Rooms(66)

“You be Snow White,” she said. “I’ll be Prince Charming.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, she leaned down and kissed me. Her lips were dry and tasted like sugar and her hair was wet from the creek and I could smell her sun cream and deodorant.

“What was that for?” I said when she pulled away, and I remember laughing even though I felt scared for some reason I couldn’t name.

“Now you’ll never die,” she said, and she was smiling, too.)

After the service was over, when the grown-ups had drifted into the kitchen to talk about nothing and drink coffee and watch the clock sideways, wondering how quickly they could leave without looking impolite, Billy gave me a boost so I could reach the casket. I remember Mrs. Gernst collected porcelain figurines and there were two cats nestled next to her, perched on tissue paper, eyes up, watching me. Her skin smelled like the inside of a garage, like spilled chemicals and someone’s wooden workbench; her lips were thin as paper and just as dry.

And I remember the sudden scream, and falling backward on top of Billy, who was laughing like a maniac. My mother came charging out of the crowd like the devil was at her heels, yanked my skirt up where I was, and gave me a solid spanking right there in front of Mrs. Gernst’s body, until my father intervened and dragged us both into the street.

Funny enough, I thought at first my mom was mad because I’d done it wrong. Mrs. Gernst hadn’t woken up. She was still dead as dead.

That was always my favorite part of the story, anyway. Not the happily-ever-after part—even as a kid I could see that that was a load of honky—but the kiss, the reversal, the waking up, like the past had never happened at all. It was better than confession and getting Jesus to absolve you after a few Hail Marys.

Maybe that was my problem all along, and Alice’s, too. We were waiting for Prince Charming and that magic kiss.

We were waiting—are waiting—for forgiveness.





MINNA

Minna saw Danny slip into the living room just after her mom started speaking her dad’s eulogy. At first she thought he’d come to show support, to listen to her apologize; but then she saw he was in uniform and was accompanied by another cop in uniform. She tried to gesture to him several times—which was hard, because she was sitting in the front row and was supposed to be paying attention—but he kept his eyes glued to her mother.

Where the hell was Trenton? She didn’t see him anywhere.

“You can never really know anyone else,” her mother was saying, and Minna turned around, guilty, feeling as though her mom was speaking a private message to her. And Caroline was looking at her. This wasn’t part of the speech, Minna knew, at least it wasn’t part of the speech her mom had rehearsed with her earlier, while they were stashing the roll-away beds, carefully avoiding discussing what they had said to each other last night, how they had slept side by side, as if Minna was still a little kid.

“I was married to Richard for almost twenty-two years, and in some ways he was still a stranger to me,” Caroline said. It was very quiet in the room. Someone coughed. Minna was embarrassed by her mom’s eye contact, and the pleading look of her expression. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. “But I know certain things for a fact. Richard enjoyed life, truly enjoyed it, in a way very few people do. Sometimes he enjoyed it a little too much.” Several people laughed. “One time, he decided we should all go camping as a family. He spent weeks researching the best tents, the best fishing poles, the best places to pick berries in the summertime. He wanted to do it. He didn’t want to bring even a can of beans. Well, that lasted about half an hour. We spent the night in a Regency near Lake George, after I got eaten alive by mosquitoes, Minna picked a handful of poison ivy, and everyone got hungry.”

Now everyone laughed. Minna felt a sudden gripping terror: she had forgotten about the camping trip, but now she remembered her father suited up in a broad hat decorated with feathers and ornaments, wading into a flat river the color of sky, calling for her to come swim. She remembered, too, how he had taken her arm, bloated with poison ivy, onto his lap, squinting with concentration as he applied calamine lotion.

What else had she forgotten about her dad? How many other moments had she let slip? She knew he had loved life, almost to the point of poor taste. That was the problem, in some ways. The rest of them had been like passing shadows on the brilliant high-noon photograph of his life; she had felt like a shadow next to him.

For the first time it occurred to her that maybe, maybe, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“Death makes it easy to forgive,” Caroline was saying. She looked down and shuffled the notes in her hand, even though Minna knew she wasn’t reading from them. When Caroline looked up again, she had the same pleading expression in her eyes. “We all do our best,” she said, speaking very deliberately. Then she broke eye contact, finally, and looked out over the rest of the crowd. Minna wondered whether her mom was sober. It was hard to tell. She didn’t usually speak so truthfully, even—or especially—when she was drunk. “I loved Richard very much, even after all this time. We stayed very close.” Her voice broke slightly and Minna gripped the sides of her chair, to keep from feeling like she might be bucked off. “I forgive him for everything. I forgive him for dying, too, although I’ll miss him very much. There were things I still wanted to say. But there always are.”