Uncle Peter paid for the funeral without question or solicitation, as he’d paid for Sam’s funeral four years before. Consequently, Nat’s send-off was a shit show of Aunt Mattie’s gross ostentation wrapped in June’s stark, Jesus-freak brimstone. The cracks started showing after Nat’s former kindergarten teacher arrived, brushing past Teddy’s rumpled dress shirt and dark hair and offering Ben her sincerest condolences. Blinking between them in confused silence at Ben’s gentle correction. By the time members of June’s congregation started chanting their own skewed prayers over the pastor’s memorial sermon, not ten minutes into the closed-casket service, Teddy was done. I followed him out the double doors of the funeral parlor, sat on the stoop beside him as he smoked and cried in intervals, my palm steady on the small of his back. My own tears locked within my hollow, red-rimmed eyes.
The morning passed in a blur of lamentation and surreal flashes of unity—the subtle press of Ben’s hand against Teddy’s shoulder as he guided him away from a circle of Grandma’s friends. The open-air furnace of the cemetery. Uncle Peter’s vacancy, his gaze roaming aimless and empty and strung. The curve of Aunt Mattie’s arm, a weird snake around June’s inconsolable shoulders as Nat’s small, shell-pink coffin disappeared into the ground.
It was just short of an utter mess—a horrible day held together with the steel-cable stitches of manners and upbringing and practiced company faces. Even so, the snags were minor. It wasn’t until later that everything came undone.
Ben and I rode home with his parents, him and Grandma in the middle row of Uncle Peter’s SUV, me crammed in between Grandpa and a floral arrangement in the fold-down back seats. Instead of following the procession of cars from the gravesite to the trailer, however, we continued up the drive to Ben’s house.
“Why are we here?” Ben leaned between the seats as the car drew to a stop. “We told Teddy we’d see him at his place.”
“We should take a moment, Benny.” Aunt Mattie dabbed a tissue beneath each eye, checked herself in the visor mirror before opening the passenger door. “Collect ourselves. Give poor June a chance to catch her breath before we intrude.”
“Christ, Mom, really? Whatever, I’ll walk. Amy and I will meet you down there.”
“Don’t be silly; she’ll ruin her shoes. We’ll drive down as a family once we freshen up.”
She ushered us into the cool, dark house, steered my grandparents and uncle into the formal sitting room. Ben and I attempted an escape, but Aunt Mattie swooped in before we made it to the stairs, hustled us back to join the others.
“Better to share our grief, not bottle it up—bottling never did anyone a bit of good, did it? You kids just let it all out now, and don’t be ashamed. There’s no shame in honest tears. Have a good cry if you need to, and don’t mind the furniture.”
“Mom.” Ben’s voice cut through her rambling, drew a ruddy slash of dismay across her mouth that vanished as soon as it appeared. “We’re ready to go when you are.”
“Of course, Benny. Oh, but we should eat something first—we shouldn’t impose ourselves on June’s hospitality during a difficult time, when we’re blessed with a full larder of our own. She has so little as it is. Let me put together something quick, and we’ll be on our way.”
She tapped off to the kitchen, words trailing behind her. Before we could properly settle on the stiff, silk-upholstered chairs, she was back bearing a loaded tray, pressing a plate into my bewildered hands: a jumble of cold ham slices and deviled eggs, a roll wrapped in a napkin. A skewerless cob of corn. A fried chicken drumstick, half-buried under a scoop of macaroni salad, celery-studded, mayonnaise-thick. Put together quick, my ass—it was fresh and homemade, obviously prepared and arranged by the housekeeper in our absence and garnished with goddamn parsley moments before we’d arrived. The chicken alone, still hot from the fryer, negated the lie that the meal was in any way impromptu. The sight of it—the pooling grease, alongside the iridescent sheen of the ham—made my throat close.
It was all such bullshit.
Never mind that none of Nat’s actual family members were anywhere near the living room—Aunt Mattie wasn’t about to let a mere technicality drop the curtain on her Display of Grief. Nat had grown up on my grandparents’ land, even if only in the trailer, which was no reason to judge someone, didn’t we know? We were like one big family, really, and “… it’s been so good for all of us, that bond. Natasha came from good people, such good, hardworking folks. Why, Sam stuck around to raise those kids, married or not, and it was so sad when he had the stroke, but he was there till the end, and that’s commendable. You never know how those situations will end up.”
On and on she went, until my nerves screamed raw beneath my skin, and Ben’s fingers were white around his glass. As if we should smile and nod along, calmly enable his mother’s ridiculous private reception. She pulled that brand of shit on the regular—had done so for decades, and not one person called her out on it. No one ever called her out on anything, apart from the single incident, long ago, when she’d chased me with one of my sandals, intent on spanking me for some childhood naughtiness I no longer recalled. It was the only time I’d ever seen my mother lay hands on anyone. It was the last time Aunt Mattie so much as frowned in my direction, no matter what I’d done.
It used to take so much for me to stay quiet. Now, after too many years of reprimands, punishments that began with time-outs and escalated into lectures and groundings and the confiscation of everything but my art supplies, I’d finally learned to shut up and shut down. Now, it was second nature to sit in silence and nod along, twist my anger into acquiescence that might coax from my relatives the too-fleeting concepts of normalcy and peace. Not that we dared speak a word to the lack of either. The whole family made me sick.
“… and Teddy’s a good boy either way, such a good boy, such a good friend to Benny and to little Amy. Such a good brother to Natasha, and wasn’t she sweet? Such a pretty little girl, and this is God’s will, of course, but so terrible. Her poor mother. Her poor, poor mother. I can’t imagine how she feels. I can’t. I—”
“So don’t.”
Ben was suddenly animated, suddenly on his feet. Aunt Mattie swiveled slowly toward him, jaw listing open like a broken door.
“What was that, Benny?”
“I said, ‘don’t.’ Don’t imagine it—go over there and see June, why don’t you, and ask her yourself how it felt to put her kid in the dirt.”
“Now, Benny, that’s enough.” Uncle Peter’s voice bubbled out in restrained tremors as he stepped between Ben and Aunt Mattie’s rapidly reddening face. “I know you’re upset, son, but—”
“No, go on. Go take June a plate, why don’t you? After all, they’re practically family, and this is such a tragedy! A tragedy, Mom! It’ll be amazing. ‘Are you okaaay, Junie? It’s such a sad loss—God’s will, of course, but I can’t imagine! Have you eaten? Have you eaten? Have you EATEN, JUNE?’ ”
His full plate shattered against the wall, china shards and ham shrapnel ricocheting past my head. I didn’t even flinch. My eyes slid closed as the room exploded, their rising voices overlapping like ocean waves.
“BENJAMIN. You sit down now, son, and apologize to your mother, or I’ll—”
“OR YOU’LL WHAT? YOU WON’T DO SHIT TO ME, DAD. YOU CAN’T FORM A THOUGHT IN YOUR HEAD WITHOUT RUNNING IT BY HER.”
“Don’t you dare speak to me that way. You—”
“Benny, what did I do? What did I dooooooo?”
“SHUT UP, MOM. JUST SHUT UP. I WILL LITERALLY KILL MYSELF IF YOU DON’T. FUCKING. STOP.”
That did it. Aunt Mattie’s wails broke off into nothing at his words; I opened my eyes in time to watch her face collapse into sudden, furious sorrow. Tears glittered at her lash line, just above her makeup.
“Don’t you ever say that,” she hissed. “I am your mother. Do you know what it does to me, to hear—no. You don’t know. You can’t fathom.”
Her guilt trip had the opposite effect. Ben’s eyes darkened, a cruel shadow of their usual open gleam. Far from the boy who’d been collared and yanked away from us only days before.
“Oh, so you can empathize with June. Got it. Because that’s who this is about, Mom—June Barrett, who we should be supporting right now, instead of listening to you talk about Nat like she’s yours. It’s about June. Not you.”
“It’s always about me when it comes to my son. What will I have left if something happens to you?”
“What will you have?” His flailing arms indicated the whole of the house, sweeping over marble and glass, tooled Italian leather and hand-carved teak. Indicating every bulb and bauble that comprised their lovely world. “All this shit, for starters. Dad’s fucking wallet. Dad himself, not that I expect you to give a flying—”
“Oh Dad Dad, he says. And money. Things. All worth nothing if you’re gone.” The tears escaped, cutting two perfect, glistening trails over her cheekbones. “When my time is up, what else will I have done with my life that amounts to anything at all?”
She was crumbling in front of us. Ben’s outburst had torn open her carefully constructed world, shattered its fragile, spun-glass ideals. I still sat frozen, eyes flicking back and forth between them. Grandma stood behind the wingback chair, her hands steady on Grandpa’s crooked shoulders. Uncle Peter was a six-and-a-half-foot void, choking on the truth of Aunt Mattie’s words. Ben, however, was a forest on fire.
“There it is again, Mom—your family name. Your life. Your feelings. Always you. You don’t give a shit about Nat, or Dad, or even me. You don’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t feed your purpose. It’s fucking sick.”
“You are me, Benjamin. Everything I’ve done since you were born has been for your benefit. Everything. You just have no idea. The things I’ve given up—for you—for—”
Her tears compounded; her fingers reached across the coffee table to touch his face, smooth away a lock of his hair. He flinched out of reach, breaking what remained of her composure.
Aunt Mattie was bad at emotions in general, worse at dealing with the fallout of her own. If she couldn’t ignore a situation—if it called for anything more than smoothing out a moment with a plate of food or a practiced smile—she could be counted on to do one of two things: shut down or come apart. Neither option was a pretty sight.
Every now and then, she did both at once.
The room was a silent nightmare as she fled, each footfall a thump on my cousin’s sagging shoulders. Grandpa, who’d barely blinked since we’d arrived, struggled to his feet and knelt in the mess, scraped bits of ham into a pile. Lost half of it in the process to his trembling hands. A sliver of plate slipped against his finger, the well of blood sudden and startling. He rose slowly, tottered to the kitchen on quiet feet. Tears stung my eyes at the sight of his abandoned napkin, small and crumpled, flecked red.
I set my plate on the coffee table and stood, left that room and that house on my own without shifting so much as a muscle in my tranquil face. Made my own way down the driveway, feet raw and blistered in shoes that were never meant for walking.