The Funeral and the Feast

The old woman in a white lace dress had appeared in Claudia’s dream three days before her grandfather died. The dress was so crisp, so white, so beautiful it actually frightened her – not the kind of fear that makes you want to pull the blanket over your head, but the kind that roots you to the spot and freezes the blood coursing through your veins. She had woken from this dream with certainty. She knew what was coming. And she had been right.

Now, on the day they buried him, she sat at the far end of a long table in a restaurant that smelled of pickles and candle wax, and tried to make sense of what she actually felt for the man.

Tradition said you were supposed to feed people at a post-burial feast in the name of the dead – strangers, neighbors, anyone who showed up – and through the giving, you did something kind on the departed’s behalf. Claudia’s mother, Maria, had organized it all: the tables, the wine, the vegetarian options, the flowers. She was always very self-reliant so it came as no surprise to anyone that she took it upon herself and didn’t ask for anyone’s help in putting this whole day together. Her grief was enormous, even if somewhat unexpected even to herself. Her conflicting emotions about the man she buried were crammed into a box to keep her from unleashing all her monsters onto the world today of all days.

Maria moved between tables, touching the back of chairs, checking that the wine was poured, the plates of food there for everyone to eat. She paused at the table of women she’d known from childhood, squeezed a shoulder, smiled a smile, wiped a tear from under her glasses. Inside her, something irreversible had shifted. Her father was gone. This rock of a man, with all his sharp edges, was gone. He might not have been a true father to her, but towards the end at least, he tried to play the part. She was now close to 64, a grandmother herself. Somehow, losing a parent had made her feel like a child once more, and losing one of them made her see that soon she’d be no one’s child. These dark thoughts came to her quickly, between the soup course and the mains, and she nearly dropped the wine glass she was holding.

Claudia noticed her mother and said nothing. She had spent the whole day calculating the right gesture – a hand on the arm, a quiet word of comfort – and kept coming up empty. For anyone else in mourning, she would have known exactly what to do and say. For her mother, the wires crossed somewhere. They seemed to always be reaching for each other but missing the mark by an inch.

She turned back to her own table instead.

On her left sat ninety three years old Victor, who had been friends with her grandfather for longer than Claudia’s parents had been alive. He was the spitting image of French movie star from the ‘80s and ‘90s, the beautiful Alain Delon. The man was over six feet tall, full head of silver hair, cleanly shaven and looking dapper in his leather jacket and suit pants. It was easy for Claudia to assume that her grandfather and this man were quite the Casanovas back in the day.

Victor was twirling his glass of red wine and reminiscing about the winter of 1971. He and George – Claudia’s grandfather – had been stranded in a train station on their way home from a work trip. The snowstorm outside had gotten so bad, they had to keep warm inside the train station supervisor’s office, with a bottle of whiskey to share amongst the three of them. They argued for six hours about whether a man owed his country more than he owed his family. George had said country, always. Victor had said family, always. Neither of them could change the other’s mind. It was the best argument they ever had. George had been a stubborn and impossible man. He didn’t care much for family and home, but to each their own Victor always said.

He was retelling this story now to Claudia. He was choosing his words carefully, trying to omit the last part of the story and was going on about this deeply meaningful talk they had, but each time he said it he shared a bit more of the truth with her. She was nodding and anxiously fidgeting under the table wishing this day would come to an end. She wanted the man to stop building a pedestal for her grandfather, she wanted the food to dry out and people to be on their way home, she wanted to crawl into bed and sleep into next week. Then she felt guilty about her mother’s own grief and not being able to help her go through it, not being able to take her pain away.

Three men at her table, men a bit older than Claudia’s father but still younger than her grandfather had been, who knew George from jobs he’d helped them get or favors he’d done for them at work, started discussing a woman named Olga. Specifically, they were discussing who she’d been going on walks with downtown, and how her poor husband was oblivious to what was happening. They all felt bad Olga wasn’t present at the Feast, yet somehow managed to get over their sadness by discussing the woman’s love life in great detail and with more passion than women gossiping.

They weren’t cruel men, exactly. They were just men that thrived in the communist days, who were used to the power of rumours in a small town. They knew that they were only as powerful as the information they held on their neighbors. Knowing that Olga got around and mentioning it at George’s feast was intentional. They laughed with the easy confidence of people who had never been the subject of this particular kind of story. Their wives sat beside them, smiling into their napkins or pressing a breadcrumb with their thumb on the tablecloth.

Claudia felt the familiar heat rise up the back of her neck. She looked at the wives – Mrs. Pavel, who was the high school chemistry teacher everyone in town loved because she always doted on her students; Mrs. Constantine, from across the street, who was famous for her Christmas cake that was even better than her grandmother’s, though she’d never admit it to either of them – and she wanted to say something that would break the whole table open, that would drop their jaws to the floor in shock and horror. She knew she wouldn’t. This was her grandfather’s Feast. She was a passenger in her mother’s grief and she would ride it out. She swallowed it down with a sip of wine and turned back to Alain Delon.

At the table beside theirs, two women sat who had not known George at all. One was the cleaning lady from the apartment building, a small, watchful woman named Ana, who had accepted Maria’s invitation with a nod and brought her cousin along so she wouldn’t come to a dead man’s lunch by herself. Ana was thinking that the soup was very good and hoped there’d be dessert, maybe a chocolate cake. She remembered the one time she’d spoken to George. It had been three years ago in the elevator, when he was already frail. He had asked her where she was from and hearing about that small village made him rant about his youth and having worked in those parts. It wasn’t a meaningful conversation for either of them, it might as well have been about the weather. George, she would later learn from people in the building, had been a director of sorts and had carried that attitude with him always. He talked down to most people in lesser jobs, such as that of a cleaning lady. Ana started taking the stairs almost exclusively. She supposed she came today for the hot meal. There wasn’t any shame in admitting that to herself.

Claudia, who didn’t know about the elevator, looked at Ana and her cousin and wondered if she should fix them a take-away bag as well. She thought about getting some absolution for George’s faults and misdoings through food. She wondered if it worked that way or if it was too much to hope for.

She looked around the restaurant – at Victor, larger than life; at her mother moving through the room like a woman walking a tightrope; at the men laughing; at the wives smiling; at the strangers eating soup.

Her grandfather had been ninety years old. He had been difficult, and harsh, and mean to Maria, and he never took her on vacations, never bought her a doll, never caressed her or told her he loved her. He always picked the nicest apple from the bowl for himself and went on trips alone – but would always find a lady friend there. When Claudia had been left in her grandparents’ care she could feel some tension in the house but nothing concrete. There were no fights, no arguments, no violence of any kind. But there was also never any laughter, no hugs, no kisses or joy. She hadn’t been close to George the way she’d been to her other grandfather, the one who had come to her in a dream, on a bench and let her hold him while he said goodbye. With this one, there had always been a glass between them, she could see him clearly but couldn’t quite touch him.

She felt guilty for that. She felt relieved that it was over. She felt the specific sorrow of mourning not just a man but the relationship she and her mother had never really managed to have with him.

Victor said something else about a different trip he’d been on with George. Claudia laughed – suddenly, caught off guard. Victor smiled with great satisfaction.

“He was never wrong,” he said. “In fifty years, he was never once wrong.”

“I know,” Claudia said.

She did know. And she found, turning her wine glass slowly in her hands while the table swelled with noise around her, that she loved him for it, and resented him for it, and would probably spend years going over those feelings and trying to make some sense of all this.

Outside it started raining again.

The dessert came. And then, as if a bell had sounded that only the guests could hear, everyone rose at once and began to leave.