“Maybe it will be,” said Ethan on the way back to the hospital after class.
“No it won’t. It can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t even imagine it. That all this mess, this heartbreak, this anger and fear could mean something good and useful? No way. Even in my fantasy, I can’t write this so it all works out. There’s too many pieces. It’s too big. That’s my point—it’s only in the movies that it all comes together in the end, and you realize it was worth it, and you learn important somethings and become a better person. I don’t see how that could happen here.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Ethan. “Not now. But it’s not over yet. You won’t know until the end.”
“I don’t get to see the end. I’m not an omniscient narrator. This is first person all the way.”
“Clearly.”
“At the end, I’ll be dead.”
“This is not a tragedy, Janey,” Ethan said, suddenly serious.
“How do you know?” I whispered.
“It has none of the markings. It doesn’t feel like tragedy. It feels like trial, but not tragedy.”
“Life doesn’t work like that. Literature doesn’t even work like that.”
“In this case,” he promised, “it does. It will.”
When I got home after the hospital, Katie was standing in the middle of our living room, looking lost.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How was your trip?”
“Great. How’s Atlas?”
“Responding evidently. You can go visit anytime.”
“How’s your grandma?”
“Also better, thanks.”
“I’m on my way to the hospital in just a sec.”
“Good. Atlas could use more company. I’ll join you again later.”
“Yeah, for sure. We should get a pizza and a movie or something tonight.”
“Sounds good.”
“Uh, Janey?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s our furniture?”
There was a note of course. There usually is in the movies. No loose ends here. In fairness though, I knew the contents before I even found the letter, and though it offered explanation, it lacked reasons or even reason. Worst of all, it was from Daniel. Even via letter, evidently, Jill wasn’t speaking to me. To us.
Dear K&J,
Don’t worry—everything’s fine. But this arrangement, if it was ever working, isn’t anymore. Jill is moving in with me. We belong together—we know that now. As you can see, we have already moved most of her stuff. We know much of the furniture was shared, but we feel that Atlas should have as many remnants of home as possible to ease the transition. Of course, Atlas will be with us, and I know you would want him to be as comfortable as possible. We will be in touch soon and let you know where we are and how to contact us but not yet. I think we all agree we could all use some space. I have learned, more than you can know but as you will observe, what problems time and distance can mend.
See you soon,
Dan (and Jill)
“What an asshole,” said Katie.
Then the blessed phone rang. We both leapt for it, afraid it was the hospital and things had turned for the worse again, afraid it was Jill calling to regret, apologize, make amends, afraid it was the police and they had decided to arrest me after all. But instead it was my father calling to tell me that my grandmother had died.
Thirty-five
Jews bury their dead almost immediately—in the ground within twenty-four hours if possible—no doubt a very reasonable practice in a hot climate in a time before full body refrigerators but something of a hardship now. The business of funeral, food, and forum are welcome distractions I guess, but really, honestly, who has the energy, the will, the focus at that point? My grandmother wouldn’t have cared I told myself. I didn’t care. It was too much to deal with, to process, to matter. And it left almost no time at all to say goodbye. My mother’s argument though was that my grandmother would have wanted things done the proper way and that someday I would cherish a week’s worth of sitting around listening to people reminisce about a woman I did not yet acknowledge as gone.
Over protestations, Katie drove me home. She did not judge me fit to drive or to be alone and reasoned that she was going to have to come up the next day for the funeral anyway. For mile after mile, we talked over and over and around Atlas and Jill and Daniel and us and not about my grandmother at all. Hours later, at my parents’ middle-of-the-night kitchen table, the four of us sat around eating chocolate cake, talking wedding plans, and indulging in more distraction and denial. Later still, towards morning, I rolled over from a not quite sleep into a not quite dawn and realized, sinkingly, that I hadn’t gotten anyone to cover my class in the morning. I called Ethan, full of apologies for waking him up, and asked if he could combine it with his again or at least tell them what was going on. “I can’t,” he said, full of sleep. “I’ve got a funeral to go to tomorrow.”
He drove up with Jason and Lucas and Peter. Nico was there too, without Caroline, and at one point when I looked up, I saw Diane alone in the back. My mother looked back at them all and whispered into my hair, “You’ve got quite a group of people who love you back there.” I didn’t respond because opening my mouth would have released howling that would not have stopped. And because it was rude to admit that my friends didn’t matter to me without my family—without my grandmother and without Atlas.
I cannot tell about the ceremony because I do not remember it at all, so hard was I squeezing shut my eyes and reining in my head. Graveside was short and garish with sun, blooming things, and fiercely good weather insistent on lightening the proceedings. Someone passed around the Mourners’ Kaddish in phonetic Hebrew so that we all could say it, but I did not. Everyone was supposed to throw dirt on the coffin, but I declined that too. Then we were meant to watch as they lowered it into the ground though I looked carefully at my feet in the grass instead. I did hear my mother wailing, surrounded by her friends. I did notice when Ethan came over and put his arms around me from behind, but I pretended not to and held very still and tried not to move or even acknowledge him at all, but he didn’t seem to care about my show of apathy. I also noticed as we were walking away that the guys in overalls, who couldn’t possibly still be called gravediggers but could not have looked more the part had they the RSC costume shop at their disposal, were already, already!, shoveling the rest of the dirt over, filling the hole left by my grandmother. As if that were possible. And finally, as I got in the car, they were using a strange dolly and strap and pulley apparatus to lower an enormous lid over the entire grave. Dropped only the last inches into new dirt, its thud shook the ground even from thirty feet away. It was that heavy. To keep her in I guess so that even if she became a vampire she couldn’t escape. Then I was sick on the floor of the car.
At my parents’ house, deli platters had mysteriously appeared. And, as Nick Carraway puts it, amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself. People moved on. They thought: at least that’s over with. They thought: lovely ceremony, I wonder what’s for dessert. They turned to each other and said: how sad for the family, now what’s new with you. This is how it is. It didn’t make me mad. In fact, if someone had asked me to reminisce or tell stories about my grandmother, I might have been sick again. So I was grateful. Sitting alone out back in the sun, my strategy was, if I’m very quiet, maybe no one will want to talk to me.