The Dead Romantics (72)

“Hmm?”

“In his book.”

I tilted my head. “He wrote that we listened to Beethoven’s Für Elise—Carver went through a classical music kick—and that Dad danced with skeletons. Which he did,” I added, “but only on Halloween.”

He snorted a laugh. “I bet it was terrifying.”

“Oh, absolutely not. He’d do this thing where he’d throw his voice and move Skelly’s jaw—it was funny! He was funny. And maybe a little funny looking,” I conceded, and absently ran my fingers across the stereo’s buttons. “I think the worst part is that Lee thought my childhood was something sad and lonely. And maybe sometimes it was. And it wasn’t always great—but god, Ben, it was good. It was broken a little, and banged up, but it was good.” I pulled open the drawer beneath the stereo to show Ben the CDs we had, the ones Dad played. “It was so good.”

Because Dad collected songs and danced Mom around the parlor—and together they taught us how to say goodbye. They taught us a lot of things that most kids rarely even thought of. They taught us how to grieve with widows, and how to console young kids who didn’t quite know death yet. They taught us how to put makeup on corpses and drain out the blood to replace it with formaldehyde, how to arrange clothes so the hospital bruises from the IVs and shock paddles and stickers weren’t quite as prominent. How to frame flowers on a casket to disguise how few some people received. Mom and Dad taught us so many things, and all of it led to this.

They gave us the tools to figure out what to do when they were gone.

And now Dad was.

I took out the topmost CD. A burned silver disc with Dad’s scratching scrawl on it.

Good Goodbyes.

I couldn’t remember how many times, after long viewings and sad wakes, Dad would call us to the funeral home to help clean up—just like this. Just like now. The Days Gone Funeral Home was small, and Dad didn’t like overworking his employees if he didn’t have to, so he worked us instead. I always made like I hated it, the too-clean smell of disinfectant and floral bouquets, the bright rooms, the dead people in the basement, but I had a secret:

I never hated it as much as I said I did.

By the time Mom had dragged me and Carver and Alice to the funeral home, usually on school nights, Dad had already shrugged out of his coat, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the tattoos he’d acquired in his youth (that most of Mairmont would gasp at if they knew). He’d put on this CD, and beckon us into the house of death with a smile and a good song.

“Want a listen?” I asked Ben, showing him the disc like it was a secret.

“What is it?”

I put the CD into the stereo, and pressed play.

The hiss of the speakers sighed through the parlor, and I closed my eyes, and the music started. The antiquated bop hopped from room to room, the shake of the tambourine, happy and joyful and light, and finally—finally—I felt like I was home. The song settled into my bones as if it wanted me to move, like it wanted me to throw my arms up, to twirl, to jump.

I didn’t need to see where I was going. Every corner of this funeral home was my childhood, every inch seared into my soul like a long-lost treasure map.

I remembered Dad standing by the stereo. I remembered the snap of his feet. Pointing to Mom, beckoning her close with an orchid in his mouth and the shake of his hips.

“I didn’t expect this,” Ben remarked, surprised.

“We are full of wonders, Benji Andor.” I mimed the tambourine as I bopped down the hallway.

Carver, putting the guest book away in the office, looked at me like I’d lost my mind as Mom poked her head out of the smallest parlor room. A smile tugged at the edges of her rose-red lips.

“What’s that music, babe?” asked Nicki, fixing his rolled-up sleeves. He must’ve been the one helping Mom situate the flowers for tomorrow.

“Dad,” Carver replied, and he was fighting a smile as I wiggled the invisible tambourine.

I undid my hair from its tight bun and shook it out, because the wake was over, and began to sing along to the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup.” Dad used to turn up the stereo as loud as it would go, so loud I was sure the corpses rattled in the basement, and take Mom by the hand, mouthing the words, and she’d laugh as they danced through parlors so accustomed to death, and they looked like home.

They were home.

This was home.

Because Dad left us things—little things—so that we wouldn’t be alone. So Mom wouldn’t be alone. So he could still be with us, even if just in the melody of a song. Any song. Every song. Not just the Foundations, or Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi or Fleetwood Mac or Earth, Wind & Fire or Taylor Swift.

Whatever song, whatever made us feel alive.

Carver grabbed his partner by the hand, and pulled him into the hall to dance.

The good goodbyes.

I always thought the CD was meant for the people laid up in coffins, with floral arrangements and bouquets and guest books—and maybe it was.

But maybe it was for the living, too.

To keep us moving forward.

Ben watched with a baffled look, so misplaced in a funeral home filled with light and sound, and before I could stop myself I reached out to try to take his hand, to get him to dance with us—when my hand fell through his.

He gave a sad sort of smile, and outstretched his hand. “We can pretend.”