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I wake in my anonymous hotel room
on the morning of Jeff’s funeral feeling closer to control, but not close enough. I need to punish my body into some sort of submission, something that’ll hold together through the funeral, the burial, the wake.

I call from the hotel room phone to check in with Brian and Zoey. They’re leaving for Nationals today, a five-hour drive in the opposite direction.

“I have a bad feeling about this one,” Zoey says, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.

“What do you mean, sweetheart? You’ll do great.”

“Dad’s been pacing all morning.”

“You know he gets nervous for you. We both do.”

“I flubbed that line last time.”

“What’s up, Zo? Really?”

“Nothing, I … Are you okay?”

I try to keep the catch out of my voice. “I’m just sad, that’s all. I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Dad wants to talk to you.”

“All right. Good luck.”

“Mom!”

“Sorry, sorry. Break a leg.”

She thunks the phone down on the counter and yells for Brian. A few more clunks and he picks up.

“I tried calling last night …”

“Yeah, sorry. I realized this morning my cell phone was dead. I forgot to charge it.”

“Got it. How is it there?”

“It looks a lot like here. Sans mountains.”

“No, I meant … Zoey seems to be freaking out.”

“Yeah, she kind of said. Look, if she doesn’t want to go, don’t make her, okay?”

“Don’t forget your knapsack, Zo. What? No, no, she wants to go. God, can you believe it, but I think it’s about a boy.”

I looked out the window at the colourless sky. A boy. A boy.

“Our Zoey?”

He chuckled. “Who would’ve thunk it?”

“Do we know this boy?”

“That Zuckerman kid, maybe.”

“Zuckerberg? The one from the western region?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Why him?”

“Not sure. He seems like the most likely candidate.”

“Mmm. Well, hopefully it’ll all blow over. Or maybe you can ask her on the drive?”

“I think that’s your territory.”

A reproach. If I were where I should be, I could ask her myself.

“Make sure she’s got enough warm clothes.”

“It’s coming on summer here. Like someone flipped a switch overnight.”

Not here. Not here.

“Drive safe, then.”

“Will do. Check in later?”

“Yes.”

We hang up and I flip through the town directory kept helpfully next to the telephone until I find what I need. A public golf course that isn’t connected with Jeff as far as I know. I call to check if they’re open, and when they say they are, I pull together a passable outfit and ask for directions from the twenty-something at the front desk.

“Cold day for golf,” she says in the local twang that sometimes crept into Jeff’s voice, the words slowed down, like the batteries running out on a music player.

The course is a twenty-minute walk away. The morning still holds the chill of the night I never saw. As directed, I walk along the local bike trail, still muddy from the just-gone snow. It was built on an old rail bed, and there are sections where the overhanging trees form a canopy that blocks out the weakly rising sun.

It ends at the golf course. The clubhouse and pro shop are deserted.

They’re happy for the business, renting me a bag full of semidecent clubs and giving me enough tokens for several hours’ worth of hitting. I sling the bag on my shoulder, feeling the familiar weight, steadying my body against it, and trudge over
the bike path to the range. The pickets haven’t even been set up yet, and the ball machine groans like an old Coke machine that doesn’t want to give up its treasure. But eventually the balls fall into the rusty wire basket, and the one after that.

I take out my seven iron and tee up a ball. My first swings are as rusty as the ball basket, the shaft clanging against the ground, sending shudders of protest up my arms. Soon enough the rhythm returns, but not the hum. That blank-mind state that Brick’s searching for in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. He used alcohol, but for me, that click from consciousness to only breathing, existing, comes from pushing myself as hard as I can physically.

I was counting on this today. I need it today, but it doesn’t come. Instead, all the memories, the conversations, the words said and unsaid stream in and speed up until I’m hyperventilating again, barely able to catch my breath.

I keep on as the tears start. I swing and I swing, and I wait and I wait, but I never get there, not in the first hour, or in the second either. My back screams, my knees complain, my stomach and shoulders throw out aches and pains, but I’m not stopping for anything.

In my sorrow I’ve found the drive I needed all those years ago.

I want that click, I need that click, and I’m going to keep swinging until I find it, or my body gives out beneath me.

Back at the hotel, I strip my sweat-saturated clothes from my body, and I do, finally, feel a sort of calm. I feel strong enough, anyway, to climb into the shower and stand under the scalding stream until my body is as red as my face.

The rest is mechanical. Drying my hair, hiding the dark circles under my eyes with concealer, pressing the black dress I pulled from the back of my closet, purchased for some forgotten event when I was a dress-size smaller. Or, at least, a dress-size smaller than I was last week; now the dress fits fine.

I get to the church almost an hour early. I’m never early for anything, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m early today.

The day has turned bright and sunny. I find a bench in a park nearby to sit on and stare into the middle distance. When I try to check the time on my phone, I realize I still haven’t charged it.

As I clutch the useless device in my hand I briefly consider pitching it into the duck pond glimmering a few feet away, but I stifle the impulse. Throwing it away isn’t going to change anything. Instead, I try to count the waves rippling gently against the pond’s edge, matching the slow thud of my heart.

When I’ve counted what feels like enough waves to fill up three hours, I walk slowly back to the church. Cars have arrived, the parking lot’s filling up, a fleet of black limos are parked in the circular drive. I reach into my purse to find the piece of paper torn from my notebook that I’d stashed there, full of words I can’t read aloud, but that I will, if able, place with Jeff.

My pupils contract in the vestibule. As I look down the long row of straight-backed pews, I know immediately that I’ll be denied this too. The casket’s lid is firmly shut, and in the minute it takes to register, I’m happy for it to be. I don’t need that kind of personal encounter, not with him, not with anyone.

I take a seat in the back row and dig into my purse again for something I will definitely need, the last Ativan in my possession. There’s a chance that in my current state it’ll put me into a semi-coma, but it’s the only way I’m going to survive the rest of today. I swallow the whole thing dry and am thankful when I start to feel its effects.

Sad-postured bodies in dark clothes pass me by while I stare fixedly ahead at the large, stained-glass window behind the altar depicting some biblical scene I could identify if I could focus. No one sits next to me, the stranger, the outsider, so I’m alone in my pew, a collection of worn hymnals available for my perusal if I thought a bombastic song would fix what ails me.

An organ starts, the family is ushered in. Claire looking shell-shocked and stoic. A woman who, from the looks of her, must be her sister. Seth, who, if he knew how much his father loved him, might be able to forgive him anything. Two older couples, then another face I recognize, Jeff after forty if he lived in the sun and on a larger scale. His brother.

The minister asks us to stand, to sing, to sit, to bow our heads. Jeff’s friends speak, telling stories I’d heard from Jeff, as I knew they would. When he told me about it, I thought the pre-funeral was brilliant and only wished I’d had the opportunity to do one with my own childhood friends before we’d grown up and drifted apart.

When the projection of Jeff’s smiling face is looming over us, I feel a sense of relief. Surely we must be almost done. A few more solemn words and I’ll have succeeded in my impossible task of not causing any more harm than I already have.

But then Seth rises, pale, terrified, his head shaped like his father’s, the slight diphthong in his voice one I thought I’d
never hear again, and he says something totally unexpected.

“I don’t need my heart anymore/you can have it …”

The words crash down around me, the threads that have been holding me together snap, and there’s nothing I can do to save myself but head for the exit.

An hour later, I’m sitting huddled against a tree. It’s half in leaf. When the wind blows, the loose buds plunk down around me like fat drops of rain.

I watched them lower Jeff’s coffin into the hard ground, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear the words. I couldn’t make myself do this, even if it would’ve been a good idea. The act of watching was enough to drive the Ativan from my system, and my brain feels clear as a bell. Ringing out a warning.

Now they’ve all started to disburse, to walk solemnly back to their cars, their lives. I know from the program still clutched in my hand that there’s a reception at the house, but right now the most likely option seems like I’ll be staying here overnight.

A shadow crosses above me.

“Are you all right?” a man asks.

I look up; it’s Tim. It must be. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his suit. He looks like he hasn’t slept well in days. I ought to know.

I run a hand across my cheek to wipe the tears I cannot hide away and edge myself to a standing position. “I’ll survive.”

“Were … were you a friend of Jeff’s?”

“We worked together. I’m the company representative, I guess, here to show the flag.”

I wave my hand like I’m holding a flag, looking to surrender, hoping for clemency.

“How do you know Jeff?” I ask, playing along.

“I’m his brother. Sorry, I should’ve started with that.”

“It’s all right. I’m so sorry for your loss. So very sorry.”

“Thank you. I didn’t get your name?”

“Patricia, but everybody calls me Tish.”

“Tim.” We shake hands. In the awkward silence that follows, we turn and start to walk away from the gravesite.

“There’s a reception at the house now, right?” I say, trying to fill the silence, something I always do when I’m nervous.

“Yes. Are you going?”

“I should. That’s why I’m here, after all.”

We’ve reached the parking lot. The only car that remains is a bright red Ford sedan, the kind you always get from rental companies at the airport.

“Is your car near here?” Tim asks.

“I walked.”

“How about I give you a lift to the house?”

No, no, no, no, no.

“Okay.”

He pulls the key from his pocket and unlocks the doors, the chipper tweet of the automatic unlocker a bright sound in the quiet world. It’s as if the whole town slipped into silence out of respect.

I open the door and slide into the passenger seat as Tim starts the engine. He drives carefully, like he’s not entirely sure where he’s going, though he must be. We stay silent for a few streets as I watch the centre of town flash by, a smalltown Main Street that’s survived better than most.

“Did you know Jeff well?” Tim asks as we turn away from the town square.

What can I say to this? That sometimes I felt like I knew
him better than myself, and sometimes I felt like I didn’t know him at all? And now I’ll never know which is right?

“Fairly well.”

“From the accounting department?”

“No, I’m in HR. We met when Jeff needed some HR training. A year ago.”

“Have you lived in Springfield long?”

“I don’t live here. I live in the other Springfield.”

“Pardon?”

I turn away from the window. I’m gripping my hands together tightly in my lap, and they’ve gone white. I loosen them, feeling the blisters forming from too many golf swings.

“It’s this work thing. The company bought a company in another town called Springfield. So there are two, which is confusing, and mine’s always called ‘the other Springfield.’ Anyway, that’s where I live. With my husband and my daughter, Zoey. She wrote that poem Seth read.”

I pause for breath, cursing myself. What the hell did I say that for?

He frowns. “I don’t follow.”

Of course he doesn’t. I barely do, and it’s my own life unfurling.

“It’s this thing she does. This spoken word thing. She won Nationals last year, and one of the prizes was publishing some of her poems.” I swallow, my brain whizzing. “It’s about my father. The poem. That’s what Zoey was writing about. He died two years ago. That’s why I was so upset, I guess.”

“Does Seth know your daughter?”

“No, they’ve never met.”

“Then how did—”

“Seth get a hold of the poem? I’m not sure.”

Crap, crap, crap.

“Jeff had a copy,” I add.

Which is true, 100 per cent true. But which is also proof that telling the truth to get yourself out of a bad situation isn’t always the best policy.

Tim puts the blinker on and takes a left. I don’t know how close or far away we are to the house.

Please let us be close. Please let us be far away.

“They were given away at this office thing we were both at a couple of weeks ago,” I blurt, still trying to cover up my earlier words with new ones. “We played golf together.”

A small smile. “Jeff did love golf.”

“He did.”

Tim parks the car at the end of a quiet street. He turns off the engine and pulls the key from the ignition. We get out in unison and I follow him up the block. Cars are parked here, there, and everywhere, and there’s a steady stream of people climbing the front steps dressed in solemn clothing.

He turns down the walkway and trudges towards the front door, looking like he dreads going in there as much as I do. I stop at the edge between the concrete and sidewalk, staring at the house, fighting once again for self-control.