Welcome to Planet Lara

3. Mushroom Sauce

Three

Mushroom Sauce

The earth has her mouth wide open, awaiting the arrival of Archibald Magnus Clarke I. And unlike the ribbon-cutting ceremony of ten days ago, today’s weather is more like a normal spring day in our fair coastal city.

Number Two offers his arm as we follow the pallbearers up the graveled path and through the lush, forested area on the back of my grandfather’s rolling estate. In true Archibald M. Clarke fashion, his final wishes eschewed the idea of a traditional cemetery, places he called “abominations of the modern age, the ground poisoned by the toxic chemicals from chemically embalmed corpses and overpriced boxes made of lethal varnishes, all in the name of vanity.” Even the idea of cremation got his ire up: one human body burned to ash emits about 250 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.

Yes, good old Archie had some Opinions with a capital O.

Today, he’s in a plain wooden box, the wood harvested from a dead tree on this very property, untreated and held together with wooden screws and biscuit joints. My grandfather himself is dressed head to toe in a mushroom burial suit wherein the mushroom spores will eventually eat him and absorb the toxins released by his decomposing body, thereby soaking all his juicy juices into the soil and nourishing the green lawn and forest around him. Like Grandpa Soup for all the flourishing flora.

The idea of mushrooms, soup or otherwise, turns my stomach. The no-martini rule I swore to myself the night of the ribbon cutting lasted approximately four hours. Hey, my grandfather dropped dead in front of me and five hundred of his closest friends. I’m grieving. Martinis are good listeners.

“You’re green,” Number Two says.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a flask on you?”

He tightens his clench on my arm and shifts the umbrella against a gust. Guess that’s a no.

“Today of all days, Lara,” he scolds. “You couldn’t remain sober, even for this?”

“I am sober.”

Rupert is enough taller than I am, even in my heels, I don’t bother tilting my head to see the disappointment on his face.

Someone calls my name from behind. “Wait up!”

“He does know this is a funeral, not a game of dodgeball,” Rupert says. He never hides his disdain for Connor Mayson. Instead, he releases my arm and walks ahead, taking the umbrella with him.

“Hey, babe, yeah, sorry. I forgot the gate code.” Connor Mayson is a legend in his own mind. A model since thirteen—the earliest age deemed safe enough for Accutane to clean up the skin overlying that perfect bone structure—he transitioned into acting a few years ago when the modeling gigs started going to younger, fresher faces. He enjoys a bit of celebrity locally and never shies away from groupies of his one hit TV show, Super George, about an accountant who gets caught in a terrible storm and wakes up with X-Men-like powers, but between you and me, the show is terrible. Connor is hot, but he can’t act his way out of a paper bag.

And, as usual, he has his umbrella. “Do you know how much I pay to keep my hair looking like this?” is his most common refrain. Right after bragging about how much he paid for the umbrella at some swanky umbrella store downtown. And by he paid, he means I paid. Connor pays for nothing if he can help it.

“Is your grandfather in that box? He’s, like, super rich, and they’re burying him in that? Looks like someone nailed it together from an old Costco pallet.”

“No nails.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I don’t have the energy to explain the part about steel nails leaching into the soil as they disintegrate. Or something. Grandfather talked at length about his plans for his eternal sleep. I don’t think my bloodstream was entirely free of Grey Goose that day.

The night of the fundraiser, I rode in the ambulance with my dead grandfather, holding his ever-cooling hand during the short ride through downtown Vancouver, lights and sirens clearing our path. As soon as the ER doctor pronounced Archibald Magnus Clarke I assuredly deceased, I wandered out of the hospital exit, into the nearest bar.

Rupert had to pick me up at closing, pay the tab because I somehow lost my clutch, chastising and scolding me all the way to my loft.

He doesn’t know the conversation I had with Grandfather earlier that week, the one where I was actually sober, the one that involved him revealing he’d stopped taking his heart medication weeks ago, the one where he knew his time was coming—and he was ready for it. Rupert doesn’t need to know that I spent my last wonderful moments with Grandfather without an audience or a giant red ribbon. I’d like to think that good old Archie was having a hearty laugh (pun intended) while all those posh society types whispered, aghast, behind their 98 percent post-consumer recycled paper cocktail napkins while the well-intended frantically tried to coax his ticker back to life.

Connor’s voice is still annoying my ears as we reach the gaping maw. He shuts up when he sees the pallbearers, men hired from the funeral home who had to sign a formidable stack of nondisclosure agreements and were not allowed to bring phones to the burial site. They ease Grandfather onto the green straps that will lower him into the arms of his original and favorite lover.

About ten feet away, a man dressed in black with a colorful stole emerges from the cover of the trees. My throat instantly tightens with emotion. My grandfather was not a religious man, but he was very spiritual. The man approaching with the kind eyes and soft smile is Father Brooks—I don’t know if he’s an ordained minister or a priest or what—but he and my grandfather have been very close for the last twenty-five years, their debates about God versus Gaia versus Carl Sagan and his Cosmos often turning loud and always running late into the night, at least until Grandfather would pull out a nice bottle of sparkling water for himself and an expensive red for Father Brooks. That would calm things down.

When I was a young teenager, I wondered if perhaps Father Brooks was my grandfather’s boyfriend … I wished he were, so my grandfather wouldn’t be alone in his golden years, but no. Just two very good friends who knew each other better than the wrinkles on their own faces.

Father Brooks, surprisingly, I like very much.

“Lara,” he says as he stops in front of me. That’s it. The tears tumble down my face. Father Brooks hugs me and then offers a clean, starched white handkerchief from inside his black suit coat. I dab at the mascara threatening to streak my flawless foundation as Brooks solemnly greets Rupert.

“Hi, I’m Connor, Lara’s boyfriend.” He reaches out and pumps the father’s hand like he’s about to buy a used car. I jab Connor in the side.

Father Brooks returns his attention to me. “I’ll say a little about your granddad, and then if you have anything you want to add, I’m sure he’d love to hear it.”

I nod. I’m not saying anything in front of these men. Sure, if it were just me and Father Brooks having a chat with my dead grandfather, maybe. But it’s not. And showing any sign of weakness in front of Number Two or Connor is unwise. Even the tears are a risk.

We take our spots next to the hole in the ground. The pallbearers have made themselves scarce, though still within our sight line. This is good. If one of them dared to pull out any sort of recording device or snap a photo, I’d finally get to use the MMA moves I’ve been learning from my brutally overpriced trainer.

The wind picks up Father Brooks’s wispy, white hair for a beat before it floats back against his pink scalp. He takes a deep breath, relaxes his shoulders, and launches softly into his eulogy. He reminisces about funny moments between him and my grandfather over the years, how they met at a fundraiser for upgrading the turbines of California’s wind farms back in the ’90s, held by a Canadian clean-energy innovator; he speaks slowly and reverently about those hard years after my mother died and Archie was left as the sole caretaker for a distraught, precocious ten-year-old; and he details the pride my grandfather felt when he realized his dream of building Thalia Island, the private, eco-friendly utopia off the BC coast that has become the perfect marriage between nature and community.

“And although he was hard on you, Lara, he loved you. With every ounce of his heart.”

I nod and look at my grandfather’s rough casket through blurred eyes, twisting his ring around my middle finger. It’s too big, but I haven’t taken it off since the night he died. And I don’t care about the tears now. In an uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, Number Two squeezes my shoulder.

With a few final words, Father Brooks beckons the pallbearers back to lower Grandfather all the way into the ground so we can each toss a handful of soil as a final wish for his safe journey to wherever he’s going next.

“Babe …” Connor’s whisper intrudes. “I gotta go. I have an audition downtown in an hour—for a pit-wipe commercial—and I need to change out of this monkey suit into something less morbid.”

I stare at him, jaw clenched. He quickly kisses the side of my mouth and jogs away. My cheeks superheat—I cannot believe my so-called boyfriend just bailed on my only relative’s funeral to go to an audition for deodorant.

Rupert clears his throat, lips pursed, and hikes an eyebrow with such disgust, I’m afraid it will get stuck there. “Honestly, Lara …”

“Shut it.”

Father Brooks nods once at me—my cue to scoop up some soft, rich earth and drop it on my grandfather’s mushroomy bed. Rupert follows suit, kneeling with his head down for a full minute, sniffing back his own tears, before releasing his final goodbye. Father Brooks whispers his thanks to the pallbearers and then leads our procession of two back down the gravel path toward Clarke Manor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see something move in the trees.

I pause, the rain hitting my face as Rupert continues on with the umbrella.

“Lara?” he pauses and asks.

I squint and scan the wooded area, fists clenched, the cortisol readying for battle. If that’s the f*****g paparazzi, I will feed them their cameras.

Nothing moves. The rain picks up.

“I thought I saw someone.”

Rupert wraps an arm around my shoulders. “No one would get past Humboldt.”

“He’d probably slobber them to death,” I say, my heart slowing at the thought of that ridiculous dog. Big bark, no bite, more saliva than a garden slug. “s**t, what are we going to do with him now?”

“We can talk about it later,” Rupert says, dropping his arm, as if he’s just expended his daily kindness quota. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“On a liquid diet, remember?”

He grunts and shakes his head once. There we go. The disappointment is back. That’s more like it.

We’ve reached the portico outside the double side doors that lead into the mudroom and fitness wing of the ultramodern, carbon-neutral mansion. Rupert closes his umbrella and keys in the code to open the door, but instead of following the two men inside, I offer my hand to Father Brooks.

“Thank you for being here for him. I know he appreciated it.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. He was my best friend,” Father Brooks says, his eyes watery.

I nod, visualizing myself as an ice queen so the tears are chased back to where they belong. “He was lucky to have your companionship all these years.”

“I’ll phone you day after tomorrow to finalize the meeting with your grandfather’s lawyers, for the will,” Rupert says. He bobs his head once and then disappears into the house. Humboldt barks from somewhere deep within. A relief—I won’t be attacked by an affectionate bullmastiff with no respect for boundaries. My assistant just had this skirt dry-cleaned from the last time it was slimed.

“Take care, Father Brooks.” I offer a tight smile and then go to move around him and toward my waiting car. His gentle hand on my arm stops me.

“You are not alone, Lara, even if it might seem like it.”

“Thank you, but it does, in fact, seem like it.” I reach on tiptoes and plant a quick kiss against his soft, jowly cheek, and hurry away before he has a chance to offer any more heartbreaking truths.