Stop touching me, I will want to say as I yank free from their awful grip, and thanks for the casserole.
I think of Oliver, the nurse’s aide, and the comforting way he put his hands around mine, making me feel for just a moment that I wasn’t alone in my grief. When he pressed my hand between his own, it was different. I don’t think about kissing him. Much.
“Cassie,” I call against the closed bedroom door. “You about ready?”
Nothing. I knock.
“Cass?”
The door opens, and she’s dressed in the same dark blue dress she wore to her piano recital last month.
“Is this going to be one of those open casket things where you have to go gawk at the dead body?” she asks, hiding her fear behind her sarcasm.
“No,” I say.
I reach out to touch her arm, but she nudges past me and out into the living room before I can take hold.
“Where’s Dad’s chair?” she asks, standing in the empty spot that used to hold Jack’s leather club chair. She circles around like it’s there, but she just can’t see it.
“It’s with Dad,” I say, picturing a space with nothing in it but a leather club chair.
I know Jack has found another place to stay, but I haven’t been there. We haven’t gotten that far yet—the switching off weekends and holidays, the arguing about child support paid and time spent. I’m not ready for that.
“There won’t be anything to gawk at,” I say, changing the subject back to the funeral. “It’s just out of respect anyway. People want to say good-bye.”
“It’s creepy,” Cassie says and stomps the floor where Jack’s chair should be. “Grandpa’s dead. It’s a little late for good-bye. And what’s respectful about staring at a dead person—looking to see if they have nose hair?”
She’s right.
“Grandpa was cremated,” I say, realizing she didn’t know that. “There will just be the urn.”
“Oh,” she says, her body going limp. “That’s even worse.”
Cassie’s world has seen too many changes these last several months. She goes into the kitchen and pours the last of the dark roast into her “First Coffee, Then Your Inane Blather” mug. She’s fifteen, sipping java and wearing a wrap dress that dares you not to notice she has hips and that she’s morphing into that scary something between adult and child. She’s right in front of me, and she’s already gone. I don’t even know when it happened. How I lost her.
She was there just a little while ago, clinging to my leg, pulling on my shirttail, showing me her drawings, telling me a joke so funny she could barely speak around her own laughter, and then . . . then some years passed and maybe I was busy working or answering e-mail, talking on the phone, doing housework—I don’t know—but she grew up while I was looking the other way, and now she’s gone. It’s selfish of me, but I’m not ready to be unimportant to her. I’m not ready for her to go, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I’m not ready for this. For any of this.
I want her back. I want my father back. I want it all back—safety and hope and time. But there is no way back. There is only picking up the car keys, opening the door, and passing through into whatever comes after this.
When we get to parking deck, Jack’s spot is still empty. Cassie glances at the space where his car used to be, but doesn’t ask about it. She doesn’t tromp around it looking for a secret passageway back to better times. Instead she jabs her earbuds in and aims her face at her iPhone. I want to say something, have some meaningful conversation about loss and love and everything in between, but I don’t know how.
We emerge from the darkness of the garage into a day too bright and blue. My cell rings as I’m waiting at a stop sign. Lola doing fish face. I’m not afraid of this call. This is her coping mechanism call. She’s not lost in the jungle. She’s just sad. Same difference I guess.
“Hello,” I answer, knowing she’s called to ask me something that seems off subject, trivial. She does that when she’s about to fall apart.
“Hey, Sissy,” she says, and the use of that long-ago nickname makes the road blur.
“Are you with Mom?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the passing cars and the tears out of my voice.
I had busied myself so much with the tasks of losing someone that I hadn’t faced the task of saying good-bye. And especially not to Dad. I’m not sure I can do it.
“I’m in the driveway,” she says. “Do you remember that time I got locked in the bathroom at a gas station on the way to Disney World?”
“Sure.”
I don’t understand the diversion so far, but it means she’s not handling this well. I ease into traffic and turn toward our childhood home.
“I can remember how I got locked in, but how did I get out?” she asks.
“Ray knocked the door in,” I say, one hand gripping the phone, the other tight on the wheel—hurrying to Lola like we all do whenever she needs us.
Breaking that door was one of Ray’s first acts of reckless destruction after Lola’s accident.
“I remember Mom saying all these silly, fake curse words from outside the door,” Lola says. “Why did she do that?”
After Lola’s accident and Mom’s reawakening into a better, albeit unreal, version of herself, Mom tried not to say “undesirable words.” So she said things like “Well, fruity Froot Loops,” and “Tangle my angle.” I’m not sure what that replaced for her, but when she said it, we knew she was upset.
I remember how nervous Ray had gotten when the door wouldn’t open and even the station attendant couldn’t help. Dad was on the pay phone trying to reach a locksmith when Ray decided
