that man’s father is my father’s son
My name is Norman Belanger. My father’s name is Norman Belanger. My grandfather’s name was also Norman Belanger. I guess that would make me “the third,” but no one has ever called me that. When I was growing up, I was always Little Norman. Dad was Big Norman. My grandfather was Pepe. Even though Pepe passed away some 20 years ago, I still feel like Little Norman sometimes.
My grandfather’s funeral was during one of the worst blizzards I can remember. Absolute white out conditions. I took the train down from South Station in Boston to Providence, a 45 minute trip usually, but the snow was coming down so hard and the tracks were icing up, so we crept along, and the dark morning seemed to last all day. It gave me plenty of time to think. Mostly, I thought about how little we know about people, even people we love. I thought about memory, and how strange it can be, what you remember, what you forget. For many years, my grandparents lived in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, so most of my memories were from when I was just a kid, and these were the first I remembered, played out like a movie as I watched wind whip up snow through the window:
I could even hear him. Pepe’s laugh. He laughed with his whole body. His eyes would squeeze shut, his head thrown back, hee hee hee. His laugh would make you laugh. He would laugh sometimes so hard he’d start coughing. As the train slunk along, I could almost see him, sitting at the kitchen table, his back to the pot bellied wood burning stove, a cigarette burning in one of the beanbag ashtrays that were everywhere. I remembered he had tattoos. On his left arm, a sort of lady whose ink had blurred and faded, who mesmerized me when she danced. Pepe was swarthy, and even though he was clean shaven when he kissed you hello or goodbye there was always the tickle of five o’clock shadow. He slicked his dark hair back with a comb and a dab of shiny goo. Pepe’s hands seemed large, with swollen looking knuckles and fingernails that were rough from scrubbing with Boraxo— the old fashioned can that sat on the bathroom sink, strong as a 40 mule team, it was gritty and smelled soapy, the only thing that removed grease. He’d always worked hard.
His joys were: playing the piano, banging out old songs (It Had to be You, Ain’t Misbehaving, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore),telling jokes, his backyard garden lush with the smell of overripe tomatoes, beer, cigarettes, and his dog. Princess, a dachshund so fat that her nipples dragged on the floor when she struggled to walk on tiny legs, she was black and brown and so, because everyone had nicknames, she was called Cucaracha (cockroach), which was shortened to Kook. We’d take trips to Dairy Queen on summer days, Princess on his lap as he drove with her head out the open window. He’d order her favorite, a vanilla chocolate swirl in a cone. She did seem to enjoy it. She also ate basically anything. Spaghetti and meatballs. Hamburgers. Meat loaf. She was not too particular.
Meme, my grandmother, hardly ever sat down. She was always at the stove or percolating coffee or getting a beer for Pepe or talking to her parakeet that hung in its cage by the window. She loved the Enquirer magazine and Star, she indulged in soap operas, “bedroom stories,” she called them, and I Love Lucy. Whenever the phone rang she’d scream into it, as though to compensate for long distance. When she toasted English muffins, my favorite Thomases, I could have peanut butter and margarine, as much as I wanted, so I slathered it on thick. Pepe called her Anna: “Anna get the kid something to drink for Christ’s sake before he chokes on his food. He eats like some gypsy’s gonna steal it out his mouth” he’d laugh. She’d chilled small copper cups in the fridge, milk tasted extra good in them. There was also ice water, a former orange juice glass bottle always filled. And Naragansett in cans, for Pepe.
On the occasional night when I slept there, at the house on Starr Street where my dad grew up, I’d bunk upstairs in his old room. I would find out from him later, on his first night in that room, how quiet my dad found it to live in the country. It was still quiet back when I was a little boy, still country, still dirt roads. Besides Aunt Shirley’s house which was built next door a few years before, nothing but woods and fields out there. I had a small transistor radio that I tucked under my pillow so I could listen to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by E.G. Marshall, a series of creepy Twilight Zone-like plays that guaranteed I’d be too scared to sleep. After the show there was nothing but the sound of the house sleeping, and whatever moved around at night in the woods.
When I was in second grade during the February vacation, I went with my grandparents by Amtrak all the way to visit Uncle Herman and Aunt Arlene down in Florida. An adventure. The trip would take a total of 24 hours, which meant we got to sleep on the train! Once the novelty of watching the scenery of people’s backyards wore off, I explored the huge train. Car after car careened forward--each one full of people dozing, quietly chatting, smoking--between each car, doors slid open to a connecting corridor that rattled and shook, you could feel the sway of the track as we sped south, and another door slid open—and there was the Game Room and Lounge. Here, people played card games, sipped beverages, and there was a lady who ran Bingo who quickly became my new best friend, especially when I discovered that prizes were to be had, like a whole bag bursting with Florida oranges! Imagine! At the end of the train, the sedate dining car with its white tablecloths and real silverware, and glasses filled, the water danced with the motion of the ride. For lunch, they had pretty much anything you could want—hamburgers, chicken fingers, even ice cream. Waiters wore white jackets and called you Sir, or Ma’am, or in my case, the young gentleman, as in “Would the young gentleman like ketchup for his French fries?” Yes, the young gentleman would. After lunch, I made a bee line back to the Game Room. I had my eye on those oranges. My grandparents said they’d go ahead to our seats so they could have a nap, and I could join them after. “You think he’ll be Ok?” Meme had asked, but Pepe laughed and said “Oh leave the kid alone. Let him make friends.” In no time I was the lady’s assistant, handing out Bingo cards and the coveted mesh bags of navel fruit to the lucky winners. So engrossed was I in the high stakes game, I didn’t notice that afternoon had turned to evening, I didn’t even register when Meme and Pepe walked by on their way back to the dining car for dinner, and even when they told me to wrap it up and meet them at the table, I was in my own little world. Eventually, games were over. The lady, probably to get me out of her hair, but at the time I naturally assumed was in payment for my day’s efforts, gave me TWO bags of oranges which I carried like trophies back to where I assumed Meme and Pepe were seated in the front of the train. I remembered our car was the third one up after the Lounge. The swaying connector was freezing cold, and the movement of the accordian walls scared me, so I went through as quickly as I could through the sliding doors even though it was a challenge pushing the button while hoisting my loot. I made it through the now darkened cars, to the third, past people who read or snoozed under little overhead lights, to our seats—no Meme. No Pepe. Maybe they were in the bathroom. The men’s room, with its row of sinks and mirrors, was pretty empty except for a guy shaving, a cigarette dangling from his lip. “Pepe?” I called out. Nothing. Quick to tears, I asked a nice older lady to go into the women’s room and ask for Meme. She ended up getting a porter, a huge black gentleman in a blue uniform who asked in a soft Southern accent, “Now what seems to be the trouble, young sir?” I bawled and told him my grandparents must have jumped off the train. “Jumped off the train, you say? Well now, that’s pretty serious.” I agreed. “Maybe we can just have a look around, see if they’re not somewhere on board.” He gently took the oranges from my arms, put them on my seat, and even agreed when I insisted he hold my hand while we made our way through the train—I wasn’t about to let anyone else get away from me. Of course, there they were in the dining car, sitting at the table having dinner, wondering why the heck I was crying and why was I clinging onto the porter. “You the folks who jumped off the train?” the man asked. Oh how Pepe laughed.
The next morning, when I woke up with my head nestled on my prize of oranges, out the window the scene had magically transformed. Instead of winter, green foliage--and palm trees! The sun was shining. By noon we were gliding into the station at Fort Lauderdale. Uncle Herman, with his two mutt dogs Bud and Busch (named after his favorite beers) greeted us. Uncle Herman was famous in my eyes for two reasons: one year during a summer visit back to Rhode Island, he had made a chain out of all the beer tabs from all the cans he had drunk, big enough that it completely encircled my Aunt Shirley’s ranch house; and during that same visit I discovered his teeth on the bathroom sink, which scared me to death because I had no idea people’s teeth came out except in cartoons. His wife, Aunt Arlene, was a funny lady who worked at the post office, who smoked constantly (they all did, except Meme). Arlene enjoyed her beer, nearly as well as Herman did. Her steel gray hair was tightly permmed and she wore those cat’s eye glasses with tiny rhinestones in them. The two of them fought and laughed and swore and smoked the whole time.
Florida was amazing. You could have grapefruit growing in your own backyard year round. Little lizards called chameleons skittered everywhere. They changed colors, I was told, though I never really saw one do it. Palm trees lined the streets. It was always hot enough, even in mid-February, to wear shorts all the time. We were shown the sites. At the Parrott Jungle, they would take your picture with huge taloned birds sitting on your outstretched arms (this was terrifying), and at Busch Gardens we saw gargantuan lazy snakes and sleeping alligators in a swamp. Herman and Arlene’s kids had nicknames, of course. Boobette, Poopsie, Pumpkin. Pumpkin’s real name was Patty, she was a big woman who was very nice, she drove us around the whole time we were in Florida, in Aunt Arlene’s huge white Cadillac. (Patty’s daughter Dawn, a few years younger than I am, is still my friend on Facebook today, though the only time we ever met was during that week long vacation. Poopsie, then a long haired kid who rode a noisy motorcycle, had an unfortunate facial twitch whenever he spoke; he would later become a rabid Trump supporter and homophobe, so our connection on social media would be short lived.) But back then, we all had a fun time. I remember sitting out on the sunny patio where I wrote out postcards to people back home, like Ruth the secretary at school, telling them how warm it was and how you could smell the lemons on the trees. We made a special trip to Aunt Arlene’s post office to mail them.
Pepe loved Florida. Meme less so. But when she talked about going down there for good, when she said “Miami,” I thought she was saying “My Ami,” and assumed she, like everyone else it seemed, just wanted to live in sunshine. Florida had glamor, besides the alligators and snakes, Uncle Herman still talked of the time he had worked maintenance at the super swanky Fountain Blue hotel, and heard Peggy Lee rehearsing. Or Pinky Lee. He didn’t really enunciate very well. The allurements were hard to resist, and New England winters can be brutal. Eventually, they would move down there. I would see them on their annual summer visits, but not as often after I had moved to Boston for school. I was at the age when I was too busy to sit around talking to the old people, too old to be Little Norman.
One of the last times I saw Pepe for a full conversation- just the two of us- was during one of these summers. He was still the same, cracking jokes about some dumb son of a bitch, still laughing, still filling the ashtrays with cigarette after cigarette. I was in my 20’s then, worldly enough to see that his dark hair was touched up with something more than Brillcream, haughty enough at my jaded age to be embarrassed by his liberal use of choice words not then politically correct. Some guy at work was a bastard and a Spic. Another was a nigger, a goddamned cocksucker. Those words hung in the smoke haze. I didn’t say a thing, even while something turned inside my stomach. I would come to understand he was a product of another time, but then—I just sat there, silently mortified, maybe even a little angry at the old man. He lit another Lucky, reached into his pocket and said, “I feel bad, I never gave you nothing. I want you to have this.” He handed me a ring. It was easily the ugliest piece of jewelry I have ever seen. A golf ball sized bit of glass, a hunk of gold metal. It would never have fit me, but I promised I would have it sized. I never did. The look on his face beaming with pride, the gesture, was enough to shame me out of my embarrassment, and I felt like the heel I was. When I kissed him good bye, his cheek was rough like I remembered it.
The day of his funeral, on the train ride to Providence, I thought about all of that, the mixed feelings, and the weight of guilt. I thought about how you never really know everything about anybody. Like Citizen Kane, you only know the little bit that you know, or that you think you know. We pulled into the station. It was nothing like Fort Lauderdale had been all those years ago. It was cold, and snowing, and very much winter. I made my way through the nearly deserted depot, feeling heavy and sad. Outside, the storm was still full force. The wind blew the snow sideways into huge drifts. There was one cab. Inside, it smelled like Mac Donald’s, but it was warm. The driver, a chubby guy with a wispy beard had the radio blasting 70’s rock, so I had to almost yell when I gave him the directions to the funeral parlor. “Who died?” he asked. When I told him it was my grandfather, he lowered the sound, said “Sorry, man.” Driving conditions were terrible. We inched along, nothing visible through the windshield. The cab swerved, then righted again. All you could hear were the wipers’ futile swooshing against icy glass, freezing rain pelting the roof, and probably my heartbeat pounding every time the tires lost traction. We made it somehow. The driver wouldn’t take the few bucks I offered for a tip. “My condolences,” he said. “Sorry for your loss.”
I had so overcompensated for the storm, leaving Boston just after dawn, that even with all the delays I was the first one to arrive. The funeral director greeted me. He took my heavy coat and invited me into the wake room to warm up. A sign outside read: Funeral Services for Norman Belanger. Unsettling to see your own name like that, like reading your own grave, and so the chill stayed in my bones despite the heat that clanged through the old radiators. And there I was, just me, alone in a room full of empty folding chairs, and my grandfather in a box. He was wearing a very loud, very plaid sports coat, a fat knotted tie and a little hanky peeking out of his breast pocket. His hair, as black as ever, was slicked. It was him. Even through the makeup his skin looked tanned. But most significantly, he seemed to be smiling. He looked like he just dozed off after telling the one about the Pollock idiot hockey player who drowned during spring training. I kneeled on the little upholstered kneeler, made the perfunctory sign of the cross and muttered one of the two prayers I still remembered by rote, though the words felt meaningless. When I kissed his cold forehead I asked him to forgive me. Then I sat in one of the awful chairs, looked at the wet heavy boots on my feet, and waited. It seemed like forever. A clock chimed somewhere. Outside it was still coming down, muffling out everything else, burying the whole world under snow.
The front door banged open, letting in a screaming blast of frigid air that made me shiver. I heard the stamping of boots, the shaking of snow off coats, I heard the low voices people use in funeral homes, of sympathies being offered and accepted. I heard the director say to one of the assistants, “This is the daughter, would you please show her into the wake room?” I stood up, straightened my tie, got ready to greet my Aunt Shirley, though I had heard she was not planning to come, she was to stay with Meme who had recently suffered from another stroke. Maybe she changed her mind, I thought. But the woman who came into the room was someone I had never seen before. It was not my aunt. At least, she was not Shirley. “Thank you for coming,” she said, “My name is Norma.” She took my hand, and when I told her who I was she smiled and said “Little Norman’s son?” Her eyes were dark, her hair too. She introduced me to two young men I didn’t know, my cousins. People started to arrive then, so there was no time to say anything more.
No receiving line, or any formality like that. Folks came in, they stopped to say hello, they commented on the blizzard, the driving conditions, they said sorry for your loss, they kneeled a while before the coffin, said whatever prayers they knew, and sat down. My sister, after being introduced to Norma and our cousins, sat next to me, her raised eyebrow registered her surprise at finally meeting the secret aunt. Somehow, Michelle knew more of the story than I did, she has a knack for this kind of thing. “Good thing Meme and Shirley didn’t have to see this,” she said quietly, noting that Norma had assumed the role of bereaved child, which she had every right to do—her father had died, too. My dad came in, with Niki, and Becka, the poor kid was wailing as much out of fear as grief, she took the extra tissues I had brought so she could dry her tears and wipe her nose but still kept sobbing during the brief prayer led by the priest, and all the way to the chapel where we said our last goodbyes. I don’t think Norma ever came over to us the rest of the day, she kept a distance, and I certainly wasn’t going to point her out to my dad who had his own grief.
At Aunt Shirley’s, where we went after for coffee, Meme sat in a recliner chair under a crocheted afghan. Her speech was slurred, and her mouth was twisted, and she seemed glazed over as people came up to offer their comfort. But she smiled (at least, I think she smiled) when I sat next to her on the foot stool, one thin arm motioned for me to move the stack of Enquirers so I could be more comfortable. What questions I might have asked her. What things she might have been able to tell me. But we both sat there, looking at the weather. Every time someone came in the front door, letting in the cold and the snow, she made a high-pitched groan and her good hand clutched mine. Through the picture window, the yard was white, with waist high drifts. She trembled. “I never… liked living…in Florida,” she said slowly, “but.. this.. is… for the birds.”
On the way home back to Boston, after my grandfather’s burial, I thought about my place in the story. Little Norman. That day, I was 35 years old, not half as world wise as I had been in my 20’s, having since made my own life, full of messes and mistakes, and successes too. I more fully understood, at least I thought I did then, how little we know about anything.
Twenty years later, I am now at the age of 55, and I know one thing for sure.
I don’t know a god damned thing.
.
