It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  Chapter 52: The Funeral Procession

  I should have ridden with Caitlin,” Emily mutters for the hundredth time since getting into the car—we’re not even halfway to Grosso’s yet and she won’t let up. It’s I should ride with Cat and Trevor’s such a wuss and if I had known I’d be stuck here with you guys, as if we’re all that bad. She sits behind me and kicks the back of my seat, her small shoes hitting just above my kidney, still sore from Caitlin’s attack. Two inches lower and I’d have to turn around, hands slapping into the back seat the way my dad used to do when we were fighting in the car, hitting anyone within reach just to shut us up. “Trevor always gets anything he wants. It’s not fair. I should be with her—”

  Annoyed, I hit the brakes and glare at her in the rear-view mirror. “You want to get out now?” I ask. Behind her reflection I can see a row of cars, headlights on despite the bright sun—next in line is Aunt Sarah with that perpetual frown on her face, hands up above the steering wheel as if to ask, now what? “It’s not far, Emily, if you want to walk. Or hey, wait on the curb, I’m sure your mom will stop and pick you up when she drives by.”

  My cousin just stares at me with a sullen expression that only a budding teenager can pull off, and she kicks at my seat, hard enough to jar my teeth. “Knock that shit off,” I growl. She sulks, her eyes hateful in the mirror. Someone beeps behind us, and ahead a gap has opened in our procession, a good two or three yards between my car and my parents’ in front of us. “You want to get out?” I ask again. “Make up your mind, girlfriend, ‘cause we don’t have all day—”

  “Just go,” she says. When I don’t let up off the brake right away, she kicks the back of my seat. “I said go already.”

  Dan turns and gives her a withering look. “And he said stop kicking the seat,” he tells her, his voice quiet. One of the other kids back there coughs but no one speaks, no one dares break the sudden silence that’s enveloped us. Emily tries to stare Dan down and can’t—she barely meets his gaze before she looks away. I hear her shoes scrape down the back of my seat and then the pressure from her feet is gone. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t scare me,” she mumbles, half to herself. My lover chooses to ignore this and turns away. In the mirror Emily’s lower lip starts to tremble—she crosses her arms and pouts out the window, her pride wounded. “Just go,” she says again, her voice thick with tears.

  This time I listen, and the car surges forward to catch up with the others. A glance in the side-view mirror shows a line of cars stretching back for as far as I can see—I wouldn’t be surprised if some still sit in front of Aunt Evie’s house, lights on, waiting for their chance to pull out. Silence hangs like a pall over us, and with the windows rolled up, it’s even more stifling in here—the only sounds are the radio playing low and the rustle of a dress from the back seat, the scrape of shoes as my cousins try to get comfortable. Then the road curves and Grosso’s comes into view, squalid and rundown and so damn old in the unforgiving sun that I have to blink back tears that blur my vision. Without looking away from the road, I fumble blindly into the seat next to me, reaching, searching…

  Dan is already reaching back.

  His fingers close over mine, both hands taking me into the safety of his palms, and his strength floods through me like adrenaline. “Almost there,” I say, though I’m not quite sure who I’m talking to, myself or him.

  My car follows the others down the street with little help from me—I feel like just one more car in a roller coaster ride, all of us chained together, I can almost hear the steady chink chink chink of a crane pulling us along. We’re driving so slow that I don’t have to brake when we take the turn right past the market, which I notice with proud satisfaction is closed. Mr. Grosso shuts down only twice a year, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, that’s it, no exceptions…except today. In the summertime, he opens six in the morning, a little later in the winter months, and has always said he doesn’t close until the last customer leaves the store. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Closed sign hanging in that window, ever—it hangs there silently, a testament to the type of woman Evie was, what she meant to this town, what she meant to me.

  Closed, like the sign says. I can still see the exact shape of my mother’s mouth when she announced over dinner that Evie was gone, I remember the way my dad’s jaw stopped in mid-chew, the way Dan’s hand stiffened in mine before he even knew who we were talking about, he just sensed the shock and knew he had to hold onto me, he knew the sign was going up, closed. With the clarity of a photograph, that moment is frozen in time, filed away with the precious few earth-shattering memories I’ve gathered in my life. Among them is the wonder and trepidation that flashed through me the first time my mother let me hold Caitlin almost a full week after she came home from the hospital. Before then it was always, “Watch the baby,” and “Keep it down, the baby’s sleeping,” and “You can’t play with her, Mike, she’s too little.” I thought she might be made of porcelain or glass, the way my mother carried on, and one afternoon when I was supposed to be watching cartoons, I snuck upstairs to the crib to see what the fuss was all about.

  She lay curled up like a doll, tiny hands fisted at her cheeks, tiny eyes scrunched shut, tiny legs pulled up to her belly. I had never been so close to a baby before—I was nine, that galooting age when boys weren’t allowed near babies, or kittens, or anything delicate like that. Still, she looked so perfect, a miniature human, I just had to touch her. When I reached into the crib, though, I heard my mom’s voice in quiet warning, “Michael.”

  I turned. Mom was right behind me—I hadn’t heard her come into the room. “She’s so small,” I whispered. I tried to take a step back but my mom was so close that I bumped into her and stopped where I was. “I wasn’t going to hurt her,” I promised, looking up into my mother’s face. “Honest, Momma. I just wanted to see…”

  With a sigh, Mom reached over me into the crib and lifted Caitlin into her arms. For a moment I craned my neck back as she cradled the baby to her, and then she knelt down and lowered her arms, draping them over me so Caitlin was in front of us both. “You want to hold her?” she asked softly.

  “You sure?” I asked, scared. When my mom nodded, I started to ease my arms around my mother’s own, around the baby, who felt so small and fragile in my embrace. Pulling back, I shook my head. I didn’t want to break her, I didn’t want to be held accountable if something happened, I was too big and clumsy and I was going to hurt her, I just knew it—

  But Mom murmured, “It’s okay. I’ve got her.” So I tried again, carefully wrapping my arms around the baby. When my mom didn’t move away, I grew bold and stepped closer, mimicking my mother’s stance until it seemed like the baby was in my arms. As I stared down at Caitlin’s tiny, precious face, scarcely able to breathe for fear of waking her, my sister felt the warmth of a body beside her and turned into me, cheeks nuzzling my chest, mouth open in a tiny, tiny sigh.

  The memory hits me hard—despite how far along she was in the pregnancy that year, Mom still insisted on visiting Evie. Everyone laughed when we arrived, joked that they didn’t think we’d make it, and with a rare smile, my dad admitted that there was a time or two driving down those back country roads when he thought the baby was going to come no matter what. That first night here, after the traditional welcoming dinner over the grill, Mom complained of gas. Two hours later, it was labor. The next morning, Evie woke Ray and me and Stephen, spending the night, to drive us into Franklin to see the new baby. In that pre-dawn world, as we sped down the road, Grosso’s had been open. Now it’s closed.

  The sign moves out of sight as we take the turn and Morrison’s looms into view, as nondescript as any other house in town. The only suggestion that it’s something more is the discreet sign in the front yard, wooden, that hangs between fat, rounded posts, black letters scripted ornately across the white paint. Est. 1923, it reads, Morrison’s Funeral Home, and beneath that the address, a phone number, and in tiny print that s
eems to grow as we get closer, Proudly Serving the Fine People of Sugar Creek.

  Pavement stretches back down the street towards Grosso’s—the parking lot. As I pull in, I notice a long, black car parked at the far end of the lot, closest to the house. Curtains obscure the interior of the vehicle, and a silver curlicue decorates the raised roof. The black surface gleams like obsidian, polished and waxed and still damp with morning dew. Without looking at the license plate, I know it reads MRRSN 1. They’ve had that same plate on that hearse for as long as I can remember. There aren’t any others, just this one, they don’t need any others in a town of this size, but that 1 is there nonetheless, hopeful. I don’t want to park near that car. I try not to even look at it, my gaze roaming the parking lot instead, as if I have to search for a spot. “Any one will do,” Dan tells me.

  But someone directs traffic—one of the funeral home employees, an elderly man whose dark suit and tie is so incongruous with the day around him that he looks like a bruise against the clear blue sky. He stands in the middle of the first aisle of the lot and uses both hands to direct us into the parking spots. The first car turns left, pulling into a space right beside the hearse, thank God that’s not me. Next car turns right, parking behind the hearse. Who’s idea again was it for us to be so close to the front of the line? You had to get out first, I tell myself, waiting for my turn to park. You were on the street, Michael, what were you going to do? Pull over and wait until all the other cars left? Right now, with the hearse at the edge of my vision like a blind spot, that doesn’t seem like it would’ve been a bad idea.

  Then it’s our turn. I’m motioned into a spot on the right, in the row behind the hearse. Three or four cars stretch between us and the end of the lot, a small buffer of space but a comfort nonetheless—at least the damn coffin-carrier isn’t right behind us or directly on either side. I can’t even see it in any of my mirrors, though when I get out of the car it’s there, insidious, malignant, waiting with the unflappable calm of a bully in the schoolyard after the last bell rings. I keep my head down, my eyes averted—it still seems to appear in the corners of my vision, haunting, dark like the shadowy image that lingers after a burst of bright light. When I close the door, it’s there, I can feel it behind me, I can see it even though I try desperately not to. I don’t know how I’ll make it past that damn car and into the funeral parlor without losing my mind.

  A hand on my arm startles me, and when I turn, I find myself in a sudden, soft embrace. “Michael,” my Aunt Billy sighs, her perfume a comforting rush that envelopes me like nostalgia. Beneath her quiet words, I can hear a faint tremor, and she shivers in my arms, her strength a mirage that threatens to dissipate like fog in the sun. “How are you holding up?” she wants to know.

  “Carefully,” I tell her. It brings an absent smile to her face and she hugs me tighter, as if she hopes that I’ll be able to stop the trembling that runs through her tall, thin frame. “What about you?” I ask. “Are you doing okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assures me. Pulling back, she smoothes a hand through my hair, down the side of my face, to the collar of my sweater. She watches her fingers as they straighten the knit with a maternal touch. “A few more hours, honey, and all this will finally be over. We’ll make it, you’ll see. We’re all going to be fine.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that, but as I start to reply, she turns away, already talking to Emily. “And how are you doing today, sweetheart?” she asks, taking the young girl’s hand.

  My cousin buries her face in Aunt Billy’s chest to block out the nightmarish vision just a few cars away. “I want to go home,” she whispers. Our aunt pets the girl’s hair with long, soothing strokes and murmurs that she knows, she knows.

  “Well?” Dan asks, coming around the front of the car to where I stand. He eases a comforting arm around my shoulders, pulls me close and gratefully I lean into him, let him take control. Concern laces his features, giving him an almost angry appearance with furrowed brow, mouth drawn down, eyes flashing in the sunlight. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  I force a laugh that sounds fake to my own ears. “I have to be,” I tell him. “Too late to turn back now.”

  Aunt Billy leads Emily to the house and I start to follow, but Dan doesn’t budge, just catches my hand and I turn to find him staring at me with such intensity that I have to ask, “What?”

  Taking a step to close the distance between us, he lowers his voice and reminds me, “I’m here for you, Michael. Remember that. If you need to get out at any time, you let me know and I’ll lead the way. If it’s too much for you in there, if you can’t handle it, don’t start worrying what your family’s going to say if you leave. I’m with you no matter what, you know that. I’ll stand beside you throughout the whole service, but if you need to go, then I’ll be right behind you on the way out.”

  His words fill my heart with an emotion I don’t think I can contain. “I love you,” I sigh, and I press my lips to his in a hungry kiss, despite the crowd that’s growing in the parking lot—relatives, mostly, though I see a few residents of Sugar Creek have already made it out to pay their last respects to one of their own. Let them say what they will, I need this, I need him to make it through today. With my forehead resting against his, I meet his steady gaze and smile sadly. One hand cups the back of his neck, my fingers rubbing over the bristly hairs that he trimmed short this morning, and the other is splayed across the front of his shirt as if drawing strength from his muscled chest, his warmth.

  I stare at him and can hardly imagine our roles reversed, me the strong one, him weak and vulnerable and on the verge of tears. There are moments, but not many—the time Dan cut off the tip of his finger one night while cooking dinner, for instance. His eyes filled with pain and his face blanched, he just stared as dark blood welled up beneath his nail. I was at the sink, rinsing vegetables, talking about something or other, and didn’t even notice that he had stopped what he was doing. “Mike,” he had said then, his voice gravelly, almost in awe. He cleared his throat, tried again, and when I looked up, I saw one single red rivulet winding down his finger like a stray tear. As I watched, it hung suspended from the base of his thumb and for a breathless moment, neither of us said a word. Then it dripped to the floor.

  Spurred into motion, I grabbed his wrist and forced his hand beneath the rushing water in the sink. “Hold it here,” I instructed, squeezing the first knuckle of his finger hard to stop the bleeding. I was running on pure instinct alone. Pulled out a drawer, grabbed a handful of towels, shook them out onto the floor even as I assured him, “It’s just a little cut, baby, you’re going to be okay. Just rinse it off and I’ll get the car, can you do that for me? Just rinse it off.”

  By the time we reached the emergency room, he had bled through one towel and I simply wrapped another around his whole hand, I didn’t know what else to do. He held his arm against his chest and I held him as tight as I dared, regardless of the other people in the emergency room, fuck them. This was D.C., they had seen gay men before and he needed me. I hugged him to me, his head buried in my shoulder as I kept up the litany, shh baby, you’re going to be fine, it’s okay. I trembled inside, terrified. My courage was wearing thin and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up—I wanted to yell at the unfairness of my lover’s hurt, I wanted to barge through the swinging doors that led to the rest of the hospital and demand that someone care for him now, I wanted to make the bleeding stop and the pain go away and I couldn’t. All I could do was let him cling to me, hide his face against my chest and let me take care of things for a little while, until he was ready to go on again.

  Here, in the shadow of Morrison’s, a house we used to think was haunted simply because it was a funeral home, I realize he’s doing the same for me now—giving me a sanctuary, a place to hide until I’m ready to move on. In the meantime, he’ll keep this show going, he’ll take care of everything, he’ll take care of me. Until I can start taking care of myself again. “What
would I do without you?” I ask, hypothetical. I don’t want to know the answer to that. I hope I never have to find out.

  With a self-depreciating smile, Dan ducks his head, a thin color flooding his cheeks. I laugh and raise his chin so he’ll look at me—he’s a little boy again, how adorable he must have been at eight or ten, when he was so easily embarrassed. “What’s wrong?” I want to know. My smile slips a notch but doesn’t disappear entirely. He’s so cute like this, I’m going to have to try harder from now on to get him to blush.

  He kisses my thumb and admits, “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  Casually, I tease, “You’re wondering what I’d do without you, too?”

  That makes him grin. “Michael!” He laughs and slips a hand into mine as I lead him from the car. Suddenly I’m all too aware of the parking lot filling up around us, the somber clothes, the dark moods, the tears. I can almost imagine my mom at the house already, probably standing at one end of the porch and glaring across the yard at us, misreading this tender moment. But as we fall in with the stream of people heading inside, I don’t see her, thank God. The last thing I need right now are her judgmental eyes trying to lay the blame on me.

  Chapter 53: Morrison’s Funeral Home

  Stepping into the funeral home is disconcerting at first—it’s unlike anything I could have expected and for some reason that throws me off. There are no black drapes on the walls, no dark burgundy chairs, no flickering candles leading the way to some back room where the coffin is propped open on a raised bier. Nothing like that at all. If anything, I’m struck more by the normalcy of the house, the polished walnut-stained floors, the Queen Anne furniture, the nature prints and family photographs that decorate the off-white walls. Just like any other home. There’s nothing macabre, nothing sacred, not here.