Would You (13 page)

“How do you know?”

“Sounds dull as doggy-do,” says Carson. “Hell at least has sinners.”

“Hell is a state of mind,” says Zack, quoting his favorite T-shirt.

“Hell is taking chemistry over and over, never passing the exam,” says Leila.

“I think hell would be something so simple,” says Audrey. “Like…” She pokes Carson's shoulder. “Like …” She keeps poking him, every two seconds. “Getting poked for eternity. Wouldn't that just drive you
insane?”
Poke.

“Quit it,” says Carson. Poke. “I mean it.” Poke. He swats her.

“So then it follows that heaven is different for everyone too,” says Zack.

“Well, mine would have lap dancers and fireworks,” says Carson.

“Mine would be a bookstore,” says Zack. “With towering stacks and dust and rare books no one has opened in a hundred years.”

Carson is staring at him. “You really are a loser,” he says. “How are you ever going to get laid?”

“I wish there could be angels,” says Audrey, rescuing
her brother. “But my heaven is an ecolodge in Costa Rica, with a jungle and awesome mynah birds and waterfalls. And the angels would be like tour guides who could show you the mother howler monkey or warn you about the coral snake draped in the emerald canopy.”

“There wouldn't be any coral snakes,” I say. “If it's heaven. No pain, no sorrow, no venom and no serpents.”

“Oh. Yeah. But coral snakes are so incredible to look at, so maybe they've just been … devenomized.”

“What's your heaven, Nat?” Zack asks.

What would I want for eternity?

“Mine would be … that there could be miracles once in a while here on earth. That you didn't have to wait till later.”

Mom says no shorts. It's a hundred freaking degrees outside. I put on Claire's gray linen pants and her black thingy.

Mom is wearing a silk blouse, pale blue. “Claire gave me this,” she says, smoothing it down over her skirt.

“I did too.”

She hugs me. “Of course you did.”

Dad's in a suit. I tell him, “Dad. You might want to be relaxed, take off the tie.”

“Relaxed?” he says.

Audrey and Zack are standing at attention at the corner, their bikes propped against the lamppost. They're both wearing black and they're each holding a red balloon. Audrey has tears streaming down her face and they blow kisses and wave.

“You sure have nutty friends,” says Dad, and he toots the horn to say thanks.

I watch through the window. She stands there with her fingers resting on Claire's shoulder. She doesn't speak but just looks, for a pretty long time. Then she leans over and kisses Claire's forehead. She comes out, wiping her eyes.

I feel like there's an order, that I'm next, that Dad and Mom have to come after me; they've known her longer than I have. I go in.

I don't know how to tell you goodbye. You're my closest person in the world … and how can this be the end?

I love you, Claire, so much that I didn't even notice until this happened. All the words are clichéd but that's all I have, aside from this huge ache in my chest.

You're as much a part of me as my own skin.

I will miss you forever.

I will never stop thinking of things to tell you.

I will never stop wishing you were with me.

I will never stop loving you, ever.

I know now that you can't hear me. But I wish that… somehow … you could …
absorb …
my, my
reverberations …
take some of me with you, like you're leaving … your
self with
me. So I'm … sending
me …
with you….

I guess that's all.

G'bye.

Mwa.

Dad hugs me when I get outside and then he goes in. Mom hugs me and follows Dad. Jeanie is waiting in the lounge. I see the chaplain guy lurking by the nurses' station, with his dark jacket and his solemn eyebrows, but that doesn't stop me. I slide down the wall next to a laundry trolley and I sob like a baby, with my butt on the hard, cool floor and my face hiding in a stack of clean sheets. There's an orderly next to a gurney right there and I realize he's waiting to take … the
body
away, right after. To get cut up, and distributed into coolers and hurried to … William, and the other patients waiting for their lives to be saved.

I go into the bathroom to splash my face and try to calm down for Phase Two, but the water doesn't get icy enough and I'm basically soaking my shirt. Claire's shirt. So I go back and they're waiting for me. Dad has signaled the nurses that we're ready.

Trisha is setting up chairs next to Claire's bed. The monitor thing has been moved away to make space. Mom sits on the right and Dad sits on the left, close to her head. I climb onto the bed. Mom and Dad look worried at each other but Trisha just nods it's okay.

This Claire's body is not the familiar one I've spooned a million times. And she's on her back, not curled to make a sister nest. But I'd rather be here than anywhere. I do the best I can to lie beside her and stay on the bed. Lucky I'm skinny. I put my head oh so gently on her rib cage and close my eyes.

They said it won't take long, they said just a few minutes. As soon as the ventilator stops sending in oxygen, the rest of the system shuts down.

I keep my eyes shut and try not to listen to anything except the beating of her heart. The doctor comes in and there's some murmuring and I know they've turned off the machine because the
beep
stops.

They said it's not like a death from natural causes,
where the patient is struggling to breathe, where the time between inhalations gets longer and the breaths themselves can sound like faulty motors. They said it would be easy.

There's rustling around me, and sniffling, but mostly there's just this distant drum inside Claire.

But then it's fainter and then hardly there. And then it's not there at all. I guess I'm the first one to know, because I'm listening to nothing.

Another minute goes by. There's movement around me. Someone lifts Claire's hand. I'm more aware of being uncomfortable, but I don't want to get up yet. I sure don't want to open my eyes.

And then the doctor's voice. “The patient has died. Time of death is 12:16 p.m.”

It'll all be
later
now, won't it? It'll be either “when Claire was alive” or “after Claire died.”

Being a grown-up means somehow knowing how to arrange a funeral. That's what Mom and Jeanie do. Dad answers the phone the four hundred times it rings. Everyone's been waiting to hear, and we're the ones who know.

I hear him say it over and over: “She died peacefully at
noon today. We were all with her. Natalie is doing fine, thanks. We're all doing fine. It was for the best.”

For the best, eh? For the better-than-worst, anyway.

Uncle Denny comes and Dad's brother, Mike, comes again, this time with his boyfriend, Arlen. Claire and I like Arlen, almost more than Mike. Grandpa John will get here for the funeral. Other family too, they'll all come. This is the family tragedy of the century. Gina and Maeve and Shelley and all the neighbors trickle in. There's so much food that Jeanie takes some over to the food bank.

It's all after Claire died, but it's
right
after Claire died, so I don't know what it's like yet. I lie on my bed.

They all come to the funeral. Zack and Carson even wear suits. Leila's in black, but she's featuring a cleavage you wouldn't expect at a moment of bereavement. Audrey decides to go with a white flowing gown, as a salute to the angels that she wishes could be greeting Claire at the other end.

I look around and see probably every person Claire has ever had a conversation with. There aren't enough seats. There are a million flowers, and it's hot, like a party in a Southern novel, with the women fanning themselves and the sweet smell of freesias floating over the assortment of black-clothed armpit blasts.

Joe-boy comes with his dad; Kate comes with her mother; Taylor comes with her evil mother, Mrs. Flint. The
chapel place is full of crying women and we sing Claire off to heaven. Or wherever.

I don't really remember when my grandmother died, except that I wore a navy blue dress with red piping, which, at the age of eight, I was afraid might be blasphemous. I remember being with Claire afterward, passing plates of sandwiches to a hundred old ladies with draping flesh, hearing over and over how sweet we were.

The sandwiches are here, but Claire isn't. There are a few old ladies dotted around, but mostly a hundred kids from school, and everyone else too. And relatives, of course. The house is packed.

My skin has been prickling since I got dressed, as if I wrapped myself in sandpaper. It's hot, really hot, and the AC isn't doing its thing because of so many people coming in and out.

If it weren't his daughter's wake, Dad'd be yelling to Closethedamndoor.Don'tyoukidsknowhowmuchitcoststo coolanoldhouseforyourgoddamncomfort?

I look over and see Gina laughing at something Audrey said. Laughing so much she actually throws her head back and shows her long throat and her teeth. Wow, I think. She had a dead baby and now she's laughing.

Audrey can be pretty funny, I guess.

Zack comes up and puts his arm around my shoulder. “Is it in bad taste to say you look cute in mourning?” He gets a hip check, but I'm smiling too.

We can only squish four into the hammock on the front porch, so it's a good thing Leila went home with her parents. If any of us moves we'll notice whose knee is jabbing whose spine and whose elbow is under whose neck. So we don't move at all; only the hammock, rocking, rocking, lulls us into feeling that today has come to a peaceful end.

“I was awake all night,” says Mom. She's waving a spatula.

“I can see that.” There are dozens and dozens of chocolate chip cookies laid out on newspaper sheets, on the table, on the counter, on top of the microwave.

“It's Claire's birthday,” says Mom.

“I know.”

“She was supposed to be away at college and I would have packed a huge box of cookies … and I would have stuck in some balloons and some party hats … and those little paper blow things that squeak….”

I put my arm around Mom's shoulder because she's starting to shake.

“And I would have been so sad, 'cause she wasn't home for her birthday for the first time in her life….”

We stand there, holding on for a minute.

“But it didn't…,” she mumbles, wiping her eyes.

“No …”

We give it a little more time. We've had some practice by now, in these kinds of moments.

“So, Mom,” I finally say. “About the baking.”

She laughs. “Maybe you can bring your friends over after school? For milk and cookies?”

happy bday old face

They all know what day it is, which is why we're in the park on a school night.

I've been struggling with myself since leaving my mother in the kitchen this morning, trying not to think about Claire. But that seems like the wrong idea, not to mention ridiculous and impossible.

So, I'm letting
sad
soak into me, getting drenched in Claire's not being here.

“Tell your mother I want to marry her,” says Carson. He's eaten half the cookies.

Audrey kicks him. “It feels like we should be doing something special,” she says.

“Let's do the pools,” says Zack. “That's the last time we hung out with Claire before she … before the accident.”

“Yes!” I say. That's exactly what I want to do.

None of us has a swimsuit but we don't care.

“Is the singer girl away?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Let's just go there. Then we can loiter.”

I haven't been swimming since I stopped work for school. Now I can't wait.

I zoom ahead of the others on my bike. I can hear them trying to catch up. I park the bike and dash down the driveway, through the gate into the shadows of the backyard.