Route 7 Review | Page 120

same category of “all men.” Although, it had always unnerved me that he liked all the same movies as my father. From the Bonds to all the Rocky films their tastes were identical. What especially freaked me out was their jointly shared passion for useless Godfather movie factoids. Such as, “Hey, did you know that was a real horse’s head in that bed.” They both said that to me on multiple occasions over dinner when there was a conversation lull. My mother thought it was humorous and detected their similarities early on. She claimed that old adage, “Women always marry someone like their fathers.” When I heard that I wanted to vomit like that little girl in The Exorcist. A movie neither of them liked, but I did. She went on to assure me, besides their cinematic preferences, it was only their sense of humors that were similar. This didn’t help my satanic nausea either, since I hated my father’s jokes. This sudden need to compare them was not helping my pre-marriage jitters, and my future husband’s memory lapse was only leading me to fear that I would soon have more horrible Venn-Diagram moments. That night I laid awake listening to him snore. Another similarity between them. My father could always be heard all the way across the house, and my future husband could shake the rafters. I watched him until it moved way past a sign of affection and into creepy stalker territory. Around the time when the fabric between this world and the next is about as thin as sheep skin condom, I went wandering around the house. I turned on the light in the office and found the black box I had banished all my therapy exercises and father memorabilia to. That night it reminded me of his Cadillac coffin and something was rattling around inside. I opened it and his sunglasses that I had tapped to the lid, amongst the flurry of Dr. Lewis’ therapy homework sticky notes, had fallen off. I found them in my father’s desk on the first day we arrived on the scene. They had cleaned up all the blood in his office the best they could, but occasionally I would spot some sad Lady Macbeth reminder of his Sambuca soaked exit. I put the glasses on that night and that day and walked around in a mushy pond of temporality altering memories. Before dawn, both versions of myself, present and past, merged to uncover the reason for my future husband’s beautiful case of amnesia. It wasn’t that he was just like my father. The week my father died my future husband was all about maintaining precious gravitational pull. From the moment we touched down in Newark he never let go of my hand or lost sight me for an instant. When we met my godfather and his wife at my father’s office and they were laying down ultimatums and inaccurately quoting scripture, he was watching me and interlaced his maple sausage fingertips with mine. Eventually, he took me to the car and watched a DVD with me. While I was curled up in the fetal position at the hotel, he was helping my mother and the kind funeral director juggle the spectacular spectacle that was my father’s funeral. My father’s mistress was not happy that she had to have a separate viewing hour, and she even tried to bribe the funeral director with an armful of cash for it to be longer than my mother’s. I later apologized to the sympathetic man for having to deal with a circus every time one of my family members needed to take a dirt nap. My grandmother’s funeral was just as messy, and he had handled that little theatrical escapade too. The man was the perfect ringmaster for my family of depressing clowns, clumsy knife throwers, and loud mouth carneys. The morning of the funeral I could not get out of bed. My kidney and bladder disorder decided it too needed to come to New Jersey for this dramatic affair. It wasn’t helping that my urine smelled of wine coolers and rum. My own fault, but necessary to cope with the plane ride. My future husband carried me to the shower, bathed me, dressed me, and helped me to the car. There was no time for him to ogle at the Emersonian moment that convinced me that the snow was trying to communicate how finite every moment is with its powerful seasonal symbolism. When it was time for me to say goodbye at the funeral home my future husband wasn’t looking at that awful red suit. He was too busy holding me up. I wasn’t eating regularly and had a bad case of the spaghetti legs. On the way to the church, he tried to negotiate a truce with my kidneys by rubbing them and making me take sips of cold water. When we entered the church he used his body to shield me from the double ought buck shot stares of my father’s mistress and her family. During the ceremony, which as my aunt so keenly observed