Chapter 4: Exclusion on Nashville
Paul pulled up to the curb of Nashville Avenue and walked up the brick walkway to his little brother Joseph’s front door. The giant two story house, from its storybook patterned shingles all the way down to the wraparound porch sanded so smooth you could slide on it in socks, was all Joe’s handiwork. He’d long ago stopped building with a crew and moved into his overseer’s office, and his home was his only jobsite now, already planned, plotted, and paid for. The four spare bedrooms Joe had built remained sparsely decorated and neutral until his wife had had time to fill them all with occupants, until the house was complete inside and out. Paul joked for a long time that the family would have to adopt another kid when their oldest left for school, but that riff joined a select few others in retirement the day Joe disassembled the furniture, knocked down a wall, and expanded his study. Paul now stood with Kendra in front of Joseph’s desk where a bed used to be.
“You guys want coffee? You look like Humbert Humbert and Lolita at the end of a long night’s drive.”
“Where is everybody?” asked Paul.
“Who?”
“Robert and Patricia. Your wife. All the kids?”
“I guess Robert’s out signing a lot of paperwork and checks. Josie took Fern and Ben to the pool at the J. Caroline’s still away at summer camp in North Carolina. Joey’s up in his room writing an obituary.”
Kendra sank into a leather couch and rolled her eyes. “I told you I didn’t have to come.”
Paul crossed his arms and drew his eyebrows together. “Joey?”
“My kid’s a good writer.”
“But what does he know?”
“He knows what he knows. You just fill in the blanks with names and dates, essentially.”
“I thought we’d get one of those sidebar write-ups. That’s gonna take a little more than basic facts.”
“You know how much those cost? That’s valuable real estate in the Times-Picayune. Three grand easy.”
“So what? We pay.”
Joe opened up an online game of Hearts on the computer monitor he had aimed away from Paul. “What’s the big deal?”
“We’re talking about a pillar of the community here! They should all get those write-ups. Don’t you ever just feel for those friends of Pop who die and then get stuck in the small print? It’s an outrage.”
“You want it, you pay for it. I just don’t want the costs of this funeral to snowball. Too many people get involved, it can snowball. You pay out of pocket if you want some half-page ad for Pop.”
“I’ve got a friend down there in the sports desk. Maybe we can make a deal.”
“Maybe he could write it, too. Obituaries and Monday morning Saints write-ups can’t be too different.”
“Jesus, Joe. Can’t you focus just a little bit?”
“Fuck you, Paul. I’ve gotten half the preparations done while you’ve probably been nursing a hangover.”
“I feel fine. I’m just saying, what’s the rush? We can take our time with this and get all the details right.”
“There’s no rush other than we need to get everybody together to shake our hands, sniff over the casket, eat some food, and get that body in the ground before it starts to rot. And I’d like to be back at work on Monday.”
Paul uncrossed his arms and let them fall loosely at his side. He stared out the window over Joseph’s head at the ivy climbing up the brick wall of the house next door. He blamed himself, now, for getting distracted. It was obvious to him that he’d have to pull his family together on his own if they weren’t going to be drawn magnetically by this crisis the way nature intended.
“Hey, what can I do for you, Joe?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what’s left on the list that’s still hanging fire?”
Joe leaned back again and looked up at his brother. “We’ve got it all settled, Paul. Don’t worry about it. All you have to do is show up on Sunday.”
“I don’t want to just show up. Kendra, will you go hang out with Joey or something?”
Kendra closed the door behind her.
“I went to go see Mom this morning.”
Joseph smacked the arms of his chair. “What’d you do that for?”
“What?”
“I think we’d have been a lot better off if we’d waited until after the funeral to let her know.”
“That wouldn’t be fair, though.”
“Fair? To who? Is it fair that now we’re going to have to try and keep her contained through the whole service? Who knows what she’s going to rant about.”
“Careful, that’s your mother.”
“I know my mother. The woman in that wheelchair is like a bad movie remake of my mother. Plus, she still has that motherfucker Phil Lange on retainer, and I don’t want him anywhere near us when we read the will. Goddammit, Paul, how do you constantly find ways to complicate things?”
“Why do I get the feeling that you and Robbie are just trying to sweep all this under the rug and move on with your lives? It’s like you want to keep all this under the radar. Have you even called Noel?”
“No, but maybe Rob has. Look, Paul, I know you and Pop were really close, but that doesn’t mean you get to call all the shots.”
“It means you do.”
“Paul, I’m getting things done. If you had your way we’d still be at dinner telling stories. We have all the time in the world to commemorate and—”
“I’m just saying include me a little! And respect the fact that Pop still has a lot of friends who need to be notified, much less a surviving family that should be gathering together instead of going to the pool for a freakin’ swim!”
“Jesus, come on. You are way too stressed over all this. Look, you want something to do, go down to the firm and clean out Pop’s office if they haven’t done it already.”
Paul nodded. The redness in his face started to clear. “Okay, yeah. I’ll leave Kendra here, though, okay? She needs to be around family.”
“What about Rosehannah?”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever. Okay, just go.”
“Call me if there’s anything else.”
Paul drove up Nashville Avenue and picked out all the houses he had been inside. He’d broken an arm in 855 in 1993. That was when the McEnroes lived there. So many old friends on this street and the numbers to go along with their faces. After-parties, dinner parties, poker games, and wakes. Houses that had changed hands with either strangers or generations and shifted colors but not value. Nashville was an avenue that knew better than to try and head deep into the city. It broke off at Fountainbleau and kept its own disconnected from all the bad elements northward, Paul thought. Safe from all that, the oak trees grew taller and thicker and spread more shade and underneath them the kids could play out front instead of locked inside. Paul sighed and tried to focus on something else besides the things he knew he could not remember, those unattained memories of raising a family on a street like this.