Imperfect Spiral (9 page)

“I'm sorry!” I said. But I couldn't help but wonder—really? He didn't see, he almost tripped on, my chartreuse size eight-and-a-half sneakers?

“Where's Mommy?” Humphrey asked.

“She'll be home shortly. What have you done on this rainy day, Humphrey?”

“Nothing,” Humphrey said.

Way to go, Humpty
, I thought.
That makes me look just great
.

“Nothing?” his father said. “That's not good. What's all this on the kitchen table?”

“They're just
pictures
,” Humphrey said. “They don't mean anything.”

Either I've created an Opposite Day Monster
, I thought,
or something is strange here
.

“Very well. If they don't mean anything, let's clean them up, shall we? Mommy doesn't need to be cleaning up messes when she comes home.”

Zing.

“It's Opposite Day, Daddy,” Humphrey said. “Danielle said so. So that means Mommy wants to clean up messes when she comes home. It's her favorite, favorite thing to do. Right, Danielle?”

Yeah, no.

“If that's the case, Opposite Day is over,” Mr. Danker said. “Thank you, Danielle. We appreciate your help today.”

From the way he said “appreciate,” I was pretty sure Opposite Day was still in effect. At least for the duration of his sentence.

Humphrey's funeral is today. That doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd say about a five-year-old.

At the same time, though, it also seems like it's too late for a funeral. It's Thursday; the accident was last Friday. You do the math. Isn't that just a really long time for a person to be—there's no pretty way to say this—lying around dead? We Jews get our dead people in the ground quickly. My grammy Ann died on a Wednesday night—technically, early Thursday morning. Her funeral was Friday morning. I don't know why we do it so fast, but I think it's a good idea. It's bad enough to be dead, isn't it? To be dead and hanging out in the basement of a funeral home, where people drain your bodily fluids and replace them with—what?—in an effort to preserve you—for what?—like
some kind of pickled biology lab specimen…. I'm sorry, but no. Just no.

I realize it's not as if the alternative is great. To think of Humphrey closed up in a box and put into a huge hole with six feet of dirt piled on top of him—again, no. Just no. Of course, Humphrey would be asking about how much dirt that is, exactly. To be specific, how much does that dirt weigh? As much as a kitchen chair? A living room sofa?

Anyway, at long last, the funeral is at two o'clock, an hour from now. Dad came home from work a few minutes ago. Mom will go to the church directly from her office. I think, but I'm not sure, that Adrian will meet us there, too.

The phone rings.

“Can you get that?” Dad calls from upstairs. “I'm changing.”

I can get it. But I choose not to. Ever since I talked to the reporter, I'm kind of not interested in picking up the house phone. Today it's probably that Diana Tang, wanting to ask whether I've enrolled in the Red Cross babysitting class yet. I let it ring.

“Pick up the phone, Danielle!”

It's Mrs. Raskin. I haven't seen her since Adrian pried my cell phone out of her hands in the ER. She gets right to the point. She's pretty sure the Dankers don't want me at the funeral.

Oh. Okay. 'Bye.

Dad comes downstairs. He's put on a suit and tie, which is not what he wears to work. He asks if that was Mom on the
phone. I tell him it was Mrs. Raskin un-inviting me to Humphrey's funeral.

“There aren't invitations to a funeral, Danielle,” he says.

“She said the Dankers don't want me,” I say.

“Don't want you?” He turns his head to the side a little.

“So—do I not go?”

“Let me call her back,” he says. It takes us a few minutes to track down Mrs. Raskin's number—she's not in our family telephone book (since she's not exactly a friend of my parents) or on our emergency phone sheet (ditto). But she's listed in a neighborhood directory. And she doesn't answer when Dad calls.

“Hmm.” He calls Mom's cell. It goes right to her voice mail, which means she's on the phone, or the phone is turned off. “Hmm.” He's not sure what to do. And I definitely have no clue.

He fumbles around in the neighborhood directory. Looking over his shoulder, I see he's turned to the listing for the Crenshaws, the Dankers' next-door neighbors. He punches in the numbers and waits.

“June?” So Mrs. Crenshaw answered.

The conversation is brief.

“Hmm,” Dad says after he hangs up. “June Crenshaw says they didn't exactly say they don't want you. But they did say something about—about how hard it would be to see you. She hemmed and hawed, so I really don't know what, if anything, is going on. June didn't feel that whatever they said warranted calling us. She says the Dankers are breakable—no,
brittle
is
how she put it—and she wasn't sure they actually intended to exclude you.”

This is way above my head. And the phone rings again.

“Hello?” Dad says. After a beat, he mouths to me, “Mrs. Raskin.” He listens. Then he says, “June Crenshaw had a slightly different impression.” More listening. “Uh-huh.” Pause. “Well, thanks for your insights.” Pause. “No, I really do appreciate it.” Pause. “We'll make our decision.” Pause. “Okay, then.” Pause. “'Bye.”

She was in the bathroom when Dad first called her, which is more information than we need. She says she heard that the Dankers said they would be more comfortable if I were not at the funeral. She is confident that what they meant was that I should not come.

Oh, how this lady loves to tell people what to do.

“Danielle, like I said, there are no invitations to a funeral,” Dad says. “We can go and sit in the back of the church. There will be a crowd. They won't even see us.”

But what if they do?

Dad talks about my feelings about losing Humphrey. I suffered a loss, too. I am entitled to take part in our community's good-bye to Humphrey—more so than most of the people who will be there. The Dankers don't have to see me. And if they do see me, they will know that I'm there to honor Humphrey and they will understand. At least we hope they will.

I decide not to go to the funeral.

“It's your decision, Danielle. Make sure you're comfortable
with it.” This is a total Dad-ism, like quality time. He's big on the decision-making process. Mom would just tell me what I should do.

But I'm sure. And Dad is not going to the funeral if I'm not going. In fact, he says, now that he thinks about it, he wonders if it wouldn't be better (
if it wouldn't be better
—another Dad-ism) for all of the Snyders to stay away from the funeral. Dad tries Mom's phone again, and Adrian's. It's one forty-five, and they're not answering. I send them texts:
Dankers don't want me at funeral, so Dad and I aren't going. Maybe you shouldn't either
.

Neither of us has eaten lunch, so I make tuna salad sandwiches.

“June Crenshaw also said that the Dankers were upset because someone put a football at that roadside memorial,” Dad says. “A ‘painful and thoughtless reminder,' June said. Look, it's an emotional day anyway. Maybe that put them over the top. So I hope you don't take to heart the fact that in their fragile state they've done something hurtful to you.”

I cannot even swallow.

Ninety minutes later, Mom and Adrian walk in. They both saw my text, but it was too late. They were already in the church, and getting up to leave would have appeared strange.

“You could have come,” Mom says. “It was a mob scene. And anyway, Danielle, you had a right to be there. You did nothing wrong. You should have been there.”

“Understandably, Danielle was conflicted,” Dad says. “And
we don't really know what the Dankers are thinking about Danielle's—role. You don't want to cause more pain….”

“These people are in so much pain already, I don't think they could even feel more,” Mom says.

“Jeez, guys,” Adrian says. “Way to shore up Danny.”

“I mean,” Mom says, “of course they're mourning Humphrey.
And
they've got Clarice's health issues. Seeing Danielle, not seeing Danielle—I just don't think it's on their radar screen.”

Adrian says he has to get going. I follow him outside.

“Do you want to hear about it?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“It was seriously intense,” he says. “I've never been to a funeral for a person who wasn't old. They use this tiny coffin.”

The pastor spoke about God's mysterious plan. Someone read that poem about how, when a person is gone, they're not really gone, they're in the air, the mountains, the rivers, blah, blah, blah. Someone read a story that they said Humphrey loved.

“What story?” I ask.

“You know. The one that everyone reads to little kids. It doesn't make a lot of sense, when you break it down.
Goodnight Moon
.”

“‘Goodnight noises everywhere,'” I quote. “I love that book.”

“Marissa was there,” Adrian says. “She said to say hello.”

“Oh.”

“It's more like she sent regards. It wasn't really a setting where people were just saying ‘hey.'”

“No, I know,” I say. “So she sent regards.”

“Did you ever get back to her after she texted the other day?” Adrian asks.

I shake my head. “We're not—close. Anymore. If we ever were.”

“Huh,” Adrian says. “I always thought she was okay.”

“A ringing endorsement,” I say.

“No, I mean better than okay. She's kind of traditional, but not—Paleolithic. I liked that she usually brought a different point of view to the table.”

“Yes, she did,” I say. “Marissa does have her points of view. Which I haven't heard in seven months, and I'm okay with that.” Adrian looks at me like he doesn't quite catch my drift, which he doesn't. How could he? I would never tell him what Marissa said about him and his bad attitude.

“Well,” he finally says. “The last time I saw the two of you together was Rock Star Weirdness Day last winter. There were some, shall I say, twisted points of view on display from both of you on that occasion.”

“I can't believe you're saying that.”

“It was video game insanity,” Adrian says. “It happens. Did you ever make it right with her?”

“Did she ever make it right with me?” I counter.

He looks at me again with that not-quite-getting-it squint.

“Am I missing something?” he asks.

“You're supposed to be on my side!” I cry.

“There's no side here,” Adrian says. “Marissa said hello to you, through me, your trusted envoy. Maybe she doesn't know how to approach you right now. You just went through a really intense thing. Some people will reach out to you—”

“Yeah, newspaper reporters and the police are my bestest friends.”

“—and some will hold back. Come on, Danny, you know that even in normal circumstances, you're not exactly the most approachable person.”

“Not approachable?” Surely he's talking about someone else. “I'm totally approachable. Except when I am temporarily deranged by a stupid video game, which will never happen again, because you're all grown up and moved away.”

“Hey, it's part of your charm,” Adrian says. “It's who you are: a self-reliant person. It can be a little—daunting.”

The whole time we're talking, we're standing next to his car. Suddenly I have to sit down. I sink into the grassy strip next to the curb.

“I'm always on your side, Danny,” Adrian says.

I love that book
Goodnight Moon
. But Humphrey didn't love it. Maybe he listened to it before I knew him, but he never let me read it to him.

“That's from when I was a baby,” he would say. “Let's read a more important book. A more interesting book.”

“I put a football at that stupid memorial on Quarry Road,” I tell Adrian. “I put it there because Humphrey loved to play
catch with me, and that has a lot more to do with him than stupid stuffed animals and action figures. And now the Dankers think some insensitive moron put a football there as some kind of sick joke.”

“A sick joke because …”

“Because, you know, he was running after a football when, you know.”

Right. Of course he sees the problem. “It wasn't insensitive, Danny,” Adrian says. “It has a meaning, a totally cool meaning, that the Dankers just don't get. That's not your fault.”

“I guess I could have thought about how they would see it.”

Adrian places his hands out, wide, palms up. The universal who-knows gesture.

“Don't they know the kid loved to throw a football?” he asks. “I mean, Mr. Danker must have played football with his own son.”

I think for a moment. “No,” I say, “and no.”

Adrian shakes his head. “Parents,” he says. “They are clueless.”

I have another visit from the police. Not the same guy-'n'-girl team as the night of the accident, though. I mean, it's a man and a woman, but they're different people. They don't wear uniforms.

“We know you've already been interviewed by our colleagues, Danielle,” the woman begins, “but we need you to tell us again what happened that evening.”

“We were walking home from the park,” I begin. “We were walking on the side of Quarry Road.”

“Were you walking along the eastbound lane or the westbound lane?” she asks.

It's only the first question, and I'm stumped. When they see my confusion, they try again:

“Were you on the north side of Quarry or the south side?” the man asks.