Quite an Undertaking - Devon's Story (14 page)

I hoped my mom wouldn’t make fun of me because I suddenly smelled like roses. She’d probably wonder what was wrong with me, but I wouldn’t tell her even if she asked.

I wandered around the store some more and found myself in the toy aisle. I remember, once upon a time, when Missy and I played board games. We used to play Clue and Trivial Pursuit a lot. We liked cards, too, like Go Fish and War. I think the last game we were hooked on was Gin Rummy. Even Mom played with us sometimes. Of course, when Grandma moved in, the game changed to Bridge. Maybe I’d challenge Mom to a game of cards when we got home. I smiled at myself because I knew I was just looking for comfort. I’d make a great psychologist someday. Too bad I was going to be an environmental journalist.

As I rounded the corner to check out the toys on the back wall, I noticed a bin filled with tiny stuffed animals. They were cute the way puppies were cute, all fuzzy and innocent. Maybe I should get one so Seymour wouldn’t be lonely. Ah, but then again, he might get jealous. Best not to hurt his little teddy bear feelings. I picked up a panda bear from the bin. She was so cute that I gave her a quick hug and hoped nobody was watching because here I was a sixteen-year-old girl, a junior in high school, hugging a stuffed toy in the drugstore. I was about to put the cutie pie back in the overcrowded bin when something made me stop. Her colors were black and white. Like Rebecca and me. Well, I wasn’t exactly white—more like beige or something. Rebecca wasn’t exactly black, either. She was more like brown, chocolate brown. So, we weren’t actually black and white at all. We were brown and beige.

I decided to buy the little panda bear and started to walk away from the toys, but then I had my nine-thousandth epiphany since meeting Rebecca. Maybe Jessie got mad if Rebecca didn’t hang out with their usual crowd, the black kids. Maybe Jessie told her she shouldn’t hang out with me, “the white girl.” Whatever it was, it sucked because I was pretty sure Rebecca didn’t have a problem with me as a beige-American. Of course, maybe I was wearing rose-colored glasses. Maybe everyone should wear rose-colored glasses, then we’d all be the same color.

I decided I should have this exact conversation with Rebecca someday. I’d give her the panda bear to show her that black and white could coexist in harmony or something just as corny.

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, I sat in my usual seat in French class, and Rebecca sat next to me, but we barely spoke to each other. I had the black and white panda bear in my back pack, and I desperately wanted to give it to her, but she wasn’t sending me friendly vibes. How could I go into my brown and beige theory if she wasn’t speaking to me? I felt like we were in the middle of a fight or something, but I had no clue what we were fighting about.

Mme Depardieu finished the lesson for the day and after thanking us for our “wonderful behavior” on the St. Lawrence field trip, asked us to start our sentence translation homework. I decided that I needed to talk to Rebecca instead. My French homework could wait until after the rifle match at the shooting gallery later that afternoon.

I listened to the sound of Rebecca’s pen as she did her assignment. I hated to interrupt her, but I had to. I needed some kind of contact.

“Hey, Rebecca?” I whispered.

She looked up from her work. “Yeah?”

“They played a good game against Unionville on Saturday, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. Belinda played well.”

I decided to play it cool and keep to basketball for a while, but I hoped she might bring up taking me to the cemetery. “Jessie predicted it. They’re three and oh now.”

“Yeah, they’re on a roll.”

“Kaiser?”

“What?” Rebecca looked confused.

“They’re on a roll,” I repeated. “A kaiser roll?” I grinned and waited.

“Oh.” She laughed.

I laughed with her. “I got the tournament results into the winter sports preview.”

“Oh, yeah?” She sounded surprised.

“Yeah. I was a good girl. I didn’t dis Jessie or anything.”

“Pfft. She’d deserve it,” Rebecca muttered under her breath.

“What?” I acted as if I didn’t hear her.

She snorted. “Nothing. Hey, I promised I’d take you out to Greystone. How’s Wednesday after school?”

Awesome
,
awesome, awesome!
“Uh, yeah,” I said with as much cool as I could come up with, “that’d be great. Thanks.” Oh, my God, I was busting at the seams.

“I’ll pick you up at your house. It’ll have to be around 4:00, though, because Ms. Adams wants me to rehearse the opening number with the dance troupe beforehand.”

Oh, God, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her into taking me to the cemetery. I had forgotten about her afternoon dance rehearsals, but I smiled inside. She had made time for me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got nowhere to be.” That wasn’t true, actually. I had a girls’ swim meet to go to on Wednesday afternoon, but I’d skip that and head home to get ready. I wish I could go to the basement dance studio and watch her rehearse, but I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of stalker or something.

Just before the bell rang I saw Jessie standing outside the classroom door. No surprise there. Rebecca saw her, too, and sighed. It wasn’t a “good to see you” kind of sigh, either. It was more of a “can’t believe I have to deal with you” sigh. I perked up. Maybe that was good news for me.

Jessie sneered at me through the small glass window in the door as if she were proud of herself, like she had gotten the better of me or something. I couldn’t hand Rebecca the panda bear now. Not in front of Jessie.

Rebecca bolted when the bell rang without saying goodbye. I stayed in my seat and sighed. If she had any interest in me at all, she would have been friendlier. Glumly, I reopened my backpack and dug underneath my books for the somewhat flattened panda bear. On my way out of the classroom I mumbled, “It’s not gonna happen, Devon,” and threw the bear in the trashcan.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON ROLLED in cold and dreary, but I barely noticed the weather as I sat on the living room couch, coat in hand, trying to stay calm and breathe normally. I don’t know why I was so nervous. I guess because I couldn’t figure out how to get my feelings for Rebecca to go away. Since I had finally figured out that Rebecca didn’t want anything to do with me, I felt bad that I was making her take me to the cemetery that afternoon.

She said she’d pick me up at 4:00. At 3:58 I heard a noise outside the house and leaped off the couch to the living room window. Nope, just an old car passing by. I sat back down and watched the clock some more.

I was glad Dad was still at work, and Mom was at the grocery store because I didn’t want them to witness my jitters. They’d think I’d gotten weirder than normal.

I wondered if my mom would pass out over me being gay. What if I confided in her the way I did with Missy? Maybe she’d take it okay, but I wasn’t ready to spill those beans. Not yet. Not before I’d even had a girlfriend. I had no idea what kind of reaction my Dad would have. He would probably follow my mom’s lead. So if Mom was cool about it, he would be, too. If she hit the ceiling, he would, too, and then he’d make me replaster and paint.

I looked at the clock. 4:05. My mind went into a spin. She forgot. She was only being polite. I checked my cell phone for a text from her. Nothing. I groaned in misery, but then told myself to chill out. It wasn’t as if we were on some kind of secret spy mission with synchronized watches or something. Four o’clock at my house could be three fifty two at her house. Maybe her dance rehearsal ran over.

I got up and went into the bathroom near the front door. I looked at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I still looked okay. Hoop earrings—check. Hair up—check. Satisfied with the mirror, I went back into the living room to continue my clock-watching vigil.

At 4:10 I practically leaped off the living room couch like Belinda Carmichael leaping for a rebound when I heard a car pull into the driveway. It didn’t sound like my mom’s, so I was pretty sure it was Rebecca. I took a couple of deep breaths to get my heart out of my throat and snuck a peak out the window. To my astonishment, a hearse sat idling in the driveway. I laughed as I opened the front door.

I waved to Rebecca as she got out of the driver’s side of the hearse. She shrugged and smiled in embarrassment. “Sorry, Devon. Mom needed the other car today, but I figured since we were going to the cemetery, we’d fit right in.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt driving around in a black hearse, but if the hearse held Rebecca then I’d go along with it.

“No problem.” I opened the passenger door and got in. Rebecca got back in on her side. The scent of her rose perfume wrapped itself around me and made my insides tremble. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm my quickening pulse before I closed the door. Being alone with her was going to be way harder than I thought.

I forced myself to focus on the dashboard before I braved looking at her again. The inside of the hearse was surprisingly cozy and looked just like any other car in the front. Of course, all I had to do was turn around to see where the similarities ended. I didn’t dare look, afraid of what I might see.

“Ready to go?” Rebecca put the hearse in reverse.

“One question first.”

“Sure.”

“Is there a casket in here?”

She burst out laughing. “No. I’d never do that to you.” She backed the car out of my driveway and headed toward Greystone Cemetery. “We don’t take the hearse to the food store or anything, but Mom said I could drive it if we just went to the cemetery and back.”

I laughed. “No Scoopalicious? I owe you a hot fudge brownie sundae.”

“You don’t owe me—”

“I know, but I want to buy you one.” Now I’m really sounding like a stalker. I cringed and held my breath not sure how she would react.

I exhaled in relief when she laughed.

“Devon, I’d love for you to buy me ice cream, but maybe we should wait until summer. It’s a bit cold right now.”

“True that. I think they’re closed for the season anyway.”

“Let’s see,” she said as we turned onto Grasse River-Unionville Road. “I guess I’ll be buying you a raspberry ice cream with—Wait, don’t tell me.” She put her index finger in the air as if to stop me from speaking. “Chocolate sprinkles, right?”

“Bingo. Tu as tout bon.”

“You’re good, too, Ms. Journalist.”

I was ecstatic because she had remembered something private about me. Knowing somebody’s favorite ice cream was a very personal thing.

“Hey,” I said a way too sharply, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Does your family live at the funeral home? Like upstairs or something?”

She laughed again. What an amazing sound. “No, we live in the house next door. Do you remember the brick house to the right of the funeral home as you’re looking at it from the street?”

“Vaguely.”

She smiled. “Yeah, you probably had other things on your mind, but that’s where we live.”

“That’s handy for your family, I guess.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

We were stopped at a traffic light, and I couldn’t help remembering that the last time I saw the hearse go through this part of town we had been able to run all the lights. It was then that the real reason for my trip with Rebecca started to hit me, and my mood began to match the browns and grays of winter. I got quiet as we approached the big gates.

Rebecca must have sensed me withdraw because she looked at me. “Tu te sens bien?”

I swallowed around the lump forming in my throat. “Yeah, I’m okay, but I didn’t bring anything. I should have brought flowers or a snow globe.”

“A snow globe?”

“Grandma collected little glass snow globes. I should have at least brought flowers.” The closer we got to Grandma’s grave, the more I babbled. I hadn’t been back to the cemetery since the funeral. This time she’d actually be under the ground. I didn’t know if I was prepared for that.

“You’ll be okay, Devon. Ça va.”

She pulled the hearse down the side road leading to my grandmother’s grave. My grandfather’s grave was right next to hers, and I instantly felt bad because I had planned this whole trip to see Grandma. Not once did I think about paying my respects to Grandpa. I steeled myself as I got ready to open the door and decided to rectify my misdeed and include my grandfather in all my thoughts from now on.

I needed to hurry up since darkness fell quickly in a North Country winter. When I opened the door, I couldn’t move. The heaviness of the damp earth paralyzed me as I stared at the ohso-obviously new sod over my Grandmother’s grave. I had been an idiot trying to combine alone time with Rebecca and a trip to see my grandmother. I took a deep breath for strength and got out of the hearse without looking back.

A wooden marker with my grandmother’s name, “Mildred

B. Raines,” identified the grave. The headstone hadn’t been installed yet. I stood on the sod and then leaped off. I had been standing right on her. I was petrified. I didn’t know the right protocol. People in the movies always stood on the grass right in front of the headstone. How could they? I wasn’t sure what to do, so I stood off to the side and looked at the wooden marker. I tried to come up with some kind of prayer, but I couldn’t remember any from the couple of times Mom and Dad tried to take me and Missy to the Presbyterian Church on the corner. I don’t know why we quit going, but I could have used some good lines. I rolled my eyes. The journalist was out of words.

I decided to speak to my grandparents as if they were standing right in front of me.

“Hi, you guys,” I said in a shaky voice. “I’m sorry you had to die. Dad said everyone has their time, but I wish it wasn’t your time yet, either of you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, and I felt a little self-conscious, so I snuck a peek at Rebecca. She was looking the other way. She stayed in the hearse, probably to give me some space or something.

“So, anyway, Missy let me have that New York City snow globe that she got you, Grandma. I hope that was okay. I promise to take good care of it.” I shuffled my feet on the grass, not sure what to say next. I blurted, “Grandma, I’m sorry you had to leave so soon. Are you with Grandpa? Are you happy? Is there a heaven, Grandma? Do you guys see me?”