Olga Dies Dreaming(5)
Christian teared up at the thought but continued.
“If that isn’t a metaphor and a half? He literally went back into the closet to die. It would be poetic if I didn’t know that it was the only practical place in our apartment to do it.”
“Fuck,” Olga said.
“So, not only was I the one to find this bitch, now I have to think about him hanging there every time I get dressed. The only considerate thing he did was leave his note on the coffee table, so at least I wasn’t surprised. I’m forty-four years old, I could have had a fucking heart attack.”
“Are you going to stay in that apartment?” Olga asked.
“Girl,” Christian replied, “do you have ten grand to move? Because that’s what it takes to get into a new place these days. To rent. To fucking rent. Lord, I can’t even talk about this right now. It will get me worked up.”
He sighed and fanned himself and she leaned in to embrace him. Olga rubbed his shoulders gently. She could feel him shaking as he again began to cry. She hadn’t factored in how the stress of money must be multiplying his sense of grief. Cater waitering wouldn’t make anyone rich, but with his wealthy clientele, Jan’s tip money had surely greased the wheels of their lives.
“You know what?” Olga muttered. “I should have brought it today, but I have a tip envelope for Jan that I’d never had a chance to give him. Probably at least five hundred.”
“Really?”
Jan’s gratuity for the Henderson wedding had, of course, gone to Marco, but the relief in Christian’s voice felt worth $500. Maybe she would send a little more. They were interrupted by another mourner and Olga figured it was a good time to go pay her respects to the dead.
The casket’s lacquered white wood and gilded handles gleamed under the soft lights that illuminated Jan. Olga approached, pausing for a moment to take in his physical form one last time. This aspect of Catholicism had always troubled her, the viewing of the dead. A really piss-poor placebo for the matter-of-fact status that is death. She had always felt the Jewish faith got mourning right; there’s no pretending there, a quick burial and a time where you can be as grief stricken as you need to be, without the presence of mirrors, surrounded by family, friends, and comfort foods. The wake struck Olga as a disrespectful farce. It’s absurd to think that kneeling before Jan’s cold, chemically stuffed body and waxen face was anything like being in the presence of his living self. A self who, if alive, would surely be outside chain-smoking, sipping from his flask, and flirting—with man or woman. The only thing Jan and the body in this casket had in common, Olga thought, was the suit, which was impeccable.
She knelt down, with the intention of saying a prayer, but her mind wandered back to his mother, grieving a child she only sort of knew. It’s a myth about motherhood, Olga felt, that the time in utero imbues mothers with a lifelong understanding of their children. Yes, they know their essences, this she didn’t doubt, but mothers are still humans who eventually form their own ideas of both who their kids are and who they think they should be. Inevitably there were disparities. Some mothers, like Jan’s, simply wished them away, no matter how glaring. Others, like Olga’s own mother, focused on them with laser precision, feeling confident that with enough effort, the gap could be narrowed. Either way, in Olga’s assessment, it was hard to not let that disparity turn into a feeling of deficiency. Olga knew firsthand how harrowing that could be. How weighty it must have been for Jan to don his mother’s version of himself every time he rode the subway back to Brooklyn for a visit. To make sure he didn’t let any of his other self slip, for fear of disappointing her. She reconsidered Jan’s sister, her previous irritation replaced by empathy. She was only protecting the image Jan wanted his mother to have of him. Olga knew that for her brother she would do the same.
As she rose and turned away from the coffin, she ran into Carol, Jan’s old boss. Carol had started her catering business out of her apartment thirty years ago and had grown it into a vast and lucrative operation, something that would be almost impossible to do now. She started out doing small weddings, then bigger and ever more prominent affairs, eventually securing the contract for the annual Met Gala, all the Fashion Week parties, and, well, just about every A-list happening in the New York City area. Now, on a given day, they were servicing anywhere from fifty to a hundred functions, and Carol seemingly knew the intimate details of each of them. Her business consumed her thoughts and life. All she could talk about were parties, and clients, and trends in catering and food, and which captains were good and which captains were overrated and, of course, her favorite topic, how to grow her margins. And while Olga long admired Carol’s business acumen, Carol herself often rankled her, as she was, to Olga, a mirror to the vapid concerns of her own chosen profession.
So commerce focused was she that Olga had been surprised by how absolutely broken up Carol had sounded on the phone. She opened her arms to embrace her now.
“Olga!” Carol exclaimed as she broke from the hug. “Oh my God. Isn’t it awful?”
“Carol, it really is.”
“He was my best captain!”
“And a really great human being.”
“Of course, goes without saying. And the best worker! They don’t make workers like him anymore, Olga. What am I gonna do? We’re about to get to the busy season, and you can’t imagine how many events I had him on for.”