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A funny thing about preparation for a funeral was that you were completely depleted of energy, overwhelmed with feeling, unable to eat a lick of food and still, you had to perform for people. You had to take meetings with the funeral homeowners; you had to make decisions. You had to dive through your mother’s many gorgeous gowns, analyze them, and ultimately decide which of them suited your mother best to be buried in. You had to make painful phone calls to loved ones; you had to write the obituary; you had to make announcements on Facebook and receive countless, “I’m praying for you, Elise,” messages, which seemed to do very little to heal the gaping hole in your heart.
“The Funeral of Allison Darby will be held at 1 p.m. at the Calabasas Family Funeral Home on August 14,” Elise wrote on her personal Facebook page. “There will be a small get-together for close family and friends at my mother’s house afterward.”
Elise arrived at the funeral home about two hours before everyone else was meant to. She blinked wide eyes at herself in the long bathroom mirror and tapped a Kleenex across her cheek. She looked thin, almost too thin, as though the shock of it all had drawn her bones out from her skeleton. She willed them to go back in. She didn’t need strange comments from relatives and friends, demanding that she care for herself.
As if I could take care of myself when one of the only people I love in the world no longer exists on it.
Allison lay in her casket in the other room. From where Elise sat in the foyer, she could just make out the tops of her mother’s hands as they were splayed across her upper stomach. One of the funeral directors entered the foyer, flustered a bit. He seemed surprised to see her.
“Oh. Elise. Hello,” he said.
For the life of her, Elise couldn’t remember this guy’s name.
“Hey,” she said.
“You’re early. We were just toying with some of the music you sent to us to play. Are you really sure about Patsy Cline?”
“Absolutely,” Elise affirmed. “She would have wanted nothing else.”
The man looked worried, as though he’d personally been to a funeral that played only Patsy Cline, and the result had been disastrous. Still, Elise couldn’t imagine anything about the funeral going well, per se. If anything, Allison would have known how to shine a light on it. She always knew how to get the party going.
Suddenly, the foyer door swung open to reveal Penny and Brad. Both looked as though they marched straight from the pages of a fashion magazine. Penny’s blonde hair swung toward her waist, and she looked trim and toned. Even as her eyes reflected tears, she revealed a big-toothed smile the moment she spotted her mother. Brad beamed and adjusted his suit jacket.
“There she is,” Penny said. She tapped her heels gently toward her mother and then crumpled down beside her, wrapping her arms around her. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get down here earlier.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Elise affirmed. She kissed her daughter on the cheek and beamed. “It’s just been go-go-go the past few days, and I’m about ready to collapse. Brad’s been a pretty big help, though. I can’t thank him enough.”
Brad’s cheeks burned red. Since he was Los Angeles-based, he had arrived at his grandmother’s house just about forty minutes after his mother’s phone call. He had sat on the couch with Elise as she’d cried into another round of Kleenex, ordered pizza for dinner, and helped her make the first round of phone calls. He had looked like a little kid as he’d helped her—much more like the eight-year-old who had been too afraid to try out for soccer than a twenty-one-year-old that was on the verge of taking over the world. Still, at the end of the night, they’d somehow found ways to laugh with one another, already recounting old stories of Brad’s grandmother—memorializing her in a way.
“I told Brad I think we should grab something to eat before the ceremony starts,” Penny said. She arched her brow toward him, as though she was a bit annoyed that Brad hadn’t thought to feed their mother that morning.
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Elise said.
“Come on, Mom. If you’re going to handle the influx of all these different people from Grandma and your long life together, then I think you need some sustenance. You’ll be embarrassed if you fall on the floor,” Penny said, trying on the joke.
Elise told one of the funeral home directors that she planned to step out for a bit. He seemed relieved. Elise wondered if they were accustomed to people breaking down before the funeral itself and looked at her like a ticking time bomb. She didn’t blame them.
Outside, the August heat blared down upon them. Sweat billowed up on the back of her neck. Brad stretched both arms out on either side and said, “Man, wearing a suit in this weather is... comfortable.”
“I can only imagine,” Elise said with a laugh.
They stopped at a little café a few blocks from the funeral home. Penny demanded that her mother sit at a little three-person table as she ordered them cappuccinos and paninis and cookies, rare treats for women who tended toward California salads.
“Peanut butter chocolate chip?” Elise marveled, lifting the cookie up from the gorgeously painted china plate.
“Not until after you’ve eaten your panini, Momma,” Penny said playfully. “You know better.”
“Wow. I guess we have an authority on our hands,” Elise said, giving Brad a funny grin.
“She was always bossing me around when we were growing up,” Brad said, lifting his cheesy-tomato panini toward his lips. “I swear, the minute she left for Berkley, I could breathe again. Who are you tormenting up there, huh?”
Penny giggled. “You know I’ve got the theater department wrapped around my finger. They don’t know what to do without me up there this week.”
“Oh, right! Are you still auditioning for the play?” Elise asked. She could hardly believe she’d forgotten.
“Of course. And you’ll have to run lines with me over the next few days. You’re the only one I manage to get them down with,” Penny said.
“I guess I’ll have to go off with you as you become famous and take over the world,” Elise offered.
“Maybe. But in actuality, you’ll be famous in your own right with your scripts,” Penny affirmed.
“It’s nice to dream, isn’t it?” Elise said sadly, drawing her teeth over her bottom lip.
Penny cast a strange glance toward Brad, who was the only one of the twins who knew the story of Rex and the failed script. Still, that whole failed deal felt like a mere shadow compared to the devastation of everything else.
They managed to weave to other topics. Elise marveled at how conversationalist her children now were, as though they’d leaped into adulthood in previous months and built up new and exciting personas. Brad spoke a bit more about his girlfriend, who Elise was painfully curious about—and Penny mentioned that she’d considered seeing someone in the theater department.
“But you know how actors are,” she said with a flip of her long blonde tresses.
“Yes. I guess I do,” Elise said with a playful laugh.
“I watched Grandma’s movie last night in my apartment,” Penny said.
“Which one?”
“The one with the three boys. Middling reviews, but her performance was stellar,” Penny affirmed.
“I know. I used to be on set with her, running lines in her trailer,” Elise said.
“Wow. You know, I looked it up later. Her reviews were incredible. Everyone spoke about her as the next up-and-coming actress, in her age bracket, at least,” Penny continued. “But it seems like her offerings were pathetic after that. Like Hollywood built her up as this idea and then threw her away.”
“Welcome to Hollywood,” Brad said with an ironic laugh.
At this, two of the baristas who worked at the coffeeshop cast them dark looks. It seemed obvious that they had their own showbusiness visions. Everyone in Los Angeles seemed to.
Elise, Brad, and Penny returned to the funeral home and streamed in with the other guests. Several of her mother’s friends reached out and touched her arm and whispered their condolences. This was something else Elise had noticed about losing her mother; people tended to speak to her as though she was a delicate child, now—as though she was on the verge of a break.
As Elise had been Allison’s one and only, her greatest love and the woman who held Allison’s memory tightly—like a beacon—Elise had decided, perhaps stupidly, to speak for most of the ceremony. At the beginning, she rose and read one of her mother’s favorite poems; her voice rasped into the microphone strangely. When she blinked up, she found herself gazing out across two-hundred faces, some of them men and women who’d known her mother since she’d been a girl.
“Thank you for coming today,” Elise said, falling away from the poem. Her heart thudded. “My mother was many things. She was a writer and an actress, a dramatic spirit, a joker. She knew how to illuminate a room, make it brighter and more alive. Her laugh was contagious. This was something everyone told me growing up—almost to the point of annoyance. Everyone said that I would be just as funny as she was. You know what? I never became as funny, and I don’t even know if I appreciated every joke as much as I should have.
“My mother had a full and vibrant life. Nobody could say differently. She lived every day to the fullest, reached for her dreams, and kept working as an actress even after she had me. She taught me everything I know about the world, and the only thing I can really say is; now that she’s gone, the world seems a little darker. I know that I’ll always be a little less likely to laugh. The world has lost a singular talent, the woman I loved most in the world, and my very best friend. There’s so much I wish I could have asked her before she left us. But I suppose, as she liked to say—whatever will be will be. And now, we must go forward without her, trusting only ourselves and the people we became because we knew her so well.”
**
AFTER THE SERVICE, Elise and her children stood near the casket to greet the guests. Her mother’s cousins approached and kissed all their cheeks and announced they would be at Elise’s house by the end of the hour. “We’ve packed several dishes for you,” one of them said brightly, as though Elise and her children had some sort of outrageous appetite in the wake of her mother’s death. “So don’t you worry about anything.”
One of her mother’s old friends from high school gripped Elise’s hands and said, “You know, I always felt like your mother should have been so much more famous than she was.”
Elise’s stomach clenched at the thought. “I don’t know. I think she had precisely the kind of life she always wanted to have.”
Of course, it was easier to say this now.
“She was just spectacular!” the high school friend continued. She squeezed Elise’s hands still harder and turned her eyes toward Penny, who continued to nod ferociously. “When she played Annie from Annie Get Your Gun in high school, she brought down the house. I’ve never seen anyone so spectacular. Everyone said that she would be this mighty force in Hollywood.”
“She played some good parts...” Elise affirmed, dropping her mother’s old friend’s hands with distaste.
Still, this woman wasn’t the only one with similar sentiments.
“She was such a stunner,” one older man said. “I wanted to marry her, but she always told me that she wasn’t keen on the idea of marriage.”
Elise guffawed. “When was that?”
“I guess around the time she left Los Angeles for a bit,” he said.
Elise arched her brow. “She left LA?”
The man gave a shrug and glanced toward the casket. “I married my wife after she left. We had our own brood of kids. It wasn’t such a bad life. But everyone told me—life with Allison Darby would be alive and fiery every step of the way. I always wondered if I really missed something.”
Elise wanted to roll her eyes, to explain to him how little her mother had needed anyone—not a husband, and certainly not anyone like him.
Another older woman stepped forward. She was beautiful, her dark blonde curls wafting about her ear, and her blue eyes twinkling with humor.
“Elise. I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl,” the woman said.
Unlike the others, she didn’t reach out to touch Elise. She seemed to understand the benefit of personal space.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t remember.” Elise offered.
“My name is Margaret,” the older woman said. “And I worked with your mother when we both left Los Angeles in the late ‘70s.”
“Oh.” Again, Elise’s heart banged away in her chest. Her mother had never mentioned any departure from LA. Throughout her life, Allison Darby had told Elise she was an LA-girl, through and through.
“It was a terribly long time ago, now. Your mother and I were just actresses with hopes and dreams of our own. Of course, everyone spoke about Allison as though she was God’s gift to cinema. I suppose it’s why she got in with some of the more famous cast members. There was a hustle to her. I think she really thought she would be one of the next greats.”
“I’m sorry. Famous cast members?” Elise asked.
“Oh, it was a long time ago. None of those people matter at all anymore,” Margaret said.
“Where was it you went to?” Elise asked.
Margaret tilted her head. Her eyes twinkled. “Your mother never told you where she was in the late ‘70s?”
“I guess not,” Elise said. Her cheeks felt terribly flushed. She found it difficult to breathe.
“How curious,” Margaret said. “Your mother and I often spoke about how that was the summer that changed our lives forever. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have wanted you to know. Unless...” She gave a light shrug. “Who’s to say? I suppose all that is lost to time, now.”
“But where were you? Were you working on a play somewhere? A film?” Elise asked.
“I suppose so. We both worked as personal assistants, hoping that they would give us the leg-up we needed in the industry,” Margaret said. “And one year, we were taken all the way to this tiny, gorgeous island between the lower peninsula and the southern one, in Michigan of all places. Mackinac Island.
“Mackinac Island, Michigan.” Elise furrowed her brow. To her memory, her mother had never mentioned the state of Michigan or some tiny island in the middle of it. Elise had gone her entire life knowing of Michigan, of its lakes and its capital, and its car industry and Detroit. But nothing else.
Michigan, in her mind, had always been just another flyover state.
“You and Mom spent time together in Michigan?” Elise asked.
“It was one of the most magical times of our lives,” Margaret added with finality.
The line behind Margaret had begun to bounce and bubble with impatience. It seemed clear that they wanted to move up, greet Elise, then move on with their days.
“But it was a long time ago,” Margaret affirmed. “It probably has no bearing on your life at all. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m just a silly old woman with a lot of beautiful memories of your mother.”
With that, she glanced again toward the casket, then placed her fingers across her lips and blew Allison Darby a final kiss. She then rushed around and hustled toward the back of the funeral home, leaving Elise gasping for air.