The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters

by C. A. Newsome

  Luci had gotten the job at the card shop after the Christmas holidays. She would have preferred working at the Body Shop or Lush, but they hadn’t been looking for anyone when she was looking for a bit of cash. She was lucky the card shop had been hiring. Their regular part-timer had taken off to travel for a year. Having an extra excuse to be out of the house on Thursdays from five to nine and Sundays from one to five was a bonus for Luci. Sundays, according to her stepfather, were supposed to be family days.

  Years ago, she’d been the one who rubbed garlic powder all over the roast and made the gravy, but now she was a vegetarian. Well, she’d eat chicken if it was free range and fish if it was certified Ocean Wise. But other than that, no meat. Despite her stepfather’s insistence, this no-meat policy wasn’t simply an ongoing attempt to piss him off, but rather the result of recently viewing a bunch of documentaries that had really grossed Luci and her friends out. That it pissed off her stepdad was a bonus.

  Anyway, the card shop carried cool gift things, including great recycled-paper bags and pencils. Her latest sparkly pink pencil had a fluffy hair poof attached to the end where the eraser usually was. Luci had done her nails during study period today in sparkly pink to match this pretty pencil. But then she’d worn her wristwatch wrist warmers — hand knitted on request by her grandmother — to add an ironic touch to the ensemble. She liked that none of the sewn-on watches — there were three different faces on each warmer — displayed the same time.

  Currently the shop was dead, as it usually was on Thursday nights. Luci had her fifteen-minute break, along with a fruit-and-nut chocolate bar and a root beer — her latest favorite combo — before the owner went home for the evening at six. She didn’t mind closing by herself. She liked the responsibility and the bits of organization that came with the task.

  As she paused to assess the wording of the love note — she was attempting to personalize the famous Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem with her own list — a woman wearing Lululemon as a style choice, not just workout clothing, rushed into the store. She was laden with multiple packages and carrying a large bouquet of white lilies. At a quick glance, based on logos and thicknesses, Luci estimated the woman was carrying close to eight hundred and eighty dollars in her paper bags. She stopped midstore and looked about frantically.

  “I need … I must have a card for a funeral. Or not a funeral … a prefuneral. A card for the actual event of a death,” the woman said.

  Now, the store was pretty simply laid out and the woman hadn’t even taken a moment to look around, but Luci — dutifully — glanced up from her note and gestured to a bank of cards about halfway back along the western wall.

  “Bereavement cards. Past the thank-yous, but before the birthdays,” she said. The woman bustled farther into the shop, following her instructions.

  As she returned to adding more hearts to her note, Luci recognized the woman as Vanessa, a vague friend of her mother’s. Probably from a Zumba class.

  Vanessa spared a couple of seconds to peer at the indicated section, but hesitated to pick out a card. Luci was always amazed at how people made a big deal out of such simple things. She had long ago decided it was because everyone wanted to feel more important than they actually were. They therefore infused their card selection with that performance pressure. Even thus personally forewarned, she waited until Vanessa actually spoke before offering to help.

  “But … but which one is the most popular one?”

  Luci abandoned her note with a bit of a sigh, but she was actually always happy to help pick out cards.

  Crossing around the counter and deeper into the store, she reached by Vanessa’s elbow and picked out a light blue card from the wall. Vanessa opened and read the proffered sample.

  Unable are the loved to die, for love is mortality.

  “Emily Dickinson,” Luci said, offering this enlightenment with a satisfied sigh.

  Vanessa thought about the sentiment for as long as she could stand to — about seven seconds, Luci judged — and then distractedly fanned herself with the card.

  “I just don’t know … What do you say to a mother whose son has just committed suicide? ‘So sorry you weren’t paying attention?’ Oh, that’s awful of me … never mind.” Vanessa pressed the card back into Luci’s hands and exited the store in a rush very similar to how she entered.

  Luci carefully replaced the card in the rack, then straightened a few others before she returned to the desk and her note.

  Her phone, neatly, but unobtrusively tucked beside the cash register, vibrated. Luci ignored it. She carefully rerolled the note, which was now as long as her arm, back into its tight tube and tucked it beside the phone. As she did so, she glanced down at the screen and noted that she’d now missed ten calls and had twenty texts waiting.

  The thing was, she knew exactly why everyone wanted to check in with her all of a sudden, but she wasn’t much interested in actually talking to anyone. She wasn’t interested in the confirmation. And she certainly wasn’t interested in the daunting task ahead of her now. A task that was too much to ask of anyone, even her. Not that he’d actually asked.

  He had — obviously and always — left her a note.

  Luci wasn’t going to get away with ignoring everyone and their condolences for very long. She was lucky that Vanessa hadn’t seemed to recognize her. Though it was part of a much larger metropolitan sprawl, West Vancouver was ultimately a small — even incestuous — municipality. There was only one high school worth going to at all.

  She had a feeling someone would be picking her up from work. Someone else would be making sure she got to school and through the day okay tomorrow. Actually, someone was probably going to suggest she skip Friday’s classes all together.

  But she knew better. She knew what was really going on — or at least what he’d hoped was going to happen. And she had her own plan. Or at least the beginning of one.

  *

  Luci hadn’t spent a lot of time in church before this. In fact, this might be the longest she’d ever sat in a pew. But she’d at least known what to expect from movies and TV, so she’d worn her black dress and nylons even though she didn’t like them. She also wore the pink flower bracelet that Colby had given her for her birthday, balancing it with a pink rhinestone clip in her hair and a light pink lip gloss. She opted to sit with her friends, not her family, who were behind her and to the right. She figured her friends needed her more right now.

  There had been some talk of not having a funeral under the circumstances, but Luci was glad they’d chosen to go ahead so that everyone had a traditional time and space to mourn. She was also glad to have the extra preparation time for herself … before she had to say a final goodbye.

  A massive gold cross loomed over the open coffin at the front of the church sanctuary. Luci tried to pay attention to the minister rather than the edge of the white waxy profile she could see just above the side of the coffin.

  The church was really full. Luci doubted that many of the people there had even known this church existed before today. Vanessa — who Luci recognized from the card shop, of course — sat right behind Colby’s parents, Candace and Abram, who along with their daughter Cicely occupied the front row. Every now and then, depending on what the minister was saying and whether or not Colby’s mother was slumped over her handkerchief, Vanessa placed her hand on Candace’s shoulder and squeezed. It appeared that Vanessa had figured out what to say and do even without the bereavement card.

  From her vantage point two rows behind, Luci couldn’t see the faces of Colby’s father, mother, and sister unless they turned toward the coffin, but she could read their body language. Candace dabbed her eyes regularly with a black lace handkerchief, which Luci was sure her grandmother would proclaim gauche. Abram looked disconnected and maybe a little bored. Cicely wasn’t currently crying, but by her crazy puffy eyes fixed on the coffin, it was obvious she had been.

  All of Luci’s friends had come, of course, and they hadn’t even b
ugged her about what to wear. She was glad to see they’d managed to dress well without her supervision. It was a respectful gesture, even though not one of them felt Colby deserved that respect — even before he was dead. At least half the school was in the church, though none of them had been close to Colby. Luci wondered where the other half were.

  “John, a close friend of Colby’s, will now read a favorite poem,” the minister said, finally voicing the words Luci had been waiting to hear. “Friends and family are invited to visit and say their good byes.”

  The minister beckoned to John, who was sitting on Luci’s right. John, his suit too tight across his shoulders, nervously pulled the cheat sheet Luci had typed up for him from his pocket. John was one of Luci’s oldest friends, and he hadn’t been even remotely close to Colby. But, reading a poem was the correct thing to do, and though she could pick it, it wasn’t for her to stand up and read.

  John glanced at her — she saw him in her peripheral vision — and she nodded slightly without meeting his gaze. He lumbered to his feet, only doing so because she asked it of him.

  As John pushed through to the aisle to approach the podium, other mourners glanced around, not knowing what to do.

  Finally, Candace stood, inhaling her newly renewed sobs as she practically dragged Abram with her toward the coffin. Cicely dutifully followed her parents, scuffing her feet on the fine-piled carpeting.

  John stood at the podium, tapped his finger on the microphone even though it was obviously on, and cleared his throat. “Okay. Here it goes ... I have no idea what it means, but this was, like, one of Colby’s favorite poems from English lit. I think he wrote a paper on it …” He glanced up from his cheat sheet to Luci, and she nodded to encourage him to continue.

  Oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final end of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt, and taints of blood …

  A line had begun to form up the center aisle toward the coffin. Mourners shuffled over to look at Colby’s body, then crossed away down a side aisle to exit the church. It was old-fashioned and ritualistic. Luci had made sure that Colby’s mother intended to subject herself to such a display. It was part of the plan.

  That nothing walks with aimless feet; that not one life shall be destroy’d, or cast as rubbish to the void, when God hath made the pile complete.

  Luci straightened her skirt and started to rise, only to be immediately pulled back to her seat by her girlfriend, Melinda, who was sitting on her left.

  “You’re not going up there!” Melinda hissed. “This is all just sick. Looking at him and everything. You aren’t going up there. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then. I’m coming with you.”

  Luci stood. She had steeled herself to move forward but was now forced to wait to step into the aisle. It was blocked by a wave of stragglers who had decided to brave the trek at the same time as her.

  Thus stalled, she was forced to listen to John not understanding a single word coming out of his mouth, but continuing to recite the poem as requested. Because ultimately, that’s what true friends did for each other.

  That not a worm is cloven in vain; that not a moth with vain desire is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire, or but subserves another’s gain.

  This was the best Luci could do on short notice. The best she could do under the circumstances. Abram had almost convinced Candace that an open casket was obscene. She’d heard their fight from the front yard, though Colby’s parents had assumed she’d left after delivering her mother’s tuna casserole.

  She hadn’t. The light had been on in Colby’s room. Luci had waited, but he obviously hadn’t appeared at the window to grin down at her. Colby wasn’t prone to smiling, but he’d always smiled at her from that window.

  Melinda, never the patient one, shoved by Luci to hiss at the slow-moving line of people blocking them from the aisle. “Wake up, people. Girlfriend here.”

  She gave Luci a little shove to urge her forward, but people seemed super slow to understand that they needed to move out of the way.

  “I’m okay going to the end of the line,” Luci said to placate her fierce friend.

  “Forget it. If you’re doing this, then do it. We have to get to the wake, don’t we? I thought you made cheesecake.”

  People shuffled enough for Luci to step into line. Melinda pressed in behind her while hissing like a cat at the guy at her back. Luci wrapped her hand around her friend’s wrist, and that seemed to settle Melinda a little. No one knew how to protect her, so they were going off in all the wrong directions. She knew she wasn’t helping, but she didn’t feel much like talking it out.

  Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall. At last — far off — at last, to all. And every winter change to spring.

  After what seemed like ages, Luci stepped up to look down at the pale boy, forever seventeen now, in the gleaming mahogany coffin. Colby would have loved this coffin. Luci had made sure that Candace knew that before meeting with the funeral director. It was atrociously expensive, but they wouldn’t be splitting an inheritance between two children now, so the money probably didn’t matter.

  Yes, that was morbid. Luci had to be careful that she didn’t get sucked down into all of this death and darkness. Colby’s face was a little too thin and his dark hair looked recently cut and traditionally styled. He wouldn’t have liked that at all, but Luci — limited in time and hindered by weighty decisions — could only fight the important battles.

  Melinda, who’d been hanging off her arm, turned her back to give Luci some privacy. That gesture alone let her know she’d been staring too long. But it was harder to look away than she thought it would be. Suppressed emotion threatened to break through her cast-iron resolution. She fought the urge to reach out and stroke Colby’s cheek. She would never have done such a cheesy thing in life, so why do it in death?

  So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: an infant crying for the light: and with no language but a cry.

  She took a deep breath and placed her hand on Colby’s chest. It would never rise with breath again. She exhaled, tucked the register roll that contained her final note to him in the breast pocket of his new pinstriped suit, and turned away from her first love.

  *

  Though her mother had smoothed the collar of her hated black dress and fussed with her hair clip, Luci had insisted on driving to Colby’s parents’ house with her friends. Melinda had gotten an old BMW — originally her brother’s car — for her sixteenth birthday. Luci slid into the passenger seat at the church. John, his girlfriend Trina, and Trina’s friend Zoe had piled into the back.

  Melinda didn’t need directions to the updated Craftsman-style home. They’d all driven to and from Colby’s place hundreds of times over the past four months. Colby’s parents had been surprised and overly delighted, when his friends started coming around. Cicely had always hung around the edges of the group, for the store-bought — but still tasty — treats that Candace provided.

  Colby had a pool, but it hadn’t yet been warm enough to swim since his family moved into town in November. Luci had taken him to the Christmas dance. Her friends thought she’d gone crazy, but they didn’t say anything outright. He’d only danced the slow songs, gently rubbing against her during Don’t Stop Believing at the end of the evening. By then, Luci had already decided to like him long term, and not just because he was the newest, most interesting boy she’d laid eyes on in twelve years. He stirred something within her. Hormones, probably. Love, maybe.

  Various people from the church service were parking along the street as Melinda pulled up to the house. They were carrying casserole dishes, or baking, or flowers from the church. Lilies dominated.

  Melinda double-parked, then turned to look at Luci in the passenger seat. Luci gazed out and up at the house. The afternoon was gray enough that she could see the light was still on in Colby’s room.

  “We could just blow this totally off,
you know,” Melinda said.

  “I know,” Luci answered. She didn’t feel remotely ready for everything that was going to happen next. Everything else she hoped she’d planned perfectly, but didn’t actually want to do.

  No one else spoke. Trina started texting or tweeting in the back seat. The beeping of that had always bothered Melinda, who threw a dirty look over her shoulder.

  John elbowed Trina and tried to change the subject. “Yeah, um. I really didn’t get that poem you had me read, Luci.”

  Zoe piped up. “Isn’t it about death and God and stuff?” She was fairly new to the group, and wasn’t completely sure yet when it was a good time to contribute.

  “Obvious much?” Melinda sneered.

  “I think it’s about love and life,” Luci, ever the peacemaker, said.

  “It’s about being a cry baby, which Colby totally was. Who kills himself? Only a baby loser!” Trina snarled. She hated not being able to tweet.

  John elbowed his girlfriend a second time. He went through girlfriends really quickly. It didn’t help that he was the captain of the basketball team and handsome in a completely well-fed, clean-cut way. He was Colby’s opposite, actually. It also didn’t help that he was Luci’s best friend. Not many girls measured up to Luci, who was — and always had been — strictly off limits. Friendship came first for both of them.

  “What?” Trina asked. “Everybody’s thinking it.”

  “He really was an asshole,” Melinda said. They all continued to watch people clump together, then walk up the sidewalk to the house. “Offing himself when supposedly he loved Luci so much ... well, you know.”

  Luci finally managed to wrap her hand around the door latch, open the door, and step out of the car. The others piled out of the back seat in a jumble of limbs and curses behind her.