4.

The sky had grown grey and droplets of rain were beginning to fall on the dark polished wood of my grandfather's casket as the pallbearers lowered the long box into the ground. I watched with struggling emotions; as a child I always stood in awe of Grandpa Chuck, a tall, weather-beaten man who owned farmland outside of the city my parents lived in. He loomed amiably over me when I was a kid, dispensing thoughts and observations that would influence me all my life, and as I got older he became the only person in my family I had any hope of relating to. Howard Charles Crawford was a man you could rely on, could trust. And now, he was dead. Where did that leave me?

As I stood over the grave thinking, a hand descended on my shoulder from behind and just sat there. I turned my head slowly, to see my father standing behind me, his eyes and expression unreadable behind his sunglasses and thick beard. "Didn't think that was ever gonna end," he said.

I wouldn't call my dad muscular, but he was a big guy and I therefore resisted the temptation to sock him in the stomach right then. Instead, I looked around the small crowd of people, searching for understanding. Toward the cars I saw my brother telling a few relatives a story that seemed to have them laughing, and not far from there my mother was reading a romance novel waiting for us to go. Not even in death did the man get the respect he deserved.

I imagine that after a funeral of a loved one the following dinner is typically solemn and commemorative. Anyone listening in on our dinner, however, would have been totally unaware that anything remotely awful had happened recently. It seemed, in fact, as though the rest of my family was also unaware that anything sad had happened.

"So Paul, I hear you're having some trouble keeping up with your bills, huh?" My dad reached across the table to pick up a dish of butter before I could reach it with my knife. I glared at him.

"Who told you that?"

"Your girlfriend kept complaining about it every time we called her." Dad stabbed his knife into the butter and carved out a giant slab. "And we called her a lot."

"She seemed so rude," my mother put in. "And why didn't she know where you were?"

"Uh..." I tried to decide whether this was something worth lying about, but Dad cut me off.

"Anyway, I figure now that you're here, you might as well get along with it. You want money, right?"

I grabbed the butter dish back, feeling a surge of resentment. "Hell no, I don't want money. I'm..." My words trailed away as I remembered that I had, in fact, planned on asking my parents for money. Why did he have to bring this up in front of everyone? "I'm fine, dad. My girlfriend was just joking, probably." I laughed unconvincingly.

There was a pause, and then my brother committed one of his occasional acts of goodness and bailed me out--kind of. "Remember that bonus I was telling you guys about?" he asked. "I got it."

"Oh that's great dear," my mother said.

"That's my boy," said Dad who patted him on the back while glaring at me. "When's the last time you got a bonus, Paul?" I returned his glare.

"Writers don't get bonuses," I said, wondering if that was really true. My dad didn't look convinced.

"I bet Hemingway got bonuses," he muttered.

"Take it easy on Paul, Dad - being a writer's tough. My pal Steve is an agent, so I know what they have to go through to get published." Once again my brother had come out with something that vaguely made me look better, and I felt grudgingly thankful to him.

My Dad, however, continued. "If it's so hard, then why don't you get a better job? Why didn't you just become a cosmonaut like I told you to?"

"A cosmonaut? This is America, Dad! You can't be a cosmonaut in America!"

My mom stood up. "Enough, you two, enough. If you need money, Paul, I'm sure we can work something out. I know we helped out Ronnie when he was just getting started. Now who wants dessert?"

"Should've just been a cosmonaut," Dad muttered on to himself.

The next day Mom took me to the airport. "Here, Paul," she said and offered a slip of paper.

I hesitated.

"I won't tell Dad," she said, able to read me like no one else could.

I took it, feeling even more ashamed than ever. Maybe I should have become a cosmonaut.

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