Anthony had crawled out before, but now there was no way. He couldn’t do it. What he could do was dig and dig he had for the past several days since Saturday when the Sergeant told him there had been an accident and Anthony sped to the hospital and was asked to identify the remains of his only daughter.
Her ravaged face hadn’t made him ill, but it had made him cry with torrential power. He had never experienced such tears before, tears that wracked the whole body and left him unable to move. On his knees before her corpse, Anthony wept and wept until a psychologist at the hospital brought him to her office. She spoke to him for over an hour, but he didn’t hear anything she said. He heard only his own screaming mind as it replayed for him over and over Delaney’s mutilated face. The clumps of blood in her hair reminded him of dried jelly or red tar.
The funeral director insisted on a closed casket, but through tears that never wanted to stop, Anthony handed the man an 8x10 school photograph, picture wobbling, and told the director he wanted him to make his daughter beautiful again. After admiring the picture (Delaney with a full-face smile as if she was about to burst out laughing, set before a holographic-like background of swirling reds and blues), the man’s thin eyebrows joining over his nose, he finally told Anthony that his employees were master craftsmen and would do their best, though he could promise no miracles. Anthony laughed out loud at that. Miracles? “There’s no such thing,” he said.
The director’s craftsmen had done a respectable job but there had been no miracles created between last Saturday and today. The artisan had reconstructed Delaney’s face. With what resembled clay, the person whose job it was to rebuild the dead gave Delaney the flesh that had been torn from her face, and replaced her wonderful, warm smile with a pale imitation that almost made her look upset, perhaps flustered, or even downright crazy. Based on the reactions of the mourners during the first showing at the wake, the funeral director had been right about the closed casket.
Upon his first viewing, Anthony wept not from pain but joy. Whoever had done the work had practically brought his daughter back to life. But then the skin turned to clay and the smile collapsed into a near frown. Chloe, doped-up and near to passing out at any point, chuckled. It was the type of laugh a drunk utters after one too many drinks when the bartender suggests maybe driving home is a bad idea. Better yet, it was the kind of offhanded laugh someone offered to a particularly unfunny joke. You think that’s my daughter, her chuckle said, well, you must be on crack then.
Chloe turned away from her only daughter and collapsed into one of the cushioned armchairs the funeral director had put out for each of the surviving family members. Her sister Stephanie went to her side and cooed empty assurances that everything would be okay, everything would work out, everything happened for a reason.
Only Delaney’s hair was the same as when she lived. Someone had spent a while cleaning and styling her hair to resemble the do she had in her school photo. That hair style had cost almost ninety dollars, but it had made her smile so large because she had been so damn pretty. Now, however, the hairstyle looked overdone, as if she had gotten too primped up for her own funeral.
Even now, as the second showing began and people entered the room of chairs and depressing recorded organ music, Stephanie was sitting next to Chloe, rubbing her hand and repeating the mantra: Everything will be okay. Everything happens for a reason.
Had he any energy, Anthony would have spun on her and shouted that her little empty phrases amounted to nothing but self-assuring bullshit. Nothing happened for a reason. God had no plan. What god, after all, would kill a wonderful young woman like Delaney? What god would deem it acceptable for someone to drop a bowling ball onto her car and have her entire face crushed? Everything would not be okay, not tomorrow, not next week, not fucking ever.
People didn’t talk at wakes; they whispered. For the first viewing, Anthony had stood at the doorway to greet whoever might show up, but that had grown quickly tiring. It wasn’t the standing or even the incessant hugging and responses of thanks for coming that tired him out, but it was the realization that after he hugged and thanked these people they were going to step up to Delaney’s open casket, maybe use the kneeler, and offer some silent words or prayers. Every person who entered was going to get a chance to be witness to the corpse that used to be a fun-loving, beautiful teenage girl. Anthony felt the emotions of each person as he or she passed from him to the casket and the weight of those emotions finally sent him to one of the cushioned armchairs, which placed him front row center for the show in which the main character simply lay still, not breathing, dead.
This time around, Anthony would greet the people after they offered that mental prayer or grace as they proceeded toward the back of the room to sit in folding chairs and wait to see if this would be one of those wakes where a priest said a prayer and gave a brief eulogy. Anthony had told Reverend Slade not to say anything at the wake, told him, in fact, not to come. There would be enough religious ceremony to satisfy God on Thursday morning when Delaney’s casket rolled down the aisle Chloe had walked down once as an unmarried woman and then back out again, her arm wrapped around his.
Tyler, who cried long and hard during the first viewing, sat next to him. He leaned into Anthony’s ear. “You mind if I go outside for a little while?” He tugged on his tie, unable to breathe, perhaps.
Anthony nodded. He was watching a plump woman in black pants and black blazer use the edge of the coffin as support to stand up from the kneeler. What would happen if her weight was too much and the coffin tipped off its stand? How would people react? Chloe might not even notice.
Finally up, and without overturning the coffin, the plump woman turned to face Anthony. It was Molly Feingold from Human Resources. Red splotches tinged her cheeks, whether from badly applied makeup or from the physical excursion needed to stand was unclear. She smiled one of those half smiles that were meant to convey happiness at seeing one person while simultaneously acknowledging that something really terrible had recently happened to that same person. Some people were masters at this expression; Molly Feingold was not.
She started in with the standard sorry for your loss, it’s just so tragic and horrible and I’m sorry rigmarole, to which he nodded slowly, taking her chubby, cold hand and thanking her, and then she started talking about work and how busy it has been what with the bad economy and everything and how bad she felt for some people who were barely scraping by, how hard it must be. He nodded almost continuously like one of those bobble heads some people kept on their desk at work. Anthony was the Grieving Parent Bobble Head: It keeps bobbing through all your pointless gestures of sympathy, just like a real grieving parent would.
After she walked past him, Anthony noticed that both Tyler and Brendan were gone. Tyler had probably taken his brother outside with him for some air. That was a good idea. He ought to have Stephanie drag Chloe outside, if, that was, she could carry her. Chloe had fallen asleep almost immediately after sitting down. No chuckles this time, just an occasional snore.
The air in here had turned stale since the first showing three hours ago. It tasted like dry cereal. If there were windows, it was hard to tell because of the dark-colored drapes hanging everywhere on the walls. There might be no ventilation in here at all. It didn’t matter, anyway, right, because the only person staying in the room for a long time was already dead. Maybe the air wasn’t stale; maybe it was the odor of Delaney’s body infiltrating the air. Even embalmed and degutted or whatever the hell was done to dead people, there would still have to be some kind of aroma. There was no way to get rid of all traces. Her molded face might be disintegrated in minute pieces, floating off her face. Everyone could be breathing her in without realizing.