Few Kinds of Wrong (25 page)

“Then I'll do everything I can to be there.”

I stand up too and walk him to the door.

“See you tomorrow,” he says, and I can't get goodbye out and close the door fast enough.

As soon as he's gone, I call a cab. I pat my dress pants pocket to make sure my keys are there and realize they're not. Carl must have taken them out when we got here. I look around and get a sick feeling that maybe he took them with him. That I won't be able to get in my car. I need to get my car and the thing I want most, which is lying on my passenger seat.

I find the keys exactly where I always put them, on the little table next to the door. Before I can open the door to leave, I hear a key in the lock. I unlock the door, knowing who's on the other side.

Jamie opens the door, and even though I knew it was him, seeing his face startles me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Coming to see you.” He stands up straight. “Waiting for him to leave.”

“And what if he didn't?”

Jamie doesn't respond, just looks away as he lays his keys on the table by the door. “Where are you going?”

“To pick up my car. Please, Jamie. I'm exhausted and I just want to get my car and get back here.”

“You okay to drive?” He taps his foot then purses his lips.

“Yeah, why?”

“I heard you weren't when you got to the funeral home.”

“What? Who said that? BJ said it, didn't she?”

“Lots of people said it. Did you drive in that state?”

“No.”

“Then why was your car in the parking lot? Why did people see you fall out of it when you got there?”

“I didn't fall out. My God, did you
come here just to interrogate me?”

“Well at least four people told me differently. Now who should I believe? The four sober ones or you? And I'm not interrogating. I'm looking out for you.”

“I don't remember inviting you here,” I say to his feet.

“Oh, that's the way it is, is it? I don't remember you inviting me any other night for the past few nights either.”

He is standing between me and my friend on the passenger seat, and I fight the urge to push him away.

“I just let you stay those other nights.”

“Let me? Let me? How nice of you to let me. You let me do everything, don't you? You let me stay here, you let me look after you, you let me cook for you, let me clean up your messes for you. You let me screw you. You're all about letting.”

I turn away from him.

“And did you let the bottle open and go down your throat? And did you let yourself stagger into the funeral home where your grandmother is being waked? Did you let yourself make a show of yourself in front of everyone?”

I hear a horn blowing outside.

“I'm getting a cab. I don't want you here when I get back.” I open the door and walk out.

Jamie comes behind me. “I don't think you should drive, Jen. It hasn't been long enough.”

“I'm fine.” I don't turn around to face him. “Just go, Jamie. You don't have to deal with my shit now. We're not together anymore, you know.”

“I deal with your shit every day. Not a day has gone by since you left me that I haven't dealt with your shit, either me missing you or wishing for you or lately, lying in bed with you, so close I can touch you, so close you let me inside you but so far away it could be a stranger there next to me. Knowing that the only reason I'm there is because you let me. Because you need something else, someone else, to help take away your pain. So whether I'm here or a million miles away, I deal. With. Your. Shit.”

His words are followed by the sound of footsteps walking away. I turn to tell him that I'm sorry, that I feel something every time I see him, and how grateful I am for him.

But something else, something sweeter and less demanding, beckons me and I walk toward the cab.

20

T
HE PHONE WAKES
me out of a dreamless sleep. I answer the phone without thinking and Mom's voice says hello. “How are you?” she says. Her tone is tinged with something, a coldness.

I shake my head to try and make my voice sound like I haven't just woken up. The clock says 10:30.

“Okay,” I croak then clear my throat.

“I wanted to know if you're going to the funeral with us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. Us. The family. We're leaving from Henrietta's house, sometime around one.”

“Um, yes, sure.”

“You can come over here this morning if you like.”

“No, that's okay. I'll be at Henrietta's by one.”

Silence.

“Is Jamie there now?”

“No.”

“Could you not? Could you?” Mom pauses then stops.

“What?”

“I hope you'll be feeling well when you get there.”

“What do you mean?” And then it hits me. But I wait. Let her say it.

“Nothing. Just that I know you weren't feeling well enough to be at the funeral home last night and I hope you don't feel like that today.” She pauses between words and I can almost see her searching for the way to say what she wants to say.

“I'll be fine.”

“Good.”

“See you at Henrietta's.” I hang up without a goodbye and without hearing hers.

After a long shower, two glasses of water and two cups of coffee, I look in the back of my closet. Still hanging in a fancy garment bag is the dress Mom bought me to wear to Dad's funeral, never taken out of the bag.

Black, three-quarter sleeves, sensible neck, hangs just below the knees. I'd picked it out when Mom insisted, when I was still in a daze and would have agreed to anything. I tried on three others before we got that one. I hadn't worn a dress since my wedding day but I didn't tell Mom I wanted a pantsuit. I just followed her, got in the car as she drove, stood there as she picked out dresses, put them on in the change room. She opened the changing room door, then she guided me out and turned me around in the better light. Until she found this one.

The night before, the night Dad died, I had slept at Mom's house, not wanting to be alone in my house. People came and went, bringing soups and cakes and casseroles like they contained some healing salve, like their cooking would make things all right instead of just giving us the trouble of figuring out where to put things and who owned what casserole dish that had to be returned.

Maisie was there. The sensible one who organized the food but didn't bring any to add to our burden. She turned off the light over the door sometime around 9:00 p.m.

“They won't leave you alone if you don't turn off the lights,” she said, turning off other lights around the house until there was only one small lamp left on in the living room. “And you'll need your rest now.”

After Maisie left, Mom turned off the one remaining lamp and we sat in the dark, surrounded by blackness, encompassed in silence. Our breathing sounded like loud waves crashing over the shore, and all I could think about was that Dad was no longer doing it. Every breath in and out was one Dad didn't get.

It seemed like a long time before Mom spoke. “I can't go to bed. Not without him there.”

“I'll go with you,” I said, although I found her words odd considering how she and Dad so rarely went to bed at the same time.

Mom sat on the edge of her bed until I'd finished putting on an old nightshirt of hers and come into the room. Only when I walked over to Dad's side of the bed and turned back the sheets, did Mom get in.

The pillow I laid my head on felt like a cruel hug — warm, smelling of Dad, yet empty of him. One of his hairs lay on the white pillow case and I put my cheek against it. Mom moved and her feet touched mine. They felt like ice and I jumped. When she moved her feet away, I searched the bed for them and placed my feet against them, the cold somehow reassuring. Until I thought how cold Dad's feet must feel now and pulled away. I turned over and pulled my knees up, trying to stop the shivering that had started.

Mom cuddled my back, and as sleep found me, I wondered if Mom and Dad always slept like that. I'd never seen them snuggled together in the nights I'd come in their room seeking refuge from colds or dark nightmares. But Mom's arm draped over my side felt practiced, like it was a natural place for it to be.

The night had been punctuated with the first moments of waking, when I could still believe it was a dream, before I realized it was Mom lying next to me and not Jamie. In those moments, I felt an empty, painful longing, not just for Dad but for Jamie, and when the tears lulled me back to sleep they were for both of the men I loved.

I don't put on the dress until 12:28, just before I'm going to leave for Henrietta's. I don't feel comfortable in formal clothes, especially a dress, and want to wait until the very last minute to get dressed. I unzip the bag and look at the dress. I hadn't remembered the small, braided pattern in the rayon. I run my fingers along the pattern and feel, rather than see, that it's a series
of leaves and flowers.

For Dad's funeral, I didn't get the bag unzipped. I took it down from the closet and laid it on the bed. I found black shoes I intended to wear with it, with just the hint of a heel. I put on concealer to hide the dark circles under my eyes, made of restless sleep. I added foundation, eye shadow, opened my drawer, took out the new pair of pantyhose Mom bought me. Laid them next to the bagged dress on the bed.

Then I walked to my closet, put on an old AC/DC t-shirt I bought at the Value Village, my jeans, a pair of socks from my drawer, strolled down the hall, slipped on my workboots and walked out the door.

Outside, the air had smelled fresh, like I had breathed for the first time. My lungs filled. There was never a conscious decision not to attend the funeral. That thought, as far as I can remember, did not form. Just as the thought not to go to the funeral home any of the days Dad was waked there did not come. No thoughts not to look at Dad in the casket. My idea was just to go to work. The garage was closed that day, out of respect for Dad, but there were cars waiting to be fixed and paperwork to be done. And I did it. Non-stop, not even a cup of coffee, for eight hours, until Mom came in, while I was face and eyes into a transmission job on a 92 Mustang.

“Your father was late for our wedding,” she said, standing over me as I bent under the hood. She was still dressed in the black skirt and blazer she'd bought two days before.

“Really?” I didn't think I'd ever heard her talk about their wedding before and found it on odd time to do it then.

“I told him I wanted his hands clean for the wedding pictures. Clean fingers, clean nails, everything.”

I looked down at my hands, covered with grease, dirt so deep it filled my pores so that no amount of scrubbing could get it out.

“But he went to the garage that morning,” Mom continued. “And worked until a little over an hour before the wedding. Until Bryce went and got him. His hands were filthy so he and Bryce got a bottle of bleach and soaked your father's hands until they were white enough. Too white, really. Only Bryce was already dressed in his tux, and you know you can't use bleach without splashing some here or there, and Bryce's tux got a big, white spot right on front.” Mom started to laugh until tears came to her eyes.

“I was in the back of the church for ten minutes, waiting for him,” Mom said, still chuckling and wiping away tears of laughter. “Your Nan Philpott thought he'd run away. But in came him and Bryce, your father stinking of bleach, his hand blood red with the stuff, and Bryce with a big sunflower pinned over the white spot on the front of his tux. Your father's hands were so raw, I could only get the ring down to the first knuckle, he cringed so much.” Mom laughed again.

“He wouldn't have minded you not being there today, you know,” she said, the laughter stopping as I finally understood the reason for her story. “But
I
wish you'd been there.”

I wiped my hand on an old rag, leaving plenty of dirt on both the rag and my hands. “Sorry.”

Mom nodded. “I still can't believe it. I saw him lowered into the ground, saw them sprinkle dirt on him and I still can't believe it.”

If Dad had walked into the garage at that moment, I don't think I'd have been surprised. I hadn't seen anything. I watched him on the floor in the garage, saw the paramedics try to revive him, but nothing else. As I slip the dress I'm wearing to Nan's funeral over my head, I hold no memories of the finality of Dad. Paramedics, the doctor's shaking head in the family room, Jamie's words. The headstone with Dad's name on it. Nothing I touched or felt or saw myself. Not like with Nan. Dad's presence, unlike Nan's, still feels around me, in part, I know, because I let it. Because I let the whiskey stay in the file cabinet, the message on the answering machine, and leave the toolbox open.

Jamie's words come back to me. Dad remains because I let him. I let everything. Except let Dad go.

I expect just family when I get to Henrietta's, at least until I try to park the car. Their driveway is full and the street is lined with parked cars. I recognize the Millers' Pontiac Grand Am, the Wilsons' Mazda 5, and the Heffernans' Windstar. This isn't going to be the quiet family preparation for the funeral I expected.

I hear wailing before I get inside the front door. Aunt Henrietta is at maximum decibels, hands flapping around as she cries loudly. Uncle Chuck is beside her, rubbing her back.

“Jennifer,” Mom whispers and slips her hand on my back. “You look lovely.” She smiles a little. “The dress still looks good.”

I could have put that dress in a line-up of two dresses and not recognized it, but Mom sees it and knows it in a second.

“It fits you well.” Her hand traces a line down my arm.

Bryce is on the other side of the room, his black suit immaculate, the crease in his pants even more profound than usual. His nod to me is slight. Maybe someone else wouldn't even think it a nod but I've gotten that nod before.