Similarly, the fans didn’t know that my mother had a beautiful singing voice, or that she liked to paint, or that she once nursed a bird with a broken wing back to health. They didn’t know that my mother had invented new endings to fairy tales to protect Lanie and me when we were children: in her versions, the Big Bad Wolf shoved Grandma in a closet rather than devouring her, and the trolls that lived under the bridges were only misunderstood.
I knew that my mother had some struggles, and that she always had. Sometimes she treated all of us strangely, refusing to speak to our father and behaving as though Lanie and I were much younger than we actually were. And there were times when she wouldn’t come out of her room for days, and sometimes she refused to wear anything other than a thin floral nightgown. But those things didn’t define my mother. She was kind and sweet and we’d loved her.
Just as certainly as I loved her, though, I hated her. She had left us deliberately twice: once for California, and once when she departed this plane of existence. I would have to bid farewell to a body that my mother no longer inhabited.
I’d have to utter the goodbye that she had left unsaid.
Peter offered me his arm as we exited the car twenty minutes later, and I took it even though I didn’t really think I needed the support. The funeral home did not look threatening. It was just a one-story brick building with a small concrete porch and ornamental portico. If not for the location—squeezed between #1 Nails and Merle’s Pizza House—and the tidy sign advertising WILHELM FUNERAL HOME in a plain font, it could have been someone’s residence. The foyer, which smelled strongly of floral air freshener, was more ostentatious than the exterior of the funeral home, with gold-and-cream-striped wallpaper and thick navy carpeting with a red-and-cream floral pattern. Across the room, a huge floral arrangement stood before an enormous, gilt-trimmed mirror. I caught a glimpse of my reflection and was surprised to find I looked remarkably calm. I was less surprised to see that Ellen was right about the hair. Of course.
On our left was an open doorway, a brass plaque bearing my mother’s name beside the doorframe. ERIN A. (BLAKE) BUHRMAN was printed in small, dignified letters—something so unlike what my ethereal mother would have chosen for herself that I nearly laughed out loud. I swallowed the inappropriate laughter and my body shook with the effort. Peter, thinking I was holding back tears, put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I was still on the verge of laughter as I stepped through the doorway, but then something shiny caught my eye and I realized it was the edge of the coffin—my mother’s coffin, which contained my mother’s body—gleaming from the front of the room. The laughter died in my throat, hardening into a painful lump. I couldn’t go any farther. Other mourners (or, as the case likely was, rubberneckers—tragedy draws horrible people like flies to honey) were beginning to arrive, and I was distinctly aware that I needed to complete the most gruesome part, the part where I confronted my mother’s lifeless form. But I couldn’t move.
“It’s okay,” Ellen whispered, materializing at my side. “You can do this.”
“I can’t,” I said, panic rising in my throat like warm lightning.
“You can,” she assured me, her voice smooth and confident as ever. “Come on. I’m right here.”
Clutching Ellen’s hand like it was the only scrap of driftwood in a dark and punishing ocean, I took a few halting steps forward. My eyes darted desperately in every direction but toward the casket: to Aunt A, deep in conversation with Reverend Glover, who had grown thin and papery since I had seen him last; to Isabelle and Sophie, whose eyes were glued to their respective iPhones; to a small cluster of round women in dark dresses gathered by the far wall. And then I was standing in front of the polished casket with my heart in my throat. I forced myself to look down, my head turning before my eyes followed.
Her face was at once the face I remembered from my childhood and yet something else entirely. The features were visually similar, but could have been molded from plastic. Her once-magnificent hair was cropped short and peppered with white strands. Spots formed in my peripheral vision.
I broke away from Ellen and lurched for the exit. Ellen took a step to follow me, but I waved her off.
“I’m fine,” I lied, my tongue thick. The body in front of me was not my mother.
It could not be my mother.
I weaved my way through the crowd of bodies in the entryway, keeping my gaze on the ground to avoid accidental eye contact until I reached the women’s restroom. I stumbled inside and leaned over one of the sinks, grasping the cool porcelain. With the tactile sensation of the sink to ground me, I took several deep, ragged breaths.
Each time I thought I might have succeeded in composing myself, that it might be safe to leave the bathroom, the irrational thought That wasn’t my mother bubbled up from deep within and I was hyperventilating all over again. I had not been prepared for the disorienting sensation of seeing my mother’s corpse, or the pain and regret that it had inspired. Hurt and devastation surged through me, making it hard for me to breathe.
Behind me, one of the toilets flushed. I straightened my spine and checked my reflection, wiping at my running mascara with my fingers.
My eyes were still on the mirror when she emerged from the stall. Our eyes locked, widened. We both gasped.
“Josie,” my sister said, her voice shaking. “You look great.”
“So do you,” I intoned automatically.
But she really did. Lanie looked better than I had expected her to, better than me. She had put on weight, but only enough so that she no longer looked emaciated. She had a short pixie cut—a better cut than the hack job I had done to my own hair—and her makeup was soft, understated, and surprisingly tasteful. As I took her in, cataloguing her well-tailored clothing and her pale-pink lipstick, I noticed she was leaning first on one kitten-heeled foot and then the other, picking at the skin alongside her manicured nails. The corner of her mouth was twitching, and her eyes darted back and forth from me to the door. If she didn’t look so well, I would’ve assumed she was strung out.
Lanie glanced at the door again. “Did you just get here?”
“Yeah, a few minutes ago.”
“When did you get to town?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Were you going to call me?”
“I didn’t know you lived here,” I said, ignoring her real question.
Lanie narrowed her eyes slightly. “You didn’t?”
I held up a hand to stop her further inquiry. “Lanie, can we not do this right now?”
Lanie’s face softened and she reached out as though she was going to touch my shoulder, but she seemed to catch herself and brought her arm back to her side. “Okay. Have you . . . seen the body?”
I tried to speak but choked instead. “Briefly.”
I tasted salt and realized that tears were streaming down my face. I was furious at my body for betraying me, for falling apart in front of my sister. She was the one who couldn’t control herself, who couldn’t keep it together. I was the composed sister, the one who could manage her emotions. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to be.
“I haven’t seen her yet,” Lanie said quietly, wiping away my tears with her soft thumbs. “I’m scared.”