The Drifter(47)
“We should probably go inside, I mean, eventually,” he said. Betsy didn’t know exactly how long they’d been parked. It could have been a few minutes, or an hour. She couldn’t say. They found a spot two blocks away from the church, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. In the time since they arrived, the streets had filled with cars, and dozens of people had walked past their car, dressed in mourning clothes. Betsy wore the only black clothes she owned, a cotton knee-length T-shirt dress that was still wrinkled from the box, the thrift store sunglasses, and some oxfords she bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. She spotted a group of Ginny’s high school friends piling out of a white BMW, each in double strands of pearls and prim, somber cocktail dresses. Caroline’s mom, Viv, in a black suit and an enormous pair of sunglasses, walked toward the church with her head down and her arms folded. Betsy slunk further in the seat.
“That church looks pretty small. And I don’t know if they chartered a bus or two, but it seems like all of Gainesville is here,” he said. “I just want you to be prepared.”
“OK, I’m good. I’m ready,” she said. She slid on the glasses she’d bought with Louise and Not-Louise just days before, though it felt like months, years, a lifetime ago.
Betsy looked over at Gavin, who was wearing a navy blazer, a white shirt, and a burgundy striped tie, articles of clothing she couldn’t believe he owned. None of it was pressed, of course, and he still looked like a rumpled mess. But the fact that he had ever been within a hundred yards of a Brooks Brothers shocked her.
They walked down to the church, avoiding eye contact with everyone. It was easier for Betsy than she thought, through the fog of the pills. She had been ready to shirk away from hugs, to fend off anyone who approached her to offer condolences, but everyone must have known to stay away from her. Betsy kept her head down and grabbed Gavin’s hand, and the two of them winnowed their way through the crowd gathering in the back of the church to the center aisle and squeezed into the end of the second to last pew. At the front of the church, behind the pulpit next to the priest, she spotted her: Caroline.
Once everyone was seated, Ginny’s parents, Robert and Martha, made their way in from the steps of the church, puffy-eyed and exhausted. Ginny’s older sister, M.J., stood behind them holding a writhing, wailing infant. Ginny hated M.J., who married a pompous young lawyer from Charleston named Griff, or Gruff, or something absurd that Betsy could never remember, and had a baby in the whirlwind eighteen months after graduating. The sisters were lifelong rivals, and since M.J. had gotten married, her newly religious, deeply conservative ways made Ginny look like a Riot Grrrl by comparison. M.J. spotted Betsy on the end of the pew and eyeballed Betsy’s men’s shoes and the faded, wrinkled dress before she realized Betsy was watching her, and then offered a sympathetic nod and a quick, forced smile. When Martha saw Betsy, her tears welled. She reached over to put her hand on Betsy’s stiff, frozen shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” Betsy said. It came out in a dry, throaty voice that Betsy didn’t recognize. Gavin squeezed her hand.
“I know you are, sweetheart. Ginny loved you so,” she said. Betsy wouldn’t look at Ginny’s father. What would he, what would any of them, have said if Betsy told them the truth? She was in the apartment when it happened. Through the haze of the pills, Betsy remembered that night like it was a distant dream. She could have stopped it. Gavin reached over to shake Mr. Harrington’s hand briskly and wordlessly.
The service was a blur. The priest, who had known Ginny her entire life, but apparently not at all, delivered a service that felt like it was composed entirely from captions written in her high school yearbook. There was a forced anecdote or two, a lot of “gone too soon” rhetoric, some unfortunate allusions to heaven.
“We may find the present moment more than we can bear,” he said. Father Tom was a sturdy man with ruddy cheeks and fine, coppery hair that had been arranged and sprayed with impressive precision. He found Betsy’s eyes in the back of the church, which were locked on his with seething resentment, and looked away. “Jesus knows that, and so He meets us here. He offers us Himself, promising that our loved ones will rise again, and that our greatest flourishing is yet to happen.”
When he finished speaking, Ginny’s high school soccer coach said a few stumbling words about her spirit and dedication. One of her high school friends talked about her being the most beautiful of all of the Royal Dames at the debutante ball. And then, to Betsy’s horror, Caroline took the pulpit.
She wore a simple halter-neck dress, exposing the muscles and tiny bones of her slim, strong shoulders, and pearl earrings, of course. Her hair was pulled back off of her face. Even from the back of the church, Betsy could sense her calm. Caroline had a note card in her hand, but put it down quickly and shook her head.
“Ginny was my roommate and my sorority sister for the last few years,” she started, her voice clear and strong. “Some people might say that she kept me in line, maybe even made me a little nicer, but I doubt it.”
There was a low grumble of muffled laughter.
“I know that she was the sweetest person I’d ever met. And every day we were friends, I was impressed by her kindness. She was funny, too, in that beat-up convertible. Everyone in Gainesville seemed to know Ginny Harrington. She was my best friend. Ginny and Betsy Young and me, um, and I.” Caroline searched the pews of the church for Betsy, who looked down at her lap immediately, intensely. She could feel Caroline’s eyes scanning the crowd for her, and she tried to will herself to disappear, to condense her body or melt onto the floor of the church somehow. She felt Gavin’s leg press against hers and tried to control her quickening breath. What would Caroline do if she knew that Betsy was at the apartment the night Ginny was murdered, that she heard something, anything at all, and didn’t try to stop it? Betsy couldn’t bear it. It was a mistake, a fuckup of colossal proportions, and she would never tell a soul what had happened. She was high and paranoid, convinced that she imagined she was hearing something: That was her excuse? She felt unforgiveable, small, pathetic, scared. “We had some of the greatest times, and you know, I thought we would have more.” Caroline finally started to break, her composure dissolved, and she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.