Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  How many of those times was he harboring rages of his own? Slamming doors, punching walls. His anger has always felt like some sort of evil science experiment, oozing out of containment into the corners of his life and exploding without warning. He remembers as if it had happened five minutes ago the first time he put a fist through the wall in his bedroom. The shock of that moment, of realizing that despite all his efforts he was growing into a man, and an angry one.

  A man like his father. Not the man his sisters wanted—needed—him to be, but a violent man, capable of atrocity.

  The gun in his hands. The recoil. The wet tearing sound of a bullet entering flesh.

  God. He should not be here, should not have accepted Maisey’s trust. The last thing she needs in her life is a man like him.

  But it’s too late to run. One thing he has always done throughout his adult life is keep his promises. And so he stays where he is, keeping watch, as the long slow minutes tick away. He’s still there, watchful and wide awake, when the morning light seeps in around the curtains.

  Maisey stirs as the light touches her face. He wants to block it, to shelter her from what this day holds, but he sees the memory of grief move across her face as her eyes open.

  “You’re still here,” she says, her voice husky with sleep.

  “I promised,” he answers. Their eyes meet and hold, and the unbearable, beautiful intimacy of the night before is still right there between them.

  Despite all the promises he made to his better self during the night, he’s about to cross the room and kiss her, when the sound of an opening door and light footsteps in the hallway freeze him in his tracks.

  Elle wanders in, yawning, and flops down on the couch beside Maisey. Tony’s mind scrambles for words to answer the question that’s surely forming in her mind, but she doesn’t ask questions. “Hey, Tony,” she says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world that he spent the night. “You want some cereal? Grandpa’s got Froot Loops.”

  “I think Tony might want a real breakfast.”

  “I can make eggs,” Elle says. “Mom burns everything.”

  Elle’s presence has brought Tony back to his senses. He takes a breath and a simultaneous step toward the door. “Thanks for the offer, but I should go. I have things to do before the funeral. I’ll call Mia to come and get me.”

  “The least I can do is drive you home,” Maisey protests. “Don’t bother Mia. She’s probably still sleeping.”

  Which is true enough. Mia is not an early riser. Of course, any one of his sisters will come get him if he asks, but then there would be explanations and innuendos and conversations he doesn’t want to get into.

  “Are you sure?” he asks. “You’ve got a big day.”

  “I’m sure. Give me a minute to get ready.”

  She yawns and stretches, then shuffles out of the room, loose-jointed with lingering sleep. Tony can’t help watching the way she moves, can’t stop imagining the feel of her drowsy body molding against his, of allowing himself to deliberately bury his hands in her tangled hair, pressing his lips against her neck . . .

  “You could ask her out,” Elle says. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Tony opens his mouth to utter some sort of denial, but no words come out.

  “I’m not stupid,” she goes on. “I see the way you look at each other.”

  He clears his throat. “This is hardly a time to think about dating—”

  “Why?”

  “It’s your grandma’s funeral today, remember? I think your mother has enough to worry about. What is that look supposed to mean?”

  The child sits cross-legged on the couch, resting her chin on both fists and eyeing him with an expression that is entirely too knowing. He decides not to wait for her answer. “I’ll be outside on the porch.”

  “You’re coming to the funeral, right?” Elle calls after him. “And bringing Mia?”

  “We’ll be there.”

  He breathes a sigh of relief when the door bangs shut between them. His whole careful system of controls, checks, and measures is unraveling at an alarming pace, and Elle has just sped up the process.

  What if? he asks himself. What if I did ask her out? Later. After the funeral.

  You’re forgetting who you are, his memory answers. You’d better find a way to remember.

  Leah’s Journal

  I’d promised myself I would leave him, but as it turned out, the leaving wasn’t easy. I had two tiny unborn babies to consider. I was a high school dropout. My only skills were a smart mouth and a stubborn streak.

  I missed a visit to my doctor, waiting for my bruises to heal. At the next visit, he put me on bed rest. Through the long, boring weeks from then until the babies were born, Boots pretty much left me alone. He said he was busy making money for us. If so, I never saw a penny of it. His mother would come over and help. She wasn’t much for cleaning, but at least she washed the dishes and did the laundry.

  She didn’t talk much, but one day when I was lying on the couch, feeling sorry for myself, lonely and tired enough that the tears got away from me, she put her hand on my forehead for just an instant. It was a hard hand, callused and rough, but the gentleness eased me. Her words did not.

  “Poor child. You’re good and in for it now, I suppose.”

  I didn’t ask her what she meant. I think I didn’t want to know.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I have never been to a funeral.

  It’s not that there haven’t been deaths in my life; it’s just that for one reason or another I’ve never actually attended the service that marked them. Dad’s only sister, Aunt Del, succumbed to cancer when I was ten. One of my classmates died tragically just before high school graduation, the casualty of four-wheeling on rough terrain. Various acquaintances of Mom’s church family also “went to sleep in Jesus,” as she always said.

  As a child, this phrase confused me hopelessly, especially since at least one of the deceased died at the wheel of his pickup truck. When Mom, busy discussing arrangements with the other church ladies, brushed off my questions, my imagination did its usual thing. I still carry in my mind today a picture of Mr. Peterson praying while driving, eyes closed out of respect to God, and accidentally drifting off to sleep. This is a state of consciousness with which I was well versed, something that happened fairly frequently to me during long church prayers.

  So I had a clear image of Mr. Peterson falling asleep in Jesus, but my imagination failed at the magnitude of this event called a funeral. I wanted to go, that one time, having some sort of idea that maybe Jesus would be at the funeral and I could actually see him. Mom nixed that idea.

  “Funerals are not for children,” she said. It was her case-closed tone of voice, the one I never even tried to argue with. So I stayed home with a sitter while my parents went to say good-bye to Mr. Peterson. When Aunt Del died, my parents flew to Orlando and left me with a friend. At the time of my classmate’s funeral, an event I would surely have attended, we were out of town on a family vacation.

  So I’ve seen funerals on TV, read books, but it’s my first time in attendance, and certainly my first time as a direct relative of the deceased. I don’t know how to behave, and a dull anxiety mixes with my grief and fatigue.

  My brain refuses to function, and by the time I get Dad put together and Elle rounded up, we arrive at the church a full ten minutes past the time appointed by Edna Carlton.

  She is waiting for us in the parking lot, flanked by Nancy and Alison, who has discarded her ball cap and blue jeans in favor of a shapeless black dress. Nancy, on the other hand, is decked out in funeral fashion attire: a slim, perfectly fitted pencil skirt and black jacket over an ivory silk blouse. Her silver hair shines in the sunlight. Mrs. Carlton, between them, wears a timeless black dress and a hat with a net veil that has been in existence longer than I have.

  I turn off the engine and remove the keys, but not one of us makes a move to get out of the car.

  “When shall we thr
ee meet again?” Elle whispers.

  A burst of laughter pushes past my barricaded lips, and I cover my mouth with my hand, partly to hide my lapse from the welcoming trio, partly out of guilt. I’ve always thought grief would be one uniform texture of sadness, but mine is so many layers of guilt and anger and now laughter.

  I’ve just gotten myself under control and am formulating an admonishment for my daughter when Dad starts to sing, in his tone-deaf way: There were three ravens sat on a tree, Downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe . . .

  “Dad!”

  We are definitely the crazy car. If the three black crows out on the sidewalk had the powers of Macbeth’s witches, all three of us would turn into toads on the spot.

  “I’m just a crazy old man,” Dad says, with an exaggerated shrug. “Who can blame me?”

  Then, just as suddenly as he started to sing, his face falls. “I don’t want to get out of the car. I suppose we have to go through with this?”

  I reach for his hand. It has gotten so bony over the years, the knuckles red and swollen, the skin fragile and transparent. Elle leans forward from the back and puts her strong, young hand on top. “All for one, one for all,” she says. “And all of us for Grandma.”

  We sit there, the three of us, linked by the bond of our hands and our grief.

  Mrs. Carlton, tired of waiting or else convinced that we’re too inept to open the doors, takes matters into her own hands. She breaks ranks with her sisters and yanks open the passenger door. “You are late,” she scolds. “If we don’t hurry, you’ll miss the viewing.”

  “I’ve already seen her,” Dad says. “She was dead before they took her from the house.”

  The scandalized expression on Mrs. Carlton’s face goads my rebellious black heart into action. I get out of the car. Elle follows.

  “I’ve already seen her as well. And Elle will pass.”

  In my heels, I’m a whole head taller than Mrs. Carlton, and I use my height to stare her down.

  “Fine. But you’re still late. Follow me.”

  She stumps off into the church. Alison glances my way, takes a step after Edna, then turns back and hugs all three of us in turn. Her body is warm, but the cheek she presses against mine is cool and damp with tears. “We’re all so broken up. Edna means well. Are you ready?”

  My throat swells in response to her kindness. “Ready as I’m going to be,” I say, as she steps back.

  “This way.” Nancy leads us in a sad little procession, Elle, Dad, then me, with Alison guarding the rear. We walk through a side door into a hallway that smells of old carpet and air freshener and holiness. Thin strains of an inexpertly played organ seep through the walls and the ceiling and up through the floor.

  Elle jams a wrench into the works and brings the whole program to a halt when she stops and turns to face me. “What if I want to see Grandma?”

  I stare at her, heart in my throat. “You don’t want to remember her this way, Elle Belle. Truly.”

  She stares back. Chin lifted, feet planted, centered like a discus thrower. “I’m not scared of feeling things. I want to see her.”

  I open my mouth to tell her no, absolutely not, under no condition, and then stop. Isn’t that what I’ve always hated myself? Other people protecting me from what they think I shouldn’t see or know? Things like having a sister, for example.

  “She’s not pretty to look at, sweetheart. Death wasn’t easy.”

  “You were there. You saw her die. I haven’t seen her for three years, and I want to see her now.”

  “I’ll take her,” Alison says. “If you’d rather not.”

  “No,” I hear myself saying. “I’ll go.”

  Elle wilts and bites her lower lip. Maybe I’ve made a wrong decision yet again. Maybe she wanted me to say no so she wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Psychology is not my strong suit.

  “Me, too,” Dad says. He takes my hand. Elle backtracks and does the same on the other side. The hallway is just wide enough for the three of us.

  “Off to see the wizard,” Elle murmurs. I squeeze her hand.

  “I don’t know that there’s time for a viewing now,” Nancy says. “Listen.”

  The organ music has shifted from hymns to a semiclassical dirge. “That’s the signal for the family to come in and sit down,” she says. “Everybody will be waiting.”

  It’s a reprieve. Elle and Dad both look at me. I open my mouth to comply, but I swear to God all at once I’m channeling my mother. “It’s a funeral, not a party. They can wait.”

  Nancy’s mouth opens, then snaps shut. There is lipstick on one of her teeth. This fact makes me feel better, sure and certain that I am mean-spirited and destined for hellfire. Her back is even straighter as she marches ahead of us, and I’m pretty sure that if she had an imaginative bone in her body, she’d be picturing herself as Joan of Arc right now, heroically walking to her death.

  The hallway passes classrooms and a study, where an elderly gentleman stands in the doorway, clasping a well-worn Bible. From the look he exchanges with Nancy, I’m pretty sure he’s her husband, Pastor McLean. My father confirms this with a nod and a murmured, “Pastor.”

  McLean is man of God enough to set aside his Bible and clasp my father’s hand warmly in both of his, despite the fact that we are inconveniently late and messing up the program. The organ comes to the end of the song. There’s a long hesitation, and then it starts all over again at the beginning.

  Just past the study a set of narrow stairs leads to an open door, and through that door I know there is a platform and an open coffin with my mother lying inside it. Everybody in the church is already seated, and they will be staring at us, the best of them pitying our grief, the others storing away tidbits to share in gossip sessions later.

  My feet falter.

  This is a very bad idea.

  But my father, the same man who said he didn’t want to do this, lets go of my hand and forges ahead on his own. The toe of his right foot catches on a step, and he stumbles. Both Elle and I surge ahead and grab his arms, and the three of us walk out to see my mother as a linked unit after all.

  The woman in the coffin looks about as much like the woman who raised me as one of those branded dolls looks like the celebrity it represents. The shape of her face is vaguely wrong, her hair styled in a way she never would have worn it.

  My imagination runs away down several different rabbit holes of conspiracy theory before I realize that nobody has run off with her body. It’s just the makeup and the hair.

  Mom never wore makeup. Her face looks strange with brow liner and blush, her lips a little redder than they ever were in life. And she never wore her hair combed back from her forehead like that. A faint white line of a scar parallels her hairline on the right, a thing I never noticed before.

  Dad sees it, too. He reaches down and tries to rearrange her hair, but it’s stiff with gel and spray and isn’t going anywhere. Elle stands statue still beside me, expressionless, not giving me any cues to her emotional state.

  The organ reaches the end of the song again, and the organist, a small woman who has to perch on the edge of the bench to reach the pedals, glares at me directly before turning a page and going back to the beginning one more time.

  “Are we done?” I whisper to Elle, and she nods.

  I’m pretty sure that what we’re supposed to do now is go back the way we came and then ceremoniously traipse up the central aisle, but since we’ve already shot the program to hell and gone, I don’t see the point. We could just as easily walk around the coffin and down the steps from the platform to the front pew reserved for family.

  Looking down to assess this option is almost my undoing.

  The church is packed. So very many people have come to say good-bye to my mother, and all of them are now watching me. Some faces are familiar. Greg’s mom is here, the critical gossip she’s going to share with her friends almost visible in a cloud over her head. Tony and Mia and Mrs. Medina sit together about three rows back,
and their kind faces bolster me.

  “Come on,” I whisper to Dad and to Elle. “Let’s go this way.” I take one step, and then I see Marley.

  She sits right by the aisle, about halfway back on the right. Her hair is twisted up into a bun, and she wears a demure black dress. Dark glasses cover her eyes. Her feet, in sensible black pumps, remain evenly on the floor. Knees touching. Shoulders back. Chin up. She’s the epitome of the perfect posture Mom tried and failed to instill in me.

  Only her hands give her away. They are twisted together in her lap, instead of loosely folded, the funeral program crushed and bent between them.

  Leah’s Journal

  I told myself that, job or no job, I would leave after the babies were born, when I was able to move again. When they could be put in a stroller or packed into the car. I believed it, too, until I was confronted with the reality of two fragile, demanding, small people.

  This was a reality nobody could have prepared me for, even if there had been anybody who might have tried. They cried. Well, Marley cried; Maisey squeaked. She was smaller by half a pound. Stayed in the baby ICU two full days longer. I’d forgotten that until just now, how much I was frightened by Maisey’s fragility.

  I remember the day the hospital sent us home. One minute both babies were hooked up to monitors in special little temperature-controlled beds. The next they were swaddled up in blankets, and I was being patted on the head and sent out the door with all kinds of instructions. Feed them every two hours. Swab the belly buttons with alcohol. Bathe them, but don’t let them get cold. Watch for jaundice.

  Guilt.

  Dear God, the guilt. Maybe I won’t write this after all. What is the point of stirring up this muddy mess so many years later? It’s not like I can go back and fix it. But it’s too late for that. Pandora’s box has been opened. From now until I die, I will be asking myself these questions. Why didn’t I call a taxi and run away right then and there? I’ve always told myself that I had nowhere else to go. It’s not true, God help me. My parents were still alive. They wouldn’t have welcomed me and two small people into their home, but they wouldn’t have shut us out.