The Beautiful Between (15 page)

19

I want very much to wear the right thing to the funeral: it feels like it is the last thing I will ever get to do for Kate, and I must do it perfectly. I think wearing all black would be presumptuous of me; that should be reserved for family members. I will wear gray or navy, and only a little black. I don’t even know whether this is my first funeral. I imagine my two-year-old self at my father’s funeral, sitting on some willing grandparent’s lap, sucking my thumb—something that would normally be forbidden, but surely no one would have said no to me that day—and watching the service, not understanding what it all meant. I see myself hot, cranky, and hungry; I imagine my hair being stroked; strangers kissing me, pitying my mother and me.

It’s easier to think I didn’t go, and so I imagine the adults saying, She’s too young. Leave her home with the sitter—a funeral’s no place for a child.

My mother and I take a cab together to the funeral home, even though it’s only eight blocks away. There’s a crowd outside, people waiting to get in. My mother had insisted we leave early. I thought she was just nervous about being late. But maybe she knew you get there early so you can see the family first, crowd into a little room and express your condolences, before taking your seats. Maybe she knew that afterward, when the family members rush into the black cars that take them to the cemetery, there might not be time.

I didn’t ask my mother to come with me today; I knew she would come. The room next to the chapel is packed. Jeremy is surrounded, and I don’t think I should squeeze past all these people to see him. I saw him last night, and I’m sure I’ll see him again tonight. So my mother and I stand in the corner, waiting for it to be time to move into the chapel, to sit and watch. I’m surprised when Jeremy is suddenly standing next to me. He leans down quickly, whispers in my ear, “Go and hug my mother. She loves you.” His breath is warm on my neck. And then he’s gone, back in that crowd of people.

I don’t know why Jeremy’s asked me to go hug his mother. She’s probably surrounded by her family and her closest friends. I’ll be intruding. But I also don’t want to let Jeremy down; he said she loved me. I know Jeremy wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true, but I barely know her. I don’t know why she would particularly care about seeing me now.

Kate would know, I think. If I asked Kate, she’d be able to explain it to me.

I start to look for Mrs. Cole. My mother follows me through the crowd and then I see her, Mrs. Cole, sitting on a velvety couch, silently staring ahead of her. People are talking to her, or anyway, talking to each other around her, keeping their hands on her shoulder, her knee, over her hands folded in her lap. I walk straight toward her. My mother hangs back; I’m relieved that she understands not to follow me. Mrs. Cole’s face almost brightens when she sees me; her arms extend toward me like she knew I was coming to hug her. She rocks me back and forth, or I rock her. When I let go, she takes my hands and squeezes them, and I know that she knows how sorry I am, how much I loved Kate, and how much I love her son. And I know that’s what Jeremy was talking about when he said that she loves me.

I turn around, see my mother waiting. A flicker of something I don’t recognize passes across her face—is it jealousy? Not jealousy that I’m so close with the Coles, but jealousy of the way Mrs. Cole and I just held each other.

We file into the chapel, and soon I am watching Jeremy: first the back of his head as he sits in the front row—his brown hair that’s almost wavy, but not quite—and then his face when he gets up to speak. Neither of his parents speaks. He is wearing a dark gray suit and it occurs to me that I’ve never seen him dressed so nicely and that he looks very handsome and tall, speaking about his sister without crying like the rest of us. The only thing that gives him away is the way that he’s digging his hands into the side of the podium, hanging on like it’s holding him up—but I think you’d have to look very closely to see that. Otherwise, he looks collected. He looks regal. I realize this is where princes earn their titles: their titles are something they must live up to, and Jeremy is doing that now at this Upper East Side funeral—he is keeping everything together and being every bit the man that we all need him to be. And it’s strange, and maybe a little condescending of me, but I feel enormously, tenderly, and warmly proud of him.

I wonder what it’s like to be strong like Jeremy. As I sit in the pew, my body curls up around itself, like it’s trying to keep me warm. My shoulders are hunched and I’m slouching as low as I can, my arms crossed in front of me, my hands clutching opposite elbows, like I think I will fall apart if I let go.

But my mother is sitting up straight next to me. She is staring straight ahead, focused intently on the back of the head of the man sitting in front of her. I look up at Jeremy, and I see that he is doing the same thing: staring straight in front of him at the back of the room. Neither he nor my mother flinches, whatever words he says. They just hold their gaze in front of them as tightly as I’m holding my arms. Maybe they aren’t so different.

Kate is in a plain, closed wooden casket at the front of the room. The only thing that gives anything away about the person inside it is its size. It’s short, so you can guess that it’s a young person. Before the service began, people were walking up to the casket and touching it like they were saying goodbye.

I didn’t go near the casket. I don’t see how touching a piece of wood will make it any easier to say goodbye to Kate. But it feels a little better now, listening to Jeremy talking about his sister.

“I don’t know how to tell you about Kate. I don’t know what words are the right ones to use so that you know that she was more than funny, or smart, or beautiful, or kind. But I can tell you this: Kate would know the right words. A friend of ours once told me that Kate always knew the right things to say.”

Startled, I drop my soaked tissue into my lap and sit up a little straighter. Because that was me: I was the friend who said that. I look around—no one can tell, of course, that he was talking about me. And even though I’m still crying, it’s somehow comforting to think that this is something that only Jeremy, Kate, and I know.

When I look down at my lap, I see that a fresh tissue has replaced the one I dropped. My mother is stuffing the dirty one into her purse.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and she nods at me, almost smiling.

When the service is over, the family files out in a different direction from everyone else, to what I guess is a room beside the chapel where they can get ready for the trip to the cemetery. A crowd gathers outside on the sidewalk, everyone waiting to say goodbye to the Coles. It’s remarkably cold today. There are a bunch of students here; some teachers too. I wonder if the students are getting excused absences and I wonder who’s covering the teachers’ classes. I wonder if they made an announcement. I bet they’ll hold a special assembly to help everyone deal with the loss—an hour I know Jeremy will spend hiding out somewhere else.

I button my coat up to my chin; dig my hat out of my bag and put it on. My mother pulls on thin leather gloves that I can’t imagine will keep her hands very warm. Someone grabs me from behind. It’s Jeremy, and he drags me around the corner.

“I want to have a cigarette before we leave, but I can’t do it in front of everyone,” he says, talking fast. I nod; everyone is out here, and they’d be mobbing him.

I look back for my mother—I don’t know if she saw Jeremy grab me. She might be looking for me. Jeremy takes me to the driveway behind the funeral home. There is a hearse parked next to where we stand. While Jeremy smokes, Kate’s casket is brought out and loaded into it. People who work here do it, like professional pallbearers. Jeremy acts like he doesn’t see, so I do too.

My eyes sting in the cold air from crying so much earlier, and smoke clouds Jeremy’s face.

“You did really well in there,” I say. “I was really proud of you.”

“Thanks, Connie,” he says, and lights a second cigarette. He seems to be in no hurry. I wonder if his parents are waiting, if he told them he needed a few minutes.

“You have to do something for me,” he says.

I look up at him, thinking, Anything. I’ll do anything you need me to. But I just say, “What?”

He inhales deeply. “I was thinking about you almost as soon as Kate died, thinking about how she’d died and the way it ended, thinking about how I was there and then the doctor explained every detail of what it was that killed her, why it had happened at that moment.” He pauses, and then he says, “It meant something to me, hearing all that.”

I picture Jeremy standing in a hospital hallway, a doctor talking to him, trying to make Kate’s death make sense.

“Connelly, you have to know. You’re sixteen years old and something happened when you were a baby that you couldn’t have understood, but you’re old enough now. Your mother botched it up, and now you have to demand that she do it better.”

“I have to demand that she do it better?”

“Yes.” He nods, and I can tell that he’s given this some thought, that he came up with the phrase “demand that she do it better” some time before and has been waiting to say it to me.

“You have to tell her that she was wrong to keep you in the dark this long and you can forgive her now, but she has to tell you the truth.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jeremy looks down at me, not impatiently, but maybe he’s wondering why it’s taking me so long to figure out what he means. “Ask your mother. Just ask her. All this figuring it out, trying to find out—it’s bullshit. It’s
beside
the point. You should find out from your mother, not because I got some doctor to break his confidence. It’s your business, Connelly; it’s your history, and it’s time for your mother to tell you. So ask her.”

“Ask her what?” I say, truly confused.

“Connelly, are you listening to me?” Jeremy tosses away his cigarette, puts his hands on my shoulders, and looks right at me, and hard. “You have to go home right now and ask your mother how your father died. I can’t imagine how lost I would feel if all I knew was that Kate had died and I didn’t know what it was that killed her. Can you imagine? Just being told that my sister died without any kind of explanation?” Jeremy’s voice catches for a second. He takes a breath and continues, “Cancer, car accident, whatever it was, it’s making you who you are, so you need to know what it is. It matters, Connelly. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. It gives sense to it.”

“I can’t ask her,” I say, and twist out of his hands. The lump that’s been in my throat since Kate died begins to rise.

“Why?”

I shake my head. “I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I can’t, I can’t.” I heave the words with my breath. The lump in my throat hurts so much, I can’t catch my breath. I begin to cry, and I really didn’t think I could cry any more today.

Jeremy takes my hand. “Explain it to me.”

I don’t know what to say. It seems wrong that he should be comforting me. But I understand: even though my father died years ago, I am only beginning to mourn him now, just like Jeremy is only beginning to mourn Kate. And Jeremy knows that, even if I didn’t.

“Explain it to me,” he repeats.

“It would hurt her. You don’t know. I can’t do that to her.”

“Connelly, you have to.”

“You don’t know.” My face is soaking wet again. “I asked her once, just once, and nothing has ever been the same. I’ve never been able to just—I don’t know—get into her bed and watch TV. She couldn’t even hug me after Kate died.”

“Maybe you need to just get this out of the way, then, Connelly. Maybe then you can even have your mother back.”

“It’s been too long. I can’t. Questions—questions like that are too much. They ruin everything.”

“No they don’t. It’s the exact opposite.”

I shake my head. I can’t. He can’t make me.

“You can do it, Connelly,” he says, like he knows what I’m thinking. “You can and you have to.”

I don’t say anything. He sounds so positive that he’s right.

“You’ll feel better.” With his heel, he grinds the cigarette he’d tossed away and then he puts his arms around me. “You’ll feel better,” he repeats into my hair, and he kisses the top of my head.

“I gotta go,” he says. “My parents are waiting.”

“Okay.” I’m distracted now, thinking about my mother, about what I have to ask her now. Then I realize I should be thinking about him, at least somewhat. “Call me if you need anything. And give your family my love, and—”

“I know. You too.”

Jeremy smiles and heads inside through the back entrance, and I walk back out to the front to find my mother.

“Come on, let’s go,” I say.

“You don’t want to wait to see the Coles again?”

“Another time. We’ll go to shiva tomorrow or something.” “Shiva” is a new word to me, another thing my mother taught me. I knew that it meant prayers for the dead, but I never knew it meant visiting someone’s home, eating catered bagels, sitting on the couch and keeping the mourners company.

She doesn’t argue, and together we walk home.