The Tear Collector (11 page)

CHAPTER 11
SATURDAY, MARCH 21

How are you doing, Becca?”

She looks up at me; her sad blue eyes look larger than ever. Her head’s covered in a black scarf. It matches the black dress and the color everyone in her family wore this morning of mourning. Saint Dominic’s was packed; Robyn would’ve loved to have been around so many people, even if they couldn’t see her. The casket was closed, which didn’t surprise me, but did sadden me.

Grandmother Maggie came with me, although she wasn’t my first choice. I asked Scott, but he was working—waiting tables at Paul’s Coney Island—and couldn’t get time off. And he couldn’t switch his work shift to later in the day because he has a hot date tonight. With me.

I wanted to sit with Becca at the funeral, hold her hand, give her strength, but Mr. Berry said his sister volunteered. The last thing he needed was a fight about funeral seating
arrangements. But I’m next to her now, as people mill around the Saint Dominic’s Family Life Center awaiting the repast. It’s so odd for people to get together to break bread so soon after putting the closed casket into the cold hard ground. If anything proves the range of human emotion, it is a morning like this. From the anguish of the funeral Mass to the agony of the last ride to the cemetery to hearing laughter at this gathering of survivors, somehow humanity survives the depths of despair and always returns to hope. Like any species, humanity adapted this trait of emotional resiliency in order to survive.

Few people from school were invited; even fewer showed up. Someone—maybe it was me—made sure Mrs. Berry knew how Craig drove a nail through her daughter’s heart with Brittney holding the stake, so neither one was invited. Several teachers attended, even Mr. Abraham, who wasn’t one of Robyn’s teachers.

Everybody’s paying attention to Becca, so it’s hard for me to comfort her, but there’ll be time later. I’ve told her parents that unless I’m at the hospital, church, or school, I’ll do my best to make myself available for Becca. I owe them; I know I can never tell them why.

“I want to go home,” Becca says in between the steady stream of mourners paying their respects. She’s sitting on a hard red plastic chair and looking as tired as the room’s worn carpet.

“I wish I could take you,” I say, kneeling down next to her. “This will be over soon.”

“I don’t know why we’re doing this,” she says, almost pouting. “It’s weird.”

“I know, but it is important for people to say good-bye,” I tell her. “It’s good they can gather together like this and share their sadness.”

“Cass, can I ask you something?”

“Sure thing,” I say, smiling brightly.

“Why do people cry?” she asks.

I try not to look at her strangely; there’s already been too much of that today. As I’ve stood next to Becca, I’ve listened to people choosing their words as carefully as if they were navigating a minefield. The elephant in the room is an eight-year-old with cancer. Everybody knows that in the next year—two at most—they’ll be back in this same room saying the same words, not
to
Becca but
about
her. Then, there’ll be no surprise, but there’ll still be as much sorrow.

“Cass?” Becca says, and I snap back to attention. “Are you going to answer my question?”

“I’m not sure,” I say, as my eyes gaze out on the entire room. “Why do you think?”

“I think people cry when they’re sad because when they’re done crying, they don’t feel as sad anymore. That’s how I feel,” she says, sounding too smart for eight. I think she asked me because she’d already thought about the answer. Like her sister, she’s a little bit of a show-off.

“Maybe, Short Stuff. Maybe you’re right.” I’m still avoiding her wide eyes.

“To feel good, you have to feel bad,” she says, and I finally look at her. She’s beaming as if she’s just won the spelling bee. She looks familiar; she looks like Robyn leading a cheer.

“That’s so smart,” I tell her, then pat her on the back.

“So why don’t you cry, Cass?” she says very softly. “Don’t you want to feel better?”

I look out over the room, desperately trying to find someone I know, but no one comes to my rescue. Instead, I’m left with Becca looking up at me, awaiting my answer.

“What do you mean?” I ask, stalling for time.

“I saw that you didn’t cry for Robyn at the funeral this morning.”

“Not everybody reacts the same way,” I tell her, then sigh. “Everybody’s different.”

“That’s what I thought,” Becca says. She looks like she’s about to ask me something else when another of Mr. Berry’s sisters starts walking toward us and Becca yells, “Aunt Ella!”

“See you later, Short Stuff,” I say, stealing a quick hug. “I’ll be over tomorrow if I can.”

“Okay, I’ll miss you,” she says, and proves it by hanging on tight. I get my face up next to her and give her a tiny kiss on the cheek. “I feel better when I cry. You should try it, Cass.”

I rise, then start to walk toward the exit. The food’s on the table in the Family Life Center, and all the tears have been shed in the church. Before Becca finds me again, I locate Maggie
standing by the front door. She looks impatient, edgy. “Are you ready to go?” I ask.

“Yes,” Maggie says. She’s not looking at me; her eyes dart wildly around the room.

“Me too,” I say. “I don’t think I can take much more. I’m ready to explode.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, Robyn was lucky,” Scott says, his eyes for the first time not looking at me. We’re at Coach’s Pizza on a busy Saturday night.

“How could you say that?” I ask, then sip from my water bottle; Scott sips from his pop.

“To die like she did, fast and, except for probably a few seconds, painlessly,” he says.

“You didn’t come to her memorial,” I say, pretending to pout.

Scott readjusts in his seat like a defendant on trial, then whispers, “I couldn’t.”

“It was hard for everybody,” I say softly.

“But for her friends, her real friends like you, it must—,” Scott starts, but stops when both of us hear loud laughing from a booth across the room. We look over to see Kelsey with Tyler, and Cody with Bethany. They’ve just noticed us; Cody hurls a hunk of bread across the room. It lands far short of the table; looks like Cody will be spending another baseball season on the bench.

“Immature assholes,” I mutter.

“Do you want to leave?” Scott asks as he picks up the bread and puts it on our table.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“There are people waiting for tables,” he says. “It’s polite to go and let them sit.”

I smile, ignoring another roll hurled our way. “That’s so nice, Scott.”

“Hey, this is what I do,” he says. Earlier in the evening, Scott had told me funny stories about his job waiting tables, but also about how hard the work is. He sets down a nice tip along with the bill. I offer to pay as well, but he turns me down. I suspect, however, that will be the only time he turns me down this evening. Yes, he’s kind, polite, and religious, but he’s still a guy.

“Okay, but if we leave now, then they win,” I say.

“We can’t let the terrorists win,” Scott says, then laughs. We’ve talked politics, current events, movies, and books. Unlike Cody, Scott reads the paper beyond the sports page.

I laugh, as I’ve done a lot this evening. Cody made me laugh by accident; Scott does it on purpose. As I watch Cody and his crew yak it up, I wonder how I stood him for a second, let alone six months. “Okay, we’ll stay,” I say, then smile. “What were we talking about?”

Scott pauses, bites his bottom lip, then mumbles, “I don’t want to think about death anymore.” We were talking about Robyn; but he’s thinking about his grandmother. Scott and I
left for our date from the hospital, a strange start to a beautiful evening.

“How is your grandmother?” I ask, unable to resist what comes naturally.

“Not much better,” he says, looking down. “I know she’s in pain, but she can’t tell us.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” I ask.

“I overhear Mom on the phone. She needs full-time care and we can’t afford it. Mom can’t do it because she’d need to quit her job. I work all I can, but I can’t quit school because then I’ll never get into college,” he says, then sighs. “It’s a vicious circle, like life itself.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“The whole thing about you’re born helpless and sometimes, like my grandmother and my grandfather before her, you spend the end of your life equally as helpless. It’s a circle.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He pauses, then once again finds his smile, a small, sideways one, but a smile nonetheless. “All we can do is pray to God that something will work out.”

“Don’t tell Samantha,” I crack.

“She doesn’t get it,” he answers, then shakes his head in amusement and disgust.

“What do you mean?” I slide my hand another half inch closer to his.

His hands stay in place: one on the glass, one in his lap. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“It’s okay, Scott, whatever you want,” I say, then pause to think how different Scott is from most guys I’ve met at Lapeer High. Most of my exes couldn’t wait to speak badly of the girl who came before me. I wonder if the laughter at the other table comes from Cody cracking wise about me. Maybe he and Tyler are entertaining their dates with tales of the backseat. Whatever they’re doing, it’s causing a disturbance. I see their server speaking to them, but she’s not getting anywhere. Her words are easily swallowed up into that ocean of assholes.

“Okay, but it’s complicated,” he says, showing he is open, but just needs a little prodding.

So I say, “Maybe you don’t want to speak badly of the undead.” He doesn’t laugh.

“I guess I understand people like her,” Scott says, then sighs. “They’re afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of being themselves,” he says. “That’s why they adopt poses or join cliques.”

“I don’t know her that well,” I say, although that might be changing. After the big door slam in the library and the eye knives in biology class, she’s toned it down. I think her new thing is to act all mature, like she’s above it. She surprised me by finally adding me as a MySpace friend, then also asking if she could interview me for the school paper about the peer
counseling service. Samantha thinks she’ll be asking the questions; she obviously doesn’t know me at all.

“I knew girls like her at Powers.” He says the name of his old school with a wince, like a bad memory. Not bad because it was scary, but awful because it was good and now is gone.

“Well, there are a lot of them at Lapeer as well,” I add. “I try to avoid all the groups.”

“I noticed,” he says, almost whispering.

“I think she’s like all of us, just trying to figure out who we are,” I say very casually.

“Well, she’s got a lot more thinking to do,” he says. “Like the whole God thing.”

“Not everyone believes in God like you and me.”

He flashes a second of anger, but it melts when I offer my best smile in return. This conversation is like a swimming meet and I need to push ahead to the finish line.

“She
does
believe in God, she just hasn’t put it all together.”

“Scott, what do you mean?”

“Here’s the story,” he says, and I lean forward as if I’m expecting a kiss. “An angel once found a demon broken and nearly dead. The angel held out his arms to help the demon. The demon looked at the angel and asked, ‘Why would you save an evil demon like me?’ The angel answered, ‘Because
without you, there is no me
.’”

I’m smart, but I play dumb. “What do you mean?”

“If she really believes in vampires, then she believes in evil. If she believes in evil, then she believes in demons. If she believes
in demons, she must believe in angels. If she believes in angels, then she believes in God,” he says. “You don’t get good without evil. They coexist.”

“That’s a rational explanation for the irrational, don’t you think?”

“There’s an order to things in the universe,” Scott says, then finishes his pop.

“So do you believe in demons and vampires?” I ask, almost amused.

He lets out a small, almost embarrassed laugh. “Not like Samantha does, but, I guess I do.”

“You’re one interesting man, Scott Gerard,” I say. My arms stretch out like I am trying to touch the wall of the pool. I can’t reach out any farther to him; he’s got to reach back.

“You too,” he says, then touches me. “I mean, you’re interesting, not an interesting man.”

I think he’s blushing, but I can’t see all of his face. Instead, I feel his skin. “Thanks.”

The moment’s ruined by more yelps from Cody’s table and another incoming bread bomb. I stare back at Cody, but he’s not looking at me. They’re too busy now throwing food at each other. I see the server walk by the table again, but that just sets off another laugh riot.

“I’m sorry, we should—,” I start.

“I wanted to get to know you for some time,” he says. “But I’d have to break my rule.”

“Your rule?”

“Since pretty girls don’t usually talk to me, I don’t talk to them,” he says as he blushes. “By talking to you, I’m breaking my rule. I wonder what other trouble you’ll get me into?”