“What about you?”
“I said good-bye already. Go on.”
There was more behind the request than mere politeness; it was like she knew everything—how he felt now, scared and yet cold and distant from all this, and how the future would play out for him because of it. His mother was never one to be lightly ignored, so Kyle rose slowly from his seat, climbed past Uncle Max, and sheepishly made his way to the back of the line.
It moved slowly, in fits and starts. People fell in behind Kyle, talking in hushed voices, important-looking people who had taken time out of their important days to honor what was left in the urn. Kyle stared at a man in a dark suit standing by the table. His shoulders were broad, his hands clasped before him. Kyle wondered if he was Secret Service or something because of the way he stood, but why would the Secret Service be in this crappy little chapel? The woman in front of Kyle stepped to the left, and suddenly there it was.
Two huge bouquets of flowers surrounding a funeral urn, shiny and blue, its body covered in grasping green vines and tiny white flowers. The urn was shaped like a squat man about the size of a football, flaring wide in his shoulders with just a tiny head. When Kyle saw it there, he stepped back involuntarily, bumping into the man behind him.
The man gently pushed him forward. “Go ahead, son,” he said.
Kyle hesitated for a moment. He liked the warmth of the man’s hands on his shoulders, the reassuring sound of his voice. “Son,” he had called him. Yeah, right. Kyle took a step forward, reached out to touch the urn as his mother had instructed, when he was blocked by a large hand sticking out of a dark-suited arm.
“No touching,” said the man standing guard.
“My mom told me I should—”
“There’s no touching.”
“But,” said Kyle, “. . . but it’s—”
“Keep moving,” said the man, as if he were a cop at an accident. Keep moving, nothing to see here. Just some useless ashes in a stinking pot. The man directed Kyle to the left, where the line bent toward a row of people sitting in the front pew. Kyle stared at the man for a moment, looking for the earpiece he knew from television that all Secret Service agents wore. Not there, he wouldn’t go to jail if he ignored him, but it didn’t seem like the smartest idea just then, so he nodded and turned away.
Those in the line were giving their condolences, one by one, to the faces in the front pew, taking the proffered hands between their own and offering tender words of commiseration. I’m so sorry for your loss. We will all miss him. He was a terrific lawyer and a better person. So, so sorry. It made Kyle sad and angry both, all these people offering their condolences. Who were those getting comforted? Why weren’t they comforting him?
He didn’t want to be here anymore. On the far wall was a door, and he thought of escaping through it, out of the chapel, into the sunlight. Maybe if he started running now and kept on going, he could get to the police field in time for the game. Would they let him pitch in the suit? He was about to head right for the door when he noticed the red emergency-exit bar signaling an alarm if it was opened. He felt trapped, like a gray-suited badger in a cage, as he was pushed forward with the line.
A small, hunched man with slicked-back black hair and lidded eyes was standing at the head of the pew. He tilted his head at Kyle and attempted something like a kind smile. The man reached out a hand and took Kyle’s in his own, forcing an awkward shake. “Thank you for coming,” he said quietly.
“Sure,” said Kyle.
“And what would be your name, young man?”
“Kyle,” said Kyle, and suddenly the man’s kind smile became a little less kind. Still gripping Kyle’s hand, he turned his hunched back as best he could and craned his neck to peer behind him. Craned his neck until he spotted Kyle’s mother. Then he gestured to the man in the dark suit standing by the urn.
As the man started over, the hunched little man gripped Kyle’s hand even tighter and said in a soft, insistent voice, “You should go now, Kyle. The nice man over there will help you find your way out.”
“Who is this, Laszlo?” said a woman seated next to him, an older woman with large dark glasses and styled black hair. She spoke in some sort of accent. Like Pepé Le Pew.
“It’s just a boy,” said Laszlo.
“Give your hand to me, young man,” she said. Laszlo reluctantly let go of Kyle’s hand, and the woman took hold of it in one gentle hand as she patted it with the other. Her lips were bright red and puffy; she smelled of some ferocious perfume that was vaguely familiar. “Thank you so for coming today,” she said. “Did you perhaps know my husband?”
“Who is your husband?” said Kyle.
“How darling,” she said. “He does not know. My husband was Liam Byrne. It is his funeral service today.”
“Let the boy move on,” said Laszlo.
“He came to pay his respects,” said the woman. “He is a sweetlooking boy. Tell me, young man, did you know my husband?”
“Sort of,” said Kyle. “He was my father.”
It was her lips that he noticed most of all, the way the bright red slabs of flesh tensed and froze at his words before opening up in soft sympathy. He couldn’t take his eyes off them; they seemed unaccountably beautiful. He stared at the woman’s lips even as she lifted her hand and placed it on Kyle’s cheek.
“So you are the one,” she said. “My poor boy.”
Her hand felt warm as it lay against his flesh, and strangely consoling. He leaned his head into it, as if this were the touch of sympathy he had been waiting for since he heard the news.
“My poor, poor boy.”
Her flesh was so warm and comforting that it took him a moment to recognize the growing locus of pain beneath her touch for what it was. The old bat was pinching his cheek. And as she did, her lovely red lips tightened and twitched.
“You shouldn’t have to suffer through this.”
The pinching grew harder and the pain so severe he tried to step away, but her grip on his skin was excruciatingly tight and he was unable to pull free.
“A boy like you has no place here,” she said. “You can only pollute the remembrances. Laszlo, take this boy away, now, before this sad day becomes too painful for him to bear.”
OUTSIDE THE CHAPEL Uncle Max and the man called Laszlo were arguing loudly, or at least Uncle Max was arguing loudly, while Kyle’s mother leaned on the rear end of a parked car and smoked. There was a certain unsurprised quality to her smile now, as if this argument was exactly what she had expected when she showed up at the funeral and sent her only begotten son to the front of the chapel to touch the urn containing his father’s ashes.
“What are you going to do to take care of this family?” said Uncle