“Maybe it’s what we are supposed to do.”
I returned to my food. I took a bite of chicken and chewed it slowly.
“We?” I said.
“Haven’t you been thinking about it? Since Florida?”
I stuffed more food in my mouth.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Not really.”
He took a sip of beer.
“Well, I’ve thought it all out. I’ll pay you. We’ll work out the percentage. If you’re not going to go to school for a while, you need a job.”
My dad had never been a great disciplinarian, and his stern glance looked like an empty threat. He quickly switched tactics.
“Look. I want this business to work,” he said, “and I’ve realized I can’t do it by myself. I don’t have all the skills I need. I could use you, Tess. You showed me something in Ocala. You understand people. You know what they want. I think you might have a knack for this.”
I watched him carefully. A lock of graying hair hung over his right eye. He didn’t brush it away. I wished I could trust him entirely, that I could feel nothing but good about all of this. But it was too easy to remember other promises he’d made. The way he had changed in the last few years. Just because he was acting more like his old self tonight, didn’t mean all was forgotten.
“What kind of partnership are we talking about?” I asked. “Do I actually get a say in things?”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s the point. I want you to weigh in.”
He fidgeted at the table. I stopped to think. It had been a while since I’d had any leverage in a situation.
“I have two conditions,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes.
“Okay . . .”
“First, any extra profits we make go back in my college account.”
My dad pursed his lips.
“You just dropped out of high school,” he said. “Why do you need a college account?”
I looked down at my plate.
“It’s the principle,” I said. “That money was mine, and you spent it like an a-hole. Either you agree to repay it, or there’s no deal.”
He wiped some condensation off the table with his palm.
“Fine,” he said. “I told you I’d pay you back. See. Now I’m going to. Are we good?”
“No,” I said. “We’re not.”
“What else?”
“Condition two: I’m not going back to Forever Friends,” I said. “And you have to defend me when Mom tries to make me. I’m done there. No more community building. No more farming. The Quakers are fine, but I’m not one of them.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
“Your best isn’t good enough,” I said. “I actually want results.”
“Done,” he said.
“Condition three: Hand me your beer,” I said.
“You said there were two conditions.”
“I lied.”
He squinted at me.
“You’re not taking this beer,” he said.
I waited, expressionless.
It took him a second, but gradually he slid the can down my way. I grabbed it and filled half my empty water glass. Then I slid it back to him.
“I’m not toasting you with water,” I said, and held up my glass.
He held up his half-empty beer can.
“Morituri te salutant,” I said.
He lowered the can.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Latin. It means ‘those who are about to die, salute you!’ Criminals used to say it before dying for Caesar in staged naval battles. It seems appropriate now that we’re making a living on corpses. Don’t you think?”
My father considered this a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Morituri te salutant.”
We air-toasted. Then we drank.
And that’s how I became a funeral planner.
17
The first phone call came that same night.
I heard the sound coming from upstairs: a muffled chime echoing through the hallway. It got louder at the foot of the stairs. I went up to the guest room and found my cell phone ringing on the dresser. I thought I had turned it off. I didn’t remember switching it back on. I looked down at the unfamiliar number. I pressed talk.
There was silence on the line. Then a soft, unsure voice.
“Is this . . . Tess?”
It was not a low voice like Jonah’s, but somehow I recognized it without having heard it before. I looked down at the screen again, at the seconds of the call ticking away. Slowly, I brought the phone back to my ear. Then I sat down on the bed, took a breath, and said: “That depends. Who wants to know?”
More silence.
“I didn’t think this would actually be your number,” he said.
“Why would I give you a fake one?”
This signaled another long pause.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
Each time Daniel Torres spoke, I was surprised to hear his voice. I was surprised that it existed at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a while. “Is this weird for you or something?”
No response.
“I mean, is it strange to talk to another human being without an element of deep deception in the mix? I can’t imagine how tough this must be for you.”
I had told myself to stay calm—not to get too upset before I had the chance to learn something—but it was difficult.
“Maybe . . . this isn’t a good idea,” he said finally.
I was lying down on my bed, the taste of stale beer on my tongue. The ceiling above my bed was cracked and peeling.
“Christ,” I said. “Of course it isn’t a good idea. How could it be? I don’t know you. You’re nothing but a creepy stranger to me. I don’t even know where you’re calling from.”
“Romeoville,” he said right away.
His voice was a little louder this time.
“Where?” I said.
“Romeoville, Illinois,” he said. “It’s a suburb of Chicago. By Joliet.”
This time it was my turn to pause.
“Romeoville by Joliet?” I said, “That sounds totally made up.”
“It isn’t,” he said. “It’s totally real. I’m looking at it right now. It’s as boring as ever.”
“And that’s where you grew up?”
“No. We moved around a lot. My dad’s a flight instructor.”
For some reason, this seemed like the oddest thing in the world to me. The father of this person I had known but not known taught people to fly airplanes in Illinois.
“So,” he said. “What else?”
Still stuck in thought, I barely heard his question.
“What’s that?” I said.
“What else do you want to know about me? So I’m less of a creepy stranger. If that’s . . . you know . . . possible.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to know about him. Maybe I just wanted to know he was a real person, to hear a voice. But he had opened the door, so I started asking questions. One after the next. And this is what I learned:
Daniel was an only child like me. His dad was Mexican American and his mom was white. He grew up speaking two languages, but he mostly hung out with white kids in his suburban high school and he didn’t have much of an opportunity to use his Spanish.
What else?
He was eighteen years old.
What else?
His parents were still together, but they seemed to get along only when he was around as a buffer. He hardly ever saw them talking alone.
What else?
He wasn’t sure what color his eyes were; his driver’s license said hazel. His mom thought they were brown.
What else?
What else?
The first person to die in his life was his cousin who drowned while swimming in a river with a strong current.
What else?
He was bullied in high school for being dorky and really into computer games.
What else?
His favorite place was the Natural History Museum in Chicago.
What else?
His favorite holiday was the Fourth of July because he used to be a bit of a pyro.
What else?
He didn’t know his favorite color because, okay, he was color blind.
What else?
He really did play video games too much.
What else?
He didn’t know why he couldn’t break up with me as Jonah, or why he had kept doing what he did. He was still confused about it all and maybe that was why it was kind of hard to talk to me.
“Okay, sure,” I said, breaking off our game of twenty questions, “But I want to know what your endgame was. Did you ever once think of that when you were lying to me for half a year?”
I could feel my face getting hot. I was holding my breath tight in my chest.
“I don’t know.”
He was tentative suddenly.
“Yes, you do!” I said. “Even if you didn’t think about it consciously, you had to have some kind of idea in the back of your mind. Some sort of fantasy about what would happen.”
“I guess I thought—”
“No more lies,” I said softly. “If you ever want to talk to me again, which probably isn’t going to happen anyway, you have to tell the truth.”
He took a medium-size pause. Then he said: “I thought I would tell you and then you would love me.”
“That’s it? That’s what you thought?”
“Yes. You would love me or I would end it as Jonah and you would never know.”
“And you would have manipulated me for months without telling me. End of story.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you think that was okay?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did Jonah ever know?”
“At first. But he stopped going online after awhile.”
“Wait a minute. He knew what you were doing and he didn’t care?”
Daniel took a shallow breath.
“He didn’t care.”
It was perfectly clear to me then: I had reached my limit.
“I can’t talk anymore today,” I said.
“Tess.”
“No more. Stop saying things.”
Ten seconds of dead air. Then Daniel spoke again in his soft voice.
“Listen, I have to ask you a question, though. Just one.”
I didn’t answer.
“You could never tell the difference between me and Jonah? You never sensed anything? The whole time?”
I thought of that poor sad man from the TV show. The guy who’d been duped. I closed my eyes.
“I can’t talk anymore today,” I said again.
This time I meant it. And I ended the call.
I didn’t move from the bed when I hung up. I stayed where I was for at least fifteen minutes, the back of my head pinned to the headboard. I was thinking of a moment, one that popped into my mind while I was talking to Daniel.
It was the aftermath of another high school party. One where I had basically been drinking alone in the company of others again—a pattern I’d done little to change since the farmhouse.
I wasn’t drunk, though, when I came home from the party. Just a little buzzed and frustrated. While I was out, Emma had given herself a haircut in the sink. Her blond locks were scattered all over my toothbrush, in my makeup, in a trail across the floor. Outside my window, there was a group of drunk boys tackling one another in the courtyard, calling out homophobic names. I sat down at my computer and dashed off a message.
I’m dropping out. I’m coming to live with you. Get ready.
He always seemed to be close to some device, and it never took long to get a response. This time was no exception.
You don’t even know me.
It was odd, looking back. We usually indulged each other’s fantasies with few exceptions. At the time I thought he meant that we hadn’t seen each other enough in person, which was undoubtedly true.
Now, I knew it must have been Daniel. And he was exactly right.
That’s what the honeymoon is for . . .
At the time, I shut off my computer and went to bed. And the next day, he sent an audio file of Chapel of Love and we carried on as usual. Now I couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if I’d asked him to explain himself that night. How didn’t I know him?
If I had pressed him, would he have told me everything I didn’t know?
18
Grace’s business card was thick and grainy to the touch.
I had been holding it for the last ten minutes, looking at every detail and trying to decide if I should call her. The card had a small picture of a bright green tree filled with birds on it. Adorable. Next to the tree were the words “Greener Pastures,” and then the name “Grace Ware,” along with her contact information. On the back, in the lower left corner, it said, “Made with soy and vegetable inks. Chemical-free processing.”
“Oh, thank God. Vegetable inks,” I said to no one.
Then I dialed the number and held my breath.
“Grace with Greener Pastures,” she answered right away.
Her voice left me momentarily stunned.
“Um . . .”
“Are you trying to reach Greener Pastures, miss?”
“Not yet I hope,” I said.
“Tess, is that you?”
I bit my bottom lip.
“Tess?”
“What?”
“Are you there?”
“Maybe.”
I heard her exhale into the phone.
“Why are you calling, Tess?”
“You told me to.”
“I told you to call if you weren’t angry.”
I was sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s car. He was in the grocery store, buying food for the week. I had been thinking about Jonah and Daniel, trying not to succumb to the dread when I reached into my pants pocket and her card was there.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
I looked out the windshield at the people going in and out of the store, stubbing out cigarettes, dragging their kids along. I suddenly wanted to cry for the futility of the world.
“Do what?” she said.
“Run a successful funeral business.”
“Oh,” she said. “That.”
“I liked your ceremony,” I said. “For Maxine. I know I was being a little bitchy about it, but the truth is it was really nice. It was better than anything my dad has done. That’s probably why he crawled into his shell.”
I watched as a bag boy waited for an old woman to open the trunk of her enormous Monte Carlo. I kept talking.
“I think you did something really nice for that woman. And it seemed to actually help the family. I’m not sure my dad is there yet. How’d you learn to do it?”
My dad was coming out of the store now, carrying two heavy bags. He pretended they were too heavy and smiled like a goof.
“Why don’t you come to my office?” Grace said. “My assistant can get us some coffee. We’ll talk about it. When are you free?”
I laughed out loud.
“What’s funny about that?”
“I’ve ruined my future,” I said. “I got nothing but time.”
“Come by this afternoon then,�
�� she said.
My dad was loading the bags in the trunk. What would he think if I was meeting with the enemy? Before I could respond, Grace spoke again.
“I’ll see you at three,” she said. “The address is on my card.”
■ ■ ■
In the end, I lied to my dad.
What other choice did I have? I sat around half the afternoon trying to think about how I could get him to understand why I needed business advice from his rival. But when the time came, I just told him I needed a giant box of tampons. Then I drove my ugly car to a neighborhood full of art galleries where Grace had her office. When I got there, I stood in front of a big window that faced the avenue. There was a sign hanging just behind the glass that read:
WHAT IS A DEATHCARE MIDWIFE?
Beneath these words was a list of answers to a question that I hadn’t asked:
AN ADVOCATE! We help you deal with anything you need in your time of loss, from legal paperwork to negotiation with area cemeteries and preserves!
A PLANNER! We arrange for in-home wakes and green burials outside of the traditional parlor system!
A STEWARD! We protect local ecological cycles and our planet as a whole with every decision we make!
A few too many exclamation points for my taste (!).
I had just finished reading it all when I heard the tap of fingernails on the glass. I looked past the sign to find a woman in square glasses staring back at me. I walked over to the door and stepped inside the modern office space.
“Miss Fowler?” the woman asked.
She squinted at me like I was out of focus.
“Yes,” I said. “But . . .”
“You’re early,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “That’s why I was outside.”
“I’ll let Grace know you’re here.”
She walked away and I looked around the small space. Aside from a very tiny coffin display, with models made of wicker, bamboo, and other planet-friendly stuff, you’d never know anyone dealt with death in this place. It looked like the acupuncturist’s office in Manhattan where my mom went.
Grace’s office door swung open, and the woman with the square glasses ushered me inside. I found Grace standing behind her desk. Her hair was piled on top of her head, held together by a mass of bobby pins. She looked like the bohemian art teacher I’d had in elementary school, a woman who wore sandals in the dead of winter and talked to us about the transcendent sensuality in Picasso’s early reclining nudes.
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