Year of the Rat by Marc Anthony Richardson

Author:Marc Anthony Richardson
Format: epub

THE CLOSET DOOR IS PULLED BACK. What are you doing? I’m praying. Oh, are you hungry? And remembering the row at the restaurant, without looking at him the firstborn, I simply say that I don’t have much of an appetite. Yes yes, he says, you always had to be a little hungry. I pack the remaining parcels of our father’s possessions into the sedan to redistribute later, but as the firstborn is driving, taking the roundabout way to the Facility, he passes through the old neighborhood and I become angry: two days ago I had asked if he wanted to take the short drive down with me to the nearby county—thirty minutes away—where the second son is being momentarily detained until his private viewing of the body (his last-minute reprieve having come from a former protégé’s transport payment), and the firstborn in his matter-of-fact way of manhandling matters had said that he still had a million things to do: wasn’t he the one handling the affairs? But what is he doing now, taking me on a trip down memory lane for some sentimental ambush? The sedan stops in front of a gas station mini-mart, the scene of the crimes: there is a cenotaphic telephone pole on the corner riddled with oxidized staples and standing in memoriam to superimposed homicides: withered flowers and faded photos, tattered teddies and discolored hearts, deflated-in-spirit balloons and a cluster of laminated bereavement cards all dripping with grief and regret, encircled by a séance of melted-down multi-colored candles that you would think people would stop stopping here. I need copies, he says. He needs copies of the death certificate, copies of the will, copies of each of the bank forms handling the estate (yes yes, the father had an estate), leaving the firstborn and the lastborn (the second son having already been bestowed by the city to the state) over thirty-three thousand dollars—before the angel of taxes of course—in checking and CDs and variable annuity for a three-way split between Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, for the father will surely be the angel in the furnace soon; he needs copies of the notarized renunciation document stating that the head of the will has signed over the whole affair to him (with the strict stipulation of cremation), for the branch manager of a downtown bank will surely need to secure a short certificate from the city court in order to set up an estate account in the father’s name; he needs copies of all the receipts of all the expenses: the filing fee the mortuary fee the cremation fee the church-usage/repast-preparation/presiding-pastor-honorarium fee the columbarium-plaque-complete-with-porcelain-picture fee the inscription fee and the book-shaped-portmanteau/installation fee (the safe deposit box for the cremains and its armored compartment—two per double niche—inside Ivy Hill Cemetery), totaling ten thousand one hundred and sixty-three dollars and seventeen cents that, my god, death doesn’t disturb me as much as the documentation. I would rather deal with tangibles. I would rather deal with the three of us in

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