a steady pulse permeates the feverish darkness, filling the room with a hypnotizing beat. near the source are a group of people gathered in a circle, all eyes fixed on the one in the center. suddenly, at a moment indistinguishable from all that had come before, a word is spoken:
sống!
life thus being granted - no, obliged - i did what everyone else was doing and began to dance.
within an hour of stepping back into the cold, gray ether of long island, i was whisked away by my sister to my grandfather's house. just days before it was still technically "grandma and grandpa's," but stepping inside i realized the house i was in now was not the "grandma and grandpa's" i remembered. this place which, with the exception of last year, i'd spent every christmas eve in recent memory, had died long before my grandmother passed away.
as a child, the house was endearing in its alien magnificence. i would rush out of the car to get to the door before my sisters so i could ring the doorbell. reaching up, i'd press that warmly glowing button and through the door i'd faintly hear that familiar melody being played on the brass chimes clanging throughout the whole house. a moment later my smiling grandpa would swing both the door and his arms open saying "matty! how are ya my boy!" my grandmother, stepping out of the kitchen, would smother me in a hug while reassuring me i'd been growing. then she used to grab and squeeze part of my face, as punishment for growing i suppose, until the day i was finally tall enough to be out of the reach of her cheek-seeking pincers.
directly across from the front door was a mirror that has showed me to myself, as i was, each and every time i've ever walked into this enchanting baroque palace. mirrors were everywhere, covering the full span of no less than 4 walls and the bathroom door. wherever i went, another me would be looking right back at me - blinking, staring, walking, glancing, dancing, laughing. the one in the bathroom, encased on 3 sides, was my favorite because looking to either side, the room seemed to extend forever, replicating the viewer ad infinitum. once, wondering if my doppelgangers all stayed inside there when i left, i walked outside and closed the door but left enough space for me to stick my head in. then i slowly inched my way in until i could see a million me's peering at and examining each other and me.
next to the steps was a bed of rocks which featured a fountain from which columns of invisible, inaudible, and even intangible water cascaded down. we sat down next to this curious fountain, lit by red lights, to remove our shoes before going into the den. following the clear plastic path in there led to the rear dining room, which was ever redolent with the heavy aromas of my grandpa's cigars. we were required to always
always remain on the runner, unless of course i was wearing my anti-gravity socks. the house was so steeped in magic that, at one time, i could even transform the carpet in the den into a swamp and me, the swamp monster, pulling my sisters down from the stairs and into my bog of death.
usually the adults sat on the plastic-wrapped sofa and talked about things that didn't involve lego's, transformers, or videogames while my sisters and i played some kind of game, or rather my sisters did something by themselves while i poked them, pulled their hair, threw things at them, or otherwise bugged them until someone (usually me) got yelled at. on nice days, we were taken down the street to a wondrous, monolithic structure that featured chain walls, metal bars, and swinging rungs navigable by only the bravest adventurers. here we competed in various competitions that would culminate in a danger-laden obstacle course, complete with swirling slides and dungeons constructed of tires, with everything connected by various bridges suspended above a pit of lava.
i always enjoyed exploring, whether it was the school playground, the limits of my sisters' patience, or the forbidden and mysterious upstairs. one day i learned that the stairs where we sat to take our shoes off and the stairs on which we kept ourselves busy in the living room were connected by an exotic half-floor filled with mystical statues and mysterious chairs no one ever sat in. the discovery would forever change my relationship with that house, but at the time i thought so only because it offered me a new way to sneak up on my sisters and scare the bejesus out of them.
but before i ever even made it up there, i cautiously climbed up those burgundy carpeted steps one at a time, and leapt from each one until i got to the top. despite it being only half a flight, the view from 5 steps up was enough to deter me from attempting the jump for several visits. when i finally worked up the courage to do it, i remember free-falling downward, landing hard on the carpet and rolling out of it, but i don't at all remember the crowd of people applauding, vigorously shaking my hand and hoisting me on their shoulders, as surely they must have done for someone accomplishing such a feat.
my father grew up in this house, along with an older sister and younger brother. his sister became estranged from the family following her wedding, which only under rare circumstances is ever discussed. however his younger brother, my uncle peter (perhaps the antithesis of my deceased
uncle chris), became a legend among me and my sisters for his extraordinary ability to understand and be a part of our simple, silly little world - our childish delights, our whimsical games, our endless hopes. but he died about 10 years ago from a misdiagnosed and mistreated bout of pneumonia that slowly weakened him, destroying him bit by bit until he finally succumbed to the savage microbe at the age of 34. one premature death begot another, providing the catalyst for my grandmother's metamorphosis into the aloof vessel of gloom and despair we unfortunately came to know her as.
at that time, the cumulative loss seemed to steal from the house some of the winsome spirit that had captivated me as a child, and with the real, physical exit of my grandmother, the house was altogether devoid of its former character. laying now on that once-daunting top step i closed my eyes to shun the light relentlessly streaming in through the curtainless windows, illuminating old dusty furniture in an empty, ordinary room. many of the paintings depicting christian iconography and various jesus chachkas seemed to be missing, but the most curious absence was that of the static electric charge that used to shock me whenever i touched a wall. i miss that. for as long as i can ever remember being in that house i received at least one shock a visit, but now there wasn't even that. downstairs my grandfather was on the phone with a social security agent, informing the united states government they had one less citizen to care for. he was put on hold.
a chandelier placed just in front of the door hung just low enough to separate the lorusso's from everyone taller than 5 and a half feet, i, just barely, being the only exception. i remember using it as an indication of my height, extending one arm as high as i could to try and touch one of the large, sparkling rubies hanging down from it, until one day i did, and realized they weren't actually gems, merely cheap imitations like many of the objects in that house i once believed were priceless treasures. and just like when i reasoned that it was in fact my parents who were leaving me gifts under the tree on christmas, i didn't really care. but the revelation nevertheless chipped away at a beguiling world of artifice i was all too ready to abandon. and yet before leaving the house, the world around me shifted once again when my grandfather, holding up his gout-swollen hand, asked me to tie his shoes for him because he couldn't do it himself. and i did, because that's just what one does in that situation.
by following the others and learning from their experiences, i gradually came to understand the rules of the game. and with that, i became aware of the ever-present threat of immediate and irreversible death. yet we all continued to dance, anxiously watching the one in the middle and awaiting the next command. sống or chết. which would it be?
the first wake would be the worst one i was told. i wouldn't know since i'd only been to one other and i hadn't known the person. i expected hours of quiet contemplation, but when i walked in, there was my mother hugging my older sister, crying, not quietly contemplating at all. she said grandma didn't look anything like herself, and my mother nodded. i've always felt the idea of displaying a dead body is unfair. it's unfair to the rightful, albeit absent, possessor of the corpse who has no say in how they look, which was especially offensive because my grandma was so particular about her appearance. but it's also unfair to the people who, in spite of a deep affection for the body when it was animated, have no special affinity for a rotting pile of flesh.
so i stayed as far away from the casket as was respectfully permitted. a collection of photographs instantly caught my attention, evoking a silent, recursively blasphemous "thank god there is no god" because if there was, and my grandmother found out my mom had done this, everyone who looked at the pictures would be dead and my mom would go to hell. my grandmother absolutely hated having her picture taken,
way more than me. pictures are ruthless in their ability to seduce people into accepting them as an artifact of an objective reality. and that's fucked up. being permanent, static, and available for anyone to peruse, pictures lack the subjectivity and privacy of mirrors for which she apparently had such a strong preference. installing a full-length mirror in her casket would have been a much more appropriate homage.
the only pictures she considered tolerable were the staged, "say cheese" photos, which i believe to be the worst kind. most were from special occasions - her wedding, my dad's wedding, and a birthday party. a picture of her parents made me briefly ponder the possibility that i am in fact a descendant of oompa-loompas. most interesting though was a picture of another person i never knew - a young girl sitting daintily on a fence, guarding dreams of grandeur, who looked familiar, but was otherwise a stranger. i could only assume her childhood differed from mine in every respect except in its fleeting chimerical essence. it starkly contrasted with a picture of her from last thanksgiving, where she was obviously caught with a sneak attack "hey grandma!" CLICK. she looked so pitiable with her bird's nest hair, mouth half agape, and eyes that betrayed a pathetic helplessness in having just been raped by a rogue picture-taker. later my sister explained that my grandmother had pleaded with her to delete the picture. instead it was featured front and center at her wake. i shuddered at the thought of her knowing about this.
the morbid curiosity that presumably underlies these bizarre ceremonies soon began to set in, and i awkwardly moved closer and closer to the dreadful thing, waiting for a moment when i could be somewhat alone with it, kinda like at my first school dance, or the prom for that matter i suppose. from several feet away i could see that her consistently reddish, brown hair was cut shorter than i'd ever seen it - another indignity. it's hardly a secret that she always styled her hair in such a way that it made her appear taller than her 4 foot 9 inch stature suggested. in the days when my mom used to drive her to the beauty parlor, this meant a massive perm, but in more recent times simply allowing her hair to be unkempt achieved an acceptably comparable effect. i have to say that the haircut she sported in the casket made her look neither shorter nor taller, just weird, as if she had died and someone said "what this old dead woman needs is a new do."
the not quite life-sized doll dress was as striking as the haircut. i later found out it was provided by the funeral home because my grandfather, unsurprisingly, couldn't find a dress of her own. i guess a blouse and stretch pants are not appropriate casket attire, or alternatively, don't meet the dress code requirements in the afterlife. reassured by routine and banality, her appearance rarely deviated. the blouse was always white and, archetypically, with black stretch pants and a black vest. if she ever wore a colored garment, cream for example, either black or white would be there to complement it in some way. colors, she felt, didn't suit her and thus restricted her image to a very limited number of colorless varieties.
her cooking, for which she was best remembered, was similar in that her 3 most popular dishes - lasagna, manicotti, and my favorite, stuffed shells - were essentially different takes on the same theme, and never changed year after year. but whereas triteness in fashion, no matter how glamorous the clothes may be, soon becomes vulgar, good food falling into an empty stomach suffers from no such pretension. i was always pardoned from having to comment on the quality, allowing my mouthful of food to suffice as a compliment. even standing adjacent her corpse, i knew the realest loss would be that of a pan full of those few, yet invariably delicious, configurations of pasta, cheese, and sauce during the holidays.
knowing how much we loved her cooking, she had already prepared the sauce for christmas when she went to the hospital for a knee operation just after thanksgiving. she seemed to be recovering ok until she started complaining of stomach pains a few days later. unbeknownst to the doctors, microbes had gotten the better of her immune system, and were voraciously eating away at her intestines. soon she was unable to eat and in incredible pain. so 2 weeks after the previous operation, she had another one, this time to remove her badly infected colon and part of her small intestine. she never recovered.
after the surgery her blood pressure fell, unable to handle the massive trauma her feeble body had sustained. for the next several days she was administered an assortment of drugs to keep her blood pressure at a life sustaining level. this effectively over-hydrated her, bloating her to such an extreme proportion that my parents said she was unrecognizable, even more so than how she appeared in the casket. to relieve the swelling, she was administered another drug, which in turn caused her kidneys to fail. meanwhile, pain killers kept her sedated, leaving her just barely conscious enough for her to qualify as alive, though forever trapped in her own decrepit body. a few days later, once all hope was lost, my grandfather ultimately made the decision to let her die.
with no one else in the room, and so close that a musty, suffocating aroma of antibacterial perfume now inundated me, i gazed upon the cadaver. at first it seemed merely disfigured, but the more i looked at it the more hideous it appeared. buried underneath a layer of paint that marked the lips red and eyelids blue was a grotesquely pallid face, wrinkles exchanged for cracks in the make-up. the fragile skin around the face and neck seemed to have been stretched to its limit, as if she'd been blown up and deflated just before she burst. had i pinched and pulled those cheeks now the way she used to lovingly do to me, they surely would have torn from the face. however the most appalling feature of this obscene effigy was the ear, which had slid down nearly to the neck. casually horrified, i stepped away, and waited to leave for dinner.
suddenly realizing i was the only one dancing, i didn't need the one in the middle pointing at me to tell me i was already dead. i felt cheated because i hadn't heard the command, but to be fair, it was said and i didn't heed it. by this point, i had played the game long enough to know that this is simply what happens, and now it was my turn. so in spite of the ecstasy having long since worn off, i stepped to the center, looked at these insane people pretending to be statues, and shouted into the ether:
sống!
and everyone danced.
50 Dinh Cong Trang (click to enlarge)
