The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [55]
19
I want very much to wear the right thing to the funeral: it feels like it is the last thing I will ever get to do for Kate, and I must do it perfectly. I think wearing all black would be presumptuous of me; that should be reserved for family members. I will wear gray or navy, and only a little black. I don’t even know whether this is my first funeral. I imagine my two-year-old self at my father’s funeral, sitting on some willing grandparent’s lap, sucking my thumb—something that would normally be forbidden, but surely no one would have said no to me that day—and watching the service, not understanding what it all meant. I see myself hot, cranky, and hungry; I imagine my hair being stroked; strangers kissing me, pitying my mother and me.
It’s easier to think I didn’t go, and so I imagine the adults saying, She’s too young. Leave her home with the sitter—a funeral’s no place for a child.
My mother and I take a cab together to the funeral home, even though it’s only eight blocks away. There’s a crowd outside, people waiting to get in. My mother had insisted we leave early. I thought she was just nervous about being late. But maybe she knew you get there early so you can see the family first, crowd into a little room and express your condolences, before taking your seats. Maybe she knew that afterward, when the family members rush into the black cars that take them to the cemetery, there might not be time.
I didn’t ask my mother to come with me today; I knew she would come. The room next to the chapel is packed. Jeremy is surrounded, and I don’t think I should squeeze past all these people to see him. I saw him last night, and I’m sure I’ll see him again tonight. So my mother and I stand in the corner, waiting for it to be time to move into the chapel, to sit and watch. I’m surprised when Jeremy is suddenly standing next to me. He leans down quickly, whispers in my ear, “Go and hug my mother. She loves you.” His breath is warm on my neck. And then he’s gone, back in that crowd of people.
I don’t know why Jeremy’s asked me to go hug his mother. She’s probably surrounded by her family and her closest friends. I’ll be intruding. But I also don’t want to let Jeremy down; he said she loved me. I know Jeremy wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true, but I barely know her. I don’t know why she would particularly care about seeing me now.
Kate would know, I think. If I asked Kate, she’d be able to explain it to me.
I start to look for Mrs. Cole. My mother follows me through the crowd and then I see her, Mrs. Cole, sitting on a velvety couch, silently staring ahead of her. People are talking to her, or anyway, talking to each other around her, keeping their hands on her shoulder, her knee, over her hands folded in her lap. I walk straight toward her. My mother hangs back; I’m relieved that she understands not to follow me. Mrs. Cole’s face almost brightens when she sees me; her arms extend toward me like she knew I was coming to hug her. She rocks me back and forth, or I rock her. When I let go, she takes my hands and squeezes them, and I know that she knows how sorry I am, how much I loved Kate, and how much I love her son. And I know that’s what Jeremy was talking about when he said that she loves me.
I turn around, see my mother waiting. A flicker of something I don’t recognize passes across her face—is it jealousy? Not jealousy that I’m so close with the Coles, but jealousy of the way Mrs. Cole and I just held each other.
We file into the chapel, and soon I am watching Jeremy: first the back of his head as he sits in the front row—his brown hair that’s almost wavy, but not quite—and then his face when he gets up to speak. Neither of his parents speaks. He is wearing a dark gray suit and it occurs to me that I’ve never seen him dressed so nicely and that he looks very handsome and tall, speaking about his sister without crying like the rest of us. The only thing that gives him away is the way that he’s digging his hands into the side of the podium, hanging on like it’s holding him up—but I