and lowering our voices the
same way we’d done ten hours earlier
with the doe on my father’s lawn.
“Where?” Lisa whispered.
“Right there, through the windowon the ground floor,” Hugh told her.
He and Amy would later remark that
the woman, who was middle-aged and
buxom and wore her hair in a style I
associate with the nineteen-forties,
made them think of a Raymond Chan-
dler novel.
“What’s she doing?” I asked, watch-
ing as she moved into the kitchen.
“Getting a drink of water?” Lisa
guessed.
Paul turned to his daughter. “Look
away, Maddy!”
When the light went out, we wor-
ried that we had scared the naked
woman, but a second later it came back
on, and she was joined by a dark-haired
man with a towel around his waist. The
two of them appeared to speak for a
moment. Then he took her by the hand
and led her into another room and out
of sight.
It was all we talked about as we made
our way down the street to our various
cars. “Can you believe it? Naked!!” As
if we’d seen a flying saucer, or a congre-
gation of pixies. To hear us in a gang
like that, the wonder in our voices, the
delight and energy, you’d almost think
we were children. “I know what you’ve come to expect from me is physical comedy,
but tonight I thought we’d try something a little different.”