Exceptional

Charlie Who? Stiff competition in the Knew-Him-Best Dept.

Waking the Dead

by Elizabeth Emerald

ACT ONE  Characters:  Larry, college friend of the deceased Charlie. Jim, Charlie’s brother-in-law. Scene One: Viewing room of Berry’s funeral parlor, both men present LARRY: Shocker, isn’t it! JIM: You got that right. What was he, 46? 48? LARRY: Good guess! I happen to know for a fact that he would have been 48 in June. His birthday is 12 days before mine. We went to school together. College roommates, from freshman year, all the way through. I’m Larry, by the way, glad to meet you. JIM: Larry! Of course. I knew you looked familiar. Charlie used to whip out his Alma Mater Album, the AMA, he called it, even had a metal monogram made for it. He was a rabid “Pavlov’s dog,” any time somebody said the word “school” or “college” out it would come, shoved half an inch in front of your face: Look, look! See, see? You just had to humor him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him nobody wants to look at pictures from those pre-digital days. Most of them weren’t worth wasting paper to print. But now that you tell me, I do sort of recognize you, Larry. Rather the grainy ghost of your youth, I should say. And Charlie also speaks – spoke – of you often, his roommate, though I hadn’t quite recalled you by name, until you said "Larry," then it came back. I’m Jim, his brother-in-law, married to his sister, Marie. LARRY: Good to meet you, Jim. Funny, I would never have figured Charlie for the sentimental type. Certainly, he didn’t give a flying fig about his high school yearbook. Told me he’d tossed it, that those days were gone, why would you want to prolong the sweet-and- sour after-taste? He had use for neither reminiscence nor recrimination. As for the latter, that’s a good thing, of course, not to torture yourself over the past. JIM: Larry, I must say that’s sure a new one on me! Not haunted by the past? Charlie, of all people! My God, Charlie constantly, ruminates – ruminated – about any and every little mistake he ever made, he was tormented with regret for everything he did/said or didn’t do/say way back whenever. Drives my wife crazy, listening to him. Tell you the truth, we don’t see him so much, not lately, at least we’ve stopped having him over, because he’d hang around the house for hours, beating himself up about all, sundry and then some.Though we do go out to dinner once a month or so. LARRY: Let me take a wild guess: your treat! I must say – not to speak ill of the dead – but, boy, Charlie was such a cheapskate! Three of us guys would order pizza and he’d insist on dividing the bill by eight, then multiplying by how many slices – or fraction thereof – each of us consumed. In those days, a large pizza cost about four bucks, so, for example, if you ate two slices, you’d owe a dollar; three, a buck-fifty. God help you if you didn’t have the exact change. Charlie would pitch a fit. We used to make him crazy, sometimes, me and the other fellow, Mick. After we three each had our two slices, Mick would split the last two slices into thirds so as to make our final portions completely even: that is, two and two-thirds apiece. Meaning, Charlie would have to divide four bucks by three, which of course doesn’t come out even. Someone – never Charlie! – would get stuck having to chip in that extra penny. JIM: Larry, you’ve got to be kidding me! Charlie won’t – wouldn’t – ever even let us pitch a cent toward the tip, much less pick up the check. Even though there are two of us to one of him, Charlie insisted on paying the tab, "soup-to-nuts" – even better – "drinks-to-dessert." In fact, he always urged us to start with a cocktail and a couple of appetizers, ordered a bottle of top-of-the-vine wine with dinner, then coffees all around with a six-pack from the treat tray. And it’s not like he was rolling in the green stuff. He made a decent living, yeah, but so do we, Marie and I. Every time I’d whip out my wallet, he’d beat it back down. He didn’t even have one kid to support – much less four! – would be his closing argument.  LARRY: I can’t even fathom Charlie ever so saying – even less so, so paying!  And speaking of kids, Jim, I’m surprised that Charlie never had any. He’d often talk about wanting to have – get this! – two sets of twins. Of course, nobody can make that happen in real life, but ever since the day I mentioned that my cousin had just given birth to twins – for the second time in less than two years – Charlie couldn’t get that off his brain. He just thought that was so cool! He even broke up with a girl he’d seemed pretty serious with because she wanted only two children. JIM: I can’t believe we’re talking about the same guy, Larry! Charlie always vowed never to marry, much less have children. He was a great uncle, from a distance – and my kids sure have the spoils to prove it – but don’t count on his ever baby-sitting, not on threat of death! He never forgets a birthday, though, I’ll give him that! I’m ashamed to say, if Marie wasn’t there to remind me, I wouldn’t remember any of my kids’ birthdays. Not even the month, much less the day. I wouldn’t have known Charlie’s birthday was in June, much less his age, until you reminded me. I could have sworn if was sometime in August, now that I think about it. Also, Marie just turned – what? – 45 last month, and she’s less than two years younger, but then that would make Charlie still 46, going on– LARRY: Jim, you got it backwards. I know for a fact Charlie was 47, because like I said we’re just twelve days apart. And his sister was two years older, now that I think about it. In fact, when we were newly “incarcerated” at  “Amherst Correctional” she was a junior, next cell over, always used to pop in to visit. Marie, you say? I thought her name was… Marilyn… no…Marlene, yes, that was it, Marlene– JIM: What do you mean “Amherst,”  Larry? Amherst College? Charlie went to Berkeley. In California. And his roommate was – now I’ve got it! – Lou. Yes, Lou. I knew ‘Larry’ didn’t sound quite right. And Marie – that is her name, I should know! – went to Albany State. LARRY: My God, Jim! Now it all makes sense. I hadn’t seen Charlie in 25 years, of course. Still, when I looked in the casket, I was shocked at his appearance. He was utterly unrecognizable! I figured it must have been the cancer.That would have accounted for some of the pallor, sure, but, even so. I mean, an albino would look sun-tanned lying next to this corpse here and Charlie got the dark side of Greek. And his curly black hair now carrot-stick-straight? I know chemo can change the color and texture to some extent, but still, he just didn’t look anything like the Charlie I knew. My Charlie who – it dawns at last on this dunce-head! – must be the other stiff, next room over. ACT TWO Characters:  Len, boyhood friend of the deceased Charlie. Judy,  early colleague of Charlie’s Dave, later colleague of Charlie’s Sharon, Charlie’s widow Scene One: Adjoining room of Berry’s funeral parlor, all four present. LEN: We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, so Charlie, my late-and-much-lamented friend, fear not today a roast-to-a-crisp job like that "got-cha-good!" we pulled at your infamous surprise party. I promise you, Charlie, assuming you can hear me from way up there – or way down you-know-where, as the case may be, ha, ha – today there will be no burnt-beyond-all-recognition roasting. Just a tad of toasting – extra light.  Greetings, ladies, gentlemen, and all the rest of you guys. I’m Len. Charlie and I go way back, waaay back, from nursery-school snotty-nosers, through senior-year snobby poseurs. For college, we both went to "Amherst" – Charlie to the gen-u-ine, good-old-ivy, me to poor-man’s, plain-old state university "U-Mass."  We’d hook up whenever were home on break. Spent summer vacations together on the Cape, bartending. Those were the days, let me tell you. Even though Charlie’s lived in Chicago since graduation, we’ve stayed in touch all these years. We’d get together whenever he came back to visit his folks, go out for a bite. Which reminds me. Gotta share this  – sorry Charlie, can’t resist. Just a gentle tease, here. Not to rat him out, but Charlie always seemed to come up short when it came time to split the check. Just a buck or two it was, but still. I mean, he’s a hot-shot lawyer, and all, you’d think he’d just pick up the damn tab, once in a while. Not that I’m heading for the poor-house any time soon, but still. Just on principle, I mean. But you’ve got to give credit where it’s due, so let me tell you this about Charlie. I’m sure he was a cracker-jack lawyer, don’t get me wrong, but he missed his calling as a teacher. I have dyslexia and ADD topping off a so-so-IQ, so school didn’t come easy for me, as it did for Charlie. If it hadn’t been for his patiently explaining everything, over-and-over, until light finally dawned on marble-head, there’s no way I’d have made it to graduation. He’d even spend hours with me over the phone, all through college – if it hadn’t been for his help I’d have had to drop out. Charlie had a real gift for digging into my dumb skull, painstakingly filling in all the cracks, then planting the sundry seeds of knowledge, and tending the tentative shoots long as it took for them take hold.  So, on that high note, I’ll sign off, and let Judy here take the floor. JUDY: Thanks, Len. That was very touching; I never knew that side of Charlie. We didn’t go to school together; we met afterwards as rookies working for Chicago’s D.A. We’d have lunch together almost every day. There were usually three or four of us. We would invite the fifth fellow in our group, Tom, to join us, but he always kept to himself, had lunch at his desk, PB&J or American cheese. One day Charlie overheard Tom’s frantic phone conversation about a pending rent increase that he couldn’t afford, on top of his law school loan payments coming due. Charlie realized that poor Tom was flat-out broke, which was why he always brought his lunch. So Charlie contrived to treat him to lunch every day thereafter, without Tom’s ever realizing that Charlie was paying for him. Charlie told Tom that the D.A. asked that the two of them put in extra time to consult on an important case, and that in turn he would reimburse them the cost of lunch. So every day, for months on end, Charlie would make a show of saving their receipt, purporting to have to turn it in to the boss. To complete the charade, he’d make a point to "discuss" the pending-case-of-the-moment, which is what we would do during lunch anyway.  Lunch-time talk always energized all of us, especially Charlie. But as for the weekly "stuff-and-nonsense shows" as Charlie called our staff meetings – he couldn’t stand them. He’d squirm impatiently as some pompous ADA spewed legalese, and roll his eyes whenever anyone asked a question. Charlie would always be champing at the bit to gallop straight into court; he had no patience for preliminary what-iff-ings, how-about-ings, and hold-your-horse-ings. Charlie’s creed was "D.A., all the way." He always said how he couldn’t stomach defending someone he knew was guilty, turned down a generous offer from a defense firm, in fact, to prove that point. Charlie was fearless when it came to prosecuting a case. You’d have thought he was Perry Mason on speed. Why, he just oozed self-confidence: boldly blasting the defense, staring down one-and-all witnesses, challenging credentials and conclusions, objecting right-and-left-and-everything-in-between. Thanks for bearing with my sketchy efforts to depict Charlie. Hope you are able to discern his general shape from my portrait. I’ll relinquish my pencil now, and let Dave add some color. DAVE:Thanks, Judy. That was enlightening, I must say. I didn’t know Charlie at the start of his career. After Charlie’s stint as an ADA, he and I worked together for a couple of years, as public defenders. He did remarkable work. Charlie loved to home in on the weakest link in the prosecution’s case and do his damndest to pry it apart. He’d find every possible convoluted reason to contradict their findings, would do anything it took to keep his client on the right side of the jail-bars. Charlie  would admit to me that sometimes it was hard for him to believe in his clients’ innocence, but if they insisted they didn’t do it – as they all, of course, so insisted – well, then he’d just have to take their word for it and do his job.  Funny thing about Charlie though – with all his years of experience in court, you’d have thought he have been be an old-pro-ice-cold "smoothie" a la "F-Lee-Bailey-Johny-Cochran-in-a-blender." He’d practice his lines, of course, over-and-over. Come show time, Charlie would play the part, and play it well.  But, backstage, boy-oh-boy, you should have seen him sweat! Sometimes – with weather facilitating – literally so. Charlie dwelled in the metaphorical "State of Perspiration" regardless – simply by sheer virtue of his strenuous efforts. If only the Powers That Be presiding over "Wills and Estates" had seen fit to grant Charlie a bequest of 12 extra hours "per diem." He could have well used the first four of them to make up his daily sleep deficit.  As for the remaining eight, let me tell you, Charlie could have had a second stellar career as a professional organizer. His desk was – pardon my oxymoron – "minimalist" to-the-max. Not paper-upon-paper-to-the-umpteenth-power cluttered, like those of the rest of us legal litter bugs. His books were impeccably shelved, ordered – not alphabetically, but artistically – with a Feng-Shui-ed eye.  We would poke fun, of course, call him "OCD-Felix," in reference to the fastidious half of the "Odd Couple." The rest of us were his nemeses: a fearsome tribe of slobby Oscars. Charlie took it all in great humor. Whatever teases we tossed said slid off that thick skin of his. Slathered as it was with so many protective layers of our genuine affection, our "ribbing" never stuck to his. For Charlie knew, top-to-bottom-line, that we loved him. And so, Charlie, as a parting gift: Jumbo-sized slop-bucket of our great adoration to grease your way through those Pearly Gates. Take it away, Sharon. SHARON: Masterful, Dave! You could quit the law and write screenplays. A tear-jerker, that was, in the best way. And quite an eye-opener, too, for my own pair of weepers. Charlie and I celebrated our silver wedding anniversary this past fall. We’ve raised three great kids – shout out to Dan, Lauren, and John. I met Charlie, not in school, nor on the job, but rather through a tortuous – bear with me –‘cousin-of-a-friend’s-brother-in-law,’ or some such convolution. Accordingly, unlike many of you, I never got to see "Charlie-At-Work." What I did view, repeatedly, day-after- day, for 25-plus-years was "Charlie-At-Home," the sequel. As you all have said, Charlie was quite the worker. And he – God bless him – took care of things around the house. His alias, surely, was "Tommy Tinker." Thanks to his being so clever we were spared many a plumber’s bill. Apart from his puttering, Charlie would wash the dishes and vacuum the carpet by way of "relaxation!" He was quite the creative cook, too, weekends, when he had the down-time do it.  My only – minor – gripe was Charlie’s tornado-ed closet. I guess he just ran out of gas once he walked in the door, because, soon as he kicked off his shoes and changed into slippers and sweats, he’d morph into Mister "Off-the-Hook-Let-It-All-Hang-Out." Let those perfectly-pressed slacks and shirts stop, drop, and roll to the far corners – as in a fire-drill gone amok. An insignificant complaint, as I said, especially considering that – lucky for me – I didn’t have to share the closet-from-Kansas-City. I always took care not to criticize Charlie for being so careless with his clothes. For, you see, Charlie could be sensitive, took things to heart. Even sometimes, when – anyone else would have thought it obvious – that you were just joking around. I suppose that, amongst the four of us who spoke here today, Charlie has by now been pretty well "nut-shelled." Let’s call it a wrap, then. Behold, ye who are gathered here today, Charlie: The "Cliff-Notes" version. On behalf of the family, I thank everyone for being here. Special mention to the three of you – Len, Judy, and Dave – for sharing stories of Charlie. Sincerest thanks to each of you: You who knew him well.  (Enter Larry) LARRY: Sorry I’m late, guys—took a wrong turn back there! (Close curtain)   Write A Review Recognized Thanks to MoonWillow for artwork: Mapmaker Pays one point and 2 member cents. Artwork by MoonWillow at FanArtReview.com You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.