Uncertain (5 page)

On my twenty-seventh round of “You Are My Sunshine,” Dave drew his last, labored breath. His face relaxed completely, and his chest stopped moving. I felt a sense of relief, but not
only
relief. I also felt deeply sad. I lay on him and cried.

Kevin dropped me off at the door to the church. I walked inside and waited in the vestibule for him to park. My dress kept sticking to my legs, and I kept tugging on it to pull it away. Kevin walked up to the church and opened the door.

“What’s going on with your dress?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“I don’t know,” I said, tugging at it more aggressively. It sucked right back onto my legs after making tiny cracking sounds.

“Let me ask in the church office to see if they have any of that static spray. That might help.”

I walked behind him, but much slower. He reappeared.

“No dice.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Crap.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

“It doesn’t look good, though.” He glanced around the lobby area. “I have an idea—follow me.”

He walked up to the women’s bathroom. “Go in here and try to wet the bottom of your dress. It’ll help.”

I didn’t say anything. I just obeyed. I walked into the bathroom and lifted my skirt up into the sink, getting it as wet as I could. It worked. The dress hung perfectly with the weight of the water.

We walked into the church, which was old and beautiful, incredibly ornate with a peaked ceiling and gold accents galore. People were filing into the pews and a low hum of conversation underneath heavy and extravagant organ music filled the air. I followed Kevin like a child. I just trailed behind him. I kept him in sight without actually looking up.

I didn’t feel like saying hello to anyone or smiling. I just wanted to be left alone. Kevin sat down next to my grampa and scooted over, leaving me to sit on the first space in the pew, closest to the center aisle. I felt emotionless and sat there, avoiding all eye contact and silently hating Dave’s parents for always yelling at him.

The casket was rolled from the back of the church, and the instant the corner of it came into my view, dread weighed me down. I fought back any emotion by singing in my head the whole time. I sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” loudly in my mind, drowning out all of the readings and the priest talking, until my grampa leaned across Kevin and tapped me on my knee. My time had come to get up. No one else had written an eulogy.

I turned to Kevin, keeping the mourners waiting. “I forgot my paper.” A slight wave of dizziness rolled through me.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a spare, giving me a half-smile. “I gotcha.”

I didn’t want to walk up there. I sighed and grabbed the pew in front of me. I hauled myself up and into the aisle. Looking down at my black pointy shoes, I felt angry at how fussy they looked. I walked with the weight of ten bricks on each foot, listening to the echo of my fussy shoes clicking on the tile floor. I made it to the lectern and paused, staring at the open book that the priest had read from.

Someone coughed; otherwise, the sanctuary was nearly silent. I didn’t feel nervous—I just dreaded speaking about him to people who might not care or hadn’t even known him. I unfolded the paper slowly and looked up at everyone. Dave should’ve gotten a bigger turnout, I told myself. Maybe fifty people were there, all looking expectantly at me. I glanced at my grampa, who smiled at me, and then saw Kevin’s mother, Vita, in the row in front of him. It was nice of her to come. I cleared my throat and began.

“Dave was timeless. He had no age. He saw magic in everyday life and appreciated things that most people don’t see. He lived his life the best he could and most people can’t say that. 

“When I was seven, Dave rescued me from a centipede near the tree where I was sitting. Maybe the better way to phrase it is that he rescued the centipede from
me
. Because when I screamed and was about to step on it, he came over, scooped it up, then walked it to behind the garage and let it go. Then he came back to tell me all kinds of facts about centipedes and why I shouldn’t be afraid. I wasn’t sure about him at that time because he talked a little differently than most people I knew—but I realized quickly that didn’t matter. It didn’t influence his heart. Dave had a pure heart. I’ll miss him every single day.” I finished quickly.

Mrs. Phillips broke down and Mr. Phillips just sat staring into space. As I walked back to my pew, Mrs. Phillips grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

After the service, we walked out of the church.

“Mel, let’s try this again with your dress,” Kevin told me.

“No, it’s fine. I don’t care about it.”

“You have to care because it’s starting to look—well—terrible. It’s clinging to you like pants,” he said. “Come in here.” He held the men’s bathroom door open for me.

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.             

“So it looks more even. You can take the whole thing off and I’ll wet it – unless you’re cold?”

“I’m on fire.”

“Ok, let’s give it a shot.”

I went into the bathroom, nearly bumping into an older man, who gave me a disapproving look. 

“Go in the stall and hand me your dress.”

I did as I was told, flopping my dress over the top of the powder blue stall and standing there in my underthings with my arms crossed, feeling ridiculous.

I heard the water turn on. “Oh, hey,” Kevin said over the running water. “I don’t think I told you. That hotel—when we left early—I looked up the local news online for a couple of days to check and see if I was nuts. Turned out that hotel had a carbon monoxide leak. Something about the pool heater malfunctioning.”

“Seriously?” I asked, staring at part of the stall door where the powder blue paint was chipped off.

“Yeah, seriously. Crazy, right?”

“For sure. It was good that we got out when we did.” I heard the water turn off.

“Bunch of people had to go to the hospital,” he told me.

I heard water squishing, and then the dress slopped over the top of my stall, flinging water on my face.

I pulled it down and stepped into it, pulling up the zipper. It was a little too wet. I had to wring out the hem into the toilet.

I stepped out of the stall.

“How’s it look?” I asked, raising my arms up so he could get a good look.

“Perfect. Can’t even tell. It just looks blacker.”

“OK. Good.”

We walked out of the bathroom. “Hey,” he said, standing there. “I know you don’t want to even think about it now.” He scratched over his ear and I noticed that he’d gotten his hair cut recently. “But I told my mom what happened in California. I didn’t think you’d mind. But now I wanted to let you know—should I have asked you first?”

“It’s fine. No, it’s fine. It’s not a secret exactly, right? It’s just that it sounds so bizarre, that I wasn’t in a rush to let anyone know.”

“I know. Maybe we just keep it quiet until we know more. She won’t say anything. You can trust her. It’s a hard story to tell. It seems perfectly impossible once you say it out loud.”

“It does,” I agreed.

Without meaning to, I was sure, Kevin had compounded my sadness by reminding me of California and making me wonder what Vita was thinking.

Most of the people were still filing out of the church. Some were gathering in the over-lit lobby area. I spotted Vita talking to my grampa. She glanced at us with a raised eyebrow, no doubt at the fact that we’d just walked out of the men’s room together.

“Please go tell her what we were doing,” I rushed to tell Kevin and I rolled my eyes.

“I will. She’ll love it.” He walked over to where she stood.

Just as I was making my way to my grampa, I saw a familiar face.

“Wren,” I said, surprise in my voice. He had already been leaning in for a hug. “Oh no, I’m super wet!” I told him, a little too loudly, backing away and calling a lot of attention to myself. He realized at the exact same second because he let go immediately, backing up. His navy blue suit coat was already darker in spots from my dress.

“That’s
my
fault!” Kevin said without thinking in an enthusiastic attempted rescue. He, turned back to us, and stuck his hand out to shake Wren’s hand. “I’m Kevin, friend of Mel’s.”

“Wren,” Wren said. He had a peculiar look on his face. I didn’t judge him for that.

Kevin looked over at me, still holding Wren’s hand. “Rubber boots?” I nodded, feeling a rare moment of embarrassment for several reasons. Kevin could read my eyes because he left pretty quickly to go and talk to my grampa.

“What brings you here?” I said, like an idiot, clearly on a path for more ruined conversation.

Thankfully, he understood my meaning. “Elmer. He’s a retired firefighter.”

“Elmer?”

“Dave’s dad.”

“Oh, I’ve always just known him as Mr. Phillips.” Super mean Mr. Phillips, I thought to myself. “He’s my neighbor.”

“OK, cool,” Wren said, nodding. He seemed to feel awkward, based on his posture and how he kept fidgeting.

I realized that I’d never gotten back to him from when he’d called me. I had been having a total spaz attack about a sign I’d gotten—a T-shirt that had been delivered to me as another hint for me to head to California.

“I want to apologize…” I started.

“I’m hardly wet,” he said, inspecting his jacket.

“Oh, not for that.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “For not returning your phone call. I was flipping out about something and you called right then. After that, I went out of town for a while and then everything happened with Dave.” I laughed in my head at the number of details I left out.

“That’s a lot that you’ve had going on.” He smiled. “I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure if you liked our coffee conversation so I figured that was what had happened.”

“Not at all,” I answered, watching a drip fall from the hem of my dress. I moved slightly, noticing several small puddles were forming below me. “I actually had a good time.” I made myself look up and smile at him, although I just wanted the conversation to be over.

I felt a hand glide on my shoulder in a strong side-hug. “Hello, love. I heard you were having some trouble with static cling.”

It was Vita, Kevin’s mother.

I nodded. Vita looked to Wren for his response with expectation in her expression.

“Now it makes sense.” Wren laughed.

Vita looked at me, squeezing my shoulder again. “Your speech was marvelous. I was so proud of you.”

“It was. It was great,” Wren said, clearly wishing he’d said it first.

“Forgive me, sweetheart. I’m Vita. I’m a—friend of Mel’s.” There was a barely noticeable pause before Vita said that she was my friend. She held her hand out to Wren.

“I’m Wren. We just happened to bump into each other here.”

“My goodness, of all the places.”

“Right?” Wren replied, smiling.

“Wren, would you mind very much if I steal Miss Mel from you for a bit. I’m dying to drag her into the ladies’ room to stop her from freezing and bend her ear for a while.”

“Sure, sure,” he said.

“I’ll give you a call,” I promised Wren. Figuring I still had his number, somewhere.

Vita spun me around. “First off, let’s get you to the bathroom to wring that dress out and blot it some. I’ve got some spray right here in my purse. I had it out in the car and Kevin ran to get it when I heard about why you were in the men’s room.”

She said this with a teasing look of disapproval. “I never travel without this stuff in the winter up here. I had a similar experience once in the past.”

I immediately felt more relaxed, almost to the point of smiling. I followed Vita to the bathroom and I was almost happy until I spotted the hearse through the window. I was instantly reminded why we were here.

We walked into the bathroom, which was a strange pink and burgundy. The line of women was out the door, with every stall filled. After pulling out a couple of handfuls of paper towels, Vita led me to a mini-lounge area on the opposite side of the bathroom, away from the waiting ladies.

“How have you been, sweetheart?” Vita asked as she fussed with my dress.

“OK.”

“Still some crazy dreams spoiling your sleep?” she asked, quietly.

“Sometimes,” I agreed. Vita made a sound of empathy and stopped what she was doing to look up at me.

“You know, I had an idea. Thought of you. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s where you recognize that you’re dreaming, and you can take control of the dream.”

I was interested to hear that it was a ‘thing.’ “Oh, I actually do that sometimes. It’s hard to do.”

“It surely is. You surprise me! I’ve been practicing it for years. I’m excited that you’ve already been trying it out because it should be that much easier for you.”

I had started mopping some of the water out of my dress with the paper towels alongside Vita. “What would be easier?”

“Asking questions you have—while you’re dreaming.”

“How?” Could anyone beside my mother answer my questions, I wondered.

“Well, what if you wrote down your questions on paper and put them in a drawer. Then, in your dream, you open the drawer and hand the paper to whoever is talking to you. Your right brain will retain the questions you wrote while you were awake—so don’t worry about that. Or, come to think of it, you could just write out the questions in your dream, while it’s happening. I suspect you can find a thousand ways to do it.” She looked at me hopefully.