CHAPTER 8 THE LONGEST GOODBYE #2
The smell of rose-scented Smithfield’s hangs in the air.
Normally the smell doesn’t bother me but knowing that it’s in the air because Noah had been prepped in here makes me want to be sick.
My mom has covered her tool chest with a sheet and put away anything she used to get Noah ready.
I’m grateful. I can’t handle seeing those tools right now.
I approach the casket and Noah’s upper torso comes into view.
I cannot look at his face. Not yet. Instead, I focus on the silver buttons on his black suit jacket and the way his hands lie across his belly.
The little scar on his left thumb where he’d cut himself on a piece of glass at Buttermilk Falls the summer before is visible.
The silver ring he always wears on his pinkie is missing, though.
I have stood next to more caskets than I can count and I’ve never been as afraid to look upon the person lying inside as I am in this moment.
Maybe it’s because I wasn’t connected to those other people.
When I looked at them in the caskets, they weren’t people I’d spent so much time with it was impossible to tally the days.
They weren’t people I had laughed and cried with, people I’d loved.
I swallow hard, grit my teeth, and let my gaze wander to Noah’s face.
He lies with his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted.
The bridge of his nose and plains of his cheeks are freckled.
His tan skin is still supple, not dry, or unnatural looking at all.
In the bright light of the prep room, I can clearly see where my mother has used her immense skill to camouflage a defect over his left cheek.
Nobody else would notice it. The color matching is perfect and the texture of the mortuary wax is just a little smoother than his normal skin.
She even painted on freckles. I think of him falling and striking his face on something that gouged out a piece of his cheek.
I wonder if he had tried to call out and couldn’t.
Had there been time for that or was it just over in the blink of an eye?
I grip the edge of the coffin, fighting the urge to scream.
I reach in to hold his hand. As soon as our fingers touch, I rear back. He is cold and stiff.
My heart drops into the pit of my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I sob. I retake my position at his side and grasp his hands. “I—I’m not afraid of being here with you. Please, Noah. Please don’t leave me.”
But he’s already gone.
I know that. I can feel it.
I take off the bracelet he’d given me and fasten it around his wrist.
“You keep this for me,” I say through a torrent of tears. “Wait for me, okay? Please wait for me. I’ll see you when I get there.”
I don’t know what happens when we die. I don’t know if he can wait for me somewhere beyond this life, but it gives me the only shred of hope I can cling to right now.
This can’t be all there is. I lean into the casket and kiss him gently on the forehead.
I let my lips linger on his cold skin knowing this will be the last time.
It hurts so much I think I might break apart and then . . . ?Noah sighs.
I jerk back, tripping over my own feet and landing hard on the floor. I scramble back, pressing myself into the wall. I can’t see Noah’s body from where I am on the floor but I stare at the edge of his casket. Maybe he’ll sit up and I’ll wake up and all of this will be a nightmare.
The door to the prep room groans open and my mom sticks her head in.
“Baby, what in the world—”
“He breathed!” I say, scrambling to my feet.
Mom comes in and takes me by the arm. “What are you talking about?”
“I leaned into the coffin to kiss him one last time and—and—he sighed.”
Mom glances at the casket and then back to me. She gently guides me back to Noah’s side and we peer down at him.
“Baby, Noah is gone,” she says softly. “The stress you’ve been under, the grieving, it’s a lot to hold all at once. Sometimes we see and hear the things we wish were real.”
“I just—I thought I heard him take a breath when I kissed him.” I try to take stock of myself. Am I hallucinating? Am I really so broken in this moment that I’m imagining things? I shake my head and Mom leads me out of the prep room.
I spend the rest of the day and evening in my room.
The image of Noah in his casket is burned into my mind and it will not allow me to replace it with another memory of him.
I want to think of him the way he was when he sat in my room and put that bracelet on me, or the way he looked at me when we almost said that we loved each other.
We thought we had more time and now there is none left.
The image that will be forever associated with him will be of him lying in that coffin and I hate it.
A motor turns over outside. The hearse’s engine has a very distinct kick to it, because despite my dad’s meticulous upkeep of the car, it’s still sixty years old and is probably coming to the end of its long life. At least it got sixty years. Noah only got seventeen.
I move to the window to see what’s going on. I can just make out the silhouette of my dad in the driver’s seat. The curtains that hang from the rear windows of the hearse are drawn. He carefully backs out of the drive and takes off.
“Hey, baby,” my mom says. She’s there with a to-go bag from Simeon’s restaurant. She holds it up. “Best mac-n-cheese in Ithaca. Not in the world. I think my mac-n-cheese holds that title but I know this one’s your fave.” She sits the bag on the bedside table.
“I just saw Dad leave,” I say. “Where’s he going?”
“Oh, he’s got something to do on campus. Some last-minute thing.”
“He took the hearse,” I say.
Her gaze flits to the window. “Huh. I don’t know, baby.
You know he likes driving that thing around even when it’s not necessary because he thinks it means people won’t try to talk to him.
God forbid.” She sits next to me and drapes her arm around me.
“That man has been all over the place these last few days. I think we all have.”
The knot in my throat threatens to choke me.
I stare at my mom, and it occurs to me that, once again, she looks not quite her usual level of put together.
Her skin is dull and her makeup is a little cakey, something she considers almost criminal.
But it’s not just that. There’s something else about her that’s off.
“You okay?” I ask.
She smiles at me. “I look a mess, don’t I?”
“No. Never.”
“You don’t have to lie, baby.” She smiles. “I ran out of my favorite foundation and picked up this one from Walgreens. It should be illegal to sell this stuff to people. I look like a clown.”
“You look great,” I say.
“I said don’t lie.” She nudges me playfully.
I force a quick smile but I can’t stop looking at her face.
I know this strange feeling but it takes me a moment to place it and when I do, it still doesn’t sit right.
I feel like I’m looking at one of our guests.
But my mom’s fine. She’s right here. This isn’t the nightmare and still .
. . ?it’s not like I’m looking at a dead person but it’s as if that spark that makes us who we are is dimmer in her than it normally is.
I don’t like it at all. Is this what happens when people we care about die?
A little piece of us goes with them? If that’s true I wonder how hollow I must look right now.
“What do you need from me?” she asks. “I know nothing can make you feel better and part of this process is sitting with the pain for a while but how can I help? What can I do?”
She puts her hand in mine.
“I just need you next to me tomorrow because I don’t know how I’m gonna do it.
” That is the honest truth. I can’t fathom how I’m supposed to sit and look at Noah in his casket as we say our final goodbyes.
It doesn’t seem real. “We were supposed to have more time. We were gonna do so many things. We had all these plans, and now he’s just gone. It’s not fair.”
My mom turns and gazes out the window. “You’re right, baby. You’re right.”
Tears pour down my face in endless rivers. A part of me wishes they’d sweep me away, drown out all the hurt and emptiness. “You won’t seal the casket until I see him one more time, right?” I ask.
My mom shakes her head. “No, baby. I won’t.”
The next day, I sit in the back of the viewing room, in the last row of folding chairs.
I keep my gaze glued to the hardwood floor beneath my shoes as my dad wheels Noah’s casket in and positions it at the front of the room between two flower arrangements sent over by Bool’s.
The girl who works the front desk at the shop, Amya, had history class with Noah last year and sent over the flowers free of charge.
My mom opens a folding stand and props a large printout of Noah’s yearbook photo on it.
His grin is way too cheesy; it looks like he’s about to bust out laughing.
He told me that the school photographer hadn’t told him where to look so he just smiled as wide as he could and hoped for the best. She sets smaller framed photos of him on a table near the front, the same ones I’d had pinned on my ceiling and a few of him and his mom together. I look away from the photos.