The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  The morgue, then the arrangements. In the midst of it all, Charles wondered about Hannah. When he’d dropped her off, no one was home. He got out of the car and asked her if she’d be all right. Hannah nodded. Charles put a hand on her shoulder, and Hannah fixed her eyes on his other hand, which hung by his side.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Lee,” Hannah had said, then turned and walked toward the house.

  Today, the day of the wake, Charles woke early. Alice had taken a sleeping pill the night before, then another in the middle of the night, after getting up to make a call (to her friend Laila, in Chile). She would likely sleep another two hours, at least. Nick Sr. and Nick Jr. were at the Marriott. Rhea and Marcus were in the downstairs guest room and would be up soon. Charles stepped down the hall to Veda’s room. Alice had asked if she wanted to sleep with them, and Veda had said no. Charles didn’t blame her; their bed did not offer the warmth of comfort. Veda would have sensed this. Or, maybe she was simply old enough to feel her own sadness without any help.

  What does a young girl think or feel about anything? Charles realized more than ever that he had no earthly idea.

  He tapped Veda’s door open to see that she was not there. The covers were thrown off, as if she’d slept soundly then awakened with a start. Charles stepped back and walked down the hall: Benny’s door was open, and there Veda stood, next to Benny’s bed, in her nightgown and bare feet.

  She was surveying the room, which had been a mess the day they left for the shore. She’d made the bed and put away the trucks and trains in the big plastic bin they’d bought so optimistically. A pile of his dirty clothes lay neatly just next to the door. The carpet was filthy; a vacuuming would be the next logical task. But beholding the silence was the thing now. Silence and order.

  Charles stood still, but the floor creaked anyway—as if his insides had settled down into his feet. Veda looked over her shoulder. The expression on her face was enigmatic. Sad, yes, but maybe more confused. She whispered, “Can you show me how to do the laundry?” Charles felt something sink hard in his chest, sucking air down his throat. He’d felt this when Rhea called to tell him Essie had died. And again when they lost Bobby. He couldn’t associate the feeling with sadness, or anger, or fear exactly. Because he’d also felt it when Alice told him she was pregnant, with Veda. And what Charles had felt then was something he still couldn’t describe in words.

  Maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe he’d been plain irritated. Now, though—since that news had become flesh-and-blood Veda—now Charles looked back and couldn’t feel it, whatever it was, so simply. It wasn’t possible to feel anything simply anymore.

  Charles nodded. “Let’s get the sheets then, too,” he said.

  “No,” Veda said, now turning her body as if to guard the bed. “We have to leave it for now. We have to let something smell like him for a while.”

  Charles was speechless. His daughter was not often insistent. Veda had spoken in a tone mostly confident, but also with a hint of uncertainty. She needed her father’s confirmation. “Yes,” he said, finally. “Yes, we do.”

  The Weaver men arrived at 9:30, crisply suited and having breakfasted at the hotel; Reverend Haywood shortly thereafter, in black robes and red tie, unshy about asking Rhea to fix him a cup of strong coffee and toast with margarine. He’d been widowed the year before, and while the church ladies were busily identifying among the widows and spinsters the best next match for him, he lived alone. Alice liked Rev. Haywood well enough. He was even-tempered, and honest. And from listening in on Rhea’s and Charles’s talk of the comings and goings of ministers, he was no dime a dozen. There was no question, at any rate, that Rev. Haywood would officiate. The Weavers’ Episcopalianism had lapsed instantaneously after Alice’s mother died; there was no one but Rev. Haywood for a time such as this. Even Nick Sr. conceded.

  Joe Haywood was tall, light-skinned and thin-lipped, and both Alice and Charles knew, though did not say, that this was better than if he weren’t. Who ever knew what would set Nick Weaver off; he was a man accustomed to ruling every room he entered—to thinking and saying whatever he damn well pleased.

  Alice busied herself in the living room, rearranging and straightening pillows and chairs that were already arranged and straight. She spoke softly to herself—Now let’s see, that’s better— as if readying to host a holiday party. It was obvious that she was avoiding her father and brother, who sat in the parlor, feeling no need to either socialize or make themselves useful.

  Charles and Veda stood in the foyer, staring out through the screen door. Charles wore his only suit, Veda a navy sundress with an organdy collar that Rhea had bought for her last Easter. Charles had his arm around her, and Veda held the hand of that arm with both of hers. Neither wanted to be in the parlor with the casket. They stood without speaking, waiting for their friends to arrive.

  Dennis and Amy and Karen walked up to the door at the same time, like an accidental family. They didn’t bother making introductions but went straight to the parlor, and shortly after, the service started. Rev. Haywood led them in “Precious Lord” and “I Won’t Complain,” and his voice was so much stronger than the rest that it sounded more like a solo. Then they all sat down in folding chairs. Rev. Haywood spoke of death and resurrection, darkness and light. When he called Benny “Bennett,” Alice let a single tear fall; her great-grandfather was the only person in all the family whom her mother had loved. The reverend then spoke of God’s nearness, His presence incarnate, His greatness transformed into earthly form. “In times of grief there is nothing but the Lord’s comfort. We must unclench our fists and our hearts, we must let Him come in.” Charles saw Alice look down at her hands; she’d laid them flat in her lap, like a little girl practicing her manners.

  The cemetery was a five-minute drive. Karen and Amy said they would walk. Veda wanted to walk too, but when she looked to Charles he shook his head. The men loaded the casket into the hearse, then Charles, Alice, and Veda drove directly behind. On Kenyon Street, people sitting on their porches stood up; some clasped their hands together in prayer. The few neighbors from the old days, who knew Uncle Marvin, nodded their heads. Alice stared straight ahead. When Charles reached over, he felt her hand balled into a fist, and after a few moments, when she didn’t unclench it, he drew his hand back.

  The sun shone brightly, though a pleasant breeze cooled things down. Alice wore large sunglasses that covered nearly half her face. During Reverend Haywood’s prayer, Alice crossed her arms and turned her head away. No one saw her biting the inside of her lip so hard she could feel the pain shoot to the top of her head. The burial was brief and no-nonsense. As they began to disperse, Veda bent down and scooped up a mound of dirt with both hands, then fanned out her fingers to let the loose brown earth spill into the hole.

  Afterward, in the parlor, Nick Sr. broke the ice. “Thank you, Reverend,” he said, shaking Joe Haywood’s hand heartily. “God’s mercy.” Charles watched his father-in-law proceed to work the room, shaking hands and delivering lines about “What a tragedy” and “God’s comfort.” His fleshy pink face and silver hair made Charles think of an elderly relation of Lee Atwater, and he noted with some relief that this burst of sociability meant that his father-in-law was soon to make his exit. No doubt his flight was scheduled for early afternoon.

  When he left, Nick Jr. shut the door behind him, then made himself a plate of deviled eggs and carrot sticks. He came to stand with Charles and Dennis, a good half foot shorter than Dennis, who towered. Nick shook his head, crunching a carrot. “Christ, what a sonofabitch,” he said. Dennis busted out laughing, then covered his mouth. Charles, too, chuckled. When Alice shot a silencing look their way, Charles thought, what a shame. She might have laughed, too.

  “So how’s your team looking this year?” Nick asked. “Got any intel on draft picks?”

  “No way y’all can top last year,” Dennis said. Dennis’s people were originally from Dallas, die-hard Cowboys fans.

  “What goes up must com
e down,” Nick agreed.

  The security manager’s office was completely separate from the training and coaching department. Only the Director of Security, Charles’s boss’s boss’s boss, would catch wind of preseason rumors.

  “Y’all just smartin from old wounds,” Charles said. The Dolphins-Redskins match the year before had been some kind of breakthrough for him and Nick, who lived in southern Florida. When Nick called for Alice the week before the Super Bowl, and Charles had answered, each argued his team’s obvious advantages. After the Redskins won, Charles called Nick down in Boca and left a boisterous, taunting message on his machine (Nick was at a sports bar, drunk and getting drunker); he’d even gotten Benny to whoop like an Indian into the phone. “Enough, for God’s sake,” Alice had said, but Charles knew it pleased her.

  The three stood together a few minutes longer, shifting weight, holding plastic cups emptied down to ice cubes, before Charles excused himself to the bathroom. He walked by Rhea and Marcus, sitting together on the stairs, whispering while Marcus massaged Rhea’s neck. Charles kept walking, past the bathroom, and headed through the kitchen to the back door, with the idea of taking a solitary moment in the yard. He found Alice there, putting out a cigarette. Neither of them had smoked in years. Where had she gotten it? Maybe Dennis, Charles thought. Or Karen Mitchell.

  “Got another?”

  Alice didn’t seem startled, or surprised. She held a pack of Camels in her left hand, held it up for him to take it—the whole thing—so he did.

  “It wasn’t how I remembered it,” Alice said.

  Charles didn’t know what she meant, what exactly she was remembering. She’d smoked in high school and college but had quit by the time they met. “They took all the nicotine out,” Charles said. “Most of it, anyway.”

  “What’s the point then? If it’s going to be bad, it should be good.” Alice’s voice was floaty, a little spooky. She’d put on a very dark lipstick today. Those big sunglasses. Charles didn’t know her at all.

  They stood together in silence while Charles smoked. They went back in together, and for another hour told their friends and family that they were doing fine, just fine. Thank you so much for coming.

  2.

  Charles took a week of bereavement leave. Only three days of it was paid time, and those two extra days worried him. The burial had cost. And he wanted to go back to work, wanted to be busy, to get away from the silence, from Alice, who wasn’t speaking at all.

  Alice’s own leave of absence was “indefinite.” They needed the money now, but Charles didn’t say anything. If she took too long, the home might replace her, they both knew that. Charles thought, well, no need to put money in Benny’s college fund anymore; and though it wasn’t much, they could transfer the balance into Veda’s. No need for a babysitter, either. The thoughts ambled in, like deadbeat old friends who took liberties, and Charles shook them away. He knew he had to be careful about such thoughts, had to keep them to himself.

  On Monday and Tuesday, Veda stayed mostly in her room. School would start in a week, and she needed some things: a list had come in the mail from school. Charles would be the one to take her. Alice spent all day in the kitchen, putting loose photos into a gigantic leather album she’d dug out of a drawer. When she wasn’t doing that, she was upstairs sleeping. In the middle of the night, Alice whispered and cried on the phone downstairs, to Laila, and to another friend—Pauline, Charles guessed, who lived in England.

  Charles took Veda to the Kmart. She didn’t complain, like she usually did, about how ghet-to it was, about wanting to go instead to Peoples, and then to Sizzler afterward. Benny had always liked the Kmart. Charles thought about this, for the first time—that Benny had had a personality, and preferences. Benny had liked Kmart because it was usually disorderly, a little grimy. What did this mean, Charles wondered. Who would Benny have grown into.

  Protractor and compass. Glue stick. Yellow highlighter pen. Posterboard, two different sizes. Erasable pens, blue or black ink (Please, no red! the teacher had written in bold letters). Erasable pens, Charles thought. What a contradiction. What was wrong with good old pencils? He always carried a mechanical pencil in his shirt pocket, along with a Bic ballpoint to fill out carbon-backed forms.

  The school-supplies aisle was a mess: items pulled off their chrome posts and tossed here, there, everywhere. Certain areas were piled high, others bare. The impression of dregs. But they’d come at the dinner hour, six o’clock, so it was quiet, the wreckage after the storm. Veda stood there, arms out to her sides and palms out, a stance of both irritation and despair.

  “It’s okay, V,” Charles said. “There’s still a lot of stuff here, we just need to sort through it.” He remembered clothes shopping with Rhea and Nona at the Salvation Army when he was young. He’d hated that vision of dregs, too—everything pawed over, the smell of vinegar. Why couldn’t he have new things, like Dennis, whose father was still around, a pharmacist with a degree. Charles had drawn the line at secondhand stores when it came to his own kids. Alice shopped at thrift stores for herself, and one day brought home almost-matching rugby shirts for him and Benny. “Aren’t these great?” she said. “Like new.”

  “No,” Charles had said. He took the shirts and marched outside, stuffed them in the garbage can.

  “Here,” Charles said, handing Veda the shopping basket and the list. “Think treasure hunt. I need to go look for a thermos for you, okay? Your mother says you need a new one.” It was the only thing Alice had said as they were leaving the house. “Don’t leave this aisle. I’ll be right back.” Veda nodded, sighing. She’ll be okay, Charles thought. She was going to roll up her sleeves like the good kid she was.

  Charles squinted up at the signs above the aisles. Was it sporting goods? Or maybe the soup and coffee aisle. He began to move briskly, up and down the aisles. The fluorescent lights suddenly seemed too bright; they were sapping Charles of energy and clear thinking. Since the funeral he’d not slept well, or much. And he’d not gone for a run or to the gym since before they’d left for Rehoboth. When the painkiller/sleep aids aisle presented itself, Charles found himself drawn, and drifting.

  It was a long aisle, and at the far end, he saw her. The lone girl, bespectacled, black-haired, long-limbed. She was reaching for small boxes, taking them down, reading the labels, replacing them on the shelf. Charles took a tentative step, then another, toward her, to make sure it was Hannah. It was. She wore her brown purse slung across her front, as always.

  There’d been no question of inviting Hannah to the funeral, no discussion; Charles thought to bring it up but knew Alice wouldn’t have it. Hannah’s absence was conspicuous, though. She’d been with Benny nearly every day for four months; what else could it mean but that she was being held responsible? That Benny’s loved ones saw Hannah as the black hand of his death.

  Charles stepped backward up the aisle, slowly, like a bystander backing away from a crime scene. He’d seen her but did not want to be seen.

  Good-bye, Mr. Lee, she’d said. Seeing her now, he heard her words in a new way. We can’t know each other anymore, was what she’d meant. We have to erase everything. Charles took another step backward, then another. His body and his mind crossed each other, moving in opposite directions. He wanted to know … how she was. Had something changed, broken. Was she all right.

  Why did he want to know?

  It didn’t matter why. Different things mattered now. There were things Charles wanted to know because he just did.

  But he did not walk forward. He turned and headed back to aisle nine, back to Veda. She was practicing the ballerina foot positions Amy Mitchell had taught her. Her basket was nearly full. Charles grabbed her hand.

  “Wait, what about—”

  “Leave it.” He walked and talked, trying to sound casual. “You know, let’s drive over to Peoples. Then we can head to Sizzler for dinner. I’ll call your mom.”

  Charles led Veda out the automatic doors into the parking lot. He did no
t look around. They got into the car and drove away. He had kept Veda from seeing Hannah, kept Hannah from seeing them. Even so, Charles knew, as he drove, that he was not running from her, but was rather compelled by a different idea altogether.

  3.

  The last days of August were unusually cool and cloudy. The oldest among the porch sitters stayed inside; there were grumblings about whether they’d be able to hold their Labor Day barbecues.

  Charles went out to Wheaton for the third morning in a row. He took the Metrobus early Friday and didn’t say where he was going. No one asked. He came home to make lunch for Veda, and then went out again, to Barkley’s, which was Dennis’s daily watering hole now that his wife, Sherisse, had gone. The two men would drink in broad daylight and stare at ESPN on the TV and say little. Once, Charles was tempted to talk to Dennis, to tell what he’d been doing in the mornings; what he’d seen, what he’d learned. But he took one look at his unshaven, red-eyed friend and knew that Dennis was in no shape to listen, really listen, to what Charles had to say. He would take it the wrong way. Then again, just what would be the right way.

  Hannah was home alone in the mornings. Charles had counted on that. The first morning he went, he just stood on the street, watching the house, until he felt conspicuous. Then he walked across the road to the bus shelter and sat on the bench. After about an hour, and five buses, he saw movement in one of the downstairs windows. He couldn’t see very well, but he knew it was Hannah. When she disappeared from the window, he imagined her going upstairs to her room, or maybe downstairs to the basement. Maybe the TV was down there.

  Benny had always nagged about finishing the basement of their house. He’d enlisted Alice as his ally. “They do need a playroom,” Alice said. “We can put the TV down there, and a foosball table.” The foosball was her sweetener: Dennis and Charles had grown up on foosball, they’d play at Dennis’s all the time. The other thing they used to do in Dennis’s basement was smoke cigarettes and, eventually, weed. Did they want to create these hiding places for the children so soon? Charles liked watching TV upstairs with Veda, and Benny was just getting interested in football.