I WISH I COULD SAY that on the last night of summer I was super excited about the start of the coming school year. In a way, I was. It was just that it had been so crazy that I rarely had occasion to think about anything else. So when it finally wound down and I had a quiet moment to look back and reflect on it, all I could think to myself was, Wow. Summer was over, and all I had to show for it was a broken arm and the three impeccably sorted piles of stack poles out back. Somehow I felt like I’d been robbed.
Sweetheart, you’re probably just a little anxious because you’re starting the third grade. And about being cooped up in that classroom with Miss Mayapple all day, after having been free to roam outside all summer. That’s normal. All kids are a little apprehensive at first—and then you get in there and you get in the swing of things and all the jitters just sort of disappear and you plum forget about how nervous you were.
Mom drew the curtain, turned off the light, and told me not to worry; school was the perfect antidote for the kind of summer we’d had. I just needed to get my mind off all the crummy stuff that had been going on, was all. The classroom would be a welcome change of scenery. She sat down beside me and warned me not to listen to the things that people were likely to say about Toby. When I asked what I’d say if kids asked me how he’d gotten that way from falling off a ladder, because it seemed a little far-fetched, she fumbled for words.
Tell them the truth. Tell them he fell on the bricks Mister Buford stacks by his barn.
His head looked like it had been cobbled together with plaster of Paris and chicken wire, Mama. Please. It sagged to one side like melted wax. I didn’t recognize him. Nobody could have, except his dentist, and honestly, did he even have one?
As far as I was concerned, it could have been anyone in that coffin. No matter how much Mom had told me that I had to, I could not find it in myself to accept that the corpse I had seen was Toby. No matter how I rearranged the pieces in my head to try to fit them together, I couldn’t. I knew there were going to be lots of questions at school. And I wasn’t ready for any of them. So I gave her the same look that she was so fond of giving me.
There is no way on this earth for me to get from an ordinary, run-of-the-mill fall from a ladder to the corpse you made me look at. And you know it.
Mom’s eyes welled. She took my hand in hers and confessed that Irma had wanted to cremate Toby but had changed her mind at the last minute. I snatched my hand away.
Oh my God.
I agree.
That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.
Sometimes the truth is gross.
Swear on the Bible?
I swear.
Put your hand on it and swear.
Mom kept a Bible on my end table. I barely ever cracked it; I had a half dozen or so comic books stacked on it. She looked up at it and hesitated, then reached over and moved the comic books aside and put her hand on it.
Cupcake, may the good Lord cast me off to eternal damnation as a blasphemer not worthy to follow in His footsteps. I swear on this holy Bible. So help me, Lord. This I do for love. This I do because deep down our world is a beautiful place and I refuse to believe otherwise. Oh Lord, please take me unto thee—unto Your bosom, body and mind, soul and spirit. And forgive me, for this I do because no matter how far we may fall, dear Father, I do require hope. And You are the great Provider of Hope. There. I said it. Satisfied?
Said what?
I wasn’t sure what she’d said—seemed to me that she’d thrown in a bunch of other stuff in the bargain. Anyway, her hand didn’t move. I had no choice but to take her at her word.
You mean after it had already started? Like they just had his head in the oven, then pulled it back out? Like you did with the roast the time you forgot to put cloves in it?
Yes.
Why’d she change her mind?
I don’t know. Maybe because sometimes sights seen are less forgotten.
She kissed me goodnight and made to leave my room.
I stopped her in the doorway. Say, another thing I don’t understand is—well—something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now, actually. How’d Toby have time for his family when he was with us all the time? And where does Evan go to school? He does go to school, doesn’t he?
I don’t know.
Oh oh oh—and one more thing. That’s why you never went to Mister Abrams’s pool, right? Because of your hair, I mean? Just between you and me.
Mom sat back down on my bed and stroked my hair and told me how happy she was that God was looking out for me, then got up and flipped off the light. She paused in the open doorway, complimented me on the fact that the room didn’t stink as much as usual. Told me to keep up the good work, and then left.
Dad came in. He confirmed Mom’s story to be true when I asked. Which was a relief, because frankly I still only believed her ninety-nine point nine nine percent. Anyway, I complained to him how Mom had dragged me to the viewing and how I’d covered my eyes and looked away but she’d pulled my hands away and made me look anyway. She’d sworn up and down that I’d live to regret it if I didn’t take a good hard look. I asked Dad if that were true. Because Mom had said that supposedly, someday I was gonna be glad I had. But I wasn’t glad at all. It’d been almost a week, and I still couldn’t get out of my head the image of that skull, the way that it had appeared to have been burnt and beaten so bad that it seemed hollow, and the scalp that had come so undone and deformed it needed to be held in place with staples and wire ties. Christ. I’d seen pictures of ten-thousand-year-old mummies that were in better shape than him.
I told Dad that I thought it unfair that I should have had to do it when he didn’t have to. Then I asked him why he hadn’t said a last goodbye to Toby, the way the rest of us had. He didn’t say anything. When he leaned in and gave me a peck on the forehead, I grabbed him and hugged him and begged him to never leave. He pried himself from me and got up. Said I needed my ten hours and closed the door. I don’t think he understood. I wasn’t asking him to not leave my room. I was asking him not to leave me and Mom.