I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [108]
She left three thousand dollars to cover funeral expenses, and though she suggested no flowers for the service, we got them. She left whatever monies remained (between eighty and ninety thousand dollars) to be divided among us. She left me her car, my sister the furniture, with phone numbers of the nearest Goodwill in case Ninette chose to donate it. All of her artwork, every lamp, crucifix, and other artifact she had made (and the house was full of them), was listed and bequeathed to one of her children or their spouses. A box labeled “for Jacques” contained my 1942 Midsummer Night’s Dream Puck costume, with the pair of little golden horns still attached to its elastic holding band, and the handheld pipes she had conjured and constructed nestled on top. Everyone got a little something. Her portrait, which had hung in the living room all our lives, she also left to me—to the chagrin of my siblings. Predictably, she had arranged for her own cemetery plot, prepaid its cost and maintenance, and left monies to the Catholic church for a memorial Mass once a year, in perpetuity. A note addressed to all of us was found next to her bed:
To my dear Family,
Please do not buy any flowers, but in your kindness of heart, I will need prayers, Masses, for my poor soul. I know that you love me, and will think of me, I will need your help to go to heaven. May the Good Lord have mercy on my helpless sinful soul.
Thank you all my dear loved ones for the pleasure you have given me. Especially Jacques, all the attentions, devotions, love he has given me through the goodness of his heart. Thank you Jacques you have made my life beautiful with your generosity—and interesting deeds. My dear children, I am sorry if I have offended you in any way during my life on earth, if so I ask your pardon.
We will be reunited in heaven one day with the grace of God, where we will all be very happy, loving God through the Mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ forever and ever. Amen. Thank you again my dear ones. May God bless you. Farewell until I will see you all again in Eternity.
Your mother,
Georgette
Boss died in 1984. The January before, when I visited her, my mother spoke to me for the first time in a negative way about my father. “Around the time we were evicted, you were five years old, Jacques, and I was so sick. I had appendicitis but didn’t know it, and my appendix burst. I asked your father to get a taxi to take me to the hospital. ‘We don’t have any money for that,’ he said, ‘why can’t you walk?’ And then in the hospital, sitting by my bed, he whispered in my ear, ‘Die, Georgette, why don’t you die?’ ” Poor Pop. I can imagine how he must have dreaded coming home, without any work, to face her harping. I don’t think my sister and brothers know this.
In March of 1989, I visited Pop in Maine. He was living in a nursing home Paul and Kathleen had arranged for him, a comfortable, spacious place. When I arrived, he showed me some of his correspondence—love letters to and from his collection of women. He was frail and failing, but he took my elbow and walked me into a kind of recreation room, the common area. A couple of old guys were playing checkers, several women were watching a soap opera, and some reluctant children wandered, visiting aged grandparents. Pop moved a few chairs around to give himself some space and me a place to sit, and then he started performing a dance, a kind of soft-shoe shuffle, a lazy man’s slow-motion wind-about. No one else in the room seemed startled—the men didn’t look up from their checkers game, the soap opera kept the ladies mesmerized—and I realized his dancing was nothing new to them, he did it all the time. “Andy’s at it again!” I watched him for quite a while, and he was pretty good. The soap opera finished and another had started, but he continued his wind-about. Then I interrupted him,