Series of Omissions

Norman O’Connor died May 5, 2012. He was a proud Albany native and New York University alum. He will be remembered fondly by his friends at the Ancient Order of the Hibernians and the Knights Columbus.

He is survived by a wife, a daughter, two sons, and a quantity of appalling pornography hidden beneath the toolshed and dozens and dozens of intricately painted model planes that he labored over his entire life, but never showed anyone, though if anyone happened upon one of them, as visitors did from time to time, he would offer it up with both hands, a young boy proud of his handiwork.

He is survived by memories of dreadful silence and What did you just say to me? and the impact of the belt, or The Belt as they thought of it, against the backs of the children, even when they weren’t children, not really, they were practically out of high school and he was still doing it. Whenever they talked back or did poorly in school or were out past curfew, he pulled it down from its shelf, so that nearly every memory of a first kiss or night on the beach or camping trip or humiliating report card is punctuated by the terrible smack of the belt and the same flat dry face he always wore when he struck them. You will not behave like this.

He is survived by two sons who, not three hours after his funeral, beat the ever-loving shit out of each other outside of the bar closest to the cemetery. They cried and cried and cried as they scrabbled on the ground and pounded at each other with their fists and soiled their rented suits with parking-lot gravel and tears and snot until finally, finally, someone managed to pry them apart, but by then the fight was out of them anyway. They had gotten what they wanted. The eldest drove them to the emergency room, where they discovered they both had broken noses. Neither apologized. There was nothing to forgive.

He is survived by a loving wife. The week after he was diagnosed he came home one afternoon with a fur coat just like the one she had when they first married, and a tuxedo and two opera tickets for the best seats in the house, and even though she knew that nice people didn’t wear fur anymore, the weight of it on her shoulders made her bones heavy and sharp and fine like spars of quartz, strong enough to hold up the both of them. And though he shook from the medication with the sort of side-effects that made her feel queasy when she thought about them, he lifted his chin up when he saw her watching, like he was daring her to say something pitying. She took his arm, and that’s how she remembered him for a long time: fierce, proud, a little scared.

He is survived by La Mer, the fine French restaurant where he and his wife once sat, waiting for their daughter to come back from the bathroom, though she was sitting in a stall wearing heels and hiccupping out tiny sobs of rage because of when he hadn’t been there, not since that singular, terrible night when he told her just what he thought about her degree in Music and her black boyfriend and that kind of people she spent her time with. He had not been there when bronchitis had left her in the hospital for a week and the bills nearly left her homeless, not when her neighbor followed her to work and left raging messages on her phone and she had to move because of it, not when her mother called late at night and promised to wire her just a little extra money. But those were old hurts, long since scabbed and calloused over. The real reason she was smearing teary makeup onto toilet paper in a fine French restaurant was because Norman O’Connor, who would die in five years, surrounded by his loving wife, daughter, and two sons, who was here now, had showed up to the hall with a potted cactus instead of flowers because he knew it would make her laugh, and when he hugged her and told her that she was the best musician in the whole damn place, he meant it.

He is survived by doubt. Years ago, when he and his loving wife were arguing over something absurd, like money or the house, something they could lose in an instant or replace far easier than each other, when they were howling at each other, young and angry and filled with fire and spit, he raised back his fist. This is why she always thought of this fight as the one that started it all. It placed something ugly between them, a pane of dirty glass that did not go away, not when he lowered his hand, not when he apologized, not when he took her to the beach the next night and she could see why she married him all over again, because she knew that he had it in him to hurt her. Years later, she remembered it, when medication and illness made him spiteful and confused and he cursed her as she led his shaking body to the bathroom or spooned food into his mottled lips. But even when he was at his sickest and most confused, when he spat out the most hurtful things his drug-addled mind could produce and she had to wonder if this was the truth, that he had not given into delirium but was delivering a death bed confession, even then, as long as she was in reach, he did not let go of her hand, not once.

Norman O’Connor did not survive. He can no longer sneak candy to his grandchildren when their parents were not looking, or surprise his wife with newly planted sunflowers outside their bedroom window. He will no longer construct exquisite hot breakfasts every Sunday morning or fall into the kinds of blind rages that could barely be attributed to a sane man. He is gone. He is hated. He is missed.