The Celebration
by Alison Ruch
On the Wednesday that Abe would die, he sent a text message
to all of his friends. “I want costumes. I want Halloween, and I want to go out
to the pub.” It was early in the morning, and some were still in bed; others
had started their days at desks. Some farmed and had been up for hours and didn’t
see the message until lunchtime. Some wrote back, disbelieving but wanting to
play along: “When?”
Abe was so nearly gone. He
was now, always, attached to a bag of morphine; he was supposed to have died
yesterday. Some friends wrote back to applaud the spirit of the invitation: “We
love you, Abe. We are thinking of you. Let us know if we can bring you
anything.” The rest did not reply. They had said their goodbyes, and it was
hard to find words after goodbye. All
else seemed redundant or like a dragging out of stilted formality when what
they wanted to remember—what Abe should carry with him—were the good times, the
spontaneous flares of joy and grief, for they had shared each in all the years
together.
At four o’clock, he sent
another message: “Tonight—Costumes, the pub! Please come.”
The friends had closets full
of costumes. Abe was a regular in community theatre productions, and the performers and
crew had become his large family. His parents were gone; his wife was gone; his
children were far away. It was this assembled family with whom he wanted to
spend his final hours. Moira and Colin
and Ken and Stephan, Colette and Joseph, T and
Big Bill. He wanted to spend these hours with Meg Wylie and Josiah, Lucette Jones-Kalep and Molly Bovarn; yes, especially
Molly Bovarn. Oh, those eyes he’d
memorized, an arresting seaweed green. He knew always which way they would turn and direct,
thoughtfully absorbing story. She danced healthily into her late fifties. They had been through
storms and sunsets for all of these years—each
of them marriages and children—and here they still were,
knowing each other, really knowing.
But it was Ken who went
to see Abe first on the day he would eventually die. He knocked and waited, and
the longer he waited, the more he thought this is it. But Abe came to
the door, with his morphine, looking gaunt and pale as he had for months. “It’s
a celebration,” he said, and he smiled, and through his atrophied muscles and thin flesh,
his joy was visible. He gestured weakly, like a much older
man, separating his wrists and
curled hands as wide as they would spread, to say it was a
celebration, an expansive celebration, and that everyone was welcome and
invited. Ken knew this meant Molly in particular, but Abe wanted a
crowd, a party, and so Ken started making the calls.
It was easy to gather the
troops once they knew Abe meant business. What do you say to a man on his
deathbed? You say yes; you say yes!
They dressed quickly,
throwing on clown suits and boas and masks, top hats and tails and rabbit ears,
princess gowns and face paint and anything that was out of the ordinary. Ken helped Abe
into tuxedo pants, a clean white T-shirt, and a jacket, and he looked
dapper despite his near translucence. He looked alive. He was alive now; he would die
later.
They paraded into the pub to the sounds of
gawking others. A little boy cried in terror at Ken in his lizard mask. He took off the mask
and smiled kindly at the boy, now curled in his mother’s arms. “I’m so
sorry,” he said, but he did not explain.
The waitress assessed the
crew and looked overwhelmed by their number or startled by their dress, and Josiah
tried to tell her that they were there to celebrate the life of a dear
friend, and she blinked with a semblance of understanding, but the real
understanding came when Abe spoke to her: “It’s Halloween,” he said with all of
the gusto he could manage, and it was not much gusto, and it was clear that he
was a dying man. They ordered pitchers of beer and fries for Abe that mustn’t
have salt, and the waitress blinked back tears and shook off chills; she was
inexperienced with life and with death.
Molly went to the bar and
asked if there was any way to play New Orleans brass, and the manager, who knew
both life and death, tapped a button and made it so, and the pub swelled with
brass and life, and most of the people had no idea that this Halloween in August
was Abe’s first and last Halloween in August.
Talk was jokes and stories,
and the tone teetered between birthday celebration and joyful wake. There were
warm pauses, too, in between.
Big Bill recalled the time
when Abe knocked over a set wall, exuberantly dancing as Fagin in Oliver!
Lucette and Molly teased
about the time he had them each convinced she was his only girlfriend. They laughed about the years it took
for them, the two humiliated women, to form a friendship outside of Abe, and thank god they did
because what would they do without each other now? Times like these.
And talk of times like these
got them on Henry who had died a few years back from throat cancer, and no doubt he
would be at the table now, were he living. He’d have
polished a pitcher, solo. He’d be dressed, they all put in guesses, as Superman or Zorro or some such brawny and heroic
figure. He’d be trying to outshine Abe, the dying man, they all
laughed.
Abe laughed, too, and he
missed Henry, and he thought—but not for long—about how it would be for them to miss him, to
miss Abe. It would be sad, he knew, for each of them in a different way. Sad for Molly to miss her
riverside walking companion.
Sad for Meg and Josiah
not to see him at the coffee shop in his usual spot, drinking decaf and
flirting wildly with the counter girls. Just like they felt the big, cool place-holder that was where
Henry had been, they would feel it with him, with Abe, though it would be
physically smaller, and, maybe, he fancied, a little warmer. Bah! he thought, because
he knew
he could think happier thoughts on the night he was going to die: warm friends, crisp fries,
Molly and music and everyone dressed for his favorite holiday. Even the weather
was right, this oddly cool and drizzly summer night.
Ken sat back and took it
in—the crowd and the costumes, his dear friends and the rambunctious music. He smiled
at the waitress who he imagined pieced together more and more the story of Abe, and he saw she was teary, and it made him feel teary and connected to her,
but he knew better, much better, than to spoil this night with tears. There was
plenty of time for crying and not nearly enough time for this celebration.
And it wasn’t long before
Abe grew too tired to sit up, and so they gathered by the door of
the bar, preparing to go, and, just with luck, “When the Saints” rang through the
speakers, and the smiling and dancing, costumed crew went marching on into the cool
and rainy August Halloween night, clapping and celebrating and feeling their veins draw life from their
hearts, working like the vines of flowering pumpkins.
