The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (47 page)

I know you not
.

T
he Good Shepherd Funeral Home was a white-stuccoed building partially covered with ivy. Outside in the parking lot it was cold and windy, the sky brilliantly overexposed and combed free of clouds. Jory wasn’t sure which day of the week it was, Wednesday maybe, or Thursday.

She remembers a side door and a faceless young man wearing a dark, slightly too small suit who led them down an arched hallway that smelled of antiseptic and carnations overlaid with a faint cedar odor. They were made to sit behind a thickly gauzed red curtain in something called the “private family alcove,” a tiny room to one side of the chapel where everything on the outside could be seen only hazily and at a red remove. It was silent and dim in the alcove and the close smell of the flower arrangements on either side of them made Jory feel that something was expected of her, something that she would not be able to deliver. When she had imagined this moment, last night, at home, in her bed, she had thought that something might occur here today that would make all of this seem vitally, indisputably real. That seeing the looks on other people’s faces would cause her own to adopt a similar expression, that her face and feelings would then mirror theirs, and that Grace being gone—this was how she thought of it, as
Grace being gone
—would become, through imitation or symbiosis, something acknowledged, accepted, and possibly even almost borne. She could see now how laughable, how absurdly idiotic that idea had been.

Faint minor-key organ music played from somewhere, although from where Jory was unsure, since there was no organ to be seen. A small group of people filed silently past the red curtain and sat, hushed or occasionally coughing and gazing toward the front of the chapel in the short
rows of hardwood pews: Rhonda Russell and her parents, Ms. Lindbloom, the guitar man from Hope House, Detective Hewett and his wife, and Mrs. Kleinfelter. Laird was there, along with Rhea and her sister Connie, as well as Jude Mullinix, who sat straight-backed and all alone in the last pew. Jory had watched as these people made their silent way past the alcove’s red-filtering curtain, and she had seen their faces, even though they apparently could not see hers.

Grip was not there. Neither were nine-tenths of the people from their church. The Quanbecks had not been allowed to hold the service in their own church, for reasons—Pastor Ron had said, clearing his throat—that should be obvious. Jory’s mother had slapped his arm hard when he said this, even though Pastor Ron was standing in her hospital room holding a cup of coffee. The burning coffee had then sloshed out of the cup and down his pant leg, but no one, including her father, had apologized or volunteered to clean it up. And so it wasn’t Pastor Ron who now read the eulogy or even Brother Elmore; it was a smiling white-haired man with scrubbed ruddy skin whose neck bulged out over his starched shirt collar. Jory would remember the man’s reddened and practically nonporous skin as if she had examined it every day, as if she had looked upon his beaming, rubberized face her whole life long. The man claimed that Grace’s middle name was Marie, not Mary. He liked using Grace’s full name, as if that were what people had called her, and each time he did, Jory’s mother took a small intake of breath that sounded almost like a hiss. “Grace
Mary
,” her mother would whisper loudly, her voice surely penetrating past the mesh curtain. Jory’s father did nothing to stop her, but sat with his head down, not even looking at what was going on. He would occasionally stretch his hand out toward Jory’s mother, as if he were going to touch her, but then he would apparently change his mind and instead let his hand hang there in the air for a minute before slowly drawing it back.

The white-haired man spoke on: “As Paul said in Philippians 1:21,
‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’
And indeed, fellow mourners, though our hearts are very heavy today and filled with sorrowing, it is a joyful occasion for the one who has passed over into God’s abundance. For she has gone to be with her Lord, and will live forever in a place where there’s
no pain or grief. No disease or death. Only joy everlasting with her bridegroom, Christ Jesus.”

The white-haired man leaned forward and beamed at his small audience. “The angels in heaven are celebrating today at the addition of Grace Marie, Heaven’s newest bright and beautiful star.” Jory’s mother seethed. She was sitting on one of the padded folding chairs to the left of Jory and was wearing a dark oxblood-colored dress that almost matched the curtain they were sitting behind. Jory had never seen the dark red dress before today. It had buttons in the front, but they were done up incorrectly. Her mother had been let out of the hospital only this morning. The doctor had said that she could come to the funeral, but that she should probably return to the fifth floor of Good Samaritan tonight. The fifth floor of the hospital was where they kept people who “just needed a little time to recuperate.” This was what her father had told Jory three days ago. Her mother was now busily ripping the funeral program into tiny pieces. Jory peered down at her own program. It was engraved in gold letters with her sister’s name across the top and several lines of writing below:

GRACE M. QUANBECK

December 7, 1953–November 22, 1970

~A Rosebud~

When a teen is lifted to her heavenly father up above

Those left behind might ponder the depth of His great love,

The sadness that we feel is so immense

That we are tempted to question God’s good sense.

Why not take just those whose time has run,

Whose days have been long beneath our sun?

But you see—God needs most the bud that has yet to bloom

To fill heaven’s air with youth’s sweet perfume,

So today as a new young angel sings on high

Those of us left below must learn to say good-bye.

Jory placed her program under her leg. Her mother’s was now a drifted pile of white confetti on the floor. Frances was leaning forward and avidly watching the proceedings going on outside of the red curtain and kicking her feet, in their black Sunday shoes, against the metal rung of the folding chair. Jory had a sudden impulse to turn to Grace, to nudge her with her elbow and point out the terrible rhymes in the program, but with a sensation as swift and terrible as an elevator’s sickening, disorienting drop, she realized that Grace was not here. She was the only person with whom Jory needed to speak or be next to or even look at and she was the only person with whom Jory could do none of those things. She wanted Grace to explain what was going on and what all of this meant and how best to live through this experience—which was what Grace had always done for her—but her sister was gone. She had gone somewhere that Jory could not follow and she had thoughtlessly left no instructions or help to show the way.

Jory’s mother now began silently shaking her head back and forth and then she stood up and teetered on her high heels through the torn pieces of her program, stepping past Jory and Frances and their father and stumbling slightly in her rush to get out of the private family alcove. Frances stood up too and tried to start after her mother, but Jory grabbed her by the coat sleeve and held her sister fast. Their father seemed incapable of noticing any of this and merely sat, his head hanging down in a way that was completely unfamiliar to Jory. He looked like someone else’s father. Like any other father in the world, but not hers.

The same young man in the ill-fitting suit who had ushered them into the Good Shepherd Funeral Home now led them back down the arched and antiseptic-smelling hallway. As they walked, he murmured something about “greeting the other mourners in the reception area,” but her father had shaken his head so vigorously that the young man had said nothing further and allowed them to escape unaided through the chapel’s outer door. Jory squinted in the brilliant glare of the parking lot, looking blankly at the scattered cars lined up and waiting for reanimation. Her mother was already sitting in the front seat of the green Buick and
Frances now dropped their father’s hand and ran toward the car. Behind Jory, the chapel’s door opened and shut with a sound like a nail being pulled out of wood and Jory turned and saw Mrs. Kleinfelter buttoning up her gray wool coat and stepping out onto the pavement. The two of them stood looking at each other. Suddenly Jory crossed the space between them and was pinned firmly to the scratchy front of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s coat. She breathed in the faint odor of naphthalene, boiled potatoes, and waxy dust even as she simultaneously registered the fragility of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s shoulder bones, her soft arm flesh, and the cobwebbed nature of her hair. Mrs. Kleinfelter held Jory close and stroked her head as if it were made of something breakable, and then she pulled back from Jory and took her by the arms. “I’ll take care of So Handsome until you’re ready to come get him,” she said. “But just until then.” Jory shook her head and gazed blindly at Mrs. Kleinfelter’s face. At the small pearl earrings clipped haphazardly on her earlobes. “I can’t,” Jory whispered desperately, her voice caught somewhere far back in her throat. “I can’t do this.” Mrs. Kleinfelter grasped Jory’s upper arms so tightly it hurt. “You can,” she said. “And you’re going to.” Jory could feel her own mouth falling, crumpling into something terrible. “Please,” she whispered, “please help me.” Mrs. Kleinfelter gave Jory’s arms a final squeeze and took a step backward. “The worst part’s already over,” she said in the firmest voice Jory had ever heard her use, “and you’ll live through the rest.” Her face took on the look of most impartial truth telling. “You’re the kind that can,” she said. Jory tried to swallow. “Let me stay with you,” she begged. Mrs. Kleinfelter glanced over at the green Buick. She shook her head, but Jory could see that this thought was not new to her. Mrs. Kleinfelter took a further step backward and then she turned and, without looking back once, walked with stiff purpose toward her truck. A fierce wind now gusted and blew. Jory could hear her father starting the Buick’s engine, but she continued to stand watching as Mrs. Kleinfelter climbed up into her old truck and then closed the door behind her.

At the cemetery, her mother absolutely refused to get out of the car, and Jory and Frances and their father had had to hold hands and walk, leaning into the glaring brightness of the November wind. They picked their way
through the cemetery’s slightly frozen grass, moving carefully past the blocky squares of granite headstones, as Jory tried to keep a tight purchase on the hem of her skirt. The white-haired man had gotten there ahead of them. He now stood waiting beneath a pagoda-like structure that had been erected over a small dark hole that had been dug in the ground. The hole was next to a double headstone inscribed with the names of Jory’s grandparents:
Gilbert Clayton and Eunice Opal Quanbeck
—
Faithful Servants of the Lord—Now Gone to Their Glory
. The white-haired man was holding a large black Bible down against his thigh and his tie kept blowing up and over his shoulder. Jory watched as he finally gave up and set the Bible on the ground next to the hole in order to capture his tie and pin it beneath his suit jacket. He held out his hand as they approached and her father had to drop Jory’s hand to shake his.

The white-haired man smiled and said something, but his words were blown away in the wind. Jory had no clear memory of what happened while he spoke, except that the wind made whipping sounds on the open pages of his Bible and the bottom of her dress would not stay down no matter how she grasped at it. She could feel a terrible need to laugh rising up in her throat—a tearing, tickling sensation that made sweat suddenly break out on her forehead.

The man stopped speaking then. He closed his Bible and tried to plaster his hair back into place across his scalp. Then he bent over, and as Jory watched, he opened a large tan-colored rectangular box and picked out the delicate pale blue urn that held her sister’s ashes. He held it out toward her father.

Frances tugged fiercely on Jory’s hand. “Is the angel baby in there, too?” Her bright peeping voice rang out and then was just as quickly whisked away. No one answered her.