It was a dreary, wet Sunday and the call came in just after lunch. They all gathered around the phone. Tommy held his palm to the receiver, looked around, nodded at them peacefully and they all held hands. There was hardly any crying. Mostly just more hand holding and long hugs. They were smiling. They were at peace, for he was at peace.
This is how good Gerry was with preparing them for this. "Listen, when I'm gone, I'm gone, just remember the good times, no point cryin' over spilled milk - don't you dare cryin', ya hear me?!" - he said that whenever he saw them starting to break down. Oh they went through a grieving phase, but that was all behind them now. They said their goodbyes too many times already, and any extra day when he was able to talk to them, was just a bonus.
The formalities, naturally, had to be completed. Insurance paperwork, then all matters pertaining to "the body", laying him to rest, etcetera. Completing the cycle. They brought flowers for the nurse who saw him last. A quiet, skinny, thirty-something looking lady, fresh uniform and otherwise looking ready for church. Or strainght from church. Surely she'd done this too many times to keep count, and yet she seemed shaken. Maybe she always will. Too humane for her own good perhaps.
"Sorry, what's your name?", Tommy started.
"Janeen. Janeen Brown, sir."
"Well I'm Tommy and this here is my sister Clara. Here, these are for you, straight from our yard", and he handed her a fresh bunch of peonies.
"Oh thank you sir, there's really no need", she smiled.
"Nonsense. Thank you for taking care of Dad. Listen, Janeen, did he, um... did he say anything before he, you know..."
"Oh, I..., not really"
"Nothing then? Good, okay then."
"Well, he did say a few words, but you know how it is, sometimes they..."
"Oh you must tell us, it's not like we were waiting for him to tell us where the X is that marks the spot, it's just one last memory for us."
"Well, if you must..."
"We must."
"Well, what he said sounded like..."
Gerry lived a good life, he thought. If there ever was an American dream, his was it. He came here with nothing, left more nothing behind, and he made a good life for himself and the family he started. He was proud of how they had turned out. Of course it was all mostly thanks to Joanna, that he knew, but there sure was plenty of raising left when she went, he thought, so he unashamedly took some credit for it. So he raised a family. He did that, and he ran a small business to help him do it, a business that miraculously survived into the modern age, and that was it, and it was enough, and it was good.
He dodged a bullet a few times before, one time literally in the thirties, but otherwise it was decades later and mostly down to his failing ticker. But this time he sure as hell wasn't gonna make it. He just knew it. One pork chop too many, Joanna said. So there was nothing more to wait for. He went to church most of his life, but he went because he went; he was never really into the whole thing. He just wasn't buying the idea of a big guy in the sky who went and sent his one kid to death, and then you joining him, but only if you went to church and said your Hail Marys. So he knew that this, what we had here on Earth, was it. And he spent his last waking moments reliving it.
Ellis Island. He remembered Ellis Island. He remembered how tired he was and how uncomfortable he felt. Everyone was drunk and everyone stank. He was constantly cold, or too hot, and since he couldn't keep food for long, also hungry, and the one time he forced himself to have a walk on the deck, he lost his good hat to the wind. His only hat.
Everything between the sound of the horn and the thud of the plank being dropped onto the dock, and him standing here in line, was a greasy, tarry blur. He was seriously reconsidering. All this, and for what? But then he didn't have much of a family back there, and what would he, swim back? So he stood in line, awaiting his turn.
His turn finally came. He approached the desk and quietly read the official's name. In charge of admitting all those sad sacks that day was one Dante De Silvio. Dante liked his job. The only thing he didn't like is all them kikes and Polacks coming in day and night, left right and center, and that it was too many and his people got here first. But anytime he mentioned that, someone immediately pointed out that his job was letting most of them in, which he did, and which he didn't like either. But it was a good job; it put bread on the table, and then some. He worked there all his life and he lived in a constant state of internal conflict.
"Good...", started Gerry with a sudden spark of optimism, soon to be extinguished for the rest of that afternoon.
"Name?", barked the official without even raising his eyes, finger on the ship's manifest, but staring at a half-eaten rye sandwich neatly wrapped in newspaper.
"Yehzhyh Shitfuck".
De Silvio mechanically slid his finger over the page, but then snorted, shook his head and looked up.
"What?! Name!"
Gerry pointed at the list and said "Here!". The entry said "SITWAK, JERZY".
"Say that to me again?"
Gerry was getting annoyed now, but he had been plenty warned to co-operate or else, so he bit his tongue and pointed at his first and last as he read them:
"YEH-ZHYH - SHIT-FUCK"
"Oh boy...", said the official. "Ey, O'Flaherty, c'mere, get a load of this guy!". A short, chubby fellow rolled over from the next desk and De Silvio pointed at the list. "See this?"
"JER-SEY SIT-WHACK" - read O'Flaherty with confidence - "Hey, ain't that bad, I seen worse. I saw worse today even. And hey, a Jersey man, like yer ma, where's she from again, Cat Piss, NJ?"
"Shut up, ya cabbage eatin' bastard. She's from Piscataway. Pis-caaata-way!", and he tapped at the manifest again, "Now get him to read it..."
"Name?!" - said O'Flaherty sharply.
Gerry clenched his fists as he read his name again.
"Oh, brother...", mumbled O'Flaherty.
Gerry was quite confused now and starting to fear - was he a wanted man? Was he a stowaway? Were they going to shoot him and drop him in the river like the boys warned him?
"Problem...?", he asked, politely, really worried now.
"No problem, if that's who you are, it's just your name..."
"My name is problem?"
"Your name is what it is, it's just how you say it that can be a problem".
Gerry wasn't getting any of this.
"Why?", he asked slowly, as puzzled as it gets.
"Che cavolo...", uttered De Silvio. "Let me tell you why - see this - SIT?"
"Yes, shit", said Gerry, completely oblivious.
"Okay, so shit, is this" - and De Silvio gets up, squats, makes a farting noise, raises and points at the floor, his other hand covering his nose - "this is SHIT".
Gerry's face was now progressing through assorted gradients of purple. And then O'Flaherty, also wanting in on the fun, points at the other syllable:
"Shit.. FUCK"
"Yes, fack..." - Gerry nodded sheepishly.
"Okay, so, fuck - is this", and O'Flaherty starts throwing some thrusting choo-choo shapes, "Get it?"
"So my name is not good...?" - asked Gerry, hands raised in an oy-vey kind of gesture, his face now pure red.
"Your name is your name - but here in America every time you say it that way you're gonna get some good laughs", said De Silvio, "and every time you write it how you write it you're gonna say it how you say it. And then you're gonna have kids, right? Like six of 'em? And they are all gonna have the same problem. So if you want - if you WANT - we can fix this right here. Or we can leave it and you can change your name later, but it's gonna cost ya, and let me tell ya, these things ain't cheap. Chance of a lifetime, pal, see? So do yourself a favor and drop the shit-fuck...".
Gerry was getting it now. It was good of them to try and help him like that, he was more surprised by that than by the revelation that his apellation sounded to them like a chain of expletives.
"So you change my name?"
"No, we can't change your name, your name is what is in the manifest, but if you were to tell us say, umm, that the manifest got your name wrong, we could correct it here, see?"
"How correct?", asked Gerry.
"How 'bout this - GERRY SIVACK? Sounds about right!"
Gerry gave him a blank stare.
"Listen, you dumb Pol... Listen pal, I'm not tellin' ya to forget who you are, I'm just tryin' to make it easier for ya, take it or leave it, we don't have all day, we have a whole line of you fucks to process!".
Gerry took a sudden liking to the idea of forgetting who he was, but mainly because he was hungry and all he really wanted was to sit down on a bench, on the sidewalk even, or on a mount of dirt, anything that didn't sway, and smoke that last cigarette he'd been holding onto for the past four days.
"Take it...", he said, lowering his hands in resignation, "My name in list, mistake."
"OH-KAY!", said De Silvio and gave him a thumbs-up, then crossed out SITWAK, JERZY, put in SIVACK, GERRY, signed on the side, and that was it. "Seriously, this guy...", he said to O'Flaherty and they chuckled as he handed him his papers.
Jerzy Sitwak died on that ship. He died of the shits, suffocation and bad company, and ashore came the Gerry Sivack he knew. He sat on a patch of grass and took a deep breath. His cigarette must have fallen out of his pocket when he pulled out his ticket earlier.
As he got older, Gerry started to regret changing his name like that, and how he cut himself off from his roots, never mind his new family, and that was his fault and his fault only. He keept telling this to Tommy, Clara and the grandkids, like, all the time, and got them to write their real name down and say it out loud, the way it's supposed to sound, over and over again. They didn't care that much, but they didn't mind either. It made him happy.
He came around. It was daylight, so he must have survived the night. There were no drip tubes and no bed pans in the afterlife either, down or up, and also, there was no afterlife! Hell, maybe he was gonna make it after all! Everything became clear somehow.
"Good morning!", said nurse Janeen Brown.
Nope. He was fading away, ooooh, there she blows, he thought. In place of the regular thump in his chest there was nothing, and he was falling through the floor. It felt like falling backwards into a pool of warm water. And through the foaming surface closing over him, came:
"Good morning, how are we today, mister... Sivack?".
What?! Oh no you don't! He'd had enough. That wasn't his name!
And so, just before he went, right before it all turned to black, with all his might and all the wind he had left in him, he stuttered:
"SH- SHIT FUCK GOD DAMN IT!"
"So I said how are we today, mr Sivack? - and that's what he said. I'm sorry, I told you, it was nothing, it happens sometimes."
Tommy and Clara laughed. That was Pops. Remember the good times.