August 31, 1990
Betsy’s eyes kept closing. She’d focus all of her effort to force them open, straining against the Valium, the Percocet she took an hour after the Valium, and the sandpaper texture her inner lids had acquired after forty-eight hours of sobbing. In a matter of seconds, they closed again. In the brief moments when they were open, her view was strangely menacing. From the passenger seat of Gavin’s car, which she’d reclined to a nearly horizontal position, the midmorning light was diffused through a giant, old cypress tree. Spanish moss hung from its branches like tattered lace, or decaying flesh decomposing from spindly bones. She would open her eyes, shudder slightly, and then they’d close again. How long she’d been repeating that cycle, she didn’t know. Finally, Gavin spoke, and Betsy was startled. She kept forgetting that he was sitting next to her.
“We should probably go inside, I mean, eventually,” he said. Betsy didn’t know exactly how long they’d been parked. It could have been a few minutes, or an hour. She couldn’t say. They found a spot two blocks away from the church, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. In the time since they arrived, the streets had filled with cars, and dozens of people had walked past their car, dressed in mourning clothes. Betsy wore the only black clothes she owned, a cotton knee-length T-shirt dress that was still wrinkled from the box, the thrift store sunglasses, and some oxfords she bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. She spotted a group of Ginny’s high school friends piling out of a white BMW, each in double strands of pearls and prim, somber cocktail dresses. Caroline’s mom, Viv, in a black suit and an enormous pair of sunglasses, walked toward the church with her head down and her arms folded. Betsy slunk further in the seat.
“That church looks pretty small. And I don’t know if they chartered a bus or two, but it seems like all of Gainesville is here,” he said. “I just want you to be prepared.”
“OK, I’m good. I’m ready,” she said. She slid on the glasses she’d bought with Louise and Not-Louise just days before, though it felt like months, years, a lifetime ago.
Betsy looked over at Gavin, who was wearing a navy blazer, a white shirt, and a burgundy striped tie, articles of clothing she couldn’t believe he owned. None of it was pressed, of course, and he still looked like a rumpled mess. But the fact that he had ever been within a hundred yards of a Brooks Brothers shocked her.
They walked down to the church, avoiding eye contact with everyone. It was easier for Betsy than she thought, through the fog of the pills. She had been ready to shirk away from hugs, to fend off anyone who approached her to offer condolences, but everyone must have known to stay away from her. Betsy kept her head down and grabbed Gavin’s hand, and the two of them winnowed their way through the crowd gathering in the back of the church to the center aisle and squeezed into the end of the second to last pew. At the front of the church, behind the pulpit next to the priest, she spotted her: Caroline.
Once everyone was seated, Ginny’s parents, Robert and Martha, made their way in from the steps of the church, puffy-eyed and exhausted. Ginny’s older sister, M.J., stood behind them holding a writhing, wailing infant. Ginny hated M.J., who married a pompous young lawyer from Charleston named Griff, or Gruff, or something absurd that Betsy could never remember, and had a baby in the whirlwind eighteen months after graduating. The sisters were lifelong rivals, and since M.J. had gotten married, her newly religious, deeply conservative ways made Ginny look like a Riot Grrrl by comparison. M.J. spotted Betsy on the end of the pew and eyeballed Betsy’s men’s shoes and the faded, wrinkled dress before she realized Betsy was watching her, and then offered a sympathetic nod and a quick, forced smile. When Martha saw Betsy, her tears welled. She reached over to put her hand on Betsy’s stiff, frozen shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” Betsy said. It came out in a dry, throaty voice that Betsy didn’t recognize. Gavin squeezed her hand.
“I know you are, sweetheart. Ginny loved you so,” she said. Betsy wouldn’t look at Ginny’s father. What would he, what would any of them, have said if Betsy told them the truth? She was in the apartment when it happened. Through the haze of the pills, Betsy remembered that night like it was a distant dream. She could have stopped it. Gavin reached over to shake Mr. Harrington’s hand briskly and wordlessly.