In the garage people were singing. Aunts and uncles and two grandmas held up by plastic chairs, candlelight dancing all around the rosary-draped picture frame on the card table in the corner. The overhead light would blink out if left untouched for more than ten minutes; a cousin kept rising to press it while the praying kept on.
In the middle of this sweating, moaning knot of people sat Dani and Lena’s newly bereaved mother. She’d occasionally wince as if giving birth, knuckles white, and then collapse until the next wave crested. She was waxen––had been a yellow filmy color since a couple days prior, when the army major had appeared on the porch. Since then she could only groan and double over, though she could drum up an oxymoronic smile anytime somebody delivered a covered dish.
Covered dishes were a crucial part of grief, I’d come to learn. When I first got the call, I’d come empty-handed and in my pajamas––a disheveled witness to the first bloodcurdling howls of fresh shock. The army major was stationed in a corner, bending every once in a while to make funeral arrangements, then folding himself back up against the wall like an ironing board. An otherworldly silence took up in place of the wailing after a while. And the news, by some invisible force, broke out across town.
Cars began rolling up, and with them came relatives and teachers and our principal, who, plucked from his proper ecosystem of the school’s front office, looked unbearably meek. Everybody came bearing two things: an ungainly sorriness and something to eat. They’d shuffle cautiously in, clutching casseroles and thick dips and mondo-sized cases of soda, which they’d deposit all about the kitchen before lining up to hug the mourning. My own mother appeared at some point, apologizing in shy, broken Spanish, toting a bag of oranges like a baby on her hip.
Now, at the end of the driveway, Dani was digging her thumbnail into one. She carved the fruit loose and halved it with her mouth, declaring matter-of-factly, “I think everything happens for a reason.”
Lena, who was a drained color, winced at this. She hadn’t eaten since before the army major showed up; she couldn’t stomach anything since. Now she watched, halfway seasick, as Dani slipped another disc of orange into her mouth.
“Why would you say that?”
“I just think it. Everything happens for a reason.”
“So there’s a reason Ivan died?”
“I don’t know what the reason is,” Dani said, licking juice from her palm. “I just know there is a reason.”
“I don’t. I think this is the worst thing that’s ever happened and there’s no reason at all.”
“Maybe only God knows the reason.”
“Then I don’t believe in God.”
The people in the garage believed. A chant was swelling from down the driveway, wafting over the indifferent nighttime shriek of the cicadas. Everybody was pleading with God and his middlemen, bartering so that Ivan’s soul wouldn’t waffle in purgatory. It seemed to me that he’d be in the clear, given that he had died young for his country. But the people in the garage weren’t taking any chances.
Either way, the bargaining would end tomorrow, as the funeral was on for ten AM. Ivan’s body was stateside and would be delivered to the tiny airport one town over, underscored by the dry whine of bagpipes. Now, however, was the final window for supplication. The pleading continued, roiling into a fever pitch with Dani and Lena’s mother writhing at the center.
“Mi hijo,” she whimpered from the garage. “Mi hijo,” she started to howl, clutching the arms of her plastic garden chair, flanked on both sides by aunts all clutching their rosary beads. Two little cousins waded through the racket, gratefully clutching cans of Pepsi that somebody had dropped off. One paused inside the garage, transfixed by all the wailing. The other bumbled down to the end of the driveway, halting in front of us to slurp from her soda can.
“Do you know that I can do the splits?” she whistled through her holey kid grin.
“No shit,” Lena muttered. Dani slapped her arm.
“We’ve seen you do the splits,” Dani explained.
“Like, a hundred times,” Lena added.
At this, the girl shrugged. She set her Pepsi on the sidewalk and slid her sandaled feet gracelessly down the concrete. When she was several inches from the ground, arms quivering, she glanced up for our approval. I gave a weak clap so that she could retreat. Lena looked on, sour, too spent to pretend to care. Dani pitched her orange peel into the grass.
“Let’s get out of here,” she announced, brushing chalky sidewalk from the backs of her thighs.
The pool was half a mile off behind a chain link fence we’d been scaling since sixth grade. All you had to do was wait out the groundskeeper, who handled the concession stand cash and carried a pistol. At the absence of his truck, we hooked our hands through the metal diamonds and hoisted ourselves over, slinking wordlessly to the cement lip of the pool.
Dani kicked her shoes off first and stepped into the shallow end, her fists propped on her hips like some determined tourist, wading deliberately till the water hit her calves. “A little cold,” she announced. “Yep,” she said, bringing her hands gingerly to her chest. “I’m nippin’.”
“Nobody can even see,” Lena cut from across the pool. She was perched on the diving board, palms resting on the plaster behind her, legs dangling into the chlorine.
“I don’t care,” Dani called back. “I’m still nippin’.”
I crouched at the deep end, reeling my ankles into the water. There was still a sting of winter in it, a chill that hadn’t yet been wrung out by late-April heat.
“I gotta figure out what I’m gonna wear tomorrow,” Dani declared, kicking some invisible debris from her end.
“Just put on church clothes,” Lena exhaled.
“It has to be black, Lena.”
“Then put on black church clothes.”
“I don’t have anything black.”
“I have a couple things you could use,” I said. “From choir concerts and stuff.”
This offer neutralized the debate. Everybody went back to whisking their legs through the chlorine. A cricket kicked on somewhere, its trill glinting in the quiet.
“Does your dad have any Grey Goose?” Lena called, swinging her legs so that they chopped the water.
“Always,” I called back.
Our drinking ritual was a round of long swigs straight from the neck, followed by dribbling tap water back into the bottle until the levels looked right––all of which was done in a stately silence behind the locked bathroom door. And tonight was a fresh bottle. We knew by the hot sting it made in the back of our throats, sending our faces all tight and buzzy. Sudden laughter bubbled in our mouths, and we clamped our hands over Lena’s; she was always most liable to crack.
“Is it bad that I’m laughing so hard the night before my brother’s funeral?” she asked through our palms, her laughter cooling into a sigh.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think you can kinda do whatever you want.”
“People laugh at funerals,” Dani added, bobbing up to the mirror. “It’s like a stress response.”
Lena sank onto the edge of the bathtub, a dark ache casting over her face.
“This has been one long nightmare,” Dani said, leaning in to study her eyebrows. “I keep thinking I’m asleep or we’re getting pranked or something. Like somebody made a mistake. I wanna see him so I can finally know it’s real.”
“I’m afraid of tomorrow,” Lena groaned, curling to rest her chin on her elbow.
Dani turned to scootch onto the countertop. “It’s closure,” she said. “Seeing the body.”
“That’s why I don’t want tomorrow to come,” Lena muttered, her voice flickering hoarse. “Because then I can’t pretend it isn’t real.”
I leaned against the door and thought of the army major who’d brought the news on foot, who’d roved so politely around all of the casseroles and tears and cousins. Tomorrow his mission would be realized, unless he had, in fact, made some kind of mistake––gotten the wrong address, misread the casualty list. But tomorrow, after all the fanfare, he’d dissipate as soon as he’d arrived on the porch.
“Did you guys see Sammy Nash come over today with his mom?” Dani said, snapping us from our respective trances. “God, it was so awkward. His mom definitely made him come. I was like, you are literally so mean to me. He didn’t even know Ivan.”
“Sammy sucks,” Lena chimed resolutely.
At the mention of Sammy Nash, my head went swimmy with laughter. “Remember when he farted during that geometry test?”
This churned a peal of giggling out of Lena. She melted slowly into the bathtub, legs jerking with each laugh. Dani raised the bottle of Grey Goose ceremoniously.
“To Sammy Nash’s geometry fart,” she proclaimed, tilting the bottle to her lips.
The walk back was dishwater gray. A couple of birds had taken up in the cicadas’ absence, the sun lying in wait behind a dim gauze. When it finally would appear, a burning, pulpy orb, the jig would be up; our delirium would be razed, our reality brought into hideous relief.
Before it broke, however, we could walk in a silent row, a couple black dresses in dry cleaners’ plastic slung over our shoulders. We could cross into the lawn, wetting our ankles with its dew. We could hug at the end of the driveway, Dani’s orange peel from the day before toughening, slow and indifferent, in the grass.