“She said she wanted to remember Katie the way she was. And she’s right. Because whatever is in that casket isn’t Katie. My baby isn’t in there anymore. But we’re going to give her one hell of a send-off. This is going to be every party Katie will never get to have. This will be all her birthdays, her prom, and her wedding all rolled into one.”
Now neighbors, students, teachers, businesspeople, and strangers sat shoulder to shoulder, stood in the stairwell, crowded the balcony, and filled the lobby. Scattered among them were FBI agents and cops, looking for clues, looking for suspects, looking for answers—and finding only anguish. Nic had been given a place near the front, where, if she half turned, she could see most of the audience. Twenty feet from her, Wayne, Valerie, and Whitney sat surrounded by aunts and cousins, grandparents and friends—but alone in some fundamental way.
The service began with a slide show projected on two ten-foot screens set at each side of the stage. Between the screens sat a grand piano and fifty-person choir, with the casket on a dias behind them. Accompanied by classical piano music, photo after photo of Katie flashed by.
An infant Katie on her belly, head raised, wearing nothing but a diaper and a triumphal smile. A five-or six-year-old Katie in a Tigger costume, grinning, with her hands held in mock claws. Katie behind a podium, but still so young that only her eyes were visible. The photo of her with George Bush that Nic had seen in her room. Katie holding aloft a trophy. And finally the photo from the vigil: Katie with eyes as blue as the sky behind her.
In every photo Katie was smiling, but Nic began to wonder just how real those smiles had been. Was it her imagination, or was Katie’s expression a mask that hid a deeper sadness in her eyes?
After the slide show, a friend of Katie’s recited a rap poem he had written. Another played the trumpet, but halfway through lost his breath to emotion. After trying and failing to start again, he let his trumpet fall to his side and began to weep softly, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. Finally, the officiating pastor led the boy away, but by that time the crowd was undone by grief and drama.
Girls wailed with their arms around each other. Boys with reddened eyes awkwardly wiped their noses on the sleeves of their ill-fitting suits. Still other kids snapped photos with their cell phones. Nic just hoped they didn’t leave the service, go across the street to where the hundreds of reporters had gathered, and offer to sell the photos to the highest bidder.
Then the pastor—who did not seem to know Katie well, if at all—read a letter from Portland’s mayor. The letter quoted a biblical passage: “The righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.”
Spared? Nic thought cynically. She remembered Tony saying Katie could have lived for minutes after the blow that shattered her larynx. How she would have tried to speak or scream, but nothing would have emerged but the faintest of sounds. What could be more evil than that?
As the service drew to a close, Wayne got up and began to enumerate Katie’s virtues, pawing through note cards, naming off awards and honors, frequently losing his place. Finally, he set the cards down. When he looked out at the audience, his eyes were wild, his face wet and red.
“Why? Why? Why?” Wayne shouted. The mic whined with feedback. He pounded his fist on the podium. It sounded like the beating of a giant heart. “I accept dying, I know we all have to die. But this way, the way Katie died! Why?”
At the sight of Wayne’s anger, the standing-room-only audience grew silent.
“God took my first wife from me, and now He’s taken my baby girl. For no reason!”
Nothing but muffled sobs answered him. Nic looked at Valerie. Her head was high, her expression blank. Whitney’s mouth gaped wide as she wept, her face crimson and swollen.
Finally, the pastor touched Wayne on the elbow and murmured something in his ear. Wayne, his head hanging, shuffled back to his seat beside his wife and remaining daughter.
MYSPACE.COM/THEDCPAGE
Over and Out
December 1
It’s over. I can’t stop crying.
He tells me to hold on to the future.
I think the future is a long way away & it never really gets here.
RIVERSIDE CONDOMINIUMS
January 10
When Cassidy answered Allison’s knock, she was dressed in an old terry cloth robe and not wearing any makeup. Her eyes looked small and tired. In one hand she held a remote control and in the other a water glass half filled with what Allison thought was red wine.
Nicole pushed impatiently past them both. “Okay, we’re here,” she said, turning to face Cassidy. “What’s so important you needed us both to drop everything and come over?”
Cassidy closed the door behind them. “You know that feature we do called ‘Nasty Neighbors’? It’s all people who steal their neighbor’s papers or collect junker cars. Because of the whole Katie Converse thing, I’ve got a huge backlog of submissions, so I was trying to get caught up today. I was logging tapes when I found this.”