A breeze took up, whipped around them. She leaned back into her husband’s strong arms and let herself fall into that familiar comfort. She’d missed it. She’d missed him. The lilies on Tommy’s grave moved to and fro in the wind, as if they were shaking their heads. The too-sweet smell of flowers fought in her nostrils with the heavy smell of upturned earth. Underneath the earth, the box, the bones. Tommy’s bones. Not Tommy, though. He was everywhere, connected to everything, including the wind, including Noah. She didn’t know how that could be, but she couldn’t pretend otherwise. Not even for Henry. She released herself from his grasp and squatted down, letting some of the dirt fall through her fingers.
“I’m sorry, Henry. I don’t want to leave you alone with it, I truly don’t. I miss him, too, every second of every day.” She scooped up another handful and let it trickle down, a dry rain beneath her fingers. She thought of Tommy’s face. She concentrated on his smile. She couldn’t look at Henry. “But Noah’s not crazy. He has some of Tommy in him. Some of Tommy’s memories, and some of his—love. For you, too—” she started to say, turning, but Henry’s wide, receding back was already moving away from her.
Thirty-Nine
Every funeral reception was different, Janie supposed. She hadn’t been to many of them. The Jews also sat shiva, a different sort of party, albeit with the same theme.
And some people, like Tommy Crawford, had a wake. That event had taken place the night before, in a hushed, crowded room in the funeral home. She and Noah had lasted only a few moments in that room, staring at that shiny wooden box covered with flowers. The casket holding Tommy’s bones, the photograph of the child propped right next to it.
Noah had stared at the picture. The smooth brown skin, the mischievous grin. “That’s me!” Noah had yelped. “That’s me!”
She’d had to hurry him out of there. Heads were turning in their direction, muttering. She caught side of Tommy’s father glowering at them as she pulled him from the room and down the corridor and out into the night.
That was a wake. But why did they call it that? Wake, like the rocking waters after a passing boat, the instability that followed some major event? Wake like that?
Or wake, the imperative?
Wake up, Janie.
She speared some cubes of turkey with a toothpick and put them on a plate with some potato salad and a pickle for her and some cheese and pineapple for Noah, balancing the plate on her open palm. The room was filled with people she didn’t know wearing dark suits and dresses. People who had known Tommy. Everyone chatting, catching up. Tommy had been dead for years now, and the freshness of shock and sorrow had transformed, turned inward.
A group of teenagers clustered together by the food table, awkward in their suits. They didn’t know what to do with their plates, either. They held them shakily in their hands, shoveling unwieldy spoonfuls of potato salad into their mouths.
Denise passed by, calling out, Thanks for coming, thanks for coming. She was on fire. There were no other words for it. Janie would say it was probably grief if she had to call it something. But you couldn’t look away from her.
The room seemed to slow. The clink of cutlery, the murmurs: over now, at rest. A river of sound flowing through the room. Noah was standing across the room from her, next to Charlie, the lizard on his shoulder, the big teen’s head angled downward. The sun sharp in the living room windows, glancing off Noah’s hair. A warm day, the heat glistening on their relaxed faces, a sickly sheen on the surface of the potato salad on Charlie’s plate.
Noah talking to Charlie, telling Charlie something, one more thing she’d never know. A droplet in that ocean.
Wake up, Janie.
A line from an Emily Dickinson poem floated back to her.
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
The heat of the bodies in the room. Noah standing in the sunlight. There was nowhere to sit, the room was sliding before her, the walls shooting up into the sky—
She squatted on the carpet. Her plate in her lap.
So many strangers: old people hugging, shaking their heads. The glum, embarrassed teenagers. Anderson, standing by the wall, watching. Denise. Charlie. Noah.
She was the only one here who hadn’t known Tommy, except for Anderson.
And Noah, of course, who you really … couldn’t … count.
The giggles came scrabbling up her throat like hungry mice. Up and out. She covered her face with her hands.
But it was okay, actually, because she wasn’t really laughing. She was crying. She had the tears to prove it, right there on the Styrofoam plate, dripping onto the cheese squares. And that was okay at a funeral reception. Maybe preferable. Hopefully the people there thought she had known Tommy. Maybe they thought she was his piano teacher. She looked like a piano teacher. Didn’t she? Though she couldn’t play a note. Maybe she should learn. Noah could teach her the theme to The Pink Panther.…
Her nose running against her fingers, the slickness of snot, the salty splash of tears.
“You all right?”
Denise stood there with a plate in each hand.
She looked up. “I—”
“Come with me.”
*
Denise’s bedroom was sunny. The curtains were pulled all the way back, and Janie had to shade her eyes from the glare. She sat on the bed. She was hiccupping, and her eyes were tearing. Denise brought her a box of tissues.
“I could give you a pill, but it might knock you out.”