At the funeral Jason stood beside me, apparently over his surge of anger at me, apparently back in his right mind. He didn’t touch me or talk to me, but he didn’t hit me, either. I felt very alone. But then I realized as I looked out over the hillside that the whole town was grieving with me. There were cars as far as I could see on the narrow drives through the cemetery, there were hundreds of dark-clad folks around the funeral-home tent. Sam was there in a suit (looking quite unlike himself), and Arlene, standing by Rene, was wearing a flowered Sunday dress. Lafayette stood at the very back of the crowd, along with Terry Bellefleur and Charlsie Tooten; the bar must be closed! And all Gran’s friends, all, the ones who could still walk. Mr. Norris wept openly, a snowy white handkerchief held up to his eyes. Maxine’s heavy face was set in graven lines of sadness. While the minister said what he had to, while Jason and I sat alone in family area in the uneven folding chairs, I felt something in me detach and fly up, up into the blue brilliance: and I knew that whatever had happened to my grandmother, now she was at home.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, thank God. I didn’t want to remember it, didn’t want to even know it was happening. But one moment stood out.
Jason and I were standing by the dining room table in Gran’s house, some temporary truce between us. We greeted the mourners, most of whom did their best not to stare at the bruise on my cheek.
We glided through it, Jason thinking that he would go home and have a drink after, and he wouldn’t have to see me for a while and then it would be all right, and me thinking almost exactly the same thing. Except for the drink.
A well-meaning woman came up to us, the sort of woman who has thought over every ramification of a situation that was none of her business to start with.
“I am so sorry for you kids,” she said, and I looked at her; for the life of me I couldn’t remember her name. She was a Methodist. She had three grown children. But her name ran right out the other side of my head.
“You know it was so sad seeing you two there alone today, it made me remember your mother and father so much,” she said, her face creasing into a mask of sympathy that I knew was automatic. I glanced at Jason, looked back to the woman, nodded.
“Yes,” I said. But I heard her thought before she spoke, and I began to blanch.
“But where was Adele’s brother today, your great uncle? Surely he’s still living?”
“We’re not in touch,” I said, and my tone would have discouraged anyone more sensitive than this lady.
“But her only brother! Surely you . . .” and her voice died away as our combined stare finally sank home.
Several other people had commented briefly on our Uncle Bartlett’s absence, but we had given the “this is family business” signals that cut them right off. This woman—what was her name?—just hadn’t been as quick to read them. She’d brought a taco salad, and I planned to throw it right into the garbage when she’d left.
“We do have to tell him,” Jason said quietly after she left. I put my guard up; I had no desire to know what he was thinking.
“You call him,” I said.
“All right.”
And that was all we said to each other for the rest of the day.
Chapter 6
I STAYED AT home for three days after the funeral. It was too long; I needed to go back to work. But I kept thinking of things I just had to do, or so I told myself. I cleaned out Gran’s room. Arlene happened to drop by, and I asked her for help, because I just couldn’t be in there alone with my grandmother’s things, all so familiar and imbued with her personal odor of Johnson’s baby powder and Campho-Phenique.
So my friend Arlene helped me pack everything up to take to the disaster relief agency. There’d been tornadoes in northern Arkansas the past few days, and surely some person who had lost everything could use all the clothes. Gran had been smaller and thinner than I, and besides that her tastes were very different, so I wanted nothing of hers