Funeral with a View

by Schiariti, Matt

  My world faded away as the sirens drew nearer.

  Home.

  CHAPTER 75

  What the shit is going on?

  Why am I back in my house?

  Where the hell is that Beetlejuice lady with my Death Handbook, dammit?

  Catherine and Celeste walk in, having returned from the post-funeral ‘feast’.

  In a week of strange new experiences, what I thought would be my final moments were by far the weirdest.

  After my casket was lowered into the dark earth, there was nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. No fade to black, no white light. No St. Peter standing in front of pearly gates with a beatific smile. No clouds, winged cherubs, or harps.

  Nothing but a total, all-encompassing lack of anything.

  Then, as quickly as the lights went out, I’m hovering in my house, watching my wife and daughter as they walk in the door, dressed in black, eyes rimmed in scarlet.

  Celeste turns her head my way. I freeze as her eyes wander around the area I occupy. There’s no possible way she can see me, I know that, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling like a voyeur in my own house. I bolt up the stairs to observe from a distance.

  Catherine puts their coats in the closet.

  “I think it’s time for bed, Pookie Bear.”

  Celeste nods without argument, without saying a word. Unusual for the chatty girl, but it’s understandable given the circumstances. Her sunken eyes and slumped shoulders show how tired she is.

  I dart into the dark end of the hallway as they make their way up the stairs in preparation for day’s end. Drawers open, water runs, teeth are brushed. I don’t move an inch.

  Preliminaries out of the way, Catherine leads Celeste into her bedroom. And dammit if I can’t help but be drawn there.

  Sticking tight to the ceiling, I poke my ‘head’ in.

  “Daddy loved you very much. You know that, don’t you, princess?” Catherine finishes tucking our daughter in, sits down on the bed, and gently strokes the little one’s forehead.

  “I know, Mommy,” Celeste says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Her voice is so very tired. Poor thing.

  Catherine kisses her forehead and reaches for the bedside light.

  “Mommy? Have you seen my guardian angel?”

  My wife’s hand pauses over the light switch. “He’s still in my handbag.”

  “Mommy—”

  “I’ll go get him for you, sweetheart.”

  Leaving the light on, Catherine slowly walks out of the room, and when she comes back, she’s holding a piece of paper. “Here you go, Celeste,” she says, handing over the drawing Celeste had been working on during the funeral. Celeste grips it in her tiny hand before Catherine can take more than a cursory glance, and a half-smile breaks through my wife’s weary veil. “Now go to bed. We can read Ladybug Girl Goes to the Beach tomorrow. Sound good?”

  “Sounds good, Mommy. G’night. Love you.” The light of my life turns on her side and burrows into the comforter.

  “I love you, too, sweetie,” Catherine whispers. Turning off the light, she leaves the room.

  More drawers open and close. More water runs; Catherine’s preparing to take a shower in our master bathroom.

  Cat will be in there for a while. She’s always loved a long hot shower. Today more than any other day, she needs it. I take the opportunity to hover over Celeste’s bed, knowing that she’ll soon be fast asleep, but I keep to the ceiling just in case. Wouldn’t want to give her a chill.

  Moving onto the ‘other side’ seems lost to me now, but there have to be worse ways to spend eternity than watching my daughter sleep.

  Time passes, her breathing becomes deeper, more even.

  Then she shifts onto her back

  “Daddy,” she says sleepily.

  I pause, more than a little freaked out, until I realize she’s talking in her sleep. My phantom heart stops racing. I let a few moments pass before making a move. Now that she’s turned around, I see the piece of paper she’s holding. I never got a chance to see it in the funeral parlor, and I’m curious to see what this guardian angel is all about.

  She shudders as I get closer, but doesn’t wake.

  The wrinkled paper clutched to her chest rises and falls with each breath, but the image is easy enough to make out. It’s an angel, all right. The image is child-like, yet somehow mature. Each stroke is broad and sure, almost as if she had a subject to study. Being an artist myself, I know potential when I see it. I can’t remember any of Celeste’s previous drawings looking this good. My daughter’s guardian angel floats in midair, fully-formed arms and legs giving it the illusion of movement, almost like it’s swimming. No stick figure here. That’s my girl! Wings, upturned and graceful, are shadowed using delicate cross hatching, giving them a three-dimensional feathered quality. Atop the shoulders, the head is more than the mere circle most kids her age would draw. It’s more realistic and in proportion to the rest of the body.

  I’m so proud of her right now, my budding little artist. I could look at this beautiful picture forever. And there’s something hauntingly familiar about it. The face. I know this face. I concentrate on it, letting the rest of the picture blur, and it hits me. I recognize it because it’s my face. Yes, it’s a bit rough, but there’s no denying the angel is me. If nothing else, the unibrow perched over the pair of ovular eyes would have been a dead giveaway.

  It couldn’t be, could it? The glances in my direction all day long, her face scrunched into concentration as she set to work on her newest masterpiece? All the talk and questions about guardian angels? Has to be coincidence, right? Simple and inconsequential conversational threads from a six-year-old mind thrust into a stressful and emotional situation. Nothing more, nothing less.

  If I still had a head I’d shake it. Eternity’s a long time. I don’t need all the answers now, as much as I’d like them.

  Celeste shivers and pulls the covers up to her chin. Time to let her sleep.

  I float away and chance a look in the master bathroom, sticking as far away as I can without compromising my view.

  Catherine’s distorted image shows through the coruscated glass of the shower door. Her head is bowed down, arms straight out with her palms pressed flat against the tile, letting the water blast against her back. A fine cloud of steam is building up. She’s crying. I can tell by the way her shoulders shake and quiver, even though I can’t hear her over the jets of water. The weird feeling of voyeurism takes hold once again, so I make my way deeper into the bedroom to leave my wife to her me time.

  On my way through our bedroom, I stop in front of the full length mirror next to the window to test a theory, concentrating as hard as I can.

  No reflection. Not a thing, no matter how much I focus.

  Damn. Was worth a shot, though, and it proves that there’s no way Celeste can see me, that her drawing was nothing more than the work of a creative and talented little girl.

  Outside, the sun is almost below the horizon. So many memories in this room. Some bad, but most good. Making love in this very bed; curling up with the television on, wrapped in blankets and each other; sleeping in and fooling around until noon if Celeste happened to oversleep, which was a rarity, believe me.

  The little things. They add up to a lifetime, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

  I catch a sparkle on the nightstand. Light from the lamp reflects off of Catherine’s C & R charm bracelet. She always takes it off when bathing. I float down to get a closer inspection of the tiny, inanimate object that, if it could talk, would disclose the most intimate details of our relationship. This trinket has witnessed almost every moment of our lives together, good and bad. Amazing how something so small can be so important.

  The little things.

  I concentrate, imagining in my mind’s eye that my hand is reaching out, wanting to touch that small thing despite knowing in my core that it’s impossible.

  My hand is poised over the shimmering silver, and I see it
.

  It’s small, the size of a three-by-five photo. The image is fuzzy; a confusing grayscale. Something in the shape of a kidney bean sits in the middle.

  Oh my God.

  With a shock, everything suddenly comes into focus. Everything now makes sense. It makes sense, and I’m heartbroken, now more than ever.

  This is not fair. It just isn’t.

  I want to clutch my fists. I want to lash out and punch holes in the wall. But I’m unable to do any of that. Can’t even scream.

  The question of why I’ve been hanging around all this time has just been answered. Maybe I should have seen it sooner. All the clues were there, but reliving my life day by day, year by year, clouded things.

  Consider those clouds parted.

  I move to the bathroom where Catherine still stands under the hot jets of water. There has to be a way to let her know. My whole world becomes the need to convey the message to her. But how? Focusing my will to a razor sharp point, I imagine myself waving my arms as I look into the mirror. Nothing. Not a hint that I’m standing there pantomiming like a lunatic.

  Crushing despair threatens to whisk me away.

  Until …

  From nowhere, steam begins building up in the bathroom, clouding the mirror. I’ve seen this plenty of times before, although never to this extent. The bathroom quickly fills with a thick, opaque cloud of heavy air and water particles. It collects on the chrome fixtures and turns them hazy, clings to the cool silver glass, turning it a milky vermillion. If I were alive, I’d write something cute and sappy on that surface for Catherine to find when she got out of the shower, words no ‘manly’ man would ever admit to writing, but secretly did because it’s okay to be a love-sick fool in private as long as the world-at-large never knew.

  Guys are weird like that.

  Not that any of this matters. I’m not alive, and there’s not a blessed thing I can do.

  Defeated and frustrated, I approach the foggy mirror. Maybe going through the motions will make me feel better. Doubtful, but what else is there?

  As if I still have a body, my hand reaches out.

  I don’t expect anything to happen.

  This is once instance in which I’m happy my expectations aren’t met.

  Where I picture the tip of my finger, the thin film of humidity disappears.

  Holy shit.

  I don’t know why this is happening. I don’t know how this is happening. But now’s not the time to ask questions. Now is the time to roll with it.

  Letters form. They’re shaky, yet legible. It’s slow going, but I have to let Cat know. Failure in this is not an option. Too much has been taken from me already. I won’t let my wife live the rest of her life in ignorance. This is quite literally the last thing I’ll ever do for her, and goddamnit, I’m going to succeed.

  I finish as the water stops running. I’m so, so tired from the effort of interacting with the physical world. I feel thin, more non-existent than before, drained.

  The shower door opens and Cat sets a bare foot on the mat, wraps a towel around her wet, naked skin. I drift back to the entry, careful not to give her a chill, and will her with everything I’ve got left to raise her head and look at the mirror. There’s nothing I’ve ever wanted more, in life or in death.

  Please, I think. Please, lift those eyes and look, baby. Please!

  I’m not foolish enough to think I had anything to do with it when she looks up, but she does.

  “What the …” she says, one hand waving away the accumulated steam, the other holding the towel tight to her chest.

  It’s a start. She’s looking up.

  I concentrate again.

  Please. Look at the mirror, Cat.

  She slowly walks through the fog and rests her free palm on the granite vanity. Her brow crinkles in confusion. Catherine’s eyes move back and forth as she reads the words several times. When she reads the writing on the mirror a final time, her lower lip begins to tremble. Making sure the towel is cinched tightly around her, she leaves and heads down the hall to Celeste’s bedroom.

  I follow.

  With a flick of a switch, the hallway light casts a dim glow in the distorted shape of a rectangle on our sleeping daughter. Celeste stirs, the white paper she’d drawn on still clutched to her chest.

  “Mommy?” Celeste’s voice is sleepy, and she stirs. “That you?”

  Catherine sits on the edge of the bed, arms crossed. “Why did you get out of bed when you know you’re supposed to be sleeping?”

  Celeste rubs a small fist against her weary eyes. “Huh?”

  “Don’t try to hide it. I saw what you wrote on the mirror. Have you been snooping around in Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom?”

  “No, Mommy. And I didn’t write anything,” Celeste says, sitting up.

  Cat sighs. “Celeste, I’m really not in the mood right now. Please tell me why you wrote it?”

  “I swear, Mommy. I’m not lying. Honest.”

  “Celeste Franchitti,” Uh oh. She’s using full names now. This has become serious business. The last thing I wanted to do was to get my daughter in trouble for what I’ve done, “you know how I feel about lying.”

  “Mommy, I swear I’m not lying!”

  “Well, if you didn’t write it, then who did?”

  “Write what, Mommy?”

  “I’ll show you. Come with me.”

  Celeste takes her mother’s hand and they walk to the bathroom. The fog has dissipated. The message on the mirror is another story. It’s still there and hasn’t diminished or faded at all in the few minutes since I put it there.

  “That,” Cat says, pointing at the mirror, “is what I’m talking about, young lady.”

  “I didn’t do that.”

  Catherine closes her eyes and shakes her head. When she speaks, her voice is frayed around the edges. “Celeste, I’m not mad that you wrote it. I’m just upset that you won’t admit it. You could have fallen and gotten hurt climbing up on the vanity like that.”

  “But—”

  “And I don’t appreciate that you snuck into my room and nosed around my nightstand.”

  “It wasn’t me!” Celeste pulls her hand out of her mother’s grip and juts out her chin.

  “Then how did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “I’m not in the mood for games,” Catherine snaps, and Celeste tears up. Cat takes a moment to collect herself. She kneels down and takes gentle hold of the little one’s shoulders, which are beginning to shake. “Celeste, please tell me the truth. Please.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Forgive me?”

  “Okay,” Celeste whispers, nodding.

  “So, the truth?”

  “Mommy,” Celeste pleads, “I didn’t snoop in your room, and I didn’t sneaky sneak in here and write anything.”

  Celeste begins to cry. Cat pulls her into a hug and whispers soothing words in her ear. I almost don’t hear them, keeping my distance as I am.

  “Shhh, it’s okay, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I believe you.”

  “Really really?”

  Cat pulls away and offers a tired smile. “Really really. I’m upset because I miss your father. If you’d fallen and gotten hurt … I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. I can’t lose both of you,” she adds quietly, almost to herself.

  “It’s okay, Mommy.” Celeste chews her lower lip. “Maybe he wrote it.”

  “Who, Celeste?”

  “Daddy. You know, since he’s an angel now.”

  “Celeste …” Cat’s sentence comes to an incomplete, sluggish end, as if she doesn’t have the energy to discuss it right now. I can’t blame her. From slumped shoulders to baggy, bloodshot eyes, I can tell how tired she is.

  “Can I go back to bed?”

  Cat pauses, then nods. “Sure.”

  Back in Celeste’s room, Cat tucks the tired little girl in.

  “I’m sorry I woke you up, Pookie Bear,” Cat says, placing
a kiss on her forehead.

  “It’s okay, Mommy.” Celeste pulls the covers up to her chin. “Mommy?”

  “Yes?”

  From beneath her princess blankets, Celeste produces the crumpled drawing. She hands it to Cat, who looks a bit confused.

  “Here’s my angel picture. You can have it, you know. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

  Catherine looks from Celeste to the drawing, turning it so it catches the dim light from the hallway. She takes in a breath and says, “Celeste, this is amazing. You drew this? At the funeral parlor?” Celeste nods. “When did you get to be such a good artist?”

  Celeste shrugs. “Dunno. It was, like, all of a sudden. Maybe I inherited it from Daddy or somethin’.”

  My wife nods, bewildered as she stares at the prodigious sketch. Something glistens on her cheek, leaving a sparkling trail behind it.

  A tear.

  Cat goes to the doorway. I follow at a safe distance.

  “He’s not gone, Mommy.”

  Catherine stops in the middle of closing the door. “I’m sorry?”

  “Daddy. He’s not gone so long as you keep him right here,” Celeste is pointing a finger to her own chest, “in your heart.”

  With a slight quiver in her lower lip, Cat says, “Love you.”

  “Love you, too, Mommy.”

  Just before the door closes and shuts out all but the faintest of ambient light from the room, I catch Celeste looking in my direction. On her face is an almost imperceptible smile.

  Then she turns and lays her head on the pillow.

  I’m nearly through the door when her sleepy voice stops me.

  “It’s okay, Daddy. Mommy’ll figure it out. Grownups are slow sometimes is all. They can’t help it.”

  I’m stunned, frozen in place, my mind going in a hundred different directions at once, and before I can even think of concentrating on a reply, she says, “Love you, Daddy. G’night,” and falls fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 76

  “Alright, Catherine. You’re doing fine. It won’t be much longer now.”

  My wife lies in her hospital bed, feet elevated by cold metal stirrups. Her brow is sweaty from effort, and she holds a fistful of bed sheet in each of her clenched hands.