NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (2 page)

DUO

Calla

-AFTER-

Astoria
smells like dying.
  

At least, it does to me.
 

Embalming chemicals.
 
Carnations.
 
Roses.
 
Stargazers.
 
These things mix with the sea breeze and
pine trees blowing through the open windows, forming an olfactory cocktail that
smells like a funeral to me.
 
That’s
fitting, I suppose, since I live in a funeral home. And my mother recently
died.
 
 

Everything reminds me of a funeral because
I’m surrounded by death.
 

Or mortem, as Finn would say.
 
He’s obsessed with learning Latin, and
has been for the past two years.
 
I
don’t know why, considering it’s a dead language.
 
But then again, I guess that makes total
sense around here.

My brother, on the other hand, only makes
sense part of the time.
 
We’re
supposed to be preparing for college, but all he’s interested in is scribbling
in his journal, learning Latin and looking up morbid facts about death.
 

His
journal.
 

The mere thought of the battered leather
book sends a shudder down my spine.
 
It’s tangible proof of how crazy his thoughts can be, and because of
that (and the fact that I promised him I wouldn’t), I don’t look into it.
 

Not anymore.

It scares me too much.
  

With a sigh, I stare down at him from my bedroom
windows, down at the lawns of the funeral home.
 
From here, I can see Finn and my father
working on the landscaping, bent over in the early morning Oregon sun as they
pull weeds from the flowerbeds that surround the house.
 

Finn’s arms are
skinny,
his skin pale as he tugs at the roots, then drops the dusty weeds into a pile
of wilted greens.
 
I watch him for a
minute, not with the eyes of his sister, but with the objective eyes of someone
who might be seeing him for the first time.

My brother is slender and clean-cut, with
an array of sandy brown curls haphazardly arranged in a halo. His eyes are pale
blue, his smile is wide and bright, and he’s beautiful in an artist kind of
way.

You know, the kind of artist who forgets
to eat because they’re so passionate about their work… and because they forget
to eat, they’re slender and sinewy, all angles and bone.
 
Finn’s handsome though, sweet and
quirky.
 

And I’m not just saying that because
we’re twins.
 

We don’t look anything alike.
 
The only thing we share is skin the
color of cream and the same shape of nose, straight, aquiline, with a slight
tilt on the end.
 
Otherwise, I have
green eyes and dark red hair, just like our mother.
 

Our
mother.
 

I ignore the lump that forms in my throat
when I think about her and I desperately try to put her out of my mind.
 
Immediately.
 
Because whenever I think about her, all
I can think about is the hand that I played in her car crash.
 
If I hadn’t called her… if she hadn’t
answered…. she’d still be here right now.
 

Alive and breathing.

But she’s not.
 

That weight threatens to crush my chest,
and so instead of focusing on the guilt that blinds me, I focus on getting
dressed.
 
Because focusing on
something, concentrating on
monotony,
sometimes
distracts me from the grief.
 

Sometimes.
 

I throw some clothes on, yank my hair
into a ponytail, and clatter down the gleaming mahogany steps, which
incidentally, are the same exact shade as my mother’s casket.
 

God,
Calla. Why does every freaking thing have to come back to that?

I grit my teeth and force my stubborn
mind to think of other things, but that’s hard in a funeral home.
 
Especially as I may my
way out of the private part of the house and into the public areas.
  

All I can do is keep my eyes pointed
forward.

Because even though no one is here yet
today, there are two Viewing Rooms straddling this hall.
 
There’s a body in each one, laid out in
their finest for all of their acquaintances to stare at.
 

They’re dead, of course, with spiked
plastic disks inside their eyelids holding them closed and thick pancake makeup
smeared on their faces to give them some semblance of living color.
 
It’s a major fail, by the way.

Dead people don’t look like they’re sleeping,
as everyone likes to say.
 
They look
dead, because they are.
 
Poor
things. I refuse to gawk at them. Death strips a person of dignity, but I don’t
have to be the one holding the filet knife.
 

Twelve steps later, I’m out the door and
taking a deep breath, replacing the potent funeral home smells with the fresh
air of the outdoors.
 
Two steps
later and
I’m
strolling across the dewy grass.
 
My father and Finn both look up, then
stop what they’re doing when they see that I’m awake.
 

“Good morning, men!” I call out with faux
cheerfulness.
 
Because something my
mother taught me was fake it ‘til you
make
it.
 
If you don’t feel good, pretend you do
because eventually you will. It hasn’t worked yet, but I’m still holding out
hope.

Finn smiles, causing the one dimple in
his left cheek to deepen.
 
I know
he’s faking it too, because none of us really feel like smiling these
days.
 

“Morning, slacker.”

I grin (fake). “It’s a rough life
sleeping until ten, but someone’s got to do it.
 
Do you guys want me to run in to the
café and get some coffee?”

My father shakes his head.
 
“Those of us who got up at a normal hour
are already caffeinated.”

I roll my eyes.
 
“Well, do you want me to take Finn to
Group, to make up for my laziness?”

He shakes his head and smiles, but the
smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
Because it’s also fake.
 
Just like mine.
 
Just like Finn’s.
 
Because we’re all
fakers.

 
“Actually,” he eyes me, sizing up
me and my mood
.
 
“That’d be great. I’ve got someone coming in today, so I’ll be tied up.”

By
someone,
he means a body to embalm, and by
today,
he must mean soon because he’s already standing up and wiping off his hands.
 

I nod quickly, willing to do anything to
get out of here.
 

Years of watching bodies come and go
wears on a person.
 
I’ve seen it
all… accident victims, elderly people,
still-births
,
kids. The kids are the hardest, but eventually, it’s
all hard
.
Death isn’t something that anyone wants to think about, and no one wants to be
surrounded by it all of the time.
 

My father might’ve chosen his profession,
but I certainly didn’t.
 

Which is why I’d rather take Finn to his
therapy any day.

It’s something my mother used to do,
because she always insisted that it was better for Finn if someone was there,
in case he wanted to ‘talk’ on the way home.
 
He never does, and so I think she just
wanted to make sure that he went.
 
Either way, we keep up her tradition.

Because traditions are soothing when
everything else has gone to hell.
 

“Sure.
 
I can go.”
 
I glance at Finn.
 
“But I’m driving.”

Finn smiles at me angelically.
 
“I called it when you were still in
bed.
 
It’s the price of being a
slacker.
 
Sorry.”

His grin decidedly says
Not Sorry.
 
And this time, it isn’t
fake
.
 

“Whatever.
 
Do you want a shower?”

He shakes his head again.
 
“I’ll just run in and change.
 
Give me a minute.”

He trots off, and I watch him go,
observing for the fiftieth time, how much he looks like our father.
 
Same height, same
build, some coloring.
 
Our
father looks more like his twin than I do.

Dad watches him walk away, then glances
at me.
 

“Thanks, sweetie.
 
How are you doing today?”

He’s not asking how I’m doing, so much as
how I’m feeling.
 
I know that, and I
shrug.
 

“Ok, I guess.”

Except for the freaking lump that won’t
go away in my throat.
 
Except for
the fact that whenever I look in the mirror, I see my mom so I have to fight
off the urge to rip them all from the walls and throw them over the cliffs.
 
Except for those things, I’m fine.

I look at my dad.
 
“Maybe we should become Jewish so that
we can sit in Shiva and not have to worry about anything else.”

My dad look stunned for a minute, then
smiles slightly. “Well, Shiva only lasts a week.
 
So that wouldn’t do us much good at this
point.”

Nothing
will do us much good at this point.
But I don’t say that.
 

“Well, I guess I won’t cover up the
mirrors then.”
 
Unfortunately.
 

My father smiles now, and I think it
might actually be a little bit real.
 
“Yeah. And you’ll have to keep showering
too.”
 
He pauses.
 
“You know, there’s a grief support group
that meets at the hospital too. You could poke your head in while you wait for
Finn.”

I’m already shaking my head.
 
Screw that. He’s got to give up trying
to make me go to one of those.
 
The
only thing worse than drowning in grief is sharing a lifeboat with other
drowning people.
 
Besides, if anyone
needs a grief group, it’s him.

“I think I’ll pass,” I tell him for the
hundredth time.
 
“But if I change my
mind, I’ll look it up.”

“Ok,” he gives in easily, like he always
does.
 
“I understand that, I
guess.
 
I don’t want to talk about
it, either.
 
But maybe one of these
days….”

His voice trails off and I know that he’s
filing this under the One Of These Days folder in his head, along with a
million other things.
 
Things like
cleaning out my mother’s closet, picking her dirty clothes up out of their
bathroom, putting away her shoes and her jacket.
 
Things like that.

It’s been six weeks since my mother died,
and my father has left her stuff un-touched, like he’s expecting her to come
home at any minute.
 
He knows this
isn’t the case since he embalmed her body and we buried her in her gleaming
mahogany casket, but obviously it would be insensitive to point that out.
 

 
Instead, I hug him.
 

“Love you, dad.”

“Love you, too, Cal.”
 

Over his shoulder, my gaze freezes on the
small ivy covered brick building down the path from the main house, and I stare
at it for a minute before I pull away.
 

“Have you decided about the Carriage
House yet?”

He and my mother had converted it into an
apartment last year as an investment property, but they’d been in the process
of trying to find a renter when mom died.
 
Finn and I have been trying to get dad to let one of us live in it.

He shakes his head now.
 
“You know, it’s not really fair to give
it to one or the other of you.
 
I’m
going to rent it out, after all.”

I stare at him like he just grew a second
head.
 
“Really?
 
But…”