A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents (2 page)

As we drive, Abigail’s messages become this echoing symphony somewhere deep in my consciousness—like I’m standing on the street
outside an opera house listening to the faint music. By the time we find a parking space, my brain has already processed and
compartmentalized the information in an almost Chutes and Ladders type of way—sending her voice down, down, down—through a
trapdoor and into the depths, out of reach. After five years of tamping, repressing and numbing, I have it down to an exact
science. Not even Abigail can pry that trapdoor open. Not even Abigail can make me buy a ticket and hear that opera live.

Maybe this is an evolution. Maybe time does heal all wounds. Maybe now I can move on and somehow forget that I’ve lost my
mom. It’s been difficult, but I’ve managed to put it away for five years now, split in two like a magician’s assistant without
that whole other part of me: past, history, family.

Maybe I’ve come to terms with things? Or maybe I’ve finally snapped and completely shut down every emotional response I ever
possessed? Whatever the truth is, Abigail’s relentless calling means I’m about to find out.

C
an I help you?” the man behind the counter says.

“I’ll have a plain bagel with lox and cream cheese, please. And a large coffee,” Tim says, handing the man a twenty-dollar
bill.

The man turns to me. “Can I help you?”

“This is for both of us,” Tim adds, motioning at the twenty-dollar bill.

“I’ll have a blueberry bagel with just really light… like
super
-light cream cheese—” I say, making a bizarre sweeping hand motion. Apparently, this is now the international gesture for
“schmear.” “And a… what black teas do you h… okay, the Earl Grey.”

My BlackBerry buzzes again.

“They’re just going to keep calling,” Tim points out. I didn’t even know he noticed. Tim takes his change. I pull my BlackBerry
out as the man behind the counter hands me a large cup and an Earl Grey tea bag.

“It might be important,” Tim urges, squeezing my shoulder. The BlackBerry buzzes again. The man behind the counter points
me in the direction of the hot water. In a haze, I check the caller ID. The phone buzzes again. I look back at Tim. He nods
at it emphatically.

“You really should get that.” Easy for you to say, I think. You’re not the one about to vomit in public. The phone buzzes
again. A chill runs up my spine as I check the caller ID. Abigail’s sent in the Closer.

“Hello?”

“Grace.” Huston. My big brother. Without Abigail in my life, I quickly realized I couldn’t fold a bedsheet by myself or do
much of anything practical. Fine, no one need see the pandemonium that lurks within my linen closet. But with no Huston, it
was worse. Without Huston, I couldn’t believe in heroes.

“I know, okay?” I sputter, finally stepping out of the line, clutching my large cup and eyeing that hot water like it was
the North Star.

“You know about what?” Huston presses.

“I know about Dad. The stroke,” I say as the activity of Noah’s Bagels buzzes around me. Tim looks over. A look of genuine
concern sweeps across his face.

“Abigail says you won’t take her calls,” Huston accuses.

Huston’s voice cuts through a chink in my armor. I can feel the tip of the sword sinking in deeper and deeper. Noah’s Bagels
melts away. It seems like only twenty minutes ago, not twenty years, it was just the four of us sitting around a game of Sorry!,
absorbed in what we were certain were the important issues of the day. Abigail’s voice cuts through the din.

“Grace isn’t going to do her own laundry! She’ll just wear my stuff! And then I won’t be able to wear it anymore because she
stains everything!” Abigail yells at Huston.

Mom is at the flower shop. She’s their main floral designer and it’s the holidays. So we’re on our own.

“Gracie…” Huston begins, looking up from the Sorry! game we’ve stopped playing. Leo takes a drink of his milk, annoyed with
our chronic bickering intermissions. It’s a testament to not being allowed to watch television that we’re still playing these
afternoon Sorry! games at ages ranging from Huston’s sixteen years old to Leo’s arguably more age-appropriate eleven. I’m
always yellow. Huston is always blue. Abigail is red. Leaving Leo with green. He
says
it’s his favorite color, but once I caught him playing Sorry! with a group of neighborhood kids. He snatched up the red pieces
like they were gold… well,
red
doubloons.

“I don’t have to do laundry if I don’t want to! Leo doesn’t have to do his laundry!” I retort.

“Leo only wears underpants and capes!” Abigail protests.

“So!?!”

“I swear to God, if you touch my stuff,” Abigail warns.

Unable to control my compulsion to do the opposite of anything Abigail tells me to, I bolt over to her neatly folded basket
of clean laundry and sit directly on top of it, praying to any god that will listen to please… please let me fart. I dig my
narrow thirteen-year-old ass deeper and deeper into the recesses of the laundry, past tiny rainbow T-shirts, Day-Glo sweatshirts
and Jordache jeans.

“I’m going to killllll you!!!” Abigail screams, charging at me.

“Huuuuusttooonnnnnnnnn!” I scream, raising my hands defensively as Abigail and I both topple over the basket, her clean laundry
spilling everywhere. Huston gets up from the dining room table and starts toward us. Leo lets out a weary sigh and focuses
back on his ever-present puzzle book. He always has a Plan B.

“Don’t you help her, Huston! You are so dead!!!” Abigail squeals, tugging at my hair and clawing my face.

“I may be dead, but you still have to do your laundry all over again!!!!” I hawk a giant loogie over as many of her clothes
as I can. Those Skittles I picked up after school do wonders for my Technicolor saliva production. My pinkish-red spit goes
everywhere—clinging to way more garments than I ever could have hoped for. Abigail lets out a primitive howl, grabs my still-spitting
mouth and pins me to the living room floor. Leo meanders over from the dining room table.

“Stop it!!! Come on! It’s your turn, Abigail,” Leo demands, pointing to the unfinished game on the dining room table. He has
an old towel tied around his shoulders, and is clad in underpants and a pair of red Wellingtons. At eleven, Leo’s a bit old
to be running around in costumes. Mom hates to discipline him, really any of us, since she asked Dad to leave a few months
ago after she caught him with another woman…
again
. We’re hoping things will go back to normal soon. And not just Leo and his costumes.

“Enough! Enough!” Huston says, peeling Abigail off with the strength of the varsity quarterback he is. He holds Abigail by
the upturned collar of her pink Lacoste shirt as she swats at me. At him. At everyone.

“I’m so telling Mom,” Abigail fumes.

“It’s still your turn, Abigail,” Leo pleads, knowing the game is close to lost.

“You’re still going to have to do your laundry again,” I sing, wiping the last strands of pinkish-red spit from my chin.

Abigail defiantly walks back over to the dining room table, picks up the die and surveys the board. I am six spaces away from
winning. Abigail blows on the die for good luck.

“You’re going to do both your laundry and Abigail’s, Gracie. It’s only fair,” Huston says, as both of us walk back over to
the dining room table. Abigail rolls a five.

“Oh, yeah?” I answer, sitting. Abigail moves—one, two…

“Yeah,” Huston says, leaning toward me. Abigail knocks my little yellow man off the board and onto the floor.

“Well, you’re not Mom, so you can’t decide…” I bluster, watching the little yellow game piece skitter across the floor.

“No, I’m your older brother, so I actually don’t have to be nice to you,” Huston says, scooting even closer, downright looming
if you ask me. I am unimpressed…
stupid
, but unimpressed.

“Sorrrryyyyyyy,” Abigail proclaims, sitting back in her chair.

“See? She apologized, now you have to redo the laundry,” Huston says, picking me up and holding me upside down over the board.
My tangled ponytail sweeps the game’s surface and the pieces scatter.

“Yeah! Now get to it!” Abigail orders, grinning widely. Huston scoops me up and stands me upright.

“Fine,” I say, steadying myself, giggling and picking my yellow man up off the floor along with a few others.

“Your turn, Huston,” Leo urges, scrambling to put each piece back where it had been. Thanks to his freakish photographic memory
he gets every position correct.

“Okay… okay,” Huston says, laughing.

I put my yellow man back at Start and settle in.

“Grace?” Huston’s voice crackles through the phone. I reorient myself. The din of Noah’s Bagels zooms back. I steady myself
on the counter, still clutching my empty large cup; the tea bag is now a crumpled mess.

“I’m not taking her calls because I’m not interested in what she has to say,” I explain, turning away from Tim. He walks over
to where the group is seated.

“It’s your choice not to be a part of this,” Huston says. The weight of what I did smothers me as it does every time I let
myself think of my family.

I bolted.

I ran from the only people who loved me. I should have run
to
them when Mom died. But I just couldn’t get away fast enough. Their love felt like a building on fire. I had to stop the
burning.

Huston continues, “It’s great to hear your voice again.”

A flash flood of emotions begins to penetrate my carefully constructed barriers. Panicked, I focus on Tim settling in next
to Laura. He looks over at me. The divide between my two identities is comical.

“Me, too,” I whisper.

Huston laughs. “You’re glad to hear your own voice?”

“No, I mean… it’s good to hear your voice, too.” I laugh in spite of myself. I watch as Tim picks up our baskets of bagels.
He settles back in, taking a huge bite of his—cream cheese everywhere.

I remember that back before Tim and I started dating I believed him to be a
monkeyhander
: a word Mom coined to describe (or poke fun at) Abigail’s exceptionally long fingers and her habit of pawing at people like
some kind of mutant-alien. As we grew up,
monkeyhander
evolved into an adjective we all used to describe a lover who was good on paper, but devoid of that…
spark
. So whenever I fantasized about Tim, we were always cuddling and lounging around doing crosswords on an overstuffed couch.
Not struggling to get each other’s clothes off in the heat of the moment. I had that once. Wasn’t ready for it again. So with
Tim I prudently fantasized about golden retrievers, morning cups of coffee and a retirement plan.

“Leo’s coming,” Huston breaks in.

“Be sure to bring some air freshener and bail money,” I joke. Huston laughs.

I continue, “Well, then…”

“So, I’ll see you later,” Huston says, getting down to business.

“I… uh—”

“I understand this is tough, but you must know that we’re looking forward to seeing you,” Huston interrupts.

I am quiet.

“Then it’s settled,” Huston says.

“If by settled you mean that you’ve bullied me into going, then—”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Huston says. Even twenty years later my brother is just as imposing as he was over a game of
Sorry!

“Huston—” I start.

“Grace—”

I cut in, “Let me finish,
please
,” still stupid enough to challenge him.

Huston is quiet.

“I’m standing in a goddamn Noah’s Bagels… and… I just need to get my head together,” I finally say.

“You’ve had five years to get your head together, Grace. You’re thirty-five years old. The onus is on you to be a member of
this family now whether you feel you’re ready or not.” Huston’s voice slithers over the word
feel
as if it’s the most ridiculous word in the English language.

I am quiet. Suddenly ashamed and embarrassed.

“So, it’s settled,” Huston repeats.

“Yes,” I say, almost in a whisper.

“See you when I see you,” Huston says, finally hanging up.

“See you when I see you,” I say to the dial tone. I beep my BlackBerry off. What just happened? I walk outside. Run outside.
Faster. Faster. Outside. Away. The rain. Close my eyes. Can I really return to this family? I don’t have the heart… I mean,
I literally don’t.

It broke into a million pieces the day Mom died.

I
thought your dad was dead?” Tim whispers, as I pull a chair up to the group after finally filling my cup with hot water. Little
Earl Grey flakes float on top like fish food.

“No, it was my mom who died,” I say. So normal. Just words.

“Then where has your dad been?” Tim presses, crossing his long legs and turning his chair toward me.

“Apparently he’s been in Ojai, California. Less than a hundred miles away. He left—well, he was
asked
to leave, when I was thirteen…” I trail off, having given Tim more information about my past in the last ten seconds than
I have in all the months we’ve been together.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Laura chimes in.

“I’m going to eat my blueberry bagel,” I answer, dismissing her and her ridiculous assumption that this is any of her business.

“Do you have any other family?” Laura presses. I swallow my bite of bagel with an apologetic shrug. They wait. Fantastic.

“I had two brothers and a sister,” I admit, swallowing.

“Had?” Laura asks. A look of horror passes across her Botoxed face—at least I think it’s horror—she could be laughing maniacally,
for all I can tell.

“Have. I
have
two brothers and a sister,” I say, wiping my mouth with a napkin. Laura relaxes. She must have thought I lost my whole family
in some hideous accident. I laugh at the thought. But. Wait.
Wait
. The numbness I’ve luxuriated in for the past five years tingles like a foot that’s been asleep. It wasn’t a hideous accident.
I walked away from my entire family voluntarily. I gulp my tea, instantaneously burning my mouth, esophagus and stomach lining.
I slam the teacup down on the table, gulping for air. I pull my complimentary water out of my purse and drink the last droplets.