a couple of times to look back at me, and I smiled as small as I could.
I noticed my father looking through the crowd on our right, and I knew it was for my mother’s grave. It had been a long time since we had visited. Involuntarily, we all looked in its direction as we turned the last bend in the path to take our seats. Laertes put an arm around my shoulder. After we walked a few paces, I whispered, “Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”
“Not a chance. This place creeps me out,” Laertes whispered back.
“Mom would like it,” I suggested.
He grimaced and walked a few steps ahead of me to catch up with our father. I craned my neck one more time, then walked to my seat next to my father.
We were, as expected, directly behind the royal family. I touched Hamlet lightly on the back before sitting and folding my hands demurely in my lap. I thought of the reporters taking this in and knew that, were the occasion not so solemn, they might take a swipe at us, asking why we weren’t sitting together or maybe even why we were back together at all.
My mind drifted again to our first reconciliation. Everyone advised against it—my friends, my brother, my father, and, of course, Gertrude. But when he came back from Wittenberg for Christmas vacation, our families had to travel together to Switzerland. On the plane he told me he couldn’t stand being without me, that there were no other girls he liked as much, and my anger dissolved almost instantly. Our being together wasn’t just convenience. It was an inexplicable attraction that had grabbed hold of us when I was fifteen and hadn’t let go of us since. Oh, how I wish it hadn’t been that way, but it was.
The minister began the service, and everyone sang a hymn, the sound enveloping us as it rose and echoed eerily at the end.
My father stood to deliver the first speech. “Our king,” he began, overenunciating as he did only at press conferences and when lecturing me, “was not only a great leader but a man whose moral character was beyond reproach. He taught his subjects through his actions. He was never false to any man. He was never one to speak without thinking. He was careful never to begin a fight, but if pulled into one, his opposition quickly realized he was a force to be reckoned with. He was not flashy or gaudy. He was neither a borrower nor a lender.…”
I slid down slightly in my chair and hoped my father would not speak for so long that he would embarrass himself. A few years back he had delivered a speech at Gertrude’s birthday party that was so long, the candles on her cake had nearly melted away. Finally, the king had tapped my father on the shoulder and raised his glass to toast his own wife. Gertrude had sighed and blown out the few candles that were still ablaze.
“… And so we bid him a solemn farewell.” My father tucked his speech into his pocket.
Too many others spoke, but I couldn’t focus on their words. Most of the speeches were about the position, not the man. Even the portrait on display looked little like the king I knew from sitting around the dinner table, the one who liked card tricks and to play racquetball in his rare free moments. All I wanted was to sit with Hamlet on the green hill above us and remember the man we’d loved.
After an extraordinarily long time, the ceremony came to a close. The final song, sung by the kingdom’s most treasured soprano, was one of the king’s favorites. As the coffin was lowered, I got goose bumps and could think only of my mother and the king lying under deep piles of dirt for all eternity. Unable to consider it for another second, I distracted myself by checking on Hamlet. He had dropped his head, apparently unable to watch anymore, and I wished I were sitting at his side so I could comfort him.
As soon as the minister nodded the end, Hamlet stood and turned around. His face was flushed, and I could see he was fighting back tears. A folding chair separated us, so he put one knee on it to get closer to me and I quickly embraced him. He buried his face in my shoulder and whispered, “This sucks,” before he lost it and wept