Part of him didn’t want to look—wanted, in fact, to turn and run from here as fast as he possibly could. Funerals were not for the dead, he knew, but for the living, services to help people cope with their grief. Well, he had seen precious little of his mom since he’d been ten years old. He loved her, but the idea that he had lost someone he hadn’t even had in the first place seemed a little silly. He didn’t need the funeral, and he didn’t want to be reminded that she had died all by herself in a nursing home, brought down by her own addictions, while he slept (well, tried to sleep) in luxury at the Brittan house.
He knew he couldn’t leave, though. And he knew that if he didn’t look at her, he would forever remember the apparition at Jessica’s parents’ place, and he didn’t want that to be his last image of his mom. He walked slowly toward the casket, gaze on the threadbare carpet, the yellowed walls, his own black dress shoes, polished to a high gloss.
Finally, he stood before it and made himself look, half fearing that he would see her as she had appeared the other night, filthy and frightening. Instead, she was beautiful. Her hair had been styled, her face made up nicely, her hands crossed over her chest. She might have been catching a quick nap before going to a party. But this nap would last forever, and the party would never begin.
Tim tried once again to call up more memories of happier times, to remember who Mary Jensen had been in her prime. A Fourth of July block party, when she had been resplendent in a red blouse and blue skirt, with white pearls, shoes, and belt, handing out sparklers to the neighborhood kids. A quiet summer’s day when he was playing outside by himself, as he had often done, being a shy and often fearful kid, and she brought him a glass of lemonade, then sat with him, asking interested questions about his army men. A winter afternoon, with howling winds buffeting the house when she made hot chocolate for him and the neighbor girl, Katie. The three of them had assembled puzzles together, and his mom’s good spirits and natural charm had made the afternoon rush by. Nights, so many of them, when she tucked him in with a kiss and a story.
You can’t sum up a lifetime standing here, Timmy,the voice said.Good and bad, happy and sad—the memories will be with you forever. Just say your good-byes. There’s a funeral waiting for you .
He touched the edge of the casket once, and turned away.
The rain broke for the funeral, but the cemetery was dotted with puddles, the headstones still dark and slick with water. Colors seemed brighter, more saturated under the overcast sky than they would have on a sunny day, when the light would have washed them out. Green and orange lichens on some of the older stones seemed almost to glow, and a scrap of red plastic around the neck of a vase of white flowers fluttered, mesmerizing Tim’s attention. Autumn leaves crusted the green grass, as if in imitation of the lichens Tim saw.
A couple of dozen people showed, many of whom Tim didn’t even recognize. One person who should have been here but wasn’t—assuming he had just abandoned them, like everyone said—was his father. Rob Jensen. He wondered briefly if any new attempt had been made to track him down, to let him know that the woman he had left behind had finally given up the fight. Probably not, he guessed. No one had been able to find him fifteen years before, and it would only be more difficult for anyone to do so now.
The other person who should have been there was Jessica. Given their last conversation, though, Tim hadn’t even told her when or where the funeral was taking place. If she cared, she knew his cell number.
Everyone who was there wore dark clothes, of course, and several carried umbrellas in case the skies opened up once again. Tim and Uncle Mike were among the pallbearers, and Tim was surprised at how light the big box was, as if she weren’t even inside.
Uncle Mike looked uncomfortable in his black suit. He wasn’t a guy who ever wore formal clothes; Tim couldn’t even remember the last time he’d worn a necktie. He was a blue collar man all the way, a working man who related to the working men who drank in his place because he was just like them. He could talk cars, construction, or sports with anyone who walked through his door, but he’d have been absolutely lost atEnd Magazine . Tim, more or less through osmosis, had learned how to mix drinks, though, and was often pressed into bartending service at parties. Uncle Mike’s dark, thinning hair was starting to gray, Tim noticed. His craggy face was dour, his lips pressed together in a thin line, his hands loose at his sides, as he listened to the preacher’s spiel.
“Thou knowest the secrets of our hearts,” the pastor said. He was as gray as the sky—gray hair, gray pallor to his skin. His suit was black, but if it hadn’t been he would have blended right into the background. He’d given a short service back at the funeral home, his words a series of platitudes that meant nothing except that he had never known Tim’s mother for a day of her life. He had seemed genuine when he expressed his sorrow to Tim privately, but Tim figured that, like a stage actor mouthing the same lines day after day, they became second nature and not hard to sell. “Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer, but spare us and suffer us not at our last hour. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Tim found his mind wandering as the preacher droned on. He knew the words were important to some, but to him they were mostly just background noise. They wouldn’t bring his mom back or make her life—or death—any more meaningful.
It might have helped, he thought, if Jessica had been here. As it stood, he had not only lost his mother, but possibly his girlfriend. When he had thrown his belongings into his overnight bag at her house on Thanksgiving night, she had been fuming. “What am I going to tell my parents?” she demanded. “That you just got up and left in the middle of the night?”
“You could tell them my mother died,” Tim had replied.
“But—it’s not like there’s anything you can do for her now,” she shot back, fury animating her eyes. “Your uncle is handling things, right?”
“Yeah…”
“So what can you do tonight? You haven’t had enough sleep, you can’t drive all that way in the middle of the night for nothing.”
“Look, Jessica…” To really explain how he felt, why he had to leave right now, he’d have had to tell her all about the visitation he’d had. She thought it was simply a bad dream, but he knew it was more than that, and the timing seemed to confirm it. He had to get out of here, couldn’t spend another minute in this house, and she would just have to deal.
“Whatever, Tim. If you want to go dashing off into the night, go ahead. I can’t stop you. I’ll just tell my parents you flaked out, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Tim said, a burst of anger charging through him. She just didn’t seem to get that his mother had died and that it meant something to him. His bag packed, they embraced tentatively, awkwardly, and then he ran out of the house. That was the last he’d seen her, or heard from her.
Looking off across the cemetery, yet another flash of color caught his eye. He watched for it again, and saw a young girl, standing in the shade of a tree. She wasn’t part of the funeral, and this was the only one taking place here at the moment. She was just someone who had wandered into the cemetery. She was maybe eleven, and her clothes were oddly mismatched, as if she had dressed herself from thrift shop castoffs. Around her neck she had a striped, multicolored scarf. Beneath that, a red sweater with a white pattern arcing across her shoulders, like something out ofHeidi . The sweater was zipped tight, but a dress trailed out from underneath it, and under the dress were blue jeans, and finally red sneakers. It was almost as if she had intentionally decided to wear every color not normally seen at funerals. Her hair was long, copper-colored, her face serious. She held Tim’s gaze for a long time, until he decided he really should be paying attention to his mother’s send-off.
Obviously, he had missed something. Uncle Mike nudged him. “You’re supposed to throw some dirt in the hole,” he whispered. “Nobody else can until you do.”
He had been told about this part, but the cue had flown right past him. He squatted down, t
ook a handful of earth, and tossed it gently onto his mother’s casket. It rattled down on her, and for a brief moment he had the absurd hope that it wouldn’t wake her up.
When the service was all over and the guests were dispersing, Tim walked out with Uncle Mike. His hand hurt from being squeezed so hard by so many people. “Thanks for doing all this,” he said. His uncle had done all the planning, all the organizing—Tim wouldn’t have known where to begin. Tim had been staying with Uncle Mike for the last few days, but had spent a lot of his time alone in his old room behind the bar, and making that trip to Danville to see Dr. Matheson. He didn’t know how the man had arranged all this so quickly. Some people spent a year or more planning a wedding, Tim knew, and these days, it seemed that most of them had two or three of those during the course of a lifetime. Nobody ever got more than the one funeral, and it had to be cobbled together in less than a week.
“She was my sister.”
Tim had no answer for that. Maybe it did explain enough—Tim, an only child, a fatherless boy, now an orphan, had never had a sibling so he didn’t know. Both men kept walking, hands in their pockets, back toward the cars parked on the curved gravel drive. “You heading back tonight?” Uncle Mike asked.
Tim had been stalling about this, not making a commitment to anyone but himself. Not even to Dr. Matheson, really. Now, it seemed, the time had come. He had to either say something, or give it up forever. “Actually, I was thinking I might stay around tonight. In the house.”
Uncle Mike shot him a surprised glance. “I thought you didn’t like being in that house.”
“Yeah, well…it’s just a house.” He didn’t want to go into detail—didn’t want to have to tell his uncle, any more than he had wanted to tell Jessica, about the visitation the other night that had driven him back to Dr. Matheson. Uncle Mike knew he’d gone to see the psychiatrist, but not, in any detail, what they had talked about. He didn’t know that she had pushed Tim to spend one night there.
Or that Tim had agreed, finally, that it was necessary.
It’s just a house. If he said it, thought it, often enough, maybe it would be true.
“The place is a mess,” Uncle Mike said, as if he was trying to talk Tim out of staying. “I’ve been doing a lot of work there, and…I got some people coming to look at it.”
“I won’t mess anything up.” He didn’t want to be dissuaded, now that he had made up his mind. It wouldn’t take much to make him abandon his plan, but if he didn’t do it now, especially because Uncle Mike was planning to sell the place, then he never would. Once it was sold, it would be too late. He could just see showing up when the new owners were sitting down to dinner, and asking if he could spend the night to see if the Boogeyman was real.
Back into an institution, if that happened. Probably to stay.
Anyway, if Dr. Matheson was right—and she usually was—this was what he needed. If he never had another opportunity to spend the night in his boyhood home, he would never get well. Never silence the voice in his head, or escape the things that he saw.
Before Uncle Mike could answer, Tim spotted a young woman he hadn’t noticed during the service. She was striking, with shoulder length brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and a jaw that would have made a sculptor proud. She pushed an older man in a wheelchair, and even through her black funeral attire Tim could tell she was strong and fit.
“Is that Katie Houghton?” he asked. Tim recognized her father first, even though the man had been hale when he’d last seen him, and then deduced that the woman with him must be Katie. Her dad had changed a lot less in fifteen years than she had. She had grown up, and very nicely.
Uncle Mike followed Tim’s gaze. “Yeah,” he replied. “How long’s it been?”
“A long time.”
“Her father’s gone downhill,” Uncle Mike told him. “You should go say hi to them while you’re here.”
Tim had done enough socializing for one day. He was tired, wrung out. He and Katie had been fast friends when they’d been little kids, but he couldn’t face renewing the acquaintance right now. “Maybe I can stop by tomorrow,” he suggested.
“She’d like that.”
Tim and Uncle Mike had come in separate vehicles—Uncle Mike in an old, faded red pickup truck, Tim in his blue Mustang. They had reached the truck now, and Tim searched for something to say…ideally, something cogent or helpful in some way. The kind of wisdom people should share at funerals, to help others feel better. But his mind was blank.
Uncle Mike broke the silence. “You might want to sleep in your old room. It’s the only one I haven’t torn up yet.”
“Thanks,” Tim managed. That was good, he decided.
“Thanks” covered a lot of territory. “Thanks for everything.” The two men embraced stiffly, and then Tim started for his Mustang.
“Wait,” Uncle Mike called after him.
Tim turned back toward his uncle. The older man fished in his pocket, pulled out a key ring with a couple of keys dangling from it. “You’re not going to get into the place without these.”
Tim smiled, nodded, took the keys from Uncle Mike’s outstretched hand. As he did, Uncle Mike said, “It’s been good seeing you again, Tim.” He climbed into the truck, closed the door, and started the ignition. Tim stood on the side of the road and watched the man who had raised him drive off into the gloom.
Eight
The Monday after Thanksgiving, Jessica drove into work trying to shake the feeling that she’d forgotten something. She hadn’t, she was pretty sure. She had a regular routine, a mental checklist. Wallet, keys, cell phone, teeth brushed, hair brushed, lip gloss, and out the door she went.
It wasn’t until she rode up on the elevator that she realized what was nagging at her. She hadn’t forgotten anything. But she hadn’t talked to Tim last night—the first Sunday night in a long time that had happened. Everyone at the magazine knew they were together, so they didn’t try to hide their relationship. But Tim liked to sleep in his own place, and the sterility of it drove her a little nuts. So most nights they slept alone, even if they had been together earlier, and they made a habit of phoning each other to say good night before they went to bed.
That call hadn’t happened for the last few nights. Friday and Saturday, it hadn’t seemed so strange to her, because she was still at her parents’ house. But last night she had been back at her own apartment, slipping back into the routine. And Tim hadn’t called. Nor had she called him; she wasn’t even sure where he was.
So it was that break in the routine that troubled her, not actually forgetting anything. Strange as it sounded, that made her feel a little better.
She had thought she would kill Tim, that Thanksgiving night. Yes, his mother had passed away, and she didn’t want to come across as some kind of ogre, but the fact was he hadn’t lived with the woman since he was ten years old. He hardly ever saw her or even spoke to her. She had lived in a nursing home for some time—as long as Jessica had been going out with Tim, anyway. It was undeniably sad that she was gone, and Jessica felt sorry for Tim, but the fact remained that it was a little too late for the rushing-to-her-side bit.
So why take off in the middle of the night, in a way guaranteed to make her parents think she had brought home a man who was egocentric, rude, and quite possibly mentally unbalanced?
As it turned out, that was more or less exactly what they had thought. At breakfast the next morning, Jessica had showed up alone and had to explain Tim’s absence. Her mother’s eyes had welled up instantly, but then, empathy had always been her forte. “The poor dear,” she said. “He seems like a very nice young man.”
But Jessica’s father, as usual, cut right to the heart of things. “Now, let me get this straight,” he said. “This phone call said that she was dying?”
“No,” Jessica replied softly. “That she was dead. She had died a little while before. The nursing home called Tim’s uncle when they couldn’t revive her, and then he called Tim here.”
�
�So what did he think he could accomplish in the middle of the night?”
“I think he just wanted to be there. With his uncle.”
“That’s a reasonable thing, Conrad,” her mom said with a sniffle.
“I should think he could have waited until morning,” her dad argued. “Driving in the middle of the night like that, he’s just as likely to kill himself or someone else trying to get there. Not to mention the bad manners it shows, taking off and leaving without so much as a thank-you or good-bye to your hosts.”
“He was upset,” Jessica pleaded. “He wasn’t thinking straight. His mom was dead, you know? He just wanted to be doing something, I think.”
“Endangering himself and others, more like it,” her father groused. “Plain irresponsible.”
Jessica had decided that there was no use arguing about it. Her mother was teary-eyed, probably because she wouldn’t get the chance to flirt with Tim over omelets like she’d hoped to, and her dad had already made up his mind—had begun to at Thanksgiving dinner, in fact, when Jessica had goaded Tim into talking about his offbeat upbringing—that her boyfriend was a nut.
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