Free Last Call by Laura Pedersen Page A

four-year-old anticipating Christmas.
    When Friday morning finally arrives Hayden briefly worries that she’s forgotten about their hastily arranged date, or worse, she’s changed her mind. But ever the optimist, he takes the newspaper and spends almost two hours planning their afternoon.
    They’d start with a couple of funerals, and then, since it promised to be a nice sunny day, they’d drive out to the crematorium near Bethpage on Long Island. Afterward he’d take Rosamond to his lawyer friend in Garden City to draw up a health-care proxy so they couldn’t keep her alive on machines for months after she should have been dead.
    After Diana finally departs for work, Hayden and Joey quickly change out of their pajamas and get under way. A recent thunderstorm has swept the pale sky clean of everything but a single cloud. Roadside construction workers remove their yellow slickers while standing on asphalt that is shiny and iridescent with streaks of oil.
    Hayden stops at the Sunoco station and shows Joey the proper way to pump gas into the car and check the oil. When Diana’s not around he’s been teaching the boy basic husband skills—how to mow the lawn, reignite the pilot light, and even take apart the pipes under the kitchen sink to retrieve lost rings. “You come from resourceful stock—the Scots invented the telephone, the TV, the steam engine, and even the electric light.”
    “You forgot the bicycle,” adds Joey, who’s heard this list recited many times before, especially after his grandfather has had a few drinks.
    “Ah, indeed I did. If you’re so smart then . . .” Hayden pauses with a twinkle in his eye, “what’s the only thing you should ever add to whiskey?”
    “More whiskey!” Joey shouts as Hayden finishes the
y
.
    “We’ll make a Highlander out of you yet, despite all these subways and skyscrapers.” He clamps his hand on Joey’s shoulder as the boy struggles to open the hood. It’s at moments like this, while watching Joey’s young hands fumble to find the hidden latch or use a heavy tool properly, yet slowly gaining skill and confidence, that Hayden profoundly regrets he will not see his grandson grow into a man.
    On the drive over to the convent Hayden is relieved that Joey is preoccupied with a new video game. Otherwise the lad might notice his grandfather’s nervousness, his continual efforts to smooth down his damp hair with a pocket comb, and his repeatedly checking the rearview mirror for anything off-putting, such as a coffee ground stuck between his front teeth.
    When Hayden rings the old-fashioned bell of the convent a small door of rotted wood creaks opens and inside it he finds a notepad and pencil, which suggests a primitive version of a bank’s drive-through window. He writes “Sister Rosamond” on the pad and pushes it back into the cavity. The message disappears into gloomy darkness and is met with ominous silence.
    Hayden goes from heart-racing excitement to heart-pounding dread in a matter of five minutes. He finally returns to the car and is about to leave when an iron gate off to the side of the massive building cries out in protest and Rosamond appears from around the corner of a tall hedge.
    She floats toward him, as if years of gliding through the silent corridors of the cloister have left her weightless. Her step is so light that not even the sparrows and cedar waxwings feeding along the path are disturbed by her passing. Upon seeing him leaning against the freshly washed station wagon, a smile plays across her lips that shapes her face into a shifting collage of hope and fear.
    Once they’re all settled in the car Hayden brims with enthusiasm. “I found a woman about your age who died of esophagus cancer. I thought we’d start with her funeral in Park Slope and then hit an ovarian cancer memorial service just for the hell of it. I mean, you never know where cancer is going to spread to next. It’s like trying to track a jaguar through the