Push

chapter Thirty-Seven

Emma—Age 18

I sit in the pew behind Michael looking at how all the small, dark hairs on the nape of his neck are standing on end. His back and shoulders are rigid, and he keeps lifting his white handkerchief to swipe at his face. He is not crying. He is sweating. The minister looks over at Michael from his place on the pulpit every time the handkerchief rises up to meet Michael’s brow. I can’t help but think of how much the motion suggests surrender, raising the white flag. It isn’t surrender, though; of that I am sure. It is nothing more than a repulsive, greasy man trying to wipe the slate clean. Trying to wipe away his rotten conscience. Trying to erase my mother. He knows that he’s the reason she’s up there in that casket. We all know it. And yet no one is saying a word. We are all just sitting here, half listening to the minister and thinking to ourselves about how my mother would have never gotten into that car to drive to the airport if Michael hadn’t made her. If Michael had done what he was supposed to do. If he had put his own vile self into that Cadillac instead of sending her. He should be the one in the casket. Not my mother.
The minister is reading a verse from the Bible, and as his words tumble out, I look up at the colored window behind him. I hated the sight of that window when I was a girl because it reminded me of my father’s funeral. And now it will remind me of my mother’s, too. It is the same church. The same minister. The same service. Michael doesn’t know it, but I do. I know that when my mother picked out my father’s casket, she said it had to be lined with dark gray satin. She chose the Bible verses and the songs and the poetry for his ceremony. She buried my father in his favorite red tie, the one I picked out for him on his birthday. I wonder if Ricky and Evan remember. It doesn’t matter, though, because I do. And when Michael set me the task of arranging my mother’s funeral because he “had a business to run,” I picked a casket lined with dark gray satin. I picked the exact same Bible verses and songs and poetry that we heard twelve years ago. I am burying my mother in the red shawl my father gave her, and she is wearing the small gold band he slid on to her finger on their wedding day. I put the gaudy diamond ring she got from Michael in a homeless man’s collection cup.
Her casket is closed because of the accident. Because Michael sent her to the airport in the middle of the night to pick up his colleague. Because Michael forgot to arrange for a town car to pick the man up, and when he got a call from the airport about the lack of transportation, Michael was three sheets to the wind in someone else’s house. In some other woman’s house. So Michael called my mother. He woke her up and screamed at her until she agreed to go get the man and take him to his hotel in the city. She fell asleep, and the truck driver didn’t see her car slip into his lane. It was three o’clock in the morning when she died.
My brothers flank Michael in the pew, and I can’t help but wonder why they aren’t angry with him for sending my mother to her death. They don’t even seem sad. At my father’s funeral, they cried until their eyes were rimmed in red. They held my hand and told me how brave I was and how much my daddy loved me. But now, now that Michael has formed them into these “other” people, it’s as if they don’t remember any of that. They don’t remember having been loved.
I am staying with my friend Susan and her parents because there is no f*cking way I am ever going back to Michael’s. Susan came home from college for a few days to attend the funeral, and her parents were nice enough to give me a place to camp out for as long as I need to. Case Western gave me three weeks leave, but they would also allow me to opt out for the entire semester if that’s what I preferred. I don’t want that, though. I want to get back to school as soon as possible. I want to get away from here. I already have my bus ticket. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.
The pipe organ starts playing from the balcony above us, and I watch Michael and my brothers stand up. After I rise to my feet, the minister asks us to open up our hymnals and everyone begins to sing. Everyone but me. My voice is stuck in my throat, trapped there like smoke. I move my mouth to the words of the hymn, but no sound comes out. I’m on the verge of tears. I’m glad when the song is over.
At the end of the service, the minister thanks us all for coming and invites everyone to join the family in the fellowship hall to share some good food and fond memories. There are so many of my mother’s relatives here. So many that I don’t recognize. I haven’t seen them in years because we stopped going to family reunions when my mom married Michael. As I walk up the center aisle of the church a few paces behind Michael and my brothers, I look at everyone’s faces. There aren’t many tears, not compared to all that were shed at my father’s funeral. It makes me feel sad for my mother. Sad that people forgot what an amazing person she once was. Sad that she lost herself twice—first to my father’s death and then to Michael. Sad that she spent so many years punishing herself for losing her first love in such a terrible way.
I smile a little when I pass Susan and see that her whole family is here. She is holding a Kleenex, and her puffy eyes are full of emotion. But I don’t think she cried for my mother; I think she cried for me. When I get to the back of the church, I see Peter Beckman. He is standing in the second-to-last pew, dressed in a dark suit and a blue tie. He looks beautiful. It is clear that he was crying, and he looks at me with enough warmth and compassion to fill the whole room. Besides my brothers, he is the only one here who has even an inkling about Michael’s cruelty. His sorrow for me is painted across his face, and it brings a rush of tears to my eyes. His father is here, too. Mr. Beckman’s hand is on Peter’s shoulder, and he is wearing a small, sympathetic smile. They both tighten when they see the fresh tears on my face, and Peter immediately walks toward the aisle. His arms wrap around me, and as people file past, he hugs me as I sob into his shoulder. We separate a few minutes later, and I tell him how grateful I am that he could come and how much I miss our conversations. We chat for a while about college. He tells me Northwestern is treating him well. He has a girlfriend there and is busy with soccer training and course work. He seems content, and when his father tells him it’s time to say goodbye so that I can visit with the rest of our guests, I am reluctant to walk away. I feel a twinge of regret that this gentle boy is no longer a part of my life. We trade cell numbers and promise to keep in touch. I know we won’t, though, because that’s the way life is.
When I make my way to the fellowship hall, my eyes scan the room. Ricky and Evan are standing next to the food table chatting with a few of our relatives. Michael is sitting at a table off to my left, surrounded by a group of men neatly dressed in suits. They are all wearing big gold rings, and I think immediately that they must be somehow involved in Michael’s business because they all look as dark and twisted as he does. Michael looks up at me when I walk into the room. His eyes are blank and hollow. He stares at me for a few seconds, and when one of the men notices that Michael is looking elsewhere, he, too, turns his head toward me. The man nods in my direction, then both he and Michael turn their faces back to the other men at the table. My hands clench into fists, and I bite at my lower lip to keep from walking over there and giving Michael what he deserves—a kick in the f*cking crotch. I will not lose control at my own mother’s funeral.
The minister sees me and makes his way over to where I am standing. As soon as I see him coming, I curl my lips into a slight smile and relax my brow and hands. He offers his condolences and expresses his gratitude for the many years of service my mother gave to the church. When she wasn’t travelling with Michael, my mother was a dedicated volunteer, he says, leading the women’s Monday morning Bible study for the past eight years and coordinating and distributing the food pantry collections for the past six. I had no idea that my mother did all that. I never thought about how she spent her time after I left for school every morning. I never bothered to ask. I assumed her days were spent taking care of Michael and the house. The minister says he is grateful to see so many church members here today to pay their respects to a woman they were all very fond of. I look around the room and know now that the faces I don’t recognize are not relatives; they are members of this congregation. My mother’s other family. He smiles at me and says that he hopes I can find peace in the many wonderful memories I have of my mother. He hopes that my stepfather and my brothers can help see us all through this difficult time by offering loving support and kind words. I have to bite my lip again to keep from laughing.
Eventually the minister leaves and heads toward Michael and the men at the table, and I am left standing alone. Within a few minutes, people begin to come over one by one and introduce themselves to me, offering handshakes and small hugs and words of support. I want to punch them all. I want to strike at them for their ignorance. I want to tell them what my house was really like. What my mother and brother and stepfather were really like. I want to tell them everything and stop this godforsaken show. But I can’t. Because I will not lose control at my own mother’s funeral.
After an hour, people begin to filter out. Michael and my bothers are standing by the door, shaking people’s hands as they depart. I am standing with Susan in the far corner trying hard to keep myself together when a well-dressed man comes over to introduce himself. He says is name is Edward Clark, and he is my mother’s lawyer. He hands me his business card and apologizes for not getting in touch with me as soon as he learned of my mother’s death, but he wanted to give me some time. He says that he has been working with my mother privately for a number of years. She wanted to set up a trust for me, to make sure I was taken care of if something ever happened to her. Michael doesn’t know about it, and my mother asked Mr. Clark to keep it private. She had been squirreling little bits of her own money into the account for years and asked him to redo her will to reflect her wishes regarding the trust. Mr. Clark will remain as the trustee until I reach the age of thirty when all monies will be released to me. But, because of my mother’s death, I will now begin to receive quarterly distributions from the trust via an allocation plan determined by him and my mother. If I’d like, I can use the money to pay for the remainder of my college education. There will be paperwork to sign, and when Michael finds out, he may try to fight it, but everything was done in a completely legal fashion and there shouldn’t be any real problems to overcome.
I look over at Michael and my brothers standing by the door. I ask if my mother left anything to my brothers. Yes, he says. Her will states that they will inherit all of her jewelry. Because Michael gifted a lot of it to her over the years, each of my brothers will probably have enough for a new car or a down payment on a house. It isn’t the same as a trust fund, Mr. Clark says, but they are grown men already living on their own, and the jewelry was really all she had to leave them. Mr. Clark asks how long I’ll be staying in town, and when I tell him I plan to head back to school tomorrow afternoon, he asks if I can come to his office in the morning to sign some papers. The rest we can do over the phone in the coming weeks, he says. As executor of her will, he’ll be bearing most of the responsibility. I shake his hand and thank him and tell him I will see him in the morning.
As he walks out the door, he shakes Ricky’s and Evan’s hands, and they both nod at him knowingly. He walks right past Michael without a second glance. When he is gone, my bothers turn their eyes toward me, and they are both wearing a small smile. They know already. They know what our mother did for us, and I hope that they feel a small amount of regret for their behavior over the past ten years. I hope they remember what an amazing person she once was. I hope they remember the family we used to be.