The Dead, and God Bless Them
by John O'Toole

Above a crowded horizon of spires and smokestacks, high-rises sharp as pressed pants, the sky that Good Friday morning hung low and unkempt. Brownish clouds blurred the rising sun to a misshapen turd, its fecal light trickling down narrow avenues between the endless walls of dark apartment buildings and seeping onto Wentworth Boulevard, ebbing up against the wrought-iron fence of Cabrini Cemetery, from whose graves the dear departed were already beginning to rise and go about their daily business.

From his bedroom window Arty Galt watched them, a cigarette fuming between his lips, his coffee steaming hot and untouched on the sill. He was sixteen now, no longer in school and as yet unemployed, therefore free to sleep in if he chose. Like his idol, Dart McGuinn, who, according to "Entertainment Tonight," never rose before noon, at which time the beloved star of TV's hit sitcom "Oh, Mr. Haversham!" would dismiss his comely bedmates and crawl into his solid gold bathtub to prepare for another laugh-filled day at the studio. And though Arty, with dubious success, had made it his life's work to emulate Dart's every move, he had so far been unable to kick the morbid habit of rising at the crack of dawn to watch all those corpses parading through the cemetery gate on their way to work or to their families, or simply to loiter on the street, if such had been their habit during life on this earth. Arty from his three-story perch, feeling his usual mixture of loathing and amusement at their jerky, stiff-limbed movements, staggering around to get their bearings, brushing worms off tattered, dirt-caked dresses and suits. Several shoeless, others googly-eyed or eyeless altogether. Ghastly white, of course, except the ones who'd turned black, some of them actual African Americans, others resembling minstrel performers with burnt cork smeared on their faces. One of whom now stopped to buy a paper at the corner stand. Two others wandered into Denny's for breakfast. The rest either picked up by family or carpooling coworkers, or shuffling across to the bus stop on Cooley Avenue.

Part morbid fascination with this grisly parade, Arty's early rising had more to do with the fact that his parents, killed in a train derailment three months earlier, usually returned home, from St. Basil's Cemetery clear across town, at about six each morning, and though he dearly loved them, and yearned with all his heart for these daily homecomings, the thought of being woken from a sound sleep by those two stiffs frankly gave him a monumental case of the creeps.

Dousing his cigarette in his untouched coffee, he gazed a bit bleary eyed out across the vast meadow that separated his apartment building from the dark, dreary sprawl of the others. Little Flower Meadow, site of the Sisters of the Little Flower Mother House. A convent in the new-fangled sense of that word, not of stone walls and roof, but of individual towers, widely-spaced amid the wild grass and daisies. Each tower actually an elevator shaft, three-walled, the elevators really just hospital beds, at the top of each shaft now, glorified pallets upon which rested the nuns of the order, at peace in the cloister of sleep, the swirling brown air leaving soot on their beatific faces.

His big sister Meg would be joining them tomorrow, her tower already prepared to receive her. And though the thought of his only friend (and secret sweety) pledging her troth to God held for him a certain perversely romantic cachet, the sadness it engendered filled his heart with brown water. He was gazing through the window at her tower when his parents' key turned in the front door lock.

Meg beat him to them, her furry, green turtle slippers racing noiselessly across the foyer's grey linoleum, terrycloth bathrobe tightly rapped around her gangly frame, the jet-black hair that would soon be shorn popping loose from its chignon now and streaming down her back like India ink as she threw her long arms around Dad's decaying neck. The old boy engaged in his usual monkey chatter, terrified of silence and the death it might confirm. Mom just the opposite, loathe to speak a word lest the effort cave her face in, a process that had nonetheless already begun, her once lovely mug a concavity of pasty, gnarled features, the wormy eyes crusted with yellow-brown puss. And that godawful outfit! For twenty-three years their mom had worn nothing but house dresses, comfy and cheap, a practical choice for a life of housekeeping, but hardly appropriate to wear in one's grave. An exchange student friend of Meg's had therefore lent for the occasion her Bulgarian mother's wedding dress, a gypsy affair of rhinestone beads and psychedelic patterns on a rich green and gold-brocaded wool, "lent" not quite the right word, of course, as Arty hadn't seen his Mom in anything else since, and she would no doubt wear the damn thing till even the rhinestones turned to dust.

While his mother and sister went about making breakfast, Arty and his dad entered the living room for a smoke. Its fake fireplace flanked by bookshelves in which Grampa Galt's volumes leaned and loafed like old bums. The well-built furniture of three generations, like a bunch of old uncles, sedentary now, a bit frayed at the edges, still looking quite like they might live forever. Dad in his mismatched Naugahyde armchair, his beige burial suit adhering to his body in big purple stains, (the worms minding their manners and keeping off the furniture). Hair below his ears (he of the eternal crewcut). Eruptions and sinkholes of decay spouting smoke as he dragged on his cigarette. The chatter undending. "...got a shot if their pitching holds up in a draft and me with my head I've seen better artwork by two year old bit off the top would ya think for one minute..."

Meg's final home cooked breakfast proved quite a feast. Bacon and eggs, hash browns, English muffins, pancakes, huge platter of orange slices and melons. Arty wolfing his. Meg, already in full self-denial mode, taking tiny nibbles, like a turtle with a huge head of lettuce. Their parents chewing lustily, rotten cheeks bulging, food bursting through them in half-chewed, brownish yellow gobs. The sun, having temporarily broken through the brownish cloud cover, had free reign now of the little dining room, sprawling across the cheap dinette table, peering at the nicknacks on Gramma Galt's cedar hutch. Arty's dad wiped his mouth (in the process losing half his lower lip) and put his sunglasses on. Reflex action, as the worms at St. Basil's had feasted on his eyeballs.

Dad suddenly leaping up, nearly toppling over backwards. Had to get to work now, no time for a second cup of coffee (which he would only have spit out like he had the first one). Kissing Arty's mom goodbye, a scrap of her left cheek adhering to his upper lip. Pausing somehwat longer to embrace Meg and, his voice oozing sobs, explain to her that, though he longed to be there for her final vows that day, the dead, unlike the lving, were granted no sick leave, which meant that if he took off he would ceratinly be fired, and then how would poor little schizophrenic Arty survive? And then off he went, gabbing like a roomful of drunken conventioneers.