“Hey, these confessions are great and all, but don’t forget we’re all here for a funeral,” said Neil. “Let’s get on with it and we can all catch up later.”
“I agree,” said Marie. “We have all of the time in the world.”
“Yes. Fine. Let’s just do it already,” said Catherine. She gently placed Dad’s box, which she had been hoarding since we had arrived, at the bottom of the shallow hole.
Carla reached inside her behemoth purse and pulled out a handful of roses like a Las Vegas magician. She told us she’d bought them fresh at a grocery store on the way to the cemetery. She handed one to each of us. I remembered how Mom hated roses because they reminded her of funerals, but Dad bought them for her every Valentine’s Day regardless. As much as she complained, he kept buying them. He never listened, she said. I wondered if he bought roses for every woman?
Uncle Neil explained that the diggers would fill the hole properly that evening, but the dirt inside of the white buckets could be ceremoniously spread across the top of Dad’s box. He reached into one bucket and pulled up a handful of dirt, sprinkling it on the box like he was seasoning a stew. He passed the bucket around and each of us took our share. We also dropped the roses onto the uneven mounds, which had transformed into mud upon hitting the wet ground. I thought it all defeated the purpose of buying fresh flowers. Some of the soil stuck to my hands, so I wiped them across the wet blades of grass by my feet.
“I think that about does it,” said Neil.
“Should we say something?” asked Marie, her hands folded and resting on her stomach.
“Like what? I’m not a goddamn priest,” he said.
“No, Neil, she’s right,” said Carla. “I can say something if—”
“No, that’s quite all right, Carla,” Catherine blurted. She could barely speak through a clenched jaw. “You’ve done quite enough. He was my father, so I can take it from here.”
We all bowed our heads.
“We are gathered here on this peaceful and beautiful hilltop today, somewhat overcast, to say goodbye to Thomas Daly. He was a good man. He cared deeply about his family, friends, and the community in which he lived. Anyone who had the good fortune of spending time with him loved him. He will be greatly missed and I only wish I could do more to help celebrate his tremendous life. Amen.”
A cold breeze blew a pile of soggy leaves down the hill. We took a moment of silence, yet my mind was screaming. Thoughts of death bounced across the empty spaces. I had only faced it one other time in my life, when my grandfather passed away and I was too young to understand. My younger cousin and I had climbed up to the lid of his coffin to wake him up from his nap, something I had done a hundred times before. I tried to visualize the day of my maternal grandfather’s funeral too, but like most of my memories, they were murky and disjointed. I remembered how people were packed elbow-to-elbow, all in black, sobbing and sharing stories about him. He had a full wake with cold cuts and my grandmother sat in the living room to greet the people who came to pay their respects.
In the end, Dad’s funeral was five strangers standing awkwardly around a two-foot-by-two-foot hole, tossing handfuls of dirt into an unmarked grave with grocery store roses. I decided on that hilltop, staring at his partially filled resting place, that when I died I wanted hundreds of people at my funeral—a great party where everyone shared their fond memories of me, and stayed late into the night because they couldn’t stand to let me go. I didn’t want to die alone.
CHAPTER 2
EACH OF US WANTED TO PAY OUR RESPECTS, yet none of us wanted to overstay. Funerals weren’t for the dead anyway. They gave those left behind a chance to grieve and tie up loose ends. I watched Catherine as she delivered her impromptu sermon. Her black hair, in sharp contrast with her pale skin, fell down the sides of her pronounced cheekbones. As brother and sister we were both pale and turned red like boiled lobsters on the beach, which was another reason I never understood why our family moved to Florida for two years and then unexpectedly came home in the middle of the school year, about six months earlier. We never finished what we started. People said Catherine and I looked alike because we both had full cheeks and slightly pointed noses that appeared to slide down our foreheads. And we both had big Irish chins. My father, Thomas Daly, was of full Irish descent—at least that’s what he told us—while Mom’s family was mostly German or English. Her name was Helen.
We all had loose ends to tie up. Catherine needed to say goodbye to her beloved father, Marie and Neil to their estranged brother, and our esteemed guest Carla a farewell to her old flame, if in fact there was any truth to her story. I’d come to do what any good son did when his father died, yet none of it was going how I’d expected. Once Carla opened her mouth about Dad’s other alleged marriages, I felt like everything was in a tailspin. Regardless of whether her story was true or not, it consumed my thoughts. The truth didn’t matter as much as the way a story made you feel, and fate had given me a chance to maybe learn something real about my father, something he never would’ve told me himself. I was apprehensive about not liking what I’d potentially learn, nervous about ripping off the lid and being haunted by what I’d find inside.
Catherine tossed the final handful of dirt into Dad’s shallow grave. She brushed her hands together and excess granules fell from her fingers. She looked out over the cemetery grounds. At first, I assumed she was surveying the property where our father would spend his eternity at rest, but instead I could now tell she was orchestrating our speedy departure.
“I appreciate you all meeting us here today, but I think it’s time we left,” she said.
“Oh, no, really? So soon?” said Marie.
We had barely spent half an hour at the cemetery, which felt unfulfilling after the excessive time it took us to drive across the state.
“I’m sorry, but we have plans with our family.”
“But … we made plans,” Marie said desperately. “Didn’t Neil tell you? Neil, you said you—”
“Yes, Marie,” Neil exhaled, hot steam leaving his exhaust pipe of a mouth. “I told them about it this morning, Marie.”
“What plans?” I asked.
Earlier that day we had taken a break from driving so Catherine could use a pay phone beside a peculiar-looking gas station. Many of the pumps were out of order and had yellow bags covering them. The building had been two stories, somebody’s get-rich-quick scheme, the kind Dad always sought out. Whoever owned it must’ve lived upstairs, which reminded me of when we were kids and Dad proposed we move above a bar he wanted to buy in Wellbourne. We toured the apartment to make him feel better, a musty place with carpets sticky from triple sec and cherry juice, and thin walls that failed to muffle the loud clinking of bottles and the scraping of wooden barstools downstairs. Mom said no. Hell no, in fact. They fought and argued over it for weeks yet we never moved in. Months later the building mysteriously burned to the ground, but that was pure coincidence.
Nearly three songs had played on the radio rotation before Catherine returned from using the phone. Smashing Pumpkins. The Gin Blossoms. Radiohead. Once back in the car she had cleverly avoided telling me who was on the line. Don’t worry about it, she had said. One of my father’s favorite sayings, one he often repeated to my mother to put her at ease when she was nervous about the state of things. Don’t worry about it. The line never accomplished what it intended, of course. Catherine had clearly been on the phone with Uncle Neil, most likely to update him on our progress, and for some reason she decided not to share the postfuneral plans with me. I knew that Catherine had a flight back to Florida either Monday or Tuesday, so she may’ve been in a hurry to get back, but I had no immediate plans.
“You two drove so far and we thought you could stay the night and spend some more time with us,” said Marie.
Carla stepped forward. “That’s a fabulous idea, Marie.” She avoided eye contact with Catherine as she