Arcadia's Gift (Arcadia Trilogy) (6 page)

Our aunt presented us to our parents like china dolls to be inspected. Mom looked like someone had beaten her with a hammer and superglued her back together. Her navy blue suit, freshly blown out hair and make-up were perfect, but anyone could see all that was only a thin veneer barely holding the pieces of her together. She reached forward mechanically and straightened Aaron’s tie. Her eyes reflected a glassy shine.

Dad stood shifting his weight from foot to foot as if his dress shoes were too tight. He drew me in next to him with a light squeeze on my shoulder. Once Aaron and I were between them like a buffer zone, the receiving line began moving again.

Thick grief washed over me with every new person who stood before me, making it difficult to breathe. I let my body shift into autopilot. While my arms hugged and my head bobbed in mute acknowledgment to the whispered words of sympathy, I shrank into myself and tried to fight off the urge to blow chunks all over my shoes. The line was insanely long, winding its way out the door, and after an hour, Dad let Aaron and I retreat upstairs to the family lounge to relax until the service started.

Away from the crowd, I finally felt like I could breathe again. I waited on a couch, letting a mug of coffee grow cold between my palms as various family members rotated in and out. My thirteen-year-old cousin, Geoffrey, sat in the corner playing Mario on his DS until Aunt Tina hustled him out with orders to talk to our great-aunts.

Aaron and I didn’t speak. He sat across from me on another sofa with his eyes closed as if catching a cat-nap, although I could tell by the way he flinched whenever someone else entered the room, that he was wide awake.

When it was time for the memorial to start, our grandma came to fetch us. While my family is not religious, Grandma hired Bronwyn’s father to hold the inter-faith service. As we entered the small chapel, I saw with horror that our front-row seats were situated directly in front of the casket. Panic hit me hard. I wasn’t ready to see Lony. Somehow, seeing her body lying in that coffin would make her death official, and I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that. I swallowed hard and stared at my feet the whole way up the aisle. I discovered with immense relief once I sat down that my line of vision was low enough to prevent me from seeing inside the box.

Just before Pastor Tom began to speak, someone sank into the seat on the other side of Aaron. I looked down the row to see Cane Matthews. I’d forgotten all about him. My parents must have invited him to sit with the family. His face appeared to be carved out of stone, as if betrayal of the slightest emotion would cause the whole thing to crumble off his head.

The ceremony passed in a great rush, each second bringing me closer to having to say my final good-bye to my sister. While Pastor Tom talked, I fingered the vintage butterfly hair clip that I had stashed in my pocket. I’d found it a couple of years ago in a junk shop downtown. The wings were made of delicate sheets of abalone and tiny rhinestones formed the body. Lony was constantly stealing it from my jewelry box, leading to many arguments about how I should just give it to her since I rarely wore my hair up. The thing is I probably would’ve let her have it if she hadn’t been so demanding about it. Instead, I held onto it out of spite. The clip now was fastened around a badly composed poem to my sister that I’d written in third grade. A few of the words were misspelled and the overly melodramatic lines didn’t really rhyme, but Lony had kept it pinned to her bulletin board in her bedroom ever since. I planned to slip it and the hair clip into the casket before it was closed.

Aunt Tina gave the eulogy for the family. Grandma had asked me to do it, but I begged off. I didn’t like public speaking on a good day, and there was no way I’d be able to hold it together on this one. My aunt’s words washed over me without sinking in. My mind whirled with all of the things I wanted to say to Lony before they closed the casket on her forever. The last time I’d seen her, she and Cane had been bickering. I snuck a glance down the row at him. The muscles of his jaw twitched beneath the surface of his freshly shaven skin, and his blood-shot eyes appeared tired and dry. It was sad that her final moments had been spent fighting. When the eulogy was over, our family remained seated while ushers dismissed everyone else with instructions that the burial would be a private, family ceremony.

Once the bulk of the crowd cleared out of the chapel, our family members drifted up one at a time to kneel on the velvet cushion before the coffin to pay their last respects. I waited as long as possible. I didn’t want an audience.

When my turn came, I settled on my knees beside her and folded my hands on the waxy wooden rail. Carefully, I allowed my gaze to drift over my sister from waist to head.

I had expected to see Lony there, but I realized with some surprise that body lying there was not her. My sister was long gone. The mortician had made her up to appear younger and more conservative than she’d been in life. Her hair was brushed and positioned so that it framed her face. She wore the plum colored dress that we had taken our family pictures in the year before, a dress that I remembered her complaining made her neck itch. The smoky eye make-up that I’d been so accustomed to seeing on her over the past year was gone, leaving a fresh face with only a hint of mascara and lip gloss. It looked more like my body in the coffin than hers. I shuddered.

I’d been so absorbed with drinking in her appearance, I didn’t notice the long moments that passed. When Dad touched my shoulder and indicated that my turn was up, my heart jumped into my throat.
No!
I screamed inside.
I’m not ready for her to be gone!

Pastor Tom gathered the remaining family members and Cane in front of the coffin to say some last words. The tenor of his voice sounded far away, and I concentrated on saying my own silent good-byes, which I’d neglected to do before.

One by one, people began heading for their cars to get ready for the procession to the cemetery.

As I left the chapel, I turned back to see Cane, all alone now, watching the two somber men from the funeral home close the lid and set an arrangement of roses on top. He’d been the last person to see her in life. It seemed fitting that he be the last to see her in death.

It wasn’t until we were in the car on the way home that I felt the butterfly hair clip still in my pocket.

The next week and a half faded past me in blur. The pain in our house was almost unbearable. When Lony died, she left behind a hole that stifled us with its emptiness. My mother, Aaron and I spent most of our time in our bedrooms, Mom in a Valium-induced haze. She crumbled after the funeral and hadn’t gotten out of her pajamas since. Aaron drowned his thoughts in death metal in the basement until Dad stopped by and told him to keep it down so as not to disturb Mom. Me? I spent long afternoons sitting on the cushy window seat in my bedroom watching a flock of cardinals nest in our backyard pine tree.

Just over two weeks after the accident, I awoke early to noise coming from the kitchen beneath me. I slid my arms into a Hawkeyes sweatshirt and wandered down to investigate. Aaron stood in front of the open refrigerator drinking milk from the carton. Mom would have yelled at him for it, but I never drank milk, so I didn’t care.

“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against the counter. Aaron’s blond hair was damp from the shower and he was dressed in jeans and a clean t-shirt which read “The ZOMBIE APOCALYPS is coming.” I wasn’t sure if it was advertising a band or making a social statement.

“What’s it look like?” he grunted. “Going to school.”

School. The thought of doing something as ordinary as going to school seemed foreign to me.

“Why?” I wondered.

Aaron flashed me a look like I was the stupidest girl he’d ever met. “It’s Monday.” He replaced the cap on the milk and slid it back into the refrigerator. His eyes drifted over me standing there barefoot and in pajamas. “You’re not going?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

Aaron’s face softened and he nodded. “If you’re not ready, you should stay home. But I…I just can’t take this house anymore.” He snatched up his bag from the table. “See ya.”

I stood there for several minutes, my mind completely blank. It felt kind of nice standing alone, like being able to breathe fresh air after a long time in a stuffy room. For the first time since leaving the hospital, I got an urge to get out of the house, to go for a jog, to feel the sun on my skin. I wasn’t ready to go back to class yet, but a run around the neighborhood sounded like it might be okay.

After swapping out my pj’s for sweats, I walked down the hall to my mother’s room to let her know I was going out. I opened her door slowly and peeked in. The shades were drawn tight, blocking out the morning sun. I could just make out a lump curled in a ball in the middle of the king-sized mattress. Aside from the funeral, my mom hadn’t left her bed. The scent of unwashed sheets made my nose twitch.

Suddenly, my hands began to tremble and my stomach clenched. Intense sorrow hit me, seeming to radiate from the direction of the bed, both emotional and physical at the same time. It sunk into my body through my pores. My breath caught in my throat and something in my heart snapped. The void left from Lony’s absence sucked the gravity right out of the room. I lost my grip on the door and dropped to the carpet. I hadn’t realized I was sobbing until my mother’s arms wrapped around me, rocking me side to side.

“I know, honey, I know,” she whispered into my hair.

After school let out for the day, Bronwyn and Shawn stopped by to drop off some textbooks that I’d asked for. They had been at the funeral, but we didn’t have much chance to talk. They both called regularly, but neither seemed to know what to say to me. I guess I understood that.

We exchanged big hugs as I invited them inside. Identical looks of horror crossed their faces at seeing my normally put-together mom standing barefoot in the kitchen wearing her dirty bathrobe and eating peaches directly out of a can with her fingers. What I saw as progress they probably saw as a scene from
Punked.
I herded them upstairs.

I moved a heap of discarded pajamas and t-shirts from my desk chair and dropped them on top of my already-full hamper, where at least half fell off onto the floor. Bronwyn took the chair while Shawn sprawled out in my window seat. He picked up my binoculars and looked through them.

“Spying on the neighbors?” he asked.

“Birds,” I replied, then instantly felt stupid. I knew it sounded like a lame way to spend my time. “I’ve been watching the birds in the pines.”

Bronwyn bit her lip as she tended to do when she was uncomfortable. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your room like this before,” she commented, her eyes roaming around.

For the first time since I got home from the hospital, I really focused my attention on my surroundings. The bed was unmade and the sheets were loose and wrinkled from tossing and turning. Several dirty dishes with clumps of caked-on food were stacked on the desk like my own personal Leaning Tower of Pisa. Next to the dishes, the photos from my bulletin board lay in a crumpled heap from where I’d ripped them down in a moment of rage and regret. On the floor in front of the closet was a pile of old school papers that I’d pulled out of my nightstand drawers for some reason late one night, and never bothered putting back.

“You were always the neat one,” Bronwyn whispered.

“Well, now I’m the
only
one,” I snapped. Bronwyn cringed and gnawed at her lip again. My harsh tone shocked me as much as her, and I immediately felt sorry.

“Cady,” Shawn said, walking over and wrapping his arms around me “She didn’t mean anything bad. Don’t get angry. We’re just worried about you.”

I allowed myself the luxury of sinking into his skinny, yet strangely comforting, chest. A wave of calm coated me like a blanket. “I’m so sorry,” I sighed.

Bronwyn slid up behind me and joined our embrace. The calming sensation intensified and the tense muscles in my shoulders relaxed. Sandwiched between my friends was the best I’d felt since before my Dad left.

“I don’t have to be home for a couple of hours,” Bronwyn said, “Why don’t you let Shawn and I help you clean up?”

I groaned. I wasn’t in the mood to clean, but I was willing to concede that doing something productive might make me feel better. I nodded.

Bronwyn gathered all of the dirty clothes and the sheets off of my bed and dragged them off to the laundry room, while Shawn helped me make up the bed with clean linens. When we carried my dirty dishes downstairs, I noticed the heap already sitting in the sink and stacked on the countertops, the remnants of what couldn’t be stuffed into the dish washer. It didn’t look like anyone had run a load since the accident.

Bronwyn and I tackled the kitchen while Shawn ran the vacuum, first in my bedroom and then through the rest of the house. My mother, holed up in her bedroom, didn’t come out of her room to help.

By the time Bronwyn had to leave to get ready for her Bible study group, the house was more or less put to order. I hugged both of my friends tightly and watched as they trotted off to Shawn’s Toyota parked across the street. As they drove away, my energy left with them, replaced by dull emptiness.

Returning to my newly cleaned bedroom, I sank down on the plush cushion of my window seat, feeling a little like a balloon that just had the air let out. My hands automatically picked up my dad’s old pair of binoculars from his time in the Army. The cardinals looked like they were redecorating their nest. I wondered if they applied the same Feng Shui principles my mother did. Wouldn’t want to see their Chi off balance.