The Meaning of Charlie Armanio

XIX

a/n: please make sure to play all audios while reading, trust me guys. enjoy!

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I HAVE NEVER SHED tears at a funeral before. Mainly because crying at funerals had never been a thing for me, granted I had only ever been to one funeral – my grandmother's. If you can even call a two year old asleep on her father's shoulder attending, then yes, I had never shed actual tears at a funeral before. So, finding the priest handing me a handkerchief made me wonder why Tieri of all people had made me start bawling my eyes out.

He looked concerned, but not surprised. He came from the town over, near Wolf's Street, and thankful could've made it to carry Tieri's funeral. A week ago, hearing that his car had swerved of the bridge suddenly, and deposited itself into the river; ironically the same river Charlie had supposedly tried to drown himself in, I was hustling to call over the priest so he could preside over the funeral. But I remember, once upon a time, when Tieri had shown up drunk in the house of the Lord. Then I decided against it.

I kept the irony of how Tieri and Charlie had both been found barely breathing in the same river to myself though. No one would've believed me and in some way, I am trying to love out Tieri's last wishes.

"He must've been a wonderful person," the priest said as he stood beside me, watching Tieri's casket being slowly lowered into the ground.

No he wasn't. He was horrible. A horrible father, husband, son, neighbor and altogether a horrible person but at least he was trying to remedy those things, I wanted to say. But instead, unable to trust my voice, I nodded.

I could tell the priest was a little surprised as to why a 'wonderful person' such as Tieri had no attendants to his funeral other than his neighbour, but he didn't question it.

I was surprised too. At the lack of people – no. Tieri was downright awful. He was pretentious and snobbish and loud and rude, so the fact that nobody in our neighbourhood had shown up didn't shock me. But the fact that Clair hadn't shown up had.

She was the first person I told about Tieri's death, if she hadn't heard prior via the news, and when the words left my mouth, she had hung up. Nobody had seen nor heard from her over the course of the week, and rumours had circled her sudden absence.

Some, like Mrs Maudie, a widow from down the street, claim that she had taken sojourn back to Italy, to get away. She says she knows how it feels to lose the love of your life. She says she knows the sadness and emptiness that Claire must be feeling now. She claims she can never really understand exactly what Claire is feeling now because she has no one now – her son's battling for his life and her husband is dead.

Others, like Mr Herdford, claim that she had drowned herself in her bathtub, because according to him, 'them Armanio's sure do love the water'.

I wonder how the unresponsive boy would react to hearing that in his absence, those who had tried to murder him have succeeded in murdering his estranged father. I wonder if he would cry like me, bawl his eyes at the sight of his tombstone, or if he would sojourn like his mother, or if he would be silent and uncaring. Would he be thankful? That the father who had left him one night was gone for good? Would he be ecstatic to have finally been rid of the father who knew nothing about him from the time he was ten until now?

I think about my father too. The father who left me for business trip after business trip. I think about how I had been cursing his name every five seconds because he left and hardly came back. I think about how I secretly loved him and wanted him to return. I think about how lucky I am that he's staying this time. I think about how happy I am that I have him in my life – how happy I am that I have a family even if it's just him and me.