Chapter 94

Chapter 94
I turned our key in the lock into the front door of the house. I stood in the doorway with one hand on the knob, listening to the house settle around me. For three hours, people had been saying Eli’s name. Now there was only the refrigerator humming and the faint click of June’s shoes as she walked ahead of me toward the living room.

The quiet felt less like peace than a room I had been locked inside. My black dress pinched beneath my arms. Someone had tucked a white handkerchief into my palm at the church, and I was still holding it, damp and crumpled. I set it on the entry table beside Eli’s baseball cap. He had left it on there when he decided to wear a different hat that day of the accident. I had not moved it. The familiar weight on the wood made something inside me stumble. June climbed onto the sofa and curled herself into the blanket she found on the arm of the couch. A strand of her hair had come loose from the braid Hattie made for her, and the little silver clip at her temple was hanging sideways. “Are we done now?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. My voice sounded as if it belonged to someone standing farther away. “We’re home for the rest of the day.”

The service had been beautiful. I knew that because everyone had told me so, and because I had seen it myself through the blur of my own tears. Maisie had tucked sprigs of rosemary into the arrangements, remembering how Eli used to rub the leaves between his fingers whenever he helped in her garden. Hattie found the old photograph of him standing ankle-deep in the creek, grinning at the camera with June on his shoulders. It was enlarged and placed beside the casket, where June could see it without having to look at the flowers.

There had been white roses, yellow daisies, and the small blue flowers Eli called weeds because he could never remember their name. The organist played the song Eli used to hum badly while making pancakes on Sunday mornings. I had almost laughed when the first notes filled the church. Almost. Then Reverend Luke spoke about Eli’s patience, his terrible jokes, and the way he fixed things even when he had no idea what he was doing. People laughed softly. I watched their faces change as they remembered him, and every time someone said was, my mind answered with is.

After the eulogy, Maisie stood and told the story of Eli bringing a ladder to the bakery because a ceiling bulb had gone out. He had spent forty minutes trying to replace it before discovering the bulb was not burned out. The switch had been off. Maisie cried through the punch line, and so did I, though my laughter came out thin and startled. Hattie read the note I had written but could not bear to say aloud. I had managed only six lines: that Eli made ordinary days feel dependable, that he knew when June needed a snack before she did, that he always left the porch light on for me. Hattie read every word steadily. When her voice shook, she paused, breathed, and continued. Our families sat in the first two rows. Eli’s parents and my parents had driven in from other side of the state, and my sister came from Georgia with two days’ notice and a suitcase that still had its airport tag on it. They held my hands, kissed June’s hair, and did everything they could.

But they did not know that June would only eat the crusts from a sandwich if the bread was cut into triangles or other little things that made our daily world go round. Maisie knew. Hattie knew. Maisie made the phone calls I could not make. She spoke with the church, the florist, and the restaurant that supplied the food afterward. She wrote names and times on the back of a bakery invoice and kept it folded in her pocket. Hattie arranged the seating, checked the microphone twice, and found June in the fellowship hall when she grew tired of solemn faces. She brought crackers, apple slices, and the soft blanket June liked to sleep with.

I chose Eli’s shirt. I chose the music. I told the funeral director that the photograph of him in the creek belonged near the front, where June could see his smile. I had done things. I had made decisions. Still, when my hands began to shake over the guest book, Maisie took it from me without making a ceremony of it. “I’ll keep track,” she whispered. “You greet who you want to greet.” So I did. I thanked people. I hugged neighbors and listened to stories I had never heard. Eli’s coworker told stories about how hard of a worker he was and how he was always eager to help anyone in need. Mrs. Alvarez from next door remembered him carrying her groceries through three feet of snow. A boy from June’s preschool said Eli once fixed the wheel on his toy truck. Each memory gave me another piece of the man I loved. Each one also carried him farther away from me, into a past tense everyone else seemed able to enter.

My mind came back to it as I heard Maisie set the covered dishes on the kitchen table while Hattie gathered the flowers people had brought from the church.

“You should change,” Hattie said to me.

“I will.” She looked at my face. “You don’t have to do it this minute.” That was the way Hattie had been all day. She offered things without pushing them toward me. A glass of water. A chair. A reason to take one more breath. Maisie opened the lid on a casserole. The smell of rosemary and melted cheese filled the kitchen, warm and ordinary. My stomach turned, but I took a small portion because she had made it, and because eating was one of the tasks still available to me. For a while, the three of us did not talk. Maisie folded the memorial programs into a neat stack. Hattie separated the cards from the envelopes and placed them beside the guest book. I removed the black ribbon from the photograph frame, then stopped with my fingers resting on the knot.

“I’m glad you were there,” I said. Maisie looked up. “Of course we were.”“No. I mean all of it. The calls. The flowers. Helping with June. The way you kept telling me where to stand.”Hattie gave a small, tired smile. “You were standing. We just helped you stay upright.”The words loosened something in my chest. I cried then, quietly at first, and they came to sit beside me on the kitchen floor. Maisie leaned her shoulder against mine. Hattie held my hand. Neither of them said that Eli was in a better place. Neither told me to be strong. They let the grief occupy the room without trying to make it smaller.June crawled into my lap. I closed my eyes and kissed the top of her head. No amount of sorting, feeding, answering, or holding could make the loss less real. Maisie and Hattie could carry the dishes. They could remember the names of people I had forgotten. They could sit with me until the light outside thinned to gray. They could not carry the empty place Eli had left behind.

When they finally left, Maisie hugged me at the door and I thanked her, though the words felt too small. Hattie kissed my cheek and promised to call in the morning. I watched their car pull away, the red taillights shrinking until they turned the corner.The house became quiet again.I changed out of my dress and found June in the bathroom, trying to unfasten the silver clip from her hair. I helped her into pajamas and carried her to bed when she grew sleepy. These were the same motions I had done a hundred times while Eli brushed his teeth beside us, singing the wrong words to whatever song was stuck in his head.

After she fell asleep, I stood in the doorway and listened to her breathing. The funeral had given everyone else a place to put their goodbye. They had carried flowers into a church, spoken his name, shared their memories, and gone home with the comfort of having marked the ending.For me, the ending was everywhere and nowhere. It was the empty side of the bed. It was the mug I could not wash. It was the drive home with June asking questions I could answer only once. It was tomorrow morning, when I would wake before the alarm and reach for a body that would not be there.I went downstairs and turned off the kitchen light. In the darkness, the flowers on the table gave off a faint green smell. I left the porch light on, just as Eli always had.