Only Child(31)

“Can you roll up the sleeves?” My voice sounded whiney. I moved side to side a lot, because of my stomach.

“You don’t roll up the sleeves of a suit. Just leave it, it’s really not important, OK? Can you hold still for one second so I can put the tie on?” Daddy said in a mean voice, and then I could tell he felt bad about talking like that because he said, “You look handsome, buddy,” and he put his hand through my hair.

“Listen. Today is going to be hard for all of us, understand?”

I shook my head yes.

“I need you to do me a favor and be a big boy today and help me with Mommy, all right? I need your help today.”

I shook my head yes again, even though I wasn’t sure I was going to be a good helper today, because of how I was feeling.

We drove to the wake in Mommy’s car. It didn’t get towed at the hospital. Grandma and Aunt Mary went to pick it up the day after Mommy parked it on the sidewalk. Mommy didn’t drive, though. She sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window, although it wasn’t even possible to see anything with all the rain splashing against the windows, and also the windows were getting fog on them from our breathing. Mimi sat next to me in the back and also stared out of the window. Daddy was driving really slow, and the more we got away from the house, the slower he was driving, even though there was no traffic.

It was really quiet in the car with no radio on. All I could hear was the rain on the sunroof and the squeaky wish-wish from the windshield wipers going at dizzy speed. I liked that it was quiet. At the wake there would be a lot of people and a lot of talking, and I wished we could keep driving, just us.

“Mommy?” I said into the quiet car, and it sounded too loud.

Mommy’s shoulders went up a little, but she didn’t turn around and she didn’t give me an answer.

“Mommy?”

“What, bud?” Daddy said.

“Do we have to go to the wake?” I asked, and I knew it was a stupid question. Miss Russell always says there are no stupid questions, but that’s not really true, because when you already know what the answer is going to be, it’s kind of stupid to ask the question anyway. Mimi grabbed my hand and gave me a sad smile.

“Yes, Zach, we have to go to the wake,” Daddy said. “We are Andy’s family, and people are coming to say good-bye to him and express their condolences to us.”

I started to think about Uncle Chip’s wake again, and it made my stomach go into overdrive. I tried to open the window to get some fresh air, but my window was locked. Daddy always locks the windows from the front so we can’t open them in the back, even though I get carsick a lot and it helps when the windows are open, but Daddy says it hurts his ears, so it’s a no to opening the windows. I mostly only get carsick when Daddy drives and never when Mommy drives.

I didn’t want to see Andy dead in a casket. When we got to the place of the wake and Daddy parked the car, my heart was beating really fast. I felt like I had to throw up, and tears were coming in my eyes. I squeezed my nose so hard it hurt.

“Get out of the car, Zach, come on,” Daddy said.

I wanted to stay in the car, but Daddy went around and opened my door. I saw Mommy standing next to the car, getting wet from the rain, and she looked really small and scared, too. She held out her hand, and her face gave me a look like she wanted me to go to her, and so I got out of the car and took her hand and we started walking together.

Inside were some men in suits, and they talked with quiet voices to Mommy and Daddy and Mimi, and no one else was there except us. I looked around, and it looked like the place where Uncle Chip’s wake was, in New Jersey. It looked like a lobby in a fancy hotel, the one we go to sometimes when we stay overnight in the city. It had big comfy chairs with little tables in between and a big sparkly lamp hanging from the ceiling and a red carpet that was very soft under my shoes. Quiet piano music was playing from somewhere in the room.

The lobby room felt cozy. I wanted to go sit in one of the comfy chairs, but then Daddy told me it was time to go into the wake room and BAM! my stomach went right back to roller-coaster mode. Mommy was holding my hand. She squeezed it tighter and tighter, and it got too tight, but I didn’t try to pull my hand away. Mommy needed to squeeze it, I thought.

Daddy had his hands on Mommy’s back and on the top of my head, and he started to push us toward a door across the lobby room, and that was probably going to be the wake room behind it. Mimi walked behind us, and we all took tiny steps.

We got closer to the door, and I held my breath in and looked at my feet. Every time I took a step, my shoe sank into the soft red carpet. I looked behind me to see if I was leaving footprints. I was, but then the carpet went right back to normal after I picked my feet up. I kept my eyes on my feet the whole time, and it felt like behind the door something scary was waiting. Something really big and scary, and the doors should definitely stay closed.





[ 20 ]


    Jumbo Twin Roll Tissue Dispenser


SOMEBODY OPENED THE DOOR. The carpet changed from red to blue. The room was quiet and it smelled good, like a garden. Mommy made a sound like a lot of fast breaths. She let go of my hand and walked away from me, but I didn’t know where because I still didn’t look up, my eyes were stuck on my feet on the blue carpet.

Without Mommy holding my hand tight, I felt like I was in a strange place all by myself and I got lost or something. I stayed by the door, and because I didn’t want to use my eyes, I tried to use my other senses to figure out what it was like around me. I used my touch sense and my fingers touched the wall, and it had patterns on it that were smooth. And I felt my feet touch the blue carpet that was soft like the red carpet in the lobby room. I couldn’t use my taste sense because there was nothing in my mouth, but I had a bad feeling in my mouth from when I started to feel sick in the car. I used my smell sense, and it really did smell like a garden, like flowers, and it smelled really sweet. I liked that at first, but then it smelled too sweet or something. For my hearing sense, I thought maybe there would be bird or bee sounds, because you can hear those in a garden, but it was completely quiet. Even with the hearing super sense all I could hear was quietness.