The Upper Hand Page 4

  What the hell, he thought. He had earned it.

  Axel jumped in bed, threw back the sheets, and pushed his underwear to his knees. He set the fantasy in motion, starting at Pam’s eyes. He could tell that she’d missed him.

  Pulling rope for a half minute, Axel brought out the big guns and concentrated on Pam’s cleavage. A line and shadow on paper, but so much more. The road crew finally got together, working in unison to raise the circus tent.

  The door swung open. Instead of Pamela Anderson, Gretchen stood in the doorway. Axel froze, dick in hand, then quickly averted his eyes from his sister’s chest.

  “Get out of here!” Axel ejaculated. Or rather, didn’t. He pulled up the sheets and his underwear at the same time but managed to tuck the sheets through the leg of his briefs. Tangled up with one nut poking out, he curled himself into a fetal ball.

  “Get up, pervert,” Gretchen said. “Mom died. Mom is dead.”

  “Bad joke, sis.”

  “Look at my face. She’s dead. Kurty’s a mess. Drop your wang, and pretend to be his big brother. He needs you.” Gretchen slammed the door, leaving Axel by himself.

  Pamela Anderson stared at him with shame and pity. It would never be the same between the two of them.

  Axel walked into his mother’s bedroom. His clothes from the night before were damp and smelled of sick. Between the pounding in his head, the queasiness in his gut, and his slimy exterior, he didn’t know if he’d ever felt more awful. On top of his mother being dead, of course.

  Bertha Ucker lay on her back, peaceful and still. Her eyes were closed, but there was no mistaking the difference between someone sleeping and someone not living.

  This wasn’t how Axel had expected this family reunion to play out. He expected his mother to be alive, at the very least.

  Gretchen sat on the edge of the bed. She gave a head-tilt toward Kurt, who sat in a chair against the wall. Axel’s younger brother wept, staring at Bertha. He softly repeated, “What happens now? What happens now?”

  Axel walked to Kurt and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. What happens now?”

  “I don’t know,” Axel said. “We’ll come up with a plan. Me and Gretchen, we’re here for you. Isn’t that right, Gretch?”

  “That’s right,” Gretchen said.

  “No, you’re not,” Kurt said. “You never are. Neither of you. You both leave. You always leave.”

  “This is different,” Axel said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Me neither,” Gretchen said. “We might suck at it, but we’re a family.”

  “That’s how I found her,” Kurt said. “I tried to wake her up. Her skin was cold. Weird cold. Not normal cold. Dead cold.”

  “Was she sick?” Axel asked. “Had the cancer come back?”

  “Who cares right now?” Gretchen snapped, her voice cracking.

  “You’re right.” Holding out his arms, Axel walked to Gretchen. “Come here, sis. I could use a hug.”

  “You’re slimy and gross, but screw it.” Gretchen squeezed Axel, crushing him. She whispered, “What you said, you being here for Kurty. That better not be bullshit.”

  “I’m going to step up,” Axel said.

  She gave him a nod, pulled away, and turned to Kurt. “What are you doing sitting there by yourself? Get in on this hug action.”

  Kurt wiped his tears with his forearm and joined them. He was big enough to hug Axel and Gretchen at the same time.

  “I’m going to miss her so much,” Kurt said. “I need to make pancakes.”

  Kurt broke the embrace. At the door, he took one last look at his mother. He shook his head and walked down the hallway.

  “We’re going to have to take care of Kurty for a while,” Gretchen said. “You and me.”

  “Results may vary. Trying and knowing what I’m doing are two different things.”

  “Don’t pre-apologize for screwing up,” Gretchen said. “As long as you don’t run, it’ll be an improvement.”

  “Something something about a pot and a kettle and blackness.”

  “I’m going to try, too,” Gretchen said. “It’s been just Mom and Kurty for a long while. We lost our mom. Kurt’s life has changed completely.”

  Axel walked to the bed and pulled the sheet over his mother’s head. There was nothing particularly disturbing about her dead countenance, but he wanted to remember her alive. He wanted to remember her laughing, even if he couldn’t actually remember her laughing.

  While Kurt made pancakes in the kitchen, Axel called 9-1-1 and reported the death. They walked him through the procedure, warning him that it might take a few hours to get someone out there. Warm Springs sat on the eastern edge of the county, the nearest medical examiner thirty-five miles away. After that, they’d have to find a funeral home.

  After he set the necessary procedures in motion, he called his job. They would be wondering why he hadn’t come into work on the first day of his new promotion.

  “Axel Ucker for Mr. Stringer . . . Yes, I’ll hold . . . Mr. Stringer, hi. It’s Axel. I’m not going to be able to come in today. My mother passed away last night, and I have to be with family . . . Thank you, I appreciate that.”

  Gretchen stepped into the living room with a plate of pancakes. Axel shooed her away, but she didn’t budge and shoveled a forkful of flapjack into her mouth.

  “Here’s the deal, Stringer. I’m not coming back to work. I can’t do it. I’m calling to tell you—well, pretty much all of Associated Banking—to fuck all the way off.”

  “Dang,” Gretchen said. “That’s one way to do it.”

  Axel walked away from Gretchen, but she followed while he continued. “If I wanted to run a confidence game on people, I wouldn’t need the umbrella of a legitimate company. I bet you don’t even bother to rationalize, to pretend like you’re doing good. You’ve always seemed like the kind of Wall Street bro A-hole that laughs at the stupid people you dupe with all the other A-holes in suits. To be clear, I’m not quitting because it’s morally or ethically wrong. I’m fluid in those areas. I’m quitting because I can’t be part of your mediocrity. You can take my job and recent promotion, form it into a conical shape, and shove it far enough up your ass that it pokes a hole in your liver. Ucker out.”

  Gretchen set the plate down and slow-clapped.

  Axel shook his head. “He hung up when I told him to fuck all the way off, but I needed to get the rest out of my system.”

  “Quitting jobs is like the best, right?”

  “Mom is dead. I have no job. No girlfriend. No money in the bank. A mortgage I can’t afford. For a house that isn’t worth it. And a responsibility to my family that I’ve failed at every time I’ve tried. I’m not ready to celebrate.”

  “In Chinese, the word for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ is the same,” Gretchen said, smirking.

  Axel laughed. “That isn’t even true. They’re two different words. Google Translate would shame that horseshit.”

  The aroma of pancakes hit Axel and immediately made him hungry. He wandered into the kitchen past Gretchen. A cartoon-size stack of pancakes sat on the table, with a half dozen more on the griddle.

  “Smells great, little brother,” Axel said, making himself a plate.

  “Is it okay if I eat my breakfast with Mom?” Kurt asked. “I want to be with her a little more before things happen. Before they take her. But I don’t know the rules about food and dead people and stuff.”

  “Go ahead, Kurty,” Gretchen said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  Kurt turned off the griddle, put the remaining pancakes on a plate, grabbed the maple syrup, and left the room.

  “Poor guy,” Gretchen said.

  “He’s stronger than we give him credit.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Not to be unemotional,” Axel said, “but we’re going to have to figure out how to pay for the funeral and stuff. I’m broke, and my credit’s maxed out. Did Mom have any m
oney saved?”

  “I got no idea,” Gretchen said. “Tell me how much you need. I got a few things going.”

  “I don’t want to know what that means,” Axel said. “Do I want to know what that means?”

  “No.” Gretchen smiled. “You definitely don’t want to know.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Bertha Ucker’s funeral was held the following weekend at the Second Christian Reformed Church. Oddly, there was no First Christian church in Warm Springs. Gretchen took it to be another example of Warm Springs’ second-bestness.

  Gretchen stowed her jeans and T-shirt for the day and donned the one legit church dress she owned. Nothing had made her mom smile more than Gretchen dressing like “a proper lady and not a thug’s stripper girlfriend.”

  People shook hands and side-hugged Gretchen and Axel as they greeted them in the lobby of the church. Old ladies. A few families. A guy with alopecia wearing a fake mustache, crooked eyebrows, and a one-size-too-small toupee. A lady carrying a black cat that may or may not have been alive. A dead ringer for Harry Dean Stanton—although that description fit a third of all desert males. They gave monotone “Sorry for your losses” and “She’s with Jesus nows.” Fewer than fifty people peppered the pews, hardcore church members and those ladies that really loved a good funeral.

  After greeting everyone, Gretchen and Axel stood in the lobby in no hurry to start the proceedings.

  “You know what you’re going to say?” Gretchen asked.

  “I wrote some stuff down. I didn’t know Mom that well these last ten years.”

  “What’s there to know? She watched that Floom guy and those other TV preachers all day. Chain smoked and judged her children, tallying their sins.”

  “Kurt should do it. He knew her. I’ve never been good at public speaking.”

  “You’re weird all the time,” Gretchen said. “I wouldn’t mention that you were jerking it when you found out she died, but that’s just me.”

  Axel opened his mouth to say something, but the heavy church doors swung open with a bang. An assault of sunlight made Gretchen and Axel squint.

  A very big woman stepped into the doorway and blocked the light. Gretchen knew better than to stare into an eclipse, but she couldn’t help it. The woman weighed three hundred pounds after a four-day fast. Crammed into a cleavage-heavy, lime-green dress that would have been loud at a retro 1970s disco party, this woman wasn’t afraid of being seen. Gretchen would have guessed that she was in her mid-sixties, but her copper wig made it hard to gauge. The woman took the cigar out of her mouth, spit in her hand, and put it out on her palm.

  “Now that’s an entrance,” Gretchen said.

  The woman walked to Gretchen with the left-to-right hobble of a woman her size. Every step seemed painful. Her ankles looked like hams jammed into too-small flats. Her knees shook with each step.

  “Gretchen,” the woman said. A statement, not a question.

  “Thank you for coming,” Gretchen said. She wondered if she was staring at the woman’s chest. There was a lot of it to stare at. It made up sixty percent of Gretchen’s sight line.

  The woman leaned in, her eyes darting over Gretchen’s features. Their noses almost touched at one point. Her breath smelled like a Havana ashtray.

  “Were you friends with my mom?” Gretchen asked, taking a step back.

  “You got the devil in your eyes, girl,” the big woman said. “Hellfire, spit, and fight.”

  “I don’t want to be rude,” Gretchen said. “This being a funeral. But you’re creeping me out, lady.”

  The woman let out a roar of a laugh. Like an explosion. Heads turned from inside the church. She gave Axel a hard slap on the shoulder that made him wince.

  “I’m going to watch out for you. You’re fourteen kinds of wicked,” the woman said, walking into the church.

  Gretchen watched her waddle to the back pew, then turned to Axel. “What in the hell just happened?”

  With Pepe and Louder accompanying him, Kurt played an acoustic version of some song that he must have written in the last few days. When Kurt’s voice cracked, Gretchen felt her throat go dry.

  When I played cards with Mom, she knew I was bluffing.

  Thought I could trick her, but I knew next to nothing.

  She wasn’t always kind, sometimes downright mean.

  But she always had time for a scared, confused teen.

  I’ll miss my mom. I can’t believe she’s gone.

  I’ll miss my mom. Now who will I lean on?

  Not close to perfect, that I know for certain.

  I’ll miss my mom, as we close this final curtain.

  Gretchen glanced back at the woman in the green dress. Seated in the last pew, the woman gave her a wink and a smile.

  Gretchen leaned toward Axel and whispered, “You’ve never seen her before?”

  “Shh. Kurt’s singing. He’s really good.”

  “He’s always been great. You weren’t around to notice. Seriously, that lady is trouble. She weirds me out. She sure as shit ain’t church folk. And she ain’t no friend of our mother’s. Friends don’t smile at their friend’s funeral. Friends don’t wear that dress, tits spilling out like a boob waterfall.”

  “In a different context, I might appreciate a boob waterfall.”

  Gretchen punched his arm.

  Kurt finished the song on a long, quavering note. Walking to his spot in the front pew, he placed a hand on the casket. He sat down next to Gretchen, who put her arm around him and gave him a tissue.

  Pastor Lucas took the pulpit. He lacked the showmanship of the televangelists that Bertha loved. Tepid lemon water to their Red Bull and vodka shots, sermon-wise. After some boilerplate funeral scripture, he moved on to Bertha Ucker’s life. It read like an impersonal dossier: place of birth, education, late husband. He avoided any mention of the scandal that surrounded their father. Pastor Lucas claimed that Bertha loved tennis, which was news to Gretchen. Even though he padded his speech with made-up pastimes, it only took him a few minutes to cover her life.

  Following his remembrance, Pastor Lucas led them in a soulless rendition of the hymn, “I Am Waiting for the Dawning.” The bulk of the crowd sucked the life out of the already-bummer tune, but Gretchen could hear the lime-green-dress woman wailing with genuine spirit over the drone. It made her like the big lady a little bit, but not enough to get past the creepiness.

  When the hymn ended, Axel walked to the dais, took out some notes, and cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming to say goodbye to Bertha Ucker. Weird saying her full name. To me and Gretchen and Kurt, she was Mom. She—our relationship—I’m going to—”

  Axel stopped himself, folded up the notes, and put them in his pocket.

  “I’m going to cut the shit. Sorry, Pastor Lucas. I hadn’t seen my mother in two years, and when I finally did, she was dead. We had a complex relationship. She gave us a lot of independence growing up—some would say emotional abandonment. Even neglect. You say ‘tomato.’ But that’s neither here nor there.

  “Everyone knows our story. When our father was murdered and the thief stuff came out, it destroyed Mom. She retreated into her own world, on her own. The town had a choice. You people could have had her back, but she got no help or sympathy from Warm Springs or this church that she had been a part of most her life. Instead, she got distrust and disdain. Who knew people still shunned?

  “She attended this church, but I didn’t see any one of you speak to her after that day. You sure as hell didn’t want your kids hanging out with us. None of you—no one—ever gave us the benefit of the doubt. You left her to watch Brother Tobin Floom on the TV. He—a stranger—was better to her than you people ever were. I used to think that was sad, but looking out at the lot of you, I’m realizing that she was better off with that money-grubbing Holy Roller than with a bunch of two-faced hypocrites. She should have moved from this fucking place. Sorry again, Pastor Lucas.”

  Kurt leaned over to Gretchen. “Should I do som
ething?”

  “You do and I’ll never forgive you. I want to see how he wraps this up.”

  Axel laughed. “You were probably hoping I’d put the ‘fun’ back in ‘funeral.’ That you’d socialize and eat and have a good time, because college football ain’t started yet. I couldn’t do it. I find all of you contemptible. I find this town deplorable. I hope the whole damn place burns to the ground and the desert sand swallows up the ashes so there’s no evidence Warm Springs ever existed.”

  Axel took a step away from the microphone, snapped his fingers, and returned to the dais. “Refreshments will be served in the Bible study room after the service.”

  For a moment the church was as silent as—well, a church. Until the green-dress lady burst out laughing. She blew a two-finger whistle and applauded. “You tell ’em, kiddo!” she screamed.

  Axel walked off the dais and sat back down between Gretchen and Kurt.

  “Mom would have hated that,” Kurt said, “but that doesn’t make what you said any less true.”

  “I have never loved you more than I do right now, big brother,” Gretchen said. “I didn’t think you could beat your job-quitting speech, but this was historic. Please tell me that someone took video.”

  “No better place than a church to perform an exorcism,” Axel said.

  Gretchen was surprised to find the Bible study room full of people. Apparently, people were cool with public chastisement if free food was involved. Even a measly spread like the one in front of them: a marked-down, dried-out veggie tray, a variety of two different cheeses, a tube of Pringles, a paper plate of cookies, and a maybe-it’s-a-casserole. Two-liter bottles of store brand soda and a coffee urn were the beverage choices. There had been some Ritz crackers and dry salami, but Pepe had made quick work of them before the first parishioner got to the table.