Rex’s hand is back on my knee, gently. It’s as if he can hear how fucked-up I feel in everything I say. I feel better than I did on the drive to Philly—seeing Ginger’s helped a lot—but now I feel kind of… sick. Just vaguely nauseated, like I’ve forgotten something important or am about to get in trouble. I shouldn’t have eaten those eggs.
BESIDES ME, Rex, and Ginger, my brothers, Liza, Luther, and a few of the other guys who work at the shop are the only ones there. It’s a graveside service, and, credit to Vic and his cousin, my father’s body does not fall out of the coffin. Sam shook my hand when we walked up, and nodded to Rex and Ginger. He looks sharp, in an overcoat I’ve never seen before, and I’d lay money that Liza went out and bought it for him. He holds Liza’s hand the whole time. Brian looked okay when we started, but now he’s crying. He’s trying to stay quiet, but tears and snot are dripping down his face and his sleeve is shiny from wiping them away. He doesn’t have a dress coat and Colin made him take off his Eagles down jacket at the graveside. It’s fucking freezing out here, so now Brian is shaking too.
Colin. It’s the strangest feeling, but Colin looks how I feel. He looks sick. He has circles under his eyes, and his hair, which is usually buzzed, has grown out some and looks crumpled from sleep. His lips are chapped and cracked from the cold and his eyes are puffy. When they lower the coffin into the ground, Colin squeezes his arms around his stomach and I realize I’m doing the same thing. Trying to hold it together from the outside in. Only he’s failing.
I’ve never seen Colin cry. His eyes are scrunched up and his neck is corded and I can tell that he’s nearly puking with the attempt to stay quiet. Sam is crying, Liza holding his arm. Tears are running down Luther’s weathered face and he’s making no attempt to hide them.
I am not crying. I am not sad. I am sick and numb and guilty with not crying.
I haven’t been to a funeral since my mom’s. At that one, everyone put roses on top of her coffin. One of my mom’s friends gave me a rose. White. She told me, “Put it on top of Mommy so she can take a part of you with her.” This—of course—terrified me, and I put the rose next to the grave, hoping no one would notice. One of our neighbors walked up last, and when he turned back after putting his rose on her coffin, he kicked my rose into the grave. For months, I had nightmares where I was just sitting in class or taking a shower and I would feel a tugging in my stomach. I’d look down and see the stem of a rose sticking out of my belly button. Then a hand would reach for it. My mother’s hand. She’d take hold of the stem, thorns cutting her palm, and she’d pull. The stem would slid out of my stomach, ripping its way through, until finally the white bloom, now stained red with my blood, slid out. She would drag me into the darkness, tethered by the stem.
I tighten my arms around my stomach and Rex pulls me into him.
“You okay?” he asks softly, his mouth next to my ear. I shiver and nod.
It’s just so ridiculous. That something like grief could course through each of these people, desperately contained, as the ritual unfolds, for the sake of… what? And the idea that my father is now a dead body inside a wooden box—absurd.
For a second, my mind wanders to the cholera epidemics, when fear of accidentally burying a family member alive resulted in coffins fitted with strings tied around the toes of their loved ones that led to bells, so that if they awoke, interred, they could signal for help. I’ve taught Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Premature Burial” in classes before and always pictured these suitably dark, crumbling, atmospheric tombs. But it’s 2:00 p.m. and the sun is shining and it’s muddy. There’s a man talking about my father who never met him and never will. My brothers are pillars of grief, mourning a man they adored. And I’m standing here thinking about nineteenth-century American horror stories. It’s too fucking absurd. I make a noise that sounds disturbingly like a giggle.
Colin’s head snaps up and his eyes meet mine. His face is red with pain, his lips bitten to blood. His look is disgusted. Murderous.
My brothers hate me.
Or, at least, don’t care about me.
And I don’t like them.
I’m standing between the only two people in the entire world who give a shit about me, and who the fuck knows how long at least one of them will stick around.