by Jolene Perry
I cannot let the giggles out right now. Cannot.
He stares at his lap and laughs a few more silent laughs. Then he blinks. Oh, crap. Is he crying?
In seconds, he’s on his feet and walking from the chapel. I leap up and follow, trying hard to do my slow and succinct don’t-see-me walk out the open chapel doors. The thumping bass of the song follows us out, but at least we’re free of the words.
Hartman’s on the other side of the lobby.
“Whew.” He blows out air while resting his hands on top of his head. I still can’t tell if he’s trying not to laugh or trying not to cry.
“You…Are…” I’m never sure how to help people I know. “You okay?”
“I laugh, and then my body wants to cry and everything I feel is all mixed up.” He has tears on his cheeks, but he’s still sort of shaking in laughter. “I feel like shit when I’m happy because I shouldn’t be happy when my dad is dead, and I’m sorry I’m dumping this on you.”
“Shhh!” I push on him as I look over my shoulder at the double open doors to the chapel.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, swiping at his eyes.
I grab his arm and drag him behind me, then pull open the coffin room door and hold it, gesturing for him to step inside.
He walks into the dark without pausing, and I flick on the light as the door closes behind us.
“Whoa.” He stands in the center of the room, surrounded by caskets, urns, and epitaphs for the dead. There are eight caskets in here; the room is not quite big enough for ten to look anything but a bit squished together. Add in all the fancy pots and vase-looking things, and it makes kind of a mess.
“This feels…strange,” Hartman says quietly.
I make a slow circle, looking over the room and trying to figure out what it would look like to someone who has never been in here before, but…I can’t. This room has always been one of my favorites.
“Are you using me? Because coming here for a glimpse at a dead body, which you already got, and to see what we do here…That really gets old. There are no ghosts. I’m not taking you back downstairs.”
He touches the side of one of the caskets. “What do you think happens to people when they die?”
So, I guess we’re ignoring my question for the moment.
I want to tell him what I hear people say all the time: People go to a better place. But I don’t want to feed Hartman a line. “They go to a better place,” I still say automatically.
I cringe, and he turns around, his face distorted in skepticism. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what I believe.” I’d rather not think too deeply about it because then what I do everyday might feel different. Bigger. More. And I already sometimes need to excuse myself for my three breaths and refocusing.
He runs his hand over the smooth interior of a coffin. His brows pinch together almost like Bree’s do when she’s upset, but the rest of his face is so relaxed I guess he’s just thinking. “When I think about my dad being buried, sometimes I can’t breathe. And then I get so frustrated and want to ruin everything in the room I’m in, but I can’t let go and do that. I know better.” His voice is more strained with every word. “There’s this practical, pragmatic side of me that I sometimes wish I could push away so I could act stupid and crazy or whatever people are allowed to do when they lose a parent.”
His eyes are wide and almost desperate, and his knuckles are white from clutching the edge of the coffin in front of him. We just stare at each other for a few moments. And a few more moments. I half expect him to grab an urn off the wall and throw it. Instead his face starts to relax around his brow, and then the tight line of his mouth droops and the white on his knuckles starts to fade.
“I used to take naps in here when I was little,” I say quietly. I don’t know how to address anything else he hit me with.
His brows shoot up. “What?”
I lean over the white lacquer casket and peer inside.
“They’re cozy little cave holes. Dad always has the head half open for people to see the inside, but I’d crawl into the foot part and go to sleep. Mom and Dad couldn’t find me for hours once.” This is one of the stories my parents always tell that always makes me want to disappear, but here I am telling this story to someone else.
He wipes his hand over his face and shakes his head. “I’m kind of envious. I didn’t…I mean…I didn’t know what to expect when Dad died. And now that it’s all done, I wish I would have spoken up. Had some say.”
“I did with my grandparents.” I tap my nails on the casket surface. “I picked out their caskets for them when I was six or seven.”
“With them?” he asks with a weird kind of laugh.
“Yep. They were both totally healthy, and my granddad used to joke that he didn’t care what we did with his body. I was thirteen when he died, and I wanted to bury him with a clown nose just to prove a point, but my parents got all worried about my sense of humor after I mentioned that. I had to see a counselor for a whole summer.”
“So you were thirteen when you fooled this counselor into thinking you were okay?” he teases.
“Ha, ha.”
Hartman smiles back, and his whole face seems lighter.
I lean against my favorite white casket. “This’ll be mine one day. I think. Although cremation sometimes sounds better, so maybe I should be picking urns instead. Though, I don’t really like the idea of any part of me being trapped that way.”
Hartman smooths down the lapels of his jacket. I wonder where he got one with arms long enough for him without it sagging over his narrow shoulders.
“You’re looking at me funny,” he says.
Crap.
I turn away from him and tap my fingers over the top of the casket.
Hartman’s hands are clasped behind his back. He peers at the satin interior. “I sort of want to crawl into one of these.”
I feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “And that comment just got added onto the reasons you might be a little bit unbalanced.”
“Of course I’m unbalanced.” His eyes flash to me for a second before going back to the casket in front of him. “I love my dad. He died. We moved. My mom is recovering slowly, but she’s a mess. My life is upside down. There are days when I want to snap.”
I’m not sure how to react to his snap comment, so I don’t. Instead I open the door between my home life and my outside life a little further.
“Crawl on in.” I gesture around me. “Any one you want. They’re made for people, you know.”
He reaches out and touches the black lacquer surface. “You sure?”
“Yep. I used to do it all the time.” I still do…
“And you call me unbalanced?” he asks.
I shrug in return.
“Hmmm…” He taps his finger on his chin as he scans the room. “Which one…”
“This one’s mine.” I hoist myself onto the edge of the white lacquer coffin and then let my bum slide down until it hits the bottom of the inside. I kick off my shoes before sliding my feet into the bottom. “The fact that these things have cushion on the bottom cracks me up.”
“Wouldn’t want the deceased getting stiff.” He snorts a little at his own joke.
I’ve already heard them all.
Hartman, slips off his shoes, lifts a long leg up, and sets himself inside a cherrywood casket without needing to jump.
“Nice choice,” I tell him.
“You too.”
I scoot down until my head rests on the little pillow, then let out a breath. It’s silly but this is childhood and hide-and-seek and finding ways to spend long days within sight or sound of Mom and Dad while they worked. The too-sweet smell of flowers is in the background and the weird white noise that hushed voices bring (now that the song is finished)…It’s all part of me, and now Hartman is in the middle of it.
Hartman glances at me and then slides down until he too is lying down. “I keep imagining Dad waking up a
nd being buried alive.”
“Not possible,” I say.
“People have been buried alive.”
“But I spend a lot of time in the basement here, and we’d for sure know if someone was alive before we started the embalming process.”
I hear him sigh but nothing else. “I never know how to take what you say.”
“Right back at ya.” I clasp my hands together over my stomach. “I see death every day. And I’ll generally say one of the worst things a person could say at any given time. People at school don’t even bother making fun of me anymore…for the most part.”
“I wonder if it would hurt less if I saw death every day.”
I think about my dad lying lifeless in one of these caskets. Or my mom’s jaw being clamped shut by someone like Matthew. The thoughts feel like someone standing on my chest. I close my eyes and pull in my three breaths. “I’m good at finding ways to get rid of sadness.”
“I guess I’ll get good at it too,” he says quietly.
The door clicks open, and I sit up so fast my head spins.
“Gabriella!” Mom snaps. “What on earth are you doing?”
Hartman sits up.
“Hartman?” Mom asks as she holds the door closed behind her back. At least she used more surprise than annoyance when she said his name.
“Sorry, we were…” I start, but how do I even answer? Hartman was being weird so I offered him a casket to rest in for a minute?
“I’m…” Hartman’s mouth pops open and then closed and then open.
“Just…” Mom sighs. “Please get out of the caskets. I sometimes really wonder what we’re doing to you here,” she mutters.
We both sit still for a moment before Mom leaves, closing the door carefully behind her.
“I hope I didn’t get you in trouble,” Hartman says.
I rub my hands up and down my thighs a few times. Living thighs. Not dead ones. He stops next to my casket. That was fast, but with legs as long as his, it was just a step down instead of a jump.
“Need a hand out?”
I stand up in the casket and lean down, resting our hands together, palm to palm. His hands are surprisingly strong and warm. I slip down without tripping or anything. It’s a lot easier to step out of one of these with help.
“Thanks.” I take back my hands and tuck my feet back in my shoes, sliding my warmed palms over the fabric of my dress.
He glances around the room again. “I guess I should go.”
“It’s been…strange,” I tell him.
He does this breath out his nose like he’s almost laughing, but he’s staring at the floor and his hand makes a swipe across the back of his neck. “Yeah…I guess it has.”
I have no idea what to make of this guy. “You’re super weird, Hartman.”
His brown eyes finally meet mine. “You’re super weird, Gabriella.”
I gesture to the door and follow him out of the room.
Once we’re outside, I figure I should pick up Mickey. Then I can come back in and refill snacks if I need to. “I’m headed this way.” I point behind the house.
“Can I…” He gestures the same way I pointed.
“Seeing my aunt Liza is a pretty sure way to make you afraid to ever come here again, so how would you like to proceed?”
“So I guess my question got bigger, huh?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well now, if you want me to come, then maybe you’re trying to scare me off…”
Something deep in my stomach is getting all tingly with how he’s watching me. “I warned you. I’ll leave it up to you.”
As surprised as I was to see him tonight, now I’m not sure if I want our night to be over. This is when I need Bree.
“I’m going to chance your aunt Liza because I’m curious.” His voice is hysterically formal. “And she doesn’t live in your house, so I’m thinking that she won’t actually prevent me from wanting to come back, no matter how crazy she is.”
I respond in my best formal voice, but my lips are betraying me and attempting to smile. “Very well then.” I gesture toward the cemetery. “Out this way.”
Hartman asks me a few questions about the house and my grandparents and how my family got into running a funeral home. The questions are all ones I’ve answered before.
We move through another gate on the far side of the cemetery, and I pause at the steps that lead to the door of Aunt Liza’s place. The music isn’t loud enough for me to hear words, only for me to know it’s loud.
“Here?” He points to the large wooden door.
Instead of answering, I steel myself and start up the steps. I knock a few times and then push open the door, veering right into Aunt Liza’s living room.
She’s in a silk robe and is holding another one of those long, black cigarette holders that I used to think were just for old movies. Her hair is tucked underneath a fur cap, and she gestures wildly as she shares a story.
“…and his hands were all over me! On the dance floor! But you know what?” She leans closer to Mickey, and I’m so stunned that I’m frozen. “…I didn’t care because he was just that good at it.”
Mickey giggles, and my face burns. “Aunt Liza!” I yell. “What are you…I don’t…” I don’t have words for this situation. “It’s time for Mickey to come home.”
“Oh!” Aunt Liza jumps up, her pale-blue silk robe billowing around her ankles. “And what a lovely young man you’ve brought with you.” She slips the cigarette holder between her teeth and looks him up and down—not unlike the way Bryce looks at Bree.
Gross.
“Mickey.” I shove my face into a smile. “Let’s go home, please.”
Mickey checks the grandfather clock in the corner. “The funeral is still happening, right?”
“But it’s close to done, and you sit upstairs during funerals all the time.”
Mickey frowns. “But she was just telling me how many beaus she had, and how unusual it was for someone to share a bed with their beau before they were married!”
Oh perfect. I rub my forehead.
Hartman’s smooth cheeks suddenly have dimples.
“Fine, fine!” Aunt Liza waves us toward the door. “You go. Have your lives. But you…” She points at Hartman. “It’s not often I get a handsome young man through here that isn’t my grandson. Give a sweet old lady a kiss?”
She tilts her head, aiming her cheek toward Hartman, whose face is about eight shades of scarlet.
He leans over quickly and pecks her cheek.
“A timid one.” She waggles her brows at me. “Hold on to him, dear.”
“Go, go, go!” I shove Mickey out the door, Hartman following close behind.
The second the door is closed, I try to take my three calming breaths, which slow down my heart and cool off my cheeks.
We walk down the steps in silence.
“You’re super tall,” Mickey says. “That might be a problem for kissing.”
“Mickey!” I yell, having no idea what else I could possibly say to make this more or less awkward. My face is heating up too fast for me to make sense of my thoughts. At least it’s dark outside.
“Do you go to the same school?” Mickey asks, totally unbothered by my outburst. “I don’t recognize you. Are you from here? You seem sorta pale for living in California.”
I grit my teeth. “Mickey. Please stop.”
“What?” she asks innocently.
I try to glare at her, but it’s so dark I’m sure she doesn’t see. “Never mind.”
“Well…” Hartman starts. “I just moved here, and yes, I go to your sister’s school.”
I pause to look at him in the dim light, his mouth twitching in a partial smile. I also notice he didn’t answer her kissing question. The weakness that comes from relief that he’s not embarrassed or angry makes me stumble. He laughs and grasps my hand, holding it just longer than he needs to. Our eyes lock as I find my steps again.
“I’m not afr
aid to come back to your house”—he leans so close that the delicious grape smell tickles my nose again—“but I might let you pick up your sister on your own from now on.”
Laughter bursts out of my mouth, because with all the tension bouncing around in my body, it’s all I can do. “Yeah. No problem.”
Chapter 14
I’m not having my best morning. I nearly crawled back into the white casket after Hartman left and slept there. I’d have probably gotten more sleep than I did tangling myself in my sheets as I flopped over last night. No one but Bree has ever shared the funeral home part of my life—at least not without an ulterior motive. Though Hartman has a slight one, I’m just not sure his plan of being around death will help him feel any better about his dad.
I slump on the kitchen chair, which is freezing and makes me wish even more that I were still in bed.
A loud rapping comes from our front door, and I blink at the kitchen table a few times. Mom peers out the window, still in her robe. “Bree’s here! That’s nice. I feel like we haven’t seen her in ages!”
Yeah. Me too.
I snatch a yogurt from the fridge and head for the door. Finally back to normal.
Mom and Dad each say a different version of love you and see you after school, and I give them a quick wave before shutting the door behind me.
“Hey!” I jerk the lid off my yogurt.
“Oh good!” Bree grins too widely—a sure sign she’s up to something.
I frown. “You’re way too chipper for morning.”
She shifts her weight to the side, slipping her already very short skirt up a few inches, but it’s some boring, short denim skirt I’ve never seen before. “I’ve decided you need to learn how to drive better.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I blink a few times, still a bit in shock that she’s here. The good kind of shock, but still…shock. “Once summer vacay has started, and I have more time, or—”
“Nope. Now.”
I stop.
Bree steps behind me and begins shoving me forward.
“What are you even doing?” I sputter.
“You’re driving my car to school.”
I shake my head frantically. “It wasn’t super fun to drive here from Audrey’s. You know that, right?”
