The Eulogy by Emily Litwin

“He singled me out, pointing at me from that terrible cot, and asked me to write it.” Dan ran his fingers through his thick but peppered hair. “Said he didn’t think he’d last much longer and how he’d like to hear it. Tomorrow. What kind of man assigns one of his children the responsibility for his eulogy?”

Ella sighed. “Love, we know your father likes to do things his way. Convention has never really shaped Lyle’s life.” She stood behind her husband at the kitchen table and began kneading his shoulders.

“Oh, that’s good, that’s good: ‘Convention never really shaped Lyle Fieldston’s life.’ Keep going, you’re on a roll.”

“Dan, seriously. Can’t you think of it as an honor, a way to pay tribute?”

Dan’s shoulders fell. “It feels like a burden. Or a test. Luke or Steve could do it.” He dug the heels of his palms into eyes. “You know, had this situation been left to normal circumstances, I would’ve insisted one of them write it.” He paused. “I mean, why me?” Dan arched his spine and tilted his head back so that he could see Ella’s face.

“Well, you are the writer in the family.” She smiled playfully. “Maybe he thought you were the most professionally equipped to write a eulogy.”

“Ella! I’m a food critic for Christ’s sake! While some may consider my profession to be that of a writer, you and I both know my dad did not.” Dan’s gaze returned to his laptop. “Unless he wants to be described as ‘succulent’ or ‘gamey’ as he is lowered into the earth, I think he’s confused…” Dan closed his eyes and dropped his forehead on the edge of the table.

“Lyle’s illness has put the whole family a bit on edge, honey, that’s understandable. But you can’t let him down now.”

Dan breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. “Why, thanks, I hadn’t felt the entire magnitude of this whole thing until just now. You forgot to mention that I will be giving it in front of a large group, too. And I don’t want to let them down, either.”

“Alright, I can take a hint. I’m going up to bed. Will you be up soon?”

“Unlikely. I imagine this will take me a bit longer than a ‘New Eats’ column.”

She kissed him on the top of his head. “Good luck. I don’t envy your position.” As she climbed the stairs to their bedroom the faint but unmistakable sound of Dan’s laptop waking from its slumber echoed through the kitchen.

Dan stood up from the table and clasped his hands together above his head, stretching out his arms. He reached for a drinking glass and filled it at the sink, staring out the window into the black backyard. It was late by now – nearly midnight – though recently it had been getting dark early.

“Honestly, Dad, requesting to be read your eulogy?” Dan spoke out loud to himself, a lifelong habit. Swinging the chair around so its back edged the tabletop, Dan straddled it and poised his fingers above the keyboard. He typed: Lyle Fieldston, aged 68, died today. Dan laughed close-lipped through his nose and shook his head smiling. “No, Dan, that would be an obituary.” He mused whether Steve or Luke was in charge of that one. Dan held the delete key for a few seconds and once again the document on his screen glowed blankly.

He tried to imagine what his daughters would choose to say about him. He coached Madeline’s soccer team and he felt fairly confident he came across as a cool dad, or at least Maddy hadn’t yet led him to believe otherwise. What about his youngest, Claire? What redeeming qualities might she shed on his character? What insight could her six-year-old perspective proffer? Just last week Ella and Maddy had gone to their monthly mother-daughter book group, leaving Claire home with Dan for the night. Despite Ella’s voicemail reminder, Dan forgot the engagement and booked a table at the new French bistro in their neighborhood.

“Ella, would it really be that bad if Claire went with you? I mean she is your daughter and technically it’s a mother-daugh—”

“Daddy, I could go with you!” Claire interrupted. “No one would ever guess you’re a secret food taster if you were with me!” Ever since Dan had explained to Claire that he couldn’t let the restaurant know who he was, or what he was doing, when writing a review, she had made a game of imagining her father as a big time spy.

Claire and Dan shared a small, candlelit table for two. Imitating her father, Claire closed her eyes as she ate; he, savoring each bite to identify flavors, spices, and textures, she, sucking the butter off each penne noodle before chomping down with her less-than-full set of teeth. Dessert was an indulgence from which Dan usually abstained; he feared the clichéd fate of the obese food critic. Yet when the waiter came, Dan announced, “The choice is yours, my dear.”

Claire had been scrutinizing the menu with the voracity of a child just introduced to reading. She giggled. “Can I have a tart-ee?” Dan looked at her sideways until she added sheepishly, “Please?”

“What’s so funny?”

Claire’s giggles rumbled to a belly laugh. “If you change the first letter to an F it would be farty!” Claire covered her still-giggling mouth and eyed her father guiltily.

“You’re right! Well, I’ve always wondered what the taste of a big…juicy…smelly…” and Dan didn’t even have to finish, Claire had lost all control.

But Dan never had such a relationship with his father. It wasn’t like he grew up feeling deprived; when he was a kid he knew of no father that would take his kindergartener to an upscale restaurant and revel in bathroom humor. Collectively, Luke, Steve and kid-brother-Dan made up the Fieldston boys and Lyle expressed what seemed like the appropriate amount of pride and love towards them – perhaps sparingly, but no stingier than the next father.

He continued to write: Convention never shaped Lyle Fieldston’s life. It was true, Dan conceded. As a customs officer at Liberty International Airport for thirty-five years, Lyle never once filed for a passport.

“The irony,” Dan whispered to the empty kitchen.

He would dress each morning in his black polyester uniform: two gold stripes lining each shoulder of the short-sleeved button-down shirt, a slightly chewed Bic pen stowed in his breast pocket. He wore those generic sneakers that are made to look like dress shoes, a comfortable approximation of formal footwear that so many wear, though I’ll always associate them with my dad.

His shift didn’t start until nine each morning and so he would drive my brothers and me to school, a service I always appreciated. Being scrawny and taking the bus was a terrible combination, unless you had older brothers who weren’t also scrawny. Dan deleted the last sentence. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” started playing in his head. Luke and Steve were at the junior high together while I was still at Edison elementary; we’d drop them off and then I’d climb into the front seat for the last leg. During those precious few minutes my favorite topic of conversation featured spies and drug dealers – and whether, or rather how many, he’d caught the day before. He would always play along, inventing stories of the Soviet espionage ring he single-handedly busted or the bombs he would have to disarm so that they wouldn’t detonate right there in the middle of the airport with all the innocent civilians nearby.

Dan snorted again. “Just like Claire.”

“What’s just like Claire?” Ella appeared at the doorway in slippers and one of Dan’s sweatshirts from college emblazoned with the Greek letters of his fraternity.

“What?” Dan jerked his line of vision to the source of the interruption, pulled from his reverie. He looked suddenly concerned: “Did I wake you?”

“No, couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d come see how it was going.” Ella filled the kettle with water and put it on the stovetop. “What was just like Claire?” Nothing registered in Dan’s expression so Ella pried, “You were saying something about her when I walked in.”

“Oh. Nothing really, I guess.” Dan retuned his chair to its normal position and leaned back on its back two legs. “Well,” he started again unprompted, “I just remembered that I would invent these crazy stories about my dad’s job in customs. I don’t remember if I actually believed them or not, but it was something I looked forward to, those fabricated stories, and I’m pretty sure Luke and Steve never had that with him, that it was just me and Dad. And just that Claire’s convinced herself I’m some undercover food mole…or something.”

Dan and Ella sat in the companionable quiet of a mostly happy twelve-year marriage. The silence was broken by the high-pitched squeal of the steaming kettle. Ella rose and poured the scalding water into a mug, adding some honey. She held up the kettle to offer the same to Dan but he waved his hand absentmindedly to decline. He poised his fingers over the keys and focused again; Ella sat, absorbing the water’s warmth with her two cupped hands.

My father promised my mother a garden when they were engaged. As the story is told, my mom made one request of my dad before she agreed to marry him – she wanted a house with a garden. My dad would have told you he thought he got the better end of the bargain: a wife for a garden. Turns out, he won the wife and got to keep the garden.

My mother asked all of her friends for garden themed wedding gifts. Once the spade and hoe and watering can were purchased, the others turned to bulbs, seeds, and plants. This would explain why we never had a matching set of silverware or dinner plates growing up. “This is a funeral not a comedy club, quit it with the jokes.” Dan scolded himself.

“I don’t think jokes are off-limits. Your dad was a man known for his levity.”

Again, Ella startled Dan. “Jesus, Ella, I forgot you were here.”

“Just ignore me, I’ll be back upstairs soon.” Her eyes glowed, warmly.

Dan nodded, suddenly self-conscious knowing he had an observer to what he felt to be a private task.

As the wedding gifts piled up, my parents had a garden-to-be just waiting to be sown. Somehow my mom lost interest quickly, while my father found great pleasure in working the soil and tending to the plants. Kneeling in the yard and working with his hands was a way for him to withdraw from the world; after a tedious day of perfunctorily interrogating people, he savored the time he set aside for weeding and watering. Even as a child I could sense his ease when in the garden and so I sought him out those weekend mornings, plopping myself down into the mound of dirt by his side. Everything he knew about gardening was self-taught and the education he offered was tactile, with a shrug for a disclaimer. Dan wondered who would tend the garden this spring.

The aesthetic of the garden was never a contributing factor for my dad. He planted each and every bulb my parents were given with the hope that with so many chances for growth, something would emerge from the earth. From as far back as I can remember, our front yard was a hodge-podge mess of foliage and flowers, buds and blossoms. “No two plants are alike,” my dad would tell the mailman, or the pizza delivery boy, unsolicited. “Just some peaceful, co-existing flora.”

For his sixtieth birthday, we threw my dad a surprise party. All of the guests wore green and my wife Ella made a cake in the shape of a thumb that she iced green to match.

“God, that party feels like yesterday.” Dan looked up to meet Ella’s stare, to sneak a bit of her unconditional warmth. But Ella was no longer in the kitchen. The red clock on the microwave glowed 3:09. She must have returned to bed.

Dan grabbed the phone but thought better of it, it was much too late to call Steve’s house. He attempted to call his brother’s cell only to realize, rather disconcertedly, he hadn’t ever memorized the number. Dan reached into his pocket for his cell phone and a moment later a groggy, “Dan, what?” was on the line.

“Dad is too young to die.”

“It’s hard, I know.” The sound of Steve getting out of bed filled the airwaves.

“Do you know what time Home Depot opens?”

“No clue. Dan, are you all right?”

“Well, do you know if they have child-sized gardening gloves?”

“Have you been up all night?”

“Yeah, writing the eulogy. Thought I might go to Home Depot right when they opened, on my way to the hospital.”

“Hmm. Okay. Yeah, okay. Well, I’m going to go back to bed. Don’t want Jane to worry. See you in the morning, Dan.”

“Did you know dad busted a USSR espionage ring?”

“Dan, get some sleep.”

“That’s what I thought. See you tomorrow.”

#

For such busy places, hospitals always struck Dan as surprisingly quiet. He parked in the ICU family lot and found his brothers and mother in the waiting room, sipping tepid coffee from the vending machine.

“Can I get you one?”

“Is it any good?”

“No, terrible.”

“Uh, then no. Thanks.”

Dan’s mother voiced what they all were thinking: “So? Did you write it?”

Dan hesitated but then nodded, repeatedly, each movement of the head more pronounced and convincing than the last. He tapped his coat pocket.

“Good. Well done, Danny. He will be happy, and to make him happy now is all we can hope for.” She leaned against her eldest son. Luke put his arm around her and the family filed in to the undersized hospital room, taking up all the space unclaimed by medical apparatus. Lyle lay in a semi-reclined bed, tubes and sensors dotting his arms and temple. He smiled and scanned his bedside slowly, seeming to take in each Fieldston’s presence: his wife, Luke, Steve, and then, finally, Dan.

Lyle opened his mouth to speak and the dryness of his lips smacked the air. He licked them. “So, Dan. Let’s have it.”

Dan reached inside his pocket and withdrew a few printed pages, folded twice. He bent his head to read, but paused and looked up. He smiled at his family, congregated in full, perhaps for the last time. He brought his eyes back to the page and began:

Convention never shaped Lyle Fieldston’s life.