The Book of Joe

evidence of our alien status is actually necessary. “You too?” I say, indicating his jacket.
    “I’ve always been a sucker for tradition,” Wayne says with a smirk. “Except as it pertains to lifestyle, of course.” I intro-duce him to Owen, who nods in recognition and hugs him suddenly and dramatically, Wayne patting his back in bemused surprise.
    Carly arrives as the last guests are filing into the chapel for the service, and I realize that I’ve been waiting to see if she’ll come. She walks over and kisses me lightly on the cheek. I was hoping for something a bit more dramatic: a lingering hug, maybe some tears. “I’m so sorry, Joe,” she says. She is wearing a sleek black pantsuit with a white blouse opened at the neck to reveal a small triangle of pale flesh and the delicate protrusion of her collarbones.
    “Thanks for coming,” I say.
    I want to say something more, but the sudden tightness in my throat makes it impossible. Carly squeezes my hand, her eyes wide and knowing. “I’ll sit where you can see me,” she says. I nod mutely, and she moves ahead of me through the twin doors into the chapel.
    After that, everything is a blur. A rabbi reads some psalms in Hebrew, and then a parade of middle-aged men in faded Cougars jackets take turns at the podium paying tribute to Arthur Goffman, threatening to drown us in a deluge of basketball metaphors. Brad speaks last, dividing my father’s life into four quarters and explaining what his contributions were in each one, and I want to stand up and shout that it’s just a fucking game. But when he steps down from the pulpit, he looks teary and spent. I know that he loved our father, and for a moment, I feel deeply sorry for him. Then I go back to feeling sorry for myself.
    Only a handful of cars accompany us in the procession behind the hearse to the cemetery, which is on the other side of town. Once there, Brad, Jared, and I are joined by three older men in Cougars jackets, buddies of my father’s, in bearing the coffin to the grave, beside which lies a high mound of dirt and the telltale tracks of the backhoe that prepared the grave yesterday. We place the coffin on the two two-by-fours that cross the open grave, and as the gravediggers begin lowering the coffin, I realize with a jolt that I’m standing right beside my mother’s tombstone. I turn to read the gray marble stone - ELLEN GOFFMAN, 1945–1983, BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER, AND DAUGHTER - and then I’m on my knees, pressing my fingers into the grooves of the letters that spell her name, weeping uncontrollably while behind me, they cover my father’s coffin with dirt, and then something hits my head, cool, smooth, and unyielding, the glazed marble of the tombstone, and maybe I pass out, I’m not sure, but I distinctly feel myself being carried, a live person borne over the scattered graves for a change, and the last thought I have is that I never thought of her as his wife before, and that wasn’t fair because he lost something too, maybe even something larger than I did.

Twenty-Four
    It took a while for me to believe that Wayne wasn’t coming back. Every day I expected to pick up the phone and hear his voice, or walk into school and see him leaning against his locker in his team jacket, greeting me with his usual wry grin. I drove past his house daily, slowing down to peer intently through the curtained windows as if I might discern some clue as to his whereabouts. Mrs. Hargrove had installed an answering machine and taken to screening her calls, and my regular inquiries apparently didn’t make the cut.
    “I don’t think he’s coming back,” Carly said gently to me one afternoon. It was one of the first warm days of spring, and we were sitting on the bleachers overlooking the foot-ball field during a free period, enjoying the freshness of the weather. Wayne had been gone for over a month.
    “Of course he is,” I said. “Why would you say that?”
    She folded her fingers into mine and looked out onto the field. “Would you?”
    I shook my head. “But where is he? I mean, you would think he’d give me a call or something. Just to let us know where he is. I’m supposed to be his best friend, for god’s sake.”
    Carly leaned against me and kissed the side of my jaw. “He will when he’s ready.”
    I rested my head on hers, kissing her scalp where her hair parted. “I wonder if he called Sammy,” I said.
    Since Wayne’s disappearance, Sammy had devoted himself to a