by Marly Swick
The funeral home was crowded with strangers — friends and business acquaintances of Dan’s parents mostly. Dan’s father had inherited a small tile store in Silver Lake, which he had built into a million-dollar enterprise with shops in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, selling beautiful, unique handmade Mexican tiles. His tiles adorned movie stars’ pools and bathrooms from Bel Air to Malibu. Luisa designed most of the tiles herself. A number of people were speaking Spanish. In among the strangers she saw a few familiar faces. Friends, colleagues. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She huddled awkwardly in a little knot with her parents and brother, half hidden by a potted palm. Her parents stood there with solemn but friendly expressions fixed on their faces, waiting for people to offer their condolences, but everyone seemed to be avoiding them. They were all clustered around Luisa or Dan. Giselle saw her father remove his glasses to wipe away the perspiration that glistened on his face. Last year he had suffered a minor heart attack. His dark suit seemed too large, as if he had shrunk a size. His eyes, without his glasses, looked weak and vulnerable, and she felt bad, as if she were somehow responsible. If Trina had died of cancer or been hit by a car, Giselle suspected that things would be different. People would be behaving differently toward them. As it was, she sensed everyone whispering behind their backs, shaking their heads, blaming Teddy. And by extension, his flesh and blood. She looked around for Dan. He was standing beside the casket, talking with his friend Harvey and his wife. Then Stan Levine, a colleague who taught Shakespeare, joined them, resting his hand briefly, awkwardly on Dan’s shoulder. Giselle had taken his Tragedies course and received a B+ even though she’d worked her butt off. At the time she had been crushed by the grade, which she thought was unfair, but now she realized that he should have flunked her. She didn’t know the first thing about tragedy.
The coffin was small and white. Giselle was shocked by how small it was. Lying there against the pink tufted satin, Trina looked like a doll. A very beautiful, very expensive doll — too nice to play with. Giselle had been afraid to look, but once she did, she couldn’t look away. She had never seen her daughter completely still before. Even in her sleep she was in constant motion. Giselle wanted to touch her but was afraid to. It was like being at a museum where some officious guard would hurry over to scold her. She could still see the faint scratch below Trina’s eye caused by Giselle’s belt buckle as she’d bent over and hoisted her out of the sandbox at day care last week. Trina had cried and cried, her lips trembling with innocent outrage, as if Giselle had hurt her on purpose. In the coffin a dark curl had sprung loose, as if it still had a life of its own, and was hanging in front of Trina’s eye. Giselle was trying to work up the nerve to brush it back when they began paging the family to return to the limos. Dan’s brother put his arm around her and turned her toward the door. “She’s with the angels now,” he whispered. Giselle shook him off. “You’re a doctor,” she said. “You know better.”
At the church she felt even further disoriented by the service, the sights and sounds of the priest going through the familiar rituals of the mass. She had not been to church since she was fourteen. She half expected to see snow drifting down outside the windows, to feel her sister poking her in the ribs and pointing to some ridiculous hat in the pew in front of them. Once Todd had farted as he bent over to retrieve a missal he’d dropped on the floor, and Vonnie and she had dissolved into a convulsive giggling fit while their mother glared at them, mortified. “Just wait until you have children of your own,” she had scolded them in the car on the way home. It was one of her favorite refrains.
Giselle sat dry-eyed while Dan wept noisily beside her. His mother handed him her handkerchief. Everything seemed muffled and blurred, as if her brain were experiencing poor reception. She was grateful for this. She clenched both fists in her lap. Just let me get through this, she prayed, through the next minute, the next hour. There was constant sniffling and nose blowing. She could feel the stares directed at the back of her head. Look, she’s not even crying. She sat up straight and stared straight ahead. It reminded her of a wedding, with all the flowers. The groom’s people on one side and the bride’s on the other. Only there were hardly any people on her side. Maybe Teddy was right. Maybe they never should have come to California.
At the cemetery they all crowded into a small chapel sitting on a crest of green lawn. She had been relieved to hear that you didn’t actually go to the grave. Apparently it was only in the movies that you saw the casket lowered into the ground and threw dirt on it. She thought they must have put an end to that because it was just too, too unbearable, but her brother said it was because of the weather. The weather was too unpredictable. It was hot in the small chapel, suffocating, and she was wearing a long-sleeved wool sweater. She broke out in a sudden intense sweat. She reached for Dan’s handkerchief to mop her face — and the next thing she knew, she was lying in the backseat of the air-conditioned limo. Her mother was hunched over her, fanning her face with her missal.
“What happened?” Giselle asked.
“You fainted.” Her mother rummaged in her purse and produced a bag of honey-roasted nuts from the plane. “I bet you haven’t eaten anything in hours.” She ripped open the little bag with her teeth and shook a few into the palm of Giselle’s hand. It reminded Giselle of the little red boxes of Sunmaid raisins her mother always used to carry in her purse, along with Band-Aids, safety pins, and a roll of dimes in case she needed to make a phone call. Giselle sat up and dutifully ate a few peanuts. Up on the hill she could see a dark line of people straggling out of the chapel, like a flock of crows, blinking in the bright sun. She glanced impatiently at her watch and thought how Trina would just be waking up from her afternoon nap and that they were out of apple juice.
Her brother volunteered to drive Giselle back home. The others could go on to the catered lunch without her. Dan leaned into the limo and said he didn’t know what to do, he felt bad about leaving her. He looked about to keel over himself. “Don’t worry about me,” she told him. “You have to go. I’m sorry.” She started to cry. “I know I’m letting you down.”
Outside the car she could hear people being directed back into the waiting limos. The whole event seemed to be as choreographed as the Academy Awards. “You go,” she told him. “If I feel better, I’ll come later.” Dan nodded and kissed her cheek. Then his brother, the doctor, checked her pulse and handed her a couple of sedatives for later. “To help her sleep,” he told her mother.
At the last minute her parents decided to go home with her. “We can go get Teddy,” her mother said. She lowered her voice. “Besides, I’m worried about your father. He looks beat.” She tapped her chest, as if to remind Giselle of her father’s heart condition. “I’ll make our excuses,” her mother said. “They’ll understand.”
The cemetery was a half hour’s drive from the house, during which no one said much of anything. Except for Todd, who kept fiddling with and cursing his air-conditioning, which seemed to be on the fritz. “I just had it fixed,” he kept muttering. “I can’t believe this.” Finally their father suggested that he just turn it off and roll down the windows.
As soon as she got home, she peeled off her sweaty clothes, took a sedative, and crawled into bed. Her parents had taken Teddy back to her brother’s place to swim, to give her time to recover. She was thankful to be alone. She shut her eyes and pictured Trina in her wading pool, laughing and splashing. It wasn’t fair. She cried like a baby until the sedative finally kicked in.
***
The two days following the funeral were just a blur of commotion going on all around her while she stayed put, mostly in bed, mostly in a drug-induced haze. Teddy was shuttled back and forth between Todd’s apartment and home. Even though her brother hated family gatherings, he rallied to the cause, chauffeuring them all over the greater Los Angeles area. Giselle was grateful to Todd for grasping the emotional complexities of the situation, for sensing what needed to be done without being told. Their sister’s nickn
ame for him was Data, like the android on Star Trek, but apparently, when the occasion demanded, Todd had all the necessary software to respond to human tragedy. He didn’t even grumble when their mother would suggest the day’s itinerary: the La Brea Tar Pits, Universal Studios, a matinee in Westwood. “You stay home and rest, dear,” her mother said. “We’ll take care of Teddy.” And in the evenings they would return with supper — Kentucky Fried Chicken or Chinese — and Giselle would force herself to sit at the kitchen table and eat a few bites, mostly for Teddy’s sake.
Sometimes Dan would join them, unfailingly polite and affable but remote. He didn’t really know her parents, and Giselle could see that it was a strain on him being around them. She encouraged him to spend time with his mother and brother, whom he didn’t get to see that often. The atmosphere in the house was lighter somehow with him gone. Teddy seemed to shrink and freeze, like a scared rabbit, whenever Dan was around, even though Dan went out of his way to be nice to him. He even bought Teddy a present, a rubber lizard he’d picked up at some toy store where Greg had gone to buy presents to take back to his own kids. Giselle suspected that Dan was putting on a show for her parents, but she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least he was making the effort. And she could see how exhausted he was. From across the room the dark circles under his eyes looked like charcoal smudges. She was already unconscious by the time he got into bed at night, and he was gone by the time she reluctantly came to in the morning. He didn’t seem to be sleeping at all, and his stubborn refusal to take any pills annoyed her. It seemed like an implicit criticism of her own urge toward oblivion. She hated to think of her parents’ and Greg’s leaving at the end of the week. What she dreaded most was the return to daily routine, to real life. It seemed that for the rest of their lives they would simply be going through the motions.
The day before his grandparents leave, his mother tells him he can’t go swimming at his uncle’s, because they have an appointment with a family therapist. When he says he doesn’t want to go, his mother presses her lips together and says he’s going whether he wants to or not. “This isn’t exactly our idea of fun either,” she tells him. Something about the way she says this, the look on her face, makes him think the police are probably making them go.
At the doctor’s office they sit in the closet-sized waiting room for ten minutes before the doctor comes out to get them. There is no receptionist, just a small sign saying to please ring the bell to let the doctor know they are there. It doesn’t seem like a real doctor’s office. There are no other people waiting. Teddy thinks maybe she isn’t a very good doctor, even though there are a lot of official-looking diplomas on the wall. His mother flips through a magazine. Dan slumps in his chair with his eyes shut, sighing loudly every few seconds. Teddy remembers once, at the grocery store, Dan’s abandoning a whole cart of food in the checkout line because he got tired of waiting. Teddy and his mom had to drive back and get it.
Finally the doctor opens the door and invites them inside her office. She looks more like a movie star than a doctor. She has lots of poufy red hair and bright lipstick. Her name is Dr. Cole. She says to call her Hannah.
First she sees all of them together for half an hour. Mostly she just listens and takes a few notes while his mother tells her what happened and gives her some background information, like their ages and how long she and Dan have been married and where Teddy’s real dad lives. Dan cries a lot but doesn’t say much. When his mother tells the doctor that Teddy’s nine, Dan interrupts and says, “Almost ten.” The therapist mostly just nods. Sometimes she looks over at Teddy and smiles. Then she says she’d like to talk with him alone for a few minutes. Teddy doesn’t want to be alone with her. Even though she’s smiling at him, he feels as if he’s being picked on. His mother didn’t say anything about talking to the doctor alone. If Dan wasn’t there, he’d beg his mother to stay with him.
Once he is alone with the doctor, they move over to a sandbox on legs filled with weird little figures he is supposed to feel free to play with, as if he were a little kid, like his sister with her Playskool people, who were always getting swept up in the vacuum cleaner. The doctor asks him some questions, which he mostly answers with a shrug or “I don’t know.” At one point she asks him if he has anything particular on his mind. He shakes his head and then thinks of his sister’s empty room, how they keep the door closed now, and suddenly starts to cry.
The doctor takes his hand and looks him right in the eye, sadly, as if she might burst into tears herself. “You are going to have to forgive yourself,” she says. “Do you think you can do that, Teddy?”
He shrugs and says, “It wasn’t my fault.” She doesn’t say anything, which makes him nervous, like maybe she doesn’t agree. “My mom says it wasn’t my fault. She says that sometimes things just happen.” He reaches into the sandbox and buries a whole little family in the sand. “If it was my fault,” he adds, “I’d be in jail, right?”
The therapist pats his hand. “They don’t put children in jail, Teddy.”
What’s that supposed to mean, he thinks to himself, but he doesn’t ask. He can see from the clock that the hour is almost up. He finds a little dog and buries him in the sand, too. Maybe if he just sits here for five more minutes, he can go.
***
On the ride home no one says much. At one point his mom says she wishes that the doctor were older and more experienced. Dan just shakes his head and says she seems to have excellent credentials. “Why? Because she went to Stanford?” his mother snaps. Dan graduated from Stanford University. He was always telling Teddy that if he studied hard and got good grades, he could go there, too, someday.
Teddy is sitting next to his sister’s car seat, which makes him feel bad. His mother suggested that they take the other car, but his stepfather said it didn’t have enough gas. Teddy figures that Dan just wants to make him feel bad. Dan hardly speaks to him, and when he does say something, he sounds too polite, the way he sounds when a student calls him at home with some lame excuse for why his paper is going to be late. Teddy can’t blame him for being mad. He knows how crazy Dan was about Trina. He was always kissing and hugging her. Sometimes, in between classes, he would run over to the campus day care center and play with her for an hour. He liked to sit by her crib and watch her sleep. He even liked changing her smelly diapers.
Teddy is really glad his grandparents will still be there when he gets home. This afternoon they are going to the beach. He wishes they could stay forever.
His mother twists around in her seat and asks him, “So what did you and Hannah talk about?”
Dan turns down the volume on the radio.
Teddy says, “Nothing. It was stupid. She wants me to play with toys like I’m a baby.”
“You have to give it a chance,” his mom tells him. He can see her jaw jut out like it does when she’s really mad. “I’m sure she doesn’t think you’re a baby. Unless you act like one.” She turns back around. He wishes she’d just yell at him and get it over with. He knows she wants to. He knows they both want to.
“I’m not going back,” Teddy shouts, “and you can’t make me!”
Dan turns the radio back up.
***
The next morning his grandparents have to leave. At the airport Teddy begs them to take him with them. He clings to his grandfather and bawls like a baby. He doesn’t care who sees him. His grandmother pats his back and says, “I wish we could, honey, but your mother needs you.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he argues. “They hate me!”
“No one hates you.” His grandfather crushes him in a bear hug. “Don’t even think that for a minute. Your mother loves you. She’s just upset right now.”
“Dan hates me,” Teddy says. “He wishes I were dead.”
His grandparents exchange one of those looks and shake their heads. “Here comes your uncle Todd,” his grandmother says, sounding relieved. Todd had run off to the gift shop for some gum and a couple of magazines for the f
light home. He hands Gramma a Redbook and a pack of Big Red gum. He hands Grampa a Sports Illustrated even though he hadn’t asked for a magazine.
“I’ve got a subscription to this at home.” Grampa frowns.
Gramma glares at him and makes a shhush noise, which he ignores. “Why don’t you take it and read it?” He hands the magazine back to Todd, who shrugs and tosses it onto an empty seat. As far as Teddy knows, the only sports his uncle is interested in are computer games.
“You aren’t just going to leave it there?” Grampa asks, worriedly.
“Oh, just forget about the damn magazine!” Gramma explodes. She hits him on the knee with her rolled-up magazine like he’s a bad dog. “Honest to God! At a time like this.” She shakes her head, disgusted. Then she turns to Teddy with a big smile. “We’ll see about a visit later on this summer, when school gets out. I’ll talk to your mother.” Sometimes he forgets that Gramma is his mother’s mother. Usually they fight a lot, but not this time. They were all on their best behavior for the funeral. She opens up the pack of gum and hands him a stick. “Maybe your mother will come, too. We can go to Disney World.” She hands him a second stick of gum. “For later.”
“I’m going to Nebraska,” Teddy says, “to see my dad.”
“Well, there’s no reason you can’t do both, is there?” His grandmother winks at him as if it’s their little secret. It reminds him of how he used to wink at Trina and watch her blink back. She was too uncoordinated to shut one eye at a time. It always used to make him laugh. He misses his little sister. No one ever seems to think that maybe he’s sad, too. That maybe he doesn’t want to be an only child again. The voice on the PA announces that the flight to Sarasota is now boarding. At the last minute Grampa picks up the Sports Illustrated when Gramma isn’t looking and sneaks it into his suitcase like a naughty child.