The Beginning of After

Chapter Three



Pretty much everyone came to the funeral, which was held on a day so beautiful, normally everyone would be walking around saying cliché stuff like, “Spring has sprung!” The air smelled fresh and sweet, and the slight breeze was the kind that tickles a little.

Our whole neighborhood showed up. Relatives I hadn’t seen in years, and my parents’ friends from college, and people from my dad’s office. Toby’s friends and his whole soccer team came with their parents, and all his teachers. Two of them had been my teachers too, just a few years back. Some kids from school who I was friendly with and their families, plus dozens of people I either didn’t know or couldn’t remember the names of. It was standing room only in the funeral home.

Nana and I sat up front, where almost nobody could see us, and she held my hand tight while people spoke. I knew I was supposed to listen and nod and cry like everyone else, but I was busy composing a letter in my head:


Dear Mom and Dad and Toby,





There are a lot of people here. That’s good, right? Doesn’t everyone always wonder who would show up to their funeral? So now you know. If you’re watching. I’d like to think you’re watching, but just in case you’re not, here are the highlights:





Dad’s college friends Tom and Lena reading a poem they wrote together.





Toby’s music teacher, Ms. McAndrew, singing “Amazing Grace.” Did somebody not tell her this was a Jewish funeral? But it did sound pretty.





Mom, your friend Tanya reading an Emily Dickinson poem. Was that really your favorite one like she said?





It was cool of the rabbi to do the service, since we never bothered to join the synagogue—I guess when there’s only one rabbi in town, that’s how it goes. He talked about community kindness and mitzvahs. I wish I could be more specific, because apparently what he said made a lot of people cry, but when he was speaking I was watching two squirrels in a tree outside the window.





Nana cried out loud twice. I had to give her some Kleenex because she used up her handkerchief. I didn’t have anything black, so I borrowed one of your dresses, Mom. It was a little big in the bust, but otherwise I think it looked nice.





Love,





Laurel





At the burial, Nana sprinkled dirt into the graves with her hands shaking, walking gingerly around them like a garden she’d just planted. The rabbi offered me the shovel, but I shook my head no.

That was when I saw David.

He was hanging back, hovering near some stranger’s headstone, wearing a black blazer over a black T-shirt and black jeans. People kept turning around to look at him and whisper. Almost gawking, like some rock star had made an appearance at my family’s funeral. But he didn’t look back at them. He just watched the three caskets intently and ignored anyone who was alive.

Earlier, I’d heard someone say that they were leaving the tent up and just moving it down the hill a bit, because Mrs. Kaufman’s funeral was the next day.

When it was time for us to stand up and leave, I glanced back to where I’d seen David, but he was gone.


Mr. Kaufman was in a coma. He was in ICU, and the hospital was making a very special exception by letting David stay there in an empty room.

That’s what I heard at the reception back at the house. I was planted in a chair in the den, a great spot for hearing snippets of conversation as they floated by me. Megan sat next to me, eating a sesame bagel, not talking but occasionally rubbing my back.

Some people came to me. They’d lean in to talk closer to my ear or squat down so they were looking up at my face. At times I felt like a queen on her throne, and at others like a four-year-old kid. I knew they were just trying to be nice, the neighbors and friends and classmates and all the rest. They were just doing what they thought they were supposed to, which was exactly what I was doing too.

I was in the bathroom when I heard Mrs. Dill and the Dills’ next-door neighbor, Mrs. Franco, talking in low tones on the other side of the door.

“Do they know anything more about what happened?” asked Mrs. Franco.

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Dill. “They might be putting out a call for witnesses, to see if other drivers may have seen something.”

“What do you think it was?”

A pause. I sat still on the toilet, leaning in.

“Probably Gabe,” whispered Mrs. Dill. “I bet he had a little too much to drink at dinner. Don’t you remember the Christmas party last year?”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Franco sadly. “Betsy had to force him to let her drive them home.”

I thought of Mr. Kaufman on his cell phone that night, with his drink in his hands. And then I thought of wrapping my fingers around his throat and squeezing hard, which was not something I wanted to be thinking in the bathroom at my family’s funeral with a house full of people on the other side of the door. I wiped the image away, out of my head with a mental eraser.

I waited three minutes and then peeked my head out of the bathroom. Mrs. Franco and Mrs. Dill were gone, and the coast was clear.


My grandmother, June Meisner, had class. Everyone said so. She wore crisp linen skirt-suits and well-made pumps and never left the house without makeup. She got her hair done twice a week at Marcella’s Salon and kept it dyed dark brown. Nana volunteered at a local nursing home filled with what she called her “old ladies,” even though many of them were younger than she was.

I guess it was because she had so much class that she made me get back into my mother’s black dress and go to Mrs. Kaufman’s funeral the next day.

Nana looked so small in the big, boxy driver’s seat of our Volvo station wagon, her hands correctly positioned at ten o’clock and two o’clock on the steering wheel, her nails perfectly manicured. As we drove to the cemetery she turned to look at me, her eyes still red from the crying she did at night when she thought I couldn’t hear her.

“I thank God every hour that you weren’t in that car.”

I pressed my nose to the window, not able to look back. “Nana, don’t.”

“You know me. I like to count the blessings I have.”

“If you need to thank something, thank all the French homework Mrs. Messing gave us.” I looked at my grandmother now, to let her know I wasn’t just being a smart-ass.

“What if you’d gone with them and I’d lost all of you?”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

She and my mom were experts at this tactic: Bring up serious stuff when driving in the car, so the child you are mortifying with your particular conversation has nowhere to go, no bedroom to retreat into; they were stuck.

I didn’t want to tell her the truth, something that sat red-hot in the pit of my stomach and weighed me down, heavier each day. If I’d gone with them, if I had maybe finished my homework earlier or just blown it off to do in the morning, it would have been one more person to try to squeeze into the Kaufmans’ SUV. Maybe my dad would have insisted on taking separate cars. Maybe I’d be driving with my parents and Toby right now, to bury Mrs. Kaufman. One funeral, one person, the way everyone’s used to doing it.

I couldn’t talk about it, I couldn’t think about it. If I did, I felt that fireball again, dragging me that much farther into the ground. It seemed like the only way to keep breathing was to focus on the here and now, moment by moment, keeping my mind frozen cold to anything else.


Mrs. Kaufman didn’t have quite the same turnout my family had, and those who went both days were looking a little more haggard at having to do the whole thing over again. I found myself glad that they’d done my family first, while people were still fresh to their grief. Even the rabbi seemed weary. It made me happy, for a second, and not ashamed about it. Our funeral was better.

David wore the emo-goth outfit I’d seen the day before, and this time I noticed his black army boots. He was surrounded by relatives. His grandparents were staying at the house, I heard from one whisper. They were encouraging him to come back from the hospital and sleep in his own bed, but David wouldn’t do it.

I watched him as the rabbi gave the cue, and David stood up to throw the first bit of dirt on his mother’s grave. As he did this, someone in the crowd burst out with a sharp sob. David looked up for a moment, the shovel in his hands, to see where it had come from. It was the first time that day I’d seen his face full-on, unshrouded by his shaggy hair now combed back, his bright eyes moving. He kept scanning the guests as the rabbi started talking again and an uncle put an arm around his shoulders.

Those eyes landed on me, flickering with some kind of new energy and purpose. David raised his head a little more now, really registering me with an acknowledgment. I looked back, held his gaze for a few moments, but that was all.

It felt like enough.