Paul helped Ronnie with his coat and tie. My brother managed the shirt and pants with no problem. He even polished his dress shoes with a rag from the kitchen and slicked his hair into place with a pocket comb. The tie vexed him, as it would me, but Paul was there wearing a gray suit with a red tie of his own. He stepped in front of Ronnie and expertly knotted it for him.
I opted for a simple black dress. It wasn’t too revealing. I didn’t want to look like I was hitting a cocktail party. It was Mom’s funeral, after all, and I was going to be doing a lot of talking and hugging. Grad school limited my budget, and I had bought the dress the spring before to attend a party at the provost’s house. The dress made me look good, but it didn’t reveal too much. I was five-five and thin like Mom. We both had narrow waists and small breasts. I didn’t work at staying thin—I just was thin. My grad school friends whose bodies had started to go to pot thanks to nights of drinking Mountain Dew and eating cheap fast food occasionally cursed me for it.
The previous two days had passed in a blur of phone calls and e-mails and paperwork. And the occasional break to stop and cry. The smallest thing could set me off. I might remember a scarf Mom once wore, or a time she made me a special meal when I was a child. Then the floodgates would open and I’d cry until I was empty. It made me feel better for a few moments, as if the tears needed to be purged from my body. But I never stopped feeling sad.
When I was coherent and calm, I dealt with the funeral home. As I suspected, Mom had made a lot of the decisions already, but there were still things for me to handle. The staff at the funeral home made it easy. They phrased all the questions to me as if I were a three-year-old child, which was exactly what I needed. They gave me choices, and I picked between two things. Graveside service or chapel? Graveside, I chose. This reading from Scripture or that one? That one. None of us was ever particularly religious, especially Mom. When it came to the afterlife, she simply shrugged and said, “Who knows what’s going to happen?”
Paul spent a lot of time with Ronnie while I tended to the death errands. I found myself only too happy to have an excuse to leave the house. I liked to tell myself it was because my mother died there, that that was why the place felt too uncomfortable for me to be in. But I knew the truth was something different. I feared being trapped there. I worried that my life would become that house, just as Mom had wanted. Before Mom’s death, I could tell myself I was leaving Dover again at the end of the academic year when my degree was finished. I could go on to get a doctorate or a job somewhere else. Anywhere, really. That was suddenly all in doubt.
My mother was explicit in her instructions to the funeral home. No viewing. She wanted a simple service at the small Presbyterian church she rarely attended. I pushed the funeral home to have the service as soon as possible. Mom died on Saturday night, and we were burying her on Tuesday morning. Paul had been spending the nights at the house with Ronnie, and I showed up on the day of the funeral so we could all go together. When I arrived, I found them putting the finishing touches on Ronnie’s clothes. It brought me a little comfort, seeing them together, knowing they were there with me.
“Looks good,” I said.
“We clean up pretty well,” Paul said.
Ronnie didn’t say a word or smile. He’d been subdued and morose over the past two days. He hadn’t said much about Mom. He hadn’t said much about anything. I worried about him. Unlike me, he seemed to be keeping a lot bottled up inside. I knew Paul would try to talk to him, but talk only did so much when it went one way.
Ronnie sat on his bed and picked up a pad of paper and a pencil. He liked to draw, and he drew even more in times of stress. He rarely let me see his drawings. With Ronnie occupied, Paul and I walked out to the living room.
“He seems pretty out of it,” I said.
“He’s trying.” Paul forced a smile. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “I keep dreaming about Mom. Nonsense dreams. She’s just there all the time, in my head.”
“I remember that happening to me when my dad died. Your grandpa. You never knew him, but he was quite a guy. Larger than life in a way. I just couldn’t believe the world continued to turn without him in it.” He placed his hands in his pockets and adopted a slightly businesslike stance. “You know,” he said, “if you want Ronnie to come and stay with me after today, he can. Or if you want me to stay here longer to help out with him and everything else.”
“I’m going to deal with the lawyer soon,” I said. “Do you know what I have to do?”
“I think you take the will to them, and they file it,” he said. “Who’s the executor?”
“Me,” I said.
“I don’t see that there’s a huge rush,” he said. “It’s only affecting the three of us. If you need to get back to your normal life, the will can wait.” He showed a genuine smile. “Let’s worry about it another day, kiddo. Ronnie’s doing fine.”
I disagreed, but I also wasn’t in any position to make demands. Paul knew Ronnie better than I did. He understood his moods. He had a real relationship with him, and I didn’t. Not anymore.
The phone started ringing.
“Has there been a lot of that?” I asked.
“Not too bad,” Paul said. “A few old friends, that kind of thing.”
I went to the kitchen and answered.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice on the other end. “Is this—? I was trying to reach Leslie Hampton’s house.”
“This is Leslie Hampton’s house,” I said. “This is her daughter.”
“Oh…”
There was a long pause. I thought I heard something on the other end of the line, a gasp or a cough. I couldn’t be sure. The pause went on so long I thought the other person had hung up.
“Hello?” I said.
I heard the sound of a deep breath. “I read something in the paper, a death notice. I just wanted to call to make sure it was really true.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, which didn’t surprise me. Even though Mom had few friends, I couldn’t know them all. And I obviously didn’t know a lot about her life, considering what Paul had told me about Ronnie the other night. But just having to tell someone else—even someone I didn’t know—brought a catch of emotion into my own throat. I fought back against the tears.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s true. My mother passed away Saturday night. It was unexpected.”
“Oh,” the woman said again, and that led to another long pause.
“Were you a friend of my mother’s?” I asked.
“I was just getting to know her,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I guess I should be saying that to you, shouldn’t I?”
“Thank you. The funeral service is this morning if you’re able to make it. It’s at First Presbyterian.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I live a little ways away, and I have my grandchildren here today.”
“I understand—”
But she hung up before the words were out of my mouth.
Chapter Six
The funeral was, indeed, small. Before the service Ronnie, Paul, and I stood in the back of the church and greeted the arriving mourners. There weren’t that many. Maybe forty total, including the three of us. Most of them were women my mom’s age, ladies she had known to some degree during the thirty years she’d lived in Dover. If I had ever met or seen any of them, it would have been years earlier, and as they approached me, shaking my hand and hugging me, it amazed me how much they had aged. Graying hair, deeper wrinkles. Funerals do make us think of our own mortality. How much time had flown by for me?