Page 85 of Vera Stein Is Fine
Well, shit.
“I’m here to tell you to stop being such a pussy and get out there,” Ruby told him.
I shot her a look.
She shrugged.What?she mouthed.
“Wow,” Leonard said. “I’m so inspired. You may leave now.”
I opened my mouth, but Ruby leaned forward and spoke first. “What are you so scared of, anyway? You’ve been obsessing over your goddamn funeral for the last three decades and suddenly it’s here and thanks to my genius granddaughter, you get to witness it yourself.”
My eyebrows shot up at the wordgenius, but Ruby didn’t skip a beat. “You’re all dressed up. Now, you just have to walk out there and sit through your own funeral. It’s your greatest dream realized. Congratulations.”
Leonard leaned back and looked to Ruby and then to me. “I don’t dream of dying. Obsessing over the details of my funeral is very different from attending it myself.”
“Just spit it out,” Ruby said. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Ruby,” I said, quietly chastising her. I shouldn’t have let her come with me.
Leonard closed his eyes. I knew he was no young thing, but in this moment especially I noticed the near translucence of his skin and the way his breath softly rattled as he inhaled. “All these people are here. Shockingly. But what if they have nothing to say? What if the minister does her little song and dance and I read the eulogy I wrote for myself and then people are invited to speak and then...?”
“Don’t pretend like you’re not friends with rejection,” Ruby told him. “How many scripts of yours went into production?”
“Including the shows I worked on? At least a hundred.”
“And how many did you write that never made the cut or were started and never finished?”
He frowned, very clearly understanding where she was going and obviously annoyed by her sensible logic. “Too many to count.”
Ruby held her hand out for me to help her up from the coffee table.
I stood and gently pulled her up with me.
“I’ve said what I needed to say,” Ruby told him. “We’ll see you out there.”
I looked down to Leonard expectantly. “Will we?”
He nodded, his lip curled.
I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I followed through with my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”
In the hallway, Ruby looped her arm through mine and patted my forearm.
“YouhateLeonard,” I said. “Why would you do that?”
“I’d never miss an opportunity to give Leonard a verbal kick in the ass.”
“At least it was for a good cause this time. Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?”
“Not likely.”
We sat back down and ten minutes later, Leonard walked in behind the minister as ABBA’s “Fernando” played.
Leonard sat down in the front row with who I guessed were a few of his nieces and nephews and some of their children. For the most part, they all seemed unsure of how to navigate this situation or what theirmood should be. A little girl who couldn’t have been older than three wore pink cowboy boots and a sparkly dress. She hopped up from her seat at the end of the row and wiggled in close to Leonard, and the tension slowly escaped his shoulders.
The minister was young and wore a rainbow stole over her clergy robes. All the while, Eli lurked at the back of the room, stepping in and out occasionally. The sermon was brief without any mentions of religion. Instead, the discussion was about accepting that your mistakes are just as much a part of you as your successes. I didn’t know if Leonard had a hand in picking the topic, but it felt like a personal attack on me.
When the time came for Leonard to give his own eulogy, he made the short trek to the podium and cleared his throat. “Leonard Eugene Marvis came into this world on February 14, 1944. Despite being born on the universally acknowledged day of love, he never married. However, Leonard did father hundreds of scripts and was lucky enough to see many of them grow up to become TV shows and movies.”
