Two caskets sit at the front of the church, the top half of each lid open so that the bodies are only visible from the chest up. The line to see the bodies snakes all the way to the back doors of the church, where I stand against the wall. Separate from the line. I’m not ready yet.
The only family to receive is Grandma in her wheelchair, who looks more confused than in mourning, and Tabby’s dad’s brother and his son, neither of whom I’ve ever seen before. The uncle has a hand resting on top of the wheelchair, his son slightly behind him. They look pained, like they’re trying to figure out the appropriate expression and response for each I’m sorry for your loss they receive, as if the loss isn’t really that traumatic for them, which I suppose it isn’t.
I’ve never seen the woman sitting alone at the far left side of the second row before, so I can only guess that it’s Tabby’s mother. Her hair a mess of red pulled back in a ponytail, she methodically chews at each of her cuticles, one after another and back again. She stares straight ahead, speaks to no one, like she’s in a trance. A few people glance at her as they pass, but nothing more.
Liam Branson sits up front with Lily, their family around them. He looks like he hasn’t stopped crying for days. Maybe he hasn’t. The line is packed with students, 99 percent of which couldn’t tell you jack shit about Tabby, beyond the fact that she was really nice and that she was Liam’s girlfriend and ohmigod, they made the best couple. Naturally, every one of them stops to pay Liam their respects, like after two months he’s a fucking family member.
Sprinkled in among the mourning teenagers are some of Tabby’s dad’s friends and coworkers—tough-looking men who look as bewildered and out of place as Tabby’s senile grandmother. Some of Tabby’s teachers—who must have left school early with half the student body—are here, including Mr. Ellis, shoulder to shoulder with Mrs. Shepler. I recognize a math teacher. Mrs. Dolan, the art teacher. Miss Edna.
And of course my family.
Mom and Dad sit up front as well, by the right-hand aisle, the viewing line directly in front of them. Gramma and Grampa sit behind them. When we first walked in, and I saw all these people, the two caskets up front, I told Mom, “I can’t.” She nodded, rubbed my arm, and moved slowly to the front, two hands clasped around Dad’s.
Murray stands next to me in the back, staring straight ahead, one hand lightly holding onto the bottom of my jacket, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. I don’t know how much he understands of what’s happening, or what’s going through his head. But he decided, like me, that he didn’t want to go up front.
He looks up once and says, “Matty, when are we going home?”
I sit my hand on top of his head, try my best to meet his eyes. “I don’t know, buddy. Soon.” Which he accepts without another word.
I watch all these people giving clueless, ambivalent family members—not to mention the family of a kid who’s known Tabby less than half a year—their deepest sympathies. No one stops to give condolences to my family. Not one.
So I nearly lose it when Mr. Holowitz—he of OTM ≠ OTM fame—walks by and squeezes my arm. He used to call us Frick and Frack when we walked into his classroom together each morning. He looks like he wants to say something to me, his hand still around my elbow, but he can’t get any words out, and I’m frozen. He gives me one more knowing look and moves on, but when Miss Edna puts a hand on my shoulder a moment later, the other clutching a balled-up tissue over her mouth, I’m about to break. Of the hundreds of people in this church, they’re the first to recognize the connection I have to Tabby, and I can’t breathe.
I can’t go up there. That’s not Tabby. I have a glimpse of red hair from back here, but I know that’s not her.
Tabby would lecture me for not sitting with my family, for judging Branson and his legion of fake mourners. They give him a hug, wipe their eyes, and check their phones as soon as they walk out the door. Slap down a crying emoji with angel wings and find out where everyone’s meeting up afterward.
But there’s no lecture.
I should go up there and say goodbye, but who am I saying goodbye to? She’s already gone. Her insides were emptied out days ago, stagnant blood pulled from her veins. If she scraped her elbows and fell asleep against me, it’d be embalming fluid soaking into my shirt while the Ewoks help thwart the Imperial Stormtroopers, the stench of formaldehyde making the last of the popcorn inedible.
That’s not Tabby.
With pews starting to fill up and the viewing line still snaking back to the exits, Grampa stands, sidesteps to the end of his pew in the second row. When there’s the slightest break in the line of teenagers waiting to view the bodies, he steps forward in front of them to Tabby. No one looks twice.
He rests a hand on the closed half of the lid and looks down at her. I can’t see if he says anything, but he stays that way for a minute. He nods once and turns to find Murray and me in the back, bypassing Tabby’s family and the Bransons.
I drop my head when he gives me a pursed smile coming back up the aisle, the first hot tears slipping to the corners of my mouth. Murray leans in and wraps his arms around Grampa’s leg, Grampa’s arm draped over his shoulder, gently scratching Murray’s back. I’d do anything to still be able to sink into Grampa like that.
We stay that way until the line dwindles, the pastor making sympathetic gestures to the last of the viewers, and then sit down with Grampa in the last row. As the viewing spills into the funeral service, the pastor steps to the front of the church, behind the caskets, and begins to speak.
His voice is kind and reassuring. But after a few opening prayers and a brief welcome, his words are empty. There are no eulogies. He didn’t know Tabby or her dad personally. After a few more numbing hymns, he speaks in infuriatingly generic terms about “the mystery of God’s love” and I think, Yeah, this is a pretty big fucking mystery.
What bullshit.
What utter fucking bullshit.
How can anybody sit here, look at what remains of such a beautiful, perfect human being, and honestly think that a patch of ice on a dark road in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, a luxury SUV, and blunt-force trauma are part of some greater plan for the universe? That there was a divine reason for Tabby’s lungs to be impaled by her own shattered ribs?
What kind of fucked-up plan is that?
Why are people not burning this fucking place to the ground?
“C’mon, let’s get out of here for a few minutes.” Grampa’s hand is on my shoulder, and I can feel that he’s shaking, too. As the pastor fills the air with more empty words, the three of us file out the back into the bright afternoon. We sit down on a bench outside the church, find clusters of teens and adults, checking phones, looking spent and bored.
I don’t know how long we sit on that bench in the cool sunshine, no trace of the ice and snow that ended it all a few days ago. Everything keeps moving. But when I hear the organ music start up again, I know the funeral is probably almost over.
A couple of minutes later, the doors open, and Tabby’s and her dad’s caskets come out, carried by a combination of her dad’s coworkers and employees of the funeral home. The caskets are loaded into two separate hearses, parked side by side. The lids are closed, and it hits me that they’ll never be opened again. I’ll never see Tabby’s face ever again, and I can’t rewind a few minutes to when it was open and I could have had one last look at her—even if it’s not really her—and I hate myself for it. I close my eyes and rest my head in my hands, trying to focus on breathing, in and out of my lungs, as everyone else spills out of the church around me.
Tabby, waving her box of Nerds as she and her dad drive away, flashes over and over in my head, this grainy clip losing a little of its impact with every loop. The last time I saw her.
“We should head to the car,” Dad says softly over us. “The procession is going to leave soon.”
“Why don’t I take Murray home,” Grampa says. “I think we’ve had enough.”
I follow Grampa and Murray and climb into the backseat of Grampa’s car without a word. Mom and Dad don’t say anything about it—just head to their car, Dad’s arm around Mom’s shoulder.
I think I’ve had enough, too.