The Things You Kiss Goodbye (26 page)

The small crowd was breaking away in pieces all around us.

“N-no. Thank you,” I said.

“Another time then,” he said. He smiled such a sad smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant for his loss—the way people say. He was a father with a dead son. My throat was in a horrible cramp. I couldn’t form another word. I nodded at Mr. Shepherd one last time. Then I turned and walked away as if I had somewhere to go.

It’d taken only thirty minutes for them to say goodbye to him—their brother, their son. Bampas might not be back for a while, so I walked. The ground made sucking noises under my mother’s boots. I reached the opposite end of the cemetery and turned to start back again. But then I got off course. I could not find the shoveled path, nor my own footprints. No matter where I looked I saw no one. Even the awning was gone.
So quickly? That’s how this works? You just fold up? How is that enough?
The tallest monuments in the yard made a dizzying pattern, like pieces on a giant disorderly chessboard.

Where is the place I was just standing? Where is the urn? Why does the whole world keep warping?

Finally, the trampled and melted snow gave it away. The awning was on the ground, rolled and packed to go. But the urn was still on its little temporary stage. Not a soul stood near it now. I stepped up and held Momma’s umbrella over the urn and over me. If that was really Cowboy, what could I say to him? What words could I whisper—

“Bettina?”

I gripped the umbrella handle and turned. Bonnie Swenson blinked back at me.

“Whu—?”

“My dad threw out his back so I’m helping today,” she said quickly. She gestured. I looked and saw a lone van slowly making a turn near the cemetery gate. Its taillights glowed and a funnel of exhaust rose from its tailpipe.

“Oh. He’s waiting for you,” I said.

“He’ll pull around,” Bonnie said. Then speaking in a very gentle way, she added, “We have to take the urn.”

I looked slowly from Bonnie to the urn, and back again. Maybe I looked like I was guarding it. I took a step back.

“I-it’s really sad,” Bonnie said. “He was so young.”

I nodded.

She hesitated then asked, “How did you know him?”

“He was . . . my friend,” I said. I swallowed hard. “Like . . . the best . . .”

“I’m so sorry,” Bonnie whispered. She touched my arm and let her hand slide gently down to mine. She held my fingers for a second. She stepped toward the vessel.

“Wh-where do you take it now? The urn?” I asked.

“Storage,” she answered. I hated that. “The remains won’t be interred until later. Some families make that request.”

“Really?” I said.
Why?
I wondered. What was the point
of a graveside service then? I did not ask that question, but Bonnie was on a roll, talking shop.

“Sometimes unmarried children are buried alongside their parents. . . .”

Suddenly, I felt like I would puke in the mud. I stepped back from my own feet and leaned forward. Bonnie hushed. A few seconds throbbed by, and the feeling passed.

“I’m sorry, Bettina,” she said again.

I nodded and took a deep breath. “I better go. My father is meeting me at the gate.” I started away.

“Bettina?”

I turned back to see her holding the urn in her capable, chapped hands.

“Are you going to come back to clay class soon? I’ve missed you.”

Beyond Bonnie I could see Bampas pulling the car to the side of the street and motioning with one hand for me to come. “I—I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know.”

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F
OR THE REST OF THAT DAY
I
DIDN
’
T KNOW WHAT
I should be doing. Closure did not show up to put its armor around me. All I felt was dread for each new minute. My phone was off but I heard the house phone several times. Momma did not make me take the calls. But she told me, “Brady again. It is the third time. I know you are hurting but, Bettina, we don’t know what to tell him.” She did seem helpless. “And now the cheerleaders have called, too.”

“I—I can’t talk to anyone,” I said, putting my hands up like a shield. “Not yet. I’ll—I’ll do something. Soon. I will.”

I slipped away to my bedroom and stared out the window at the place where Cowboy had stood the couple of times he
had come for me—the place I would never see him again.
All
places were like that now. He would not be anywhere . . . unless I could dream him. I watched the world beginning to refreeze in a changing wind.
All that early drizzle had been a waste of a good snow
, I thought.

Later, I went into the kitchen and I carried a shopping bag in my hand. Neither of my parents saw me in the doorway.

“Loreena,
this
you should have told me!” My father towered close to my mother as if he would step on her feet.

“Two days, Dinos! Two days I knew about it! Then he is dead!” She brought her hands to her head. “I didn’t have time to tell you. I was still trying to think.”

“To think?” My father stepped back and brought his fist down onto the counter with a thud. “That is the problem then!”

“Dinos, you are being unfair,” my mother insisted. Her eyes were filling.

“He was twenty-six, Loreena! The girl is fifteen. . . .”

“Sixteen.” I interrupted hoarsely. “I’m sixteen. Seventeen soon.”

They both looked at me.

“Bettina!” My mother reached for me, trying to apologize for my father’s mistake. I wanted to say that it didn’t matter. Instead, I held the bag out to her.

“Momma, I need you to turn this in,” I said. “It’s my
cheerleading dress. You have to tell them I am not coming back.”

“No, no,” Bampas started up. “Bettina, quitting is not the answer—”

“Bampas . . .” I cut him off with a whisper. “Do I look like I can jump up and down and make noise? Do you think I can care about
ridiculous
basketball after everything that has ha—” I choked. It took a huge effort but I pulled myself together. “Don’t you understand why I won’t take Brady Cullen’s phone calls? Because
I can’t
!” He stared back at me. I actually had his attention. “And Bampas, I hope you never blame Momma for any of this again,” I said. “I sprung it on her—the whole thing. She did her best.” I turned to face my mother. I held out the bag. “Take it to the school for me, Momma, please. The cheerleaders will need to make other plans. There is a Jenna Somebody. She can step in. I won’t hold them up any longer.”

“I’ll do it,” Momma said, and she took the bag.

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M
Y BED BECAME MY NEST
;
MY NIGHTGOWN WAS MY
cocoon. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to find Cowboy in a dream.

My parents left me to it. They brought cups of tea and small dishes of food. The boys knocked softly on my door in the afternoons, as if they were wearing mittens. For all those days they whispered my name, whispered offers of card games and cocoas and videos. I couldn’t do any of it. They looked at me with big, round eyes every time they closed my door.

There was no single thing that dragged me from that bed. But three or four days after the funeral, I got up. I stepped
straight into my clothes, slid my window open, and walked out into the snow. I walked the swath to River Road. When I saw the place I had last seen Cowboy—the place where we’d held each other—I reached into my jacket to check for his cigarettes. I turned left and kept on going for an hour, or maybe it was more, until I reached the water property.

In the ruined and refrozen snow, there was evidence of something having been pulled up and out. There were muddy gashes in the hillside from heavy equipment. These scars in the earth were right where Cowboy and I had stood together on New Year’s Day. I wondered, did he think about telling me he loved me that day? And if he had, how would that have made this day different? I looked into the bowl below and saw the split treetops, the sickening hole in the snow—the place where the Chevy had to have lain with Cowboy in it. I twisted my arms together and held them to my chest.

I asked myself again,
What could have gone so wrong that night after he left me?
But no answer could ever unbreak my heart.

The little mental movie played—us running along the snowy ground—clouds of Cowboy’s breath—gray bark on winter trees—the pair of cardinals.

And cold hands holding cold hands
.

It seemed like a time to cry or scream. But I was perfectly silent.

When the cop car pulled up behind me I realized my mistake; I’d left home with out telling anyone. The cop ushered me onto the seat of the patrol car. I heard him radio in to the station. “Have someone phone Dinos,” he said. “I’ll have her home in fifteen minutes.” He gave me a glance, shook his head, sighed through his nose.

At home, my frantic parents slipped into their roles: Bampas playing “good host” to the officer, pouring him coffee, and making light of everything, and Momma following me to my bedroom. “I’ll start your shower,” she said. “After, I’ll help you with your hair.”

I went along with that. My mother came in and out of my bathroom several times, the shower curtain billowing to announce her each time. She left fresh towels, then came back and handed me her bottle of rosemary and olive oil—Old World hair conditioner. “Suppresses the tresses,” we’d always said. I poured a small puddle of the oil into one hand then spread it between both palms. I drew my hands through my hair, then rinsed and watched the water falling toward the drain. My arms and shoulders were tired; my wet hair was heavy. Even my fingers felt weak. I rinsed one last time and shut the shower off. I wrapped my head in one towel and my body in another. My mother tapped on the door.

“I’m leaving a clean nightgown on the hook.”

“I want the one I’ve been wearing,” I said.

“It’s stale. I’m washing it,” my mother answered. I don’t know why but I wilted over that loss. When I came out, she was tossing a crisp, clean top sheet over a fresh fitted one on my bed. The windows were open to the cold day. She was airing me. I shivered.

“Put it on.” My mother gestured at the clean gown. “Your robe too. You can have tea if you want it. I’ll close the windows after a few minutes.”

It was late afternoon, the winter sun dropping and fading, when my mother gently braided my damp hair for me and told me how fine I was going to be. When she left, I tried to find my way to sleep, and to a dream where I might glimpse Cowboy. But sleep didn’t come. I twisted in my fresh bed. My hair caught underneath me. For years I had never cared that my braid made my nightgown damp, that it was heavy and so constantly
with me
. Now, I remembered the day Brady Cullen had jerked my head back so hard.

I sat up in bed. The scissors were the on the nightstand. The next thing I knew, I was halfway through that rope of hair. It was quite a
thing
—that braid—hanging from the grip of my finger and thumb. I don’t know what gave me the thought that it had to be kept together but I twisted an elastic band onto the chopped end. I dropped the braid and folded myself back between my sheets.

There was the awful moment when my lamp came on.
My mother screamed. She was frantic, searching the back of my head and finding only a short cob of hair left there. She was still breathless when my father’s form filled the doorway. “Does this do it, Dinos?” Her voice was hoarse. She swept the braid off the floor and shook it at him. “Can you see that beneath this roof there is a heart that must be mended? And will you help me? Because if you will not . . . I will ask you to leave so I can do it alone.”

That about blew me out of my bed.

Leave? What had I done to them? “Oh, Momma! No!” I cried and begged her to understand. “It’s j-just hair!” I stammered. “It felt wet—it was twisting around me—and I was tired of it, is all. Momma, it doesn’t matter.”

Her face ran with tears and her lip quivered uncontrollably. I looked at Bampas, who stood still as granite and looked empty as a cardboard box. I turned back to my mother. “Please, Momma,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I suppose I did sleep that night once they left the room. But I kept opening my eyes wide in the darkness. I could not dream.

When I came into the kitchen the next morning, both my little brothers looked at me with big eyes and mouths wide open. I caught my bowed reflection in the cupboard glass. My hair had sprung into wild spirals and uneven lengths. I should’ve said something to Favian and Avel. But Bampas
excused them before their cereal bowls were empty.

I put the kettle on, flicked the burner to high, and watched the flame. I stared at the fire below the kettle and twisted the knob. Flame up. Flame down.

My mother glanced at me, at my hair. She turned away to face the kitchen sink.

“Bettina . . .” My father cleared his throat. “Tomorrow you need to get up and go back to school. This has been enough,” he said. He endorsed his own words with a nod.

“Enough?” I said. My lips felt numb. “No. I can’t go back. Really, I can’t.”

“Your mother will take you to have something done about your hair, which you have ruined—”

“Dinos!” My mother turned from the sink so fast, one of her bones cracked. “Please don’t say that Bettina’s hair is
ruined
—”

“I don’t care,” I said. I paused to touch the springs of hair. How quickly it had untamed itself. I couldn’t stand it if Bampas got on Momma’s case, any more than I couldn’t bear the mention of anyone leaving. “I don’t want the hair fixed,” I said. “But okay, I will go to school. I will try.”

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B
RADY
C
ULLEN WAS WAITING AT MY LOCKER
. I
ARRIVED
in front of him on hollow legs.