CHAPTER
five

My hands shook and I couldn’t seem to make them stop. Wringing them didn’t help and neither did holding them in tight fists at my sides.

I stood, waiting at the threshold of the church sanctuary. Someone was supposed to tell me when I should walk down the aisle, and it was not lost to me, the irony of it all. The last time I’d stood in that very spot, I’d been seventeen years old and wearing a white dress pieced together from flour sacks. Then Norm had been waiting at the front of the church for me, grinning wide.

But that day I was dressed head-to-foot in black and my eyes were fixed on the casket at the other end of the aisle that held Norm. I put my gloved hand on the doorjamb so I wouldn’t keel over right there.

“Ready?” the funeral director whispered into my ear, and I nodded even if it was a lie.

I wasn’t ready. How could I have been?

“I’m only forty years old,” I whispered back to him, looking him in the eyes and hoping he’d understand my meaning, that I was far too young to be at my husband’s funeral.

From the sympathetic upturn of his eyebrows, I thought he understood perhaps better than most people.

Of course he did.

Pop made his way to my side, offering me his arm, and I took it. Never in a hundred years could I have taken that walk by myself.

Without a word, we took the first step through the doors, the rest of our family following behind us. One step after another. Quivering organ music set the slow and solemn rhythm for our procession. I kept my face turned down, eyes fixed on the bright red carpet in front of me.

Thank goodness the church was small and there were only a dozen pews to walk past before we got to our row. The further I’d gone, the weaker I felt. Pop didn’t seem much stronger.

“You made it, Bets,” he said to me under his breath once we reached the front.

“So did you.” I squeezed his arm before letting him help me to my seat.

Folding my hands, I placed them in my lap, praying that I could just last another hour, maybe two. Then I could go home and lock the front door and sleep for a hundred days if I wanted to.

I’d never been so tired.

Marvel drove me home in Stan’s car, the music playing at a low volume. The Chiffons went on and on with their do-lang-do-lang-do-lang, and I tried my hardest not to hum along. I wasn’t sure that it was all right to sing about handsome boys with wavy hair right after my husband’s funeral.

Still, the music made me feel a little more normal, even if only by a small measure.

We pulled into my driveway, and Marvel shifted into park, letting the engine idle. Dropping her hands to her lap, she turned toward me.

“Would you like me to come in?” she asked.

I sighed and tried to think of a way to tell her I’d rather she didn’t. Truth be told, I wanted to be alone. In the three days since Norm passed, I’d not been by myself unless I went to the powder room.

Even then it seemed someone waited just outside the door to make sure I hadn’t fallen in.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go home.” Marvel reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m tired.”

“Go,” I said, nodding. “Be with Stan and the boys. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Call if you need anything?” She released my hand.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

She waited until I got my front door opened and I was inside before she pulled away and in the direction of her house. I waved and she honked the horn twice like she always did.

Another inch of normal.

I shut the door, clicking the dead bolt into place, and rested my head against the wood. Even if I had a hundred years I wouldn’t be ready to see my living room for the first time since Norm’s passing.

“Well, you can’t stand like this forever,” I muttered, forcing myself off the door and to turn around.

Standing in the vestibule, I peeked into the living room. All was back as it should be. Every chair in place and each end table where I liked them to be.

Wrapping my arms around my body against the chill that still lingered from the graveside service, I stepped forward, the floorboard underfoot making a crackling sound that was somehow comforting to me.

A potted hyacinth sat on the mantel, its purple buds filling the room with a delicate fragrance. It wasn’t one from the funeral. All of those plants and arrangements had been sent home with various people from town.

No, whoever had placed the hyacinth in my living room had to have been the one to also clean and rearrange it. My money was on Albert.

Albert was nothing if not thoughtful.

I touched the flowers, letting my fingers dawdle over their smooth petals.

“Like a cluster of stars,” I whispered, remembering my sister saying the very same thing so many years before.

Closing my eyes, I let memory sweep me away from the house on Deerfield Avenue and to a dingy tenement in Detroit—the first we’d moved to after Mother died. The landlord’s wife had given me a transplanted hyacinth—that one a pretty white—from the makeshift flower garden she cultivated on the fire escape outside her window.

As I carried it, I breathed in the scent of the flowers, trying to think of how I could describe the way they smelled. The only word I could think of was “purple.” They smelled purple to me even though they were white.

When I’d come into the apartment, Clara had wiped her face, but I could still see the swollen flesh around her pretty blue eyes and the tears clinging to her lashes.

The three of us—Dad, Clara, and I—did our very best not to cry around one another. And we most certainly didn’t talk about Mother. It might have been pride that had prevented us, or not wanting to make anyone worry. Maybe it was a little of both. But we reserved our emotions for when we were by ourselves.

“Mrs. Bunker sent this up for us,” I’d said.

Clara put her hands out, and I let her take the potted flower from me. She turned it, looking at it from all different angles and sniffing at it with her eyes closed.

“What is it?” she’d asked.

“Hyacinth,” I answered. “Isn’t it nice?”

“Hyacinth,” she echoed me, meeting my eyes. “Isn’t that a pretty word?”

I’d agreed, feeling the way the word started at the back of my mouth, making its way to the tip of my teeth when my tongue touched them. Even in my squeaky twelve-year-old voice, it sounded important, special.

Breathing in the smell of the flowers, Clara closed her eyes and held the scent in her lungs as if it might be the very thing that could heal her sadness.

“They look like a cluster of stars,” she’d said. “Don’t you think so?”

I’d tilted my head and tried to see it.

“I wish Mama was here,” Clara said, holding the pot to her chest, eyes still shut. “Don’t you think she would have liked these flowers, Birdie?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I turned my back on her, not wanting her to see me crying. I cleared my throat and pushed my nails into the palms of my hands to make me straighten up. Clara didn’t need me to cry. She needed me to be strong.

“Mrs. Bunker said we have to water the flowers every other day,” I said. “And we should keep it near the window so it gets plenty of sunshine.”

Within weeks of that morning, the hyacinth had wilted, the flower dried out. It hadn’t been for a lack of care. We’d done everything we knew to do. I’d carried it to Mrs. Bunker’s apartment, hoping she could save it, holding back my tears so she wouldn’t know how desperate I was.

“Well, this is normal,” she’d said. “The flowers can’t last forever. You just wait until next spring. They’ll come back.”

I hadn’t believed her. I thought she was trying to make me feel better the way people did when something died.

I’d mourned that plant with the ferocity of a girl losing her mother all over again.

But I’d done my grieving alone.

It was the only way I knew how.