There we were: my parents, Brynn’s mother and her brother, who sat on his hands and tried not to bite his fingernails, Vera Leasey and her husband, who gnawed his wad of chew, spitting surreptitiously into a red Solo cup every few minutes, the guys from the cover band, some kids we’d gone to school with, and the pastor from Vera’s church, who was officiating. His white, fluffy hair made him look like a stressed-out brood hen.
We held flowers that attracted bugs. Clutching our bouquets, we swatted and let the petals fall in wilted clumps on the grass. It clouded up and threatened rain for over an hour, but the sky refused to break open.
I wished that it would rain. I glowed greasy with oil and thought I’d pass out, hungover, chest aching and hollow. My brother was tall and handsome in his suit, looking suddenly very capable—the kind of person who should be getting married, someone who could handle a job and bills and responsibilities, despite his lackluster past in all those capacities. Brynn was powdered enough that she looked remarkably dry in the smothering humidity, sweet and pink and pretty. They each repeated the vows, holding hands like they’d been doing it for years, not going out on dates with Bastien in tow, like a tiny prefab family.
Their faces met chastely over the dying bouquet. Brynn’s mouth left a pink imprint on my brother’s lips that stayed for the rest of the evening. Their faces kept meeting, over and over again. They kissed while we ate fried chicken, grease coating their fingers, forks quivering with bites of macaroni and cheese with homemade croutons. They kissed while they danced on a makeshift floor that my father had assembled out of plywood in the center of the backyard, slowly swaying to the terrible music. Everyone drank pink champagne out of plastic flutes from the Dollar General. My father made a toast and so did Brynn’s mother, who swayed drunkenly in her heels, crying, until someone helped her into the house.
I’d thought it would be like watching myself with her, but it wasn’t. My brother seemed like a person I’d never met before. Stronger. He was as far away as she was, the both of them clinging to each other while they created something that had no space for me in it.
Milo kept his arm around Brynn’s waist. They laughed together, heads ducked to whisper in each other’s ear. When they left, they did it quietly, sneaking out the side door to his car. They drove off in the orange and purple evening light, heading toward the downtown Marriott where they’d stay for two days and three nights while my parents watched Bastien and they swam in the hotel pool.
I stayed in my folding chair and drank sweaty bottles of beer, ripping off the labels and sticking them to the top of the card table. Reeling from everything I refused to feel and still stuck in the clutches of my hangover, I burrowed down into myself. No one tried to talk with me. People continued dancing on the patio, hanging from each other in the flickering lights of the tiki torches. It was a warm night. Everything smelled like grease and citronella.
My mother, sweaty from serving food and dancing with my father, slipped a hand across my neck. She handed me a piece of cake, marble chocolate and vanilla from the Publix bakery. The bride-and-groom topper had sunk into the top before it was cut, making them look like quicksand victims. Bastien carried the plastic couple around like a trophy, sucking on the bride’s feet.
I dug my fork down into the cake, which was still half-frozen. It bent back the plastic tines until they almost snapped. I took a bite of frosting and it sat slick on my tongue like unsalted butter.
11
I put Bastien in charge of any work up front and spent a week sifting through the detritus of my mother’s art show. We laid out items on newspapers, tender bits of wing and thin, blackened legs, spindly and twisted from the heat. Every countertop was covered with parchment paper, tissue blotting up liquid, continually replaced with fresh sheets.
I felt like the administrator of a burn unit as I made the rounds. I flipped torsos, changed bandages, dabbed at seeping wounds that bled yellow and black liquid from tanned hides. The aftershocks of trauma lined up in pans on my tables. Most of the work was demolished, but I saw promise in the parts I tended, carefully applying fresh dressing to the boar’s neck and snout, bleaching the dank crust off charcoaled bone matter. I reduced the remains by relegating any extraneous material to the garbage can: burnt copper wiring, soaked cotton padding, any foam forms that had twisted to crisp bits, adhered to bone like hot glue.
The smell was overwhelming. I made Lolee wear a mask when she helped, a white medical thing that scooped over her nose and kept sliding down her chin. Like a surgeon’s assistant, she helped with the grisliest work—handing me cotton swabs or changing out linens, turning over pelts and heads on the damp floor.
We brought in fans that stirred the papers, creating breezes heavy with the odor of dead things and smoke. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the smell out of my nose or my hair. My clothes I tucked into garbage bags when I got home, hoping that after a few washes they’d smell normal again, but not placing any bets. When I scrubbed my face in the shower, I tried to focus on the freshness of the soap. I blew my nose often, sinuses so blocked I felt I might suffocate.
Bastien was good on his word. He collected new species for me, sometimes still fresh off the pavement where they’d been struck, others so deeply set in rigor I wondered if I’d be able to save the limbs, solid as statues. We kept them in the freezer while I worked endlessly on the burnt parts, trying to salvage pieces for my mother, who wouldn’t leave the house.
She wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even Vera, who stood perplexed in the driveway, cradling a potato casserole after my mother refused to answer the door. I hadn’t seen her either, but I hadn’t tried to visit. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing and wasn’t sure how to broach the thoughts I had about her work and my feelings. It seemed smarter to wait; to make sure I knew the exact right thing to say before I went to the house. I didn’t want a repeat of my last visit. I didn’t want to hurt her more.
It was hard to leave the shop. I was there before the sun came up and stayed long after it set, subsisting on fast food that Bastien left out for me. I’d sit behind the counter in the moony glow of the front window, eating my cold burgers and fries as I flipped through the day’s receipts, tallying up the money that had come in and the bills left to pay.
For the first time in my life, I considered what it would be like to sell the shop. What freeing up my time would mean. I’d never lived anywhere else. There’d been only one neighborhood, one grocery store. The same gas station beer. Brynn had done it—just taken off without ever looking back. If it was something she could do, then I could do it too. But there were things holding me at home: family, and my memories. Nostalgia carved out my insides, padding my bones until my limbs stuck, splayed. Frozen in time, refusing to live.
Lolee brought in a food dehydrator and we stuffed in bits of hair, tiny rabbits’ feet, birds’ wings. We took turns toasting things with a hair dryer, close enough that the fur started smelling a different kind of burned. I took the bearskin rug to a dry cleaner down the street, the one who used to press my father’s shirts. I kept the skin shrouded in a tarp until the cleaner came out from the back of the store; Mr. Gennaro with his overly white dentures, shorter even than me, skin leathery and wind-chapped.
“I have a special request, if you’re up for it.”