The Tear Collector (23 page)

The service goes on for a long time, as several members from Saint Dominic’s speak in addition to Father Morrison. All of them talk about what a giving person Scott’s grandmother was, and I can’t help but think about my family: who gives, who takes, and what is owed. Veronica has said nothing to me since the incident, mainly because she lacks the energy to speak. Mom attends to her every day, and for that reason
alone, I’m surprised she’s not mixing in among the mourners to take her share of energy. Once again, it falls to me to serve Veronica.

“Death is the far-right bookend,” Scott says when it is his turn to speak. He looks uncomfortable in his black suit; his words are barely understandable through his obviously still painful mouth. He speaks slowly yet softly, as if the gauze were still in him soaking up his blood. Alexei tortured him with those dental tools—jabbing at gums, pulling teeth, anything to cause fear and pain in order to produce tears. Scott’s mouth will heal; that trauma will linger.

“And my grandmother’s life, like every life, was filled with stories,” Scott says, then tells stories about his grandmother’s life. The microphone bounces his words off the stained-glass images of saints and martyrs. I try to pay attention, but my thoughts are elsewhere, yet also right above me. At Saint Dominic’s, our family sits on the left side, underneath the stained-glass Stations of the Cross. We always sit under station six: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face with her veil. Just as Alexei’s family would normally sit under the fifth station: Simon carries Jesus’ cross.

“The sad thing in death is knowing there are no more stories to create. There are only stories to tell. As long as a person remains alive in story, they remain alive in spirit,” Scott says, then his eyes look out over the crowded church. He pauses, then finds me in the crowd. “So, tell stories of your own family. If
you do this, then each family lives longer than their time on earth.”

“Your speech was nice,” I tell Scott as I slip next to him in the receiving line. I sat with Maggie in church, but I’m standing with Scott as people prepare to walk past to pay their respects to him. This, more than the upcoming prom, bestows official girlfriend status on me.

“Thanks,” he whispers, then pulls me closer to him.

“I’m so sorry, Scott,” I say.

“It was time.”

“Not just about your grandmother, but about the other thing,” I say softly.

He looks away from me; I don’t blame him.

“Alexei is my cousin. Like I told you, he’s insane,” I explain. “He stole my phone. Nothing happened between us. There’s no one but you, Scott.”

“I believe you, Cass,” he says, then starts to cry. As I touch one of Scott’s tears, I know instantly everything is all right between us. I’ve learned that every tear, just like every grain of sand, has a different texture. But tears of any kind now rip me apart.

“Please don’t cry,”
I say. I’ve never said these three words together before. Scott can never know that my saying “please don’t cry” is proof that the words “I love you” are true.

Scott takes a deep breath and pulls himself together. “Are you okay?” I ask.

He tries to smile, but can’t. Instead, he says, “That’s the only thing I really remember clearly.”

“What?”

“Your voice asking me if I was okay,” he whispers. “And I knew, because it was your voice, everything would be okay.”

“You don’t remember anything else?” I ask as I take hold of his hand.

“Nothing else that matters,” he says, then kisses me on the cheek. His mom clears her throat and the mourners start to file past. And in a way, I’m mourning too. Not for Scott’s grandmother but for myself—what I was and what I hope to become. I’m not there yet. Once again I find myself in between. So while I stand in this line for Scott and offer compassionate embraces to all the grieving relatives, I must still be here for my own family. I owe them.

After the last person passes by, we all gather outside next to the hearse. Scott joins the other men from the church lifting the white coffin into the black vehicle. Before he gets into the limo that will lead the procession to the cemetery, I go up to him and give him another kiss. Then I wipe away his tears with the soft gentleness of my hand instead of the coarseness and calculation of my monogrammed handkerchief. I wipe away his tears, not for me or for Veronica, but for him.

As the hearse starts off toward the cemetery, I head back
to Maggie’s car, where together we start the drive in silence. As we pull into the funeral possession behind a long line of limos, Maggie finally speaks. “You didn’t answer my question. I saw you with Scott. Are you still—?”

“I didn’t answer because I don’t know.”

“Cassandra, I know this is hard for you. It was for me, and your mother,” Maggie says as we drive slowly to the cemetery. “But you have a duty to your family.”

“Why Alexei?” I ask. No one in the family seems to know where he is. I still don’t know if I should tell the family the things that he did to Scott and to those young boys. Everyone is looking for Alexei, but I hope they never find him. I must not have hit him hard enough with the car, or maybe he was too strong from soaking up so many of Scott’s tears, but I know from the news alert I printed this morning that he is still out there, hiding in the dark shadows.

“Because that’s how it is. After, you’ll come back home just as your mother and I did,” she says. “You need to mate to create the next generation. Cassandra, it is your turn.”

“Why does it have to be me?” I watch the limos in front snake down the streets of Lapeer.

“For the same reason the sun rises in the morning: because it is how the world works,” Maggie says. “Our family is part of the natural order. These are the rules of our lives.”

“I hate these rules!” I shout, like a child throwing a tantrum. “I hate Alexei. I love Scott!”

“Cassandra, you don’t love Scott,” she says. Her lips move, but I try to block out her words. “You think you love him, but you don’t. In fact, you can’t. That is not who we are.”

I say nothing because I cannot speak the truth. I want to tell her that I’ve proven my love for Scott, that I can cry and feel like a human. As soon as I learn Siobhan’s secret, I will leave Maggie, Veronica, and Mom behind. But I can’t say this yet. Not yet.

“This is how we live,” she says. “The males stay separate and come to us only to prolong the species. It is not about love or any of those human emotions. It is about our survival.”

“But Siobhan—,” I start.

Maggie cuts me off with a glare. “Don’t speak her name. She is a traitor to her kind,” she says. “She betrayed her family. She betrayed her values. There is a natural order to things, and when she left this family, she selfishly disturbed that order.”

“She was in love,” I counter with the most defiant tone I can muster.

“It’s
impossible
for us to feel that way,” she continues. “Love is a human illusion.”

I want to tell her how wrong she is. Love isn’t an illusion, but it might be magic.

“Siobhan isn’t selfish,” I say, thinking of all the selfish people I know, like Brittney.

“Cassandra, listen to me,” she says as she pulls the car over. “Everybody in the family has had these doubts. Do you think
you’re the first? We live among humans; it is natural that we should want to be like them. Being like them not just in appearance but by feeling emotions—the very thing that makes them human. But we can’t feel emotions because they would drain us, and then we couldn’t fulfill our place in nature. The family would cease to exist. It’s science, not supernatural. Don’t blame me, your mom, or Veronica; blame evolution.”

“But Siobhan—,” I try again, but once more, she cuts me off.

“Siobhan has nothing. She is an orphan, an exile, an outsider. I don’t want that for you. Is that what you want?” she asks, and I respond with a strange look. Is this some odd bonding attempt or some trick? As obligation replaces emotion in my family, every motive is suspect.

“I want Scott,” I answer.

“How long have you known him?” she asks. “Something like two weeks?”

“Almost two months,” I say. “He means everything to me.”

“If you leave the family, then you can’t come back,” she says.

She looks at me like no family member has ever looked at me before. Even if it is just an act, it still means something. I know she can’t feel it, but she can fake it; it is a loving look of worry and concern. “Cassandra, if you lose your family,” she says, “then, you lose
everything
.”

…

After the service and the funeral repast, Scott, Samantha, and I are sitting outside of the Family Center. He’s loosened his tie, while Samantha has removed the black headband wrapped around her head. She dabs her eyes with it, winks, then hands it to me like a secret handshake.

“What are you doing?” Scott asks.

Samantha pauses, then looks over at me. I owe her Scott’s life; she owes me her silence. I stare back at Scott, then say, “What do you think she’s doing?”

“I don’t know,” he says, then shrugs. “I’m saying that a lot these days.”

“You don’t remember any of it?” Samantha asks. This is the first time she’s seen Scott since everything happened. She doesn’t see my eyes, pleading with her to shut up.

“I remember visiting my grandmother after you left on Saturday morning,” Scott says. Depending on what else he remembers, some details might be hard to explain away even to a person who says he believes in the supernatural. He told me once that he believes in angels and thus must believe in demons. I wonder if he can believe in creatures that are not evil but live off human suffering. “I remember getting your text, Cass, and then going to meet you.”

“Then what?” I ask. Scott doesn’t need to know it was Alexei, not me, texting him.

“I wanted to see you so badly,” he says. “So, I went to meet you at the little park near the nursing home. And then …”

He falls silent again, and I wait. Details may return and one day he’ll know the truth, but maybe by then, he will be as in love with me as I am with him and none of this will matter.

“Then I woke up in my own bed on Monday morning,” he says. “I woke up with my mouth in terrible pain and two back teeth missing. I woke up to the news that my grandmother had died. But in between, I don’t recall anything, other than your voice asking me if I was okay.”

“That must have been just a dream,” I say. Better he think that than know the real nightmare.

“No, it was more like I was in a coma,” he says. “I just don’t know what happened. My mom called the police, but they told her that there’s not much they can do.”

“They search for missing persons, not missing days out of a person’s life,” Samantha says. She knows the truth, but she’s proving her trustworthiness with her silence.

“If Mom could afford it, I bet she’d hire a private detective,” Scott says.

“Maybe you were in a car accident or got mugged,” Samantha says, practicing her fiction-writing skills. “Maybe you were abducted by aliens who conducted all sorts of—”

“In that case,” Scott says, trying to smile, “maybe it’s better I don’t remember!”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say.

“Once this all dies down, my mom wants me to see somebody,” he continues.

“What do you mean?” I ask, trying to keep Scott talking and testing the limits of his memory. While we’re talking, Samantha is writing in her notebook. I shoot her a dirty look.

“She wants me to see a therapist to help with all this trauma,” he says.

Samantha chimes in. “I’ve got something else you might want to consider as well.”

“What’s that?” Scott asks.

“I’d also recommend the peer counseling program at Lapeer High School,” she says, and both of us laugh. Scott tries to, but ends up coughing instead. He takes a tissue from his coat pocket and puts it up to his mouth. When he removes it, it’s stained with blood.

“Are you in pain?” Samantha asks. I guess Scott answers, but I’m not listening. Instead, I’m thinking about all the suffering and sorrow that Scott, Samantha, Becca, Becca’s parents, and every human experience, and how it benefits me. And how I want it still.

I wish I could retrieve all the tissues from inside the church and harvest all the tears cried during the service. I took in a lot of emotion from strangers during the service, but I need more. When I get back to school, I’ll need to spread new rumors and stir up drama. When I get back to the hospital, I’ll need to comfort as many crying families as I can. When I get back to Becca, I’ll make her feel better for as long as she lives by letting her cry in front of me. And then, then I’ll take the tears
home to Veronica who has grown weak; I’ll need to be strong for her. I will need to thrive on people as I feed on their sadness. I will have to continue to collect tears until I’m able to reject this way of living. Until that day, which I sense is coming sooner than later, I’m still dwelling on the threshold.

“I need to say good-bye to people,” I hear Scott say, then he kisses me very lightly on the cheek. This morning he said one of the hardest good-byes of his life; any other has to be easy.

“I’ll see you later,” I say as I push his perfectly combed hair out of his face, kiss him on the forehead, and then watch him blush. It’s nice to see some color back in his face.

Once Scott is out of sight, Samantha turns to me and says, “Thanks, Cass.”

“For what?”

“For saving Scott’s life,” she says.

“That wasn’t me,” I counter. “That was Veronica, but mostly it was you.”

“Me?”

“You gave her the strength,” I whisper. “By showing your emotions you helped Scott. He’s still in pain, so he needs your support. You’re so mature, Samantha. Most girls—”

“Most girls didn’t come from families as screwed up as mine,” she says, still holding back tears. “You get really mature, really fast, when you have to raise yourself.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I say. “I’m just glad we can all be friends.”

“I need to know,” Samantha says after I pause. “I don’t understand so much of what—”

But I cut her off, then take her hand and say, “You can
never
understand. You can
never
tell anyone, and I can’t tell you more than you’ve seen. You have to promise me this.”