I let my gaze sink down my wedding gown until it meets his coffin. Julian Verenich wasn’t perfect, but he was as good as it gets. I loved him. Definitely would have gone through with the wedding.
I miss my notebook.
Setting: small Greek-orthodox church—St. Tatiana—in the Valley. It’s packed with grieving/curious guests, most in black but some in white “to celebrate his life.” People are here to ritualize and memorialize. I am too. Which is why I wish I had my notebook. The reactions around me are astounding.
My best friend, Joy, narrows her eyes at me from the first bench. I know why. You’re blocking your feelings, Geneva. Snap out of research mode. She’s in her last year of psychology and lives and breathes the stuff, always a fixer of people.
Julian and I are observers. Or, he was one. First-year PhD students in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology, we care about how people react and why. I wish he stood next to me and looked out over this church, such a classic example of ritualization in the name of mourning. Only, I’ve introduced a new aspect with my wedding gown and his groom’s tuxedo. It’s flexible ritualization at its finest, and I’m shocking the shit out of the crowd.
Joy frowns deeper, and I almost smile.
These are the mourners’ reactions: one, they notice my gown, my bouquet, my bridal crown, and their eyes widen. In some, this is followed by glossy eyes and/or a dropped jaw. Two, they cover their mouths in shock/horror/surprise when they see that Julian is dressed in his wedding tuxedo. Three, they gasp out loud, and the backward whisper commences, from the front of the line by the coffin to the ones who haven’t yet seen him. Four, murmurs erupt at the sight of Julian’s best friends/roommates/groomsmen in the archway to our left. People’s reaction are culturally groomed. Julian would have loved it.
Tall and broad-shouldered, the men are as similar as they are different. With dyed-blue roses in their lapels, they match Julian and me, and every one of them flicks his gaze over me, gauging my emotional status. I’m all right. Patiently, they wait, now bodyguards, soon coffin bearers.
These seven men are my friends too. For the last six years they’ve shared the once-condemned frat house on Magnolia Avenue with us. I’m the only live-in girlfriend who has lasted for more than a year.
James. Shorthaired and straight-laced, he’s our polite, handsome law student. Marlon. Another law student, dark-skinned with burning eyes and dreadlocks he’ll cut once he takes the bar exam. Lenny, or La On, which we’re banned from calling him. Male-model-styled black hair, eyes that turn upward at the edges. He curls his lips now in a sad smile.
I nod back because my face can’t move.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” someone mumbles, shifting from Julian’s mother to me. I accept their hand. “Beautiful dress,” she says. “Really, I’m so sorry.” And then she cries, whoever she is, and glides on to Luka. She pulls in a deep gasp—I want to sigh.
I wish people did their research before they came to funerals. Julian was an identical twin; he’s not actually standing next to me. Luka mirrors his brother in a tuxedo, and that I’m pissed about. This was my show, not his. He should have worn what his friends are wearing, regular sharp groomsmen attire. I refuse to look at him. I’m disgusted by the way he hugs the girl. It’s too tight, his side-job considered. I let my eyes go to the remaining groomsmen/pallbearers instead.
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Nathaniel with his big blue eyes, pale skin, and cherry-colored lips. He’s innocence and pureness despite being the oldest of the Fratters. Diego, deep green irises against olive skin. He eclipses them with long lashes as he studies me, another psychologist in the making.
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
From behind Diego, Connor peers out, gaze lustrous. Ruggedly handsome, he’s trimmed his beard for the ceremony, and his hair is gathered in a bun. I shake my head to him. If anyone can make me cave in and cry, it’s this poet boy. He even makes Luka swallow hard.
We do everything together today, and I hate that Luka’s right about this. Golden hair brushing the top of his collar, he swaggers slowly out of the cemetery and pulls their mother under his arm. I’m right behind, just not by his side, the rest of the Fratters silently following. Joy is with me, thank god.
The shuttle was supposed to get us back and forth between the church and the wedding dinner. The arrangement still works, from church to funeral dinner.
“You know what I think?” Connor murmurs. I don’t want to hear, Poet Boy. He leans in so his lips touch my hair. “I think that Julian had it all figured out.”
I turn to stare as the bus hobbles to a stop at a traffic light. We’re almost at the bottom of Hillside, the porn-star mansions’ part of the Valley.
“What, how to O.D. on over-the-counter pills?”
“There’s no way he planned it. It was the stress over the wedding and your research trip. There was a lot going on at once, and he was trying to get some rest.”
“Yeah, well.” I can’t think about it without getting mad. This too is a natural reaction. Joy would claim it’s psychological, but it’s culturally founded. I’m supposed to be mad at him. Unfortunately, analyzing it doesn’t stop my thoughts.
Julian and I were lovers and colleagues. We were a team, and we bought tickets to Kenya a week ago. After Kenya, we were going to the Amazon. I don’t even know what to do now. I can’t go alone into those tribal areas.
“We finished each other’s thoughts,” I say.
“Yeah. I’m not a godly person, but I’m damn sure of this: the good ones die young, and they do it for a reason. Julian was the best of us all, chill with you and the crazy research you guys do. Didn’t he always look at the bright side of things? I don’t recall him saying anything bad about anyone.”
“He’d just study them.” I shake my head, feeling a smile twisting on my mouth. “Then he’d go, ‘Got your notebook?’ and I’d have to jot down his observations because he was too lazy to do it himself.”
Connor huffs a laugh. “Okay, so he wasn’t perfect.”
“Which according to your theory means he needed another few decades to get polished if that’s the goal with hanging down here on Earth,” I say, and then a sob escapes me after all. Connor pulls me into the crook of his arm and sighs when my face buries into his shirt.
“You’ll be okay.”
“I know. I didn’t love him that much,” I convince us. Try to, anyway.
“Yeah. It was the allure of rituals that made you two plan that wedding.”
I snivel-laugh; part truth, part cruel joke. We’re over. Now what do I do?
We park in the driveway of our Queen Anne Victorian at the foot of Hillside. We’re in a narrow neighborhood between a Vons and a Ralphs, twenty minutes from Kar Community College. None of us go to it anymore. We met there, starting our studies cheaply, but then we moved on to full bachelor’s degrees, later master’s degrees, med school, and law school. We all have our reasons for getting terminal degrees and staying in L.A.
The Queen is our home. Six years within her teal green wood does that to you. Me, I met Julian and moved in only months after they’d fixed her up. I can’t imagine moving out. I can’t imagine staying either.
Friends or not, I used to live here with eight men. One of them was my boyfriend, my fiancé, my to-be-husband. Now, there are seven left, none of which is he. None have steady girls either. It would have been easier if they did.
I admit to being culturally patterned by thinking that. What would Julian have said if he’d heard me? He’d have nudged my chin up and said, “You and your bourgeoisie predictability.”
Lenny hooks my arm with his and supports me down the steps from the shuttle like I’m a convalescent. His eyes smile in beautiful dark slits as if this isn’t the day that broke, and then he helps me up the wooden steps to the porch too.
“I can still walk,” I say.
“Just making sure.”
Luka enters the Queen first. I just can’t take him today. Honestly, he’s who should have been left behind at that cemetery, the one with the disgusting life, an immoral sonofabitch who preys on people’s lust for his own winning. That wasn’t Julian.
Inside, Lenny doesn’t let go of me until I’m seated next to Mama. Small and skinny, she looks babushka-old with her black dress and headband trailing in a cone down her back. Her doll-sized, dark body supposedly carried her sons to term. I find that hard to believe; with their oversized frames and pale features, they could be changelings.
“My Yulian,” she murmurs, face like stone and eyes alive with grief.
“Yes, Mama,” I say, because what more? Her husband passed away five years ago, and her good son died. Now, she only has the douchebag son left.
Luka folds her in, a golden Russian bear, and she disappears against his body.
The twins were born in America. Their parents were not. Raised on bread lines in the Soviet Union, Mama and her dancer husband were well acquainted with starvation until they were granted exile in America.
It’s not cultural bias to conclude that the ready availability of food allowed Mama’s sons to stretch into the top three percentile of males in America. It’s a biological fact.
My parents savor the traditional Russian dinner prepared by Julian’s tetkas, aunts by blood and extended family. My baby sis flutters her lashes over violet irises in an effort to catch James’ attention. The Fratters are all between twenty-five and twenty-eight, and Aci is seventeen. James knows this and keeps his eyes on me, on Luka, and on Mama.
The Russian pancakes are too delicious for a day like this. We eat though, all of us. Luka folds two blinis in one hand and takes savage bites. I look away. The tetkas pour vodka in thick glasses, and we drink. I like this funeral ritual. It makes a lot of sense when it’s hard to remain rational.
It’s late.
Since Julian and I were the only resident couple, we have the second-story corner suite with a built-in bathroom. Our room hosts a small glass veranda too, though that’s not unique in the Queen.
I’m so drunk. I don’t want to think, but even when you’re sloshed, your mind whirls around. I remember fragments of conversation. I remember him sliding up my body on this bed, alive, warm, playful, the last time only five days ago. Ah how things change. How do they change so fast?
I stumble over sneakers, clothes, and large men’s shoes that form a disorderly path toward the closet. I need to tidy up in here. I shouldn’t be falling asleep shit-faced anyway, so now’s as good a time as any.
There’s too much stuff everywhere. It makes it hard to remain upright. The door flies open in the exact moment I crash to the floor.
“Geneva.” Luka’s voice is hushed. “Are you okay?”
“Of course. Yeah.” I gather blue jeans and dress pants into an even taller mountain and start kicking it toward the glass veranda. It means I have to stand on one foot. Not good, and I almost topple over again.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like, getting shit done, how’z your mom,” I say all in one.
Luka quiets, so I sniffle and glare for him to answer. I’m used to oddly yellow eyes raking over each detail, cataloguing. I’m happy they still exist on someone even if that someone screws girls on camera and pays for his med studies with the money.
I’m being culturally inhibited on this one, but I’m not ashamed. Julian knew how I felt about his brother, that I’ll never agree to the way Luka whores himself out. Yes, I know their parents could never have paid for their education. It’s not even a point for me that he might save lives as a doctor in the future, because—take up student loans, dude, like Julian did. Having a big dick doesn’t mean you have to be in the adult industry.
I want to chuckle; Julian found what I’m doing now funny; I’ve always been like this, my mind rolling coolly and analytically even as my tongue and body lose to the effects of the alcohol.
Actually, I’m the opposite of inhibited by not accepting whoring in men. Typically, women are the ones called sluts, while men are just Casanovas and Don Juans. How much cooler does that sound, right? And when they’re doing it for money, it’s just them being gigolos. Certainly doesn’t sound as bad as being a whore.
It’s hard to be objective about this. I’ve watched Luka swagger off with porn bimbos one time too many, laughing, arms around their shoulders and a lip-smack on their cheeks. The man is months away from going into residency at a hospital, and he does it without a penny in student loans.
I can picture him now. “Ma’am, breathe deeply. Let me listen to your heart.” Unless his patients have watched his films, they’ll have no idea what kind of hands are touching them.
He sinks down next to me and starts gathering his brother’s clothes. “Mama’s okay. She went home with Aunt Lily. I didn’t want her to be alone tonight, but she didn’t want to stay at the Queen, so yeah.”
“I can do it,” I say, half-pulling the clothes out of his hands.
He doesn’t let go. Instead his eyes blaze at me, grief and stubbornness mingling. “He’s my brother.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He tugs on the fabric. “That I’m here too, that I can help, and that I’m going through what you’re going through.”
“Ha, I don’t think so. You weren’t about to marry him,” I say, and then I burst into tears though I’ve made it this far and Luka is the last person I want to cry in front of. I shouldn’t be in this room. Julian’s smell is here. Everything around me is ours. I should have gone to the hotel with my family.
“Please. Just leave me alone, Luka.”
“No.” His eyes are full too. “You don’t like me, but can we see past that now? I want to be here. I know Julian would have wanted me here.”
“Bullshit. He’d have wanted what I want, which is for you to leave.” My breathing rasps. “Leave. Please.”
He stands, arms hanging along his sides as he watches me. A tear gleams at the corner of his eye, and I see what Luka wants, someone like him, someone who loved his brother as much as he did.
Luka’s dress shirt is barely tucked into his tuxedo pants, and he hasn’t even skipped off his shoes yet. He needs someone to bond with, and for one painful moment, I feel desolate for not wanting the same thing. He treads backward. As he shakes his head, his retreat becomes surer, and the pain in my chest turns to guilt. I follow him to the door so I can lock once I close it behind him.
Julian blew it. I don’t accept what he did, and as much as I loved him, I won’t let what happened ruin my life too.
For a second, Luka’s eyes trail over my hand as it curls around the door knob. Then they lift, the liquid yellow of his irises deepening like he’s about to tell me a truth, like I should pay attention to him.
“You can’t do this alone, Geneva.”