Forever Loved (The Forever Series) (12 page)

In fact, hitting something had become a preoccupation that bothered me quite a lot. It was almost a reflex, the urge to strike. I’d always felt it to some degree, and saw it in my father when his anger hit a certain level — time to get out of the way. I had a sixth sense about it in him, developed over eighteen years. Possibly the biggest relief in moving in with Corabelle the last few months was to relax. I knew he couldn’t show up suddenly to jerk me out of bed.

We couldn’t afford any of this. Six hundred dollars for a coffin. There were funeral fees. Graveside fees. Processional cars. Flowers. Headstones.

Corabelle’s dad had been working insurance angles. She was still on his health insurance — one of several reasons we’d waited to get married. He wanted the baby covered through him too, to spare us the problems of trying to get a policy retroactively since Finn hadn’t lived long enough for us to arrange it. That would get us a little money to cover the funeral.

The man in the suit held out a folder, asking Corabelle once again which coffin she would like to select. Her mother finally said, “The blue one is nice.”

No one looked to me for any opinions. I stood against the wall, feeling strangled in a shirt and tie. The funeral wasn’t for another two days. I wasn’t sure why I had to be dressed up now. But I did what was expected. I didn’t know anything else to do anyway.

I walked up to the blue coffin and looked inside. The metal walls were lined with white satin. The salesman nodded approvingly. I tried to picture Finn lying in it, but the image made me want to knock the little box off the stand. Babies shouldn’t be in boxes, but Finn was just moving from his enclosed crib to this. He’d never smelled anything but controlled spaces, never rolled around in open air.

I had to ball my hands into fists to keep myself from pushing over the whole row of coffins like dominoes falling. I backed up against the wall, arms at my sides. I wondered if this was how my dad always felt. And if, like me, it hadn’t started until he had a kid. Maybe I was the reason he was so angry. Maybe that responsibility — that obligation and demand — activated the chain.

I couldn’t take another minute and strode out of the showroom, through the empty chapel space, and past the girlfriends, who took up their sobbing when they saw me. I felt jaded, bitter, brimming with disgust at everyone around me. I didn’t know how to get past it, how long it would last, or if, now that I had come to this place, I could ever go back to caring about anything.

Corabelle’s father caught up with me in the parking lot, jerking me back by the arm. “Don’t you walk out of here right now,” he said. “She needs you.”

His face was hard, and I could see the change in him. He was being forced to be strong. His quiet kindness evaporated in the face of protecting his daughter.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I was just sick of coffins.”

He sighed. “I don’t think she’s up for any more decisions. Why don’t you sort through the pictures for the slide show?”

“She’ll want to do that.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Right now, she needs you in her corner. I saw Maybelle through a lot of hardship. Four miscarriages. Her mother died two days after one of them. She acted like she didn’t want me, but I finally figured out that it was because she didn’t have any way to put into words what she needed me to do.”

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t fix this.”

He ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Neither could I. But walking away breaks it even more.”

I sank down on a concrete bench outside the door. “I don’t see how things could get any worse.”

His lips pinched together like Corabelle’s did when she was concentrating. “Nobody can walk these paths alone. Even if it seems she doesn’t need you, you have to stay by her side.”

“She doesn’t even want to talk to me.”

“The moment that she pushes you away is exactly the time when you should hold her even closer.” He stood up. “I’m going to get us out of here for a while. Why don’t you bring her over to the house? We’ll pretend to eat something.”

He opened the door to the funeral home, and I forced my body off the bench and back inside. His hand clapped against my back as we headed through the building. “My Corabelle doesn’t choose lightly. I know you can do this. For her. For all of us.”

When we got back to the coffin room, Corabelle was holding a silver urn. “Maybe we should cremate him. Then we can keep him with us always.” Her eyes had this shell-shocked look about them, both seeing and not seeing anything in front of her.

“You wanted a grave to visit,” I reminded her. “You were worried about having the ashes move from place to place.”

“You’re right. I did want that.” She set the urn back on a shelf. “There is no good way to do this, is there?”

“None.”

She turned to me, and finally, I was able to hold her in my arms for a moment. The salesman led her parents back into the chapel and we were alone, the empty boxes propped open around us, revealing their silky interiors. The air smelled of pine and fabric and a stale sort of newness, like a car that’s been closed up too long on the lot at a dealer. “Did you go with the blue one?” I asked.

She nodded against my chest.

“Like the ocean,” I told her, and her shoulders heaved.

I hung on to her, the only things upright in a room full of horizontals, the boxes for the living to lay their lost.

~*´♥`*~

The morning of the funeral was stupidly beautiful. Birdsong, sunshine, a warm breeze off the desert. I wanted to pummel Mother Nature for thinking it was okay to celebrate spring on a day like today.

Corabelle sat on the end of our bed, holding a black dress in her hand. “It doesn’t fit,” she said.

I stood at the mirror working on my tie for the hundredth time. I hated these things. “It will be fine,” I told her.

In the mirror I saw her list forward, and I whipped around to catch her. “Are you okay?”

Her belly heaved with tears that were all dried out. “My boobs are leaking.”

I sat on the bed next to her. “What will make it stop?”

“I don’t know. They gave me a pill to dry them up but it’s not working.”

Her bra was soaked. I headed over to the dresser and pulled out a new one. “Didn’t you get some of those pad things?”

“In the nursery. But I can’t go in there.”

“I’ll do it.” I laid the bra next to her.

I didn’t really want to go into Finn’s room either, but I guessed this was what Corabelle’s father had talked about. Doing what needed to be done. Be there for her. Getting the pads would upset her. Not getting them would too. I just had to accept the no-win situation for what it was.

The door stuck, and I had to push to get it to open. The movement of air made the butterflies on the mobile over the crib start to dance.

The wall was lined with our drawings of the sea, carefully stored by Corabelle’s mom until a month ago. We’d tacked up the yellowing paper covered in crayon to remind us of where we’d been, where we were going. I didn’t know what we were doing now.

Most of the consumables we’d bought already were in a little changing table one of our neighbors had loaned us. A package of newborn Pampers. Wipes. Corabelle’s parents picked up things here and there, and we tried to keep it all organized, knowing that when Finn came our system would fall apart to late nights and exhaustion.

We’d had no idea how hard it could all fall apart.

I found the package of nursing pads and pulled out a pair, judged their thickness, and took two more. The milk refusing to dry up was another insult.

When I got back to the bedroom, Corabelle was curled on the bed in her underwear, the black dress on the floor. I sat next to her. “We have to get ready, baby. We’re supposed to meet your parents in twenty minutes.”

“The dress doesn’t fit,” she said.

“Is it an old dress?”

“I wore it to Uncle Ben’s funeral last year.”

“You’ve had a baby since then.”

She rolled on her belly, her face pressed into the pillow.

“Corabelle, you’re perfect.”

Her voice was muffled. “I’m pathetic, leaky, fat, and I have no baby.”

I tried touching her shoulder, but she jerked like I had burned her. “Can I go buy you something else to wear?”

“In twenty minutes?”

“Let me see it on you.” I pulled her back to sitting and retrieved the dress. She stuck the pads in her bra, this terrible dead look in her eyes, as I figured out which end was which and dropped it over her head.

She was right, though. The front was tight on her swollen chest. “Maybe a jacket could cover it?” I asked.

She flung herself back on the bed. “Make this day be over.”

“We’ll get through it.”

“I don’t want to go through it.”

Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. I picked it up. “Your parents are asking if we’ve left.”

“Screw them.”

“Corabelle, come on.”

My tone must have set something off in her as she jumped up, tugging the dress down. “I don’t want to come on! I don’t want to go! I want him to be fine! I don’t want to see him in that horrible blue coffin!”

Sobs overtook her then, and I did my best to hold on to her even as she stiffened when I pulled her in. I had no idea what I was doing. I needed a rule book, something to tell me what to do and when to do it.

“We’re going to make it through this,” I said.

I led her into the living room, hoping to get her out the door. She didn’t have shoes. “Hold on,” I said and raced back to the closet. She seemed to have forgotten the tightness of the dress, and I hoped I could at least get her to her parents. They were doing a better job of helping her than I was.

I found a pair of black pumps and took them out to her. I didn’t think I could get her in them at that moment, so I just led her out to the Camaro barefoot. We could put them on when we got there.

In a town as small as Deming, we didn’t have far to go. I felt conspicuous, driving along the streets, feeling like every passerby was staring at us, the parents of the dead baby.

They were judging us. They wondered what we had done to deserve this. I could feel them backing away, wanting to avoid the bad luck in case it was catching.

Corabelle’s parents were waiting in front of the doors of the funeral home. I was sick of that place, its brick walls and white columns, the smell of rotting flowers, and the employees’ fake sympathy. I imagined my car crashing through the front doors, glass shattering, walls splintering. I tamped down the rage and parked.

Mrs. Rotheford rushed to the car and opened the door. She leaned down to put the shoes on Corabelle’s feet. “Come on now, baby, let’s get inside.” She pulled her daughter from the car.

Her father stepped up to help, and Corabelle was flanked by her parents, leaving no room for me. I felt like I was the cause of all the misery but no part of the solution.

When we entered the foyer, my own parents stood up from the sofa. My mother dabbed her eyes with a tissue. My father looked positively jovial, like we were celebrating a holiday.

“I just saw Finn,” Mom said. “He looks so sweet in his little duck pajamas.”

Corabelle’s head snapped up. “It’s supposed to be the frog ones!” She shot out of the room and toward the chapel, her parents hurrying after her.

My father rolled his eyes. “Not like it matters, frogs or ducks.” He rocked back on his heels. “At least you don’t have to be stuck with her now.”

I took three steps toward him with the absolute intention of knocking him flat. I didn’t have anything to lose. Everything that mattered was already gone.

But my sister ran around the corner, a bunch of daisies in her hands, and I stopped. She still had to live with them.

“Gavin, Gavin!” she cried and crashed into me. “I’m not an auntie anymore. Daddy said so.”

I pressed her face into my belly, scowling at my father. “You’ll always be an aunt,” I said.

“But Daddy said—”

“Daddy’s a big fat asshole.”

She looked up at me with big wide eyes. My mother came forward and grasped her by the shoulders. “We’re going to look around,” she said.

My father tugged on the sleeves of his charcoal jacket, a size too small. “Lookit who’s deciding to be an asshole at his own kid’s funeral.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t get to pick your family.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t pick you.” My face threatened to explode from the pressure.

My father glared at me. “You want to take a potshot at me?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead. I’ll give you a freebie.”

My hands were fisted, so ready to break his jaw. “I’m not like you. I don’t pick on people more pathetic than me.”

He laughed. “Oh, Gavin. You act like you were some great son.”

I had to walk away from this. Had to. “I’d appreciate it if you would leave,” I said, and headed back toward the chapel.

“You’re just a chip off the old block,” he called after me. “No sense denying it.”

I kept walking.

When I entered the room, Corabelle looked up from the coffin. “He’s in the wrong pajamas!”

“It’s okay, baby,” her mother said. “The duck ones are just as lovely.”

I didn’t really want to approach the box that held Finn, the lid open and a spray of purple hyacinths covering the lower half.

But I did. He looked nothing like he had in the hospital. His cheeks were colored pink, his mouth stitched closed. They had rearranged his lips to sit more naturally together, even though they had been formed to the tube when we held him that last time.

The pajamas were slightly too big, tucked beneath him. I was sure if I could see his legs, the footed part would dangle off the end. But I said none of this. “I think there are more ducks than frogs in the ocean.”

Corabelle laid her head on my shoulder, and I relaxed. This was just a ritual. A bit of time to pass. Maybe when it was behind us, she would be better. Maybe I would figure out something to say.

The minister came in with his black suit and white collar, a pale face topped with scant wisps of blond hair. “Lovely boy,” he said, gazing down at the coffin, and I wondered how many babies he had seen in boxes.