James was
standing at the back of the funeral crowd thinking that it might be time again for
a haircut. His bangs had started to get caught in his eyebrows. He could tell
that the back of his head was getting frizzy from the day’s humidity. The sun
had come out from behind the clouds somewhere toward the end of the service and
the misting rain had stopped. He didn’t need an umbrella, which was good since
he had left his on the floorboard of his Plymouth. He tugged at the neck of his
shirt, and unfastened the top button beneath his tie—the shirt was one that he
had dredged from the back of the closet at his mom’s house. James had been on
one of his rare visits home when his Uncle Gary had suddenly died. He got a
text from his sister around lunchtime asking James if he could stick around
town for the funeral.
How could James have known he would
need a funeral outfit? The shirt he borrowed was just a little bit too small
for him, and it clung to his skin, absorbing sweat. James’s father—now five
years divorced from James’s mother—had brought a sports jacket for James to
wear; it was a size too big and made James feel like he was wearing a costume.
He felt like an idiot for staying—he’d cancelled a meeting with a client, and
he always hated the excuse that a loved one had died.
It wasn’t
his first funeral, so he knew what to expect. His left pocket was shoved half-full
with breath mints. His right had a small pack of tissues—not for him, but to be
offered to other people. James felt that it was unlikely he would cry at this
funeral. The inside pocket of his jacket held his Denman-Professional hair comb.
In his back pocket was the small aluminum case that held his business cards. He
was proud of these cards and what they advertized because they said that James
had achieved something in life and that he had managed to escape the small town
of Goodview, where he had grown up. Some days, when he thought of home, he
would pull out his business cards and read “JAMES EDWARD THOMPSON, ARBORTOWN INSURANCE
AGENT” and he would remember that he was still going to go somewhere in the
world. He carried those cards with him all the time because, as he often said,
he never knew when he might need one.
James stood
at the back of the crowd. He couldn’t hear the preacher, but he could see
everything. A towel had been passed around to dry off the aluminum folding
chairs set out for the mourners, but by the time it had reached James, it was saturated;
James stood behind his chair. He recognized a few people in the crowd, but was
slightly surprised at how many he did not recognize. He was sure they were
family—who else would come to his Uncle Gary’s funeral? Some faces he
half-recognized from family reunions, Christmases, and Easters, but the rest were
people he had just met at the open-casket viewing.
***
The open
casket service was held earlier that day at a small Baptist church at the end
of Main. The parking lot was small, so many of the guests’ cars had spilled
into neighboring parking lots. James had parked across the street at a small
diner that his parents had taken him and his sister to on parade days. The funeral
home was beside the church. Convenient,
James thought. Good for business. There
was a misting of rain, so most of the guests had huddled together under
umbrellas on their way into the building. James had left his in the car.
At the
viewing, the church had been packed with people milling about, looking lost.
Greetings were whispered, accompanied with a wish that they were meeting under
different circumstances. A few people sat in pews, but most stood. James
remembered lurching forward with the crowd glance at his uncle’s corpse. James’s
cousin Kate was standing by the casket, being hugged. James gave Kate a hug. It
had been ten years since James had last seen her. She was a tall, thin girl
now. Her black dress hung loose on her arms and James smelled alcohol mixed
with perfume.
James had had his first kiss with
her when they were kids. “Look at what Daddy taught me.” She had pulled James
beneath one of the tables draped with fabric at a reunion and parted his lips
with hers. He had liked it—it was foreign, new, and he had seen his parents kiss
a few times before his dad moved away. James and Kate had had a romance during
that family weekend, but it didn’t survive. James never let himself think that
Kate’s dad, his dead uncle Gary, had taught her to kiss, but now he couldn’t
help thinking of what it had meant. It made James feel nauseous. More than
anything else about the funeral, James hated that the people were here to
hypocritically honor this horrible man, and everyone knew so.
As they grew up, Kate became a
source of family gossip. She had run away from home once or twice, but just down
to a neighbor’s or a friend’s place. She got caught in a large cheating scandal
during her high school SOL tests and dropped out because of it. The gossip
didn’t really get bad until she ran
off and got married to a city boy from DC. In the midst of the gossip, it
somehow got out that Gary had been investigated for having relations with his
daughter. It was never proven, but James knew, and everyone else knew as well.
James never
liked Kate’s dad. His casket was made of cheap oak with a cushioned white interior.
Gary had once attempted to hike across Blue Ridge, he told James. He’d once
gone swimming with sharks, but James didn’t believe him. He used to own a
business, one time. James had been unimpressed, and was still unimpressed by
the dead man. Gary’s face was plastered with makeup to make him look more
alive. Gary’s suit fit better than James’ did, James noticed. James smiled,
amused that his uncle Gary looked better in death than he ever had before.
James
stepped away to allow his great aunt Gertrude—or maybe it was Greta?—to stare at
the corpse. The line of gawkers had moved into an empty side room filled with tables
of tiny sandwiches that came from the diner across the street. Quite a little operation they have here.
James grabbed a cucumber sandwich and walked to the back of the room. The
service was about to start, so James fixed his hair in a hall mirror before
sitting in the rear pew.
James’s
sister Meghan was already there with her son, Gavin, who was playing a
hand-held video game with the volume turned up just loud enough to be annoying.
“So Mom
didn’t make it then?” Meghan’s hair was pulled back with a black scrunchie, but
a few strands were stubbornly jutting out to the side. James handed her his
comb.
“Not her
brother. Not her problem. You know how she can be. She sends her best.” James
took the comb back from his sister and pulled a few hairs from the teeth before
slipping it back into his breast pocket. Their mother had estranged herself from
their father’s side of the family after the divorce.
Meghan
nodded. “Gavin. I said save your game and put it away.”
Gavin
looked up from the game. “But Ma-ahm!” Meghan gave the boy a look again and
held out her hand. He kept playing, and Meghan took her hand back.
Meghan
looked back at James. “I am surprised that you and dad are here, at the same
time. You two can barely occupy the same space without fighting.” Meghan looked
toward the front pew. Their father was in the front row, sitting next to Kate.
Gary was his brother, after all. Meghan would never bring it up to James, but
the reason their parents divorced was because their father had thought James
was too effeminate as a boy, and so their father had mistreated James. Meghan
admired her mother for kicking their father out of the house, but she didn’t
want James to think it was all his fault.
Before James had come out in high
school, he and his dad had been fighting. Since the divorce, James rarely saw
his dad, except during an obligatory family function, and even then they would
either ignore each other, or start arguing. Even at the funeral, the only
exchange between the two had been when his father had passed James the sports
jacket and told him to keep it. “I won’t wear it after you,” his father had
said. James just shrugged the jacket on and walked away. James’s father had
never come to terms with having a gay son. James pretended like he didn’t have
a father.
“Are you two ever going to make
up?” Meghan looked at her brother. “His brother did just die, Jamie. He’s vulnerable to compassion.”
“What am I supposed to do?
Apologize? What for? He’s an asshole, and I’m through with trying.” James
would’ve gone on, but the pastor had just stepped up to the front of the room.
Meghan told Gavin again to turn off his game. He turned the volume down and
kept playing.
The pastor welcomed everyone to the
gathering and read the twenty-third Psalm. He invited everyone in for a moment
of reflection, and then opened the floor to family and friends who would like
to share a memory of their dearly-departed Gary. James listened as people
talked about Gary’s self-made business (though they left out the part about it
failing). They talked about times they went hiking with the man and the trip to
the ocean he had once taken his family to see. Everyone had only good things to
say about Gary. To distract himself from the lies, James kept fidgeting with
his bangs. In between speakers, all anyone could hear was the sound of rain on
the church roof. James was distracted by the sound of Gavin’s thumbs jabbing
buttons on his game.
After several people spoke, Kate
took her turn. Like the others, she spoke only kind things. The memory that she
gave the congregation was of a time when she was little and she had just come
home from school with an A+ on a drawing assignment. Her father, sober at the
time—though she did not mention that—had taken the drawing and told Kate how
much he liked it. It was a drawing of her and her dad holding hands in a field
with blue grass and a yellow sky.
When Kate left the pulpit, she sat
beside James’s father and a man that James did not recognize. The man was
dressed better than James. The man’s hair was crisp and neat. This must be Kate’s husband, James
thought. The man kept checking his watch.
James’s father did not stand to
speak. When no one came forward to speak after Kate, the pastor returned to say
some parting words, and gave instructions about how they would proceed to the
gravesite.
“And it sounds as though God has
stopped the rain, just for us.” Everyone stood and sang a hymn before they
began to pile toward the doors. Gavin finally turned his game off. He sneaked
away from Meghan and began speaking with one of his younger cousins, a pretty
little blonde girl wearing black hair ribbons. As the two kids ran off, James
clenched his fist and thought about when he and Kate had met beneath the table
as kids.
“Did you meet Raymond yet? Nice
guy,” Meghan broke James’s reverie as she nodded toward Kate’s husband who was
jabbing at his phone’s touch-screen. James shook his head. “He’s an accountant
from Washington. He wants to make it big. I bet you two would get along.”
James rolled his eyes, but as the
crowd began to file through the doors, he found himself being drawn
unintentionally closer to Kate and Raymond. James smiled to himself, thinking
that this would be the perfect opportunity to get revenge on the hypocrisy in
the room. Raymond was an attractive man, and James wasn’t above using his charm
to distract people.
“That was a very nice story you
told about your dad, Kate.” James ran his hand through his hair with the hope
that his sweaty palm would help it stay down.
Kate smiled a smile that could have
been mistaken as a frown. “Have you met Raymond?” Her breath smelled like
bourbon, and James thought of the breath mints in his pocket. When Kate spoke,
Raymond looked up from his phone and nodded before he went back to typing.
James extended his hand toward the
man, anyway. “I’m James, Kate’s cousin. I heard you do accounting?”
Raymond looked up from his phone
and smiled. “Oh, yes. Raymond Williams. I run the books for New Haven Auto
Insurance.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket and shook James’s hand.
James noticed that Raymond did not have a very strong grip, and his hand was
soft and sweaty, like his own. Raymond had grayish blue eyes.
“New Haven?” James smiled. He
reached into his back pocket for his aluminum case, flipped it open, and handed
Raymond a card. “I’m an agent for Arbortown. Small world.” Raymond accepted the
card and frowned.
“Nice card. I guess we’re rivals. Just
kidding of course.” Raymond reached into his pocket and pulled a card to hand
to James. James took the card, but continued to look Raymond in the eyes. He smiled
at Raymond as the crowd forced them through the door and out into the
graveyard.
It was much brighter outside than
it had been. It was warm now—welcoming. The sky was bright blue and the clouds
were puffy and white. It was a beautiful day. In the light, James realized that
his dad was standing just on the other side of Kate, pretending not to realize
that James was there. James glared at his dad before looking back at Raymond.
“It’s very nice in DC. I’m up there every other weekend or so. It’s much better
than this stinking hole I grew up in, anyway.” James spoke for his dad to hear.
His dad broke away to sit with the funeral crowd in the fold up chairs.
“I like it here, to be honest. It’s
where I met Kate, you know.” Raymond smiled at Kate and put his arm around her
shoulder. “It was nice to meet you.” Raymond guided Kate toward the front of
the crowd. James stayed at the back with a bad taste in his mouth. He unwrapped
a breath mint and ate it.
***
After the casket was lowered into
the ground, the crowd began to disperse. James was ready to leave—if he could
get out of there fast, he could schedule a hair appointment and still have
enough time to get on the road before dark. Meghan caught his arm as he turned
to leave, though.
“Have you seen Gavin?” She did not
look worried, but she did seem as though she was preoccupied. James looked
around real quick, and saw Gavin walk out of the church with the little girl.
Her black hair ribbons were gone, and her hair looked messy for the lack of
them. James pointed in their direction. “Oh, thanks.” Meghan turned to leave,
but then turned back and gave James a hug. “Talk to dad. Seriously,” she
whispered in his ear. Before James had a chance to respond, she ran over to get
Gavin, and left for her car.
James turned around and looked
toward the grave. The marker was simple. It listed Gary’s full name, his
birthday and last Tuesday’s date. James did the math; he had been forty-nine
years old. Kate was still standing talking with mourners. Raymond was checking
his watch while speaking with the pastor. James’s father was looking at the
grave, but his back was turned to James, and he did not see James, who turned
away and walked back through the church.
James passed by the little blonde
girl who was brushing her hair. With a smile on her face, the girl asked her
mother, “Why do we put people in boxes when they die?” James left before he
heard the answer.
James got in his car and pulled out
his phone to call the old barber shop. He was in luck—there was time for a trim.
James shrugged his dad’s jacket off and tossed it out the window. That will give this town something to talk
about. He reached into his breast pocket for his comb and found Raymond’s
business card. James tossed the card into the floorboard beside his umbrella.
While he drove, he thought of black hair ribbons and his uncle’s grave marker
which waited for the tombstone he was sure Kate and her Raymond had ordered for
his Uncle Gary.
