Condolence

Kit struggled to breathe. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other alternating between his tie and the gear shift, even though traffic on Sherbrooke St. hadn’t budged in what seemed like an eternity. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and wondered if Miklós, who tended to be frighteningly punctual, had become delirious with impatience by this point. When he looked at the reflection of his eyes through the rear-view mirror, he thought he could detect a gnawing in his stomach that was caused more by restless sleep than by a lack of nourishment.

His head turned as he became aware of Miklós marching down the sidewalk against the bottleneck of traffic, wearing a suit that seemed a tad too upbeat for today’s occasion and scanning each immobile car before moving on. Kit honked and waved, prompting Miklós to make a beeline in his direction.

“Good. I saw the accident and figured you were stuck nearby,” Miklós said by way of a greeting as he clicked on his seat belt and rearranged all the fans within reach so they were pointing at his face.

“Could you tell what happened?” Kit asked, his view of the intersection ahead blocked by a minivan and a blast of sunshine.

“Not really. Probably somebody took a left turn they shouldn’t have. One driver was yelling in English and the other in French. Talk about a collision of cultures. I couldn’t figure out if they understood each other or if they just liked to yell.” Miklós touched up his trendy hair wall while peering at his reflection through the side mirror. “Shit—we’re going to be late. Do you think you could make a U-turn and zip down that side street?”

“Let’s give it a try.” Kit signalled, checked all his blind spots, and made an awkward and probably illegal scamper toward Union Avenue, then coasted down the hill to René-Lévesque, at which point he headed west. “You know where we’re going, right?”

“Totally. The church isn’t too far from Franco’s parents’ place. I went there a couple of times with them for Midnight Mass.”

They drove in silence as Kit reached the highway off Saint-Antoine and as they sailed through the tunnel and out the other end. Highway driving in Montreal was still liable to make his liver roll over, but whether or not Miklós had picked up on this Kit was glad not to have any distractions as he changed lanes and made a wild dash for the overpass that led to the Decarie, at which point they headed north.

“Thanks again for picking me up,” Miklós said after a while, socking Kit on the arm in a way that presumably was meant to be friendly. “I swear I didn’t know you had a car when I asked you to go with me to the funeral. We probably would’ve had to wake up at dawn to make it there on the bus.”

“No problem.”

“And I really appreciate you coming with me. You probably weren’t expecting to become a buffer between Franco and me one more time after all these years. I just thought—oh, I don’t know anymore what I thought. Franco and I didn’t end things on a terribly good note—which you probably guessed—”

“I was there, Miklós.”

“—but when he called to tell me his father had died I just—well, his parents were so good to me. Super Catholic in a lot of ways, but they were pretty chill about us, all things considered. I mean, that’s why I’m going—to pay my respects to Franco and his family. Right? Nothing else is going to happen. It’s not like we’re going to get back together or anything—right? That’d be crazy, right?”

Kit made sympathetic eye contact with himself through the rear-view mirror for a moment, but otherwise he stared unblinkingly at the road as more and more highway unfolded in front of him. He didn’t know whether Miklós and Franco getting back together at a family funeral was crazy or not, but what he could say with certainty—although he knew it wouldn’t do any good to say it out loud—was that he had no desire to be lured into yet another one of Miklós’s pained analyses of where things stood between him and Franco or where they might feasibly stand under certain circumstances in the future, especially not after three-and-a-half years during which they’d apparently had little contact with each other.

“You look nice, by the way,” Miklós said in a decidedly more subdued tone of voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing a suit.”

“That’s probably because we’ve never been anywhere formal together,” Kit said. Then he added, feeling the need to provide a reason that didn’t include the term together, “Besides, I don’t get too many opportunities these days to dress up.”

They soon changed highways again and headed toward the West Island in a silence broken only by Miklós’s directions. When Kit sensed without looking that his friend was gearing up for yet another circuitous monologue, he flicked on the radio in search of a distraction, and the most beautiful music filled the space of the car—something about ravaged spirits and the difficulties of letting go. He changed the channel in pursuit of something less apt, then resigned himself to the inevitable.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Miklós began, and Kit tried to repress the exasperated sigh that threatened to ooze out of every pore in his body, “if everything between Franco and me was doomed from the start. I mean, yeah, we dug each other, and the sex was pretty good most of the time. But besides that—oh, this is our exit—I think. Either this one or the next one—maybe the one after that. Don’t worry—I’ll know it when I see it. Anyway, I don’t want to upset you, old buddy, but after Franco called me the other day after all these years I started to think everything over, and finally it dawned on me: the only thing him and I really had in common was the fact that you’d broken both our hearts.” He ended this monologue with a note of finality, almost of triumph, as though he expected Kit to burst either into tears or into applause. Instead, after they’d coasted down the ramp and stopped at a red light, Kit slammed the gear shift back into first.

“That’s it? That’s your big epiphany?”

“Yeah. Why?” Miklós asked, his eyebrow skewing in the middle.

“I don’t mean to be a dick, but dude—you told me that years ago.”

“I did?”

“Yeah—trust me. You got super drunk somewhere. I think it was at Lydia and Millicent’s going-away party—at that club on Saint-Laurent—the one with the Christmas tree lights on the rooftop patio, where the DJ played an eighteen-minute dance remix of ‘Hotel California’ and that guy who looked like Beethoven kept hitting on my sister.” He took advantage of the fact that the light was still red and turned to get a better look at Miklós’s blank face. “Doesn’t any of this ring a bell? You downed too many fuzzy navels and when you didn’t come back from the men’s room I went to check on you, and you told me that right after you’d finished puking. I mean, it was less coherent then, but the gist of it was the same.”

“Really? That’s funny—I don’t remember any of that.”

Kit reflected that he didn’t find any of this particularly funny as the light turned green and he floored the gas. He glanced at Miklós, who’d been an open book and a broken record the whole time they’d known each other, and thought about asking him what good could possibly come out of analyzing this to death so many years later, even though it felt vaguely hypocritical to do so. In desperation, he turned up the volume on the radio, but Miklós reached over and snapped it off.

“You know—neither one of us really got over it,” he declared like this was perfectly normal road-trip conversation. “We never came right out and admitted that to each other, but I heard about what went down between you and him in so much detail that it was almost like I’d been there. And then there were times when—oh, I don’t know—I’d be over at Franco’s, and we’d be taking each other’s clothes off, and one of us would be, like, Hey, maybe we should knock on Kit’s door and see if he wants to join us. Always light—you know— like we could take it back as a joke if the other one got upset by it. We never went through with it, obviously—well, we did once after we’d had a couple of beers, but you weren’t home. At least, no one answered. We didn’t try again because we could never figure out what was going on upstairs between you and Lydia and Freddie—and, to be honest, I don’t think either one of us could handle the risk of being rejected by you one more— Oh, I know where we are! Yeah yeah yeah—the church is just a few blocks away—it’s called St. Something of the Something Else. Maybe? I’m pretty sure it has the word ‘blood’ in the name somewhere. So yeah—in a way, it always felt like I was in a relationship with two people, or at least with one guy and the ghost of another guy who was also a friend of ours, which is pretty fucked up if you start to think about it. Crap—looks like the funeral’s already started, but we’re not too late at least.”

Kit wondered if he was going to scream. First, he couldn’t fathom what he was supposed to do with the discovery that both Miklós and Franco had persisted in having feelings for him far longer than they reasonably should have, and second, the prospect of entering a church for a funeral after learning how narrowly he’d missed being invited to join his friends for the most awkward-sounding threesome during a block of time in which his sex life had come to a screeching halt seemed to be beyond the realm of common decency.

The only thing he could think of doing to relieve his feelings was to slam the car door shut harder than necessary, which of course did nothing but make him angrier. He tried to lean into the mid-morning October air that was crisp and fresh, like biting into an apple that had been waiting in the refrigerator. Hoping that doing so would revive and calm him at the same time, he inhaled as much of it as he could hold while Miklós gave his hair wall one final inspection. Then he and Miklós crossed the parking lot, heaved open one of the doors to the church, and stepped inside.

Thankfully, the compulsion to lose his mind managed to dissipate by the time they’d found half an empty pew near the back. But Kit’s hope for a few moments in which he could collect himself was dashed when the organ erupted the moment they sat down and the congregation rose to sing a hymn. Determined to be a good sport, he grabbed a hymnal from the rack in front of him when he recognized the melody from his childhood, intending to sing along with conviction. When Miklós tried to peek over his shoulder he turned away, partly because he was still ticked off and partly because he was afraid that sharing a hymnal with his friend would make him giggle.

Kit had been to his share of funerals before, but the tradition in his family was to attend funeral services when they’d known the deceased and to make an appearance at the visitation or the wake to express condolences to family members when they didn’t. And so, instead of grief for someone who’d died, he felt a strange form of regret that didn’t have a discernible object, not even when he thought he spotted the back of Franco’s head. He considered himself agnostic, which in his case meant he had zero interest in religion and figured that the realities of the afterlife should remain a fun surprise. Even so, he listened respectfully to the eulogy, opened his heart to the family tributes, went along with the kneeling and the sitting and the standing and the crossing, and responded to every part of the liturgy automatically in spite of the fact that he hadn’t set foot inside a church in years.

It was later, once he and Miklós had joined the throng of people heading to the church basement to pay their respects to the family, that he started to sift through the most recent thoughts in his mind. He stopped at the men’s room to mark his territory, then joined the back of the line and made a point of studying the framed photos on the wall beside him so that he couldn’t notice Miklós trying to wave him over. Once he was reasonably sure Miklós had given up on him, Kit looked ahead just as it was Miklós’s turn to offer condolences to Franco’s mother, to Franco’s sister and brother-in-law, and finally to Franco himself. Kit watched with interest as Franco greeted Miklós with a cordial, non-lingering hug and nodded solemnly as Miklós evidently said something condoling.

And at that moment, Kit looked away and allowed himself to wonder what might have happened had things unfolded differently with Franco all those years ago—if he hadn’t bolted like a frightened colt when Franco had admitted that their loose buddies-with-benefits arrangement was starting to morph into something with feelings. He wrapped his arms around himself when he caught a flash of the cinderblock walls of his old dorm room and Franco’s smile that reflected the optimism of seventeen. But when the Franco of today happened to look past Miklós and evidently noticed him for the first time, Kit was unprepared for the change in Franco’s face as Franco darted toward him and wordlessly enveloped him into a bear hug.

“Kit—I’m so glad you’re here.” Franco started to say more, but his voice quivered and he proceeded to cry against Kit’s shoulder. Kit held on tight, aware that Miklós was watching them but trying not to show that awareness, until Franco let go and wiped his eyes.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Kit said as the years between now and the last time they’d seen each other evaporated like steam from a kettle.

“Thanks,” Franco said, accepting the tissue Kit held out to him. “It was all pretty sudden. I mean, he was stable for a while, but—anyway—once he’d taken the turn for the worst I wasn’t able to make it back in time.”

“Oh—I’m sorry. So you’re still in Chicago, then?”

“Yeah—stayed on for the Ph.D. It’s going well— I’m pretty happy with it.”

“That’s great! Lydia started a Ph.D. too last year— at McGill.”

“Huh. So you’re still—you’re still hanging out with Lydia,” Franco said in a tone that struck the midpoint between a question and a declarative sentence.

“Yeah. Um. We’re still good friends—and neighbours now, too. She lives across the hall from me. You remember my old place in Mile End, right?”

“Sure. You’re still in Montreal? I thought I’d heard from somebody that you’d left.”

“Oh—um.” Kit shook his head and came to the conclusion that he just didn’t have the energy needed to tackle that. “Miklós is the one who called and told me—about your father.” He realized too late that his words could have sounded like a barb, but Franco didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Come and say hello to my mother,” he suggested, then grabbed Kit’s hand and led him down the receiving line to make the necessary introductions. Kit murmured the usual phrases of condolence, unable, as a near stranger, to offer his mother anything else that might help her in her sorrow. She smiled at him in recognition, although she asked if she’d met him in the dorm or when he and Franco had lived in the same triplex near Snowdon metro station. Kit had never been able to forget meeting Franco’s parents because of the speed with which he and Franco had put their clothes back on in response to the sound of someone knocking on Franco’s dorm room door, but he looked her straight in the eye and said he didn’t remember. He made a point of avoiding Franco’s gaze, but it turned out that making eye contact with Miklós was even worse.

Kit and Miklós meandered toward a nearby buffet of plastic plates and finger foods that were the staples of funeral receptions everywhere, then sat together at an otherwise empty table. Knowing that Miklós was less likely to analyze everything with so many witnesses within earshot and was saving it for the ride home, Kit concentrated on enjoying his triangle sandwiches and crudités. Once the line of condolers had dwindled, Franco joined them with his own plate of food, so he and Miklós proceeded to bring each other up to speed on their respective lives. As he half-heard their updates, Kit wondered what it must be like for Franco to have lunch with two of his ex-lovers— who had carpooled—at this time of mourning, but he couldn’t think of a non-awkward way to ask. He sipped his tea so slowly that it turned cold by the time he finished, which made him wish there was a more concrete way to slow down time.

Just as it was Kit’s turn to start with his news, some guests interrupted them to offer Franco some good-bye hugs, and once Franco had stood he didn’t seem that inclined to sit again. “I guess it’s time to go,” he said. “My mother wanted the funeral to be here since this has been my parents’ church for decades, but my father’s going to be buried in the family plot in Longueuil.”

They stood around the table until Kit reached out and hugged Franco, catching a sliver of the tightness on Miklós’s face as he stepped back, at which point Franco and Miklós hugged each other and murmured something that he didn’t quite catch. For a moment, Kit allowed what Miklós had revealed to him on the drive up to seep back into his consciousness, along with the memory of Franco’s bare body—the taut stomach, the salty nape, the tattoo of a star on his right butt cheek. This was not the Franco at seventeen from the dorm, but the relatively more mature Franco of the summer fling he and Kit had enjoyed five years later, once he and Miklós had broken up for good. Then Kit pushed all that down and smiled. When he realized that Franco still hadn’t given him any means of staying in touch, he intuited that they wouldn’t see each other again unless circumstance brought them together once more. And although he felt a mild regret over this parting, he exhaled and accepted that it must be so.

He and Miklós exited the church and moseyed down the path leading to the parking lot, Kit enjoying the relative warmth, the sunshine, and Miklós’s uncharacteristic silence. But once they were within rock-throwing distance of his car, he paused in mid-step with the unshakable conviction that he’d forgotten something.

“Are you in a hurry to get back?” he asked Miklós. “Why don’t we walk in the cemetery for a while and get some air?”

When Miklós shrugged, Kit led the way to the cemetery adjacent to the church. He and Miklós wandered down the main path together, but as soon as Miklós lingered over something that had caught his eye Kit fled down a side lane until he was decidedly out of earshot of his friend.

Once he had the sense that he’d be alone for a few minutes at least, he slowed his pace to a crawl and took in the contrast between the modest tombstones and their more ostentatious neighbours. Most of the inscriptions consisted solely of names and dates, but a few of the larger ones included a bit of narrative as well, like “In Loving Memory” or “United in Eternity” or “After Life’s Fitful Fever She Sleeps Well”—which, as someone with an undergraduate degree in English literature, struck him as vaguely familiar.

But it was only at the end of a row, shaded by some sort of tree and leaning to one side with the slant of a hill, that he came across a grave for someone who’d had the same full name as Miklós and who, according to the tombstone, had died the year that he, Kit, and Franco had all been born.

Kit froze. After a moment, when he noticed a sound that turned out to be of his foot shifting in the gravel, he reminded himself to breathe. Once he’d looked around and spotted Miklós a safe distance away, he wrapped his arms around himself as a form of self-protection. Startled by the sound of a car door slamming shut, he turned and saw Franco in the distance, murmuring something to his sister as they evidently were getting ready to drive away. Kit sensed that noticing someone after they’d already said good-bye to each other was a form of cheating, but before he could think about whether any of the tombstones would make a suitable hiding place Franco turned in his direction. Although Franco held Kit’s gaze for a moment, his face betrayed no recognition of Kit as he and his sister climbed into the car and drove away.

In the perplexing silence that followed, Kit turned around again and superimposed the memory of Franco’s blank facial expression over the sight of the tombstone in front of him. Without planning to do so or understanding why he would, he stepped forward and placed his left hand on the top of the tombstone for a moment, feeling the rough marble against his fingertips, just as a tearless sob shot out of him. He balled his hand into a fist as a way to gather his emotions together, then turned and marched away before Miklós noticed what he was up to and insisted on talking about it all the way home.

He and Miklós returned to his car in silence. He inserted the key in the ignition and floored the clutch, but his hand refused to start the motor. He turned his head in the direction of Miklós, who raised part of his unibrow and looked back at him tentatively.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

After pondering whether it would be sick to ask his friend for gas money, Kit remembered a term he’d learned in an English literature course years earlier: “Carpe florem,” a variant on the better-known “Carpe diem” that literally meant “seize the flower” but was understood in the figurative sense of “seize the day— in bed.” Or, in plainer terms, “get laid while you can before you die.”

“What are you thinking about, Kit?”

Still, whoever had coined that Latin term probably didn’t have to face someone who seemed to delight in torturing himself and others by endlessly analyzing everything he’d ever said, heard, or done—including takeaways from past rounds of analysis. Kit glanced at his friend and wondered if Miklós planned to keep reproaching him forever for the fact that he’d declined Miklós’s romantic overtures seven years ago. Then another thought, one that threw him in its unexpectedness: How might that story change if the future differed from the past? If they seized the flower today, what would tomorrow bring and the day after that?

“Not that it really matters anymore,” Kit said at last, gripping the steering wheel, “but just for the record, nothing was going on upstairs between me and Lydia and Freddie. I really don’t understand what made you and Franco think there was—or could be.”

Miklós stared at him, evidently surprised by the return to this thread of their earlier conversation. “Okay,” he said. “But weren’t you involved with Lydia at some point?”

“Yeah—before. But that ended when they met and we just carried on as roommates. I guess Lydia always saw me as her back-up guy.”

“Good to know,” Miklós mumbled with a strange edge in his voice. He looked at Kit in a way that seemed to be mostly curiosity, but a momentary slant in his unibrow conveyed some yearning as well. As Kit started the motor, he felt a spark in his pants that made him increasingly grateful he was wearing a jacket. He tried to clog his erogenous zones by picturing his future self trying to explain to people that he and Miklós had decided to get together after seven years of on-and-off friendship within an hour of seeing their shared ex at his father’s funeral, but that awkward prophecy didn’t manage to douse the spark completely.

“Shouldn’t we get going?” Miklós asked.

Kit responded by backing out of the parking space and brought the car to the edge of the curb. “Which way to the highway?” he asked.

“Oh, left or right will get you there. You choose,” Miklós said, checking his side mirror again to see if his hair wall needed some attention.

Kit reached for the turn signal and looked both ways, but in each direction, a bend in the road obscured what lay beyond it. He donned his aviator sunglasses even though it was no longer particularly bright out, and so, when he glanced at his reflection in the rear-view mirror again, he couldn’t find answers to his unspoken questions in his eyes. Jiggling the gear shift a few times for no particular reason, he cleared his throat and let out a ragged breath.

“Fuck it,” he said, and with new resolve, he turned left.

 

Photo by Dan Gold from Unsplash.