The Burial of Max Peterson

by Alan S. Falkingham

Matteo

‘Sig.na. Peterson’

The driver my mother had told me to meet in the arrivals hall at Marco Polo airport holds a sign as neat as his suit and necktie, letters precise and perfectly written.

“Did you manage to sleep on the plane, Miss?” he asks once we are out of the parking garage and moving along the highway, cars nipping at each other’s fenders as they zip between lanes. His accent is lilting, in the way Italian accents always seem to be, with their musical cadence and rolling syllables.

“No,” I tell him without looking up from my phone. “I worked mostly.” I had spent the flight from JFK sifting through analyst reports and, now that the Asian markets are open, I watch the indices tick anxiously but also with a rising sense of guilt at this resentment I feel. I am just too busy for this. But what sort of piece-of-shit daughter should ever be too busy for this?

I make a point of dropping my phone into my purse, try and focus on remembering my father, force myself to recall my favorite memories. When I look up, I see the driver watching me through the rearview mirror.

“I am sorry for your loss, Miss Peterson,” he says, as if, somehow, he can read everything in my face.

I look puzzled and he chuckles, but not in a disrespectful way, the floppy black curls of his hair beating out time. “I should explain,” he says. “My name is Matteo. My father owns the Onoranze Funebri Quattrini. Your mother sent me.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Well, I suppose, strictly speaking, my father sent me. But he would do anything to please her.” He seems to catch himself, makes a face. “You know, anything for the client…”

This much makes sense. There are few people Mother ever came across that she could not charm. And those, she could pay instead.

“I will inherit the company one day. But Papa says first I must learn to be less chatty.” He looks back into the mirror, gives me an apologetic look. “Death is a solemn business, you know?”

But he does not look very solemn. In fact, there is something endearing about him. He has a kind face, laughter creases at the corners of his eyes.

“I suppose it is.”

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” He says it quite matter of fact, but the poetry of it catches my attention. “Maybe this is why I like to talk…I don’t know.” He shrugs, eyes back on the road.

“Well put,” I tell him. I mean it, but I also feel sad suddenly, reminded of all the things I never said to my father that I should have done. And now it is too late. We never were a family that was much good at expressing our feelings. At least not to each other.

“William Shakespeare’s advice. Not mine,” says Matteo, not wanting to claim credit.

“Are we going to the apartment?” I ask him. My parents’ place is a beautiful high-ceilinged apartment with a wrought iron balcony that overlooks the Jewish Ghetto in Cannaregio. It has a sotoportego that leads to a tiny walled courtyard packed full of fragrant, big-headed flowers. It costs them a king’s ransom in rent, but I suppose that is what a life spent trading derivatives buys you. My parents had moved here when my father retired from Bank of America. For a couple so steadfastly traditional in every way I could ever recall, it had seemed like a kind of shared mid-life crisis. My mother had shed her yoga pants and tennis lessons and taken up art. My father became an adjunct professor in the School of Economics at Universita Ca Foscari.

“No, Miss Peterson; your mother said to bring you to the funeral home first. She is there with my father finalizing arrangements.”

“Jesus, that sounds like fun. Will there be cocktails?” I try a joke for size, just to see how he reacts.

His eyes are suddenly mischievous. “I have learned that, with your mother, there are usually cocktails.” He smiles at me, also trying to judge my reaction, whether he might have over-stepped. Too chatty perhaps.

I laugh to tell him it is OK, relieved for the mood to be lightened. “You’re right about that, Matteo.”

We drive on in silence for a little while, but when I reach for my purse to check my phone, he beats me to it.

“The water looks beautiful, today,” he says, glancing to his left. “Venezia is a special place, Miss Peterson. Even in a time of great sadness it has a power to heal. I hope you find some peace here.”

As we head over the Ponte della Liberta, I take in the view. He is not wrong. The sea glimmers, a prism refracting the sunlight, sailboats dotted here and there, islands hanging in the distance. And directly in front of us, with its crooked lines and jagged angles, the orange-brown teardrop of Venice.

Arturo’s Place

The funeral home is not like anything you would ever find in America. Crushed in between an old-fashioned bookstore and a jewelers, it is unremarkable out front, just a plain black canopy with a brass name plate next to the door. Inside, it is poorly lit, all dark wood and almost eerily quiet.

“Georgie!” My mother throws her arms around me and plants two kisses, one on each cheek. Apparently, she has taken to wearing bandanas and floral print dresses. “So wonderful to see you, darling. This whole thing is just so terrible. Such a dreadful accident.”

With the situation neatly summarized, it seems she feels no need to elaborate. “This is Arturo,” she continues, introducing a silver-haired man, dressed in a dark suit. “He is your father’s mortician. And a friend of the family, as it happens.”

Arturo steps out of the shadows, tucks his hands together at his belt line and bows his head. “I am sorry for your loss, Signorita,” he says. “A truly great man.”

“We have just finished talking through everything,” my mother says briskly. “I think we are all set for Wednesday.” She exudes finality. Her way of telling me there is nothing to discuss here.

“We are going through with it then?” I cannot help myself. It just comes out. Somehow, I had half-thought that when I finally got here, I may be able to talk her round. This whole idea of burying him here, in Venice, rather than returning his body to the States.

“It is what your father wanted.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Georgina. Really.” My mother tuts with annoyance. “Remember, I’m the one who lived with him every day. While you were working so hard.” She ends her sentence with emphasis. “He loved Venezia. We both do. He wanted to be buried here.”

Arturo watches silently, head still bowed. The atmosphere is awkward and, somewhere off in the distance, a clock chimes.

“Matteo, would you be kind enough to escort us back home? Georgie’s luggage looks heavy, and the paving stones and staircase can be awkward.”

My mother. A river in flood. Rolling along, carrying the rest of the world as flotsam.

“It would be my pleasure Signora Peterson,” Matteo replies, as if he has a choice.

But, before we can leave, Arturo comes to life, raising his head and moving his arms, like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been tightened. He clears his throat.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” he asks my mother.

She moves over and places a hand on his arm. Half for comfort, half as re-assurance. It is a strange gesture, especially for my mother who has never been a woman to show much affection, especially to strangers.

She replies softly in Italian and Arturo says something back. Words I do not understand. By the door, I sense Matteo stiffen slightly.

“Perhaps,” she continues in English. “I have not decided yet.”

Venice

“It was just a regular childhood,” I tell him as we look out across the rooftops from the terrace of the T. Fondaca dei Tedeschi. It is late afternoon. The sun is hot and the sky shimmers. Below us the streets bustle with tourists and across the interwoven layers of terracotta-colored roofs I can see the copper-green pinnacle of the camponile at St. Mark’s.

“My father worked a lot. Mother was the driving force behind our family. But I remember being happy enough. I had friends. We had money. Charlotte is a nice town. It was an unremarkable upbringing, I suppose.”

It has been a wonderful day. I had slept late, jet-lagged, and when I awoke, I discovered my mother gone, leaving only a note to tell me that Matteo would swing by later to be my tour guide for the day. With a perfect sense of timing, the doorbell had buzz-sawed through an antiquated intercom even before I had finished reading.

“We have a saying here that a good day starts with the morning. Il buongiorno si vede dal mattino. So, first, we go get coffee. And not your terrible American coffee. Italian coffee!”

He had proved a charming and interesting companion, energetic and humorous, chivalrous but also with a twist of dryness. Quick to poke fun at me in a friendly way, and at himself. We had wandered through the tight streets, criss-crossing back and forth across the bridges and canals, visited the farmer’s market in Rialto, walked among the orange trees in the courtyard at the San Fransesco Della Vigna. For lunch we had eaten cicchetti at a canalside osterio near the Sculo grande di San Marco.

“It was not so straightforward being the mortician’s son,” he laughs. “Not easy to get girlfriends to come over…..” He makes a face like a ghoul and I throw my hands to my mouth in mock terror.

“You never mention your mother?” I ask him, treading carefully, wondering if it is too personal a question.

“She left us,” he says simply, still staring out across the rooftops. “She struggled with depression.”

He leaves me wondering. Divorce? An institution of some kind? Suicide?

“You feel guilty. About your father.” He changes the subject. “You shouldn’t. Everyone has the right to choose their own pathway in life. Everyone. That includes your parents. And you.”

He can read me well. Too well.

“I wish I’d done more to stay close. To love him more. I never really tried to understand why they came out here. And I work too much. We just drifted apart. And now it’s too late.”

“You are not listening, Giorgia,” he twists my name into Italian in a way I find strangely romantic. “Your parents made their choices too. Both of them. Believe me.” He says it with a hint of mystery, some glimpse of understanding that he refuses to fully reveal.

“Do you think my mother is telling the truth when she says Dad wanted to be buried here?”

“Yes. Definitely,” Matteo replies, this time without hesitation.

“And what about my mother and your father?” I think back to the way she had extended her hand the previous evening. The words spoken between them so gently in Italian.

“As I say,” repeats Matteo, “I think our parents are entitled to make their own choices too.”

San Michele

San Michele is Venice’s island cemetery, out in the lagoon on the way to Murano. The gravestones there are tightly packed in, and Matteo had described how, to free up space, after twelve years, the dead are exhumed and their remains transported back to the mainland where those rich enough could pay for their loved ones to be re-interred. Those not so fortunate, had their remains cast to the boneyard.

We travel out by hearse boats, Arturo in the lead with my father’s coffin, Matteo on the second boat with me, my mother, and the pallbearers. The sun is hot, and we all wear sunglasses to shield our eyes from the glare off the water as we slide out towards the island, nobody talking, just the rattle of the engine and the thud of waves striking the prow of the boat.

When we dock, off in the distance I see a short woman, dressed in a baggy black dress carrying three huge bunches of flowers, so large that they seem to engulf her, turning her into a walking patchwork of yellow, pink, and white: chrysanthemums and carnations, lilies of the fields. A little farther away, on the crest of a shallow rise is a freshly dug grave, surrounded by a knuckle of mourners, covered by an open sided tent to provide shelter from the sun.

The funeral proceeds at a clip and in Italian so I just let the words flow over me, staring out across the water, listening to the rhythm of things. In the moment, for the first time, I feel more connected with him. As if maybe my mother was right after all, and that this place was somewhere that felt more like home to him than either the lonely plains of Nebraska where he was born or the Piedmont plateau of my North Carolina childhood.

After we are done, the mourners drift away. Arturo helps my mother, supporting her gently by the elbow as she makes her way back towards the boats. Matteo remains with me, and we linger for a moment by the graveside.

“Mi scusi, signora,”

The voice behind me is apologetic and when I turn, I find that one of the other mourners has doubled back, separating himself from the dispersing crowd.

He is tall, with a well-trimmed beard, speckled with gray. He removes his sunglasses and squints at the brightness. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he blinks hard, perhaps to convince me it is only because of the sunlight.

“My name is Giuseppe,” he says. His accent is heavy and halting, less fluent than Matteo. “I was a student of your Papa at the university. We worked together on my doctorate thesis.”

He hesitates again, seemingly unsure how to proceed. “He was at my apartment when he died.” He makes a face, part apology, part confession perhaps. Then he digs his hand into the pocket of his suit coat and pulls something out.

“I will miss your Papa. He was a wonderful man. An incredible teacher.” There is such a heaviness to his voice that is hard to miss. Laden down.

“He spoke about you a lot, signora. He loved you and was so incredibly proud of you. He would want you to know that.”

He extends a hand, offers me the object he is holding. I cannot help but give a little gasp. They are my father’s eyeglasses, a tiny crack in one of the lenses.

“I am sorry they are broken. It happened when he fell,” Giuseppe explains and he runs his finger along the fissure, ever so gently. The depth of his grief is unmistakable.

“I loved your father,” he says it almost imperceptibly, involuntarily. “We loved each other very much.”

The Studio

“I must show you something,” says Matteo.

He has given me his jacket to wear around my shoulders, because I cannot seem to stop shivering, despite the warm evening air. He links arms with me as we walk, without a word, neither asking for permission, nor forgiveness.

“What is it?” I ask him. The day has been emotional and exhausting, on top of my jet lag. All I really want to do is curl up and sleep.

“Your mother’s studio,” Matteo explains. “She rented an upper room at the funeral home for her art. This is how she met my father, in fact.”

My mother. Always with an eye for the dramatic. Only she would choose an art studio above a mortuary.

We climb the stairs, uneven and tight with a well-worn handrail.

“When you first see her work, you will be shocked, Giorgia. But perhaps, after a moment, you might also see the beauty.”

Now it is Matteo’s turn to be dramatic it seems. But when he pushes open the door, I immediately see why.

“Jesus, fucking, Christ.” I whisper it into my hands.

The room is set up as a workshop, with a long trestle table in the middle, trays of a white, paste-like mixture, brushes, newspaper, a heat lamp. The wooden floor is covered with dust sheets to protect it from splashes. But it is the walls that catch and hold my attention.

Hanging there are a series of molds of human heads. Each one is made of plain white plaster, contoured to the shape of a face: forehead, nose, lips, jawbone. They come in all shapes and sizes. Gaunt, fat-rolled, a boxer’s chin, a widow’s peak. But on each of them, the eyes have been delicately painted, so that the heads stare back unblinking.

The significance is not lost on me. These are death masks; Arturo’s dead.

“Shit, Matteo. This is weird. My mother did these?”

“Yes,” he says softly.

“And your father let her?” It is accusatory. But, at the same time, I know that my mother has never done anything in this life that she did not want to do.

He nods. “We spend so long seeing our parents only through our childhood eyes. But they are complex people too.”

I circle the room, slowly looking at each mask in turn.

“Why do you think she didn’t do one of my father?” I ask him once I have examined them all. “Was it revenge? She wanted to forget him? She must have known about Giuseppe. Or at least suspected.”

Matteo shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says. “Or maybe she also recognized his happiness. And her own too. Preferred to remember their life together, not his death? Did you ever consider that?”

And, standing there in the half-light, I think that maybe he is right. That, in the end, it is only about the journey, and making peace with all its twists and turns.

When I get back to the apartment, my mother is still up, sitting alone in front of the tall, open balcony windows.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?” she asks. Her voice is husky.

I pull over a chair and sit beside her, placing my hand gently over hers. “I thought I’d stay a while,” I tell her. “If that is OK with you?”

“Yes,” she says eventually. “I would like that.”