by Marly Swick
The little girl died about 4:45 P.M. Sunday at Holy Angels Hospital after undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound to her heart. Joan Lufkin, a Western Ambulance spokeswoman, said the bullet entered the girl’s chest, then exited.
Los Angeles County Attorney Angela Peralta said the girl’s older brother was holding the gun when it discharged through the bedroom window and struck the sister, who was playing in a wading pool in the backyard. Initial police reports indicate the shooting was accidental. Peralta is awaiting results from the analysis of the gun, to determine how it functioned and whether it was working properly, before making an official report.
Both boys’ mothers were home at the time of the shooting. Investigators determined that the gun belonged to the other boy’s father, who had given it to his wife for protection following some recent burglaries in the neighborhood.
Teddy takes his time reading and rereading the article. Dan isn’t home. He is at the funeral home, dropping off Trina’s burial clothes. Nana had offered to take care of it, but Dan said he wanted to see the place for himself, to prepare himself. Trina is going to wear the red velvet dress she is wearing in the photograph of her that hangs in the dining room next to a photograph of Teddy in a white shirt and bow tie. His mother had dragged them both down to Sears during some two-for-one portrait special. The photographer liked Trina’s portrait so much that he put it on display out front, where everyone at the mall could see it. He didn’t put Teddy’s up, which was fine with him. He didn’t want the kids from school to see him on display looking like a dork. He’d wanted to wear his Jurassic Park T-shirt, but his mom said no way.
He puts the newspaper back where he found it and calls his real dad in Nebraska. He tells him about the article in the newspaper, and his dad seems upset by the news.
“They didn’t even mention my name,” Teddy says.
“That’s because you’re a minor, I guess.” His father sighs.
“What’s a minor?”
“It means you’re not an adult. Is your mother there?” he asks. “I want to talk to her.”
“She’s in the shower. Gramma and Grampa are coming this afternoon. We’re going to the airport to pick them up.”
“That’s good,” his dad says.
“Yeah.”
His dad doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Teddy can’t think of anything else to tell him, so he says good-bye and hangs up. He looks at the clock. It’s not even nine o’clock yet, and his grandparents’ plane won’t get in until four-thirty. They are flying out from Florida. He’s really glad they’re coming. When he talked to them on the phone earlier this morning, they kept saying how much they missed him, how they couldn’t wait to see him. They didn’t sound mad at all. But he could tell Gramma was crying. They kept asking him how he was feeling. He knows that sometimes old people get things all confused. He hopes they don’t think that he was the one who was shot.
Giselle had never realized what a welcome diversion a funeral could be. All the phone calls and travel arrangements helped distract her from focusing on the main event. Trina’s name was on everyone’s lips so often that it was almost as if she were there, taking a nap in her crib, and any moment now Giselle would go in and get her. She hated to wake her up. When she was left to wake up naturally, Trina was always in a good mood, bright-eyed and playful. But when her sleep was cut short, she could be cranky. Giselle remembered how right after Teddy was born, she would occasionally wake up (on the rare occasions when she wasn’t awakened by Teddy’s cries), and it would take her a minute before she remembered that she had a baby. The recollection would catch her by surprise. It was the same now, only in reverse. Brief moments of amnesia, and then the instant of remembering, which was so painful — it hit her anew with such undiminished force that it seemed like some cruel trick her mind was playing on her. It was like being knocked out over and over again. She had only two Valium left. Dan’s brother, Greg, was a doctor, but she didn’t want to ask him, and Lois was off-limits. Giselle was saving one pill for the funeral itself.
Her parents had arrived first, in the late afternoon, almost twenty-four hours to the minute since Trina had been pronounced dead. Her brother, accompanied by Teddy, had picked them up at the airport and brought them over for a quick supper — a pizza — most of which was still sitting in its box on the kitchen counter. Dan’s brother’s plane was scheduled to arrive at seven-thirty. His wife had stayed behind in Tucson with the three boys. They had thought the funeral would be too traumatic for them, and they never left them with sitters. Angela, Greg’s wife, didn’t believe in day care. She and Luisa were thick as thieves, like mother and daughter. Giselle was just as glad not to have to deal with her. The brother, at least under other, better circumstances, she had always liked. But she wasn’t counting on anything.
Even though Greg had offered to rent a car, Dan had insisted upon picking him up and driving him over to their mother’s place. He wanted to keep busy. And she couldn’t blame him. But now she wished he were here. It was after ten o’clock. Her parents and Teddy were spending the night at Todd’s apartment. Teddy had begged to go, and she thought maybe it was just as well. It would give Dan and her some time alone. She glanced impatiently at her watch. She was already in her nightgown, so exhausted that she could barely keep her eyes open, but she didn’t want to get into bed alone. It was the night before they buried their daughter. Shouldn’t they be comforting each other? She kept catching herself thinking in terms of “should” and “shouldn’t,” as if there were correct and incorrect ways they should be handling this. Was there a Miss Manners guide for grief-stricken parents that everyone but her had read? It made her worry that she was shallow, that somehow her grief was inauthentic if she could be worrying about whether she was doing it right — when who could tell her she wasn’t? Who in the world had that right?
The phone rang. She thought maybe it was Dan, telling her he was just now leaving, but when she picked up the receiver, she was disappointed to hear her sister’s voice asking how things were going. She missed Vonnie but didn’t feel like talking right now. Giselle had told her not to fly out for the funeral. She thought it would be too much for her to handle. Vonnie’s lover had died of ovarian cancer just this past winter, at Christmastime, and she was still estranged from their parents, who had not even bothered to send flowers. Giselle had assured her that she didn’t mind, she really didn’t, and in fact it was probably better this way. She felt pulled in enough directions without having to run interference between her sister and parents, even though Teddy was disappointed when he heard that she wasn’t coming. He was crazy about her. Once, three or four years ago, when a friend of theirs asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d answered, “A dyke.”
“I hope they’re not driving you crazy,” Vonnie said. “I still feel bad about not being there.”
“It’s okay,” Giselle said. “It’s good for Teddy to have them here. He’s really perked up since they arrived.” She didn’t say that he’d seemed almost too cheerful, as if he’d forgotten all about the reason for the visit. At one point when he was roughhousing with her father, Giselle had snapped at them, and her mother had shot her a reproachful look.
“Yeah, well, as far as they’re concerned, the sun rises and sets with their grandson. Their apartment looks like a fucking shrine.” On her end Giselle could hear a doorbell chime and Vonnie shouting for whoever it was to come in. “They were still complaining about your taking him to California last time I was there.”
Giselle sighed and waited while Vonnie put her hand over the receiver and made an aside to whoever had walked in. “Look, you’ve got company. You better go. I’ll talk to you in a couple of days,” she said hurriedly and hung up, anxious to end the conversation before Vonnie could really get going about their parents. Not that Vonnie didn’t have legitimate grievances. Or that Giselle didn’t have her own bone to pick with them. All evening they had made it clear, in subtle but unmistakable ways, that their primary al
legiance was to their grandson, whom they had spent a lot of time with during his first four years, before Giselle moved out West and they moved to Florida. They had met their granddaughter only once, the Christmas before last, for a week. Mostly they just knew Trina through a succession of snapshots sent through the mail: a series of Piaget milestones. And now they would never have the chance to know her any better.
Giselle looked at the open pizza box lying next to the phone on the counter. A dead fly was stuck in the congealed cheese. She plucked out the fly and shoved the box in the refrigerator. Then she lay down on the couch and cried. It was the first opportunity she’d had to cry alone, in private, and she thought that if no one interrupted her, she might never stop.
***
In the middle of the night she jolted awake as if a doctor had attached cardiac paddles to her chest. Back from the dead. Her heart pounded. Her neck was stiff. She had heard a noise. She had been dreaming: she had heard Trina’s voice half singing along with her favorite nursery rhyme. The little mice are creeping, creeping / The little mice are creeping all through the house . . . And laughing. This was the part where Giselle would creep her fingers across her lap and grab hold of Trina’s chubby little leg, which was her cue to squirm away and put her fingers to her lips, pretending to chew, as Giselle continued to sing. The little mice are eating, eating, eating . . . She was standing up now, fully awake, and she could still hear it, crystal clear, coming from the back of the house. The little mice are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping . . . At this point they always closed their eyes and pillowed their cheeks against their hands. Giselle shivered. “I’m going crazy,” she mumbled as she walked across the living room to the hallway — and stopped dead. She could see the light coming from Trina’s room. The old gray cat comes creeping, creeping, creeping . . . She heard her own voice saying, “Do you know what comes next?” And then Teddy’s voice yelling, “Mom! Hey, Mom, can I ride bikes with Eric?” Dan was sitting on the floor, leaning against the pink toy chest with the little cassette player in his lap. He must have come in while she was asleep. He was wearing his pajama bottoms. She looked at her watch; it was two-thirty. When he sensed her standing there, he looked up and punched the off button, then held out his hand to her. She braced herself against the doorframe and pulled him to his feet.
“Listen.” He set the tape player on the little white bureau and pressed rewind:
“Who’s got the ball? Where’d the ball go? Where’d it go, Teeny?” Teddy was saying in his best big-brother voice.
“Me! Ball here!” Trina was shouting and giggling.
Dan hit the pause button and shook his head. “I have to keep reminding myself what a good brother he was. I have to put the other thing out of my mind. I keep telling myself it doesn’t matter how it happened.” Giselle nodded and squeezed his hand tight. “I mean, when someone you love dies, does it really matter if it’s a car crash or a plane crash or even, you know, cancer or whatever?” Giselle shook her head. “At least that’s what I tell myself.” He sighed and ejected the cassette. “But it’s hard. I’m not sure I can do it.”
Giselle let go of his hand. “What does that mean?”
“It means I want to, but I don’t know,” he said quietly, not looking at her.
“He’s only nine years old.”
“And she’ll never be nine years old.” Dan snapped the tape back into its case.
“She was my daughter, too, you know.”
When he didn’t respond, Giselle turned and left the room. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“In a minute.” He was standing by the crib, staring into it, as if maybe if he stared hard enough, she would materialize out of thin air. Giselle went into the bathroom and took a Valium. There was only one left, and she planned to take it right before they left for the service. She wanted to behave with dignity. She flashed on photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy in her black veil, her expression of stunned anguish. Giselle hadn’t even been born yet, but she had seen the footage of the funeral — who hadn’t? — and her mother, an ardent JFK admirer, had an entire bookshelf devoted to Kennedy books. Giselle tried to imagine Teddy standing there in a suit, saluting his sister’s casket, breaking everyone’s heart, but she couldn’t. He didn’t even own a suit.
***
The funeral service was scheduled to begin at eleven. The first thing Giselle thought when she opened her eyes and looked at the bright sunshine was I can’t go through with this. Dan was lying on top of the covers, his arms cradling Mookie against his chest. She imagined waking him and breaking the news to him — I’m sorry, I know all the arrangements have been made, but I just can’t do it — like a bride with cold feet. But before she had a chance, the phone rang on his side of the bed and he answered it — perfectly alert, as if he had just been faking sleep. She could tell it was his mother, calling to iron out some last-minute detail. Giselle got up and went into the bathroom, popped the remaining Valium, then headed into the kitchen to start the coffee. The immediate family was going to meet here at ten so that they could all ride to the funeral parlor together. Luisa seemed to be orchestrating some huge, lavish affair — something just short of a state funeral. A Day of the Dead festival. If there was a funereal equivalent to eloping, Giselle would have opted for it. Already her head was pounding; she could feel her intestines clutching. What if she couldn’t get through it? She had felt the same fear right before Teddy was born. What if she couldn’t withstand the labor pains? But she had no choice then, and she had no choice now.
As the coffee perked, she looked at the wall clock hanging above the American authors calendar that Teddy had picked out for Dan’s birthday last year all on his own. It was 8:15 A.M. Any other Tuesday she would be dropping off Trina at the day care center, then racing across campus to her Chicano lit class, which was a piece of cake. She had already read all the novels. This week they were discussing Bless Me Ultima. She wondered if tucked away in the barrio there was a curandero who could have saved Trina with some concoction of herbs and spells. It seemed that nobody in these stories ever died for real unless they were ancient, and even then their spirit just entered some owl or wolf waiting right outside the door. Once she had tried to talk to Luisa about the books she’d been reading, tried to have a real discussion for once, but her mother-in-law had just looked insulted. She pictured Dan hugging Trina’s stuffed monkey in his sleep as if her spirit had flown inside poor beat-up Mookie, who had been through the washing machine one time too many.
Giselle drank two cups of strong black coffee, but the caffeine seemed to have no effect. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to counteract the lethargy she felt. She set her cup in the sink and went in the bathroom to take a shower before the others arrived. Her parents were always early.
The next thing she knew, she was standing in the bedroom blow-drying her hair. She couldn’t even remember being in the shower. This was the third or fourth little blackout she had experienced in the past two days. Suddenly she would just “come to.” She had to look in the mirror to see if she had already put on makeup. A week ago she would have been worried about a brain tumor, but now she just attributed it to exhaustion, a short circuit caused by emotional overload. She wished she would black out and come to after the funeral was over.
She could hear voices in the kitchen. She heard her father asking if anyone wanted a jelly doughnut or a cruller, then a chorus of no, thank you’s. Teddy, who loved doughnuts, was spending the day at her friend Ellen’s house. She opened her closet and stared. Yesterday her mother had asked if her clothes were in order for today, if she needed anything from the mall, and Giselle had just shrugged as if to say that her wardrobe was the last thing on her mind. But now she realized that her only dark dress was a cocktail dress, too low cut to be appropriate. Even though it was already eighty degrees out, unseasonably warm for April, she put on a long-sleeved black sweater and skirt. She still hadn’t lost the last stubborn ten pounds of the weight she’d gained duri
ng pregnancy, and the waistband wouldn’t zip. She went into Trina’s room and found a diaper pin with a little duck on the end and safety-pinned the skirt. With her sweater over it, no one would know the difference. She hadn’t worn panty hose in months. The only ones she could find had a run in the foot, but she didn’t care. As she sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on her panty hose, it was all she could do not to crawl between the sheets and pull the blanket over her head. Dan walked into the bedroom, dressed in the dark suit he’d bought for his father’s funeral. She had only ever seen it hanging in the closet. He perched on the bed next to her. They clasped hands for a minute in silence, heads bowed. She wished that everyone would just vanish and leave them alone. But then Greg — a shorter, squatter version of Dan — appeared in the doorway and said, “The limousine’s here.”
***
From the moment she saw the black limo sitting in their driveway, it was as if the starship Enterprise had landed and beamed her to another galaxy. It’s not real, she thought. It’s just a hologram. The chauffeur, grave and dignified, even reminded her a bit of Captain Picard. She settled in to the plush gray seat between Dan and her father. Her mother, Luisa, and Greg sat in the seat behind them. Todd, for some reason, insisted at the last minute on following them in his own car. The smell of Greg’s cologne overpowered her. She felt sick to her stomach and asked Dan to please lower his window.
“The air-conditioning’s on,” he said. “Are you sure?”
Her father patted her hand and lowered his window. She closed her eyes and focused on taking deep breaths the way she had when she was little and used to get carsick on family outings. Her mother snapped open her purse and handed her a stick of peppermint gum. Giselle obediently unwrapped it and folded the gum into her mouth. Her mother held out the pack. “Anyone else?”
The only other time Giselle had been in a limo was the night of her senior prom. Ed and the guy who was Laura’s date — Giselle couldn’t even remember his name — had rented a white stretch limo. Ed, who usually looked like he just rolled out of bed, was wearing a white tux. She remembered thinking, This is the high point of your life, addressing herself in the second person as if double-checking to make sure she was actually there.