Local Girl Swept Away (3 page)

“Hi, you two. Mind if I join you?”

“Hey, Char,” I said. “Yeah, sit with us.”

Charlotte and I had been friends when we were little kids, before Lorna came to the elementary school. After that, we drifted apart, but I'd always liked Char. She was a quiet kid when we used to hang out together, but she'd blossomed the past few years since she started getting a few parts in school plays. It was funny, but the minute Charlotte sat down, I felt a wave of comfort, almost relief, wash over me.

Finn didn't have much to say to Char, but then, he didn't have much to say to anybody these days.

“I know you both must feel pretty terrible,” Charlotte said. “I wanted to say I'm sorry about what happened, and if you need anything—I don't know what it would be, but anything—I'm here for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and Finn mumbled something similar under his breath.

“Do you have jobs lined up for the summer?” she asked.

“I don't yet, but Finn's working on a whale watch boat starting next week. The
Poseidon.
” For some reason I felt I had to speak for Finn, as if grief had rendered him mute.

“Oh, Captain Fritzy's boat?”

Finn nodded and finally opened his mouth. “Yeah. I practically have to pay him to let me work on it, but I don't care. I want to be out on the water.”

“Right. I remember you always loved boats. You used to hang around on the wharf when you were a kid and watch the fishermen unload their catch,” Charlotte said. But Finn had gone back into hibernation.

“So, Jackie, you're not working at the Riptide this summer?”

I was surprised Charlotte knew where I'd waitressed last year, but then, it's a small town. “No, he hired two of his nieces, so I'll have to look around. I should have started before this, but, you know, I haven't had the energy.”

“Want to work with me at my dad's place?”

“At the café? Really? I didn't know he was hiring.”

“One of our regulars retired. You'd be working with me, breakfast and lunch. Tips aren't stellar, but we get busy in season.”

“Absolutely! I love the Blue Moon.”

“Great! I told my dad I'd ask you, but you should go by and talk to him after school. He'll pretend like he's going to make your life miserable, but he's all bark.”

I felt a smile break across my face and recognized it as a first since Lorna's death. There was a lightness in my chest that felt like hope.

As Finn and I trudged down the hall after lunch, he said, “You sounded pretty excited about that job.”

“Why shouldn't I be? I have to make some money this summer, and it'll be more fun to work with Charlotte than down at the Riptide.”

Finn didn't say anything else, but as he headed off to his next class, I felt like I'd been scolded. Did he think I was replacing Lorna or something? That was ridiculous. Lorna was irreplaceable. But I needed a friend, I needed a little bit of normalcy in my life, and if Charlotte was offering that, I was damn well going to take it.

Lorna's memorial service didn't take place until a month later, at the end of June, the day after school let out for the summer. At first it looked like there might not be one at all because Lorna's mother had gone into a drunken seclusion and was incapable of planning it. I stopped by to see her a few times, but she wouldn't even open the door. Finally, Ms. Waller, the guidance counselor from the high school, managed to force her way into the house, and she got Carla to agree to let her plan something in the school auditorium.

“We all need to find some closure,” Ms. Waller told me when she called me into her office to discuss it. If that's what she said to Carla, I'm amazed she got out of there alive. “Closure” sounded to me like what happened when the lid of the casket banged shut. Only we didn't have a casket or a body or a grave. We just had a big hole in our lives.

The day of the service, I changed clothes four times. Nothing I owned sent the right message:
Everything is ruined.
I understood now why black was the traditional funeral color, not dull gray, not muddy brown. Only stark black told the world that the worst had happened, the inconceivable worst, and there was not a bit of color left in your life.

Mom went to the memorial with me, but Dad was out on his boat, unwilling to lose a whole day of fishing. We were a little late getting to the high school because of my clothing dilemma, and I was surprised to see the auditorium was almost filled. Who were all these people? Did they really know Lorna, or were they there because she was young and beautiful and she fell from a place every one of them had also carelessly walked?

Finn came up the aisle toward us wearing his usual jeans and dark T-shirt, the uniform of every teenage boy I knew. He always looked a little sharper than the other guys though, probably because Elsie bought his clothes in New York when she went to her gallery in the city. The locals mostly shopped at the mall in Hyannis, if not the Goodwill.

“We saved seats for you up front,” he said, pointing. The whole Rosenberg clan was in the front row, Elsie motioning for us to join them.

“You go,” Mom said, giving me a little push. “I'll stay here in the back.”

“No! Mom, come with me!” I begged. I wanted her by my side for this, but I wasn't surprised when she backed away. Not only did she hate funerals, but she pretty much despised any public gathering of more than two or three people. It was kind of amazing she came at all.

“There's plenty of room up front, Mrs. Silva,” Finn said.

“Oh, I know. Thank you, Finn. But I don't like to traipse up the aisle in front of everybody. I'm fine back here.” She plopped into a seat in the very last row, and I could tell by the set of her jaw she wouldn't change her mind. If she had her way, Teresa Silva would be completely invisible.

As I followed Finn up the aisle, I spotted Charlotte in the crowd, sitting with a girl from our Spanish class. Finn's friends from the basketball team were all there too.

“Wait.” I pulled on Finn's arm. “There's Lucas with Simon and Billy. They should be up front with us. We should all be together.”

Finn scowled in Lucas's direction. “Good luck with that. He won't even talk to us.”

“Not true. I talked to him this week.”

“For more than thirty seconds? Did he want to hang out with you?”

“He had a dentist's appointment that day—”

“There's an original excuse.”

“Look, I don't know what's going on with him either, but I'm asking him to come up front with us,” I said.

“Well, hurry up. The service is starting.” Finn loped up the aisle without me.

Lucas was sandwiched between his fathers who seemed to inflate around him like protective packaging as I approached.

Simon was on the aisle and I leaned over him to speak directly to Lucas. “You should all come up front. Finn saved seats so we could be together.” Simon, Lucas, and Billy exchanged nervous glances, as if I were speaking a language they didn't quite understand.

Mr. Coleman, the high school music teacher, started pounding out a somber piece on the out-of-tune piano just as someone with a loud voice came stomping down the aisle behind me.

“Oh, leave me alone, will ya? I don't need you holding my hand!”

Carla Trovato, wearing what looked like old black pajamas, her faded rusty hair pulled back into a lumpy bump on the back of her head, sideswiped me, then bounced off down the aisle, followed closely by Ms. Waller, who was attempting to grab her arm.

“There are still some seats in the front row,” Ms. Waller said.

“Where do you
think
I'm going? I'm her mother, for Chrissakes.”

Ms. Waller stopped in her tracks for a second as if she'd been smacked, then rallied and trotted after Carla. I was so absorbed in watching this little drama I almost forgot what I was doing until Simon tapped me on the hand. “Sweetheart, I think we'll stay where we are. It's getting crowded up there.”

I tried to pin Lucas with my eyes, to see if this was his choice or Simon's, but he wouldn't look at me, so I gave up and went to sit by Finn.

“Wouldn't come, would he?” Finn asked, frowning. “Told ya.”

“I give up,” I said.

I was so aggravated by Lucas's behavior I couldn't pay attention to the Unitarian minister, not that he was saying anything of interest. He didn't know Lorna, and he was giving what I assumed was his standard speech for young people “taken before their time.” All I could think about was that Lucas didn't want to be with us, didn't even want to talk to us. Something was very wrong and I couldn't bear not knowing what it was.

We sang a few hymns, everybody but Carla, who was fussing with something in her purse and didn't even stand up. I closed my eyes and tried to remember Lorna's face. I still could, of course, but I wondered how long it would be before I'd forget some of the details. I swore I'd never forget her luminous eyes.

“My eyes have no color at all,” I could hear her say. “Yours are chocolate brown and Finn's are blue as water, but mine are see-through eyes.”

“That's not true,” I'd argued. “They're hazel.”

“Hazel is a name, not a color,” she'd come back. “In eyes it just means a muddy mixture. I have alien eyes.” She'd narrowed them into slits. “I can see right through you.”

I was sure she could.

The minister asked if anyone in the audience wanted to say anything, to give a remembrance. At first no one came up. Most of the high school kids looked down at their laps as if they were afraid someone might call on them. Finally, Ms. Waller took the microphone herself to start things off. She said Lorna was a leader whom other students looked up to. “She had a bright future ahead of her,” the guidance counselor said with a quivery lip. Which made me remember how hard Ms. Waller had campaigned to get Lorna to consider college. But Lorna hadn't even wanted to talk about it. She always said, “College is a waste of four years. I want to start living my life
now
!”

The principal got up and stumbled through a few sentences about what an asset Lorna had been to the school, which everyone knew was a total lie. Lorna would burst out of her chair at two forty-five every afternoon, thrilled that the school day was over. You couldn't pay her to stick around after class for a meeting or a rehearsal or a practice of any kind, ever. She wanted to get out, do as she pleased, make her own rules.

A few more people stood up, but I couldn't bear to listen anymore. None of them really knew Lorna, not the way I did. But I was my mother's daughter. I couldn't stand up in front of all those people and admit how much I'd lost. I twisted in my chair to look across the aisle at Carla whose crossed leg bounced up and down in time to a soundtrack no one else could hear. She smirked and shook her head when an elementary school teacher described Lorna as “kind and sweet.” Of course, Lorna would have hated that description herself, but couldn't Carla at least
pretend
she liked her daughter, even at her memorial service?

Finally Ms. Waller took the mike back. “If no one else has a remembrance, there are refreshments out in the foyer provided by our generous PTA parents.”

People started to shuffle in their seats and stand up, but suddenly Finn jumped to his feet. “Wait! I want to say something.”

Ms. Waller brought the microphone over to him and rubbed his arm as she handed it to him. Finn cleared his throat and began, his voice low and growly. “First of all, Lorna
was
beautiful, and she
was
strong-willed and a leader and all of those things people said about her. But she was more than that too. For me she was . . . everything. She changed my life. She
was
my life. And now I don't know how to . . . live . . . without . . .” Which was all he could say. He cleared his throat again, handed the mike back to Ms. Waller, and sat down.

I was glad Finn had had the courage to say what I was thinking, but hearing his words was not comforting. It reminded me that things would not really get better, that we would miss her forever. Why, I wondered, not for the first time, was she so special to us? Could I explain it if I had to? Why did she seem more beautiful to us than anyone else? There were other girls with lovely hair and perfect skin—Gillian Bates, for example—and Tiff Medieros could be a crazy daredevil sometimes. There were even other girls who were graceful and funny, like Carrie Costa. But no one combined all those attributes in quite such a stunning way. And no one else hid such depths behind her deep-set eyes or saw so clearly our own depths. No one else made us love her the way Lorna had.

Ms. Waller was weeping as she brought the service to a close. Finn had triggered tears all through the auditorium even though he was unusually dry-eyed himself. After a minute or two people mopped their faces, wandered out into the hallway, and stood in clumps around card tables full of punch and coffee and cookies. I couldn't imagine swallowing anything around the golf ball that was stuck in my throat.

Finn and I stood together and a bunch of kids circled around us. I looked for Lucas, but wasn't surprised not to find him. People were saying kind things to us, but for some reason it all irritated me. Everyone was very respectful of our grief, but they were enjoying the drama a little too much. I felt like some low-level celebrity that everybody wanted to stand next to so my pitiful bit of fame—best friend of the dead girl—might rub off on them.

A boy named Joe shook his head and said, “I can't believe she isn't coming back.” How many times had Finn and I said the same thing this past month? Others in the circle nodded, as if he'd voiced a new and profound idea and not just a repetition of the constant refrain that played in my head.

Then, without meaning to, I repeated my other obsessive thought, the thing I couldn't get past. “How could Lorna have slipped? She could run across the whole breakwater and start back before the rest of us even reached the far end. It doesn't make sense.”