Grandpa's Gardenias

Grandpa's Gardenias

by Harry Buschman

That night my father got home late and we had to wait supper. My father was never late – even on paydays he was never late, and here it was 6:30 with supper getting cold on the back of the stove. I knew without asking that something was wrong.

Before he took his coat off, my mother asked him how grandpa was.

"He can't stand the pain in his stomach, it's pretty bad I guess ... "He looked at my mother and shrugged. "I don't think he's gonna' make it through the night, not with the pain and all. I’m gonna have to do somethin’."

This was 1928, and pain like that – pain that doubles you up – pain that wouldn't go away. It could mean only one thing.

My mother put her foot down. "Well, he's not coming here. I've got enough to do!"

A sort of home grown non sequitur! There was no question about that, my grandfather was not going to spend the night with us. My mother certainly had enough to do, the apartment was over-crowded, clothes hung everywhere. Times were bad and my father's brother and sister had moved in with us and I had to sleep in the parlor on a horse hair fold-out bed next to an upright piano.

Nobody had a good word to say for the old man anyway. The highest rung he reached on the ladder of life was the weekend bartender at Shorty's on Classon Avenue. He was a part time man; part time steam fitter, part time fireman, part time bartender, and pretty much of a full time gambler.

His wife, my paternal grandmother, had four children in the shortest possible time and then died in the great flu epidemic of 1919 while the old man was tending bar. He never remarried and left the mothering of the four children in the hands of the older sister.

But my father was fond of him. Pop was the only one of the children with a son of his own. He was also the youngest, and maybe he never got to know his father as well as they did.

"I don't want him here neither," my father backed away defensively, "it's just that I gotta do somethin'. I think we should get him into a hospital maybe. Is Fred home yet?"

Fred was his older brother, and a lot like the old man. He slept in the bedroom, that in better times would have been mine ... it was hard to get him to wear a shirt for dinner, and it was rare to see him without a cigarette in his mouth, one behind his ear and the pink and green racing news sticking out of his back pocket. In an emergency he was no use at all.

But he was home and he gave my father some older brother support. The two of them walked over to my grandfather's flat to see what they could do about getting him in Saint Theresa's Hospital – but they were too late. The pain in his stomach was gone forever and left the old man in peace. Fred, nervously lit another cigarette, and my father re-lit his half smoked White Owl. They sat down at the old man's cluttered kitchen table and decided they didn’t know what to do next. They called the superintendent, in those days a super could do anything ... fix a faucet, snake out a drain or speed the departure of a deceased tenant. By tomorrow afternoon somebody else would be living there – none the wiser. In the blink of an eye, a man from O'Dell's funeral parlor was on the scene with a canvas bag, a coffin catalog and the medical examiner.

Within the hour the old man was in the capable hands of the mortician. Later, my father said the decision to have him 'laid out' in our parlor was Fred's idea, but Fred said he had nothing to do with it. Then they blamed it all on O'Dell. That's how brothers can be – they get together and decide something, and they can't remember whose idea it was. It was definite anyway, and that was the end of my childhood innocence concerning life and death. At the tender age of ten, I was going to have a roommate for a day or two. Old grandpa never got invited to our house while he was alive, but now he was dead and he was going to share the parlor with me ... and the upright piano.

I put up a howl when I heard the news. So did my mother who didn't want him in the house alive or dead.

My father tried to put his foot down. "It's too late now damn it ... O'dell's bringin' him over tomorrow afternoon. It'll only be for a day or two."

"I ain't sleepin' with him," I bawled, "I never slept in a room with a dead man!"

"He's right, Henry, you can't ask a child his age to sleep next to a coffin. You sleep in the parlor and he can sleep with me."

I could tell from the look on my father's face, a look I had seen many times before and after ... a tightening of his upper lip and a sideways twitch of his jaw. He knew he hadn't thought it through enough, and it wasn't going to work out. I suspect he and Fred let O'Dell call the shots. It was late winter after all, and every funeral parlor was full. The only way he could handle grandpa was to lay him out at home.

The following day was a landmark day for me. The day a dead man came to live with us. I couldn't wait to get out of the house and off to school in the morning. My father left first, still nursing the tightening of his upper lip and the sideways twist of his jaw. He gave my mother a peck and promised to be home early. Fred scuttled out so fast his cigarette was still unlit, and my Aunt, (knowing we didn't have a phone) said, "Call me if you need me."

It was the first time in my life I wondered what was going on back home while I was in school. I could imagine, in grisly detail, O'Dell and his crew carrying grandpa up the four flights in a canvas bag, all powdered and rouged to spend a night or two with his family before taking off for Evergreen. I hoped he'd get there before I did, I didn't want to be there when they brought him in. What would it be like having a dead man in the living room? There would be relatives I never saw before – I didn't like it at all!

When school was out I dawdled, looked in store windows – I even did my homework in the library. It was dark when I finally screwed up enough courage to come home. There on the vestibule door was the bouquet of waxy black calax leaves we used to call the "dead man's corsage." Taking a long breath, I climbed the stairs and knocked timidly at the door.

"Is he here yet?" I asked.

My mother was wearing a black dress I never saw before. She was wearing an apron over it and I could smell something sweet.

"Come on in, wash your hands and I'll take you in to see him – don't be afraid, he won't bite."

The sweet smell grew stronger as we approached grandpa in the living room. It was the flowers. There was a giant standing bouquet of gardenias from the volunteer fire department. I forgot Grandpa was a volunteer fireman. Mother pushed me up to the coffin, but I was too short to see anything but the tip of his nose. That was as close as I wanted to get but my mother picked me up so I could get a better look. He was in his fireman's uniform – his fireman’s hat was on the lid covering his feet. He looked the picture of health, much better in fact than most people did this time of the year. He wasn't too bad to look at, but I was glad when my mother put me down all the same.

"I'm hungry, Ma – we gonna' eat soon?"

The five of us ate early. We got the dishes done quickly and by seven o'clock the family were all sitting in the living room with Grandpa waiting for the first visitors to show up.

There weren't any. My grandfather didn't have many friends and the ones he did have probably didn't know he was dead. Tomorrow night was supposed to be the big night. That's when Pastor Tremayne and a delegation from the fire department would be there for the wake.

We about gave up when gramdpa’s sister arrived. She said she couldn't be there for the wake the next night. I don't think she saw my grandfather once since grandma died, but she put up a great show of grief. A stranger might think they were inseparable. She had a cup of tea in the kitchen before leaving – "What will I do without him," she sobbed and added, "I'll try and make the 'layin' in' ... day after tomorrow, you said, right?" Then she had to go.

It was nine o'clock and grandpa hadn't drawn much of a crowd. O'Dell came in with a little black make-up kit to check on his appearance and said he'd be back again tomorrow night and touch him up before the service
. When he left, my father closed the lid on the coffin with a bang and said we should all go to bed.

I lay next to my mother and wondered how my father was getting along in the next room with grandpa. He suddenly began to sneeze. I nudged my mother and asked her, "That ain't grandpa, is it?"

She went in to see what was wrong and came back with my father. He got into bed, with me between them – just like old times. He never realized he was allergic to gardenias, we didn't have allergies in those days. It took him a while to quiet down.

"Did'ja ever sleep between your mother and father, pop?"

"Shut up and go to sleep," he answered. It was too dark to see but I could tell he said it with a tightening of his upper lip and a sideways twitch of his jaw.