Summer de los Muertos

The response at checkout was “Would You Like to Add More Marigold Garlands to Your Cart?” He inclined, then adjusted the quantity to several hundred garlands of marigolds, which would do quite a bit of devastation to his already behind credit card bill. Damn it was easy to check out these days.

Tall, but slouched in his chair, he was now spent from an exhaustive online shopping spree. He was still wearing the black suit that he’d worn earlier that day at his wife’s funeral. The gray hairs along the side of his head were beginning to outnumber the brown that had once roamed free and wild. And tears, not of sorrow for his wife, but self-pity wetted the measly beard that a teenager might have been proud of.

Yes, the tears ran. They ran down his long, pointy, oversized nose. They dripped from his nostrils and blended with his ever-present snotnose. He was a weaselly man, both in appearance and personality. Shifty eyes that were unlikely to lock with another pair for an extended period of time. Narrow cheeks and waist that really only afforded his height and his nose the masculinity he’d always desired.

He’d grown up in San Diego, where the Mexican influence ran deep in all traditions. And he had always been easily influenced, due mostly to his limited intelligence and, not to overemphasize the point, but weaselly nature. He was as white as a jar of mayonnaise, and yet found ways to co-opt any tradition that aligned with his current circumstance. Especially from one of his Latinx friends who’d attended his wife’s funeral. And that is where the idea, the one that would lead to his ruin, would come from.

---

“I’m so sorry for your loss, man,” said Fernando, wearing an all-black suit and a spectacularly turquoise bolo tie.

“Everything is part of God’s plan,” Fred acted solemnly and spoke through his oversized nose. Truth be told, Fred wasn’t even religious. It just seemed like the right thing to say in a situation like this. Or at least that’s what he’d seen in the movies

“If—If there’s anything I can do-,” Fernando spoke haltingly, clearly uncomfortable expressing his sorrow for a guy he considered to be no more than a passing acquaintance. In fact, the only reason Fernando had even come to the funeral is that he’d had a sneaking suspicion that Fred didn’t have many friends who would be in attendance. So when he got the invite from Fred (an e-Card, of all things), he thought it best to join his co-worker in his moment of grief.

But the strangest part was that Fred didn’t really seem all that, well, sad. He seemed a little panicky. A little more squirrely than normal. No, squirrely wasn’t right. Weaselly was more appropriate. Fernando stared back at Fred and pictured the world’s tallest weasel. Sniffling through his big nose and peering out through his shifting, wondering eyes.

“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without her,” Fred said, again barely making eye contact, but with nary a hint of sadness. It was fear, Fernando realized. He was afraid that he was now alone and that no one else in the world could possibly love him. And Fernando felt bad for thinking what he thought next. But Fernando thought he was probably right.

“Hey, you’ll have something to celebrate for Dia de los Muertos in a few months!” Fernando chuckled awkwardly at his attempt at a drama-lifting joke. He immediately regretted it. But then he doubled down, “You can come celebrate with me and my family.”

“Dia de los mortos?” Fred attempted in what could only be described as the most gringo pronunciation of the holiday ever.

Now Fernando was definitely regretting this invitation. He’d really hoped to come to this funeral, pay his respects, and GTFO. But his shoe was in it now. And a funeral was no place to wipe off dog shit. So he decided to step all the way in.

“Dia de los Muertos. It’s like Halloween for you gringos, but more a celebration of life. It’s the one day a year your dead loved ones can cross over to the living world.”

“How do they do that?” Fred was asking as if he was trying to understand a math problem.

“Well,” Fernando said, realizing he’d never actually thought about it before, but knowing the lore. “We start with the pictures of our loved ones. Then we get some marigolds—”

“Marigolds!” Fred said, eyes rising as if he’d been struck with genius, an adjective that had never been used to describe him in his life. And with that, he turned his back to Fernando, with his nose sunsetting on the profile of his cheek as he turned and walked away. Fernando was left standing alone, a heavy dose of confusion and annoyance.

---

The marigolds arrived at Fred’s house the next day (what’s an extra $50 for expedited shipping on top of a $5,000 order?). He was mesmerized by the sheer volume of flowers. In truth, he hadn’t even known what marigolds looked like until he placed the order the night before.

Now he had what he needed. He didn’t have a plan exactly, but he knew he’d need a picture of his wife, a few candles, and as many marigolds as he could possibly find. He’d checked two of those things off his list. The first was the marigolds and the second was the candles he’d bought at Yankee Candle Company. It was quite literally the only place he could think of to buy candles, which required a drive across town and another large charge against his credit card. Now his house smelled like all different seasons, flowers, potpourri, laundry, and basically anything else he could fit in his arms while steamrolling the store. And on top of it all, the unincumbered smell of fresh but slowly and surely dying marigolds.

Yet he had no picture of his wife. Sure, he had a few on his Facebook page and on his cell phone. But they’d had no photos hanging on the wall, nor portraits on the desk. To his dismay (but not to his understanding), there were not many reasons to take a picture of the homely couple. Especially not one worth framing in the permanence of a printed photo.

And then it came to him. Her high school yearbook! She had shown him her yearbook just a few months before. He couldn’t remember exactly why, which was nothing new. But the yearbook. That would work perfectly.

The scene was now set in their small kitchen. A dozen or so burning candles of every fragrance. An open yearbook, turned to the page of Karen’s senior high school photo (along with a few dozen other seniors from Rancho Bernardo High School, class of ‘98). And (without a perfectly accurate count) roughly 10,000 marigolds strung up in garlands.

With everything in place, Fred moved his favorite chair (a recliner, approximately a million years old, acquired from Goodwill) to the kitchen, turned off all the lights, and sat.

He waited.

And waited.

And waited a bit more.

Fred was not a man of intelligence. You’ve already learned that. But nor was he a man of conviction. Which is why Fred fell asleep. Sure, Fred had been excited and enthusiastic to test out his half-baked theory of how to co-opt another culture’s tradition (without even bothering to listen to the tradition in its completion, mind you) in order to achieve one’s selfish will. But after roughly five minutes of waiting, Fred could not be bothered to pay attention any longer for his own satisfaction. Instead, he passively gave up and passed out in his chair, which smelled mildly of feet and sadness.

---

Hours later, as far as Fred could tell, he awoke. Candles were still burning. The smell in his room was undefinably and terribly overpowering. The marigolds flickered from the candlelight, which was bright enough to illuminate most of the kitchen, save for the corners.

“Well then,” Fred said, looking around in a faux-witty sarcastic quip. Don’t worry, this is not Fred changing his stripes. It’s just that he’d been watching a British comedy series recently and he’d picked up this common line from the show.

But just then, he saw a small movement from the corner of the kitchen, where the shadows lingered just beyond the candlelight. Then the movement grew. Then it grew a little more. And after just a few moments, a full body had materialized before his very eyes.

“Well then,” Fred repeated, stunned and his brain unable to create something new.

The body almost seemed to build itself in front of him, materializing computeristically, pixel by pixel. Then after a few moments, there were two people in the kitchen. He and his wife. She stood before him, looking just as she had when she was alive, if just slightly more transparent than normal. There was also a bit of blood spilling out of her nose, an homage to the disease that had taken her.

“Beth?”

“I’m here,” she said enthusiastically. She seemed excited to be back, but also as if she’s just come from somewhere exciting. She was panting slightly.

“Is—Is it really you?”

“I mean, I think so,” she rubbed her body harshly to get proof that this was true.

“Oh thank God! I thought I was going to be alone forever.”

Her head cocked. “I’ve been gone for a few days?”

He tried to backtrack, “Oh, no, I just mean I miss you.”

“Jesus, Fred. What about me? Any concern for what I went through?”

“Well—”

“Oh for fuck’s sakes Fred.”

“I just—”

“You’ve always been selfish, but Christ!”

“That’s not—”

“Fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair. I was voted Most Likely to Succeed in my high school yearbook. Then, not only did I wind up with a dead-end job, which laid me off during a global pandemic, but I married you, the most sniveling, weaselly, ignorant man, if I can call you that, I’ve ever met. Your nose, for fuck’s sake! And then,” she pointed up to the sky accusingly, “And then I get cancer? WHAT THE FUCK.”

Fred hung his head in apparent shame, although he wasn’t really sure what she was getting at. It just felt right to him.

“I have good news though, Fred.” He looked up excitedly, not at all picking up the disdain in her voice. “I’ve found some of my high school friends. The other ones who died younger than they should have. I actually have you to thank for that,” she pointed to the yearbook posted up by the candles. “And we’ve decided to invite you to our new club,” she turned back to the dark corner, “Let’s welcome him, guys!”

Out of the dark corner of the room, several more pixelated specters began to emerge and materialize. There were a dozen or so, and they trudged toward him, smiling. The first to arrive at Fred grabbed him by his left nostril. The second to arrive grabbed him by his right. And they both pulled, detaching the cartilage from Fred’s face, and spraying agonizing streams of blood over several dozen marigolds near his feet.

The Summer de los Muertos specters had their fun with Fred. Especially Beth, whose marital frustrations in life had come to a head only after she’d passed into death. It was several hours before he fully joined their new group.

And when the firefighters arrived later that night (due to candle fires, of course), they couldn’t determine how the nose of this burned-up corpse had been set neatly on a mantle of only wall that hadn’t been scorched in the fire. Next to it was a yearbook, turned to a page that now showcased Beth and a quite horrified Fred.

The first and last Summer de los Muertos had come to a brutal, nasal, if not appropriate close.