Chris comes to take his place beside Lola, and Mom beams at him. I fear she’s going to ask for an autograph or, worse, for him to act out one of her favorite scenes. Do the one where you have on the Superman costume and pretend to fly around the city.
Lola moves away from Mom and wraps herself around Chris. He covers her over with his cape and flies them out to car.
Mom touches my shoulder and follows them outside.
“Cass,” I call into the living room. “It’s time to go, honey.”
I listen for the sound of her getting up out of the chair, but there is nothing.
“Cass?”
Silence.
I step into the living room, expecting to find her ears plugged with music and her eyes stuck to the iPhone screen. Instead, she’s standing by the window looking into the backyard. I walk over to her, knowing I will get this wrong no matter what I say. Wishing it could be the one time I had my superhero cape on as well.
“We need to go,” I say, wanting to touch her, but fearing that little pull away that she does.
“Is Dad coming?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe. Do you want him to?”
She shrugs.
“Are you going to be ok?” She looks at me so directly that my throat burns.
“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking across the huge, one syllable word. “Are you?”
She shrugs again, and my heart breaks. Tears glaze over her eyes, and her lip trembles. There are too many layers of fear and sadness in her face. I know she can’t bear for me to hug her just now, so I smooth my hands down her hair, holding the ends of it between my fingers like the finest fabric.
She lowers her head and walks toward the front door.
Out in the driveway, we all stand around the Buick, trying to come up with an excuse not to get in. Mom finds one.
“I forgot the photo boards,” she says, looking relieved. Whether it was relief at having not driven away without them or at having found a way to stall a moment more, I’m not sure.
“Let me help you,” Chris says and follows Mom back inside.
Cassie gets in the backseat and closes the door.
We had Dad cremated. So since there’s no body for people to gawk at, Mom made these collages of when our family was perfect for people to view. Photos of vacations, holidays, graduations. She’s left off my wedding that is now defunct and any picture of Lola wearing braces on her legs. The only pictures of Ray are those little school pictures where he could be some kid with a bright future and no police record.
“Do you feel like we’re in a movie?” Lola asks.
“Yeah,” I say and wrap my arms around myself. “Not a good one, but yeah.”
“What do you think happens next?” she asks.
A slight breeze lifts the bitter scent of daffodils to my nose. The air is both cool departing and warmth approaching, and the sunny yellow of the flowers are a jaunty juxtaposition to our stern black skirts and heels.
“We go the stereotypical funeral,” I say, and Lola clutches my hand. “Our childhood pastor will give the eulogy. Everyone will be in black, except for Sue, who still wants to show off her new breasts, so she’ll be in something low cut and loud. There will be some woman who no one really knows, but who seems terribly upset, and we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon trying to decide if she was Aunt Millie’s half-sister’s daughter or that lady from Dad’s work who came to your show that time and tried to make out with Jack.”
Lola laughs. This is how we have always gotten through the tough times—by playing out our movie life.
“What then?” she says, and her face becomes like stone. “Will Ray come?”
Dad and Ray had never been able to sort out the details of a regular father-and-son arrangement. Ever since the night of Lola’s accident, Ray and Dad were at odds. Warring in a battle neither one of them seemed to know the rules to.
“Of course Ray’s there,” I say, although I can’t picture it. “And afterwards, we all come back home and eat too much green bean and fried onion chips casserole. We’ll avoid Aunt Rose like the plague. We’ll listen to people tell us the story of our lives as they know it. We’ll cry a few times and laugh a lot—you can’t talk about Dad and not laugh—and then we’ll fall asleep in the twin beds upstairs in our room because we won’t want to go home and start the rest of our lives just yet.”
A room that mom hasn’t changed since we left for college.
“Where will Ray sleep?” Lola asks.
Ray’s room had been turned into a mini-storage facility—medical equipment and furniture from our parents’ bedroom that took up too much space once they bought the hospital bed for Dad to have at the house.
Mom had kept Dad at home for as long as she could after the first stroke, but after a couple of scares and trips in the ambulance, her nerves were shot. For a while, she had someone come over to the house, but insurance wouldn’t pay for round-the-clock, in-home care, and Mom worried the most at night. She couldn’t let herself fall asleep for fear that something would happen and she would wake to find Dad sprawled on the floor with his head cracked open.
Dad seemed to dip into dementia not long after the stroke, and we never really got him back. Once, he woke in the night and went out into the yard. Mom found him the next morning sleeping by the mailbox. After a few close calls, it seemed there was nothing to do but place him in a facility that could care for him and watch him all the time.
There’s a sadness that takes over in a place
