The Eyes and Ears of Love (4 page)

Bentley hasn’t left his room except to use the bathroom. He has yet to eat, take a shower, or change his clothes. On his dresser is the breakfast tray his mom has left him for this morning. It’s the kind of meal that would normally brighten his mood: orange juice and coffee along with buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and fresh fruit. Bentley cannot seem to grow the slightest appetite for any kind of food. He has severe fatigue even after sleeping for hours. But today he doesn’t have the option to stay in bed, as it is Emily’s funeral. 

In the bathroom, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and immediately turns back to stare. He is quite a sight this morning. He’s hardly recognizable. His eyes are red and puffy and underneath are deep circles, giving his eyes a hollow look. He resembles someone that would be cast as a zombie for a horror film, or maybe even as a person diagnosed with cancer.

Bentley turns the knob on the shower to the hottest temperature and scorches his body with the water. He sits on the shower floor in a cradle position and rocks himself back and forth.

When Emily died, she left behind her cancer and Bentley inherited it. He now has a darkness inside him that he knows is going to kill him on the inside, and it is going to be slow and painful.

After his shower, he sees a starched pressed black suit on his bed with well-polished black dress shoes that his mom had laid out. It is the perfect funeral outfit. It is the attire everyone would expect a big brother who just lost his little sister to wear. Which is precisely why he isn’t going to wear it. He promised Emily he would wear his basketball jersey, so he will keep his word. A lot of the guests may find it disrespectful, but it didn’t matter because he was doing this for Emily, not them.

It isn’t an open casket as Emily didn’t want to be looked upon as a stuffed doll while she lies there dead. She found it rather amusing, but the rest of the family never had an urge to laugh while talking about funeral arrangements. “Lighten up!” she would say.

The funeral takes place in the church Emily had attended since being brought into this world. Over a hundred people arrive at the funeral, including hospital staff like Mable, neighborhood friends, Bentley’s basketball team, and even elderly cancer patients she befriended while in the hospital.

Everyone stares at Bentley’s purple and black jersey, but he doesn’t care. He recognizes that all of the flower arrangements are sunflowers because those were Emily’s favorite flowers.

She requested that the only music playing at her funeral would be Britney Spears’s old
Oops!... I Did It Again
album. Bentley learned to tune out Britney Spears before Emily got sick. She would blast it in her room singing along at the top of her then-healthy lungs so it isn’t difficult for him to let the music go through one ear and out the other.

Bentley and his parents sit in the front row while everyone approaches them to give their condolences. He hates this. He thinks the best way to give a person their condolences is to not say anything at all. Not to cry and sob in front of their face. Not to even bring up Emily’s name, but to sit there with their lips sealed showing support just by being there.

“Will everyone please take their seats,” the soft-spoken Pastor Darien asks. “What a turnout. Looking at all these people, I know that Emily knew she was very much loved. I knew Emily and her family very well. Emily was the type of child that was truly a blessing because she had a way of touching people’s lives in such an extraordinary way. And I know she will continue to touch lives with her spirit. She was a child filled with innocence and God called one of his angels home.”

Bentley clamps his fists together and clenches his jaw. He stands abruptly towards Pastor Darrien’s direction. Suddenly he sees the stack of all the pictures Emily had drawn and painted from the hospital on top of her casket. He walks up to it in the middle of Pastor Darien’s speech, ignoring everything going on around him. All the guests stare at him. On the top of the stack is the last picture she drew. She must have done it at home because he had not seen this one in the hospital. It was just like the others, a big building with lots of windows and a great big garden on top of the roof while Bentley cut a red bow with giant silver scissors. However, this one has a cloud in the sky and sitting on the cloud looking down is Emily with wings and the same smile she died with.

He shakes his head continually as the tears flow down his face.
If there is a God, then why did he have to take her?

Mrs. Menichelli walks over to Bentley and touches his shoulders. “Honey, let’s put the pictures back and sit down.”

He viciously shakes his head. “No.” He runs out of the church, clenching onto the stack of art.

He gets in his car in the parking lot and drives around for hours, too emotional to obey the speed limit. The wateriness of his eyes blur the traffic lights causing him to run red lights.  He eventually ends up in the college parking lot at eleven o’clock at night with only two beers left from a twelve pack he picked up from the liquor store down the street. His once collected thoughts have now turned to mush.

Red and blue lights appear in the dark night directly behind him. With one jerk of his knee, he slams down on the gas pedal. He rolls down the window to throw all the beer cans out. He attempts to throw the cans out of the car and removes his hands from the wheel. Bentley feels time slow down as he crashes into the sign that displays the university’s name. His head hits with full force on the steering wheel, knocking him out instantly.

The following day, Bentley is released from the hospital with only a broken nose. Because the crash was on school property and he was detained by campus police, he was luckily dismissed from criminal charges. But he is to face the Admission Board the first week of school in August for disciplinary sentencing. Bentley is certain he is going to get expelled. Because Bentley doesn’t have a job, his parents become responsible for paying for all property damages.

The car that his parents had bought him as a high school graduation present is now completely totaled. The steel metal sign has done far more damage to the front end of the vehicle than the vehicle did to the sign.        

Bentley’s parents aren’t angry. After everything they are going through, their bodies seem to not be able to carry the emotion of being angry.

Speaking has become a foreign concept with Bentley and his parents. Now they don’t even eat dinner together at the dining table anymore. Mr. Menichelli eats while watching ESPN in the family room. Mrs. Menichelli usually skips supper and Bentley eats in his room.

Bentley never imagined his family could get anymore dysfunctional, than when Emily got sick. And now, his family is completely damaged.

Chapter 2

***

The next morning, thousands of miles away from Melbourne, Dorothy lies in bed waiting for her alarm to signal her to wake up. She thinks about the last four years and how she has managed to get through them. Today is her high school graduation and she’s nervous. She ponders the memory of walking into school on the first day of ninth grade, having lost her father twenty-six days prior. Her sister, Donna, wouldn’t let her walk alone and took a hold of her hand as she accompanied Dorothy to her first class. Their father’s death was tragic for both girls, but Donna grieved and moved on within two weeks, while Dorothy still held onto the pain years later. 

This last year was the most challenging, as it was Dorothy’s senior year, and Donna, being one year older, had gone off to college in Florida. This meant that Donna was away, and only Dorothy was left at home, alone in the house with their mother.

Dorothy’s relationship with her mother seemed to die, too, after their father’s death. She blamed her mother for his death and never seemed to be able to forgive her, unlike Donna, who didn’t seem to hold the same grudge. Donna understood the pain that her mother’s actions caused the family, but she was the type of person to let go of the past and move on.

Dorothy understood why Donna left. It was always the girls’ dream to go to college in a sunny state, and it had to have a beach. They grew up in Otis, Oregon, and although they lived right by the beach, the water was always freezing from the chilly climate.

Donna is now home for the summer, and her arrival almost immediately mollifies tension between Dorothy and her mom. Dorothy is more patient with her mom and doesn’t overreact like she usually does when her mom goes out late at night because she has Donna to keep her company. And she’s looking forward to spending even more time with her sister, because by the time Donna returns to school later that fall, Dorothy will be right by her side, beginning her first year. 

Dorothy remembers her father dying right before she started high school, and she now thinks about high school ending and the fact that he is still not here. She never imagined her graduation without him. Her father valued education, he always believed it was insurance on a person’s life. In high school, he ran track, but after suffering an injury to his Achilles at the Semi Finals, he could never run again. He became depressed and lost in his life, as his goal was to train and compete in the Olympics. Eventually, he enrolled at a Community College and found the Culinary Arts program which he graduated with his Associates. Soon after he enrolled at a University and got his Bachelors. Afterwards he got a job as a chef at a two-star restaurant. He always told Dorothy and Donna, he didn’t know what he would have done without his education.

The sudden blaring of her alarm clock startles her from deep in thought. She can see her door opening slowly, and her mom and Donna rush inside screaming while holding sparklers and a banner that reads: HAPPY GRADUATION, DOROTHY! She lifts the covers over her face, uncomfortable with the attention. 

“Dorothy! Come on! Happy graduation, baby!” her mom shouts.

Dorothy peeks over the covers.

“I’m so proud of you, squirt! We all thought you were gonna walk across the stage with either herpes or a baby,” Donna says while laughing, amused no doubt, and heads for the door.

Her mom frowns at Donna, then turns her attention back to Dorothy. “Okay, sweetie, it’s your day today! Do you want me to make you breakfast? You can pick anything you want!”

“I’m not that hungry,” Dorothy snaps.

“Nonsense! You can’t have your stomach growling when you collect your diploma!”

“Fine. Pancakes,” she mutters just to get her mother to leave her alone.

“Blueberry or chocolate chip?”

“Surprise me.”

“One more thing. Chocolate milk or orange juice?”

“Mom, surprise me. I’m not picky. I don’t care.”

As her mother leaves, Dorothy remains in bed. Her stomach feels as if it is convulsing in an attempt to induce vomiting. She is not hungry, but the feeling of sickness that accompanies her thoughts of her father is particularly gut-wrenching on this particular day.

Her mom brings in a breakfast tray with orange juice and a plate of burnt, irregular-shaped blueberry pancakes. Her father loved her mom’s pancakes although she couldn’t cook. He made up for her lack of skills with his own cooking. Her dad nicknamed the pancakes “state pancakes” because each pancake seems to resemble a state of America; Maine and Texas are usually the most recognizable. It was a loving joke at the time, but now Dorothy hates the pancakes. She nibbles at one, avoiding the charred pieces, and empties the glass of orange juice.

She crawls out of bed and sits at her vanity, propping her elbows on the table. She lets her face fall into her hands, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees the snow globe her father gave to her. She stares at the globe, which sits next to her makeup bag. Inside the globe is the figurine of a little girl building a snowman. Dorothy holds the globe upside down, shakes it quickly, and then places it back in an upright position. As the snow falls inside the globe, she pinpoints a snowflake that’s falling more slowly than the others. Her mind latches onto a memory from eight years ago and replays it.

It was a cold winter day, and an unbroken blanket of snow covered the entire yard outside of the family home. Although Dorothy and her father were bundled in coats, hats, and mittens, their bones felt brittle and their fingers ached. She could see her breath streaming from her lips, but she was accumulating the warmth by cozying up to her father. He glowed around her, and she glowed around him. She and her father built a well-structured snowman: a rounded and perfectly proportioned body, solid black buttons for eyes, a fully grown carrot for a nose, and a symmetrical smile made with BBQ charcoal. The snowman stood in front of the kitchen window so that Donna and their mom could enjoy it while they made hot cocoa. The hot cocoa was her father’s recipe: a mélange of Belgian dark chocolate melted with frothed half & half and topped with whipped cream, cocoa powder, and peppermint bark.

The thought of the hot cocoa makes Dorothy salivate. Since her father’s death, she has not attempted to recreate the hot cocoa, nor has her mom or Donna.

“I almost forgot!” Her mom barges in, interrupting her thoughts. Dorothy wipes the tear slithering down her cheek.

“Oh, honey! Are you sad about graduating?” She doesn’t wait for Dorothy to answer; instead, she suffocates her with a hug. “It’ll be okay.”

If only she knew
, Dorothy thinks.