The church is packed. So very many people have come to say good-bye to my mother, and all of them are now watching me. Some faces are familiar. Greg’s mom is here, the critical gossip she’s going to share with her friends almost visible in a cloud over her head. Tony and Mia and Mrs. Medina sit together about three rows back, and their kind faces bolster me.
“Come on,” I whisper to Dad and to Elle. “Let’s go this way.” I take one step, and then I see Marley.
She sits right by the aisle, about halfway back on the right. Her hair is twisted up into a bun, and she wears a demure black dress. Dark glasses cover her eyes. Her feet, in sensible black pumps, remain evenly on the floor. Knees touching. Shoulders back. Chin up. She’s the epitome of the perfect posture Mom tried and failed to instill in me.
Only her hands give her away. They are twisted together in her lap, instead of loosely folded, the funeral program crushed and bent between them.
Leah’s Journal
I told myself that, job or no job, I would leave after the babies were born, when I was able to move again. When they could be put in a stroller or packed into the car. I believed it, too, until I was confronted with the reality of two fragile, demanding, small people.
This was a reality nobody could have prepared me for, even if there had been anybody who might have tried. They cried. Well, Marley cried; Maisey squeaked. She was smaller by half a pound. Stayed in the baby ICU two full days longer. I’d forgotten that until just now, how much I was frightened by Maisey’s fragility.
I remember the day the hospital sent us home. One minute both babies were hooked up to monitors in special little temperature-controlled beds. The next they were swaddled up in blankets, and I was being patted on the head and sent out the door with all kinds of instructions. Feed them every two hours. Swab the belly buttons with alcohol. Bathe them, but don’t let them get cold. Watch for jaundice.
Guilt.
Dear God, the guilt. Maybe I won’t write this after all. What is the point of stirring up this muddy mess so many years later? It’s not like I can go back and fix it. But it’s too late for that. Pandora’s box has been opened. From now until I die, I will be asking myself these questions. Why didn’t I call a taxi and run away right then and there? I’ve always told myself that I had nowhere else to go. It’s not true, God help me. My parents were still alive. They wouldn’t have welcomed me and two small people into their home, but they wouldn’t have shut us out.
So many things I might have done, I suppose. In fairness to myself, I’m going to remind myself of a few facts. They do not excuse me, but maybe they explain.
Fact: I was only seventeen and had never been around babies. My heart was full of love for these small creatures, but I was terrified by the amount of care they required.
Fact: I’d had a C-section. My dream that as soon as they were born, I would be light and free and have my own body back was pure fantasy. I was still heavy. My belly hurt where they’d cut me. My breasts were hot and swollen and ached. I was bleeding. Just walking down the hallway from my room to the nursery took all the energy I had. Tears were flowing nonstop. The nurses cooed over the babies, petted me, told me it was just baby blues and I would be fine.
And Boots. The nurses all adored Boots.
He would come in, golden and beautiful and unmarked by any physical change. He brought me flowers. Every day a new bouquet. Stuffed animals for the babies. Chocolate for the nurses. I should have wondered where he got the money, but I was too overwhelmed to ask questions.
“You’re a wonder, Leah,” he said to me. “Look what we’ve done, the two of us. We’re a family now.” He said that word, family, with reverence. He kissed me so tenderly. Held me gently.
I believed him.
The moment when we walked out of the hospital together, each of us carrying one baby, holding hands. The moment when I buckled Maisey into her little seat while he did the same with Marley. The moment when he opened the car door for me, all gentleman, and helped me buckle up my own seat belt.
Believing him was my greatest sin. Because in all that came after, I had so little choice.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She’s here.
My sister. My Marley. She came to the funeral after all, in spite of everything.
I can’t tear my eyes away from her face, and my feet, unattended, tangle up with each other. For a shattering instant, I think I’m going to fall, right there on the platform with everybody looking at me. Elle and Dad anchor me just enough to let me correct my balance.
An usher materializes and offers an arm to me and one to Dad, assisting us slowly and cautiously down the steps, Elle trailing along behind. He stops at the end of the family pew and signals me to walk in and sit.
The organist stops midsong, now that we’re all seated, and shifts her pages around. A slow hymn signals Pastor McLean and Edna Carlton to come in. He approaches the pulpit and clears his throat. Edna takes a seat.
“Let us begin with a hymn,” the pastor says. “We’ve chosen one of Leah’s favorites today, ‘Amazing Grace.’ Let’s all stand, shall we?”
The organist plays an introduction, and everybody starts to sing. At first I only mouth the words, but then memories hit me. My mother singing this song as a lullaby when I was a small child, at church on Sundays, humming it in the car, chanting it while making breakfast as if the eggs sizzling in the frying pan are an incarnation of the grace she has come to amazingly see.
Beside me, my father’s quavering tenor wanders in search of the tune. I grab his hand and try to give voice to these words for my mother, who can no longer sing them herself, but my voice keeps breaking. I can’t help wishing Marley stood on the other side of me, can’t help wondering how it would be for the two of us to sing together.
The rest of the service inches by in a slow torment.
It’s all I can do to keep my eyes forward and not look back over my shoulder for my sister.
Mrs. Carlton delivers a eulogy that seems to last for hours. A quartet sings a hymn. Pastor McLean talks about how short our lives are on this planet and the importance of living right since we never know the day or the hour.
And the whole time, the coffin is open up on the platform. My mother is in that coffin, or at least an approximation of her, a waxen effigy lacking all the endless energy and force of will that defined her. She was a believer in family sitting together, and I have never sat in a pew in this church without her beside me, ready to pinch my arm if I fidgeted too much or fell asleep.
I find myself missing her with an astonishing depth of passion.
All the years I’ve been away, I’ve rarely given her a thought outside of our regular phone calls. But then, I haven’t been sitting in church with the rest of the family. Where is she now? Can she see us sitting here? Would she be glad that Marley has come, for whatever reason?
My head aches.
The minutes tick by.
At long last we all stand up to sing a final hymn and then wait as the pallbearers pick up the coffin. Our usher appears discreetly at the end of the pew, signaling that we are to get up and follow my mother down the aisle and out to the waiting hearse.
Marley is gone.
The spot she had occupied at the end of a pew is now empty. She’s not in the crowd at the back of the church. She’s not in the parking lot. She’s nowhere to be seen at the graveside ceremony, where the sound of the first clods of dirt hitting the coffin do something to my knee joints and nearly drop me.
Dad’s mind goes soft again about halfway through.
“Why are we standing here?” he whispers in my ear. “I’m thirsty. Can I get a drink?”
“It’s the funeral, Daddy. This is Mom’s grave.”
All I want to do is take him home and put both of us to bed for a nap, but there’s still the potluck to navigate.