Putting Makeup on Dead People (5 page)

“It’s actually next week,” Mom says. “Saturday, remember?”

Aunt Irene swats Uncle Lou again. “Yeah, remember you said you’re taking her to lunch on Sunday? Jesus, Lou, get your head out of your ass.”

“Why don’t you get your head out of my ass?”

Aunt Irene pulls a pack of menthols out of her purse. “I’m going outside.”

“Can I come with you, Aunt Irene?” Linnie asks. Aunt Irene doesn’t respond, but Linnie follows anyway.

“Good riddance,” Uncle Lou says, and rolls his sharp blue eyes. Dad used to say how some Dago ended up with blue eyes was beyond him. Uncle Lou would respond, “Hey, I’m just like Sinatra,” and sing “My Way” until a vein popped out of the edge of his round bald scalp and zigzagged like a lightning bolt down his forehead. Our very own geriatric Harry Potter.

Mom, who looks somehow different than she did earlier, squeezes my hand, and I realize what’s different: her curly hair is now piled on top of her head, secured, interestingly enough, with two pencils. She and Liz look like twins.

I look from Liz to Mom. “What happened to your heads?”

“Liz did mine at intermission,” Mom says. “Our hair texture is the same.” They share a look and smile.

“What do you think?” Liz asks.

I am disturbed, but I have to admit that it looks good—on both of them. “It works.”

Liz smiles. “And you were great.”

“You don’t have to lie. It was kind of ridiculous.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous, but it’s fun,” Liz says. “And I think it’s really brave.”

I decide I’d like to have Liz follow me around everywhere.

Once we round up Aunt Irene and Linnie and B, we all go for ice cream, and Liz comes with us. Of course Aunt Irene and Uncle Lou like her just as much as everyone else. After Liz drives away, when we’re all saying good-bye in the parking lot of the Tasty Twist, Aunt Irene says, “That girl’s a real spitfire.”

I laugh. “Does that mean she’s like a dragon?”

“I suppose that’s one way to put it.” Aunt Irene often looks at me like Mom does, like I’m speaking another language that sounds like English, but isn’t quite discern-able. And at moments like these, I wonder if I should just stop talking entirely.

For a second, I get a little jealous. I don’t seem to make anyone light up the way Liz does. I’ve known all these people for years: shouldn’t I have figured out how to do that by now? Watching Liz work her magic almost feels like a reminder that I’m somehow damaged goods. If Dad hadn’t died, would I be more normal, friendly, interesting, a better conversationalist? Maybe I’d be more like Liz. My dragon friend.

Uncle Lou says, “Let’s hit the road,” and we all hug good-bye.

Looking out the window of the backseat on the drive home, I notice the shadows the streetlights cast on the dark lawns and sidewalks. I decide I like the idea of Liz as a dragon. One of my favorite storybooks was about good-luck dragons, how their arrival always means that something wonderful lies ahead. If that’s true, then, as far as I’m concerned, Liz can spit as much fire as she wants. And if I stand near enough to it, maybe I’ll glow a little, too.

S
unday night, B drives back to his house on the UD campus. He lives with five other engineering guys, and even though that sounds pretty rotten to me, I’m guessing he’s glad to get away from our house and boring family things like my play. Or maybe just from his boring family members like me. We didn’t get to talk, not really, all weekend. Yesterday he helped Mom dig her vegetable garden all day, then he helped Linnie with her math homework, and after that it was time for him to go.

On Monday morning, I push my scrambled eggs around my plate and wonder how I’m going to break my mortician news to Mom.

Mom points to my food. “Are you not feeling well?”

“Just not hungry.”

“You should eat something.”

“I know. Breakfast is the most important meal of everyone’s life.”

“Hey,” Mom says, “it’s not like I’m slipping you arsenic to start the day. I just want you nourished.”

“I know. Sorry. Maybe I’m worried about our Spanish quiz.”

“Honey, you’re good at Spanish. You’ll be fine.”

On my way out the door to catch the bus, Mom calls, “Oh, and please tell Liz I said hi. You’re welcome to bring her over any time.”

“Okay I will,” I say, even though I won’t.

The weekend is over, and I’m wondering if it actually all happened, if Liz and I are really friends now. But she smiles when she sees me in homeroom.

Liz has lunch at our corner table on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and it’s the most fun I’ve had at lunch here, well, ever. Until Thursday, when Becky smiles and grabs my arm. “Guess what? I got accepted to UD, too. Maybe we can be roommates!”

“Yeah, maybe.” I wonder when everyone will find out that I have other plans, and I’m hoping I’m not going to be there when it happens. Up until now it’s been easy enough to say I’m going to UD, even if I had no idea what that meant. Even if I didn’t care. Now, though, I’m not used to caring, and it makes me nervous. I fold my arms over my chest and slide a few inches away from Becky.

Patty makes a gagging sound and sticks her tongue out. “Don’t you guys want to get out of town? Why would you go to school here? It’s Dayton, for God’s sake. The most boring place on earth. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Erin—I mean Mom—says Dayton is actually a healing energy center,” Charlie says. “That’s why they had the Peace Talks here and stuff. So maybe it’s not such a bad place to be.”

“I’ve heard that too. And aren’t you going to school in Cleveland?” Liz asks Patty. “I heard on NPR that they officially christened it the armpit of America, which sounds so much better than Dayton.”

“What do you know?” Patty asks. “Have you even been accepted anywhere yet?”

“Actually, NYU and Carnegie Mellon.”

Patty hesitates to respond, like she’s deciding if it’s worth it to keep fighting Liz, since it turns out Liz might actually be the coolest person at the table. “Really?” Patty finally says. “Congratulations.”

Liz raises one eyebrow and stares at Patty. “Thanks,” she says slowly. What’s even stranger is that then they start talking about New York, where Patty’s always wanted to live and where Liz, of course, has visited many times. They talk through the rest of lunch, and it seems like Liz has worked her magic again, now describing her plans to travel the world and be a famous journalist. And I wonder if that’s it for me. Now Liz and Patty will be best friends. Maybe they can hang out with Mom.

While I pretend to read my history book and not watch Patty and Liz talk about the East Village, I hear Charlie say, “Hey, what do you think about living in Dayton?”

I turn and realize he’s talking to me. “Um, I don’t know.” I think about how much it seems to rain, how downtown rests under a perpetual coat of dingy, like it could use a fresh coat of paint. It’s not shiny like how New York City looks on TV, that’s for sure. But I also think about my favorite Sunday breakfast spot, the Golden Nugget, where Dad used to always take us after church. About summer picnics at John Bryan State Park or Wegerzyn Gardens and Dayton Playhouse shows—Dad loved those. Maybe he would have loved Players’ shows too. “I don’t know. It’s familiar.”

“Familiar’s not a bad thing.” Charlie smiles at me, which makes me remember what Liz said on Friday. There’s a softness in his eyes, like he sees something beautiful in me. And I don’t have the faintest idea what to do with that. He takes a drink out of the stainless-steel mug he uses for all beverages so as to reduce waste, and I find myself watching where the mug touches his lips.

I start to smile back, but suddenly worry I have something in my teeth, so I do this sort of half smile without opening my mouth that must make me look like a total idiot.
Stop being ridiculous, Donna. No one likes anyone. We’re just talking about Dayton, for God’s sake. Say something. Ask a question already.
“So where are you going?”

“Actually, I’m thinking UD. I just got accepted, and they have a new environmental studies program. With whole classes about making silverware out of potatoes.” Charlie smirks. “I can carve you your own set if you want.”

I force myself to have what feels like the most awkward conversation of my life with Charlie, and I don’t get to talk with Liz at all, which doesn’t seem to matter since she and Patty are so busy chatting. It’s easier, I decide, not to talk, not to want anyone to talk with me.

At the end of lunch, Liz asks if I can come over to her house after school, and I’m so relieved she still wants to talk to me that I almost hug her. “I have a present for you,” she says.

Liz’s basement has a fireplace, a big shaggy rug, and a wooden bar in the corner with a sink and everything. It’s hard to know where to look first. All over the walls are pictures of her parents in these exquisite costumes—silvers and golds and rich burgundies and indigos—on elaborate stages with sparkly sets, which are a far cry from the painted bedsheet backdrops the Players use. Written below each of the photographs is a tantalizing location—Amsterdam, Paris, Naples, Rio de Janeiro.

Next to the fireplace stands a wrought-iron statue with a number of arms. Liz tells me it’s Shiva, Hindu god of creation and destruction. She likes the symbolism of his fireplace proximity. I’d like to see him juggle bowling pins. The basement also has big sliding-glass doors that open onto a back patio with umbrella tables and a hot tub, which makes me a little envious.

I call home to make sure Mom doesn’t worry about where I am, but no one answers. Instead the voice mail picks up, and it’s Dad’s voice, in his fake almost-British accent. “You’ve reached the Parisis—Brendan, Donna, Linnie, Martha, and Nicky. If you leave a message with our answering service, we’ll be sure to ring you back. Ta, ta.” No matter how many times I listen to it, hearing Dad’s voice makes something hopeful lift in me, some kind of outrageous notion that he’s still here. But then I lose equilibrium as the thought falls quickly away, like riding the Drop Tower at Kings Island. I leave a quick message and hang up, staring for a minute at Liz’s hot tub to catch my breath.

We all used to get excited to change the message every few months and make Dad use a different accent and say something else. Since he died, it’s stayed the same. That first year, I called all the time when I knew no one was home, just to hear Dad say my name. Once, when B asked Mom if she wanted to change it, she replied with an emphatic “No.” One time last fall, when Aunt Irene and Uncle Lou were over for dinner, I overheard Uncle Lou bring it up with Mom, and she said, “It’s my voice mail, and I’ll decide what to do with it.” I wonder if she calls to hear his voice, too.

I join Liz on the shaggy rug and sit cross-legged, examining the package she hands to me. I squeeze it and crinkle the white tissue paper, feeling the bulky and pointy parts. I smile at Liz.

“Open it, already,” she says.

I untie the thin red ribbon and pull apart the tissue paper concealing a twelve-inch plastic skeleton mounted on a silver rod and stand.

“Well, do you like it?”

I stop smiling long enough to say, “Perfect,” and, “I think I’ll call him Maurice.”

Liz nods. “Yeah, he looks like a Maurice.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“ ‘Thank you’?”

“Oh, yeah, thank you.”

“Happy funeral home,” she says.

I run my fingertip over Maurice’s smooth skull and tap my fingernail against it.
Click. Click.
“Hey, um, you and Patty seemed to be getting along today.”

“Her bark is worse than her bite.” Liz leans back on her hands and pulls at the carpet. “She’s not so bad when she’s not worried about what everyone else thinks.” I’d never thought about Patty as anything other than the Evil Twin. I guess Patty worries too, like me.

Liz shrugs. “But I guess everyone can’t be like us.”

“What do you mean?”

“We know who we are.”

I want to say,
We do? Then tell me, who am I?
But instead I pick up Maurice by his base and watch his arm and leg bones swing at the joints. “Yeah.”

On Friday, Liz tells me she’s going for a long weekend trip to Pittsburgh to visit CMU with her parents, since seniors have Monday off as a college prep day. “I’d ask you to come,” she says, “but I know you’ve got birthday plans with your family.”

“I could cancel them.”

“I don’t think your mom would like that.”

“It’s my birthday,” I say. “But you’re right.”

After school, I say a quick hi to Mom and tell her I’m going to my room to take a nap and do some studying, which I hope she knows means, leave me alone. I really just want to start working on my application.

“Dinner at six. So be up by then. Are you feeling all right?”

“Yep,” I say. “I’ll see you for dinner.”

In the basement, I read the catalog again and imagine myself using paintbrushes in restorative art. Maybe restoring bodies is like restoring frescoes from the Renaissance, uncovering some kind of beauty. Understanding Grief sounds interesting, and Cemetery Issues sounds good too.

I like cemeteries. When I was maybe eight, we all went walking in Woodland Cemetery so Dad could show us the Wright brothers’ graves. Dad made himself into an airplane and took off down the path until Mom declared him too sacrilegious for words. Then he stood in front of Mom and said, “I’m ready for my penance now, Sister Martha,” looking so actually penitent that Mom eventually giggled.

I liked reading everyone’s names on the gravestones, wondering what those people were like when they were alive. And I liked the spot way up high in the cemetery where you could look out over the whole city.

In the center of Chapman’s catalog, I find the application. I fold the perforation and carefully tear out two pages. I fill out my name and address and high school, feeling very accomplished. I turn it over and look at the last page, which lists three essay questions:
Why do you want to study mortuary science? What do you think makes a good funeral director? What makes you think you’ll be a good funeral director?
I think question number three sounds a little aggressive, and I wonder if Patty helped write it.

I pull out the last new composition notebook I got for Christmas, the one with the picture of the ocean on the cover, which I’d been saving for something good. The one I’ve been using to write about funeral stuff, as Mr. Brighton suggested. Dad used to carry a little notebook with him. One summer, when I was eight or nine, we were sitting on a blanket on the lawn at Fraze Pavilion, waiting for a concert to start, and Dad pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and quickly scribbled something.

I asked him what it was, and he said, “I guess it’s like a journal. Things I don’t want to forget. Things I liked or didn’t like.”

B offered to help Dad set up a daily journal he could keep on the computer so he wouldn’t lose it, and Dad said, “Hell, no. A person should know what his own handwriting looks like.”

I don’t think B ever took to the notebook writing, but I never forgot. The notebook Dad used was too little for me, but I think he’d approve of my ocean notebook and that I know very clearly what my own handwriting looks like—kind of blocky, without a lot of frills or loops.

I start on the first application question. It turns out I don’t quite have an answer I can write yet, so I go to number two. For this one, all I can think of is:
Grandpa-like. Nice. Sturdy hiking boots. Doesn’t talk too much.
I close my notebook and decide to take a nap.

After dinner, Linnie brings her dirty clothes down to the laundry room and leans against my desk, flicking one of Maurice’s dangling arms. “This is a little creepy.”

“It’s a present from Liz.”

“Still, creepy.”

I wouldn’t think my sister, with her green hair and eye makeup springing from a color palette I’d call “Bruised,” would be bothered by a skeleton. “
You’re
creepy.”

I move Maurice a few inches away from Linnie. Now both bony arms swing and shake—skeletal jazz hands. Maurice must know it’s almost my birthday. Jazz hands go with birthdays.

“Mom won’t like it,” Linnie says, reaching for Maurice again.

Maurice laughs in the way skeletons do—at me, at my sister’s hair, at the black stapler, and the retractable pens sprouting like plastic weeds out of the white mug with the blue lettering: the play’s the thing—we all got them from Father Bill for Christmas.

“Mom doesn’t have to look at it.”

“Whatever,” Linnie says. “I’m going to watch TV.”

I put on my pajamas and crawl into bed with my ocean notebook, still contemplating essay questions I can’t answer.

Mom knocks on my door and walks in. “What time do you want to go?”

I know she’s talking about Dad’s grave. On the first birthday I had without Dad, I asked Mom if we could visit him. And every year on my birthday since he died, we’ve gone and planted flowers. Maybe planting flowers is a Cemetery Issue. I don’t know. “Is nine okay?”

“Yes.” Mom walks over to my bed and kisses me on the forehead. “Happy almost birthday.” Maurice catches her eye, and she turns toward my desk. “What is that?”

“My skeleton.” I decide not to tell her his name. Maurice prefers to go incognito.

Mom folds her arms, like she’s about to give me a lecture. “Donna, that’s a little dark, don’t you think?”