The funeral was Jacob’s idea. “Ivan, in your drawing, your regret was not being able to go to your mom’s funeral. Well, maybe you can. Maybe we can create one for you.”
“How?” Ivan asked. We were sitting at JJ Bean, and Ivan was slurping a huge peppermint hot chocolate.
“Does she have a gravesite?”
“Yeah. At Mountain View Cemetery.”
“So we’ll go there.”
“And do what exactly?” Alonzo clutched a latte. He sounded skeptical.
“Go through the rituals. It’ll be like performance art. I can film it.” Jacob turned to Ivan. “You’ll have the video as a keepsake. It’ll be something you can watch any time you want.”
Ivan was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept. “Can I talk about her? Like, memories and stuff?”
“Absolutely. You can deliver the eulogy. Say a proper goodbye.”
Ivan’s eyes lit up. He had a big whipped cream mustache. “I like this idea.”
When Jacob pitched the idea to Betty the following Friday, she also liked it.
I was the only one who hated it.
The last time I’d been to a cemetery, we’d buried Maxine. I remember very little from that day. When I picture it, we are enveloped in fog, although apparently it was clear and sunny. I remember my dad and his sister, who’d flown in from Antwerp, having to hold my mom up because her knees kept buckling. I remember murmurs of relatives I barely knew. “Such a tragedy…” “Home alone with her sister…” “Death of a child…” “Never recover…”
I remember my sister’s tiny coffin.
That image gets replayed a lot.
And I remember the sound my mom and dad made when the coffin was lowered into the ground.
So hanging out at a cemetery on a Saturday night—the date everyone had agreed to—was not my idea of a good time. I thought about bailing.
Then I thought about Ivan, and how much this meant to him.
Then I thought about bailing again.
Then I thought about Ivan.
And on it went.
I was still agonizing over it when Jacob arrived at seven to pick me up. He wore a tailored gray suit with a black wool coat on top. “Wow,” I blurted. “You look nice. I mean, aside from that.” He also wore his filthy John Deere cap.
“I’m sure you look nice too, under all those layers. At the moment you look like the Michelin Man’s twin.”
I wore a dark blue skirt, thick wool tights, and a white shirt. I’d pulled on two bulky sweaters, followed by my peacoat, cat hat, mittens, and Belgian flag scarf. The last thing I needed was to catch some new strain of flu virus.
I grabbed my dad’s reflective vest from the hall closet.
“You’re not actually putting that on.”
I wrestled it on over my other layers. “It’s pitch-dark out. This way I can be seen. You, on the other hand—a car would never see you. You’d be roadkill.” I picked up my backpack, which was heavy with supplies.
Jacob grabbed it. “Allow me.”
I yelled goodbye to my parents and followed him out the door.
I did a deep-breathing exercise as we walked to the bus stop.
“You okay?” asked Jacob.
“Yes. Why?”
“You sound like Darth Vader.”
I wasn’t about to tell him that on top of everything else, I hadn’t set foot on a bus in two years. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you to try on.” I rummaged around in my backpack and pulled out a half-finished beagle hat.
“No way. You did it.”
“Yes.” My boxes of old crafting supplies were still in my bedroom, so a few nights earlier I’d forced myself to dig out some knitting needles and balls of wool. I felt anxious, but once I got started, it felt fine. Good, even. Like riding a bike, even if I would never again ride a bike. “I need to see if it’s the right size.”
He sat down on the bus shelter bench. I stood behind him and put the hat on his head. “I think I’m going to need to make it bigger. Your cranium is massive.”
“It holds a very big brain.”
I held the hat in place. His hair was super soft and shiny. I wanted to run my hands through it. Instead I leaned in carefully and sniffed. His head smelled like Ivory soap and breakfast sausages.
Delicious.
I had an overwhelming urge to bury my lips in his hair. The voice inside my brain was goading me on. Do it! He won’t even notice. I knew it was madness, but I leaned in closer. Closer. My lips were almost touching his hair—
“Here’s our bus.” Jacob stood up, and I narrowly avoided losing my front teeth.
It took me forever to pay the fare because I didn’t dare remove my mittens and touch any of the bus’s surfaces with my bare hands. Finally Jacob grabbed my wallet and took out the correct change.
We walked toward the back. I wrapped my scarf over my mouth. Jacob shook his head. “Maybe we should roll you up in layers of bubble wrap. Poke a few holes in it so you can breathe.”
“Ha-ha.” It came out muffled.
We found two seats near the back. I do not understand why buses don’t come equipped with seat belts. It’s just common sense.
I started another deep-breathing exercise. Aside from my loud inhalations and exhalations, we made the journey in silence.
Ivan was waiting for us when we got off the bus. He wore a shiny black tracksuit. “It’s the best I could do,” he said. “My mom bought it for me.”
“That makes it perfect,” said Jacob.
Koula and Alonzo stepped off another bus a few minutes later. Koula was still grounded, but her dad was attending a Greek Cultural Society banquet and wouldn’t be home till late, so she’d snuck out. She wore a short black dress with black fishnet tights, red Doc Martens, and a black bomber jacket. Her nose still showed signs of rug burn from her fall. “I brought flowers,” she said, her voice subdued. She held up a limp bouquet of carnations dyed a garish blue. “You said blue was your mom’s favorite color.”
It was becoming harder to completely hate her.
As we headed toward the cemetery entrance I fell into step beside her. “How are you doing?”
“Meh,” she said. “But thanks for asking.”
We arrived at the entrance. We’d worked out all the final details of our plan at YART—Alonzo had even made a checklist—but we’d forgotten one thing.
Opening hours.
The gates to the cemetery were locked. A six-foot-high wrought-iron fence ran along the perimeter.
“Crap!” Ivan’s cheeks puffed out. He looked like he was about to burst into tears.
I put a hand on his shoulder, secretly relieved. “It’s okay. We can come back another time.”
“But I’m all ready! I have things to say!”
“Ivan, you can climb, right?” asked Jacob. Ivan nodded. My heart froze as I understood what Jacob was suggesting. “I’ll go first.”
Jacob started to climb the fence. It took him a while with his robotic hand, but by using his left hand to pull himself up, he eventually made it to the top. He jumped down to the other side. Alonzo helped Ivan over, then Koula.
Then it was my turn.
I was terrified.
Alonzo gave me a boost. I started to climb. With all my layers, it wasn’t easy. I’m pretty sure I whimpered. When I got to the top I perched there, my feet dangling over the other side. The earth seemed a long way away.
Jacob held out his arms. “I’ll catch you.”
I didn’t move.
“It’s okay. You can trust me.”
I closed my eyes. I jumped.
And he did catch me, sort of. The sheer mass of my five-foot-eleven body landing on his made him stumble and fall backward, but he never let go of me. I landed on top of him, my face centimeters from his.
I started to laugh. I’d leapt from a fence! I felt like Wonder Woman!
“Oh my God, you’d think you’d just climbed Mount Everest,” said Koula. “Get over yourself, Grandma.”
“My mom was a great lady. She always put a treat in my lunch, like a Twinkie or a bag of chips. Or Cheez-Its. She knew I loved Cheez-Its.” Ivan was delivering his eulogy. We stood by a simple marble headstone that read IVANKA BOGDANOVICH, BELOVED DAUGHTER, MOTHER, AND WIFE. “And she only yelled at me when I deserved it. And she only smacked me when I was really out of control.”
Alonzo and I shared a look, but Koula nodded like this made sense. Jacob stood a few feet away, filming.
Ivan started talking directly to the tombstone. “We miss you, Mom. Dad’s doing okay. He drinks a lot of beer. And vodka.” He started to cry. Because I was so layered up, I figured I could safely put an arm around him. “You knew you weren’t a great swimmer, so I’ll never know why you swam out so far, and that’s hard.” He wiped his sleeve across his nose and I did my best not to shudder. “I miss you every single day.”
Poor Ivan. He wasn’t a demon. He was just a kid who’d lost the person who was most important to him in the world. I wrapped my other arm around him. If he got snot on me, it would only be on Dad’s reflective vest. I could put it through a hot-water wash.
Alonzo pulled out a speech he’d printed from the Internet and began to read. “Because God has chosen to call our sister from this life to Himself, we commit her body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.”
I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a collapsible shovel. Ivan took it and dug a small, discreet hole next to Ivanka’s tombstone. Then I lifted out the miniature coffin/memory box I’d made for the occasion. I’d lined an old Converse shoe box with purple velour and written Ivanka’s name in calligraphy on the lid.
“That’s really nice, Petula,” said Ivan. He opened his own pack and started taking out items one by one. “This is a Mother’s Day card I made for her when I was five. This is a stone I gave her, because it looked like a heart. This is a photo of the two of us together in Mexico. Before she…Well.” He placed the items in the box.
He put the lid on and laid the box in the hole. Then he shoveled the dirt back in place and patted it down.
Jacob caught it all on camera. Including the blinding beam of light that suddenly engulfed us. “What the hell do you kids think you’re doing?”
A large security guard stood on the roadway, aiming his flashlight at us. “Good evening, sir,” Jacob began. “I can explain—”
The guard didn’t let him finish. “You’re not supposed to be here. I’m calling the cops.” He pulled out his phone.
Jacob lowered his camera. “Run.”
We split into two groups. Jacob, Ivan, and I went left; Koula and Alonzo went right.
The guard chose to run after Jacob, Ivan, and me. For a large guy, he was surprisingly fast. We tore through the cemetery, weaving among tombstones. In retrospect, my reflective vest was perhaps a bad choice; I made for a very visible target.
I was worried I was going to pee my tights, but Ivan was having the time of his life, laughing as we ran. Jacob was still holding his camera up.
“You’re filming this?” I said.
“Of course! This is solid gold!”
We arrived at the fence, panting. Jacob shoved his camera into his pocket. He gave Ivan a boost over, then me. I hesitated when I reached the top; Jacob wasn’t there to catch me on the other side. But I could see the guard bearing down on us. So I jumped.
I landed on my knees, hard.
Jacob started to climb the fence, but his bionic hand slowed him down. The security guard was closing in.
Jacob reached the top of the fence just as the guard arrived, wheezing and out of breath. He grabbed Jacob’s foot. “Gotcha!”
But all he got was Jacob’s shoe. Jacob wriggled his foot free and dropped to the other side. “We’re sorry to have caused you any trouble,” he said. “We weren’t being disrespectful, you have my word. We were just helping someone grieve.”
The guard looked taken aback.
“I don’t suppose you’d toss me my shoe?” Jacob asked.
The guard looked at the shoe in his hands, still catching his breath. Then he shrugged and threw it over the fence.
Jacob caught it. “Thanks.”
We heard sirens in the distance. We had no idea whether they were for us, but we didn’t wait to find out.
We started running again. Over his shoulder, Jacob hollered, “Have a good night!”
Jacob and I got back to the Arcadia an hour later. He knelt to check on my torn tights and banged-up knees. “Be sure to put disinfectant on when you get upstairs.”
I blame what happened next on the endorphins still coursing through my body.
As he straightened, I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
On the lips.
He pulled back.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what made me—”
He took hold of my wrist. He pulled me close. “Has anyone ever told you you have spectacular eyes?” he said.
This time, he kissed me.
My experience with kissing up to now went like this:
1) One awful, spittle-filled attempt at tonguing by a boy during a game of spin the bottle.
2) Pecks on the cheek by male relatives.
But even so, I knew that this kiss felt right, and good. So good that when thoughts of saliva-transmitted illnesses like mononucleosis and oral herpes crept into my brain, I was able to push most of them out.
I replaced them with these thoughts instead:
Jacob is not “this side of” good-looking.
He is spectacular.