Stella Atlantis by Susan Perly

Author:Susan Perly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd
Published: 2020-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

17

THE DEAD STILL KVETCH

As soon as they sat down to eat, Stella started. “Why didn’t you come to my funeral?”

Johnny said, “I did.”

“Liar. You did not.”

“Okay. I lied.”

“Why, Dad? Explain to me why.”

“Because the public. Because publicity. Vultures. Paparazzi. Because there was a guy with a placard marching in front of our house, ‘Mister Stella-Denier’ with his ‘There is no child, it’s an actor.’ You want to talk about chutzpah: guy denies you ever existed, then climbs in the limo with us to hitch a ride to your funeral. Chalk it up to the fog of grief, Stellita. And get this, Stel. A shutterbug turns up at your graveside, Mount Sinai; they’re shovelling dirt on your coffin, he’s taking snaps of us. Your uncle Lou took him aside, quietly bent his wrist back, banged his camera around on his titanium knee. That puny paparazzo is suing Lou, last I heard.”

“Hang on a minute, Mister Pitzel. You just said you didn’t come to my funeral, now you’re telling me the guy who denies I ever existed was in the limo with everybody and you to come to the gravesite, bury me?”

“Honey, I got out of the limo at Bathurst and Eglinton. I couldn’t. I walked back home down the Bathurst hill, over the bridge, looked at the ravine, thought of jumping. Made it to Davenport, which got me down to Dupont and I sat in the house a couple weeks, getting, as you used to say, stinky.”

“‘They.’ You said they shovelled dirt on my coffin. My own father. My own dad couldn’t rouse himself enough from his – what is it, exactly again, you do, oh, yeah – writing, to attend my own funeral. They shovelled dirt on my coffin, but you didn’t. Fine father you were.”

“Stel, listen. Look: they trespass on our property, the best of times. They come with copies of a book of mine from, like, thirty years ago, come in the dark on the coldest night of the year, sitting on the doorbell. What the heck do you think the vultures were going to do at your funeral?”

“So I died. Is that any reason you can’t come hang out at my tombstone?”

“I came.”

“When? First I ever heard of it.”

“Alone. On your yahrzeit. November 2.”

“I wasn’t dead, that day.”

“Yes, you were.”

“No, I wasn’t, Poppa. I was on life support. I died on November 9; I got buried the next day. Even my own dad can’t come to my grave on the right date.”

“Stella. People I intersect with occasionally, maybe in my work from time to time, they become personally invested in me. Their ego, their id, their future, oh shit, I don’t know, they assume a personal relationship. Snowstorm, midnight, they’re on our porch, like I’m an all-night rabbi, or a hotline counsellor.”

“And this has to do with why you didn’t attend my funeral how?”

“You know, at Stan’s service, two different people, women, what a shanda, shame on them, they asked to have a photo with me. At my best friend’s funeral?!”

“Very nice.

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