Absolute Brightness (21 page)

“Who
are
all these people?” Deirdre groaned as she tossed her lit cigarette behind a mausoleum and pulled a stick of gum from her slim black purse. She was wearing a simple black sheath and a pair of black patent leather flats. Her hair had long since grown in, but she continued to keep it short, which made her look like an obscure French movie star who refused to conform to the modes of conventional beauty. She knew as well as I did who everybody was, because like me, she'd known almost every single one of them since before she was born. I think she meant to ask, Why are so many people showing up at Leonard's funeral?

Deirdre didn't have much interest in the effect Leonard had on the women of Neptune, on Mom, on me, and, until her hair debacle, even on herself. She never spoke about the fact that he had somehow managed to transform her or how he had talked her into it. But staring at her as she stood there in the cemetery grass looking tall and elegant, refined and slightly detached, I could see that the end result wasn't such a bad thing after all. Leonard had lifted the burden from her of always being Neptune's golden girl, and with one decisive action, which included a barbershop, he had inched Deirdre toward a new life as an independent woman.

“Look,” Deirdre said, pointing with her chin to a bunch of young people who were gathered near the grave. “Sheesh. Talk about nerve. Who invited them?”

Ms. D and Mr. Buddy were standing head and shoulders above a group of kids from Drama Camp who buzzed around the gravesite like the extra townspeople from a production of
Spoon River
, except they weren't dead. And though Ms. D and Mr. Buddy were trying to get certain factions to stop practicing leg extensions in public and explaining to others why expressing grief with jazz hands was out of the question, it was a losing battle. For many of the Drama Camp kids, death was something that either happened onstage with a sword, stage blood, and plenty of choreography, or was discussed by the principal players after the fact in rhyming couplets. In both cases, the actor who played the part of the deceased could be seen later that day at the local Wendy's ordering fries and a frosty. Actual death was something else; its finality was a new experience. And like many new experiences for the people of the theater, it became a fresh opportunity to act.

“We're so sorry for your loss,” Mr. Buddy said to Deirdre and me. He had walked over when he noticed us staring in his direction.

“Thanks,” said Deirdre. She lit another cigarette and narrowed her eyes at him.

“You've probably heard,” he continued, unfazed by Deirdre's chill and smoke, “but we're going ahead with
The Tempest.
You know. For the kids. But we're dedicating the entire production to the memory of Leonard. I hope that's okay.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “That's so nice of you, Mr. Buddy. Really. We'll tell our mom. And maybe we'll come see it.”

Mr. Buddy looked down at his shoes. They were ecru canvas lace-ups with leather soles, and already soaked by the wet grass. They were probably ruined, but Mr. Buddy didn't seem to mind. He tapped the blades of wet grass with the tip of his soaked toe.

“Leonard was a very special boy.”

Deirdre and I couldn't say a word.

“Very talented,” he added.

Mr. Buddy glanced back behind him to see Ms. D struggling with the kids. She shot a pleading look at him.

“Without Leonard, I don't think Sal and I would've realized our love for each other.”

“Sal?” Deirdre wanted to know.

“Oh. Sorry. Ms. Deitmueller.”

Before we could catch ourselves, Deirdre and I let out a simultaneous burst of laughter. Deirdre and I had both had it in mind that Sal was a short, stocky Italian guy with a handlebar mustache and bushy eyebrows who had fallen madly in love with Mr. Buddy. The idea that Ms. D was Sal knocked us for a loop. But Mr. Buddy, trouper that he was, plowed on.

“I realize that this isn't exactly an ideal situation for an announcement of this kind, but I wanted you two to know. Ms. Deitmueller and I have decided to get married during Christmas break. And, well, if it hadn't been for Leonard … You see, he made us realize … I guess he saw it before we did. He was like that, wasn't he?”

Deirdre dropped her cigarette in the grass. By the time she'd lit another, Mr. Buddy had returned to Ms. D. We just stood there, trying to see this unlikely couple, as Leonard did, in a whole new light.

At that moment, Uncle Mike, Mom's brother and Leonard's legal guardian, arrived. He got out of a rental car and took in the scene before him. He had just flown in from Mexico, and he was leathery tan and wearing a peasant shirt and sandals. He had strong, dark features, the kind a child could draw from memory—thick, dark, wavy hair, a single line of eyebrow that sat heavily above his deep-set glinting eyes, and a strong Roman nose that sailed above his prominent chin. Mike was a man who met the world face-first, but his expression of perpetual surprise was proof that he was unprepared for almost anything that the world could dish out. Certainly he was unprepared for Leonard's funeral. It was as if he had been raised by bears and stumbled out of the wilderness to attend a civilized rite, the particulars of which he could only dimly recall. He was too large, too clumsy at the gravesite, and by the time he found us, he was already sobbing.

“Oh, Phoebe,” he said, sighing, burying his big head in my sky-blue tank top and hugging me hard around the waist. Even the scent of his cheap cologne couldn't disguise the smell of cattle and late-night Mexican campfires that had seeped into him over the past year.

“I know,” I said. Though, in fact, I didn't. Not quite.

Uncle Mike had dumped Leonard on our doorstep. He'd been foolish enough to assume that Leonard had enough spunk to get him through no matter where he was plunked down. I couldn't decide whether to feel sorry for Uncle Mike or be furious with him. In any case, everyone's sorrow at the gravesite seemed muted next to his.

My mother, who was usually so adept at consoling the grieving women at her salon whenever one of them lost a husband or a child or a beloved pet, had suddenly misplaced the knack. She left Mike to his tears and stood beside him, just staring out into the daylight as if she were waiting for a bus. Occasionally she moistened her lips with her applicator (a touch of Glossimer with high-beam gleam by Chanel), and sometimes she snuck a wad of tissue under the lens of her large round sunglasses. At one point in the ceremony, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Are you holding up okay?” Other than that, she showed no signs of life. She had clearly lost the ability, or desire, to connect with others.

After much discussion about what to wear to the funeral, Mom chose a bright-pink Ann Taylor A-line sleeveless dress and black patent leather pumps. Deirdre declared that it was a little upbeat, even for a daytime funeral. Mom didn't care what anybody thought and announced that she was going to wear it anyway. This, as it happened, was the ensemble that had been chosen for her by Leonard himself just days before he disappeared. He chose it, he told her at the time, to coincide with her new, younger, more “with it” look. Deirdre and I didn't say a word after that. We just looked at each other in the hallway as Mom finished dressing. We knew what was happening. Wearing that particular ensemble to Leonard's funeral was Mom's way of signaling to the crowd that she placed the good opinion of a ghost above that of any earthbound well-wisher standing by the grave. And Mom was no fool; she knew that she'd be a standout next to all that basic black.

And that is exactly what happened. When I saw her, a bright spot of hot pink in the cemetery, I thought,
This. This I will remember
.

“Thank you so much,” she said to people who paused to offer her their heartfelt sympathies.

“Yes, we are getting through it.”

“No, you've done so much already.”

Her affect, flat and semidetached, had a lot to do, I guessed, with the Zoloft, which had finally kicked in; but to strangers it must have appeared an act of sheer will on her part, a strategy devised by a grieving guardian to get through a tragic event, a brilliant performance.

My mother took the loss of Leonard pretty hard. From the very beginning, his presence in our household seemed to enlarge her own. He had a knack for making her into more of the woman she had always wanted to be. Leonard never rolled his eyes or talked back to her, he didn't turn away from her bad taste or make demands and give ultimatums the way Deirdre and I always did. Leonard had taken my mother seriously, he had appreciated her beauty business, he had laughed at her jokes and encouraged her emerging sense of purpose. Without Leonard, Mom was without her biggest cheerleader, and so she reverted to her old accustomed self, the self that simply smiled in the face of adversity, the self that didn't want to change.

But it wasn't only Leonard's death that had hit my mother so hard and broken her heart; it was as if all her other losses over the past few years had been suddenly stirred up by this single incident and she was feeling all the hurt at once. Her divorce from Dad, Deirdre's depression and withdrawal, all the failed hopes and disappointments she had somehow endured and survived. Leonard's death tore into everything, until she was now a person who, despite her best efforts, had been irrevocably changed by events beyond her control.

A hard, heavy rain had fallen during the night, and the air was clear and clean, the sky unbearably blue. The grass up and down the sloping hills of the Park was soggy, and the ground shimmered in the bright morning sunlight like green Christmas foil. As we stood there, the soles of many shoes got soaked straight through; my flip-flops squished beneath me, some pumps were ruined. But no one mentioned the wet ground or complained of its effect. This was just one of the inconveniences that the living had to endure, and under the circumstances, we simply stood our ground and faced forward.

Father Jimbo had agreed to officiate at the grave. A few days before, he'd told us in his confessional voice that until recently the Catholic Church considered cremation an unsanctified form of burial but then assured us that he didn't expect much of a problem. And maybe we would like to make a “donation” to the church in Leonard's name. Mom forked over a hundred bucks, and sure enough on the day of the funeral Father Jimbo showed up in his black Lexus with all the appropriate prayers, paraphernalia, and expressions for bereavement and burial.

Father Jimbo was Ethiopian. He had smooth dark skin that shone like an espresso bean. His features were narrow and elegant, and his limbs were thin and long. Because he jogged ten miles every morning, he moved with the grace of a professional athlete. Father Jimbo's real name was Ngimo, but he soon discovered that Ngimo was a name as difficult for Neptunians to pronounce as it was for them to remember. So he finally settled on Jimbo.

Right away Father Jimbo distinguished himself in Neptune by doing the kind of outreach that is more customary for missionaries and Episcopalians. He also had a way of including personal details of his own life into his homilies, a practice that endeared him to the community while annoying his superiors. For example, he once told us from his pulpit that tending a flock of predominantly white parishioners in a place called Neptune, New Jersey, was not exactly what he would have chosen for himself. But after a serious shortage of Americans willing to join the priesthood and fill the US parishes, the higher-ups decided to go looking elsewhere for priests. He paused to smile and then admitted to us that as a boy growing up in Africa, he never would have dreamed of such a thing. Not in a million years. “Beyond the beyond,” he called Neptune. And then in the next breath he told us that if ever there was proof of God's wicked sense of humor, his fate was surely it.

“Over one hundred years ago the church was literally beating the Ethiopian bushes to find converts,” he informed us with half his mouth turned up into a smile. “And now they have their pick of them, turning them into proper priests like me, sending us to places like New Jersey.”

*   *   *

“Are we all here?” he asked the crowd in his singsong African cadence. When there were no objections, he began reading some prayers from his book and making elaborate hand motions over the grave, all of which added an air of solemnity and occasion to the gathering.

Hanging back at the edge of the crowd, my father and Chrissie Bettinger stood like life-size cardboard cutouts of their better selves. No longer a part of the family, my father had assumed the role of bystander. He made no attempt to offer us his personal condolences. His face was slightly twisted and full of grief. Once, when I dared to look directly into his eyes, silently challenging him to exist, he turned away. But in that split second before he did, I think I saw in his eyes a yearning to be nearer to the grave, closer to us, one of the grieving principals. Sorry, pal. No go. You're dead. Chrissie, on the other hand, just looked intense and nervous and perhaps slightly dazed due to the heat.

I looked over the tops of all the heads and hairdos hoping to catch a glimpse of Travis. I half expected him to be loitering out beyond the gathering, smoking a cigarette, and leaning against a gravestone like some punk. It was only when I didn't see him that I realized that my expectation had been more than merely half.

I did see my ex–best friend, Electra, though. I recognized her gnarly dreadlocks, which were peeking up above a few of the more traditional hairdos. I shifted position and lifted myself on my toes. She was looking solemn and standing with her parents. Her brother, Larry, was there, too. When Electra spotted me, she lifted her tiny round hand and gave me one of our old secret hand waves. That was when it hit me: We weren't friends anymore. Not really. She was my past. How had that happened? And how had she and her whole family ended up on the periphery of the moment?