Catalyst (19 page)

Dad raises his head. His slack face is streaming with tears.

The conversations stop.

Sara pokes me. “Is he okay?” she whispers.

“Maybe you should do something,” Toby says.

Cripes.

“Something could be wrong,” Sara says. “Help him.”

Just then, Dad pulls a white handkerchief from under his black robe and blows his nose loudly. When he tucks the handkerchief away, he forces a smile. “Sometimes even your pastor can’t find the right words,” he says. “If you will open your hymnals . . . ”

Dad is back on track. The adults in the congregation sigh and spring into action. They fumble a bit with their hymnals, looking for the right pages. Toby takes my fists out of my lap and loosens my fingers. The service rolls on: a prayer, a hymn, more prayers, a sermon. It’s like a stage play, with Dad as the leading man. I try to think of the casket as a prop, but it’s useless. Every time I look at it, my stomach flips over.

After half an hour of religion, it’s time to wind things up with a closing hymn. Teri chose “Rubber Ducky.” I can’t get the words out.

11.1 Beta Decay

TV news cameras have set up across the street. They film the mourners crossing the driveway that separates the church from the graveyard. They focus on Dad and Mr. Lockheart carrying the casket, zoom in on Mrs. Litch leaning on Teri’s arm, on Teri’s frozen face, the run in her stockings, her work boots and flowered dress. Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid people, poor people, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It’s death porn for the masses.

Dad and Mr. Lockheart set the casket down next to a small hole dug in the ground. Mikey’s grave is in the back corner of the cemetery, uphill from the Litches’ house. (He and Mr. Lockheart will lower it into the grave later. People don’t like to watch that part.) Betty helps Teri guide Mrs. Litch to the folding chairs lined up by the grave. The rest of the crowd tiptoe in and stand with their heads bowed. My friends and my brother join them. I can’t. I stay outside the gate, my back to the cameras. I flex my fingers, try to get some circulation going. Even though the sun is shining, it’s freezing today.

Dad opens the faded book and speaks the old words. As he reads, Teri puts her head in her hands and sobs. Dad has to speak louder to be heard. A cardinal lands on my mother’s tombstone and chirps, looking for lunch or a mate. Dad can’t see it from where he’s standing. I have to study the pebbles under my feet and breathe through my mouth. I do not understand death. It is a physical law that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So what happens when people die?

The wind picks up and more birds fly overhead. Teri keeps crying. Dad’s voice cracks once. He pauses to rub the back of his neck with his left hand. Other people are sniffing, wiping their eyes. Travis and Sara have their arms around each other, her head on his shoulder. There is still a bit of yellow paint behind his ear. He hides his face in her hair. Mitchell has his hands clasped behind his back. Toby is sitting on the ground plucking grass. Dad’s voice deepens, calling on God, spirits big and small. Mikey is, Mikey was, Mikey will be nevermore. Dust.

I walk around to the front of the house and open the door. Somebody has to start the coffee and get the napkins out.

After the funeral, the mourners invade our house armed with casseroles and sympathy cards. Dad greets them at the door. After a quick handshake, they move to the living room to pay their respects. Mrs. Litch sits on the couch, flanked by Betty and Ms. Cummings, the three of them holding cups of black coffee jittering on china saucers. Respects are paid—“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, we’re so sorry for your loss,” playing over and over and over again. Mrs. Litch is wearing sunglasses. She nods her head like a queen. Teri is nowhere to be seen. Betty tells people that “she’s resting, poor dear.”

Part of our church’s funeral ritual is to stuff your face. The dining room table is buried under cakes, plates of sandwiches, chips, dips, and several varieties of tuna casserole. I set up the coffee urn and pitchers of iced tea on a card table. The cakes and cookies are laid out on the sideboard. I buzz around resupplying paper plates, cutting cake, and mopping up spills. I make sure there is enough toilet paper in the bathroom. My flu symptoms seem to have abated. Maybe I ate something that was spoiled, or the lack of sleep caught up with me.

Toby disappears into his room with his Game Boy and Mr. Spock. Teri is gone, too. I’m too busy to worry about them right now. I send my friends back to school, back to normal. We all hug-hug, kiss-kiss. Mitch tries to hold on too long. I squirm away.

The adults mingle and murmur—“I’m so sorry, we’re so sorry, have another piece of that nut bread, did you get something to drink, your rosebushes look so healthy, what are they going to do, is it true what I heard, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree . . . is that a new dress?”—blah, blah, blah. Nobody talks to me, which is fine. The cat raids the ham platter and I stick her in the basement.

And then they leave. Betty and Mrs. Litch are the first to go, then the choir, then one by one the house empties, the cars fill up, and they drive away. Dad has changed out of his robe and into jeans and a sweatshirt. He mutters something and walks back over to the church. I bet he’s going to take a nap on the sofa in his office. I wash the dishes. It’s my house, after all.

Toby joins me in the kitchen once the coast is clear. “They’re gone?”

I set a bowl of tuna casserole on the floor for Mr. Spock. “Perfect timing. The show is over.”

“Excellent.” He cuts a monstrous piece of chocolate cake and takes a quart of milk out of the fridge.

“Use a glass.”

He sighs and grabs a cup. “Dad sleeping?”

I spoon ambrosia salad into a plastic container. “Yep.”

“What’s with all the food?”

“It’s for Teri and her mom. I’m going to freeze it. We can take it down to their place once they get the kitchen finished and the electricity fixed.”

“Ummm.”

While he eats, I pack up the food. Leftover casserole is dumped into plastic containers, the extra ham is wrapped in aluminum foil, sandwiches are wrapped in plastic. I work steadily, the little engine that could. Toby eats another piece of cake. When he’s finished, I point to the dishwasher. He licks the plate before putting it in.

“Is this what it was like when Mom died?” he asks.

I open the freezer slowly. “Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

I stack the containers of casserole one on top of the other in the freezer. “I guess.”

Toby hands me a container. “You guess?”

I put the last container in and shut the door. “Those sandwiches had mayonnaise, didn’t they? Can’t freeze those.” I put the bag of quartered sandwiches in the fridge. “You can take some to school if you want.”

“The funeral, Kate.”

“It was just a funeral. You’ve seen plenty.”

“Was I there?”

“What?”

“I was real little. Did Dad let me go?”

Okay. The dishes are washed and the food is put away, but the counters are filthy. Somebody spilled lemonade and it looks like the top must have come off a saltshaker. I take the Comet out from under the sink.

“Kate?”

“I don’t know.”

First I wet the surface and wipe up as much salt as I can. Then I sprinkle the Comet on the countertop, squeeze the sponge under hot water, and scrub. “I don’t remember.”

Toby leans against the refrigerator. “Dad told me that all the grandparents came, and Grandma Stuart was already senile and kept wandering off.”

“If Dad told you about it, why are you bugging me?” I rinse out the sponge and scrub some more.

“Because he won’t tell me everything.”

I use my thumbnail to scrape away something hard and gray stuck in the middle of the counter. It is oatmeal.

“I think he likes to pretend it never happened,” Toby adds.

“You got that right.” I rinse the sponge again and wipe down the counter. That looks much better. “Help me with the trash.”

Toby snaps open a garbage bag and holds it while I lift the smaller bags of trash and dump them in. “How many people were at Mom’s funeral? As many as today?”

I spin the garbage bag and fasten a twist-tie around the neck. “There were lots of cars. They had to park in the front yard and way up both sides of the road.”

I set the bag by the back door and wash my hands. Then I snap off a square of plastic wrap. The salad needs to be covered.

Toby hops up on the counter. “Did she have an open casket?”

The plastic sticks to itself. “Geesh, Tobe!” I crumple it in a ball and try again. “I don’t remember the casket.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.” I pull the last of the plastic wrap off the roll and stretch it across the bowl. It seals perfectly.

“Did Dad help carry her casket to the grave?”

“It’s morbid to obsess about funerals.”

“He carried Mikey’s casket. Did he help carry Mom’s?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“We need more plastic wrap.”

“Why not?”

I open the refrigerator door and talk to the skim milk. “Because I wasn’t there, okay? You want to know what I remember? I remember running out of the church. I was wearing black patent leather shoes and I ran down the road and I got blisters and I kept running and the blisters popped and I kept running and then my feet were squishy and wet and I kept sliding in those stupid shoes like I was on ice or something. By the time they found me, Mommy was buried in the ground. I didn’t see it happen, I don’t remember it. okay?”

Toby pushes himself off the counter. “Yeah, okay. Relax. I just wanted to know.”

I let the cold air cool me down before I put the salad on the top shelf. “Sometimes not knowing is better.”

I close the door a little too hard and the magnets fall off. Toby bends down and helps me. We work silently, putting up his soccer schedule, my track schedule, his honor roll certificate, my high honor roll certificate, the list of emergency telephone numbers, a postcard of the MIT campus, another postcard, an old one, of the periodic table. The last piece of paper is a drawing of Mikey’s, an enthusiastic roundish thing entitled
ball
. I let Toby put that one up.

I wash my hands again. “I’m going to the store to get plastic wrap. Want anything?”

He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go to the store later.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, she was in a hurry. I figured she wanted to get away from everyone, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Tell me. Who left?”

“Teri. Teri borrowed your car. An hour ago. She said she needed cigarettes.”

11.2 Entropy

Good news: She didn’t take Bert far.

Bad news: She’s swinging a sledgehammer. And yelling.

I sprint down the hill to the Litch house.

More good news, sort of. She’s not pulverizing my car, she’s attacking the half-renovated kitchen at the back of her house. The back door has been torn from the hinges and the window smashed to bits. Her hair is coated with dust and swinging wild around her face as she wields the sledgehammer, every blow punctuated with a curse. She’s in a trance, lost in the action of beating a counter to death, heart pumping, lungs like bellows.

The kitchen looks worse than it did after the fire. The double-insulated windows are shattered, the new drywall has been ripped from the studs, and all but one of the cabinets have been torn out and smashed on the ground. The sink is still hanging from the wall, but the drainpipe under it is missing. She hasn’t torn down the roof or ripped up the floor yet, but the way she’s going, it’s just a matter of time.

Bert is parked dangerously close to the storm. He looks unharmed, though I bet he has a nail or two in his tires. It’s a miracle she hasn’t hit him with anything, the way she’s tossing lumber and tools around. At least she didn’t drive him into a bridge abutment.

Teri drops the hammer and kicks the counter fragments out the door to the ground below. Yesterday there were steps leading from the dirt to the kitchen door. They’re gone. She picks up a crowbar and inserts it between the last cabinet and the wall. She leans back, veins standing out in her neck, and pushes with her legs, her butt hanging out for leverage. The nails scream, she swears, and the cabinet breaks free and tumbles to the floor. She tosses the crowbar aside and crouches down to pick it up. It’s too big for her to get her arms around.

“You want some help with that?” I ask.

She jumps a bit and squints through the former window in my direction. She’s still not wearing her glasses.

“No.” She takes a length of rope off the floor and ties it around the fallen cabinet.

I climb up into the kitchen. “That’s awfully big. You might hurt yourself.”

Teri tightens the knot, then wraps the ends of the rope around her fists. She bends her knees deeply and pulls. The cabinet moves slowly, scraping grooves in the new plywood subfloor. She pulls until the cabinet is almost at the doorway, then she moves to the other side and pushes it off with her boot. It lands on the ground with a little
crack
.

“Or maybe not,” I say.

Teri takes off her work gloves and lets them fall. She picks up a can of soda from the floor and gulps it down, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “You come down here to stare at me?”

“No. I was looking for my car. You could have asked, you know.”

She crumples the can in her fist and flings it into the yard. “You’re such an idiot. Here.” She takes something out of her pocket. “I used the keys this time.”

She tosses them over my shoulder. I don’t move. “It’s not just the car. I was worried about you.”

“I bet you were.”

She slips her work gloves back on, picks up the crowbar, and jumps to the ground. She breaks the cabinet into kindling with a few blows, then kicks the pieces.

“Is the party over yet?” she asks.

“Yep. Your mom went back to Betty’s house.”

“Did she ask where I was?”