Splitting the Difference Read online

  I tell him that I have to start the eulogy tonight and just the thought of it staggers me.

  Alberto will be my third eulogy, I explain, but when I think of how pitch-perfect this one has to be, well, I don’t know how to start.

  Two hours into the meeting with Pastor Weinbaum, he says he’d like to pray with us and would that be okay?

  My parents and I join hands with a man who thanks God for the privilege of spending an afternoon with the Miller and Rodríguez families. He asks God to fill the apartment with peace. To comfort us, strengthen, and enable us.

  When he says Amen, he looks at me.

  I’m compelled to tell you something, Tré, and I know it will sound crazy.

  He pauses for a long moment before drawing in breath.

  I’d like for you to approach Alberto’s eulogy as a thing to be embraced, not feared.

  Really, I say.

  Surround yourself with your memories of him, Tré. Bring out his pictures and the love letters you exchanged. Read them, relish them, translate them into your tribute of him. Strange as it sounds, he says, try and appreciate this experience: it is a singular moment, one you won’t get to do again.

  By the time I walk Pastor Weinbaum out of our apartment, I’m actually inspired to write the eulogy. Except I can’t start yet: the music for the service must be selected.

  After visiting First Presbyterian Church four days ago, Pastor Edie had given me a hymnbook to take home.

  The organist can play everything in it, she said.

  Can he do anything by Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra? I’d asked.

  Sorry, nothing secular, she said.

  Can he play these hymns on piano instead of the organ?

  The pastor looked surprised. We have a really good organ—have you heard it?

  I have—and it’s a really nice organ, I nodded, but Alberto loved piano. I bought him lessons for Christmas one year. A piano is what he would’ve wanted.

  She agreed to tell the organist to play piano.

  Leaving the church, I had asked my mom to go through the book and flag all the songs she thought might work. It occurs to me now that I will have to choose the song for when the coffin enters. And when it departs.

  I cannot imagine there’s a hymn for either of these moments, so when Mom hands me the hymnal tagged with Post-its tonight, I shake my head and look away.

  She takes my hand.

  I’ve done the work already, she says. All you have to do is choose.

  All I have to do is choose, I repeat.

  I can choose.

  “How Great Thou Art” is the first Post-it.

  It hearkens me back to my California childhood and Sunday sermons at Lake Avenue Congregational in Pasadena.

  Sorry, I say, this song reminds me of Dad. Next.

  Upon hearing his name, Dad peeks into the living room.

  How’s it going? he asks.

  It’s going, I say, and veto the next few songs based on title or overt sentimentality.

  I’m looking for something grand, I explain. Something sweeping.

  Grand and sweeping, my mom repeats. Well, let’s see. She tucks her blonde hair behind her ears and shifts the book back to her lap.

  I get up to find a beer.

  When I return, she looks eager.

  How about “Crown Him With Many Crowns?”

  The title certainly works, I say, Alberto was rather fond of the phrase Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

  I start humming the song from memory and she joins in with the words. I imagine it being played on piano, echoing through the church.

  It’s definitely commanding, I say. I can visualize an entire congregation standing as this song starts. It sounds like a coffin-entering-the-church song.

  Sold, I say, one down, one to go.

  Actually, Mom says, two to go: there’s also the hymn that will be played while people are entering and being seated.

  We dive back into the book, and when we get to “O for a Thousand Tongues,” I can’t remember how the song goes.

  Can you sing it, Mom?

  She launches into the first verse and I close my eyes to concentrate. Just as I’m starting to see that it might work as the people-being-seated song, she stops singing. I open my eyes.

  Why’d you stop? Keep going! Please?

  She picks up the second verse and my dad joins in. I close my eyes, smiling at the sound of my parents harmonizing like off-key angels.

  It’s perfect, I sigh. Thank you. That will be the people-being-seated song.

  Only one more to find, I think. The hardest one.

  My mom has flagged “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” but that song reminds me of her and the next flag, “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less,” is way too cheery. We’re now three hundred pages deep in the hymnal: what if we get to the end of the book without finding the coffin-departing song?

  I take a few deep breaths and head to the bathroom where I turn on the faucet and talk myself back from the ledge: You can do this. It’s one song. As soon as you pick it, you can tell the night shift to come over, put your parents in a cab, and start the eulogy. So just effing do it.

  I return to the living room, where another half-dozen hymns are considered and dismissed. When we land on “To God Be the Glory,” I don’t recognize it.

  Can you guys sing this one?

  I close my eyes, lean into the sofa, and listen.

  The words are not funereal words—let the people rejoice is something you’d sing at a wedding or a baptism—but no choir will be singing these words. The melody is what matters: and it’s not too peppy, not too somber. The tone and pace of the piece shifts between a reverent adagio and a hopeful allegro.

  Can I carry his coffin out of the church as this song plays? Will it capture the spirit of him? Of the moment?

  My parents sing the last verse, and I decide.

  “To God Be the Glory” is officially the coffin-departing song.

  * * *

  When my friend Jessica exits the elevator, I put my parents into it, kissing them goodnight.

  Thank you, Jess, I say. For coming in from Connecticut. For being up for this.

  Don’t thank me, she says, softly. Just tell me what I can do.

  Here’s the agenda, I say. We gotta figure out what a girl wears to her husband’s viewing and to his funeral. Because if we don’t decide this tonight, it’ll take me four hours to get dressed tomorrow and Saturday. Also, I say, we need to write at least half the eulogy tonight.

  Let’s make it happen, she says.

  An hour later, outfits are sorted and Jess helps me take everything off the desk except the computer. We load it all into a canvas bag and put it in Alberto’s closet.

  I pull my “Alberto Box” from a cabinet and spread our mementos out like a map: postcards, letters, wedding vows, florist cards, hotel room keys, ticket stubs. I open my Moleskine with the notes and quotes I’ve been writing all week. I start plotting the journey and don’t stop until 6am.

  * * *

  I wake to the smell of bacon and sit up in bed.

  I hear it sizzling in the kitchen.

  Jess? Are you . . . are you cooking bacon?

  The sizzling stops.

  Sunshine, I’m a vegetarian.

  I know this already. I’m a fishetarian myself. Have been for eighteen years. And yet our apartment is filled with the scent of pork, one of his favorite food groups?

  But, my voice breaks, I smell bacon.

  I wander into the living room and see that it’s snowing. If Alberto were here, he’d take one look at my California nose pressed against the window like an eight-year-old and say WEATHER! in a teasing voice.

  I nearly jump when Jess wraps her arms around me.

  Sorry, I say. I’m all nerve
s right now.

  It’s okay, she says, gently. I don’t want to leave you, but I need to go home and change clothes. Left in such a rush last night, I forgot my overnight bag.

  Oh, I say. Let me see if Tony Papa can come over. He flew in from L.A. last night.

  I’ll leave in ten, he says.

  He’s on his way from the Standard, I tell Jess. It’s ten blocks away. Go. I’ll be okay.

  Should I wait? she asks.

  No, I’ll be fine.

  Soon as the door shuts behind her, I’m not fine.

  I should not be wandering our apartment alone so I take a shower to fill up the time until Tony Papa—whom no one calls by first name only—arrives.

  When he does, he gives me a long hug and asks how I’m holding up.

  Longest week of my life, Tony Papa.

  I can imagine, he says.

  I explain that I want our wedding video to play while I’m getting ready: would he mind keeping the DVD looping?

  Show me to the remote, he says.

  I need to hear Alberto’s voice for the next two hours. Need to hear the toasts and the Frank Sinatra and see us dancing. I need to absorb the most sentimental moment of our marriage so I can prepare for its most unsentimental moment: his viewing.

  * * *

  My darling, my love: this can’t be you.

  These are your eyebrows, red glasses, cuticles, but the rest of it?

  Not the you I knew.

  The you I knew is above your casket, in the memorial video. In the footage of us kissing our way into the candlelit wedding reception with twenty of our closest friends and family, flashbulbs illuminating us. I want to melt into the video but instead, I’m stuck in this godawful movie—at the part where the wife kneels beside her husband’s coffin—with no idea what to do next.

  No one stops me from touching his shaved head, his face, his hands: I don’t know how to be near him and not touch him. His skin may be cold and the wrong color, but I still want to climb inside and spoon him.

  I’m holding his hands when I hear his sister’s voice behind me.

  Is she?

  Saying what I think she’s saying?

  That Albert looks like a . . . scary Santa?

  She is.

  And dear God, he does.

  When I embrace Barby and her husband, Anthony, I am laugh-crying. The three of us hold hands and stand over the casket, shifting our gaze between the body of Alberto and the movie of him. As childhood pictures flash on the screen, Barby narrates: That’s Albert on his sixth birthday. That’s him in the front yard of our house in Kendall. There’s Albert crying on the lap of a very scary Santa.

  The inside joke hits us unexpectedly and we laugh until the video fades from upbeat Cuban music into Donna Summer’s “Dim All the Lights.”

  We stand there, swaying to the footage of Alberto and I dancing at our wedding. When a close-up of us kissing fades to a final shot of his name on the place card at our reception, I drop Barby and Anthony’s hands. I sink into a chair and try to find a comfortable position.

  There isn’t one.

  I want to crawl out of this scene, out of my skin, out of this sweater dress he bought for me. Out of these heels he chose and earrings he brought back from Tel Aviv.

  How do I have all these things but not him?

  Doris, one of Alberto’s favorite childhood friends, sees me panicking and approaches.

  Wraps me in a hug.

  Thank you for flying up from Miami, I manage. How are . . . the kids?

  She summarizes the family highlights but when we run out of words, we find ourselves looking at Alberto.

  I find myself—ridiculously—explaining his silence.

  If he could, he would thank you too, I say.

  I brought something for him, Doris says, placing an ice-cold package in my hands that makes me think of his skin.

  Fifty frozen croquetas, she says. From Versailles.

  Alberto’s favorite dish from his favorite Cuban bakery in Little Havana.

  You can put them in the freezer tonight and tomorrow you can—

  She doesn’t finish the sentence.

  No need.

  I understand that she’s asking me to place the package in his casket tomorrow before they close it.

  The gesture is so thoughtful and the subtext so searing—these croquetas will cook in the crematory oven—that I have to excuse myself.

  * * *

  There’s a break from 5 to 7pm, someone says. We should go to dinner.

  Dinner?

  Um, I’ll pass.

  I see twenty or so people—close friends and family—in the lobby, pulling on jackets.

  I look at his casket and hesitate.

  We’re leaving him? Alone?

  When my mom appears with my coat, I shake my head.

  It doesn’t feel right, I say. To leave him.

  She nods and sits beside me.

  In the silence and thick scent of flowers, one minute feels like an hour.

  I approach the coffin.

  I don’t want to abandon you, Alberto, I say. But everyone’s waiting to get something to eat.

  At this precise moment, the memorial video cuts to Alberto raising his glass at our wedding dinner.

  I take it as a sign.

  I kiss his cold cheek and tell him that I’ll be back in two hours.

  If you could talk, I say, I know you’d say that you’ll be here.

  That was one of our phrases, I tell Mom as we walk toward the lobby. Whenever one of us was going somewhere without the other: You’ll be there? I’ll be here.

  Yes, she says, I remember you guys saying that.

  I feel the tears so I put on sunglasses before walking the half-block to Da Silvano, one of his favorite restaurants.

  When I open the door, the memories assault me.

  I start backing outside—why did we come here? Was this my stupid idea?—but now Ramses and Jeanette have stood up and beckoned to me.

  People are turning around.

  Making room.

  I keep my sunglasses on and order a Peroni. Someone orders me a caprese salad that I don’t touch. Around me, everyone is eating, laughing, shouting in Spanish.

  On the one hand, this is how it should be: Alberto was never one for somber affairs.

  On the other, it’s just wrong.

  I slip away from the table, lock the restroom door and cry on the cold floor of the candlelit bathroom.

  Someone knocks and asks if I’m okay.

  I laugh—what a dumb question—before remembering that this is the very same exchange Alberto and I had through our bathroom door on Sunday.

  I stand up, blow my nose, and tell the voice on the other side that I’m not okay but I’ll be out in a minute.

  * * *

  When viewing hours are over, I kiss Alberto’s cheek goodnight and Jeanette, who drove in from Virginia, accompanies me back to the apartment. There’s a eulogy to finish and she’s agreed to stay the night.

  When we open the front door, I’m relieved that the housekeeper left the living-room lamps on and that my family brought Alberto’s pictures and mementos back from the funeral home, along with a bouquet of yellow roses from HBO Latino.

  I head straight into the office but when I switch on the desk light, nothing happens.

  I try again.

  Nothing.

  The bulb’s burned out, I shout.

  When Jeanette doesn’t respond, I return to the living room.

  She’s white as rice.

  Tré, I’m sorry, it’s just, I can’t believe it. So many memories in this apartment.

  Take your time, I nod. Do what you need to do.

  From the liquor cabinet, I bring out the Havana Club and pour two shot
s into the clear espresso glasses in which I served Alberto his morning cafecito.

  I set the rums on the bar and return to the office. But when I grab the mouse, the computer screen remains black. I move the mouse again. Still black. The light and the computer aren’t working?

  Shit, I shout. The housekeeper. She must’ve shut something off!

  Did I save the eulogy last night? This morning?

  Jeanette rushes in as I’m pressing the power—and the panic—button.

  Nothing.

  The eulogy. The effing eulogy.

  Jeanette asks what we need to do.

  Something’s unplugged, I moan. And we’re gonna have to pull this desk armoire and those fucking cabinets out from the wall to reach the power strip.

  Then that’s what we’re going to do, she says, calmly.

  Together, we move furniture, locate the surge protector, and restart it. When I hear the espresso machine starting up, I climb out of the chaos and switch on the desk lamp.

  The light blinks on.

  I press a button and hear the deep, orchestral sound of a Mac powering up.

  Thank you, Jeanette, thank God.

  We move the unit back and salùd Alberto with rum while the computer loads.

  Which feels like hours.

  I click the icon titled “One Mourning in the Month of March” and scan it quickly for what I remember writing before going to bed.

  It’s all here.

  I exhale and start typing.

  Jeanette pulls up a chair.

  * * *

  It’s 3am and I’m spent.

  Can’t we set the alarm for 6am, I beg Jeanette. And finish it then?

  I think we can do more, she says. Her Colombian accent is optimistic. Convincing.

  You’re right, I say, we can do more.

  More rum.

  The writing follows.

  * * *

  The 26th of August 2005, was the happiest day of my life. It was the day Alberto and I were married. And I’d like to share it with you today by reading the wedding vows we exchanged on that summer evening.

  These were my promises: