Remembering Raquel (7 page)

When Raquel's mom, Aunt Cleo—who we of course knew—died, we'd been on a weeklong cruise over winter break. We didn't even hear about it till we got back two days after she'd been buried.

So for Raquel, in the end Mom and Dad left it up to us whether we wanted to go to the funeral parlor. I would have voted no, but the frightful four wanted to go, so that made me feel like I had to.

The room was big, and full of aunts wearing
a lot
of perfume and uncles fighting back with equal amounts of aftershave, and about as many flowers as they put around the altar on Easter morning. My head began to swim as soon as we crossed the threshold.

There was a book, which Mom said she'd sign for all of us, and I asked a perfectly reasonable question: "What's the book for?"

Mom said, "So your Uncle Al will know we came."

"Isn't he going to be here?" I asked.

Mom gave me one of those that-was-a-weird-question looks, and Gina smacked the back of my head.

"Don't do that," Mom told her. She told me, "Of course he'll be here."

"Then why does he need the book?"

I dodged a second smack, so that Gina's hand accidentally made contact with the stand on which the book rested.

She clutched her fingers and swore, loudly, and the person who had signed the book right before us, an older woman I didn't know, turned around to glare.

"If you can't behave...," Mom said in a low but threatening voice.

"It's
his
fault," Gina said. "Tell him it's not cute to keep asking dumb questions."

"Enough," Dad told her.

"I'm not—" I started.

"Enough," Dad told me, too.

The signing-in was only a stop along the way. The line continued, following the contours of the room, then passing by Uncle Al like a wedding receiving line, except that it ended just beyond him at Raquel's coffin. For the moment, I wasn't worrying about that last part. I was doing quite well at
not
thinking about Raquel. What I was worrying about was what I could possibly say to Uncle Al.

Relatives who'd been through already came to chat with us and keep us company. The adults called me "young man," with the uncles shaking my hand (as if attending a funeral made me into a grown-up, too) and the aunts giving me powdery pecks on the cheek. People asked Amorette how she liked college, and she answered, "Very much," which was a surprise considering all the complaining she does at home. They asked Gina if she was beginning to look at colleges yet, and she said she wanted to go to Vascar, but that Mom and Dad wouldn't even take her to look because of the expense. "State schools are fine," Dad would explain, to cut off any sympathy she might have gotten. And as far as Corinne and Sophia, people kept getting the two of them confused and then finding an infinite source of quiet amusement in that.

Mom leaned in close to Dad, but I could hear her when she whispered, "The casket is open."

That made me jump, because I thought she meant it was opening right then and there. But the lid was all the way up and nobody else seemed to be reacting.

Sophia, who's probably going to be a teacher when she grows up—either that or a spy, because she has such sharp eyesight that nothing gets by her—had of course noticed me. "What a moron," she sighed.

Dad told us, "After we give our condolences to Uncle Al, you don't have to go up to the casket if you don't want to."

Corinne asked, "Was her face run over?"

The woman ahead of us in line got all stiff-backed.

Mom took hold of Corinne's arm, and she dragged her out of the room.

"What?" We could hear Corinne's voice protesting. "What?"

Like an echo, "What?" Sophia demanded. The two of them are like ... well,
twins.

Dad put his finger to his lips, because Sophia often needs to be reminded about the difference between an indoor voice and an outdoor voice. But he did answer Corinne's question. "There won't be anything wrong with Raquel's face."

"Moron," I muttered to Sophia. But I was glad to have Dad's reassurance.

After a couple minutes, Mom and Corinne returned. I was surprised that Mom just got back in line with us, but apparently cutting in a line at a funeral home is not as big a deal as cutting other times.

Corinne was sniffling, which she does any time she's reprimanded.

Mom rolled her eyes.

Sophia, who always takes Corinne's side, started whispering with her. Finally, together, the two of them asked, "Do we have to wait in line?"

"No." Mom and Dad answered in unison, too. "Just," Mom added, "remember where you are."

It was the girls' turn to roll their eyes.

We were getting close to the head of the line, and I really didn't want to be there. "Can I go, too?" I asked.

Mom, busy trying to find a tissue in her purse, nodded and gestured me away.

I didn't head after the twins, who had spotted some of the girl cousins across the way and had gone to sit with them. It was just that I still had no idea what to say to Uncle Al. That, and I felt I was going to pass out because the room was so warm and so full of perfume, aftershave, and flowers. If I keeled over, I'd never hear the end of it. My embarrassment would go down in family folklore: "Remember the time...?"

There were windows on the other side of the room, which were closed, but I thought maybe if I could just rest my hand against the glass, that would help me cool off.

I kept my head down as I approached to pass Raquel's coffin. Directly in front of it there was this kneeler thing, wide enough to hold two. A pair of girls about Raquel's age had been kneeling, praying, I guess. But just as I was walking by, they stood, and we almost collided.

"Excuse me," they whispered in church voices. They walked around me.

I glanced back to where Uncle Al was talking to Great-aunt Gwen, my family not far behind. Nobody was in line for the kneeler.

I took a step closer.

The coffin itself was a dark wood, like Nona's china cabinet. The inside was pink satin.

Raquel doesn't like pink,
I thought. I know this because Corinne and Sophia
love
pink. Their whole room is pink: pink walls, pink curtains, pink bedspreads—not matching, but pink, pink, pink. For their birthday in February, Raquel had bought them pink stuffed animals: a bear for Corinne, a dog for Sophia. "Pink fur goes against the natural laws of the universe," Raquel told them as, squealing with delight, they'd ripped open the wrappings and hugged the pink monstrosities. To me, privately, she'd added, "Being in their room is like being in a wad of bubble gum."

But now, lying in that pinkness, suddenly reminding me of Snow White in her casket, was Raquel.

I hadn't been planning on looking at her face, despite Dad's reassurance. But once I did, I couldn't look away.

I knelt down in front of the coffin.

Somebody had put makeup on her, which was not something I was used to seeing. Raquel didn't wear makeup—not even on special occasions, like at Christmas or for our cousin Jesse's wedding. But the funeral parlor people had forced a healthy pink glow onto her. Healthy but powdery, like the ancient aunts.

In life, her hair had had a tendency to be wild, and now it was unnaturally tamed. Her lips were thin and stretched out. And of course her eyes were closed.

People talk about pets being put to sleep, so I guess I'd assumed dead people would look like they were sleeping, but Raquel didn't look at all like she was asleep. In fact, she didn't quite look real. For some reason, I got the idea of candy in my mind: It was like she was made of spun sugar or something.

If she was a dessert or a mannequin, you'd say, "Wow, she looks so real!"

But you could tell the difference.

Not that I could think of any reason why they'd have substituted a spun sugar mannequin for Raquel, except just to spare me having to look at her.

That was stupid. I looked at her hands, folded quietly—and Raquel was never that still—and the hands were real. Not sugar, not even wax, or plaster or whatever they make mannequins out of.

And then I started thinking: It's still not really her. It was someone else, someone who looked a lot like Raquel, but it wasn't her. It was some other girl who'd been in an accident. And because she looked so much—but not exactly—like Raquel, people had gotten confused. They had told Uncle Al it was Raquel, and he'd been so upset, he hadn't taken a close enough look. It was sort of like with the story about the emperor's new clothes—where the emperor is naked, but everybody is convinced the problem is with themselves, that they're the only ones who can't see, so they don't want to admit anything. It was the same here. Everybody was probably thinking,
Hey, that doesn't even look like Raquel,
but nobody wanted to say so for fear of being stupid. It was sad that this other girl was dead, but this wasn't Raquel, who was really ... who was really...

Where
was
Raquel?

Maybe,
I thought,
maybe she was in an accident, too, except that she wasn't killed.
She was probably, at this very moment, lying in a hospital, suffering from amnesia, which was why she hadn't spoken up, and I would be the one who would be able to break the good news to the family, and we'd all go, like, "Whoa! That was a close one!" And I felt hands on my shoulders and Amorette was whispering into my ear, "Marco. Marco."

I realized I'd been leaning on the padded elbow rest, closer and closer to Raquel, my knees barely making contact with the kneeler. Because I'd been thinking of fairy tales, I figured I probably looked like I thought I was Prince Charming, like I thought I could kiss her awake. I
hope
I didn't look like that.

Uncle Al was there, too, having come to rest his hand on my head. He gazed down at Raquel, dead in her coffin.

"She wasn't a big fan of pink," I said.

"No," he agreed. Then he said, "They didn't have peppermint-striped."

That was how she'd painted her room: red and white stripes.

Uncle Al looked like he was going to cry because the lining was the wrong color.

"Well," I said, finally knowing what to say, "pink is like a melted peppermint."

Uncle Al patted my head again. "That's the way I'll think about it," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

Amorette said to me, "How about we go outside for some fresh air."

Which was uncommonly considerate of her. So I did.

I've watched Alzheimer's steal my husband's memories, one by one, from most recent to oldest—so that at the nursing home he'll say, "Hello," as though I haven't been holding his hand for the last half hour. He'll give the smile that won my heart in high school and say, "Thank you for visiting me. Do I know you?"

Oh, Raquel. Why did God bless him, and not me?

I know a lot of the people here from my years of tagging along at so many Falcone family functions. I call them aunt and uncle as though they're related to me, just as Raquel adopted my parents' siblings. So I've been watching Uncle Ray get two of the younger cousins in trouble by wiggling his ears and making them giggle. Each time their mother turns around, Uncle Ray switches to a solemn face and the nephews get scolded.

Grandma Papadopulos can't stop crying, and periodically her daughters take her out—to the ladies' room, outside, I'm not sure. She comes back, seemingly composed, and then her eyes start leaking again.

Will I lose this family as truly as I've lost Raquel?

I feel numb.

Meanwhile, I'm watching a girl who is having a terrible time.

I saw her when she came in, and I took an immediate liking to her.

A lot of the other girls here are very chic in their little black dresses. You can tell they know they're looking good and that people are admiring them, and this makes it hard to take their subdued voices and somber faces seriously.

But this girl is dressed for the occasion without regard for the impression she makes on others. And given all the crocodile tears—or, let me be kind and call them self-indulgent tears—I've seen from the Quail Run kids tonight, this girl is a breath of fresh air.

We need fresh air in here, because the scent of the lilies is getting to be overwhelming.

Ever since we ended up going to separate schools in sixth grade, Raquel tried to keep me up on the
goings-on, first
at Maplewood Middle, then Quail Run. From her drawings, and from her descriptions, I'm pretty sure I've got Jonah Proia, Mara Ravenell, and Lindsay Lapjani pegged. I'm not certain—short of going over and demanding an introduction—how to tell the difference between two lovelies I assume are Zoe Kanisky and Stacy Galbo.

But, despite all these
people
whose
identities
I'm deducing, I don't have a name to put on this one girl.

She has started sneezing, and I suspect she is about to begin going through her purse again in search of a tissue. There's no telling what further catastrophe this might lead to, for—like Raquel—she obviously never cleans out her purse.
So I
grab
one
of the tissue boxes that are discreetly scattered about the room and sit down next to her.

She looks at me suspiciously, perhaps evaluating whether I might be the kind of jokester to sprinkle pepper into a box of tissues. It was Raquel who did that, not me. And only the one time. And it was at a family picnic, not a funeral.

But this girl is about to sneeze again, so she takes her chances. Perhaps she chooses to trust me and my tissues because that memory of Raquel has caught me unawares and now I'm sniffling, too.

"Thank you," she says.

After we're through blowing and wiping, I say, "You look like you've gotten into something your body doesn't like." Normally, I try not to be one of those people who is given to stating the obvious, but I figure this is a bit more tactful than saying, "Look at you! Do you need medical attention?" Instead, I tell her, "I have some cortisone cream in my purse."

"That," she tells me, "might be a big help."