A Wake

I've come home to bury my best friend, my almost-love.

Lisa's ex-husband.

...almost ex-husband.

He was going to leave her already...for me. We were finally going to be together.

I watch Lisa run her hand down the edge of his coffin, over and over, the tips of her fingers traveling the length her arm can reach, then going all the way back to the beginning, like she was fixing the sleeve of a shirt (his), like she was tracing the valley of a spine (his). I can feel the devastating mix of emotions in that gesture—the love, the disbelief, this sprawling valley of grief.

I can feel them because they are mine. Only I can't run a hand down the edge of his coffin, the sleeve of his shirt, the hollow of his spine. Not anymore.

The smell of flowers is cloying, deep and heavy in the air. There is a tipping point when it comes to flowers, I realize: at a certain point, they will all smell like death.

I watch as Lisa's mother puts her hand on her daughter's shoulder and whispers in her ear. Lisa turns around, sees me standing there in my black skirt and my black blouse, my black cardigan and black flats. I cannot stop the tears from pooling in the corners of my eyes and sliding down my cheeks. As if I were the widow, not her.

She folds me into her arms, her murmured greeting soft and sweet. She has no idea, I speculate. No idea at all.

"Clarisse, I'm so glad you made it. I'm sure he is, too." When she says that last part, I wonder if she actually knows everything. But when I pull away and look into her eyes, red with last night's tears, I decide that she knows absolutely nothing.

Wouldn't that be better for everybody?

A man touches Lisa's elbow and whispers, "He's here," and for one mad, joyful, wishful, heartbreaking second I think, it's Gabe, he means Gabe, but instead it's the priest, his robes pristine, his voice low and comforting, his eyes kind, his belly rotund. And I think, Well, that's close enough, he's probably surrounded by angels now, didn't his mother name him after one?

I find a space in a pew somewhere in the back, far from his wife and his mother, far from his brother and his nephews, and I sit with people who won't wonder as much if this woman in black were to weep, to wail, to shatter into a million pieces.

The priest tells everybody to rise, and somehow, I find it in me to stand. I rest one hand on the wood, the tip of my index finger traveling the space right in front of me, and not an inch more. Over and over, like I was fixing the sleeve of a shirt (his), like I was tracing the valley of a spine (his).