After (3 page)

Though Luc was sitting right there trying to sink his Cheerios with his spoon, and Maman was methodically watering the row of herbs she grew in old cans on the windowsill, and Sputnik was at the kitchen door shaking his collar, desperate to go out, the kitchen echoed with emptiness.

“Come on, Sputnik,” Maman held the door open for him. “No walk for you this morning.” The dog had been another great Christmas present. I’d called him Sputnik because it was easy for Luc to say. The dog’s toenails clicked on the floor as he went alone into the yard.

“Will we have to move?” I’m not sure why I asked, but it seemed desperately important at the time. There would be a lot of desperate, disconnected questions from me that year.

“I don’t know, Francis. Don’t think about that now.” Maman was washing the dishes like a robot. Her face was
blank, as if someone had drained all the life out of her. When she finally stopped–I can’t say she finished, she just ran down–she wiped the chipped counter with the dish cloth. She folded it carefully before she spoke again.

“We’ll be beautiful today, my loves, because it’s the last time we’ll see your father.”

“I’m staying here. I’m not going to the funeral.” The very idea of burying my father seemed preposterous.

“You are coming with us, Francis.
Point final
” She opened the kitchen door to let Sputnik back in. The dog wagged his tail and cocked his head at Maman. Her face crumpled. She sank into a chair, sobbing.

I wore an old black shirt, black pants and a black tie. The tie felt like a noose. Luc was dressed in the suit I had worn years ago when I was a ring bearer at my cousin’s wedding. It was too big for him, but it was black. Maman had no black summer clothes but she’d found an old wool skirt and a black sweater with small satin bows on each shoulder. We sat down at the kitchen table to wait for Aunt Sophie.

On the kitchen wall there’s a clock in the shape of Elvis Presley playing his guitar. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The hands seemed to move madly, grabbing the minutes. The more time that passed, the more I wanted to vomit. I dreaded the funeral and all the eyes that would be looking at me: “That’s the kid whose father hanged himself.”

Aunt Sophie arrived in a cloud of perfume, wearing a big green hat and silk scarves. She wrapped her soft, heavy arms around me. Aunt Sophie is a non-stop laugher. Her laugh is the soundtrack of her life. This morning the laugh was present, but muted, and her eyes were red and puffy. She was speaking to me, but I could not make sense of her flood of words. Finally she stopped, and we sat silently in the kitchen.

A man from the funeral home picked us up in a black limousine.

“Hello,” he said in a practiced, warm voice. “My name is Jerry.” I hated the limousine. It was freaking ugly and cold. I also hated every Jerry in the world. This Jerry drove slowly. I wanted him to drive fast, to skid through red lights, to smash us all into a big wall, to sail off the mountainside. That way, there would be no funeral and no eyes looking at The Suicide’s Family.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon–a bright and sunny day, the kind of day you would normally enjoy because it’s June, and the air is soft and scented with lilacs, and you know that school will end soon. It was not the kind of day you should spend going to your father’s funeral.

Another big man met us at the door. His name was also Jerry. He smiled at us. I would have liked to pull his freaking smile off his face and stomp on it.

“Welcome, madame. I want to warn you right now: your husband is not…” His voice tapered off. “Death by strangulation, you know.” He nodded his head and pursed his lips. “You are quite lucky to see him once again. If you had not discovered him when you did, it would have been impossible to have an open coffin. You understand, we can’t leave the body exposed for very long.”

The body. My father was nothing but a dead body, a piece of meat you can’t keep on the counter for too long because it will turn. I wanted to punch the guy right in his big, soft, white-shirted stomach.

There were flowers everywhere, carnations mostly. Their sharp smell was nauseating. The funeral home was freezing. Everything was cold and everything was beige. I hate that color. Beige is boring. It’s ugly. I hated the people who chose beige for the funeral home. The thought of them filled me with fury.

We approached the glossy oak coffin slowly, Luc, Maman, and I. Maman held our hands tightly. Hers were freezing. I didn’t want to look into the coffin, but I couldn’t help it.

He lay on white satin with a paler face than usual, and a turgid neck. For some reason I couldn’t stop looking at his eyelashes lowered against his gray skin. Someone had curled them. I stared at him for a while, to see if his eyelids or his nostrils would move. They didn’t. Luc climbed up on the prie-dieu and looked at Papa.

“Papa, I’m tired of you being dead. Get up! Play with me, please, Papa. Just for a bit. I’ll help you get out of your bed. I promise I’ll be a good boy.”

Maman took Luc in her arms, and kissed Papa, first on the forehead, then on the lips. A chill ran through my body. I couldn’t make myself touch him, not even with my fingertips.

We were alone with him for a few minutes, until the Jerrys opened the doors and people streamed in. Houston came with his father. Though Houston’s been my best friend since third grade, this was the first time I’d seen him in a suit. I didn’t know what to do. Should I shake his hand, hug him, kiss him?

“Francis, my sympathies.” His father shook my hand.

“Thanks.”

Thanks. That’s all I could say. I saw my friends, Eric, Caroline, and Melanie, standing together at the back, looking uncomfortable. Melanie is the same kind of chronic laugher as Aunt Sophie, but she had a Kleenex crunched in her hand, and her eyes were red. Caroline looked pretty in her black dress. Her head was on Eric’s shoulder. She’s crazy about Eric; that’s what she told me before we left for New York. A million years ago.

When the time came to close the coffin, one of the Jerrys took off Papa’s watch and wedding ring and handed them to Maman. She gave them to me. I slipped the watch on
my wrist. The ring was loose on my finger, so I put it in my pocket. The watch and ring seemed to throb as if they were charged with electricity.

A Jerry drove us to the cemetery. All the limo seats were the kind of white leather that hurts your eyes because it’s too bright. Maman sat between Luc and me. I saw the three of us reflected in the rearview mirror. This was my new family.

They asked me to drop a handful of soil into the grave because I was the oldest son. I felt sweat running down my back. Afterward, Aunt Sophie took my hand, though it was all covered in dirt. Her perfume made my head ache.

Luc leaned against my leg, wanting to be picked up. I held him and he put his head on my shoulder, just like I used to with Papa when I was Luc’s age. Luc knows a lot of things: he can tie his shoes, he can count to twenty, and he can sing a song in Spanish, but he’s pretty much in the dark when it comes to the concept of death.

“Is there light in his coffin after they close it? Can he hear me if I talk to him?” he whispered in my ear.

I wanted him to shut up, but I didn’t say anything. I buried my face in his hair.

My mother calmly dropped a handful of soil on the sleek varnished coffin, but when the cemetery guys took
over and heaved dirt into the grave, she started to scream: “
WHY, MY LOVE? FOR WHAT? WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT YOU? MY GOD, WHY DID YOU DO THIS TOME? YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! I HATE YOU! NO!
”

People craned to get a good look at The Grieving Widow. I could see Houston reaching for his father’s hand. His eyes were fall of pity.

You could almost taste Maman’s pain in the air that we were breathing. One of her brothers wrapped his arm around her shoulders and led her stumbling to the black limousine. I helped Luc inside and slid onto the white leather seat beside him. I would have liked to hug Maman, but my arms were too weak. I wished I could dry her tears, but I was scared I might drown in them. I didn’t have a shoulder for her to lean on: mine wasn’t strong enough. I was only fifteen years old, skinny, weak, and scared. I sat silent and still and watched the early summer city slide by as we drove away.