The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(137)

Then you think how strange it is, how you have to remind yourself that the person you loved is dead, and even while you’re thinking about that, the thought comes to you again that the person you loved is dead. And it’s the same stupid fog, the same needles or mallet to the intestines or whatever worse thing you want to call it, all over again. But you’ll see for yourself someday.

Miles stood there, remembering, until Bethany’s mother, Mrs. Baldwin, came up beside him. Her eyes were dry, but her hair was a mess. She’d only managed to put eye shadow on one eyelid. She was wearing jeans and one of Bethany’s old T-shirts. Not even one of Bethany’s favorite T-shirts. Miles felt embarrassed for her, and for Bethany, too.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Baldwin said. Her voice sounded rusty and outlandish, as if she were translating from some other language. Something Indo-Germanic, perhaps.

“My poems. Poems I wrote for her,” Miles said. He felt very solemn. This was a historic moment. One day Miles’s biographers would write about this. “Three haikus, a sestina, and two villanelles. Some longer pieces. No one else will ever read them.”

Mrs. Baldwin looked into Miles’s face with her terrible, dry eyes. “I see,” she said. “She said you were a lousy poet.” She put her hand down into the casket, smoothed Bethany’s favorite dress, the one with spider webs, and several holes through which you could see Bethany’s itchy black tights. She patted Bethany’s hands, and said, “Well, good-bye, old girl. Don’t forget to send a postcard.”

Don’t ask me what she meant by this. Sometimes Bethany’s mother said strange things. She was a lapsed Buddhist and a substitute math teacher. Once she’d caught Miles cheating on an algebra quiz. Relations between Miles and Mrs. Baldwin had not improved during the time that Bethany and Miles were dating, and Miles couldn’t decide whether or not to believe her about Bethany not liking his poetry. Substitute teachers had strange senses of humor when they had them at all.

He almost reached into the casket and took his poetry back. But Mrs. Baldwin would have thought that she’d proved something; that she’d won. Not that this was a situation where anyone was going to win anything. This was a funeral, not a game show. Nobody was going to get to take Bethany home.

Mrs. Baldwin looked at Miles and Miles looked back. Bethany wasn’t looking at anyone. The two people that Bethany had loved most in the world could see, through that dull hateful fog, what the other was thinking, just for a minute, and although you weren’t there and even if you had been you wouldn’t have known what they were thinking anyway, I’ll tell you. I wish it had been me, Miles thought. And Mrs. Baldwin thought, I wish it had been you, too.

Miles put his hands into the pockets of his new suit, turned, and left Mrs. Baldwin standing there. He went and sat next to his own mother, who was trying very hard not to cry. She’d liked Bethany. Everyone had liked Bethany. A few rows in front, a girl named April Lamb was picking her nose in some kind of frenzy of grief. When they got to the cemetery, there was another funeral service going on, the burial of the girl who had been in the other car, and the two groups of mourners glared at each other as they parked their cars and tried to figure out which grave site to gather around.

Two florists had misspelled Bethany’s name on the ugly wreaths, BERTHANY and also BETHONY, just like tribe members did when they were voting each other out on the television show Survivor, which had always been Bethany’s favorite thing about Survivor. Bethany had been an excellent speller, although the Lutheran minister who was conducting the sermon didn’t mention that.

Miles had an uncomfortable feeling: he became aware that he couldn’t wait to get home and call Bethany, to tell her all about this, about everything that had happened since she’d died. He sat and waited until the feeling wore off. It was a feeling he was getting used to.





Bethany had liked Miles because he made her laugh. He makes me laugh, too. Miles figured that digging up Bethany’s grave, even that would have made her laugh. Bethany had had a great laugh, which went up and up like a clarinetist on an escalator. It wasn’t annoying. It had been delightful, if you liked that kind of laugh. It would have made Bethany laugh that Miles Googled grave digging in order to educate himself. He read an Edgar Allan Poe story, he watched several relevant episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and he bought Vicks VapoRub, which you were supposed to apply under your nose. He bought equipment at Target: a special, battery-operated, telescoping shovel, a set of wire cutters, a flashlight, extra batteries for the shovel and flashlight, and even a Velcro headband with a headlamp that came with a special red lens filter, so that you were less likely to be noticed.

Miles printed out a map of the cemetery so that he could find his way to Bethany’s grave off Weeping Fish Lane, even—as an acquaintance of mine once remarked—“in the dead of night when naught can be seen, so pitch is the dark.” (Not that the dark would be very pitch. Miles had picked a night when the moon would be full.) The map was also just in case, because he’d seen movies where the dead rose from their graves. You wanted to have all the exits marked in a situation like that.

He told his mother that he was spending the night at his friend John’s house. He told his friend John not to tell his mother anything.

If Miles had Googled “poetry” as well as “digging up graves,” he would have discovered that his situation was not without precedent. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti also buried his poetry with his dead lover. Rossetti, too, had regretted this gesture, had eventually decided to dig up his lover to get back his poems. I’m telling you this so that you never make the same mistake.