Zoe found herself floating twenty feet above a small group of mourners surrounding an open grave at St. Raymond’s Cemetery. St. Ray’s was the only cemetery she’d ever been to. As a child, she’d attended the funeral of her grandfather here. Then, five years later, that of her uncle Tommy, her father’s older brother.
The mourners . . . perhaps twenty in all . . . were looking away from the neatly dug rectangular pit. Their eyes focused instead on a wooden coffin that lay just inside the open rear of a black Cadillac hearse, where six tall men in identical black suits stood waiting. At what must have been some kind of silent signal, they simultaneously reached into the vehicle and pulled out a coffin and lifted it up onto their shoulders. It wasn’t one of those ornate coffins. There were no golden handles or fancy filigree. Just a plain wooden box constructed from rough pine planks that had been crudely nailed together. The thing seemed more suitable for transporting freight than the mortal remains of someone who had died. She wondered who was being buried here today. Her grandmother? That seemed most likely. But wouldn’t she have been told if Granny Rose had died? And if not Granny Rose, then who?
The men carried the coffin to the open grave and, holding it by black cords on either side, lowered it carefully into the ground. As it went down, Zoe noticed black block letters stamped on the top of the box identifying the contents. The letters were upside down and it took a minute for her to decipher them, but when she did, what she read was Zoe Catherine McCabe. 1991–2015
Zoe Catherine McCabe? How was that possible? It sounded as though she was the one who was dead and about to be buried. How weird. Especially since, if she was dead and in the box, how could she also be flying around up here, among the trees, watching her own funeral instead of down there imprisoned in the cold blackness of a pine coffin.
Could it be that Aunt Frannie . . . Sister Mary Frances . . . was right after all? That she really did have an eternal soul that survived after death and lived forever in the arms of Jesus? But if she was supposed to be in the arms of Jesus, what was she doing up here flying around among the trees like Wendy, whom she’d once played in a ninth-grade production of Peter Pan back at the Dalton School.
Zoe Catherine McCabe. 1991–2015. Only twenty-four years old. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Not fair at all being lowered into the ground like this before she got to do all the things or, for that matter, very many of the things she’d worked so hard to achieve. The other night when she was lying in bed . . . lying there alone because she’d caught Alex cheating on her just days before in their own frigging bed and had kicked him and the woman he was screwing the hell out of the apartment. Anyway, as she lay there alone, she’d practiced an Oscar acceptance speech. She had no idea what as-yet unproduced film she was going to be honored for so she couldn’t be very specific in terms of who to thank. Still, her lines had been graceful. To the point. With just the right touch of humility. No, Zoe’s speech wouldn’t go on forever like so many others did, thanking half the people they’d ever known or met, including in some cases, their third-grade teachers. But now, since dead people so rarely win Oscars and never have the opportunity of accepting them in person, that dream, that fantasy had become nothing but ashes.
Zoe flew onto a branch of a big maple and sat, looking down at the people watching the pine box as it was lowered into the ground. Some stood silently. Others mumbled prayers. Her father and stepmother, Cathy, were openly weeping. Poor Daddy. He’d always supported everything she wanted to do. Even more so after his first wife, Zoe’s mother, Ellen, died in that terrible accident when the car she was driving slid across a patch of black ice and into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.
Zoe knew deep down Daddy believed that as a responsible and now single parent he should encourage her to do something sensible with her life. Like go to law school or business school. Nevertheless, he told her that if the theater was what she really and truly wanted she should just go for it. Follow her dream. Wherever it led, full speed ahead, and even if he didn’t agree, he would support her every step of the way. Zoe knew Daddy loved her so much that dying almost made her feel sadder for him than she did for herself.
Standing next to Daddy, Alex, her former lover, stood expressionless in a dark suit and a black tie standing next to his new girlfriend, a British bitch named Annabelle—call me Bella—who had once been Zoe’s best friend but was no longer, not now that she’d been caught in her best friend’s bed fucking her best friend’s boyfriend.
As she watched the box lying motionless in the hole and imagined herself inside, Zoe repeated the familiar lines from Hamlet’s soliloquy.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil . . .
What dreams may come, indeed. Perhaps that’s all this really was. A dream.
She looked around to see who else was inhabiting her vision of death. Standing next to Alex and Annabelle, Zoe saw her father’s sister, Aunt Fran, aka Sister Fran or, more accurately, Sister Mary Frances, dressed in full nun’s habit. Next to Fran was Uncle Michael, her father’s brother. A cop like all the male McCabes, except for her father. Uncle Mike lived in Maine now and he had his arm wrapped around the shoulder of his daughter, her cousin Casey. Zoe had spent the whole summer with them six years ago in a tiny rented cottage on a place called Hart’s Island just off Portland. She had been eighteen at the time and Casey was thirteen. She hadn’t seen much of them since then, outside of the occasional Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations at her parents’ apartment or their house up in Dutchess County. She was too busy working her ass off trying to make her dream of being a successful and respected actress a reality. Uncle Mike was a homicide cop, so maybe he could figure out who’d killed her because she was sure she must have been murdered.
A circle of friends, classmates from Dalton and Juilliard, were all in attendance. As was the entire cast and crew of Othello, the actors all in costume. Randall Carter, who played the Moor, looked down at her coffin with the same bereft expression he’d worn after smothering her on stage. Was it Randall who’d murdered her? He’d already done it twelve times on stage, not counting rehearsals, so maybe he had. The last person in the circle of mourners was Luke Nichols, whom she’d had drinks with last night after the closing performance. Handsome Luke. Was he the one who’d killed her? No. Luke was one of the gentlest, sweetest men she’d ever known. He wanted to replace Alex as her lover, but she wasn’t ready for that yet, and when she told him so, he just accepted what she said and told her he’d be asking again. No matter how many times he asked, Zoe knew Luke was never going to be the right guy. Not that it mattered anymore.
After the box was settled in the ground, a priest with light brown skin and a Hispanic accent started talking about how wonderful Zoe was, which was ridiculous because he didn’t know her from Adam. Or from Eve, which she supposed was a more appropriate descriptor. Zoe had gone to services at St. Ray’s a couple of times when she was staying with Granny Rose while her parents went on their grownups-only vacations. But the only priest she remembered from those visits was an elderly Irishman named Father Fred, and this guy looked nothing at all like him. Zoe guessed all the old Irish priests like Father Fred were either dying off or getting their butts tossed out of the church for diddling little boys. On the other hand, she’d also had a strong feeling that Granny Rose had had a crush on him. And that he had felt the same way about her. The idea of her grandmother having her last sexual fling with an old Irish priest made her smile.
The priest intoned a prayer, and when the prayer was finished, all the people lined up and each tossed a little dirt on top of the box. Soon the box would be covered with dirt and Zoe would be gone forever. Her body rotting inside at the bottom of a hole. The idea of it made her angry. This shouldn’t be happening. Not now. Not here.
Not to her. She tried to call out to her father. Tried telling him that someone had made a terrible mistake. That she wasn’t dead. That she was just asleep and this was all nothing but a dream of death. Daddy, Daddy, please wake me up!
As the mourners left the gravesite, an elderly black workman with snow-white hair appeared and started tossing shovelfuls of dirt on top of the box that held Zoe’s body. She tried as hard as she could to scream out to him, to tell him to stop, but the only sound that came out was more like a garbled choke than anything like a scream.