Un Jour Dans La Vie

There I was sitting in the guest room, thinking about Serena – suddenly all the memories came back to me. The times when I would be going out to dinner with her and her family at a small café, hearing people talk about the devastation of World War I. I remember sitting in central park with her and watching the birds fly down and peck food off the ground, strolling around and watching ducks bathe in the ponds. Hot dog vendors and the smell of hot dog water in the air are filling my nostrils. Oh, nostalgia, why must you be such a cruel instrument? I was quickly awaked from this trance when I notice the time and notice that it is already 8:23.

“For Christ’s sake, look at the time,” I announced as I jolted off to grab my nicest shirt, tie, and pants. After I gathered my things I rushed to the bathroom where I took a warm shower. After 15 minutes in the shower the water that was pleasantly warm and comfortable turned cold and started to freeze my skin, like a hundred needles poking at my chest, face and back. This was always the thing I hated most about showering here – the water. It was always so… unstable. No warning in the water temperatures that it was dropping in degrees, no, just like a light switch it changes dramatically. I stepped outside of the shower and grab a towel and began to dry myself off and wrap the towel around myself. I grab the shaving cream and lather my face prepping for a warm, relaxing shave. Moments after I prepped my face I heard the record player playing the song “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” play downstairs as I start to hum along as I ran the straight blade down my face.

I take a deep breath after splashing a sink full of water on my face. “I hope she still cares. It’s been a while,” I thought to myself. I get his shirt – a deep blue, almost black, shirt with red and dark white but not quite grey pinstripes, and I buttoned it up. I grab a classy red tie and toss it around my neck. I put my black pants on and buckled my belt. I slicked back his hair, grabbed my black blazer and buttoned up top two of the three buttons “never want to button up the last one,” I said to myself and headed downstairs. I tossed on my top hat and headed over next door to see Serena. I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. I hears Serena singing and I knocked again, this time with more force so she’ll hear me over here quite obnoxious singing voice.

“Hold on, I’ll be there in a second I just got to-“

Serena’s voice was growing fainter with every word until I couldn’t hear her anymore. Expecting the traditional late answer she’s always been so known for I decided to take a lean up against the mahogany pillar on the porch and light a cigarette as I wait. Lowe and behold, I’ll be damned that as soon I struck the match I heard the clamor of footsteps approaching the door, the doorknob rattles and the door opens. Standing there is Serena in a gorgeous long red dress, black fur scarf, curly brown hair, red lipstick and red heels. I stood there with my jaw scraping the floor hoping my cigarette doesn’t do the same.

“Hi Branden, do you like the dress,” she asked.

“Uh… Ye-ye-yes of course, you look absolutely stunning, my lady,” I told her, with a slight stutter.
“Good. You’re looking quite good yourself. Dressed like a true gentleman.”

“Thank you, Serena. Now if you’re ready let us take off. I am going to have my uncle’s caretaker, Henry, Take us to a restaurant. I hope this suits your wishes.”

“Branden, as long as it’s with you I don’t mind what we do.” She announced, almost seductively.

We drove down 57th street and we spot The Russian Tea Room, a relatively new place that a lot of upper class people have been raving about, according to Serena.

“This place has been getting a lot of attention recently, would you like to try it out?” Serena inquired.

I took a look at it and after a few moments and agreed that we should eat there. We walked up to the doors and Henry opened them for us. We walked in and were greeted with a beautiful sight: a chandelier hanging from the relatively short ceiling with pea green colour walls and golden decorations scattered amongst the walls. The doorman asks if we can take off our outerwear, coats and scarves and such. We were then seated to a table where we were brought menus and asked if we would like something to drink while we wait. Both say that we would like some tea and after a few moments of skimming through the menus tell the waiter what we’d like to eat.

“Yes, may I have a lobster soup for the appetizer? Boeuf a la stroganoff for an entrée and for dessert Czar’s gold and caviar parfait” I asked the waiter.

“Yes very good choice sir. And for you, milady?” The waiter asked.
“Can I start with a caviar tasting, veal chop a la soblianka for the entrée and a slice of cheesecake for the dessert?” Serena requested.

“Yes, milady, we will have these out for you as soon as possible. I will be bringing the teas out to you right now. Thank you for choosing the Russian Tea Room for your choice of dinner tonight. We hope our service meets and exceeds and all expectations,” The waiter told us as he scurried off.

Serena sits there and looked in her pocket mirror to check her makeup. “How rude,” I thought at first, “She is supposed to be here having dinner and she is concerned about her makeup?” I was naïve in thinking that this was only about how she looked. She was concerned about how she looked for me.

“Don’t worry, love, you look stunning, and your makeup looks fine. No need to worry about that,” I told her. She closed the container that the mirror is in and she put it in her purse.

“Thanks Branden, that was sweet of you to say. So tomorrow is the funeral for your father, how are you going to be able to handle it? I know he was close to you, even after you left for France. I’m sorry about all that happened, he was a-”

She was untimely interrupted by the waiter with our tea.

“Here you are 2 high teas. Hope you enjoy. We are working on appetizers right now and we will be bringing them out to you in a moment and sorry about the interruption,” he exclaimed and walked into the back room again.

“Yes, thank you,” the two of us told him.

“So, as I was saying, your father, he was a good man. And we will surely be missed and may his soul rest in eternal peace up in heaven.” Serena said.

I sat in silence for a moment; thinking about the notion that heaven is actually real for some people is shocking to me. I couldn’t believe it. I never took Serena to be one that believed in such fairy tales. Growing up she was such a rational thinker – the idea of believing in heaven would’ve been absurd to her in her younger years. “Or would it have been?” I thought, “what if she never was as much a rational thinker as I perceived but rather quite the opposite… Or even what if I thought that to make me relate more to her – or more relate to me?”

“Yeah, may he rest in peace and all that,” I said cynically. Serena stares at me in an almost mesmerized state.

“Are you mad? At me? Do you not care that your dad is dead? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Here we are folks; we got caviar tasting for the lady and a lobster soup for the mister. We will be bringing your entrees out here soon. Hope you enjoy your meals.” The waiter exclaimed.
Serena thanked him in a miserable tone and I do the same. “Oh are you just the waiter who gets paid to interrupt everyone’s conversations?” I wanted to say but I bit my tongue for fear of causing a scene – and I didn’t even mean any of that, I didn’t consciously feel that way. Something felt odd.
“So Branden, what is it? Am I to brash in my joy? What’s wrong?” Serena asked me.

“Hmm? Oh no sweetheart, it has nothing to do with you and not really my father either. I just don’t believe in heaven and thus I am landlocked in this notion of disappointed limbo. I want my father to be happy, but if I don’t believe in heaven then he’s just going to be 6 feet underground and there won’t be pearl gates and St. Peter there to greet him. I don’t want that for him, I want him to have the joys of heaven but I can’t fathom it is all.”

The next 5 minutes were spent in awkward silence, not knowing what to say to one another. Religion is a touchy topic, I got that, but something so insignificant shouldn’t alter the flow of the night this easily, no, there has to be some underlying problem that is getting to her to keep this quiet.

“Serena, are you alright?” I asked as I took hold of her hands across the table.

She’s just about to take a bite of her caviar when he asked her.

“Yeah, I’m fine, why are you asking?” she questions with a look of discontent.

“I just wanted to make sure you were alright, after we talked about my opinions of heaven it seemed that you couldn’t get over it and you were just going silent on me, I was just making sure nothing was wrong, sweetie.”

She looks at me with a glassy looks in her eyes, like she’s about the cry.

“It’s-it’s nothing Branden, and most certainly nothing you did or said. I just can’t imagine an afterlife like the one you think of, which I guess, is a lack thereof. Please, disregard my emotions, I am having a hard time holding them back with so many colliding issues lately. I’m nothing short than a fuse and even the smallest of words can be highly volatile.” She exclaimed.

“I understand. Serena, since coming back to New York things weren’t going so well, I was coming back a cynical man with a chip on my shoulder. Resentment and hostility running amuck between the stupidities of people, the greediness of some and just the natural flow of the city creep under my skin and bothers me more so than anything. But after finding you again I feel… more at peace. Happier and more content with life as it is instead of how it was. I came back here with a remembrance of the past we had, and part of me, the child inside me thought we would return to those days. Those days are obviously far behind us, but you and me, together we can build a better tomorrow with the knowledge of the past. I love you.” I said to her as I leaned over the table and give her a kiss on the lips.

Her face was lit up red from blushing as she took my hands and said “Branden, I don’t know what to say… that… that was the nicest thing I ever heard. I do love you; I really do, but this future… I know this weekend you’re heading back home and maybe sometime we can get together in Paris and visit the Moulin Rouge and the Eiffel tower and go all out, but I can’t do that now. I want to, but I can’t. I can’t leave everything I have here to go spend my days in a city I never been to just to be with someone I love. I can’t even fathom how badly this could end. I have to go now, it’s getting late. I will see you at the funeral tomorrow. Au revoir.” She said to me followed by a kiss on the cheek.

She walked to the doors and I stopped her to ask how she was going to get home.

“I am just going hail a cab. Henry isn’t coming for another 10 minutes and since the earlier silence bothered you so much I can only imagine how awkward it will get now.” She exclaimed as she gets her scarf, handbag and heads out the door.

As the doors fling open I see the rain pouring that was but a light clouds looming overhead earlier in the day “I can’t let her just go outside in the rain. What a man I’d be if I did that,” I thought. “Was this me being an honest and kind person or was it just a last ditch effort to try and get her back – despite how cliché it was,” something I always asked myself.

I was just about to tell her to wait for Henry but the doorman gives her a complimentary umbrella and thanks her for coming. “UGH! CURSE THIS PLACE - THE BANE OF MY EXISENTCE!” I shouted inside my head. As the doors slowly close I saw her standing there hailing down a cab and stepping inside it. I assume she told the driver to take her and away she went. She didn’t even look back…

“Henry,” I said on the telephone, “I will be getting my own way back to the house so don’t worry about coming to get me,” I told him. I arrived back at Francis’ house some time later I headed straight for the guest room to flop down on the bed. Racked with depression and memories of my father and his funeral looming ever so closer I lied in bed and thought about all of his war stories from World War I and his remarkable journey through the fields of Passchendaele. His stories of lying in the trench beds for 2 hours and waking up covered in lice and hearing the roaring sounds of artillery shells smashing the ground 6 fix away from him. Remembering how he would always get mad at the Jewish haircutters because of their outrageous prices.

“Yes, my father was a good man and I was happy to call him my father.” I thought to myself. And just like that, peaceful thoughts put him to sleep where he stayed until it was morning.
“Branden, Are you awake, Branden? It’s almost time to go to the funeral. You need to be up and ready in 20 minutes,” Henry said loudly with gentle taps on my cheeks.

I arose from my bed in a sluggish motion and go to the counter and pour myself a glass of whiskey and chug it to wake up, then another to get over last night; followed by another to deal with today. Feeling slightly more awake than I did a few seconds ago I went to the bathroom to wash up and change my clothes. I stood in front of the mirror and looked upon my swollen, bloodshot eyes and feeling so self-loathing. I popped a couple painkillers and got a glass of water to wash them down with. Water… I like to give my liver a surprise from time to time. I got dressed in a standard funeral suit and threw on the red tie from last night.

After I was dressed I headed downstairs to the automobile and hopped into the rumble seat. Away we went to the catholic church of St. John. The ride over was tense and unsatisfying. Henry being polite tries to make the best out of a bad situation. Neither Francis nor I was happy today – and what was there to even be happy about? Were alive? At that moment and given the events that transpired and was about to, “being alive” hardly seemed as much a blessing as it’s made out to be. Francis stared out the window the entire time and aside from heavy breaths and an occasional grunt he made no sound and I was content with that. It was one of those rare times where we were on the same page with one another. Before I knew it I could see the towers of the churches gothic architecture, a haunting tower that reminded me all too much of the grimness that was about to take place.

I let the others walk inside first, hoping the group would possibly absorb most of the crowd’s attention away from me. There was a group of individuals, some of my father’s old war buddies and people I don’t know standing around talking. As soon as I got someone’s attention they hushed. One can only assume it was them paying respects. Henry and I walked up to my father’s casket and tossed a rose inside it. The priest asks everyone if they could have a seat and he talks his nonsensical dribble of religious propaganda, normally I would call him out on all this like I did when I came back to New York, but this wasn’t the time to do that. I politely sat there and lit a cigarette, just waiting and dreading to be called up to give my speech.

“…and may god a place in heaven for him,” The priest said, “now, Branden Renoir, son of John Renoir, has a few words to say about his father.”

I took a stand and walked to the podium, any rambling in the crowd was quietly silenced.
“John, my father, he was a good man. A dictator at times at home, but was never unreasonable. I like to think that I was molded from his image, with a different philosophy. He was a traveler, never liked to stick to one place for too long. He was a fancy for the exquisite and oh did he like to tell stories. World War I was all he talked about. The smell of rotting flesh in the mud and the sight of flesh hanging from barbed wire was something he enjoyed talking about.”

At this time people in the benches were holding their noses and a couple even threw up. Guess a simple thought of all this made them absolutely sick.

“Sorry if I made some of you sick,” I grunted.

“But John, he was a religious man. I guess that’s one thing that we never had in common. Being raised in a catholic family wasn’t a turn off to religion; it just… never felt right. I remember John was raised by an Irish family, never knowing his real one, and thus he adapted to their thinking. I have a glass of whiskey right here, my father’s favourite drink. This, father, is to you and May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead. We all will miss you, love you and we will never forget you,” I said as I chugged the glass of whiskey.

The crowd was in silence aside from the whimpers from family members. Some people, mainly the war vets, clapped as I turned around and looked at my father’s body. I said goodbye for a final time and stepped off the platform. I started receiving hugs from people but hastily asked them to please just let me be to let me go outside for some fresh air.

I sat down on the church steps to light a cigarette in the cold Manhattan air. Gloomy day, how fitting. Not paying attention after the first soothing inhale I burned my finger with the fire from the match. I shouted in agony as I shook my finger to ease the pain slightly. I heard the door open with footsteps following. I looked back and I see Serena coming up to me.

“Branden that was… touching. I know that was hard for you and I know the road ahead will be rough as well. I know you’re not very happy with me, I get that and understand that, but I just want you to know that no matter what I will do everything I can do for you.” She told me.

“Right, I’m sure you will. Although I feel all your attempts at helping will be a fruitless endeavor since you won’t go back to France with me.” I said in a snarky tone.

“Branden you know why I can’t go, I can’t leave everything behind. That’s asking too much. It really is. I would do anything I can, as long as it’s feasible. This isn’t. I love you, I really do, but if you won’t even try to understand then there is nothing I can do for you… and that breaks my heart.” She said with tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, that breaks your heart just like you broke mine. I got to go back to Francis’ I got a boat to catch. Goodbye Serena, I’m sorry. I love you.” I said as I finished off my cigarette and flicked it out toward the street where the autocar was parked.

Henry walked out of the church, handkerchief in his hands against his eyes and drying them. He looks at me and extends his arms for a hug. I look back at him, unflinching for a moment then decide to indulge henry’s desires and give him a hug.

“I could’ve sworn I heard angels cry when we said goodbye to your father one last time,” he said to me. I looked at henry, a heartbroken stare washes across my face and I hugged him tighter.

“Henry,” I said, “You’ve always been more of a friend than just a caretaker, I don’t know if Francis is appreciative of your efforts, but I know my father, john, most certainly was.”

“Thank you master Branden, that… that means a lot,” He says to me as he starts to whimper. I gave him a firm pat on the back – an unspoken reassurance that everything would be alright. We got inside the car and Henry asks if I want him to take me back to Francis’ house or to the train station where I can go back to my boat. I asked to be taken to Francis’ to gather my things.