Death is a superhuman burden.
When Tyson Vilmer is front and center, where he belongs, all the pallbearers but me sit in a reserved section. I slide in next to Grandy. Her velvet hand with its spidery blue veins lands in mine. I let her cling. I even cling back when Woods and Janie Lee shred the entire funeral home with “A Satisfied Mind” followed by “How Great Thou Art.”
Then Dad shreds it with his eulogy. A good thing because of the conversation I had with Janie Lee this morning:
“You see the paper?” she asked.
I hadn’t.
“There was a full page about Big T and . . .” She drew a banner with her hand. “‘Community Church Aflame,’” followed by a big fat pause.
“‘Community Church Aflame’ and . . .”
“And . . . ‘Local Minister Sleeps Through Blaze.’”
I’m vexed. “That’s not even true.”
Truth hardly played a part in the local news.
Now Dad’s telling a story about the Harvest Festival, and how without Tyson’s support this will likely be its last year. Our spines bend like dying flowers. The congregation responds. Grief knocks into grief. No one can imagine Otters Holt without the Harvest Festival. Without Tyson. Least of all my tear-streaked father.
I look away from him and notice three things. A) Janie Lee has her pinkie on Woods’s knee; B) Davey has his head on Thomas’s big-ass Thor shoulder; and C) there’s a muscular man looking like Davey will in thirty years, who is practically sitting on top of Davey’s mom. She is not sad; she’s furious.
And then I manhandle the casket to the car and the casket to the earth and say my final good-bye. “Thank you, you sweet old coot.” Tyson Vilmer. b. 1938.—d. 2017. Beloved by Otters Holt. (Not the official inscription, but I’m close.)
Dad catches my eye, narrows his expression. I still remember that you blew up the youth room.
No worries, Brother Scott. So do I.
3
Dad in his ratty bathrobe, unshaven at two in the afternoon. Dad alone in his study, Bible open, heart closed, at two in the morning. Dad gazing and blazing at the newspaper article. For one week, I leave him to his heartache, aware that I am a contributing factor.
I was grounded before the fire. For attitude, back-talking, and breaking Dad’s Coolest Minister Ever mug. The weekend of the fire I was interrogated. I explained about the sock, I admitted to the vodka; I bore the weight of responsibility. “It was my idea and my alcohol,” I told Mom and Dad apologetically. Mom yelled herself hoarse. Dad walked away. She was fine in a day. He was . . . well, since then we’ve had a baker’s dozen of passive-aggressive interactions and only one real conversation.
My goal was to apologize, genuinely. Which I did. But the end result was us screaming about my “inability to understand my position in this family.”
Oh, I understand my position quite well. “Brother Scott McCaffrey demands perfection,” I say.
Our words are between a snarl and a growl. I shut him in his home office with a door slam that rattles the frame. Through the wood, he yells, “Not perfection. Effort. Where is your effort?”
He makes me old just listening to him.
Dad has a common problem among ministers: he reproduced.
While our argument is exacerbated by the fire, most of our “discussions” are of the agree-to-disagree variety. Somewhere, buried under all this angst, hardwired in, we have a sturdy core. I am his baby girl and he is my big strong father. I love him even when I hate him. Like . . . if I close my eyes on any given summer day, I feel him lift me into an azure sky—a basketball falls through a hoop, he cheers. There’s the denim of his Wranglers on my bare legs as I drive a pickup on my tenth birthday. The cotton of his T-shirt as we piggyback down Grandy’s steps Christmas morning. The two of us stand at the observation point at Niagara Falls—Mom is sketching in the grass—and he tells me, “Baby, you can be anyone.”
The positive-memory well stops around the time I turned thirteen. We exchanged memories for yells, trust for suspicion, ease for tension. According to him, I’m my mother’s daughter. She was the art major, a Canadian liberal. Back before monogrammed shirts and the Lord, my mom was a real shit-starter.
I think about her. How she handles him. I nudge open his office door and give him another shot. “I meant what I said. We never meant for anything bad to happen.”
“Billie . . . I believe you. But the problem is . . .”
“No one else does.”
His chin drops in defeat.
There’s really nothing more to say. Back in the garage, I let myself get snagged in a project I’ve been working on for months. I call it the Daily Sit—a (someday) fully functional couch made mostly of old newspapers and glue. I’m busy adding another layer of epoxy when Davey pulls into my driveway and wheels his fancy-schmancy Camaro all the way up to where I’m working.
He’s dressed as usual: navy bandanna headband pushing his hair skyward, black skinny-ish jeans, lace-up high-tops, and a white T-shirt he’s cut the sleeves from even though it’s sixty-five degrees. I’m dressed like I’ve been in the garage all day. He assesses both the Daily Sit and me. Seems interested.
“Mom has me out delivering thank-you packages,” he says. I’ve got newsprint and glue up to my elbows, so he tosses something wrapped in craft paper on the workbench.
“For what?” I ask.
He mounts our chest freezer and slaps his high-tops against the side. “Being a pallbearer for Big T. So, was that weird for you?”
I don’t look. One ornery corner of the newsprint is curling up like a cat’s tail. “No,” I say, realizing I’ve glued two fingers to the armrest. I jerk them away and cuss.
Davey’s too busy checking out my workspace to care about my loss of skin. The garage is both oddly organized and incredibly chaotic. There’s Guinevere, a lady knight constructed of aluminum cans, two prototypes of a book television I built for Woods, stacks of newspaper for the Daily Sit, a half dozen semi-constructed metal unicorns near my welding bench, and supplies most people would call trash.
“You do all this?” he asks.
I can’t tell if he’s impressed or trying to work out why I haven’t finished anything. “Yeah,” I admit. “Everyone needs a hobby.”
“Especially in a town like this.”
“Oh, don’t be so judgmental. Otters Holt inspires imagination that big cities don’t.”
“I wasn’t being judgmental,” he says.
“You were, but I’ll give you a pass for now.”
I opt to join him on the freezer, thinking I’ll add another layer to the Daily Sit tomorrow after church. “Some of us have to make our own fun.”
“I make my own fun.”
There’s something sly and opaque behind his expression that tells me we are not opposites, which had been my theory until Big T died. Until then, I assumed he was in Otters Holt because he had to be and in the Hexagon because of Mash. He didn’t seem lonely; he seemed both cultivated and uncertain, always hesitating. The way I was as a kid.
I dip my shoulder into his and tease him out. “I’m not sure you even know how to spell the word fun.”
His chin lodges against his breastbone. His feet stop swinging. “I didn’t know you were keeping up with me.”
I tell him the truth. “I keep up with everything.”
Davey’s got potential—the movement, the thrill, is all there. It’s hidden, but when Davey smiles, really smiles, the dictionary doesn’t have an adequate word for the effect. It’s fully charged, alive. I want to give him a reason to do it again.
Quite unexpectedly, he asks, “How would you like to keep up with me this evening?”
I make a show of dusting my hands as if the work in the garage is all done forever. “Sure. What’s the occasion?”
“Change of scenery. Costume party in Nashville?”
Well, damn. No rigidity to that. I’m overjoyed to hear that his grief is moving nicely along the normal healing continuum. I’ve
noticed Mash has been able to reference his granddad without burrowing inside his T-shirt this past week. And over the past few days, Davey was able to say “died” and “Big T” without stuttering. The rest of us stopped trading shifts at their houses. Which is good; I’ve had about all the barbecue sandwiches and red velvet cake I can manage. Another thing I can’t manage: Janie Lee scooting close to Woods on the hardwood floor of Mash’s bedroom. So Davey’s suggestion, a change of scenery, feels downright hopeful.
“Will Audi Thomas be at this costume party?”
He grins. “Indeed.”
“Indeed,” I repeat.
I need to clean up and get permission. Before Davey knows it, he agrees to add another layer of newsprint to the Daily Sit while he waits. I instruct him to make that ornery flap his obedient servant.
Inside, I address the parents. “Davey’s here. We’re gonna run around if it’s okay with you?” I focus on Mom instead of Dad, and of course, get opposing answers.
“Yes,” says Mom. “No,” says Dad.
In a heartbeat, this is their argument, not mine. “Honey, united front,” Dad demands.
“Oh, unite your own front,” she says without any malice. “He just lost his granddad.”
Other than funeral friend watch, I’ve barely ventured from the garage, assuming “out of sight, out of mind” is a good strategy. Although all this time in my workshop gave me plenty of time to stew over the possibility of Woods and Janie Lee coupling up, which only turned into me making terrible paintings of two-headed unicorns and having awful dreams where everyone I know and love claims they hate me. I don’t know which part irks me worst: her liking him or him possibly liking her back. I probably need this trip as badly as Davey does.
“Please,” I say to my parents, greasing the wheel. “I’d really like to go.”
Whether Dad remembers that I’m not evil or that Davey is probably in need of company, the pushback ends. I skate triumphantly from the room and shower off nearly eighty percent of the glue. Win-win. I settle on a costume, make the necessary transformation, and toss a change of regular clothes in a duffel.
When I sneak my costume past the parents—they would not approve of cross-dressing—it takes Davey a moment to realize I’m dressed as him. My hair, which is the same color as his—a dark brown that is almost black and nearly the same length—is parted, glued (thanks to Janie Lee’s stash of cosmetics in my bathroom), and bandanna-ed to mirror his style. It isn’t hard to emulate his clothes: scissors to every piece of fabric on my body. I added silver accessories. I added sideburns. Because I am an overachiever, I added makeup that angles my chin, triples my eyebrows, and hints at an Adam’s apple. Though that part is flubbed.
“That’s sort of hilarious,” he says, circling me.
I’m pleased he’s pleased.
He continues his survey. I get the feeling he’s not looking at my clothes, but somewhere deeper. He says, “I thought you’d fit in with my cosplay friends.” He means, I thought you’d fit in with me. And I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere with this boy.
“Cause-what?” I ask.
“Cosplay.”
“Is that like chains and whips?” I am not balking just yet, but perhaps I have underestimated him.
Davey laughs in earnest, head back, teeth showing. “No. A cosplay party is just a regular old costume party that doesn’t use Halloween as an excuse to dress up.”
“What are you going as?” I ask.
“Good question. They just called, so I’m going to throw something together.” He uses the utility sink to clean his arms and then paws around in the trunk of his car. He comes up with a navy V-neck sweater, tie, and white dress shirt. After shucking his T-shirt and tossing it onto the Daily Sit, he eyeballs the knight in the corner while he dresses and expertly ties a Windsor. He asks if the knight has a name. Certainly. I name everything. “Guinevere,” I say.
“Is she stable enough to borrow?”
If he wants to borrow a half-assembled lady knight, who am I to stop him? We toss Guinevere in among the thank-you gifts, and I toss myself among the books on his front seat. Graphic novels. A biography on Teddy Roosevelt. Sex for Dummies. One of those cheap sketchbooks from the bargain aisle.
“Doing some extracurricular reading?” I ask, and drop the books on the back floorboard.
“Roosevelt, yes. Sex, no. That’s Mash’s copy. Comic, hell yeah and always.”
You gotta love a guy who throws his cousin under the sexually inexperienced bus.
I’m pretty enamored with Davey’s car. The seats are leather, the radio is exquisite—like the bands are playing in my lap—and he’s got another tie hanging from the rearview mirror. Did I mention it’s a V-8 engine with 455 thoroughbreds under the hood and a manual transmission? Did I mention I drive a bicycle?
I give the tie a swing—it’s identical to the one he’s wearing. “This from your last school?”
“My last life.” He shifts, revs, off we go. “You want me to dress as you?” he asks when we hit the interstate.
No. Yes. It would be funny. “I’d like to see you try.”
I am glad we’re joking. Since he moved to Otters Holt, he’s been dawdling through the school hallways, chin always down, moving the way this one Death Cab for Cutie song sounds. Trudge. Trudge. Sad. Sad.
Davey drives a little bit like he behaves: erratic, but safe. He doesn’t listen to a single band I’ve ever heard of.
“Tell me about where we’re going,” I say.
He counters. “Tell me about Woods.”
I turn down the music. “I can talk eloquently about pine, oaks, sometimes birch. They’re harder. I confuse them with sycamores.”
He flicks my thigh.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Everything.”
I tell him everything he’s missed in the last seventeen years. Stunts, history, fake weddings, other items we’ve set on fire. Forty minutes later, he says, “You didn’t say the real thing.”
I raise my sunglasses. “Which is?”
“You’ve got some serious attraction going on.” He’s fishing, but he’s nearly sure of himself.
I can’t give myself away. “Maybe I don’t.”
He pokes the bear. “Maybe you’re a liar?”
The bear pokes back. “Maybe I never lie.”
“Maybe you only lie to yourself.”
I guess while I was studying him, he was studying me. I turn the radio back to full blast until Batman is in the sky in Nashville. (The Batman Building: that’s what Davey calls the skyscraper that looks like a superhero.) The Cumberland River snakes beneath lit bridges through downtown. Traffic sucks. I roll the window down and listen to the sheer noise of the city: cars, horns, sirens, construction.
“Things at church going to be okay?” he asks when he passes a fire truck.
“They’re bleak,” I tell Davey.
“You feel guilty.”
He’s not asking, so I don’t bother nodding. I don’t destroy things; I repurpose them. Even tiny little things that other people throw out—paper clips and pennies and confetti. So I would never destroy a church on purpose. The church is a symbol of faith, Jesus, my principles. I don’t pretend that trio works for everyone, but I never ever meant to crap where I eat.
If I’d known what the fallout would be for Dad—the newspaper, the subsequent deacon meetings, the anger—I’d have erased Einstein.
We arrive outside a coffee shop east of the river, and Davey explains what we’re about to do. Essentially, we’re joining a “private” club—a contingent of acquaintances from two schools: one all-girls, one all-boys. From his description, I determine that this academy of his is either the Hogwarts of Nashville or a rip-off Dead Poets Society. I also determine that his father must be filthy rich and that Otters Holt is a few notches down the economic ladder. Hello, modified Camaro. Hello, rich-people activities like raising cheetahs or some crazy shit like that. Hello, Davey’s friends.
/> The Audi is in the parking lot.
“Audi Thomas,” I say.
“You plan to call him that?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t know anyone else who drives an Audi.”
“You don’t know any other Thomases.”
“I’m still going to call him Audi Thomas.”
“I wouldn’t. He hates that car.”
“No one in their right mind hates a black, gorgeous thing that goes zero to sixty in four seconds.” I looked up the specs the weekend of the funeral. Price too. New: $162,900.
“Okay, Thomas hates when people make assumptions about him based on the car.”
“Audi Thomas,” I correct, unwilling to bend. “If you own a car that costs more than the church parsonage, that car goes before your name.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, my insults, Davey says, “He’s going to like you a lot.”
“We carried a casket together. We already bonded.”
The casket comment lands like a plane with a flat front tire. He breathes, I breathe, we skip ahead to who else will be in attendance. Davey reels off a list and concludes with, “Plus, Gerry. She’s your people for sure.”
My people. It’ll be interesting to crosscheck his perceptions.
I don’t have to wait. A girl clad in leather, fishnets, boots similar to mine, and a generous portion of sexy smacks the hood and growls at us. “Gerry,” Davey says.
Gerry opens the driver’s side door, and Davey slides his seat back. A good choice, because she hurls herself sideways onto his lap, loosens his tie, and says, “Holy hell, David Winters, I’ve missed you. When are you moving home?”
Then she puts her lips to his lips with a big mwah. She’s my people? Holy hell, indeed.
Gerry has hair the color of the Green Goblin, and if it’s spray-in, it’s damn convincing. I’m guessing she cut it herself . . . with kindergarten scissors. There’s a quirky upside-down-triangle tattoo behind her ear and six piercings in her cartilage. I barely have time to count them because she says, “Your turn, David’s friend.” She tugs my shirt, and we’re ChapStick to ChapStick. It’s not just a mwah. I have time to think I’m kissing a girl. I’ve never kissed a girl before.
Dress Codes for Small Towns Page 3
