I thought I wouldn’t cry again, but I did, a lot. Mr. Fisher got up and thanked everyone for coming, told us we were welcome to come by the house afterward for a reception. His voice broke a few times, but he managed to keep it together. When I last saw him, he was tan and confident and tall. Seeing him that day, he looked like a man who was lost in a snowstorm. Shoulders hunched, face pale. I thought about how hard it must be for him to stand up there, in front of everybody who loved her. He had cheated on her, left her when she needed him most, but in the end, he had shown up. He’d held her hand those last few weeks. Maybe he’d thought there’d be more time too.
It was a closed casket. Susannah told my mother she didn’t want everybody gawking at her when she didn’t look her best. Dead people looked fake, she explained. Like they were made of wax. I reminded myself that the person inside the coffin wasn’t Susannah, that it didn’t matter what she looked like because she was already gone.
When it was over, after we’d said the Lord’s Prayer, we formed our processional, everybody taking their turn to offer condolences. I felt strangely adult there, standing with my mother and my brother. Mr. Fisher leaned down and gave me a stiff hug, his eyes wet. He shook Steven’s hand and when he hugged my mother, she whispered something in his ear and he nodded.
When I hugged Jeremiah, we were both crying so hard, we were holding each other up. His shoulders kept shaking.
When I hugged Conrad, I wanted to say something, to comfort him. Something better than “I’m sorry.” But it was over so quick, there wasn’t any time to say more than that. I had a whole line of people behind me, all waiting to pay their condolences too.
The cemetery wasn’t very far. My heels kept sticking in the ground. It must have rained the day before. Before they lowered Susannah into the wet ground, Conrad and Jeremiah both put a white rose on top of the coffin, and then the rest of us added more flowers. I picked a pink peony. Someone sang a hymn. When it was over, Jeremiah didn’t move. He stood right where her grave was going to be, and he cried. It was my mother who went to him. She took him by the hand, and she spoke to him softly.
Back at Susannah’s house, Jeremiah and Steven and I slipped away to Jeremiah’s bedroom. We sat on his bed in our fancy clothes. “Where’s Conrad?” I said. I hadn’t forgotten my vow to stay by his side, but he was making it hard, the way he kept disappearing.
“Let’s leave him alone for a while,” Jeremiah said. “Are you guys hungry?”
I was, but I didn’t want to say so. “Are you?”
“Yeah, sort of. There’s food downstairs.” His voice lingered on the word “downstairs.” I knew he didn’t want to go down there and face all those people, have to see the pity in their eyes. How sad , they’d say, look at those two young boys she left behind . His friends hadn’t come to the house; they’d left right after the burial. It was all adults down there.
“I’ll go,” I offered.
“Thanks,” he said gratefully.
I got up and shut the door behind me. In the hallway I stopped to look at their family portraits. They were matted and framed in black, all the same kind of frame. In one picture, Conrad was wearing a bow tie and he was missing his front teeth. In another, Jeremiah was eight or nine and he had on the Red Sox cap he refused to take off for, like, a whole summer. He said it was a lucky hat; he wore it every day for three months. Every couple of weeks, Susannah would wash it and then put it back in his room while he slept.
Downstairs the adults were milling around, drinking coffee and talking in hushed voices. My mother stood at the buffet table, cutting cake for strangers. They were strangers to me, anyway. I wondered if she knew them, if they knew who she was to Susannah, how she was her best friend, how they’d spent every summer together for almost their whole lives.
I grabbed two plates and my mother helped me load them up. “Are you guys all right upstairs?” she asked me, putting a wedge of blue cheese on the plate.
I nodded and slid it right back off. “Jeremiah doesn’t like blue cheese,” I told her. Then I took a handful of water crackers and a cluster of green grapes. “Have you seen Conrad?”
“I think he’s in the basement,” she said. Rearranging the cheese plate, she added, “Why don’t you go check on him and bring him a plate? I’ll take this one up to the boys.”
“Okay.” I picked up the plate and crossed the dining room just as Jeremiah and Steven came downstairs. I stood there and watched Jeremiah stop and talk to people, letting them hug him and grasp his hand. Our eyes met, and I lifted my hand and waved it just barely. He lifted his and did the same, rolling his eyes a little at the woman clutching his arm. Susannah would have been proud.
Then I headed downstairs, to the basement. The basement was carpeted and soundproofed. Susannah had it set up when Conrad took up the electric guitar.
It was dark; Conrad hadn’t turned the lights on. I waited for my eyes to adjust, and then I crept down the stairs, feeling my way.
I found him soon enough. He was lying down on the couch with his head in a girl’s lap. She was running her hands along the top of his head, like they belonged there. Even though summer had just barely started, she was tan. Her shoes were off, her bare legs were stretched out on top of the coffee table. And Conrad, he was stroking her leg.
Everything in me seized up, pulled in tight.
I had seen her at the funeral. I’d thought she was really pretty, and I’d wondered who she was. She looked East Asian, like she might be Indian. She had dark hair and dark eyes and she was wearing a black miniskirt and a white and black polka-dot blouse. And a headband, she was wearing a black headband.
She saw me first. “Hey,” she said.
That’s when Conrad looked over and saw me standing in the doorway with a plate of cheese and crackers. He sat up. “Is that food for us?” he asked, not quite looking at me.
“My mother sent it,” I said, and my voice came out mumbly and quiet. I walked over and put the plate on the coffee table. I stood there for a second, unsure of what to do next.
“Thanks,” the girl said, in a way that sounded more like, You can go now. Not in a mean way, but in a way that made it clear I was interrupting.
I backed out of the room slowly but when I got to the stairs, I started to run. I ran by all the people in the living room and I could hear Conrad coming after me.
“Wait a minute,” he called out.
I’d almost made it through the foyer when he caught up to me and grabbed my arm.
“What do you want?” I said, shaking him off. “Let go of me.”
“That was Aubrey,” he said, letting go.
Aubrey, the girl who broke Conrad’s heart. I’d pictured her differently. I’d pictured her blond. This girl was prettier than what I had pictured. I could never compete with a girl like that.
I said, “Sorry I interrupted your little moment.”
“Oh, grow up,” he said.
There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you’d erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.
What I said next was one of those moments for me.
On the day of his mother’s funeral, to the boy I loved more than I had ever loved anything or anyone, I said, “Go to hell.”
It was the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone, ever. It wasn’t that I’d never said the words before. But the look on his face. I’ll never forget it. The look on his face made me want to die. It confirmed every mean and low thing I’d ever thought about myself, the stuff you hope and pray no one will ever know about you. Because if they knew, they would see the real you, and they would despise you.
Conrad said, “I should have known you’d be like this.”
Miserably, I asked him, “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, his jaw tight. “Forget it.”
“No, say it.”