by Sarah Ready
“Miss,” Karl says. He tips his hat.
I walk into the chapel.
It’s the smell that hits first. The pungent odor of embalming fluid and lilies. My stomach churns. Why do funerals have to smell sweet? That sickly, unnatural sweet?
“Do you know those ladies?” my mother asks. She’s gesturing to Gerry, Sylvie and Cleo. Sylvie is discreetly waving to me from the front row of chairs by…I block out the word, then force myself to think it, by Matilda’s coffin.
“Darling, would you like to sit with them?” she asks.
No. Yes. I don’t know. The last time I saw them wasn’t my best moment.
The hushed whispers around the room are starting to aggravate me. Someone comes into the chapel behind us. I turn. It’s Jack.
He pauses when he sees me.
He clears his throat. “I came to pay my respects,” he says.
I nod. I can’t do this with him. I turn and drag my mother to the front row.
She walks next to me gracefully, nodding politely at a cluster of people as we pass. I’ve never been more grateful for my socially conscious mother in my entire life.
I slide into the seat next to Sylvie. Gerry is next to her, then Cleo at the end. My mother sinks down next to me.
There’s a board with pictures of Matilda. Images of her as a child. Of her at her wedding. Of her in one of her awful cat T-shirts. There are flowers behind the baby blue coffin. Then, finally, I bring my eyes to where I’d been avoiding looking.
Her body is done up, full of makeup and fake color. It hits me hard. It’s not her. There’s no Matilda-ness left. No smile. No gentleness. No grace. It’s an empty shell.
Matilda is gone.
I look at the photos again. Of her on her wedding day with Steve.
I look back around the small chapel.
There’s Jack.
A couple near the back.
The funeral director.
A family with three teenage children.
I turn to Sylvie. She gives me a reassuring smile and pats my hand.
Then something strikes me as odd. Doesn’t the family usually sit in the front row at funerals?
I crane my neck around the girls. The front row on the other side of the casket is empty.
“Where’s Steve?” I whisper. My voice is dry and hoarse.
“What, dear?” asks Sylvie.
“Where’s Matilda’s husband. Steve?”
Is he too overcome? I imagine him sobbing in the other room. This has to be hard for him. Losing the love of his life.
Sylvie watches me. She shakes her head.
“Where?” I ask. I look over the room again. I don’t see him.
“Steve died,” she says.
My heart stutters. I didn’t hear her right. “What?”
“Sweetheart. Steve’s been dead for fifteen years.”
I shake my head. This doesn’t make any sense. I stand and push away from the chair. I walk up to the picture board. There’s Steve. There’s Matilda. They are getting married. And there’s Steve and Matilda dancing. She’s grinning at the camera. And she looks…twenty-five at most. I scan the board. There aren’t any pictures of Matilda and Steve from recent years.
Sylvie joins me at the board.
“I thought you knew,” she says.
“How would I know? She was always talking about him. Always saying they were going on their second honeymoon when this was all over.”
Sylvie nods. I look past her at Matilda’s body.
“When it’s all over,” I say.
“Yes, dear,” says Sylvie.
I start to cry. And I hate it. Matilda knew. She knew that she was going to die. And she was telling us all that she was going to see her love again when she died.
I wipe at my eyes. Cursing the tears.
“Her second honeymoon was in death?” I ask. Appalled.
Sylvie nods. “She told us her story the week before you came.”
I look away, bitter at the loss of Matilda’s story. “She never told me.”
“Let’s sit down. The service is about to start,” Sylvie says.
I blink my eyes and walk back to my seat.
I don’t hear what the minister says. I can’t hear it.
I had everything so wrong. Everything I thought. Everything I believed. Wrong.
Matilda was right. I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid nearly my entire life that if I show anyone my true self they’ll turn away. Reject me. So I rejected myself first. I didn’t love me. I didn’t let anyone see me.
A tear falls from my cheek to my hands.
The officiant asks if anyone would like to share a story about Matilda.
The woman who was part of the couple stands. She shares a touching story about Matilda volunteering at the animal shelter.
The family stands. Matilda was their neighbor. The children loved her.
But where is her family? Didn’t she have any?
I sniff back more tears.
Sylvie is crying next to me.
Gerry sobs quietly into a handkerchief.
Even my mom is crying.
“Anyone else?” asks the officiant.
I hear a rustling and then Cleo stands.
I look up at her. Her face is pinched and if possible she looks more sour and angry than usual.
“I have something to say,” she says.
The officiant nods and Cleo walks up to the podium.
“Bah,” she says in a low growl. She waves her hands at all of us. “Bah at you, and bah at you, and humph.”
I hiccup back my tears. I look around. Gerry has the handkerchief halfway to her mouth. Sylvie stares at Cleo in shock.
“I don’t know why you’re all blubbering.” She pinches her face down and then blurts out, “Here’s what I’d like to say—”
Cleo fumbles for a moment and then pulls her phone from her pocket. She gives each of us a sour look.
Next to me, Sylvie’s eyes are wide. My mom is staring at Cleopatra like she’s never seen anyone like her in her whole life. Gerry shakes her head, back and forth.
Then Cleo looks at me and winks.
I sit up straight.
“This is for Matilda. Dance, girl, dance,” Cleo says.
She holds up her phone and presses the screen.
Then the chapel microphone picks up the beat of the most inappropriate song in funeral history. Heavy bass. Thumping, beating drums. Cleopatra drops her phone beneath the microphone and struts out next to the podium. She puts one arm behind her head and her other arm swings around as she points at each of us.
Her black pants flare out and she starts to shake her hips.
“Let’s go,” shouts Cleo.
It’s Matilda’s song. From the party. The bass cranks out.
“What the shit,” says my mother.
I stifle a horrified laugh.
The officiant’s mouth drops open and he rushes toward the podium.
By the look on his face, he’s going to put a stop to it.
No way.
No. Freaking. Way.
I jump up and moonwalk my way across the floor. I block him out. This music isn’t stopping.
“Ma’am,” he says.
I shake my head and start to Cabbage Patch Dance around the stand.
“Ma’am, this is a funeral chapel, not a dance party.”
I do the robot and the sprinkler dance. Every bad eighties move I know.
There’s no way I’m letting this music stop. No way.
Cleo sings as loud as she can. She points at the front row.
There is one more second of stunned silence then Gerry jumps up. She bends over and drags Sylvie to her feet.
“Dance,” Gerry laughs. “Dance, girls.”
The officiant backs up. He knows a losing battle when he sees one.
We’re dancing. This is our moment. Matilda’s too. We’re not stopping.
“Daniella,” my mom cries, “what are you doing?”
I
slide up to her. “Dancing, Mom. I’m dancing.”
She shakes her head. “But a lady—”
“I’m not a lady, mom.”
She looks me over and something shifts in her expression. She nods. “Okay.”
I stare at her in shock.
Okay?
Then my mother, in her four-inch black Jimmy Choos, starts to tap her foot to the music. She smiles at me and gestures for me to keep going.
My friends cheer.
Gerry grabs my hands and spins in a circle. Sylvie does a little shuffle. Cleo, once again, is moving like she was born on the stage. Her face is transformed from pinched and sour to radiant.
Suddenly, everyone has joined us at the front. We’re all dancing.
Every single one of us.
I feel it then.
Matilda’s here.
And she’s dancing too.
She’s swinging around and around. Laughing and dancing. And Steve is here. And they’re on their flipping second honeymoon.
I smile and blow a kiss in the air.
We dance and dance.
I’m free. Free of all the masks. All the fear. Matilda was right.
I’m just me now, dancing with my friends.
Something strikes me then. Where’s Jack? I look around the chapel.
The music fades.
He’s not here. He’s gone.
40
Dany
* * *
After the burial, I stand with Sylvie, Gerry, Cleo and my mother at the graveside. The drizzle that began days ago is finally starting to clear. A little ray of sun twinkles on the pink and white of the granite headstone. Matilda is resting next to Steve.
“Darling, how about your friends come over for early dinner?” asks my mother.
She twists her hands together and has a hesitant half smile on her face.
“That’s really nice, but what about…”
“Your father?”
I nod.
She shrugs then tilts her face to the sky.
“He’s in Chicago,” she says. She closes her eyes and her shoulders sag.
“Why is he in Chicago?” I have the urge to reach out and take her hand. She doesn’t look like my formidable mother. She looks lost.
“He left me weeks ago, darling. Your father decided that I was an old hag with neck wrinkles and he’d rather be with his twenty-two-year-old intern.”
I shake my head and stare at her in shock. “But you said I couldn’t stay because you were having a second wind. Boinking on the printer—”
“Fax machine.”
“Fine, making dirty on the fax machine.”
“That was your father and the intern. That’s where I found them copulating.”
I thread my fingers through hers. I had no idea.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was embarrassed,” she says.
“What? Why?”
“He’s right. I have neck wrinkles. Saggy breasts. I’m a tacky sixty-year-old attempting to look like a twenty-something—”
“Mother—”
“He said I embarrassed him. That everyone but me knew I was over the hill. That makeup can’t hide old.”
“Mom—”
“Darling.” She turns and takes both my hands.
I look at her pristinely applied makeup, her perfectly sculpted brows, her dyed blonde hair. I don’t see tacky or old, I see my classy mom.
“He’s wrong,” I say.
She shakes her head and drops my hands. “He’s right. My whole life I’ve put on my face in the morning, made myself the picture perfect wife, just so he wouldn’t leave. So you would have a father.”
“Oh, Mom.”
She presses a tissue to her eyes. “I’ve spent nearly twenty years being Mrs. John Drake. Designer clothing, makeup, cocktail parties, concentrating on pleasing him. Daniella, I don’t know who I am if I’m not…I don’t have anything else. I don’t know who I am if not his wife.”
She drops her head and sniffs into her tissue.
I sigh.
I understand. Oh boy, do I understand.
It looks like my mother passed down more than her hair color.
I hold out my hand to her.
She looks up and frowns.
“Hello,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“Hello, I’m Dany. I like to dance, sing to eighties music, be spontaneous, and garden. I just lost a good friend, but I’ve gained friends too.”
My mom tilts her head and her lips wobble. Then she reaches out and shakes my hand.
“Hello, I’m Bernice. I hate makeup and tight dresses. I love tacos, reading trashy books, and cooking. I just lost my husband, but I hope I’m gaining my daughter.”
There is such an air of hope. It’s like the spring morning before the first bulb pokes its green leaves through the cold ground. I take a breath.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
A smile blossoms on her face.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Then we’re hugging.
Thirty minutes later we’re all in the kitchen at my childhood home.
“Who knew? Dany is little miss money bags. Did you see the bathroom? The soap has 24 karat gold flecks in it. Tell me, do you wipe your tush with dollar bills?” asks Gerry.
I choke on a laugh.
“Rude,” says Cleo.
Gerry shrugs. “Truth is rude.”
“Sit down and eat,” I say. I point at the long butcher block table. On one side there’s a low bench, on the other, comfy upholstered chairs.
My mom’s at the stove. She brings over tacos, five cheese nachos, and guacamole.
The kitchen is French farmhouse chic. To me, it always felt cold. Until now. I guess what it was missing was friends.
“Tell us the rest of the story, Gerry. We want to hear about David,” says Sylvie.
“Humph,” says Cleopatra.
I reach for a chip and dip it in the tomatillo salsa. “This is really good,” I say.
My mom beams at me. For the first time in my memory, she’s in jeans and a blouse.
I turn. The girls are all looking at me.
“Oh, sorry. No interruptions.”
“Wait, who’s David?” asks my mom. She’s at the stove again plating up enchiladas. She’s a cooking wonder.
“A figment of Gerry’s imagination,” says Cleo.
“He’s the love of Gerry’s life. She went searching for him across the world,” I say.
“Ooh,” says my mom. She plops the enchiladas on the table, then slides onto the bench.
Karl brings a tray in from the bar full of drinks. I grab the glass of watermelon agua fresca.
“Have a seat,” I say.
“Thank you, Miss,” says Karl.
“Enough interruptions,” says Sylvie.
Gerry begins.
“From Finland, I traveled to China. I traced David to the Tarim Basin in Northwest China. There, I learned of a foreigner who was working on a peach plantation. I was certain, absolutely certain that I’d found my David. I arrived at the plantation during harvest time. I ran down the rows of trees. Searching the faces of the men and women picking. Finally, at the end of the day, when dusk arrived and the sky turned as dusky orange as the fruit on the trees, I found him.”
“He’s real?” asks Cleo. Her mouth is a perfect O of disbelief.
“No interruptions,” says my mom.
I laugh. It’s like Matilda is still here enforcing the no interruption rule.
“Slowly, I made my way to him. His hair was glinting bronze in the setting sun. All my dreams had come true. My David. Thousands of peach trees. They’re considered the fruit of immortality in China. A good omen. I called out to him. He turned. He was happy to see me. Of course he was. An American man in China meeting an American woman. But…he wasn’t David.”
“I knew it,” says Cleo.
We all shush her.
“Bah,” she says.
“David’s trail was cold. Any whisper of him had disappeared. As dead as a peach pit in winter. I went home. And gave up my search.”
“Ugh,” I say.
“This one doesn’t have a happy ending?” asks my mom.
“Oh, it does,” says Sylvie.
Gerry nods. “It does. I met and married my husband Russ. He owned the Five and Dime here in Stanton. We had thirty-eight fabulous years before he passed.”
I crunch down hard on a tortilla chip. “Why didn’t you start with that?” I ask.
“Because chemo is painfully boring and I like stories.”
Sylvie snorts, “Take up knitting.”
Gerry’s eyes twinkle. “And I wanted to show that every apparent tragedy brings an equal or greater opportunity.”
“Bah, fortune cookie blather,” says Cleo.
“You never heard from David?” I ask, not quite ready to let it go.
“Never,” she says with a smile. “But if he popped up today, I’d marry him. I’m too old to bother with preliminaries. I want the juicy bits right now.”
“Humph,” says Cleo.
“So that’s how the story ends,” I say. I sigh. I really wanted Gerry to find her David.
“Wasn’t real,” says Cleo.
I start to laugh. Then everyone joins in.
We stuff ourselves with nachos, tacos, and enchiladas and talk into the night.
41
Jack
* * *
“How was the funeral yesterday?” asks Sissy.
I kick my boot into the shovel and turn up a pile of dirt.
I’m in the back garden clearing the last of the weeds. The garden’s in full bloom. Dany upheld her end of the bargain. It’s gorgeous back here. I kick the shovel into the ground again and dump another clump of weeds.
“Wow. What’d those weeds ever do to you?”
I sigh and turn to her. “I left early,” I say.
“Why?”
I shrug.
“Was Dany there?”
I nod.
“Seriously, bro. You’ve never been one for loquacious sibling chats, but give me something here.”
“Sis, I’m not going to share my internal struggles with you.”
“Ooh, somebody’s in looove. I called it. I knew it. You’re in looove. I knew it the second Dany proposed in the hospital and you got that stupid look on your face. Jack’s in love, in love,” she sings.
