The cemetery was enormous. Morning gloom swallowed the dark funeral-home car ahead of us. The signal light beat through the opaque mist and Mom turned onto a narrow paved road. A pool of leaves to our right nearly covered the sign, but I could see as we drove by three large black words: Evergreen Hills Cemetery. I hadn’t ever been to a cemetery. I was unprepared for how large Evergreen Hills was. I couldn’t help but imagine how many bodies were encased in the earth we drove over. Thousands, probably. I shivered in my navy blue cotton dress. Mom hadn’t slept at all the night before. She was showered and dressed, drinking out of a paper cup from some coffee shop chain nearby, by the time I woke up. I could always tell when she hadn’t slept by the sharpness of her morning conversation and too-wide eyes. She was watching me, watching to see what I’d do next.
I knew she wanted me to take back what I’d said, but I wouldn’t.
The cemetery grounds were drenched in green. Enormous maple trees soared over the drive, and the gray-white monuments hovered in the mist in jagged rows. There were lots of American flags, and clusters of flowers mobbed the well-tended graves. Some of the stones looked pretty derelict, though, seamed with cracks and nestled in organic debris—piles of leaves and moldering grass clippings. I wondered what my dad’s would look like—probably the latter. The black car pulled to a stop in front of us. The funeral director had sent an underling, Thad, along to deal with us. Thad leapt from the dark car and scurried over, opening the door eagerly for Mom.
She kept her head low and strode to where a dark figure waited by a bend in one of the sand-colored footpaths that wound through Evergreen Hills. I could see Thad rushing over to my side, so I quickly slid out, opening and closing my own door. He gave a comic oh-darn snap, but shook it off right away, a little shocked by the inappropriate gesture. I smiled at him, which surprised me. It seemed like maybe Ida would have liked his goofing around.
When I caught up, Mom was already in conversation with the reverend, a stocky Asian woman with a crop of short, black hair. She was dressed in black robes and held a plastic binder in her hands. Mom waved me over.
“Van, this is Reverend Cindy. Reverend, this is Ida’s granddaughter.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Reverend Cindy said as she shook my hand, squeezing it very tightly at the same time.
“Is there anything you’d like her to say, specifically? Do you want to say anything, honey?” Mom asked. I could feel her wanting to do and say the right Mom things.
I shook my head.
“Let’s begin, then.”
“Of course,” Reverend Cindy replied with a somber nod.
A small hole in the muddy earth gaped out at us, partly covered by a thin strip of Astroturf. Two workmen in coveralls stood to the side. It was obvious why they were there. Thad had disappeared into the dark car to retrieve Ida’s ashes. He emerged, holding the polished brass urn. He offered it to Mom, who shook her head, and then he offered it to me. I shook my head, too. There was something about the urn—so formal and final. When it had been just the white cardboard box, I’d felt Ida pulsing through, somehow. The golden urn looked just as dead as Ida—it wasn’t something I wanted to touch.
Thad moved so that he was positioned between the hole in the ground and Reverend Cindy. Mom and I stood, so close we were almost touching, on the reverend’s other side.
“Family, friends,” Cindy’s voice boomed out over Evergreen Hills, impressive in its volume and maple-syrup cadence. “We are here to celebrate the life of Ida Bouchard, beloved mother, friend, mother-in-law,” Cindy looked meaningfully at Mom, “and grandmother.” She clutched the white plastic binder in front of her. “Beloved Ida was a woman full of spirit and strength, yes, and love, too.” Reverend Cindy spoke like she was trying to reach each pair of deceased ears underground.
The flower arrangements we’d chosen the day before stood on either side of the open grave, splotches of yellow in the green, green grass.
“We beseech you, ruler of the universe, to ease beloved Ida’s transition into the next world. Her path on earth has been righteous, may her path beyond also be.” Here, Reverend Cindy opened the binder in her hands and looked out, at Mom and me, at Thad, even at the duo of workmen slouched in their coveralls like old sacks of bones.
“Sofia has kindly provided me with a piece to read this morning. This was a piece near and dear to Ida, and, as I understand, to her son, Michael. It is also, I’m happy to say, near and dear to me. If you’re familiar, please feel free to join.” Cindy held the binder lightly in one hand and smoothed a palm over the single page of paper nestled inside. And then she began to speak, her magnificent voice looping through the air like some mystical lightning bug. She half recited, half sang “Astral Weeks.”
It should have been so terrible, this too enthusiastic, possibly Wiccan priestess half singing and half chanting my dead father’s favorite Van Morrison song, but it wasn’t. Cindy’s voice rose and broke through the song like some ancient lament, reaching down into all of us who stood around the tiny gravesite. Mom and I wept, and so did Thad. He had to readjust his hold on the urn, and the two workmen, who didn’t cry, seemed to slump even more. I wiped my eyes and nose on my cardigan sleeve, and Thad handed the urn to the workmen. They lowered Ida down into the hole using the narrow strip of Astroturf. Thad fished a handful of yellow flowers from a green bucket behind his legs and handed them out. Everyone dropped a flower onto the urn, even the workmen, before they filled the hole with dirt.
We shook hands all around, Mom and I, our eyes still oozing tears from Cindy’s performance. I hugged her before she left, that’s how great it was.
“Do you need anything else, ladies? Can I escort you back?” Thad asked.
“No, thank you,” Mom answered. “There’s someone else we need to see here.”
We left the pair of men shoveling dirt over Ida, sealing her inside of Evergreen Hills for all eternity. Mom took my hand and led me onto the winding footpath.
“I think it’s over here,” she said, pointing to a row of headstones about twenty feet away. We stepped off of the path and into the grass. The muddy ground yielded and sucked at the soles of my shoes. Mom pulled a square of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it.
“Right there,” she said, striding over to the row abutting a low, verdant hedge. Mom walked ahead, looking down at the names. I stood back. I didn’t want to stumble onto Dad’s grave—I wanted to walk up to it knowing what it was. The gravestones in that row were nearly identical: white marble and low, the size of briefcases. Mom stopped in front of the eighth one over. She bent her head and crossed her arms. Her Burberry raincoat pulled tight across her back. I let Mom take a minute—I wasn’t going to ask her what she was thinking, because I knew she’d never tell me. But I’d lived alongside her long enough to understand—she didn’t love and miss him, but she felt guilty. She felt guilty about me, and now, she felt guilty about Ida. A cruel flicker unfurled in my chest as I realized a great way to hurt Mom’s feelings would be to bring up how she couldn’t even get a spot for Ida next to Michael.
And Mom, like always—like her brain could always go where my brain went—turned and spoke to me.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get them closer to each other,” she said, shaking her head. “There was just no room. Nobody was thinking ahead when Michael died, I guess.”
I felt a swell of anger—certainly she wasn’t thinking ahead. I tried to push it back. I wanted to be neutral meeting my dad for the first time. It seemed disrespectful, and too late, to bring any of these other twisted feelings I had to the foot of his grave. I took a deep breath and then another one and put my hand on my chest. I felt my body and my mind settling down.
I clasped my hands in front, with the decorum of a choir singer, and walked over to Mom. I looked down at the worn, white marble, at the words there: MICHAEL BOUCHARD MAY 29 1970—DEC 11 1998. A lacey spray of flowers umbrellaed the text. Michael Bouchard. Van Bouchard, I thought. I thought about the ordinary life I could have had with Ida, if she’d taken me in as a baby. I thought about all of the faces I’d swallowed down in Sedona in front of that booming stone god, and I wondered if one of them had been Michael Bouchard. I wondered if all of them had been Michael Bouchard, different faces for all of the different things he would have said to me, different faces for all of the ways he would have looked at me.
If I hadn’t known it before, I surely knew it now—we were all imperfect weirdos: Mom, Ida, Michael Bouchard. All of us, even—especially—me. But I was still here, and I could make something from all of it. The band was a beginning, an opening into a world where I could understand and explain all of these entrances, exists, and absences.
I looked down at Michael Bouchard, and then across at Mom. This is what you have to work with, I told myself. It was a lot. It was so much—a continuum from raw darkness to soaring crystal arrows. Even a month ago, the thought would have terrified me. It didn’t, though, not anymore. I had my own place to go, and my own things to do. I could figure it out.