The morning of Papa Kwirk’s funeral, I woke to my older sister shoving a stick up my nose.
There are worse ways to wake up. Say, if you were knocked unconscious by a group of cannibal hillbillies and came around to find yourself smothered in barbeque sauce and strapped to a spit above a stack of smoldering logs. But on a day that already had one huge knock against it, my sister challenging me to a duel at dawn didn’t help my mood.
“En garde,” she said.
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to defend your honor.”
I pushed the stick out of my face and squinted at the sunshine seeping through my window. “No, really. What time is it?”
“Really. It’s time for me to practice. Dad’s taking another walk, and Aunt Gertie’s making breakfast. And you know how Mom feels about physical violence.”
I knew. My mother was generally not in favor of people thwacking each other with sticks. Not without extra padding, at least, which we actually had back at home but hadn’t bothered to bring with us. Probably because we’d come to Greenburg for a funeral, not a sword fight. “What about Lyra? Go bother her for a change.”
“She’s still asleep.”
“I’m still asleep,” I grumbled, closing my eyes and turning over, only to be poked in the side.
“Not anymore. Besides, Ly isn’t tall enough, and I’m supposed to practice every day. You know that.”
“So go beat up a tree or something.”
“Trees don’t fight back.”
In that moment, I imagined a giant oak falling on my sister, pinning her to the ground. It made me smile.
“Rion. C’mon. I need something to take my mind off . . . you know. And I finished my book last night. Will you please just do this one thing?”
I let out a long, low groan, muffled only slightly by the pillow I was half-heartedly trying to suffocate myself with. I knew she wouldn’t leave until I either said yes or called for Mom to come drag her away, and I didn’t want to bother my poor mother. She was probably busy straightening the house behind Aunt Gertie’s back. “You’re so annoying,” I said.
Cass tucked her stick under her arm. “That’s a yes. See you downstairs in five. And put some pants on. I can’t possibly duel you in your Batman underwear.”
I peeked down to see that I’d kicked the sheets half off the bed and was wearing only my black boxer shorts with the little yellow bat symbols all over them. Perfect. Sure, she had seen me in less, but not since I was a toddler. Once you get past the age of two, there are rules. Or at least there should be.
But in this family sometimes the rules just didn’t apply.
The main event wasn’t until the afternoon, and short of a few last-minute phone calls “to make sure everything was in place,” Aunt Gertie insisted that there was nothing any of us could do to help.
Which meant I didn’t need to put on my fancy pants yet, so I made do with yesterday’s jeans. I ambled down the stairs to the kitchen, still wondering why I’d let my sister talk me into this. She needed a distraction. That made sense. So she chose beating me up. I guess in her mind, that probably made sense too. Maybe she should have brought another book. Where was Prince Teldar when you needed him?
Aunt Gertie was the only one I passed on my way to the back door, squinting at the directions on a package of pancake mix as if they were written in hieroglyphics. “Hrmm,” she said, doing some kind of math with her fingers.
“Good morning, Aunt Gertie,” I said without thinking, instantly wishing I’d gone with something less chipper. The morning of her brother’s funeral would be anything but good, and my cheery tone, while fake, probably didn’t help.
Surprisingly, Aunt Gertie stopped her squinting and offered me a warm smile. “Morning, Rion. Did you sleep all right?”
I nodded. “At least until something annoying woke me up.”
She knew what I meant. “Yes. I think your sister’s waiting for you in the backyard. But don’t worry, breakfast should be ready shortly. I’ll come rescue you before you lose all of your limbs.” She went back to the box, her brow furrowed. “What’s half of three quarters plus two and a half?” she asked.
“Two point eight seven five,” I said. That one was easy, even for early Sunday morning. But Aunt Gertie apparently didn’t like my answer.
“I’ll just make the whole box,” she said.
I closed the screen door gently behind me so as not to wake anyone else up, which I knew was a rude thing to do. Cass was there in the backyard, twirling her stick around like that swordsman from Raiders of the Lost Ark. If only I had a pistol. Instead I had to find my own stick.
“Over there,” Cass said, pointing to a three-foot branch that she’d already picked out for me, leaning against Aunt Gertie’s porch swing. It was a little crooked, but at least it was thick enough that it wouldn’t break on my sister’s first hit. Cass chose her weapons with care.
At home she had a real sword. A few of them, in fact, hanging over her bed. Last summer, after weeks of badgering, Mom gave in and let her go to fencing camp so that she could improve her stage fighting. She came home with something called an épée, one of those helmets that made her look like an extraterrestrial beekeeper, and way too much enthusiasm for the art of stabbing people. Since then she’d been taking classes every Tuesday after school with a guy named Eduardo, whom, I suspected, she was also in love with, given how she talked about him: “So graceful. Just gorgeous to watch. Ahhh . . . Eduardo.”
Blech.
Some people might think it’s cool to have a sister who’s a fencer, but they would be wrong. It just made me mad. Of course Cass gets a sword, but I have to keep my knife that was a gift to me from my grandfather in the attic. Plus she even gets to wear her sword out in public. Not all the time, of course, but for one weekend a year when we go to Ren Faire.
That’s short for Renaissance Faire. Which is, itself, short for Ye Longe Boring Day, most of it spent sitting on hay bales watching drama queens and kings parade around pretending like it’s the 1400s and nobody has cholera. Imagine a bunch of people in knee-high boots and frilly shirts slogging through the mud, drinking beer out of ivory horns, and saying “Forsooth” a lot. Sprinkle in the smell of horse manure for full effect. There’s a Ren Faire that happens in July less than an hour away from our house, and every year my parents drag me along for the entire weekend so I can watch my sister pretend to be some kind of fairy pirate handmaiden or something.
Don’t get me wrong. Parts of it are cool. The jousting and the archery contest and the guy who eats fire. But after a while you start to feel like you’re an intruder, and the people who are dressed up in flower crowns and billowy pants are having a lot more fun than you are because they know something you don’t.
Come to think of it, I get that feeling a lot.
I gathered my stick and joined Cass in the backyard. The morning dew was cool and slick on my feet.
“Remember what I taught you,” she said as I approached. “Salute. En garde.”
Even dressed in her zebra-stripe flannel pajamas, Cass looked like a pro, striking the pose I’d seen a zillion times: branch out, leg extended, one arm back. I held my stick droopingly out in front of me with both hands like an apathetic Jedi. It wasn’t how I was supposed to stand, but I didn’t ask to be dragged out of bed this morning.
“Are you going to take this seriously or not?”
“When last we met, I was but a learner. Now I am the master,” I replied.
“I take that as a no,” Cass said. Then she shouted “Allez!” which is French, I assume, for “Prepare to have me beat you senseless,” and she lunged, swiftly knocking my stick out of the way and jabbing me in the belly. I collapsed, clutching my stomach with both hands, moaning and rolling from side to side.
“I think you punctured my spleen,” I groaned.
“I barely touched you. Now will you please get up and try this time, you big baby?”
I stood up and brushed myself off, only to be skewered again. And again. And again.
That’s how it went for the next half hour or so. En garde, allez, and then Cass somehow disarmed me or knocked me off-balance before stabbing me in the heart, the liver, or the lungs. I did try, eventually—mostly out of an instinct for self-preservation. The harder she poked me, the harder I tried, though it wasn’t easy with her shouting at me all the time.
“Feint! Feint! Parry! Riposte! Riposte! After you parry, why don’t you ever riposte?”
“Because I never posted in the first place!” I said, which earned me an eye roll and another jab. “This is stupid. Stop poking me!”
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to try something new every once in a while. Just because I like it doesn’t mean you automatically won’t.”
No. But it made it highly probable. “What’s there to like about you stabbing me?”
“You know what I mean.”
I guess, maybe, I knew what she meant, but I was still tired of being beat. I tossed my stick into the line of trees behind Aunt Gertie’s house with a grunt and turned back toward the door. Cass called out behind me.
“You can’t quit now. We’re just getting started.”
I ignored her.
“You know Papa Kwirk always tried new things. And he never did anything halfway.”
And see where that got him, I almost said, but I didn’t. In fact, I instantly felt bad for even thinking it.
It seemed like something my father would have said.
By the time I’d washed my hands—Mom refused to let you join the table without sniffing them to detect a lingering presence of soap particles—everyone else was seated. Dad was back from his walk and was already wearing his suit and reeking of aftershave. He owned at least twenty colorful bow ties, polka dots and fancy stripes and even a black one with little gold stars that Mom said was her favorite, but the tie he wore today was of the straight and skinny variety, simple and boring, patterned black and gray. I had never seen it before and wondered if he kept it in the back of his closet just for occasions like this—though our family hadn’t had many occasions like this. He looked strange with his hair slicked down and his shirt cuffs buttoned. Not at all like the dad I was used to.
That set me to wondering if Papa Kwirk would look just as weird to me when I saw him today. Except for that one picture on Aunt Gertie’s wall, I’d always only ever seen my grandfather in a short-sleeve buttondown, the top two buttons loose to show off his patch of curly silver chest hair. I wondered if they would trim his bird’s-nest beard. Wondered if he would look like him or like a wax replica, like something you would find in a museum. Maybe I could avoid going up to the casket to say goodbye, just so I wouldn’t have to look, but then it would seem like I didn’t care, which wasn’t true at all. I just wanted to remember Papa Kwirk the way I’d always seen him. Leaning against Jack Nicholson, or snoring in our La-Z-Boy, or sitting on our stoop with a piece of licorice dangling out of his mouth.
“Eat up,” Aunt Gertie said, setting a plate of pancakes on the table. She had, indeed, made the whole box, the stack threatening to topple over. We worked through them, though—it kept our mouths busy chewing. Unlike yesterday, when it seemed preferable to talk about anything other than Papa Kwirk, today it seemed wrong not to talk about him, so nobody said much of anything. Not until Lyra, who had only taken one bite of her breakfast, pushed her plate away.
“You okay, honey?” Mom asked.
My little sister shook her head, lower lip bulging. “I still haven’t found Beelzebub.”
“That’s what’s bothering you?” Aunt Gertie said, sounding relieved. “No worries, dear. He’s got to be around here somewhere. His food bowl’s half empty, and there’s a big wet spot in the litter box, so I know he’s not dead.”
Dad choked on his pancake.
“Sorry, Fletcher,” Aunt Gertie said.
“It’s all right,” Dad said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. He looked at Lyra. “I’ll try to help you find him after the funeral, okay, sweetie?”
“Funneral,” Aunt Gertie said, pronouncing it with a short U sound, like in “gun.”
There was a pause, the room so quiet I could hear the grandfather clock in the living room ticking.
“Sorry, what?” Dad asked, his fork hovering over his plate.
Aunt Gertie just kept eating, though, speaking with food in her mouth. “Jimmy always said that the problem with funerals was that they were no fun. So instead we’re calling it a funneral.”
I waited for the wink, but Aunt Gertie was all business. She didn’t flinch.
“You can’t be serious,” Dad said.
“Serious as a funeral,” Gertie replied. “Which is why today is going to be something different.”
Mom suddenly looked uncomfortable, squirming in her chair like she’d gotten an itch in the middle of her back. “So what exactly is the difference between a funeral and a . . . um . . .” She cleared her throat as if the word had gotten lodged there. “Fun-neral.”
“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” Aunt Gertie said, her eyes flashing. She shoveled a forkful of pancake into her mouth with a smile of relish.
Wait and see? Now I was nervous. Were people going to jump out from behind the coffin? Would there be streamers? Those little cone-shaped horns you blow at New Year’s? My experience with funerals was limited, but I sort of knew what to expect from them. Black clothing. Speeches and prayers and lots of sniffling. Everyone with their hands in their laps. Hugs and flowers and organ music. What did Aunt Gertie have planned?
“Will there be more clowns?” Lyra asked, saying out loud what I only dared to think to myself.
“It’s a funeral, not a birthday party for a five-year-old,” Dad told her.
“Funneral,” Aunt Gertie repeated in a carefully measured tone, fixing my father with her eyes. “Jimmy gave instructions for how he would like to be remembered. It was all outlined in his will. And as executor of that will, I intend to honor his final wishes.” The tone of her voice was oddly authoritative all of a sudden. Like she was giving us a warning. Or an ultimatum. “It should be well attended, though,” she continued, her voice softening. “Most of Jimmy’s other family will be there.”
“His other family?” I asked. I could have sworn that my grandfather’s entire family was sitting at this table. I looked over at Dad, but he seemed to still be hung up on the difference between funeral and funneral. He rubbed at his forehead with one hand.
“Your grandfather lived in this town most of his life,” Gertie explained. “Almost sixty years. You don’t drop anchor somewhere for that long and not get barnacles on your boat. There are quite a few people here who knew and loved him. I think of them as family.”
“Not my family,” Dad said.
“Well, it’s not your funneral,” Gertie replied shortly. “When you die, you can make the guest list.”
I could sense Lyra wanting to point out the logistical problem with this statement, but she popped a strawberry into her mouth instead, chewing slowly.
“Your grandfather was a fixture in this community,” Aunt Gertie continued, looking at me now, I think maybe to avoid looking at Dad. “Did you know he used to volunteer sometimes at the high school, talking to troubled teens?” I shook my head. Just as expected, I was learning new things about Papa Kwirk already. “Well, maybe if your dad had brought you around more, you would have,” Gertie said.
The sound of Dad’s fork clattering to his plate startled me.
“Around? You want to talk about being around? How about you tell the kids how often Frank was around when I was their age? Ask them if they knew where he was when I left for school some days? Or when it was time to make dinner? I’m sure they’d love to hear how around he was.”
Aunt Gertie frowned and set her fork gently on the table. Mom looked up to the ceiling. Cass shifted in her seat. Mealtimes at Aunt Gertie’s were starting to follow a familiar pattern.
Lyra swallowed her strawberry. “Did you guys know that the aurora borealis can be seen from outer space?”
Everyone looked at her, except for my father and my great-aunt. Normally this would be the point when Dad would jump in and say something about charged particles and magnetic fields and start to explain away the mystery of the whole thing, taking some of the beauty with it.
Instead he said, “I think I’m full,” and stood up. “Thank you for breakfast. I’m going to go finish getting ready for the . . .” He paused, and I could sense that whatever came next could trigger an explosion at the kitchen table. “For today,” he finished. I watched my pancake soak up the last of my syrup as he tromped upstairs.
“Do you really have to make this more difficult than it already is?” Mom snipped at Aunt Gertie, before standing and following him.
I was starting to wonder if either of them would ever finish a meal the whole time we were in Greenburg.
“What was that all about?” Lyra wondered out loud.
“I’m afraid your dad and I don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to your grandfather,” Aunt Gertie said with a sigh. “But we will by the time this is all over. At least that’s my intention.”
I was pretty sure by “this” she meant the funeral, or funneral, or whatever it was called. I had no idea what we were in for. None of us did.
Only Aunt Gertie knew for sure.