Carver hesitated. “Just some stuff—about the estate and the will.”
“And everyone was here for it but me?” I inferred.
“It’s nothing, Florence.”
“Nothing—like when everyone met at the Waffle House early before I was told to be there?”
He closed the door, and breathed out through his nose. “Florence, it’s nothing personal. You haven’t really been a part of the family business in a few years. And you haven’t come home in a decade. We... didn’t think you wanted to be a part of it.”
“Of course I do, Carver.”
“Well, we thought you didn’t want to. I mean, you knew about it, right? You didn’t ask.”
“That’s kind of a shitty way of turning the blame back on me, bro.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”
“Whatever,” I sighed. The funeral home was quiet as I shuffled down the hallway to the very last door that led to the mortuary. It smelled like it always did, of flowers and disinfectant. Mom was in the kitchen making tea, it sounded like. There were already a few bouquets delivered for tomorrow’s wake. Then Thursday we’d say goodbye.
Time was both passing too fast and not fast enough.
The basement door had a latch on the outside, but it was unlocked. When I’d been trapped down there for a night, I hadn’t been afraid of the corpses in the freezers. They were like shells, and when the person was done with them, the shell cracked and broke.
I didn’t start hating corpses until much later. I didn’t like their stillness, or how blue always—always—crept through the heavy foundation, or how they smelled after being, you know, embalmed.
Alice was downstairs, a black-and-white-striped cloth headband in her short hair. She looked like a black smudge in an otherwise soft gray room. Even her latex gloves were black. On the steel table in front of her was—
I fortified myself. It was fine. This was fine.
Alice glanced over her shoulder, and threw up her hands. “Finally!What took you so long?”
“I was at Unlimited Party,” I replied as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and one foot at a time, one step closer and closer, I came toward the corpse on the table.
No, that was unfair. I couldn’t say it was a corpse because it wasn’t justanyshell.
It was Dad.
And Alice had done such a wonderful job, he looked like he was simply sleeping. She already had him dressed in his favorite tux—the tacky red one with the long tails and the golden lapels. He had on his favorite cuff links, gold skulls he bought from some boutique in London several decades ago, and they matched his earrings, and his favorite skull and crossbones and sword rings.
He used to spin those rings when he was anxious—especially the one on his thumb. My eyesight began to blur.
Alice shifted, tapping her foot on the ground. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Does he look okay?” she burst out. It was only then I noticed the makeup kit on a rolling tray on the other side of her, concealer and eyeshadow and lipstick scattered across it. “Does he look like himself? I got his color right? It’s not too much?”
“He looks—” My voice caught in my throat, cracked at the edges. “Fine.”
Dad looked like I remembered, a too-still snapshot from my memories, and I curled my fingers into tight fists to keep myself from grabbing his shoulders, shaking him—asking him to wake up. It was the kind of prank he’d pull. Pretend to be dead. Then he’d sit up in the casket at his funeral with a “Surprise! I’mretiring!” but... that was the kind of happily ever after in my head. The kind that didn’t exist.
Because the longer I looked, the stiller he seemed. Frozen. Unmoving.
Dead.
Alice went on. “He had a lot of bruises from the hospital, but at least the tux jacket covers most of that, and his cheeks are a little sunken but—the wake’s tomorrow and I think he doesn’t look like himself at all so I keep checking the pictures. Is my memory of him already going or—”
“Alice,” I repeated. “He looks like Dad.”