In My Father's Footsteps

by Sebastian Matthews
WW Norton & Company
2004

Crossing the Threshold

First they take it away,

for now the body belongs to the state.

Then they open it
to see what may have killed it,
and the body had arteriosclerosis
in its heart, for this was an inside job.

- "My Father's Body" William Matthews

When the officer stepped back, I was the first to pass through the broken police seal. Ali, my wife, came in close behind me. The young cop followed. The older cop brought up the rear, closing the heavy door behind him. For a moment, the four of us huddled at the start of the long, dimly lit hall. Down at the end of the passageway, where it made a sharp left, the light from the guestroom window dropped onto the worn carpet in an elongated rectangle. The apartment was unsettlingly quiet.

The older cop walked down the hallway, turning on lights as he went, first in the bathroom, then in my father's bedroom. His partner trailed after him, posting sentry at the guest room door. A cat scurried out from under his feet, disappearing in a blur of fur around the corner. This kick-started Ali, who drifted from my side and entered my father's study. I stood in place, stunned.

The night before, I had called my father from Ann Arbor to wish him a happy 55th birthday. A strange voice came on the line. That's not my father.

I said: "Bill Matthews, please."

Ali looked up from her book.

"Who is this?" the voice said.

"This is his son. Who's this?"

A pause, then: "This is Officer O'Hara. I am sorry to have to inform you, but your father, William Matthews, passed away earlier this evening."

The phone seemed limp in my hands. Ali was at my side, an expectant look on her face that wanted to transform into a smile.

"He's dead. My dad's dead."

After a long night of calls to family and friends, after frantic packing and planning, we had caught a late morning flight out of Detroit International to JFK. We dropped off our luggage at the hotel, pausing long enough to call the on-duty detective. He told us to take a taxi to my father's Upper West Side apartment; a uniformed escort would be waiting. In the lobby, the older of the two policemen, a sleepy-eyed Irishman, told us what we already knew:

"You're only allowed access into the deceased's apartment for ten, fifteen minutes. I'm not supposed to let you take anything out. Just the necessary clothes for the funeral--and the will, if there is one. Clear?"

Because my father had officially died alone, the detective had told us, a court order would have to be procured before we could gain permanent access to his residence. In accordance with state law, the police had placed a seal across the door, to remain until we appointed an estate administrator, navigated the court system, obtained the proper forms. Then, and only then, could the police escort the "bereaved" back to the "deceased's" apartment and allow us inside. It would take a few days, maybe as long as a week.

As the elevator jerked its way up to the fifth floor, I had tried to imagine what we would find in the apartment. They didn't make chalk outlines for natural deaths, did they? Would his computer still be on, coffee cold in the cup? I couldn't do it. Instead, I pictured Dad in his morning routine, slouched on the couch in his ratty flannel nightgown, busy reading the New York Times. He'd be nodding his head to the jazz seeping out of the deck as he sipped the hot coffee and his cat, Velcro, purred out sutras at his feet. All I wanted was to join them there, up late from a hard sleep. The whole ride up, the younger officer, a handsome, square-jawed Latino, stared at his reflection in the mirrored glass.

Now that we were actually inside the apartment, I didn't know what to do. I peered uneasily through the open study door. My father's literary papers were strewn on his desk, books scattered on the floor: stacks of hardcovers weighed down the side table, a hodge-podge of reader's copies, students' first books, uncracked novels. His tape deck perched on a bookshelf next to the mammoth, open Webster's dictionary. The familiar mother-and-child Picasso print hung by the window alongside a framed ink drawing of two Japanese monks glaring at each other like Laurel and Hardy. His black leather chair stalled in the center of the room, empty.

Ali was thumbing through desk drawers and gathering manila folders into a pile. I wanted to tell her to stop, to remind her that my father was an intensely private man: that rifling through his stuff was the equivalent of pick-pocketing. But I didn't say anything. I wanted more time to take everything in. His tattered leather jacket hanging on the coat rack. The umbrellas and walking sticks leaning against each other in the corner. The bulletin board with its collage of old postcards.

Standing there in the hall, I became overwhelmed by his undeniable presence, by the olfactory amalgam of dust, mold, and stale cigarette smoke that made up his living space. Momentarily transported back to high school, I was once again in our big, empty Seattle house. Walking up the stairs to deliver a fresh cup of French Roast to my father, hunched over his Selectric, smoking. Met at the turn by the subtle undercurrent of his body odor--nutmeg, sweat, Grey Flannel cologne, essence of old sweater.

They said my father died in the bathroom, collapsing of a heart attack while dressing for the opera, dead before his body slid to the floor. That his girlfriend, Celia, was let in by the doorman and found him. (It was she who would come and fetch the cat.) I didn't look into that room, focusing, instead, on the floor-to-ceiling wall of poetry books that loomed before me on my left. I came to a full stop before the huge library of slim, dusty volumes; it was like being in front of a gigantic beehive, or a bank of computers. A massive amount of stored energy pulsated in front of me. Running my finger over the spines of the hardcovers (Stevens' Collected, Berryman's Dream Songs, Pound's Cantos, Les Fleurs du Mal), I marveled at the sheer magnitude of the collection, the weight of all the words.

The broadsides lining the opposite wall seemed lit up from within, the handset poems shining in their frames. It felt like I had slipped into a museum after hours and was passing alone through a library's special collection room, a hall of cases and frames containing undecipherable, heraldic mysteries. Before me: the immortalized life of the poet--printed on museum-quality paper, bound and displayed in glass frames, embossed with illustrations and calligraphic signatures. As though I was trespassing on my legacy.

I moved forward. The door to the bedroom hung open, its crooked frame calling me onto its threshold. The room was shrouded in darkness, blinds pulled down. My father's immense bed, which took up most of the room, floated in the dark. I thought back to all the moments when I'd stood in the doorway and watched him nap, face down in the pillow, feet draped over the side. Dad, I'd whisper, time to wake up. What would happen if I stretched out--then and there--in my father's sleep imprint? Would I feel the last echo of his heartbeat?

Of course, none of this was going to help. I couldn't stay in this room; nor was I ready to select the clothes for the funeral. That chore would have to wait. It was as if I had been placed on a walking sidewalk, against my will, and now couldn't step off. All of a sudden out of breath, I turned for the door, panicky in the cramped room. But the young cop was standing at the turn in the hall, blocking my way into the living room. After a brief standoff, he moved out of my way.

The living room shades were pulled down and the lights were on bright, making the usually warm and shady space feel empty and cold. Ali was now in the back room; I could hear her opening cabinets and drawers. Street noise wafted in through the windows: cars moving through their gears and school children at recess calling to each other in play. In a trance, I turned off the lights, opened the blinds, and watched as the afternoon sunlight rushed to its familiar spot on the floor. This was only a minor improvement.

When a pigeon flew up past the window, its shadow slithering over the red brick buildings across the way, a melody started playing in my head--one of those slow-starting Monk compositions that winds itself up like a hand-cranked record player. The first melody was followed by other fragments of song, by little snippets of music I'd listened to in this room over the years. Cuts off Miles' Kind of Blue. Marley's chanting on Babylon by Bus. The anguished cry in Rigoletto. A running rush in a Mozart sonata. The opening climb of Bach's first cello suite. Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

And then I was lost, back at all the dinner parties my father held for his literati friends. Elegant people milling about. Bottles of wine opened and emptied in a spontaneous toast of glasses. My father holding court in the center of a small group, wineglass in hand, left leg splayed out in front of him, right wrist curled back against his waist, elbow out. Leaning back a little, eyes sparkling, he surveyed his audience before letting loose his trademark wit. It was as though he was surfing: the board he crouched on was his sharp mind, the wave the tumult of words forming inside him. People were leaning in, either curious bystander or comrade in-the-know. And a pretty young woman had moved intently into my father's sphere, placing her hand on his arm. She was looking up at him, wanting to know everything she could about this man.

Dust particles danced in the air. The tenant upstairs was dragging something heavy across the floor. I stood in place, breathing slowly, aware of the dropped ballast of my hands. My dad is dead.