JACKIE TOOK ME TO the mall to shop for a black dress yesterday. I didn’t try it on. I wish I had now, though, because it sticks to me around the hips and it’s too loose in the stomach. The fabric is thin, and it’s sleeveless. It doesn’t look like anything I’d ever allow to be anywhere remotely near my body, but I didn’t care enough to look any farther than the first rack of clothes.
I was sweating on the car ride here, but inside it’s freezing. A deeper shiver runs through my entire body when I realize why. A place that houses dead bodies would need to be cold. I linger behind Jackie and Aaron as we walk down the wide hall plastered in the most depressing wallpaper imaginable: sick, pale peach and pink flowers against a deep-navy-blue background. Everything about this place screams death. It shouts it from every inch, every corner. From the dark, heavy drapes that block out all the sunlight in the world. Death, it whispers as we pass empty rooms on either side. The hard floor, covered in a carpet that’s so thin there can’t possibly be any padding underneath. Death-death, it seems to squeak under my footsteps. The carpet feels more like what I would imagine the green felt on a pool table would be like if you walked on it. I guess there’s no real reason for a funeral home to have any luxuries or comforts. Like my dress, it doesn’t matter.
I hold my breath as we near the last room—our room. I know because each room has a frame affixed to the wall outside the door, and in it, behind the glass, a sheet of marbleized paper with an unfamiliar name printed in calligraphy.
Until we reach the last one: PAUL WINTERS.
Aaron stops short when we reach the doorway.
Jackie enters first. When Aaron follows, his steps take on a zigzag path, walking like he’s drunk, like he doesn’t know which way to go, like his feet are arguing with his brain.
I exhale slowly, then suck in another deep gulp of air as I cross the threshold for myself. My eyes are immediately pulled to the opposite end of the room. The casket is laid out like a centerpiece, surrounded by flowers, some kind of morbid banquet. Immediately to the left of the door stands a podium that holds the guest book; I turn around and grip on to it with both hands, my thumbs making imprints in the crisp paper. I can’t do this, I realize, I don’t want to. I wish I had stayed home with Callie.
I glance over my shoulder, nearly losing my balance completely. Jackie’s standing in front of the casket. Aaron stands in the very center of the empty room, craning his neck like he’s trying to see, at a safe distance, how bad this is. As I’m watching him, waiting for some sign to tell me how bad it is, he turns to look at me. Like he can read my thoughts, he holds his hand out. Carefully I release my grip on the podium one finger at a time. Force my feet to move toward him, left-right, death-death. I force my eyes not to look anywhere except at my brother. He reaches for my hand the way he used to when we were kids, crossing the street. That small gesture makes me feel a little safer, like maybe he’ll be my big brother again. Starting now.
We walk together, slowly, cautiously. I can’t tell if it’s his hands that are shaking or mine. I look down at my feet until I have no choice, until there is nothing left to do but raise my eyes.
We weren’t brought up with any kind of religion. So maybe that’s why I’ve never thought too much about the soul. Never knew how to define it, how to recognize it. But looking down at my dad’s face, I know exactly what a soul is, and I know for sure that it exists, because I can see that his is gone. He doesn’t look real. Like whatever made him him, whatever made him a person, a human being, is no longer there.
As I stare, I keep thinking he’s about to open his eyes. I keep thinking that he moves, just slightly, that I can see him breathing. I blink hard, trying to reset my vision. But it happens again. And again.
“Aaron?” I whisper. I want to ask what he looks like to him. Do you see him breathing? Do you notice his soul is gone? Are you scared?
“Yeah?” Aaron answers, not taking his eyes off our father either.
But I can’t utter any of those questions. And he doesn’t ask me again. So we just stand there. It seems too surreal even to cry.
One second it’s only us and the next there are tons of people filling in the empty space behind us, the air crowded with chatter, with signs of life that only accentuate all the nonlife, making all those markers of death scream louder, more dead somehow.
I hear Carmen’s voice close by, whispering, “Sweetie?” As Aaron turns to her, they pull each other into an embrace. Carmen faces me, her chin propped on Aaron’s shoulder. We’re the exact same height, so as we stand eye to eye, I can see it clearly now, living there inside of her the way it lives inside of me. Fear. That Aaron won’t be able to handle this, that she won’t know the right thing to do or the right thing to say. That he’ll go off the deep end again. I want to tap him on the shoulder and spin him around and look him in the eye and tell him: For once just be here for me, Aaron. Because I’m afraid I might be the one to go over the edge this time.
But I don’t say that. I don’t do anything. Because Carmen’s mother is suddenly there, pulling me into a hug so tight my lungs don’t have room to expand. I start to feel dizzy as I extract myself from the vise of her arms.
Most of the people are Dad’s police friends. I recognize the captain and Dad’s partner, and Tony is there, of course. There’s Carmen and her mom and Aaron’s friend Mark. Three of Callie’s friends come with their parents. Callie’s JV soccer coach comes with a man I assume is her husband. I take a good look around. That’s when I realize that no one is here for me. Not a single person.
I’m caught, all alone, in this whirlwind of comments and declarations that swirl around me like a cloud of fog moving through the room, accompanied by hugs and shoulder squeezes and pats on the back: “He was a great guy . . . generous . . . hardworking . . . loved his family . . . so sorry . . . so sorry . . . so sorry,” they say. I guess it’s natural that when people die, when they’re no longer here to defend themselves, the temptation to idealize them is stronger than the pull of reality. That acute desire to pretend they didn’t have a single flaw—I feel it too. No one mentions the way he died, as if there are unspoken rules dictating what you can and cannot say at a funeral.
It’s like in Peter Pan, how Peter’s shadow separates from him, and Wendy has to sew it back on. Here we pretend my father was divorced from his shadow. And it’s nice. I wish I could make the shadow of him stay separate, like it is right now, forever. I want to throw it away, or lock it up and make it disappear inside a dark dresser drawer where no light can reach it. I want to destroy it altogether. But that’s not how real life is. In real life there’s no way to tear that seam that kept it tethered.
I want to play along, because it would make me feel so much better to pretend that the person they’re talking about is the real, the one and only, Paul Winters. But there are two different people. There’s Paul, the hard worker, the generous great guy who loved his family, in his way. The one who was a cop and protected other people. But then there’s his shadow. The part that no one here ever knew, the one that I never understood—that was the part of him I wanted gone, his shadow that could take over in an instant.
I’m thinking about how I shouldn’t be thinking about this when I see someone new, this old woman standing in the doorway, surveying everything. Or rather, a woman who may not be all that old but looks like life has beaten her down, aged her prematurely. Tall and thin, her face sharp angles, she wears a navy-blue pantsuit that matches the wallpaper and looks like something that would’ve been on sale several decades ago. Her movements are rigid and jerky as she enters the room, as if each step is painful.
She has a long gray braid that swings back and forth with her footsteps as she makes her way through the room, drawing the attention of every last person here. She walks up beside me and places both hands on the edge of the casket. She looks down into my father’s face. She nods, as if he addressed her somehow.
“Had to see it for myself,” she mumbles. Then she takes a sniff of air through her nose. “You don’t know me; she never wanted you to know me,” she says, still looking down at my dad. “Your mother.” She slides her gaze to me then. I motion for Aaron to get over here because she’s making me nervous. “All because I didn’t approve of him. Well, can you blame me?” she says, coughing as she loses her breath by the end of the sentence.
I look at Aaron. Though we’ve never so much as seen a picture of her, we know who she is—I see a flash of something familiar, something that I can’t quite name but that reminds me of Mom, reminds me of myself, even. She’s our grandmother.
“I have to say,” she begins, the line of her mouth quirking up at the corner, “I predicted this. I predicted it would end this way. One of them would be here.”
Jackie quickly steps in and puts her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to leave, Caroline. That’s really enough.”
She shrugs Jackie’s hand off. “She was like a dog all those years, you know,” she says to Jackie, her expression twisting her already-harsh features, like she’s catching the odor of something rotten. “So desperate for his love and attention and approval that she’d let herself be kicked and kicked. Always went crawling back, licking his hand.” She looks up at me and Aaron. “Everyone wanted to make me out to be the bad guy.”
“You need to leave,” Jackie repeats more firmly. “You’re causing a scene, and Allison would not want you here—no one wants you here. Please go.”
“Well, she finally bit back, didn’t she?” she says, shaking her head.
She pauses, letting her words sink onto my skin, finding their way inside of me, like a drug into my bloodstream. We’re not supposed to be talking about any of this, not here, not now, not out in the open, not ever. But she won’t stop.
“She was going to be trapped forever, and she knew it. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” she asks, looking directly at me.
I open my mouth, but . . . no words. I shake my head, or at least I think I do.
“I think you should go,” Aaron says, taking a step toward her.
She holds her hands up in front of her, surrendering, then she reaches for my hand. As her fingers graze my palm, they feel cold and soft and bony. She turns, and leaves exactly the way she came.
I look down at the small, folded piece of paper she’s left in my hand. I open it slowly. In handwriting so impeccable it looks like a scrolling font, ten numbers are lined up in a perfect row, along with the words Caroline. Just in case. I close my fist around the paper, crunching it in my palm like it’s a secret.
I want to follow her, tell her not to leave. I want to know what she knows. But I can’t do any of those things. I can barely feel my hands and feet. The world seems to tilt on its axis just a little too much. I have to sit. Because my thoughts are racing in a million different directions and I’m sure my brain is short-circuiting one region at a time, neuron by neuron. I move to the hard couch along the wall, Aaron and Carmen and Jackie following me. And the paper in my hand: Caroline. Just in case.