He expected Grandma to open the creaky porch door any moment now to ask him if he wanted spaghetti for dinner.
Life is going to change.
Ivan’s left wrist twitched a searing pain up his forearm again. Somehow it wasn’t as bad as the grief in his heart. He closed his puffy eyes.
The crunch of gravel made him look down the meandering driveway to where a small Toyota was coming in their direction.
Willow.
Ivan hadn’t seen his sister, Willow, in several years. She had called at Christmas, but didn’t show up in person. One would think that five hours wasn’t too long to drive from Atlanta to the Georgia coast, but she almost always had an excuse even when school was out.
Granted, she barely eked out a living running a piano studio and going to graduate school. Every Christmas season she was paid to play piano at parties, dinners, church plays, and so forth. Many times the regulars were on holiday, and she substituted for them. It paid well; she charged three-figure amounts for one or two hours of repeatedly playing Christmas carols and hymns.
Ivan stepped off the porch as Willow coasted her Toyota to a stop. The door flung open, and Willow came running out, tears on her face.
“I’m too late!” She wept into Ivan’s barn jacket. “If I hadn’t taken that extra gig, I could’ve been here at Christmas. It would’ve been our last Christmas together as a family.”
“Shhhh…” All Ivan could do was pat her shoulders. He prayed silently for her. For spilt milk never returning to the bottle. What was done was done—
Done.
Like what had happened between him and Brinley?
Ivan wished he could retract everything he had said to Brinley earlier in the month when they had broken up. Yet dignity forbade such yielding. It would be admitting that he had been wrong to send Brinley away. She could use it against him. She could have wanted her money back. Compensation for plumbing costs. Restitution for the stolen Strad.
“Grandma is in heaven now.” Ivan pushed back a lock of hair on Willow’s face. “She’s with Grandpa. That’s what she had wanted for a long time, to see Grandpa.”
Willow nodded. Two years younger than Ivan, they had been close through high school and then college at Juilliard. Their relationship had splintered after Grandpa Otto died. Lately it had improved as the brother and sister grew older and hopefully, wiser and more mature than their younger twenty-something days.
“Would you like to rest a bit, freshen up before we go to church? Matt can take us both in his van so you won’t need to drive.”
Willow nodded again.
As Ivan helped Willow up the porch steps, he heard thunder in the distance. They had chosen the wrong day to have the funeral. It had been clear skies Thursday when they had the viewing at the funeral home. And clear skies the day before that too. However, today, the forecasters said it would rain through the weekend.
Matt waved to Willow. “Praise the Lord that Yun is saved. She’s not grieving now. We are.”
“It’s hard.” Willow broke down again.
Ivan took her inside, then came out again to speak with Matt.
“Zoe and Quincy texted. They’re meeting us at the church.” Matt hesitated. “Brinley is with them.”
Ivan said nothing.
“She is devastated.”
So am I.
“Zoe says Brinley is having a hard time,” Matt said. “I think she needs you.”
“What am I to do about it? We broke up.” Ivan clenched his fists. His left wrist hurt when he did that, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t Matt’s place to give him relationship advice at this time.
All Ivan wanted was for the funeral to be over. Grandma was already in heaven. She didn’t care how short her funeral was.
“I don’t know, dude. Pray about how to handle her. At least be nice to her when you see her.”
“I suppose I can do that.”
“You’d better. I don’t think your grandma would’ve wanted it any other way.”
* * *
Brinley used to hate funerals, their unremitting obsequies, sea of red eyes, and awful cacophony of sobs. She used to think that there was nothing happy about people dead and gone, family bereaved and left behind. Nothing happy about the cold, dark spaces of loss, a past that could not be recovered and a present sapped of verve, a heavenly future notwithstanding. Things to come were, well, things to come.
Today some of those feelings were still in her as she entered the Seaside Chapel sanctuary to see Yun’s closed casket. The open casket viewing had been the day before, but she had chosen not to go to the funeral home because she knew she’d come face to face with Ivan. Something in her was still raw from his rejection of her that she could not bring herself to show up even though she had considered Yun a friend.
Brinley decided not to sit with the McMillan family in the front. Being Yun’s granddaughter-in-law’s sister didn’t qualify her as close family. Having been rejected by Ivan in his self-focused spell had further widened the chasm. The front rows were filled with not only McMillans, but also representatives from the Park family, who’d flown all the way from San Francisco, Vancouver, and Seoul for this sad day.
Brinley thought that Ivan must’ve favored his father for he looked like none of his cousins from overseas.
She found the corner of the back-row pew insulating. She sat silently, spoke to no one, sobbed alone, and thought of Yun and how it was too late for words, too final for eventualities.
What sliced at Brinley was not the act of saying goodbye to Yun, but the fact that the last time they had gotten together, Yun had been downtrodden. Such a strong spiritual woman brought down by a wayward grandson who should be slapping himself awake to see the reality of the situation.
His actions, his failed plans—if there had been any—had left his grandmother no choice, but to sell her beloved Steinway Victorian upright piano. While Brinley had added a generous amount to the appraised value of the piano, it was obvious that if Ivan had paid more attention to his finances, Yun wouldn’t have had to hawk off a family heirloom. Even with that piano sold, they still didn’t have enough to pay off the McMillan family home.
I blame Ivan.
Some people came to sit down beside her. It wasn’t until someone squeezed her hand that she realized it was Tobias and his father Alonzo. Alonzo’s eyes were red and he was barely keeping it together.
Tobias held Brinley’s hand, like he had used to do when helping her cross the roads back when she was six and he was older.
“Gonna be okay, all right?” he whispered.
Brinley nodded.
Many times, she had wished Tobias was really her older brother.
A haunting violin began to play “Amazing Grace.” Brinley didn’t care who was playing. She was too busy keeping her head down, to be alone in her grief. She stared at the wood pews in front of her, wood that every now and then resembled the panels on the sides of a casket.
Yun McMillan had been a good friend.
A dear friend.
Gone.
Before Brinley met Jesus, she had thought that Christians were overtly religious by nature, but Yun had been the least condescending of all. Preachy she might have been, but Yun had meant well. At their last tea time together, Yun had pleaded with her to forgive Ivan.
Forgive him?
A group of senior adults gathered on the platform and sang some of Yun’s favorite old-time hymns. When they reached “Blessed Assurance,” Brinley recalled that bittersweet day when she had sight-read that hymn for Yun, minutes before Ivan kicked her out of their house in a dismissive way that confused her to this day.
Forgive him.
One by one, Yun’s singing friends came forward to tell a joke or a story about Yun. When an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair finished the story about the time he tried to cozy up to Yun at the ice cream social, there was not a dry eye in the sanctuary amidst the laughter. And the missionary trips overseas that Yun and her husband Otto had taken in
her lifetime! Brinley had no idea she had traveled that much. The time she had to eat green caterpillars in Papua New Guinea or taste fried grubs in Botswana…
Pastor Gonzalez went up to speak.
“She is not here,” he announced, and the entire crowd leaped to their feet and cheered, breaking into an a cappella “O Happy Day.”
This is how Grandpa Brooks’s funeral should’ve been.
While his, ten years before, had focused on death and the past, Yun’s funeral focused on life and the future. Brinley choked up when Pastor Gonzalez spoke of nothing except the love of Christ, the hope of Christ, the heaven of Christ, culminating in the cross of Christ, which he preached as the bridge to heaven.
“Yun McMillan crossed that bridge. She is now experiencing eternal life. Yun had hope. Do you? Yun is alive. Are you?”
The funeral service ended with the pallbearers carrying Yun McMillan’s coffin out to the hearse. Sitting in the back, Brinley saw Ivan for the first time since their last conversation some thirteen days ago. He walked alongside six pallbearers, three on each side, Quincy among them. Ivan himself did not carry the coffin. Brinley figured he was still recovering from his injuries.
As soon as the casket was out of the sanctuary, Tobias told his dad they should leave. Alonzo nodded.
“Take it easy,” Tobias said to Brinley. “See you at work later.”
Brinley nodded.
Zoe came up to Brinley in her Valentino black, the maternity dress concealing her three-month pouch. “Let’s go, Brinley.”
“I’m not sure if I should go. You know how I feel about cemeteries.” The last time Brinley went to a graveside service was in Charleston when they had buried Grandpa Brooks in the family mausoleum.
“Come for Grandma Yun’s sake. You’re practically family.”
Brinley sucked in her tears.
“It’s unbearable for me too, but I have to go for Quincy’s sake.” Zoe dabbed her eyes.
Brinley didn’t tell Zoe that there would be no closure here. Life was a continuum, and Yun simply adjourned to heaven. Someday Brinley would see Yun again. That comforted her. The certainty she had about it was unmistakable, a confirmation that she was really a believer now. The course of her eternal destiny had changed.
“You’ll be fine, Zoe.” Brinley patted her sister’s shoulder. “I’ll come if you want me to.”
“I do.”
Brinley held Zoe’s arm as they made their way to an awaiting car. Silently, the funeral procession went up Frederica Road.
* * *
As Grandma’s casket was lowered into the ground, all Ivan could think of was, “What now?”
For six years he had been singularly focused on providing for Grandma Yun. They had managed to survive, so he wasn’t altogether a failure at that. Now that Grandma was dead, everything she had owned was in the grandchildren’s name, but it still had three mortgages, and with three payments behind on the primary loan, he knew it was a matter of days before the McMillan family home went into foreclosure.
Willow had no money.
Quincy—never mind. He was living off Zoe.
I’m sure that says a lot about us to Brinley. What an embarrassment to the McMillan name.
To Ivan’s left was Quincy, looking either stunned or stoic. Ivan couldn’t tell. Next to him, Zoe was crying quietly. She had hardly known Grandma, but perhaps her pregnancy made her a bit more emotional than usual. The rest of the McMillan and Park family members were around them with Grandma’s only surviving sibling, a younger brother, in the front, face sullen. The oldest living relative now.
As Pastor Gonzalez read passages from the Holy Bible, Ivan kept thinking that Brinley should be standing next to them.
Where is she?
He had seen her get out of the car with Zoe earlier as they crossed the lawn to the gravesite. He had wanted to go to her, kiss away the tears from her eyes, and tell her everything was going to be all right.
But it wasn’t his place.
It was over between them. But who was that guy sitting next to her in the last row back at Seaside Chapel?
When the graveside service was all over, Ivan backed out of the crowd to look for Brinley, against his better judgment. He wanted to see her. Make sure she was okay. Make sure she could go on.
That’s all.
Ivan found her at the back of the crowd, dabbing her eyes on a wad of tissue soaked all the way through. She didn’t seem to realize he was walking toward her. Didn’t even look up when he folded her into his arms, his splint pressing against her back through her black sweater. He felt her snuggle against him inside his coat as if she knew who he was without even looking.
They stayed that way for a while, silently grieving for Grandma Yun.
Ivan didn’t want to let her go.
What have I done to this poor thing?
Poor?
It is I who am poor in all manner of it.
Ivan rubbed Brinley’s back. She spoke not a word.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead. He didn’t know why he did that. He sure didn’t want to send her mixed signals. It was over between them. This was a final goodbye.
Or was it?
Brinley pulled her arms from around his waist. Without a word, she walked away.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Ivan locked the front door and stepped into the living room. Matt and Willow had both left after dropping him off. They had offered to stay a while longer, but he had told them not to worry. He wanted to show them he could move on, but really, he wasn’t sure how.
Everywhere he turned, memories of Grandma Yun swept through his mind in droves like a slideshow from the past. There was his baseball in a shadow box by the wall from when he was twelve years old. Grandma had saved it for him. Someday he’d give it to his children, she had said.
Here was the braided rag rug that Grandma had made years ago. There was her old Bible still sitting on that scratched old oak table next to the run-down rocker she had always sat in. He could see Grandma rocking and telling him to read his Bible everyday.
Now the rocker was still. Cold and still.
Ivan made a beeline for the Bible on the side table. He opened the Bible to Grandma’s last bookmark. It fell on Isaiah 30:19.
For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.
“Weep no more.” Ivan barely voiced it.
His chest hurt badly.
He sank into the sorry couch, Grandma Yun’s Bible still in his hands. Tears fell onto the old pages, and he couldn’t wipe them off fast enough.
Hate to ruin Grandma’s Bible.
No words came out of his mouth, only guttural sounds. There was an agony so deep within his chest that Ivan felt like he was going to implode. The pain was too much to bear, and he couldn’t get it out.
Lord, I’ve failed.
All his careful planning to work hard and pay off the house so Grandma Yun could live in a house that she finally owned. All his dreams of fixing up the house so that Grandma could have a nice, lovely home to read her Bible in. Maybe great-grandchildren to sit on her lap and listen to her stories of Grandpa Otto.
All that was gone.
Could never happen.
Yeah, I know Grandma is in heaven with Grandpa, and they don’t care about this house anymore.
But it was his hope, his prayers, his wishes.
Unanswered.
Ivan wiped bitter tears on his cheap oxford shirt he had bought off the bargain rack at Matt’s thrift shop.
Poor! I’m always poor!
Why, Lord?
Just like that the words came to him: Rich in Christ.
Yeah, but I’m going to lose this house. You knew that, Lord! Why didn’t You stop it?
Ivan sat there for a while. Then slowly, his chest still constricting, he eased off the torn couch and placed the Bible carefully back on the table where it
had always belonged. But when he lifted his hands off the Bible, he felt a sharp pain inside his left wrist under the brace. That tendon again.
This too, Lord! Can things get any worse?
The funeral this morning was a blur. Truly, they should not have parted ways after the graveside ceremony because they could have kept each other company. But he didn’t want her to see him grieve. Besides, he had broken up with her and keeping her company could be misconstrued as an apology. He didn’t want to apologize. He wanted her to see him strong.
And he wanted her to see him back in form.
A facade?
Ivan knew he wasn’t as strong as he wanted to portray to Brinley. How could he when he couldn’t even pay off Grandma’s debts? If he’d been a concert violinist, he could have, but that career had been cut off before it ever began when Grandpa Otto had died, and Ivan had to come home to take care of Grandma. All his hopes of launching the rest of his life off of his Juilliard degree had been dashed.
He’d worked long and hard to build up his music studio, but to what end? St. Simon’s Island was a small place with very few students. If his music studio had been in Savannah or, better yet, Atlanta or even Boston, he might have more students and more income since they’d pay more in bigger cities. The music studio and his hourly wages at SISO were barely enough to pay off the debts. Grandma said she’d go with him to Atlanta if it meant he could get a better job, but Ivan knew she’d rather stay on the island.
And truth be told, he did too. He never liked big cities.
Then again, the first thing he had to do was get out of debt. He should sell this house. That would be the end of it. It’d been in the McMillan family since 1902. But some old things were never meant to be kept.
But.
Maybe if his wrist healed, he could be a concert violinist now that Grandma Yun was dead. Maybe he could earn enough to save the house. Maybe there was still time to keep the bank at bay if he worked out a payment plan.
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