Speed of Light

by Amber Kizer

  “I’m sorry. I listen. Sometimes it’s easier to let people think I do not understand. It gave me a way to defend myself. It’s a habit. My English isn’t perfect, but it’s okay.”

  Her English was in many ways better than mine. At least she speaks her truth.

  CHAPTER 16

  Twilight dusted Riverside Cemetery in mauve. We gathered at Auntie’s plot with the air humid and fragrant with early summer lushness. While we waited for Nelli, Tens dug a small hole at the base of the plain headstone.

  “We have about half an hour until the gates close.” Tony glanced at his watch.

  Juliet stood apart from us, staring down at her mother’s new headstone. I started toward her as Fara walked over and started whispering. I watched Juliet’s shoulders relax.

  Tens noticed and motioned me to stay put. What did Fara say that made Juliet sigh away a little of her tension?

  Nelli drove up. In the car next to her sat a Kirian look-alike. All-American, wholesomely handsome with a nice-guy air, he unfolded from the car holding a gallon ziplock bag filled with ashes.

  “They left Howie’s cremains dropped on my desk.” Nelli shook her head ruefully.

  “It’s really disrespectful. Hi, I’m Sergio Rafa.” He nodded at us, but his hands were full and he made no move to relinquish the ashes.

  “Sergio is my intern. He’s going to be helping with the investigation, especially transferring all the files into a database,” Nelli said. “He wanted to be part of this. And he has skills I badly need.” She shrugged.

  “I would want someone to remember me.” His eyes seemed shiny with unshed tears.

  “Welcome.” Tony squeezed his shoulder.

  I found it fascinating to watch Fara size up Sergio and place herself in front of Juliet, who looked as though she’d taken a blow to the stomach. I understood her reaction. He could be Kirian’s cousin.

  While the others made a bit of uncomfortable small talk, I walked over to Fara and whispered, “He looks like Kirian.”

  She nodded her acceptance of my explanation. I wasn’t sure if that was because she trusted me or because she shared memories with Juliet and knew more about Kirian than I did.

  Sergio moved closer to Juliet. “I’m sorry we’re meeting like this, but I want you to know how brave I think you are.”

  She glanced down, stepping away. “Thank you.”

  “Maybe sometime we can talk about it? I was in a group home south of here that was similar. I don’t really have friends who know what I’m talking about.”

  She started to say something but Rumi reached into his box. “I made a Spirit Stone special.” Rumi’s glass creations usually hung from ribbon and were closed like a sphere. This one he’d left open at the top. “I thought we might bury Howie in this as an ossuary, an ash container?” Rumi seemed hesitant and insecure.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Perfect.” We all agreed.

  Sergio and Nelli carefully emptied the bag of ashes until it filled the Spirit Stone, as if it was made for it specifically.

  “Shall we?” Tony asked, commencing the brief burial service for Howie.

  Rumi recited a poem called “Away” by James Whitcomb Riley, a local poet who was also buried here. Tony asked us to bow our heads while Rumi recited a prayer his nain, his grandmother, taught him to pray over the dead.

  Nelli dropped candy and a model race car into the hole. The black-and-white race paint job was more about the time of year than Howie’s unknown interests.

  Juliet knelt and started burying him with a handful of dirt. Fara was next and the rest of us took turns, until Tens replaced a patch of grass and violets over the top. It was as if we’d never been there. Out of his pocket, Tens pulled a whittled wood “Howie” and tucked it against the base of Auntie’s stone. “Until we can get something more permanent.”

  A rush of love surged through me. Tens thinks of everything.

  I hoped Howie was home. Healed.

  “Rumi, what did you say?” Nelli asked.

  “Nain’s prayer for the dead. I don’t know how to translate it exactly, but it’s about wishing the soul wings and God’s speed on its journey.”

  “It was beautiful,” Sergio said. “I’d love a copy of it, if you can write it down sometime? I have a professor at the university who collects prayers like that.”

  “Sure.” Rumi nodded.

  “So you’re new to town?” I asked Sergio.

  “Yeah, pretty new. I came for school and stayed to work. I’ve volunteered at the racetrack the last five summers. This is a great time of year to be in Indy.”

  Nelli’s cell phone rang and she moved away. Juliet and Fara went back to hovering by Roshana’s plot. I tried to focus on Sergio. He seemed like a little puppy desperately wanting attention.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Ah, it’s May. The big race. All the events. The thrill of cars moving at two hundred thirty miles per hour. It gets addictive. You are going, right? To the Indianapolis 500? The ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing’?”

  “Uh, hadn’t planned on it.”

  “It’s gonna make history this year. It’s the centennial race. Biggest event to hit this country in years.” He nodded his head as if keeping time to a drumbeat only he heard.

  “Oh, okay, I guess we’ll think about it.” I backed up another step. I leaned up to Tens’s ear. “Was that a weird conversation to have?”

  “Not everyone is as connected to the unliving as you, Merry.”

  “I know, it’s just—”

  Nelli interrupted, “Can you guys come to Faye’s? Gus wants to talk to us.”

  “I hope you can talk some sense into Faye, Meridian.” Gus hugged me.

  This didn’t sound good. “About what?”

  “He’s mad I don’t want to go on a cruise around the world or learn how to skydive before it’s too late.”

  “That’s not what I said, was it?” Gus’s eyes were sunken and the fragile skin around them was bruised and puffy.

  “Honey, the trick is to live until we die. To fill up those moments.” Faye wrapped a knit shawl around her shoulders. “Do you know how many people don’t breathe correctly? They take little mouthfuls, little dainty bites of air instead of filling their lungs to capacity. Not breathe, right? Can you imagine? Most people don’t live right either. They take tiny nips and tastes, but they don’t remember to inhale deeply and consciously live. We’re going to live until—”

  “Then marry me, woman.” Gus threw his hands in the air.

  Faye’s chin wobbled. “You know Dolores won’t be able to handle that.”

  “Your daughter is an adult; she will handle it if you let her.”

  “Regardless, we can’t.”

  “Then aren’t you a hypocrite with all your talk about living life?” Gus slammed out.

  Whoa! I didn’t know where to look. The emotion echoing around us was almost unbearable. I heard Auntie telling me that sometimes grief starts months before the death itself.

  “He’s right, isn’t he?” Faye’s eyes filled with tears.

  Nelli knelt down and wiped her cheeks.

  Rumi tsked. “He shouldn’t be so adamantine, unyielding, to storm off like that.”

  “Why, because I’m dying? I don’t want kid gloves, Rumi. I want life.” Faye shook her head.

  “Then you’d better storm after him and marry him,” Nelli said quietly.

  “Why don’t I go get him?” I slid from the room while their murmurs continued.

  I found Gus weeping into his hands on a bench behind the house. I dug into my pocket and held out wadded-up tissues. I was beginning to get the hang of the accessories of grief and never went anywhere without a few clean Kleenex.

  “She won’t break her daughter’s heart, so she’ll break mine,” Gus said.

  I stayed silent.

  “I never married.”

  “How’d you meet Faye?” I asked, picking a pink blossom and burying my nose in its happy scent.

&n
bsp; He smiled through his tears. “The first time I met Faye, she and her husband had just moved in next door. I was mowing my grass and noticed how long their lawn was. It was a scorching summer day, so I cut hers too. She came out onto her porch and offered me a tall glass of sweet tea to thank me. First sip of that tea I thought I was going to die.” He gagged in memory. “It wasn’t sweet but salty. She asked if it was okay, as she’d never made it before. I didn’t have the heart to tell her. I drank that whole thing. Tasted worse than seawater. Years later, she confessed the sugar and salt got mixed up in the move.”

  “That’s why you call her Sweet Tea?” I smiled.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “When she sliced into a red velvet cake and cut me a piece the size of a house, I had no idea how I was going to choke it down. But it tasted rich and moist, with a hint of something unusual. Delicious. When I asked her, she confided that it was her secret and she could only tell me if I promised not to enter it into the state fair against her. I promised. Never baked a thing in my life. I found out later the tea took all the salt and she’d bought more sugar for the cake.” He chuckled. “Looking back, I loved Faye even then.”

  “But she was married?”

  “Yep, so we were friends. And after her husband died, I didn’t know how to make her see me as the man who loved her. So I stayed her friend instead of risking her rejecting me. We could have had twenty years together instead of a few months.” He paused as if waiting for me to berate him and agree. When I didn’t, he continued. “And now she won’t marry me because her daughter can’t handle it. It’s her mother’s death she can’t stomach. Not a wedding. All I want is to say those vows in front of God and friends. I know that’s not the legal part, but that’s the part that matters to this old man.”

  “So do it.” Seems simple.

  “What?”

  “I’m not an expert or anything, but if you want to say wedding vows, you don’t have to say them wearing a white dress,” I said, trying to make him smile. The hopelessness of waiting for goodbye weighed heavily on him. How do people watch their loved ones die without losing their minds?

  “That’s good, ’cause white really isn’t my color.”

  We laughed.

  “You know what I mean. Say the words. Invite whoever you want to. We can do an officially unofficial wedding.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Start with what you want to say. We can do the rest.”

  “I’ll think on that. Thank you, kid.” He patted my shoulder.

  Rumi came out with Tens and Tony in tow. “Why don’t we men get a squoosh of air? Deliquesce, disappear, and leave the ladies to primp for us?”

  I didn’t argue as the men dissolved into the night around us. I headed back into the house to see what I could do for Faye. I knew how to soothe the dying, the newly dead, but those days or weeks away from it? Not so easy.

  Faye dozed and shifted.

  “I can’t get her comfortable.” Nelli frowned.

  I stooped at Faye’s feet. Inhaling deeply, I gathered my courage to speak. “Faye, I met a woman. I’d like to call her. She’s a friend. And she works at a hospice. Maybe she can help?”

  “How?” Faye opened her eyes and then closed them. “I keep forgetting I can’t see you but for the light. It’s very disconcerting.”

  “How do you think she can help?” Nelli asked, repeating for Faye.

  “I don’t know, but I think she can get you comfortable and maybe help Gus understand your point of view?”

  “You know I would like nothing more than to marry Gus, but it’s too late. Too much has happened,” Faye said.

  “What do you mean? It’s never too late.” I glanced at Nelli, who frowned.

  “My first husband and I got married by the justice of the peace. I got my daughter out of it. I’m not complaining.”

  “But you wish …?” I let it hang. Wait, let her speak.

  “I wish Gus and I could get married. A real wedding.”

  “When’s your daughter coming?” I asked.

  “Soon.”

  Behind Faye, Nelli shook her head and shrugged. Dying wasn’t convenient; the dying didn’t make an appointment on the calendar. It doesn’t work that way.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’d like, if anything were possible?” I asked.

  Faye’s expression got faraway and dreamy. She let herself wander through a vision of her wedding. I quietly took notes as she spoke.

  Faye abruptly stopped her flow of words between flowers and vows. “Gus has a surprise planned for tomorrow. I used to say I wanted to drive the track, but now? I don’t know how I’m going to do it; it’s so important to him to make me happy.”

  “What’s he got planned?” Nelli asked.

  “Let him tell you himself. Yes, call your friend, Meridian. Maybe she knows how I can manage this.” She slowly drifted into a slight sleep.

  I used Faye’s phone to dial Delia, who said she’d be right over.

  Gus reentered, bolstered. I didn’t know what the other men said to lift the weight he carried but it worked. “Faye, Sweet Tea, exactly like you wished years ago, we’re going racing tomorrow. I’ve got you a car that’s going to take you across the yard of bricks, faster than the speed of light.”

  She pretended surprise and delight.

  Tens slipped his arms around me.

  There is nothing easy about dying. Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Did you sleep at all last night?” Tens rolled over and nestled against me.

  I sighed. “Not really.”

  “What was that boring documentary?”

  “An in-depth report on the tornadoes this spring and how the city and state—”

  “Stop! I don’t care. How come you didn’t fall asleep to that?” Tens sounded appalled.

  “It was kinda interesting.” I shrugged. Not really, but Gus’s story about wasting time in fear reiterated so much of what I read in Auntie’s journal and what she’d tried to teach me. Death without a life is meaningless. Whispering, I asked, “What’s on your bucket list?”

  “Thinking about Faye and Gus?” He glanced down at me.

  I nodded.

  “I’d like to see South America, run a marathon, eat my way through that ten-pound hamburger at Bub’s, see you when you’re Auntie’s age …” His voice trailed off.

  “You’ve really thought about this.”

  He nodded. His palm pressed me against his side with slow strokes along my back. “I have. What do you want in your lifetime?”

  “I want it all.” And I do. I finally have some of it.

  “Thanks for narrowing that down for me.” Tens poked at my ribs.

  “Normal stuff.” Living up to my legacy, seeing my brother again, having a family with you someday, seeing you when you’re Charles’s age. “Like waking up next to you every morning for the rest of my life.”

  “Does it count as waking up if you never slept?” He chuckled. “You have to come up with something outrageous to do for a bucket list. Not normal stuff.”

  “What, like skydiving?” I’d probably get hit by dying birds.

  “Or running naked in the rain. Or raising a flock of emu.”

  I laughed as he continued spouting.

  “Or camping in the Australian bush. Or—”

  “Stop! I can’t take it.” I dove for his tickle spots and straddled him. He let me pin him for a kiss. “Do we have to get out of bed today?”

  “I think someone might notice. Rain check?” He kissed me, then swung out of bed to pad toward the bathroom. I snuggled my face in his pillow, inhaling his sleepy warmth.

  “Come on, Merry!” Tens shouted. “You lost your chance to sleep.”

  “Coming,” I mumbled.

  Unprepared for the sheer enormity of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we’d driven around the outside before I knew what it was. So that’s why this entire town is called Speedway.

  From the back, it lo
oked like giant gray scaffolding and bleachers. The outside was fenced in chain link and sported paths with white-pebbled gravel. Golf carts flocked at every entrance.

  “That’s where we’re going?” I asked. “That’s a racetrack? Not an airport?” Or a construction site? Or an alien colony? A ten-story glass pagoda stood guard over it all, either as sentry or proud parent. They call this place a finicky female.

  Juliet’s eyes were as wide as mine felt.

  “Wait until you see it from the inside. The infield alone can hold eight football stadiums.” Tony grinned at me. “I’m not much for the cars, but the people watching … ah, that is most awesome.”

  We’d broken into two travel groups. Gus, Faye, and Rumi rode ahead. Tony, Juliet, Fara, and I rode in our van, with Tens at the wheel. Delia, the hospice nurse who’d descended on Faye last night upon angelic wings of mercy, was meeting us. She’d gone early to try to make miracles happen.

  We drove up to the Hall of Fame museum with its flagpoles and imposing cement construction with architectural tire tracks running down the front.

  Delia waved at me as we parked and unloaded. Faye was tucked deeply into her wheelchair with shawls and blankets, and she had a hat and scarf covering the rest of her.

  Gus enfolded Delia in a bear hug that clung. When I could, I asked her, “How’d you pull off the rest of this? Gus said he’d only booked a ride in a car?”

  “Help from friends I’ve made at Never Too Late. You can imagine how many locals wish for this particular final lap. We have to work between teams’ practices, though.”

  In so many ways, the timing could be better. I knew Gus would cherish this memory, but I wasn’t at all certain this was Faye’s wish for an outing. She gazed up at Gus with all the love and understanding I hoped Tens and I had in fifty years.

  An old converted school bus was our chariot. Its lift brought Faye inside and we gathered, listening to a hilarious tour guide rattle off race trivia. Who knew there were faster things to watch than Indiana corn grow? Not that I’d seen that yet either.

  The tour guide began. “Now, sports fans, notice we have the Colts colors in the sky above us today. Between the blue of the heavens and the fluffy white clouds, it’s clear that even heaven cheers for our local football team.”