TWENTY-EIGHT
THE FUNERAL WAS NOT THE HARD PART.
There was no body to stare at. Leo’s body was not recovered.
Everyone was dressed in black and you could pour your heartbreak into the empty coffin and the tissues and the hole in the ground, all of which were there, Griff was told, for closure. Food and flowers. Cards and tears, all critical. Given the strong turnout, and abundant food, and weather that was gray but not pouring, there were worse ways to spend an afternoon in Clade City—but where was Leo?
Griff wondered where Leo was for these small white cakes with the cream cheese frosting which Ms. Marizza hadn’t made since two Thanksgivings ago. Where was Leo to laugh with when their aunt Christina sneezed on the potato salad point-blank without apology because she was allergic to peppers. Leo, to help count how many drinks the CigBiz had before she moved from the couch to the floor and seemed unable or unwilling to get up for nearly an hour. Leo, to place bets on how many clove cigarettes Uncle Ron would sneak in the garage.
It was Leo’s funeral, and he wasn’t even here.
Griff was wearing his bracelet, which no one noticed. He wanted to find Leo at the funeral and show him: See, Leo. I remembered. It was the first thing I did when I got home.
Eventually it got dark. People collected their families and each other. They went with all the same people they came in with. They left the loss behind.
The loss would not be concealed in an empty coffin or shut into a pit in the ground or wrapped in a tissue and thrown away. The loss would be borne. Carried alone. And when there was no longer an accommodating space for loss, it still had to fit somewhere.
Placed in the spaces between notes. In the backseat of Dad’s truck. Loss would be the tight and squeezing thing in the toe of your shoes when you walked to school, in your pockets with the jangling keys. The breaths between words.
Mostly in your throat. So you learned to breathe around it.
At school, the day after the funeral, Griff was afraid he’d punch every sad and sorry face, but those faces were helpful. It was better when the whole world carried a piece of it. When you are sad, the therapist said, listen to sad music. Music should be mood-compatible. At first, the world was mood-compatible. Teachers and parents and relatives and everyone in Clade City played along, except Leo.
How did Leo fit in all this?
Griff wanted to ask his mom: When will Leo be home?
He needed to ask somebody. When he got home from school, he panicked in the room with his brother’s empty bed, could not breathe. The question, swelling to block his windpipe. If he didn’t get the question out, he would choke on it. “When will Leo be home?”
He made himself say it.
In first grade, Leo always played with the neighbors across the street. They could only have one friend over at a time and had always requested Leo by name. When his brother left, Griff would sit in the window and watch. He couldn’t stop asking his mom:
His mother kept the blinds down and curtains drawn. The next day, sometime in the early evening, she came out of her office with bolts of fabric draped across her forearm.
“Magnets?” she asked the room. “Tacks?”
His father stood and went into their bedroom. A few minutes later, something crashed. His father came out with a dustpan full of glass. Light danced on the ceiling, flickered on the walls. His mother followed him and pulled an old burlap coffee sack over the mirror near the front door. Stuck it with pins.
“We’re supposed to cover the mirrors,” his mother said.
When they could not be covered, mirrors were removed. The interior of the medicine cabinet gaped with metal shelves and Leo’s toothbrush. Lotion. Floss. A big plastic jar of vitamin C gummies. In their bedroom, the closet mirror was blocked by a gray tapestry, held with magnets. Leo’s clothing hung inside.
Five pairs of shoes, unlaced.
Shoes, waiting. Shirts, waiting. Pants. Plates. Chair and dinner. Hanging keys waiting. Dental floss waiting. Everyone and everything waiting for Leo to come home.