The Funeral Planner (2 page)

So when the one-year anniversary of Smitty’s date of death faithfully appeared on my computer calendar, I bought a Y-candle for him. The reason I bought two candles? Well, one was for Smitty. One was an afterthought. I had never purchased a
Yahrzeit
candle before and was surprised to discover how incredibly inexpensive they are. I never expected to receive another call with the same message of death: last year my cousin Smitty; this year my former classmate and friend, Tara Pintock. I couldn’t help but admonish myself for buying two candles. What if I hadn’t? Would Tara still be alive? I knew it was a silly thought. But still…what if ?

I glance at the Y-candles, blanching at the thought of picking up the phone on this very day next year, fearful an unwanted pattern may have begun. Neither Smitty nor Tara was supposed to have died. Smitty was a vibrant forty-two-year-old artist whose oil paintings were getting recognized in major museums. And Tara—Tara was only thirty-one years old, with a whole life ahead of her. A freak strike of lightning got Smitty. A faulty inhaler for an asthma attack took Tara. I fume with anger. Even more so because Tara had just taken the painful and liberating step of leaving her father’s multimillion-dollar business in mortgage-lending to pursue her true life’s passion: music.

My knees wobble at the thought of reliving the funeral scene all over again in the same cold winter, at the same funeral home, on the same Sunday, at the same time, only with a different cast of characters. Last year, the ensemble was comprised of family; this year it would surely include my fellow graduates from U of M’s Entrepreneurial Studies Program, whom I hadn’t seen in over nine years. Never mind running into people you really don’t care to see at this stage of your perennially budding career, but ugh, the very thought of attending a funeral, let alone sitting through one of those interminably long, canned eulogies that rarely do justice to the deceased.

I am beginning to realize that I have no clue how to cope with death. It is full of…grief ! And that is one department I have little if no experience in. Yet, it’s a natural part of the life cycle. So how come in junior high or college, they don’t have courses on how to deal with it? How was algebra, home economics, biology or entrepreneurial studies supposed to help me deal with bereavement?

I stop the outfit search and stand quietly among the hanging layers of dated pantsuits, sundresses, shirts and Dockers jeans. I feel numb. I know the feeling is temporary and that in due time it will fade to make way for the grief that is inevitable, but I wish it would linger forever.

Loss of any kind is something I prefer to avoid. Of course, loss is part of growth, which is part of change, and that is something I fully embrace—or at least try to…I think.

I sink to the bottom of my closet. Branches of loose fabric drape around me, forming a jungle of uninhabited human parts. I’m thirty-one, like Tara. I live alone in L.A., far from family. And I haven’t had a lucky break career-wise in a really long time. I know deep in my soul that I was born an entrepreneur. Even before I knew the definition of the word
entrepreneur—
an individual who can rapidly identify an opportunity and act upon it—I knew who I was. Someone who’s willing to take risks through experimentation, willing to learn by trial, willing to fail by error, and then start all over again. You have to be tenacious, unwilling to accept “no,” and capable of discovering and connecting dots others miss. And that’s what I do all the time: connect the dots between the most unlikely marriages of elements and then pursue them—relentlessly.

I grind my teeth as I sift through the dated textiles, brushing aside any hangers that drip with color. “Orange will never do. Where’s that black wool top and matching skirt?” I ask aloud. But it’s too dark in the closet. I redirect the reading light attached to the bed frame toward the innards of the closet, where I continue to search like a surgeon seeking the right nerve ending to cut. Okay, so it had been a while since I purchased new clothes. Money to buy…well, anything, had not been an option for, okay…years. But what was more important, a wardrobe or honoring investors? I can do without. The trouble is that I have been
doing without
for so long that I no longer know how to do
with. What a novel concept that is,
I think.
Doing with.
I look forward to that day. All I have to do is create one successful business and I will be “there,” I think.

My wardrobe smells musty, laden with cedar and stale air. I find the black wool skirt and matching top. Would it be so horrible to do a wardrobe repeat? Not that I have choices. I check to make sure no moths have bored holes in the fabric then pack it in the black Tumi suitcase that Uncle Sam gave me for college graduation.

Uncle Sam is my best friend and the only one in my whole family who knows anything about business. He used to own a small fishing-lure company because fishing is his passion. As a kid, he carved a fishing lure from a fallen tree branch, caught a bass and started a company. He hired his younger brother, Charlie, my dad, at the age of five to paint the lures for him.

If you talk to Uncle Sam, he’ll tell you that by the 1940s quality fishing lures had become an American art form, the quality of the craftsmanship began to diminish once plastics came on to the market. He developed his own brand of baits known as Banks Baits with the slogan “Baits you can bank on.” Banks Baits produced ten thousand lures a day. Eventually, he sold the company and retired at the age of fifty.

Uncle Sam says,“Fishing is like living. It requires patience and persistence. The joy of the journey over the joy of a catch.” He often reminds me, “Do the right thing in all of your affairs, conduct yourself in business as you would with family and friends, because it makes no sense to have different codes to live by for different facets of life.” When I ask for examples, he follows our family’s teaching traditions with a story.

“It was during the war,” he begins, “before American manufacturing was exported to Third World countries—which has depleted America of its pride, but that’s another story, Maddy. Now where was I? Oh, yes. I would drive to a tiny remote village in the upper peninsula of Michigan to buy caseloads of handcrafted ice-fishing lures. One day, I asked a Potawatimi Indian named Fisherman Joe,‘How much for a caseload of lures?’ And Fisherman Joe said,‘Thirty-five dollars.’ That didn’t sound right to me. So I turned to him and I said,‘Why, Fisherman Joe, don’t you know there’s a war going on? I’ll give you fifty dollars per caseload and three dollars for shipping.’”

I proudly relayed that story to a visiting professor of business marketing, who told me that Uncle Sam had been an idiot. An idiot? For not taking advantage of the ignorance of others? Incensed, I dropped out of the class, swapping it for a course in ethics but not before telling the greedy professormeister that he was in dire need of a humanity injection.

Maybe my business ethics are one reason why I’m still playing the results? I chose to put my career first and then focus on a relationship that would include marriage and children. The only problem is, nine years out of college I am still trying to put my professional life in order.

I finish packing my suitcase, a sore reminder of my exodus from Ann Arbor to L.A.—where I intended to create my own American dream…one day.

“Maddy…you there?” shouts a thick male voice from behind the front door.

I glance at my watch—one of those bare-all watches where the Lucite encasement reveals the naked ticks and tocks of its internal mechanisms. I wear no other kind. I like to know how things work.

“Coming!” I call out. I zip up the suitcase and dash through the narrow hallway to open the door for my sort-of current boyfriend.

I’ve been hanging out with Seth Wickham, a twenty-six-year-old, extremely good-looking, out-of-work stuntman, for four months, during which time I’ve realized I can’t fully commit to him. Yes, he is amazing in bed. But I’ve learned that aside from incredible endurance in the bedroom, stuntmen tend to enjoy putting themselves in harm’s way, whether they’re on the job or not.

I open the door. Seth takes me in his tattooed arms and kisses me. That part is lovely. Too lovely. I feel myself getting lost in him, lost in the comfort. And I fear that too much comfort will compromise me.

He halts the kiss and throws me a wink. “How ya doing, Bulston?”

Bulston is one of his nicknames for me because he thinks I possess looks and manners reminiscent of Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore and Reese Witherspoon. His monikers range from Anilock and Bulston to Withermore and Barryspoon. At the moment, he’s in a Bulston mood.

I scrunch my face and look at him. “It’s Banks. Madison Banks.”

“When you do that serious and funny thing at the same time…turns me on.” He grins.

Before I know it, he’s kissing me again. All thoughts pleasantly evaporate until his voice lulls me back to the present.

“Like my new tattoo?” He lifts his shirt in one sweeping motion, displaying a back laced with intricate designs.

“It’s stunning, Seth. Incredibly artistic.” What else can I say except that all those tattoos, as beautiful as they are, will prohibit him from ever being buried in a Jewish cemetery. If he was Jewish, that is.

His eyes glint with lust and he dives in for a French kiss. When it comes to Seth, I find myself overly preoccupied with sex, which distracts me from my
professional
goals, which delays me from accomplishing my
personal
goals.

“Where are your bags?” he asks.

“In the bedroom,” I reply, softly rubbing the base of my neck where he unwittingly grasped a thick mound of locks.

Seth saunters into the bedroom and picks up the suitcase. “That’s it?”

I nod, then glance at a week’s worth of
Financial Street Journals
stacked in the corner. “Oh, and the
FSJ
s. Can’t forget those.”

“You pack light,” he says, grabbing the papers with his free hand.

“Actually, I pack efficiently. I don’t like to take anything I don’t have use for.” As I utter these words, I can see a certain metaphorical truth with regard to Seth and me, and know that somehow, sometime soon, I will need to do something about it.

* * *

The long stretch of road on the way to the airport is void of other vehicles. Seth turns to me with a wily smile. “How about a three-sixty?”

“I prefer not.” I quiver.

He offers a salacious grin, then swiftly jams his foot against the brakes of his Jeep Wrangler. He dramatically twists the wheel like a conductor orchestrating a sudden flourish of symphonic sounds. I find myself jammed against the passenger door, my heart thumping. The car swerves and weaves in a circle, then pulls out of a fishtale and veers into a straight arrow. We rock back into place.

Seth grins at me. I smile back, trying to be a good sport, realizing that impromptu three-sixties are not something I wish to include in my repertoire of experiences.

“Did you like that?” He smiles.

“Not particularly. I just established a corporation, registered the URL for a new Web site and finalized a PowerPoint presentation. I’d like to stick around to finish what I started.”

“Wow. Busy Barryspoon. Is that that Artist Showcase you’ve been working on?”

“Artists International,” I reply. “I’m about to shop it to investors. I’ve got professional artists and designers lined up to have their bios videotaped with a licensing plan in place to capitalize on cross-promotional applications. I just have to be the first to bring it to market.”

“How the hell do you do…all that?” he asks, dubiously lifting a brow.

My voice elevates in pitch as it always does when I get excited. “I secure financing. I stabilize strategic partnerships with globally recognized museums. I get the media jazzed about it so they’ll write articles. I create an online catalogue for curators to download artist bios for prospective clients. I design a companion convention for art dealers with sponsors—who’ve given me verbal commitments. Oh, and I include a new emerging market called Outsider Art. It’s raw, unaffected, unsophisticated and people are paying millions for it.”

“Yeah, but how does this thing make money?” asks Seth.

“I license private collections of major art and design museums around the world to advertisers. Museums love it because the extra income helps them stay afloat. I want to do it with anime, comic-book art and video-game art, too. Anyway, it’s all in the business plan that I gave to Jonny Bright.”

“Who’s that?”

“A venture capitalist.” I pause, feeling my brow furrow.

“What’s that face for, Withermore?”

“I should’ve had him sign an NDA. Last time I shared my idea with venture capitalists and strategic partners, someone leaked it to Derek Rogers.”

“Derek Rogers? The dude who burned you in college?” asks Seth.

I nod. It still gives me a bad feeling. Forgiveness is not my strong suit. And when you consider that Seth and I have only known each other for four months and he already knows the history of an incident that occurred ten years ago, well, it’s pretty obvious that I haven’t let that one go.

Seth cocks his head toward me. “Can I ask you something? How can you even think about business when you’re off to a funeral?”

“Simple. If I don’t, I’ll fall apart.” Then, to keep the pain at bay, I force a smile, adding, “Though I am getting to be pretty good at interment these days. Black dress on hand, there’s nothing to it.”