Something odd happened when I pictured my dad. Specifically, the face I remembered from the only photo one of my tías kept without my mother knowing. The only time I’d seen my parents together. He was a young, slightly goofy twenty-something white guy, his hair bleached bone white, tongue out, flashing devil horns. She had her eyes closed, head thrown back in laughter, resting against his shoulder.
If he’d stuck around, it might’ve been my last chance to see him. Apparently he’d crossed over, because trying to spirit to him only led me to his remains on Earth, leaving me standing at his grave.
As the sun rose, the headstones cast long blue shadows in the dewy grass. There were already a few other people here, but judging from their lack of eye contact, they were only visiting, not residents.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, pretending to prop myself up against his headstone, the way I used to lean on it in life.
He didn’t answer, as usual. I’d never really met the man, not in my waking years. But I’d listened to his music.
“I joined the club,” I said.
He’d died at twenty-seven. I once wrote a song about it, leaving it open to interpretation whether I feared following in his footsteps, or planned on it. Assuming anyone cared that I’d gone, it might’ve gotten some clicks, even a little radio airtime. But not enough renewed fame to be worth the cost of admission.
“Your old lady would kill me, if it weren’t too late for that.”
I’d often wondered how my life would’ve gone if he hadn’t up and died on her. She had to have been less of a zealot at some point. I couldn’t imagine her making a baby with a drummer otherwise. Perhaps she would’ve loved me, instead of resenting the reminder of her wilder days, the mistake of choosing a man not long for this world. After his death, she’d repented her sin and returned to her family, who only welcomed her back on the condition that she brought me up in the church.
It should’ve been so easy to vilify him. He wasn’t around to defend himself. Yet, somehow, I could never muster much anger toward the man. I had enough of that with the only parent I had left, too tired to drag him into it as well.
On second thought, if I would be meeting him soon, that might inspire me to give him a piece of my mind. Or return the broken one he’d passed down to me.
It wasn’t a coincidence that we’d both died young.
I got up, reaching to brush my legs off thanks to muscle memory, though no grass clung to me. “See you soon?”
* * *
My wake would last several hours, guests trickling in and out. Ren didn’t need to be there for the whole thing. While he went to go borrow a suit from his brother, I spirited ahead for a peek at the turnout.
From the outside, the funeral home looked nice enough, like a bed and breakfast. Inside, though, it couldn’t shake the chill of a place of business, no matter how hard they tried with cozy grandma furniture, all warm mahogany and beige velvet.
I wandered down the hallways until I recoiled at the sight of my face, blown up on an easel, wreathed in flowers. They’d had to go all the way back to college to find a decent photo of me, right before I started dyeing my hair and wearing piercings. I’d long stopped, but there hadn’t been any occasions for me to take pictures in the last two years or so. Not that I’d wanted to capture that time of my life, anyway. None of it had been worth remembering.
There ought to have been music for my arrival. I nearly hummed it to myself as I walked through the doors. Here comes the dead. Though I couldn’t exactly make an entrance when nobody could see me.
Hardly anyone even showed. Mostly faces I didn’t recognize. Those I did made me cringe with awkwardness, as if I’d have to greet them, try to remember their names. Extended family I’d only met once or twice; primly dressed older ladies who probably went to church with my mother; preppy, cornfed college kids who were no doubt friends of my sister. All unaffected aside from the emotional labor of looking respectfully sorry.
My old coworkers didn’t look too devastated, either. I hadn’t expected to see any of them when I’d only worked a few months at each position in the last two years, too restless to last long either boxed in a cubicle or chained behind a counter. It made sense to see some older, well-meaning office moms and dads here to shepherd, but I had no idea why some of the younger people I’d befriended and promptly abandoned bothered coming. Especially not the guy I’d banged and then tried my best to ignore despite working only two desks away. Or the girl I’d stopped flirting with after finding out she had a partner, trying to do better for a change but still offending her all the same.
Nobody from my past life showed, either. I might as well have been a stranger at my own wake. At least I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.
Just like in life, I headed for the snack table, wondering if there was booze. No such luck. Nothing but catered pastries and coffee, and comfort food brought in plastic and aluminum. I hoped someone had spiked the punch.
“You call this a wake?” I asked. “Where’s the wailing and gnashing of teeth?”
The sunflowers were a nice touch. They peeked their ugly heads from every bouquet, including the one on my casket, bright and loud and totally inappropriate. I fucking loved them. Someone had remembered that.
That seemed to be the only concession made to my tastes. Everything else, from the Bible verses and images of Mary on the programs to the creepy altar music on an unseen stereo, even down to being buried versus cremated, didn’t exactly put me to rest.
That’s when I realized I’d gotten it all wrong. This party didn’t belong to me.
“Thanks for coming,” said Cris.
She lingered near the entrance, shaking hands, occasionally accepting hugs. Her mask had evolved, no longer still as she smiled with the right amount of effort, sad but brave. Ever the consummate hostess. She might not have been the life of the party, but she’d always been the perfect party planner, ready to quickly and quietly smooth over any unexpected interruptions.
“She was real nice,” said an office dad whose name I couldn’t remember, maybe Ted or Todd. I couldn’t exactly blame him for not knowing any better.
He appeared to have started a craze, because that’s what all the rest of my coworkers, as well as strangers who’d never met me, suddenly began to declare: I’d been nice.
My relatives knew better, so they stuck with an equally undeserved claim: “She was so beautiful.”
They had the excuse of comparing my looks to my mother’s, at least, though nobody would’ve agreed with them in life. But it made the loss more tragic to think so. Dead girls are always pretty.
“She’s in a better place now.”
I laughed out loud at that, the first time. After a couple of variations, even my sister’s face started to twitch.
At last, she had to excuse herself. I followed, though I didn’t particularly want to see under the mask.
* * *
Cris’s destination looked like an office break room, with a kitchenette and tables. It didn’t feel like a staff room, though. There were tissue boxes everywhere.
Gloria sat at one of the small tables, half hidden by a pocket mirror held in front of her face. Her other hand shook too hard for her to apply her eyeliner. There were tissues piled up beside her, smudged black. Were they from failed attempts, or crying? Had she begun getting arthritic, or had I shaken her up that much?
Then again, if she really did believe her daughter was going to hell—and so did all her church friends—that might’ve been enough to rattle her.
Cris watched silently, maybe considering leaving and pretending she hadn’t seen anything. At last, she sat down across from her, waiting for acknowledgment, perhaps dismissal. Finally, she said, “I could get that for you.”
Gloria responded by putting down her mirror. She handed over the eyeliner without a word and wiped off her last attempt before leaning closer. After only one or two deft strokes to each eye, she blinked, leaned back, and picked up her mirror again to examine the results.
“You do fine work,” Gloria said. She didn’t quite smile, but her voice loosened like it never did with anyone else. Of course, she had to occupy herself rather than look at her as she spoke, curling her eyelashes, risking some mascara. “You did so well making all the arrangements, with few mistakes. It’s good I can trust you.”
Cris skipped straight past the praise. “What mistakes?”
“Small, more or less forgivable mistakes—aside from the change of venue.” Gloria raised her eyebrows, letting her lips pucker in distaste. “And those ugly sunflowers.”
After packing up the makeup and tossing out the tissues, they looked at each other, like they were checking a mirror for any last flaws to fix.
Gloria reached out to brush her hair, as subtle as if merely straightening it. I recognized the gesture. She’d never been that gentle, fixing my own locks. No wonder I always kept mine short. She wouldn’t give me permission, so I forced her hand by doing my own hack job with craft scissors, necessitating an emergency salon correction.
And yet, in spite of trying to cut that part of me away, I still took after my mother. Instead of hugging, I always reached to stroke hair.
“You’ve become a fine woman,” she said. “So brave and dutiful.”
Cris didn’t look proud, or even grateful. Not only because of where they were, what they were doing. She’d always taken our mother’s praise like that. I used to think of it as simple humility. Now, for the first time, I wondered if she heard those words as I had always heard them: Everything she is, I am not.
Was not.