Those early visitations were nothing compared with what was to come. Root remained closed to me apart from these little teases and glimpses. It would take some major jolts to break down the doors, but that was only a matter of time. Dad’s passing was only the start. I was in for a bumpy ride.
The day of the funeral, Aunt Helen made breakfast for all of us—blueberry buckwheat pancakes with sausages and bacon. I sliced up some pancakes with my fork, slid them around the syrup, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a bite or two. I did have a slice of bacon, though. No matter what mood I am in, I can never resist a good, crisp slice of bacon.
Dad was an Episcopalian so his funeral was going to be the whole shebang. We had already suffered through the wake. Now we only had to muddle through a mass and a procession to cemetery for yet another ceremony. I couldn’t to go home and mourn in peace and on my own terms.
At the church, I sat in the front pew next to mom and Aunt Helen, her sister-in-law who had come down from Ohio with my mom’s brother Ed. Uncle Ed kept chase after his rowdy eight-year-old twins, Jay and Josh, who seemed to be given free reign over any havoc they wished to wreak. At one point, they had blown out a whole bank of votive candles before Ed could coax them to stop.
“Kids, please. It’s not your birthday.”
Mom gripped my hand like a pet hamster she was afraid might get loose and run away the instant she slackened her grip. I just sat there and stared straight ahead, trying not to look at the coffin, wishing my bratty cousins would stop goofing around and act like they were at a funeral.
Whenever the main door creaked open, Mom would crane her neck around to see who had arrived. I’m sure she was keeping some kind of running tally in her head of the folks who came to pay their respects to dad. Social slights were important to her.
“That girl’s here,” she whispered, turning back around.
“What girl?”
“The one you were hanging out with … in the park.”
I turned around and there she was, settling into a pew way in the back next to her own mom.
I swallowed my gum. My blood, which had been settling into my lowest reaches like bilge water, began to course like superheated steam through my veins. The flame that had been guttering inside of me had roared back to life.
Mom managed a grin. “You like her, don’t you?”
I stared straight ahead, still not looking at the coffin, my lids pegged open a half inch wider.
I hadn’t seen Jenny in weeks. I’m not sure how she got wind of what happened to my dad. It’s not like we shared any social circles anymore. In fact, I had become a circle of one.
Her being there did a good job of taking my mind off the grotesque side show that was my dad’s coffin. It seemed so surreal—him just laying there in front of this crowd. At least the lid was closed this time, unlike at the wake when he had been displayed like some slab of meat, because that’s what he was—meat. That thing in there was not my dad. My real dad—the consciousness that made all that meat move and think and talk—was long gone away to another place.
If dad was here, there was no way he would have tolerated all these people staring at him laying in a box. Dad was a social creature. If he could, he would have gotten up and made the rounds, with body or without, going from pew to pew cracking jokes and making small talk. There was just no way my real dad was in this room.
I kept glancing back towards Jenny, trying not to be too obvious. She seemed to be trying real hard to ignore me, apart from one puzzled stare. I started to worry. Why was she here, if she wanted nothing to do with me? I didn’t get it.
