Absolute Brightness (22 page)

Only a month before, the Wheelers had been at the center of all the fuss and attention this town could muster. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and Electra herself were busy revolving around Larry like tiny, inconsequential moons, held in the thrall of his gravity and reflecting his light. He had been the hometown hero returning wounded from the war. But then Larry and the whole Wheeler clan began to be eclipsed by current events. They stood (or in Larry's case, sat) toward the back of the crowd, aware that my dead cousin, Leonard, had once again taken center stage, Neptune's latest hero.

Of course, Leonard wasn't the kind of hero who saved lives; he had never walked into a burning building or battled terrorists on their native soil; and notwithstanding the restyling of Mrs. Barchevski's wig after she lost her hair to chemo, he hadn't created a particular moment of glory that would survive in anyone's memory long after he was gone. Nothing like that. He had simply been courageous enough to be himself in the face of everything that had tried to persuade him to be something else. Despite the fact that I was unwilling to recognize it when he was alive, Leonard's determination to live his life was a desperate act of daring worthy of note, if not deserving of actual medals and a VFW picnic.

The ceremony was almost over. The little Urn of Leonard had been lowered into a hole in the ground, and Father Jimbo was wrapping things up by reading a selection from the Bible about shepherds and green fields. Uncle Mike had stopped crying—finally—and the women were stuffing their tissues back into their purses.

Father Jimbo raised a little baton from a silver bucket, and when he whacked the baton a few times over the open grave, drops of holy water sprinkled into it. That's when I realized not a single word had been said about Leonard. The whole affair seemed too generic for someone so original and so flamboyant. Soon the mourners would disperse down the hill into their cars and return to their lives, their schedules. A handful of them would come back to the salon, where they would stand around with us talking, eating sandwiches and feeling Leonard's absence like so many tongues feeling around for a lost tooth. Someone had to say something before it was too late.

“
Excuse me
,” I practically shouted, and caused quite a few people to jump in their wet shoes. “I just wanted to say something … a few words. Y'know, about Leonard.”

It wasn't as if I had written a speech that I could pull from my skirt pocket and read exactly the way I'd rehearsed it at home in front of my bedroom mirror. I hadn't prepared anything. So naturally there was a bit of a delay as I organized my thoughts and gathered my courage to speak. Someone over to my left let out a wild soprano sneeze. There were a few nervous coughs from the crowd. Then the whispering and shushes began.

“Is she going to say something?”

“What's happening?”

“Can we go?”

If I wanted to keep their attention, I was going to have to speak, and quickly. My mouth began to move, but just like in a dream, no sound came out. Father Jimbo stepped toward me in what appeared to be an effort to help me out.

“No!” I said, finding my voice all of a sudden and with alarming force. Father Jimbo jumped back, adjusted his clerical collar, and decided to encourage me by simply nodding vigorously in my direction and offering me what was either a look of terror or a smile. I cleared my throat and began again.

“I used to steal.”

“We can't hear you!” someone piped up from the rear.

My heart was pounding so loudly that I could barely hear my own voice. I took a deep breath and started over.

“I said I used to steal. Not from people. From stores. Just junk, really. Makeup, clothes. Once I stole a radio. That was the biggest thing I got away with.”

The sunlight was blazing down on us, and the crowd was getting restless. They must have been wondering why I was bringing all this up. Why now? But I noticed Mom looking over at me from behind her dark glasses; she gave a quick nod, which I interpreted as a signal to continue.

“The other thing I did was write to people who never wrote back. Movie stars. One movie star, actually. Winona Ryder. I don't suppose she's with us here today. Winona? You here?”

I paused and looked out at the crowd as though I were really hoping to spot Winona in the mix. This was my idea of a joke. I had read in one of Nana Hertle's books on public speaking that it's a good idea to throw in a little humor, both verbal and visual, as a way of keeping the audience alert and involved. And it worked, too, because someone laughed out loud. But it was followed by a quick shush and then silence.

Why was I saying this? Why wasn't I talking about Leonard? I could practically see the cartoon bubbles of thought hovering over the heads of the people gathered around the grave:
What's with her? What's she saying? Why isn't she talking about Leonard?

“Leonard made me see something else, I don't know, some other way. I don't steal anymore. I gave up writing to people who don't write back. Leonard did that. He did. The thing about Leonard was that he didn't get all hung up on the wrong things. You know what I mean? Like, I never met anyone who actually liked people as much as he did. People mattered to him, we all did, and he wasn't making it up. I always thought this was weird, because if anyone ever had a life that could turn you against your fellow human beings, it was Leonard. We all know his story. But God knows he was having more fun on a regular basis than most of us. I mean, until the end.

“Look, I'm not saying Leonard was some kind of saint, because ask any of us who lived with him, he could be a total pain in the ass. Sorry, Father Jimbo. But I don't know, I just wanted to say that Leonard's life mattered. To me. I think it mattered to us all. A lot. He was here with all of us. He was one hundred percent present. And now he's gone.”

Everything was quiet after that. There was only the distant whoosh and thrum of the highway drifting in from over the hill, reminding us that life might be happening elsewhere. But we were there, a group gathered together on a hot July morning to mourn the passing of a friend. And for a moment we were all there, one hundred percent. No one was straining toward the next thing about to happen, no one was hoping for more. For everyone gathered at Leonard's grave there was this, only this.

Just when I thought the crowd wouldn't be able to stand the heat and the stillness another second, something extraordinary happened. Five of the biggest monarch butterflies I've ever seen appeared in our midst. It was as if they'd materialized out of the still, blue morning air. They fluttered just above our heads, flashing black, orange, and gold and playing in the air in patterns that seemed to spell out some secret code of pure delight. It was a dazzling display, and everyone noticed. There were spontaneous oohs and aahs of appreciation. Mrs. Pissaro let out a high-pitched trill of laughter when one of the butterflies veered too close to her and threatened to tangle in her teased-up hairdo. And though some others in the crowd would later stand at the buffet table with a ham sandwich in one hand and a drink in the other, dismissing the coincidence as just that—an accident of timing to which we, in our hour of need, gave more meaning than was due—I wanted desperately to believe that it was a sign from Leonard that he hadn't left us for good.

After the butterfly incident, we all made our way down the hill toward the parking lot. A few of the mourners stopped to ask if they could bring anything to the party; some complimented me on my speech or my midnight-blue wraparound skirt or my hair (I had dyed it midnight blue to match the skirt). But mostly we were all silent as we shuffled back to our lives, observing some rule of cemetery etiquette that the dead don't really require of us.

“Pssst!” she said when she caught up with me in the parking lot. “Remember me?” I turned to see the tiny out-of-breath figure of Peggy Brinkerhoff, her puffy face topped off by a visor. When she tipped up the front of the overly wide brim and smiled, I acted as though I had only just then recognized her.

“Oh. Yeah. Peggy, right?”

She smiled weakly at me, stopped in her tracks, and then looked around as if someone might be spying on us. She lifted her finger and crooked it at me, daring me to approach.

“You dyed your hair,” she whispered, as though we were already the coconspirators that we would later become.

“Yeah,” I replied, fussing with the blue-black straw that was now my hair. “Magenta is so before. This is after.”

“Looks good,” she said.

“Want to come back to the house with us? It's not much, but, well, you're welcome.”

“No,” she said. “But thanks. Listen, I've got to talk to you. It's important.”

I wasn't used to having dark hair; with the sun beating down on the top of my head, I was burning up. I was a human heat magnet. I started to walk, trying to get to the car before I melted into a puddle on the blacktop. Peggy followed alongside me; she kept talking, but this time with added urgency and less volume.

“They used my dock as a kind of staging area for the crime scene. That's where they brought Leonard's body. I only got to see it for a minute or two. Ghastly. Even though it was in my backyard, they didn't want me butting in like some old Miss Marple, so I kept out of it and let them do their thing. I'm pretty sure of what I saw, though.”

She paused, waiting for me to give her some kind of encouragement. “Really?” I was supposed to say. Or “And what did you see?” But I didn't play it her way. Instead, I just kept quiet and continued to walk without looking at her. There was a knot in my stomach. I didn't want to hear the gruesome details. I stopped and turned toward her. I stared at the little dome of hair that was pressing out the top of her visor, gray and smooth as settled dust.

“Maybe this isn't a good time,” I said.

My mother and Deirdre were already waiting at the car, and my mother was calling out to me across the lot.

“
Phoebe! You coming?
”

I waved and then offered Peggy a helpless shrug.

“I gotta go.”

“Come by my house tomorrow,” Peggy said, grabbing hold of my arm and pressing her point. “Tell me you will.”

I nodded, though at that moment all I knew was that I wanted to be free of her grip. It was a beautiful day. I wanted to be back with the butterflies.

When I slid into the backseat of the car, our neighbor old Mrs. Kurtz was sitting there beside me. Unlike most of Mom's customers, Mrs. K wasn't wearing a smart black dress. Instead, she wore a black-and-blue floral housecoat gathered at the waist with a wide, white patent leather belt. She had on a pair of white tennis shoes with holes cut out of them to accommodate her aching corns. Instead of the rag she usually carried to mop herself with, she held a man-size handkerchief in her right hand. She looked tiny and frail and utterly exhausted from the heat. Obviously we were giving her a ride back to the salon, where she would chow down on sandwiches and then stuff her pockets full of macaroons. Later she would feed small bits of the soft cookies to her mean, toothless Chihuahua named Joey while she described to him what he had missed.

“It was a lovely speech,” she said, touching me gently. It seemed as if everyone was reaching out to touch someone. Hugs, kisses, small pats on the back or on the forearm, faces touched with an open palm, hands squeezed, wordless gestures that allowed us to reaffirm the warmth and reality of what was once Leonard.

Mrs. K seemed to guess what I was thinking, because suddenly she grasped my hand tightly. I could feel the steely strength of her thin fingers as they interlocked with mine. There it was—more powerful than speech, more pressing than even touch—her need.

I couldn't look over at her. Not yet. I stared out the window at the passing mini-malls and fast-food joints. I was sure that if I saw her dyed-black hair that was sticking flat to the side of her head or the little rivulets of perspiration running from her temples or her dim, tiny eyes straining to see me through her thick lenses, I would change my mind. I would not offer to go over to her house the following Friday and sit in her musty, airless front room while Joey panted and growled at my feet. I would not have the heart to read aloud to her, as Leonard had, from a book about a boy who is orphaned and alone and ends up happy at last.

“So,” I asked her, careful to keep my gaze fixed on the passing landscape, “what chapter were you and Leonard up to in
Great Expectations
?”

“I can't remember,” Mrs. Kurtz said with a plaintive edge to her voice. “But I know we were just getting to the good part.”

 

fifteen

UNCLE MIKE WAS
fast asleep on our living-room couch, looking like a dead person, and I was standing over him. I gathered my
SAVE THE WHALES
T-shirt tight around my thighs so that he wouldn't wake up to a view of my panties. He was family, but he was still a guy.

“Uncle Mike?” I whispered urgently.

There was no response. I tried again, and this time I tugged at the flowered sheet that was tangled around his legs. When that failed, I gave him the old one-two—a quick jab in his side and a hard cough in his right ear. That did it. He probably thought I was a hired ranch hand trying to make off with his wallet in the middle of the Mexican night, because he jumped clear off the living-room couch, yelling, “
Paco! I'm tellin' ya! Clear out!
”

Naturally, I screamed.

The next thing I knew, Mom was in the room with us. She had rushed out of the salon and stood there with a teasing comb in one hand and a can of Volume Plus hair spray in the other. What she saw probably didn't look good to her. Uncle Mike was standing there in nothing but a pair of Joe Boxer shorts, his fingers were digging into the soft, fleshy part of my upper arm, and his eyes were spinning in their sockets.