Coda:
Doesn’t Mr. Kellermann Know That He Has No Hair?
PM
Kellermann
3 August 2003: Beth Israel Cemetery, Woodbridge, NJ.
I arrive at my destination a little wobblier than anticipated. Driving up Route 1, past sights all-too-familiar yet eerily transformed, central Jersey feels more dilapidated than I remember. A coat of grayish-brown drapes the buildings. Even the newer strip malls with their bright facades seem worn down and decaying. I feel distanced, as if the roads I once traveled daily have been reduced to an image from some depressing independent film.
I pull into the cemetery and drive to the burial plot by rote. I park on the side of the cemetery road and get out of the car. The graves aren’t there. Different pattern. Different names. I pull up to the next block. Still not there. I glance around the massive cemetery looking for familiar landmarks, but I don’t see any that might indicate the location of the plots. From a distance, everything in Beth Israel looks the same, generic—flat stones to one side, monuments to the other. I’m lost. Memory fails me. I close my eyes and attempt to conjure images from the funerals. But in the snapshots, the background blurs. I ponder whether I will need to walk the entire cemetery to find the graves. Instead, I drive back to the entrance and start over. This time, I drive directly to the spot.
It’s hazy. It’s sticky. Heat and humidity both hover around 90—New Jersey as I remember it, a prototypical Jersey summer day. As I walk from the car, sweat pours down my forehead, smearing across my sunglasses, dripping down my chin and off my beard.
Mom and Dad have new neighbors. Fresh gravestones liven up the block—shiny granite, covered with stones from recent visitors. Ritual calls for visitors to lay a pebble on a loved one’s headstone—a calling card of sorts that dates back to ancient custom. By comparison, Mom and Dad’s graves look dusty and neglected.
I scan the ground looking for stones to place on the grave markers, but I don’t see any. I consider borrowing rocks from Mom and Dad’s new neighbors, but instead I walk the twenty feet back toward the car to gather stones from the roadside. As I return to the graves, I am struck by fear. Brian’s headstone has disappeared. Only a deep indentation remains where the flat marker had been. Why would anyone steal Brian’s tombstone? Rather than contemplate the unthinkable, I kneel to examine the site more closely. Brushing away the dirt and grass clippings, I find the marker underneath, sunken three inches below ground level, where the earth had settled above Brian’s corpse. I continue cleaning before placing my pebble.
I sit beside a tree, in the shade, to write in my journal. An SUV pulls up and the driver rolls down his window. A middle-aged bald man cranes his head and asks, “Are you okay?”
I look up and smile. The sweat drenching my face must look like tears. “Yeah,” I say. He drives away.
I’m a middle-aged man, too, visiting my family. As a teenager, I frolicked on these grounds—smoked joints not far from where I sit, cutting through the cemetery to get to the mall. Now, I visit my family’s graves—seven years to the day after moving away. Since then, I’ve only been back once: 13 December 1996, the day we closed on the sale of my parents’ house, the day that would have been my father’s eightieth birthday.
I returned to Jersey yesterday to go to a party with my old college chums. Old men and women, talking about the old times, forcing ourselves to have fun, eating and drinking too much, staying up until five a.m. as if to prove that we still can. It’s nice to nostalgize about happier times every once in a while, even if those times weren’t quite as happy as we all seem to remember.
Who would have thought twenty-five years ago that we’d all end up in a remodeled kitchen suburban Princeton, exchanging business cards and email addresses, retelling stories we’ve all heard a million times? Who would have thought that we’d all survive? Back then, we never looked more than a day or two into the future. And we never looked further into the past than the last bong hit. For some in the kitchen, the past is all they have; they’ve cast the future on their children’s lives. For me, the past is illusory—a collection of disassociated stories, better remembered through the retelling than from living through the experiences.
Sitting under the tree, writing in my journal, my hangover finally begins to dissipate. I’m waiting for the rain. A steady din of traffic streams by on the Garden State Parkway. The wind picks up. Storm clouds surround on three sides. Brilliant blue skies rise in the south. Or is it the east?
At Lynne’s funeral, cousin Robert wailed against this tiny maple. Eyes turned, as if he were creating an unwelcomed spectacle by letting go of his emotions. Jewish law forbids expressions of excessive grief, but secretly I envied Robert’s ability to put his sorrow on display. I barely cried at any of the funerals. A few drops for show. Staging a larger show by trying to remain stoic. My stoicism drew praise from the incidental mourners and became a part of my personal mythology.
I place a stone between the first and last name of each member of the family. The lettering on Brian’s marker is smaller than the lettering on Lynne’s. I wonder why I never noticed that they failed to follow my instructions to have Brian’s marker match the rest. Brian always had to be a little different.
Before I leave, I spray water on the markers and towel off the dirt. I place another stone on each of the graves. Directly overhead, the sun shines through blue skies. Everywhere else, ominous storm clouds threaten.
w w w w w
I put pressure on myself to visit my family this summer—feeling that I could not complete the book without doing so. For seven years, this book has consumed me—addictively writing about my family, perpetuating the mourning cycle. In a sense, I’ve created a stasis for myself. By connecting writing with grief, I’ve allowed myself to remain in a constant state of bereavement, unable to move on with unfinished business left to attend.
And yet, for the past two or three years, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid writing. Often, I use work as my excuse. I’m just too busy, I tell myself; my teaching schedule leaves precious little time to explore my passion. But I’m a good enough teacher to recognize a rationalization when I hear one. I know all the excuses; I’ve used most of them myself.
In truth, I simply haven’t felt like writing. I’ve been unwilling to subject myself to reliving the pain. Nor have I given myself permission to let go of it. So long as the book lingers as a work-in-progress, I can wear the pain as a protective barrier—an excuse to remain transfixed. But I’ve grown weary of making excuses. And I have begun to question whether I’ve been carrying the weight of placebos.
If I cease to feel depressed, will I cease to feel at all? If I forget that I’m depressed, will I also forget the people who once loved me?
w w w w w
I leave the cemetery and drive the mile back to Menlo Park Terrace. Traffic along Route 1 is at a standstill. It always is. Rather than get annoyed—or drive miles out of my way to avoid the traffic as I used to do—I sink into the stillness. The air conditioner blares. R.E.M. plays on the stereo. It’s these little things; they can pull you under / Live your life filled with joy and wonder… The stillness feels good. I’m in no hurry. Slipping into the stop-and-go rhythm, I work the brake pedal. The incremental progress feels familiar and yet the accompanying futility of getting nowhere in a hurry seems to have evaporated. Crossing under the Parkway overpass, I look rightward toward the old neighborhood. Tall weeds cover the small field where we sometimes played tackle football as kids. A chain link fence now separates the field from the neighborhood. I slide across the Parkway exit and ride the shoulder to Ford Avenue.
New potholes dot the streets of the Terrace. Otherwise, little has changed. The Swiss Motel has a new name. I try to remember whether it was still called the Swiss Motel when I lived there last. Driving slowly up Maryknoll, I take an inventory of the houses. I want to see everyone, but I’m also hoping that no one is out so I can drive by without being noticed.
I turn right onto Atlantic and then park in front of the Beatons’ house. Mr. Beaton’s old Ford van sits in the driveway along with another car that I don’t recognize. I look across the driveway toward 216. It’s not the same; it’s not my house. The house has been re-sided in the blandest beige. It sparkles. And the front window has been replaced. The porch looks miniscule beneath the jutting bay window. All the windows have been replaced by oversized monstrosities, giving the house a disjointed asymmetrical look. It looks good. It’s not my house. Brian’s rock garden is gone, replaced by a traditional suburban lawn.
For a moment, I sit there with the engine running and air conditioning blaring. R.E.M. continues playing as I take off my sunglasses and replace them with my bifocals. I scan the block. There seem to be fewer trees than I remember. Everything looks old—even the new house that sits at 216.
No one answers when I ring the Beatons’ bell. I ring it a second time. No reply. I reach into the pocket of my cargo shorts and pull out one of my business cards. I think about slipping it into the screen door and slipping away unnoticed. Instead, I decide to go back to my car and write a note and leave it in the mailbox. As I walk down the sidewalk, I hear the front door open. I turn around. Mr. Beaton seems startled. “Oh my God,” he cries in his thick Cuban accent. “Paul… Paul… Oh my God… Paul… What are you… Paul… Paul… Come in… Paul… What are you… Edy, look who’s here. Edy…” Mrs. Beaton comes into the living room and seems equally dumbstruck. “Oh my God…” She runs over and hugs me, her chin barely reaching my chest. “Would you like something to drink? Some soda? Juice? Water?” I ask for water and sit down in the living room. The living room is filled with children’s toys. In the next room, I see a toddler playing. I know that he’s not theirs, but I’m too polite to ask. The Beatons are in their seventies.
The toddler, I find out, belongs to their eldest son Ron, who has divorced and moved back into the house with his two sons. Ron has taken his other boy to a class at Rutgers. “He’ll be so disappointed he missed you,” Mrs. Beaton says. The Beatons’ other son, Randy, lives around the corner on Wall Street. Mrs. Beaton still mourns the death of Roland, Randy’s twin. Pictures of the three boys dominate the walls of the living room.
The Beatons fill me in on the comings and goings of all the neighbors. I can’t keep track of who’s who. So many names have lived in these homes over the years. I tend to associate each house with the original owner—a time back before even the Beatons moved in more than thirty years ago.
We talk a lot about death. Both of Mrs. Beaton’s parents have passed away since I moved. And the Beatons themselves seem convinced that they don’t have much time left, though both appear to be in excellent health.
But mostly, we talk about our families, how interlaced they are. And we reminisce. “One time, when the twins were around five,” Mrs. Beaton says, “I was standing in the driveway, talking to your mother over the fence. Your father was on the porch and Randy looks over at him and says to me, ‘Ma, Mr. Kellermann doesn’t have any hair on top of his head.’ I was so embarrassed. ‘Randy,’ I said, ‘that’s not polite. You should apologize to Mr. Kellermann.’ And Randy says to me, ‘Why? Doesn’t Mr. Kellermann know that he has no hair?’ Your mother thought that was the funniest thing she ever heard. I never saw anybody laugh so hard.” I could just picture my mother doubled over laughing. She had a loud guffaw, which she often tried to suppress, replacing it with a polite suburban chuckle. But when something caught her by surprise, her natural laugh came spitting out. I’ve struggled for years to hear that laugh again. It always eludes me. But as Mrs. Beaton tells the story, I hear my mother’s laugh. I chuckle politely. Doesn’t he know that he has no hair?
“You were always the restless one,” Mrs. Beaton tells me. “You had to have your own space.” I never realized that she knew me so well—or perhaps she learned this from my mother. But she’s absolutely right. No matter where I’ve ever been, I’ve always wanted to be somewhere else. I’m not sure whether I ever felt at home in New Jersey or whether my restlessness prevented me feeling at ease. But now I’m convinced that it’s not my home any longer. The Beatons recognize this—and embrace it. The afternoon grows late. And as wonderful as it has been to visit with the Beatons, I know that I must get on the road to go back home. “Ronnie will be so disappointed he missed you,” Mrs. Beaton tells me again.
As we walk onto the porch, I tell the Beatons that I will try to visit again the next time I’m in New Jersey. Mrs. Beaton says, “I don’t know whether we’ll still be alive the next time you come to visit.”
Rather than respond directly, I say, “Wait. I want to take your picture.” They pose on the porch, with their arms folded around each other. I stand below, shooting from a low angle to befit their stature in my life.
I say good-bye and walk to the street to take some pictures of the new 216 Atlantic Street. I try a few different angles, searching for a mix of old and new. In the corner of the viewfinder, I see the old brown plastic garbage can—“recycling” spray painted on the side in Brian’s hand. I stand in the middle of Atlantic Street, doubled over, unable to suppress the guffaw I inherited from my mother.
w w w w w
I drive home through torrential rain—often needing to slow to thirty-five to be able to see in front of me, turning on my four-way flashers to alert the cars behind me not to run up my back. A sense of contentment illuminates the car. I’m at ease, wrapped in a wholeness I so often find elusive. I pull off at a rest area to call my girlfriend to tell her when I’ll be home. She’s gone to visit her parents; she’s taken Ona, our dog. Abner, the cat, waits at the house impatiently for someone to let him out. “I’ll be home around eight,” I tell the answering machine.
The words linger in the air, floating in a bubble above my caricature. They appear to flow seamlessly from my mouth. The image looks strange to me, unfettered. Like my old friends who still revel in twenty-five-year-old tales of mindless debauchery, I had crafted an indelible character for myself who eternally sits by the bedside of his dying mother. And at one point, this persona depicted my reality. But it doesn’t anymore. I may still have a little hair left on my head, but when it all goes I expect to realize it.
Perhaps this explains why I cringe at nostalgic celebrations of the glory days. I’m too busy making new memories to get caught up in the past. But I’ve been too stubborn—and too consumed with mournful narratives—to acknowledge my own happiness. Like Brian’s tombstone, buried beneath layers of grass clippings and dirt, my joy has settled back into the earth, sunk three inches below ground level. And occasionally, I still need to sweep away the debris. I may decry the seven years I spent working on this book—the pain of dredging up and reshaping memory—but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
This awareness didn’t happen overnight. It certainly didn’t reveal itself exclusively during a weekend jaunt to Jersey to party with old friends and visit my family’s graves. But while I acknowledge that evolution is a gradual process, I still need signposts and metaphors to guide my life. Driving through squalls on I-78 with zero visibility, I leave Jersey in my rearview mirror.
The skies begin to clear a bit as evening descends. And as my car climbs the gentle hills that insulate State College, I repeat my mantra: I’m coming home. I’m coming home.