When I got home Kelly was still up. Peter was asleep in the basement, she said. They’d played chess for hours. She’d won all the games. He was sleeping off the emasculation.
In my day, I laughed, sixteen-year-old girls were not supposed to know the word ‘emasculation.’ Still less use it in a sentence.
Bad luck for them, she said.
Kelly was the ideal mix of sweet and sour. I thought of her trip the year before. She’d gone to Thailand with a group from school. To minister to AIDS orphans in the countryside. I’d saved all her e-mails. Printed them out. Tacked them to the wall. The orphans are soooooooooo cute. I want to take all of them home. But I’ll settle for my six favorites.
But now the sweetness was suffused with sorrow. I could see it. How hard she had to struggle to maintain her sense of self. To not succumb to unadulterated grief. She didn’t want to do that. At least in front of me. She was too proud to lose control.
I hoped she had the sense to cry her heart out when I wasn’t there.
Daddy, she said gravely once I’d sat down. We have to have a funeral.
Oh dear, I said. Do we have to talk about this now?
By which you mean ‘at all.’
She was right.
Okay, I said. Why?
Funerals are for the living, she said.
I’m not sure I agree entirely. But let’s say I do. I’m living. I don’t want one.
But you don’t count. You’re a curmudgeon.
It was hard to argue with her logic.
Who does? I asked. She alienated everyone she knew. Who’s going to show up?
I regretted saying it before it got out of my mouth. Tears appeared in Kelly’s eyes. She glared at me.
Mommy had a lot of friends, she said. They’ll be there. You keep avoiding the house. You don’t take the phone calls. You don’t know.
Damn it. This was unfair. She had encouraged me to go to the poker game.
Who are all these people who’ve called? I asked.
Everybody, she said.
She recited a list of names. Most I’d never heard before.
Amazing. That so many old friends long cast aside in favor of the Monster would care, would call. Commiserate. Show up.
I was helpless in the face of Kelly’s onslaught.
All right, I said. We’ll have a memorial service, okay? I still think she’d have wanted cremation.
The tears came back.
The word. Cremation. The reality of it. The finality.
I went to Kelly. I put my arms around her. We hugged. She cried.
I must confess I cried a bit myself.
It was good to have company.