by Jen Violi
“Got it.”
On Good Friday evening, Mom and Linnie and I go to the Stations of the Cross at St. Camillus. Inside the dark church I smell incense and the polish they use on the wooden pews. Tonight’s service doesn’t require talking to anyone on the way in or out, and I like the excuse to be somber.
Father Dean walks from station to station, stopping in front of each statue of Jesus on his way to being crucified. At the station where Jesus carries his cross and Veronica steps out of the crowd to wipe the sweat and blood off his face, I think of Mom wiping Dad’s face with a cool washcloth as he lay on the hospital bed she had set up for him in their room. Supposedly, Veronica’s cloth somehow carried the imprint of Jesus’ face after that. With a Kleenex from my pocket, I wipe the tears from my own cheek. I look down at it and search for the imprint of my face. All I see are dark spots in the tissue. One looks like a rabbit, but I can’t be sure.
Jesus Christ, 33
Cause of Death: Suffocation and heart failure due to crucifixion
Surviving Immediate Family:
Mother: Mary of Nazareth
Body covered with spices and oils
Clothing: Tunic
Entombment: Linen wrappings, cave covered by large stone
Special Guests in Attendance: Angel of the Lord
Funeral Sponsor: Rich Jewish leader, Joseph of Arimathea
Funeral Incidents:
Body disappears from sealed tomb
Jesus comes back from the dead
Dumbest thing someone says trying to be comforting, which in this case turns out to be true: “There is no need for you to be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said he would.”—Angel of the Lord, postdescending from heaven and violent earthquake, sitting calmly on tombstone he rolled away, and scarin the crap out of Jesus’ lady friends.
seven
Late Holy Saturday morning, the kitchen smells like vinegar and rain when I tell Mom I need to go out. She turns from the kitchen sink, where she’s filling the teakettle with water. “But we’re dyeing Easter eggs.”
“I don’t have to this year.” I tighten the straps on my backpack and hope I sound convincing so I can make a quick escape.
Mom looks sad, but the frown changes course on her face and somehow flips into a raised eyebrow. “Where do you have to go that’s so important?”
I do some speed-fishing in my brain for a good answer that isn’t the truth, which is that I’m going to Brighton Brothers to tell them I turned in my application. “I have to look for some books. For that class at the community center.”
It seems I caught a winner, because Mom smiles a little. She sighs. “Just try to be back soon so you can do at least one with me and Linnie, okay?”
“Okay.”
At Brighton Brothers, when I walk in and say hello, no one answers. I call a little louder, and still nothing.
The doors to Viewing Room One are closed, but it doesn’t seem like any visitors are here. I knock softly and slide open one side of the pocket doors, just enough of a crack to stick my head through.
In front of a black coffin that looks like it’s right out of a Dracula movie stands a muscly man in a lab coat and hiking boots—Joe Brighton. He turns and grins at me.
“Hey, it’s my pal, Donna P.” He’s wearing rubber gloves and is holding a triangular sponge. “My brother told me you stopped by.”
“The other Mr. Brighton.”
“The Evil Mr. Brighton.” He stops smiling and nods with exaggerated slowness, but there’s a little sparkle in his eyes.
“So I call you the Good Mr. Brighton?”
“How ’bout you call me JB instead?”
“Okay.” JB is absolutely the tan body builder, mustache-free version of the dentist head, which I didn’t know was possible until now. “I turned in my application at CCMS.”
“Good for you.” He sets his sponge down on a little cart next to the coffin, which I notice has silver spirals painted on the side. “Want your first unofficial class in restorative arts? I am, after all, the master.” I remember the Restorative Arts Lab at Chapman and think of the tattooed teacher. I wonder if Jason and JB know each other.
I hesitate to answer him, although I’m straining my neck to see the coffin behind him, which I’m not totally convinced is vampire-free. “Sure.”
“You picked a doozy of a day to stop by, so you’re in luck.” He rifles through what looks like the huge, multitiered makeup cases Father Bill bought for the Players last year, and pulls out a small tube. Turning back to the coffin, he says, “Shut the door behind you, would you? Despite what you might think, we don’t usually like people wandering in.”
I step into the room and slide the door shut. “Sorry.”
“You’re an exception, so it’s okay. You’re in training.”
“Not yet. I haven’t even been accepted.” I notice folding chairs lined up on either side of the room, and up closer to JB and the coffin stand two shoulder-height flower arrangements bursting with black roses.
“You’re in training as soon as you start to learn something. Wanna learn something?”
I step up next to JB. “Yes.”
“Well, there you are.”
And holy crap, here I am. In front of us is not what I expected at all. Inside the coffin, which JB tells me is a toe-pincher, tapered at the end like they made in the old days, lies a woman with black curly hair piled high, tendrils dropping delicately over her white ears, contrasting with her shockingly white skin and a mouth gaping wide open.
“No, this isn’t how we usually do it,” JB says. Apparently this woman, Miranda Nethers, had some unusual requests for her viewing, the basics of which were getting made up to look like the undead. JB looks a lot like B does when he’s figuring out a new mechanical gadget—thoroughly delighted.
JB calls his makeup case the Titan, short for the Titan 2000, apparently the fanciest, most complete mortuary makeup kit on the market, equipped to meet the needs of the most versatile artist. From one of the Titan’s lower tiers, JB pulls out something that doesn’t look like makeup, and I realize it’s a tube of superglue. After applying two smooth lines of superglue on Miranda’s top and bottom lips, JB seals her mouth. Suddenly I think of Patty and wonder if this trick could work on live people.
JB explains that he applied an initial coat of white foundation to help him get focused, although he knew he’d need another coat. He points out where he’s already smudged it in a few places when he closed Miranda’s mouth. “Makeup doesn’t mix the same with a dead person’s skin. There’s no heat or oil to help it sink in like it does on a live person. So it’s easy to mess up, but also easy to fix.”
Which he does in no time, sweeping graceful strokes of a blend of white and beige cosmetic on her cheeks and chin and forehead. He paints her lips with a dark red that’s almost brown, and I’ve got to hand it to him—she looks pretty undead to me. Finally he pulls out an atomizer and squeezes three puffs of powder over her face, then pulls off the plastic bib covering her neck and chest, revealing a black high-collared dress with lace at the throat.
“Scary.”
“Really?” he asks, and then nods. “Thank you. I thought so too.” He pulls a bottle of deep red nail polish from the Titan. “Now for the finishing touches.”
As I watch JB delicately paint each of Miranda’s fingernails, I notice how tense my whole body feels—not like I’m stressed out, but like I’m some kind of animal ready to pounce, all systems go. I can’t remember the last time I paid this close attention to anything. And it feels amazing.
On Easter, as usual, Mom has the table set beautifully. A big platter of sliced ham with pineapple rings around it sits in the center. Steam drifts up from the dish of scalloped potatoes and the plate of bakery rolls. And Mom put almond slivers in the green beans, which I wish she did all the time since they taste so good that way. I’m sitting next to Linnie, then B, then Gwen, then Mom on the other
side of me.
After we say grace and pass the food around the table, B stands up, holding his wineglass. The sloshing Merlot looks just like the color JB used on Miranda’s lips yesterday, and I almost say so, but luckily B starts talking first.
“We have an announcement to make.” He smiles at Gwen, and I realize her eyes are sparkling and full. “Gwen and I are getting married.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom says, dropping her fork. “Congratulations. To both of you.” She stands up and hugs B.
For a second I feel something drop in my stomach, and I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. Then everyone’s up hugging each other, and Gwen is squealing a lot. Surprisingly, Mom is too. Gwen wears the same sweet department-store perfume that Patty does, which makes the hug a little stifling, and I notice that with her heels on, she’s still a few inches shorter than me.
When we sit back down, Mom says, “I’m so excited, I’m not sure I can eat.”
“I know, right?” Gwen says, although usually she doesn’t eat, at least not like the rest of us. For instance, right now her plate is full of green beans, a pineapple ring, and a tiny slice of ham. Gwen likes to avoid fats, and our Easter dinner clearly falls outside the Weight Watchers’ guidelines.
From what B has told me, Gwen’s not big on conventional cooking. I don’t know that she actually cooks at all. Mostly she eats sprouts and dry foods or things like kelp and carrots. She often won’t eat anything at our house. For instance, last Fourth of July, she asked Mom, “How much butter is in these cookies?”
“I’m sorry?” Mom said.
“The proportion,” Gwen said. “You know, the percentage.”
Without looking up, Mom peeled back the plastic wrap from a plate full of snickerdoodles. “I know what proportion means.”
“Of course,” Gwen said.
“And I have no idea.” Mom held up a cookie. Exhibit A. “They’re cookies. Cookies have butter in them. That’s what makes them good.” Any normal person would have dropped it, but Gwen continued. “Actually, you could make them with yogurt.”
Nobody asked you, Gwen, I thought.
“That’s an interesting idea.” This was Mom’s way of saying hell would freeze over, thaw, and refreeze before she’d make snickerdoodles with yogurt instead of butter. Mom is a diplomat.
I’m not. “Yogurt’s gross,” I said. Then I made Gwen an abominably strong gin and tonic—a tactic I no longer use because of the repercussions. When Gwen drinks too much, at least as far as I’ve seen at family functions, she starts to dance. Or she likes to have sing-alongs. So that Fourth of July, I had to mine my musical depths.
“Let’s have a sing-along,” Gwen said.
“Yes, please,” Mom said. “Donna, why don’t you play something?” And I found myself at the piano with Gwen breathing a gin-and-flat-noted version of “Send in the Clowns” behind me. The clowns never came. But who knows? Maybe they’ll show up for the wedding.
Gwen says, “Mrs. Parisi, I hope you’ll help me make plans. Mom and Dad aren’t so into the wedding thing.”
When she says this, I feel a wave of sympathy for her. I remember B telling me that Gwen is really different from her parents. She’s about to graduate with a degree in exercise science, and both of them are overweight couch potatoes. And they don’t actually seem to take an interest in anything she does. I wonder if she’s even told them she’s getting married. As much as I don’t think Mom gets me, I’ve never doubted that she takes an interest in my life.
Mom reaches over and squeezes Gwen’s hand. “Of course. Whatever you need. I’ll be happy to.”
I decide maybe Gwen could use a little extra niceness. “Me too. I can help.”
B looks at me and smiles. “Thanks, Donder.”
Linnie asks, “Do I have to wear a dumb dress?”
“I’m sure I can arrange that, even before the wedding. I’ve got closets full of them.” Mom stares at Linnie. “Any other ideas of what you could say at this moment?”
Linnie slowly smashes one of the potato slices on her plate. “Congratulations.”
I can’t say I’m feeling a lot more enthusiastic, realizing that helping Gwen may very well involve a whole array of things I’d call dumb, dresses notwithstanding.
“So,” Mom says, leaning into the table, “when will the wedding be?”
“Just after Christmas,” Gwen says. “It will be a New Year’s extravaganza. So there will be lots of things for you to glitter, Donna!”
My earlier sympathy is waning.
“And helping someone else plan her wedding can always give you pointers for your own.” Gwen grins and winks at me. I have the sudden urge to shrink myself to the size of the saltshaker, climb onto one of the pineapple rings, press a button, and shoot myself off into space. Since I can’t do that, heat rises almost instantly to my neck and cheeks.
“She’s right,” Mom says. “Maybe you’ll fall in love with someone at UD too.”
And even though a little part of me tells me to take a bite of my roll and let the conversation flow to other places, the words come out of my mouth. “Or at CCMS.”
Mom glares at me.
“Because I’ll probably go there,” I say a little louder.
“I’ve never heard of CCMS,” B says.
“They teach mortuary science,” I say.
“You want to be a mortician?” B says mortician in the same way I think he might say pole dancer.
“Yes. I do.” I fold my arms across my chest, which I hope B knows is my way of saying, See how interesting I am? If you’d been paying attention to me at all, you might have noticed earlier.
“Metal,” Linnie says, like she might, in fact, realize how interesting I am.
Gwen glances around the table, at B’s open mouth, at Linnie smashing her scalloped potatoes, at Mom’s frown. She turns to me. “So when do you start school?”
“She hasn’t been accepted yet,” Mom says, like she’s forcefully shutting a door. “Okay, someone pass me the potatoes before I pass out.” She takes the bowl from Gwen. “Now, Brendan, have you thought about groomsmen?”
Yesterday JB said I’m already in training, and it felt so good. Today it feels like training’s about as close as Guam. I take a big drink of water and wish I could get through a meal with Mom without active combat.
Gwen gets excited about groomsmen and a follow-up question from Mom about cake, so the conversation leaps from funerals to Funfetti, about which I have nothing to say.
eight
I tell Liz about B and Gwen when she drops me off after school on Monday. “A New Year’s wedding will be fun. You can get all fancy.” She puts her car in park in our driveway.
“I guess.”
“Speaking of fancy, are you planning on going to prom, D?”
“Is that my new nickname?”
“I guess. Does it work?”
“Yeah.” No one but my family had given me a nickname—that one being shared with a reindeer—so I feel like anything else is an improvement. “And no prom for me.”
“Then me and you have a date to do something else fun.”
“No one asked you either?” I pull my backpack up onto my lap.
“Well, no. I just don’t want to go.” Liz, I’ve discovered, seems to always have lots of choices about everything. I wonder what that’s like.
Two weeks later, Mom goes to her first yoga class at the community center, and she comes home with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. Stray hair from her ponytail has curled around her face, and it occurs to me how pretty she is.
“So how was it?”
“Really wonderful,” she says. “And our instructor is part Japanese and part Cherokee; he’s really interesting.” She looks at the kitchen table, covered with the books I have spread out for my last two finals tomorrow. “How’s studying?”
“Okay. I need another hour or so, and then I’ll head to bed.”
Mom looks at me and shakes her head. “I can’t believe my baby is graduating in
just a few weeks. Both of my babies. It seems like you both just started.”
B’s and my graduations are a week apart, and it does seem like only yesterday that he started UD and I started Woodmont. That life turned upside down and it felt like I lost both Dad and B in the span of one week. That I started a new school and have never felt at home there.
Mom’s eyes fill with tears, and I know she’s remembering too. “Oh, life goes on, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” I say, feeling like I’m lying, but not wanting to upset Mom.
She wipes at her eyes and puts her game face back on. “Have you heard from Chapman yet?”
“Not yet.” I feel my stomach getting tight, and I steady myself for another fight.
Instead, Mom says, “At yoga tonight, we had to take deep breaths. Maybe that would help you too. Just fill up your belly first, though. I never knew I wasn’t breathing deeply before, but I wasn’t.”
“Okay.” I watch my mother show me how to take a deep breath, which seems utterly out of place in the kitchen, where she concocts casseroles and does cross-stitch.
When she goes to take a shower, I do my best to concentrate on my books, although I’m definitely wondering if Mom was secretly replaced by an alien robot, the deep-breathing, New Age kind.
Although I guess I can’t judge. I am going to a rituals class with Liz tomorrow, so maybe I’m a New Age robot too.
When Liz picks me up the next night, and I see Patty in the front seat of the Jeep, I feel ill.
“Hey there,” Liz says slowly. “Patty decided she wanted to take the class too.”
“Great,” I force myself to say, and hope I don’t sound as devastated as I feel. What was going to be my really fun thing with Liz has now become something else.
“Hop in,” Patty says, like she was the one who had the idea in the first place.
“Okay,” I say.
Liz turns to the backseat and smiles at me, and it looks like she’d like to say more, like she’s got an explanation, and that at least makes me feel a little better.