Connie pulls into the fire lane in front of the church and turns around. The starched collar of his shirt appears to cut off the circulation to his neck. “I’ll let you out here and find a place to park.”
“I’ll stay with Connie,” Vivi adds. “You all should go in.”
People are streaming into the building, so many that Kyung keeps losing count. He’d rather use a side door and slip in unnoticed, but he knows what’s expected of him today. He gets out of the car, trailing behind his father and Gillian, each of whom is holding on to one of Ethan’s hands. As they make their way up the path to the front steps, people he doesn’t recognize stop to pay their respects. All of them, even the children, are dressed in black and gray — colors that seem at odds with the fierce blue sky and the heat of summer, which is stifling even though it’s barely midday. As he listens in on their conversations, he hears the word “accident” over and over again: “What a terrible accident.” “Such a tragic accident.” “I’m so sorry about the accident.” His father doesn’t correct this interpretation of events; he simply thanks everyone for coming and moves on.
As they step into the sanctuary, Kyung is immediately overwhelmed by the smell of flowers. Bright white gardenias, displayed to excess everywhere — not a cheap carnation in sight. They were Mae’s favorite flower, but it almost seems grotesque, spending so lavishly on decorations for a funeral. The gardenias are arranged in gilded planters, ascending along the steps to the altar. They’re bunched together in clusters, tied with white ribbon and clipped to the pews. The most elaborate display is the twin wreaths — huge, tire-sized wreaths, one on each side of a black-and-white photograph of Mae. Kyung doesn’t recognize where or when the photo was taken, but he thinks it captures her well. Straight spined and imperial, with the slightest lift of the corners of her mouth instead of a smile. Tucked behind the photo is a silver urn on a pedestal, a detail he hadn’t considered before. He’s grateful for the absence of a coffin, open or closed, but he worries where the ashes will go after the funeral. He doesn’t understand the idea of keeping the dead.
Kyung follows Jin and Gillian to the first pew, struggling with the heat and perfume of flowers as he scans the crowd of people already seated. He notices Tim immediately, sitting a full head and shoulders taller than everyone else. He also notices the Steiners, Craig, and some familiar faces from campus. Strangely, the faces he’s least prepared to see are the ones he should have expected the most. When Reverend Sung and Molly appear, hands outstretched, he feels a spike of panic. His body goes rigid, ready to be hit, but he quickly finds himself wrapped in the reverend’s arms, bear-hugged in a way that seems wrong among men.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says.
Kyung blinks as the reverend sweeps down the pew in his shiny black vestments, greeting everyone with the same octopus embrace, even Connie and Vivi, who managed to slide into the seats next to Jin unnoticed. Molly follows close behind, bowing and shaking hands. He expects her face to reflect some memory of the last time they were together, but she keeps her eyes fixed to the floor. It’s obvious she didn’t tell her husband what happened, which is both a relief and a disappointment. Even the devout have their secrets.
“We have a nice gathering of people here today,” the reverend says, staring out into the pews.
The sanctuary is almost two-thirds full. Most of the mourners are members of the church — Koreans with lined faces and dark clothes, blotting their sweaty foreheads with handkerchiefs. Over a hundred, maybe even 150 have turned out, which is more than he would have expected. He wonders who, if anyone, will show up for Marina’s services, if she had any friends to remember her at all.
“When is Marina’s funeral?” he whispers to Gillian.
“Why are you asking that now?” she snaps, barely attempting to conceal her irritation at being spoken to.
“Because I want to be there.”
“We’re sending her body back to Bosnia. Now stop talking.”
The reverend climbs the steps to the altar and asks everyone to be seated. The low murmur of conversation comes to a halt as he thanks people for coming to celebrate Mae’s life. Kyung thinks of Marina’s parents, standing on an airstrip in some wretched little town, waiting for men to unload their daughter’s coffin. He’s certain there won’t be any gardenias at her funeral. No gardenias or carnations, probably no flowers of any kind. Just a modest grave that people will visit for a while until they eventually don’t. The memory of his first and last real conversation with Marina still haunts him, the way she kept insisting she couldn’t go home. Death made it easier, strangely. Everything she didn’t want her family to know will remain secret now. He assumes that Mae understood this, and the bond he couldn’t see was actually there all along. She thought she was doing right by Marina, ending their suffering together, the same way it began.
“Our sister, Mae, is no longer with us…,” the reverend says. “I know that her loss may seem like too much to bear, and you’re tempted to ask yourselves, Why? Why did the Lord have to take her?”
In the corner of his eye, Kyung sees several people nodding, but it’s not the right question, he thinks. God didn’t take her. She took herself. And the guilt he feels is multiplied by the fact that he prayed for this as a child, back when he thought his prayers might still be answered. He wanted his mother to run. He wanted her to be brave. But he knows it wasn’t bravery that made her get in that car. It was him.
“Some of you may even find yourselves blaming the Lord for her absence.” The reverend lowers his head, shuffling through pages and pages of notes that everyone can hear through the microphone. When he looks up again, he pauses much longer than he should, flustered in a way that Kyung has never seen before.
“We’ll now have a reading from Sister Han.”
A small Korean woman stands up across the aisle. She watches the reverend for a signal, confused perhaps by the brevity of his remarks. When he doesn’t give one, she approaches the altar, nervously folding and unfolding a slip of paper. Kyung thinks he recognizes her. She and her husband used to run a copy shop somewhere. Her round face is more withered now, and her hair has turned gray, but her footsteps sound the same, the way they clunk in thick black orthopedic shoes that correct the uneven lengths of her legs. Despite the shoes, Mrs. Han’s face barely clears the podium.
“From Thessalonians…” She adjusts the microphone, cranking it down near her mouth with a screech that rings through the sanctuary. “‘For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.…’”
Kyung turns to look down the pew at his family. Everyone is listening intently to Mrs. Han as she struggles through the reading, her accent too thick to fully enunciate the words. No one is crying except for Vivi, who dabs at her face with a handkerchief, consumed by a fit of grief that seems out of place beside the others. Gillian squeezes his leg — not affectionately, but forcefully, as if to snap him back to attention. He scans through his program, a long list of readings and remembrances by people he barely knows. When he looks through the names more closely, he notices that Jin isn’t scheduled to speak on Mae’s behalf, and of course, no one trusted Kyung enough to ask. He’s never attended a funeral in which a family member didn’t say at least a few words about the deceased, but their omission seems entirely appropriate. He and his father lost their rights to Mae long before the Perrys entered their lives. It’s better that people who treated her kindly have a chance to say their good-byes.