Keep Me in Your Heart: Letting Go of Lisa / Saving Jessica / Telling Christina Goodbye

by Lurlene McDaniel

  She couldn’t console him. She had never cared for Tucker, but now he was the only person in the world who understood what she was going through. He was part of the situation—but was he responsible? Other people might say they understood, but how could they? Had they been in the car? Had they lain in the wet snow, or heard sirens coming for them, or seen their best friend covered with a sheet in a hospital?

  She and Tucker had survived. “How do you suppose God decides who lives and who dies?” she asked, not because she expected an answer, but simply because the question had popped into her mind. “Why did we live and Christina die? I’m not so special. She was very special.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “God didn’t play fair.”

  “I’m scared for Cody,” she said. “I’m scared he might die too.” She voiced her deepest fear, because she and Tucker were in this together and she had to tell someone what was eating her alive.

  “I talked to his mother. She was nice to me. I thought she might hate me, but she doesn’t,” Tucker said.

  Trisha couldn’t grant him absolution, no matter how many times or ways he asked her for it. “I’m scared about tonight too,” she said. “About the viewing and all.”

  “Do you think—” he stopped, then started again. “They’ll make her look pretty, won’t they? I mean, isn’t that their job? To make people look good even after an accident?”

  She hadn’t thought about it, but the idea that Christina might look mangled and battered made her stomach feel queasy. “I—I guess so.” Her friend was so pretty in life. Shouldn’t she look the same in death?

  “You’ll be there, won’t you?” He looked apprehensive.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Can I hang with you? I don’t want to be there by myself.”

  “But your parents will come, won’t they?” She didn’t think she could be responsible for Tucker and herself.

  “Sure. But so will hers.”

  His message hit her like stones. She had yet to face Christina’s parents. In her mind’s eye, she saw Christina’s pretty blond mother, Julia. She saw the years of afternoons she had spent at Christina’s house, with Julia more like a third girlfriend than a mother. Christina was her parents’ only child and they adored her. They were alone now. Devastated.

  Trisha said, “If you get there first, wait for us in the parking lot. If I get there first, come inside and find me.”

  He looked grateful. Tears shimmered in his eyes. “Thanks.”

  It struck her that in all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard him say that word to her. “It’s what Christina would have wanted,” she said. “She would want us to stick together.”

  Trisha heard the bell ring, glanced at the clock, and was shocked to see that it was almost noon. The morning was gone. The afternoon would be gone soon too. All that remained was the night—the long, dark night at the funeral home where Christina lay, waiting for family and friends to tell her goodbye.

  Fine, dry snow spit against the windshield of their van as Trisha and her family drove to the funeral home. The weatherman had predicted cold, clear, snowless skies for the next morning, the day of the funeral. Trisha sat tight-lipped during the trip, unable to get warm, even though the heater was going full blast.

  “The place looks packed,” her father said, turning the van into the parking lot. “I’ll let you three out, park, and meet you inside.”

  Pale yellow light spilled from overhead mercury lamps, giving the area an eerie, surrealistic glow. Trisha scanned the parking spaces for any sign of Tucker or his family but didn’t see them. She figured they hadn’t arrived yet. In the lobby, a black-suited man directed them to where a crowd had gathered near a doorway to one of the parlors. A sign read MISS CHRISTINA ECKLOE. People were signing their names in a book on a podium beside the door. Trisha had attended her grandmother’s funeral when she was nine, so she was familiar with viewings.

  She saw kids from school everywhere she looked. Most were gathered in groups and standing with each other. Many were crying, but some were whispering to each other, even smiling and waving to friends. Where was their respect? Had they come to mourn or to see and be seen? She wanted to brandish her crutches and hit them.

  She might have done it too, except that her father came along, took her elbow, and said, “Are you ready to go in?”

  She would never be ready. “Sure,” she lied.

  She walked between her parents, with Charlie close behind, into the dimly lit room. She saw Julia dressed in black, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore no makeup. “Trisha!” Julia pulled Trisha into her arms, weeping. “My heart’s broken, Trisha. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Over Julia’s shoulder, Trisha saw the front of the room, where a red velvet curtain hung and a gleaming pale blue casket sat on a black-draped table. Hundreds of flowers in vases, wreaths, baskets, and display panels flanked the table. More flowers lined both sides of the room. Trisha could hardly breathe in the warm perfumed air. It felt oppressive, suffocating.

  Julia pulled away. “Let me take you to see her,” she said.

  Panic raced down Trisha’s spine. “I—I don’t—”

  “She looks pretty,” Christina’s father, Nelson, said. “Don’t be alarmed.”

  Trisha’s mother stepped to her other side and laid her hand on Trisha’s shoulder. “We’ll be right here with you, honey.”

  Trembling, heart hammering, Trisha made her way to the front between the two mothers. The top portion of the casket was raised and locked into place. There, on a bed of creamy white satin, lay Christina. Her hair, long and sleek, fanned onto a satin pillow. Trisha was startled to see that she was dressed in the pale blue cashmere sweater set she’d bought on the Labor Day shopping trip to Chicago. A tiny gold cross on a chain twinkled on her neck, its small diamond flashing with cold, white fire. Her hands were crossed demurely at her waist and held a single white calla lilly. She looked for all the world like a princess gone to sleep, as if waiting for some magical prince to kiss her and wake her up.

  Trisha half expected Christina to sit up, look around the room, and ask why everyone was crying. She did not. For all her beauty Christina’s skin had a waxen quality. Her cheeks were colored an artificial shade of pink. The shade of lipstick was wrong too. The tips of her fingers looked unnatural, in spite of freshly painted nails. Trisha shuddered. There was no life in this imitation Christina, this cold body cradled inside the ornate casket. Trisha longed to hear someone say, “Will the real Christina Eckloe please stand up?” and for her friend to jump out from behind the curtain and yell, “Surprise!”

  “She looks beautiful, doesn’t she?” Julia said, sounding as if she believed it.

  “Lovely,” came the answer from Trisha’s mother.

  Trisha couldn’t utter a word. To her, there was nothing beautiful about death. Not one thing pretty about Christina in a coffin.

  “Touch her if you want,” Julia said, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s cheek.

  Trisha recoiled. She’d touched her grandmother’s lifeless body years before with the curiosity of a child and had been shocked by how cold her skin had felt. In life, Grandma had been warm and soft, and had smelled faintly of lilacs. Trisha didn’t want to touch this strange, icy skin of death. “No,” Trisha said in answer to Julia’s suggestion. “That’s okay.”

  She sensed her dad standing behind her. She glanced to the side and saw Charlie peering at her through watery eyes. In an uncommon flash of insight, she knew he was thinking, I’m glad this isn’t you.

  “I’ve seen enough,” she whispered, taking a step backward.

  The adults flanked her all the way to the back of the room. People converged on them, and soon both sets of parents were distracted. For Trisha, it was the perfect moment to slip out of the parlor and into the larger waiting area. Once there, she felt lost. If anything, it was filled with even more people. She wanted them all to go away. She wanted to ask, “Why are you here? She d
idn’t even know most of you.”

  Slowly, she made her way through the crowd, not finding Tucker and not sure where to go or what to do. She stopped in front of a large floral arrangement from the student body and faculty of the high school that was done up in the school’s colors. Red mums on a background of yellow petals spelled Christina’s name and the date she would have graduated. Emotion clogged Trisha’s throat.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Tucker said as he came up to her. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go in there to find you.”

  He wore a dark blue suit and looked more grown up, more responsible than when he was in his everyday school clothes.

  “I saw her, Tucker. She looks … okay.”

  “I don’t know if I can stand to look at her.”

  “I didn’t think I could either.”

  “You’re braver than I am—”

  His sentence broke off and his eyes widened. Trisha turned around to see Christina’s father hurtling toward them. He bellowed, “What are you doing here? You’re a killer! You killed my daughter! Get out!”

  Nine

  All the color drained from Tucker’s face.

  “I told you to leave. Get out before I throw you out!” Nelson Eckloe shouted.

  Trisha cowered, half expecting the man to shove her aside and strike Tucker.

  All at once, her father was by her side. He caught Nelson’s arm and forced him to take a step backward. “Stop it, Nelson. It won’t help.”

  “I don’t want him here. I don’t want Julia even to see him. He’s not welcome.”

  Tucker looked sick. Both his parents materialized on either side of him. “Now hold on,” Tucker’s father said. “You can’t throw us out. We have every right to be here.”

  “He killed our Christina.”

  Tucker tugged at his father. “Let’s go. I—I don’t want to cause trouble.”

  “You don’t have to leave, son.”

  “Yes, I do.” Tucker turned and headed straight for the door.

  Trisha stood stock-still in a lobby filled with onlookers grown motionless and quiet. Tucker’s father said, “It was an accident, Nelson. An accident. Tucker loved your daughter. You know that. They’d been together for years. He’d never have done anything to hurt her.”

  Christina’s father pressed his lips together into a fine, harsh line, spun on his heel, and walked away. He disappeared inside the parlor. People in the lobby began to talk among themselves.

  “He’s distraught,” Trisha’s mother said to Tucker’s parents. “I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said.”

  Tucker’s parents looked weary, as if they hadn’t slept in days. They left the building.

  “Can we please go?” Trisha asked her parents. “I need to go too.”

  They rode home in silence, none of them offering to discuss the events of the evening. Trisha thought a long time about what Tucker’s father had said: that Tucker wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Christina. It was partly true. Tucker didn’t harm her, but he’d hurt her many times. With words and attitude, he’d assailed her emotions, wounded her heart, and made her cry. Tucker’s love had sometimes been a burden for Christina, which was something only her closest friend knew.

  Trisha sighed. Parents knew very little about what went on inside their teenagers’ hearts and minds. Amazingly little.

  The funeral service was held in the huge Lutheran church downtown where Christina’s parents had been members all their lives. Trisha arrived early because she wanted some time alone with her thoughts and memories. The casket, already in place at the front of the church along with several of the more spectacular flower arrangements, was sealed for the service. A mantle of pale yellow roses was draped across it. Trisha plucked one perfect flower from the cascade. She would preserve it, keep it forever as a remembrance.

  At the insistence of Christina’s parents, she sat at the front of the church in the special pew reserved for family. Julia held her hand, sobbing intermittently. Trisha’s family sat behind them, and Trisha felt comforted, knowing they were within arm’s reach. The church filled for the service. Organ music washed the atmosphere in somber tones of grief. The minister paid tribute to Christina’s brief life. Through it all, Trisha felt almost detached, as if she were in some movie or a dream from which she would soon awaken. It was as if her brain couldn’t take it all in, nor could her soul absorb the quiet agony.

  The minister posed questions about why one so young should die; yet, for all his eloquence, he had no answers. He gestured to the flowers filling the sanctuary and said something about God picking the most beautiful flowers first. Trisha thought it was rather arbitrary of God to do so. What had Tucker said to her? God didn’t play fair. But then why should he? she thought. He was God, after all. He could do anything he wanted. And for reasons no one understood, he wanted Christina with him in heaven. Never mind the pain and anguish it caused to those left behind.

  When the service was over, when the tributes had been paid, the congregation stood and six members of the high school football team, acting as pallbearers, came forward and carried the casket down the long, carpeted aisle. The pallbearers wore sunglasses, but she saw tears streaking their faces below the bottoms of the rims.

  Just the summer before, she and Christina had attended a wedding in the same church. A cheerleader friend of theirs was getting married. On that day, the aisle had been strewn with rose petals, and the men in dark suits had been groomsmen. The bride, adorned in white, had all but glowed when she came down the aisle. Christina had leaned over and whispered, “This is just the way I want to get married. Tons of flowers, lots of people, and a dress to die for.”

  There would be no wedding for her now.

  The principal had given everyone who wanted to attend Christina’s funeral an excused absence from school for the morning. By the size of the funeral procession, Trisha figured the whole school had turned out. The townspeople had turned out en masse also. It had been many years since the small town had lost one of its own so tragically. “I didn’t realize she was so loved,” Julia said as they stood together in the cemetery watching car after car inch through the gates and down the long, winding road to the place where Christina would be laid to rest.

  Julia looked dazed and, without her husband to hold her up, might have fallen over. As for Trisha, she was glad she had crutches to lean on. Using them was slow going and the undersides of her arms ached from the constant pressure, but without them, she might not have made it to the side of the grave where the casket had been carried.

  Trisha shivered despite her heavy coat and gloves. Most of the previous week’s snow had melted in a fickle February thaw. Sunlight poured from the sky, but it offered no warmth for all its brightness. She could hardly bear the thought of going away and leaving Christina in this cold and lonely place with nothing but stone angels to watch over her.

  She wondered where Tucker was, glanced around, and saw him on the other side of the casket in a crowd of students. He wore sunglasses and a dark overcoat. If Christina’s father saw him, he didn’t let on. Trisha believed that Tucker had every right to be there. In spite of the accident, he’d been a part of Christina’s life for many years. She longed to have Cody there too and tried not to think of him in the hospital in a coma. She vowed to remember every detail of the day so that she could tell him about it when he woke up. If he woke up.

  The minister spoke again, read some Bible verses, then dismissed the crowd. Instead of leaving, the kids from school formed a single line, passed by the casket, and touched it. Some tossed a flower on top. Trisha felt a moment of panic. With only the rose from the mantle in her coat pocket, she had nothing to put on the casket. She felt a tug on her coat sleeve, looked down, and saw Charlie. He handed her a single white mum and stepped away. She took her place in line and tucked the flower into the mass already heaped on the casket. Tears blurred her vision. Until then, she’d been dry-eyed at the service, but this final farewell was almost more than she co
uld bear.

  “Come on, honey,” her mother said, leading her away from the others.

  “How can I leave her here, Mom? She was the best friend I ever had.”

  She went slowly back to the van, which was parked along the inner road in a long line of vehicles. She leaned against the door, looking back at the tent over the site where workmen would lower Christina’s casket into the ground once the crowds were gone.

  “Why don’t you get out of the cold?” her dad said. “It’s going to be a while before we can drive out of here. The crowd’s huge.”

  “Not yet,” Trisha said.

  Someone came up to her. “Trisha? You remember me? Harriet Kimble from the nursing home.”

  She looked into the nurse’s kind face. “I remember.”

  “I’m so sorry about Christina. This is a very sad day indeed. I read in the paper where you were hurt too. Are you doing better?”

  “I’m just sore and achy.”

  “I’m glad. When I read about the accident, I couldn’t believe it. She was just helping us out the day before, and then I read where she’d died.” Tears pooled in Mrs. Kimble’s soft brown eyes. “And then yesterday afternoon when the florist delivered all those flowers to the home—”

  “What flowers?”

  “Red carnations. Christina ordered them a week ago. Paid for them out of her own pocket, according to the florist. Fifty-three pretty red carnations, one for every patient in the place, for us to put on their breakfast trays this morning.”

  Trisha’s brain felt dull, her thoughts murky. “Why would she have done that?”

  Mrs. Kimble’s expression became surprised, then gentle. “Why, for Valentine’s Day, child. Did you forget that today’s Valentine’s Day? She wanted everyone to have a pretty flower to brighten their day. Wasn’t that just like her?”

  Trisha had totally lost track of time, of the days of the week. There was something about Valentine’s Day … something she should remember. And then all at once it came back to her: This was to have been the day Tucker asked Christina to marry him. This was to have been the day he offered her a ring, the day she might have decided to give up the scholarship to Vermont to stay in Mooresville and become his wife after graduation.