Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
Some funerals are a relatively happy affair. People slap them with a Celebration Of Life title and imbue the event with a joyful hue.
Not this one.
This is a funeral service in the truest sense of the name. It is somber and dark. Palpable anguish, so thick it could be sliced, settles into the space between bodies packed into pews.
Gabriel’s fingers wrap around mine, his grip painfully tight. If I bruised easily, I’m sure my body would bear the markings of his iron-clad grasps since the night Ryan died. Every time we’re in our bed he holds me, forming a cage, as though he believes if I’m not ensnared, I’ll be lost.
I uncross and recross my legs, my black dress slipping over my black tights. Four rows in front of us, Carrie’s blonde hair shimmers with the quaking of her shoulders. I know Gabriel notices. I know he feels disgusted by her. More than once since the first morning, he has mentioned what a terrible person Carrie is. He hasn’t reached out to her, but I have. I called her the day Ryan died, after Gabriel passed out drunk. I wasn’t expecting her to answer the phone, but she did. Where I anticipated wailing, I heard only a sunken tone. We spoke for less than a minute. She accepted my sympathy, declined my offer to help in any way she needed, and we hung up. We haven’t spoken since.
Gabriel’s father delivers the eulogy. He tells a story of Ryan’s first time cooking at the firehouse, how he’d almost burned the place down.
“We’ve always kept a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but I never expected to need it.” He grins ruefully, and for the first time during the service, the low hum of collective chuckling radiates through the people. It makes me happy that Gabriel’s father was able to insert a moment of levity. The stuffy air needed it.
He finishes and returns to his seat next to Gabriel’s mom. The minister says a final prayer, and the service ends. There is a reception afterward, and Gabriel takes his time with Ryan’s parents and his two older sisters. I stand back and watch. Grief has always fascinated me. It is an emotion so layered, so nuanced. One moment it can be as soft as a gentle rain, the next, an outraged typhoon. Some people refuse to admit its presence. Others drown in it.
And then, there’s Carrie. She shakes hands and hugs, nodding and wiping at her eyes. I believe her tears are real. And she uses those real tears to firmly place herself in her new role. Widow.
Carrie gazes out across the small room we’re in, and finds me. She starts for me, and is stopped twice on the way. When she arrives, she doesn’t hug me the way she has other people. She stands beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and murmurs so quietly I lean closer to hear her say, “He would have hated this.”
I nod. “What would he have chosen instead?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. But I know it wouldn’t be this.”
From somewhere in the room, there is wailing. An older woman is led away by an equally aged man. Maybe she is an aunt.
Carrie raises her eyebrows and ducks her chin as if to say, ‘See what I mean?’.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Carrie. Truly.” I mean it. Alongside my condolence sits relief it wasn’t my husband. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.
“It’s awful,” she says, clasping her hands together in front of herself. “Going through his things. Our things. But you know what?” She side-eyes me, and I tip my head back slightly, a cue for her to continue. “Now I don’t have to be a divorcee. I get to be a widow.”
I get to be a widow . I’ve never wanted to inflict physical pain on someone until right now.
“I don’t mean it the way it sounds,” she adds, her words tripping over themselves in her haste to fix what can’t be repaired.
“Yes, you do.” I say each word slowly.
“I’m just looking at this realistically.” She’s whispering again, more forcefully now. “We were going to get divorced. He didn’t want to be married to me anymore, either.”
Revulsion leaves a bitter tang in my mouth. I don’t know why she’s saying any of this to me, other than she thinks because I’m a therapist I’m receptive. But she is not my patient, I am not her therapist, and I am not a keeper of her secrets and innermost thoughts.
Ryan’s mother motions for Carrie. “Don’t tell anybody what I said,” she whisper-hisses.
“I don’t plan to.” Though she deserves it, Ryan does not. Gossip or negativity around his marriage need not exist.
Carrie slips away, sending me a pleading look in lieu of a farewell. By the time Gabriel makes his way back to me, I’m sitting with Corinne at one of the tables set up in the church courtyard. She has hardly said a word through all this, breaking her silence once to ask for directions to the ladies room, and a second time to ask me to get her a coffee from the box provided by the church. I would imagine a funeral service for a young man is painful for her on many levels. Both Gabriel and his father have spent a majority of the last hour talking with the firefighters in attendance.
Gabriel kisses his mother’s cheek and pulls me up from my seat. I say goodbye and we start for his truck. He holds my hand.
“I saw you talking to Carrie. What did she have to say?”
I glance over at my husband in his shiny shoes and black suit, and his equally dark hair. Shadows darken the skin under his eyes. “Nothing of importance.”
We stop at his truck tailgate. He leans closer and says, “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you. I love you,” before placing a featherlight kiss on my cheek.
“I love you, too.” I take the keys from his hand. “I’ll drive. It’s been a hard day. You should relax.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“Of course I’m sure.” I squeeze his forearm.
Gabriel nods in agreement and wipes a hand down his face.
I hate pretending.
But the smell of liquor on his breath? I hate that even more.
Gabriel pulls a navy blue Phoenix Fire Department T-shirt from the dryer. He shakes it out, then threads his neck and arms through. It’s his first time donning it since the night Ryan died.
It’s been one week since Ryan’s funeral, and Doug has ordered Gabriel back to work. Everyone else has returned, and he said Gabriel was being the kind of colleague nobody wants, moping around and feeling sorry for himself. When Gabriel told me what his dad said, I picked up my phone, ready to tell Doug exactly how wrong he was. Tough love on a man like Gabriel? Terrible approach.
Gabriel shook his head at me, and when Doug answered, I told him I called him by accident.
Gabriel walks from the laundry room into our kitchen. His movements are certain. He reaches up into a cabinet, the muscles of his upper back straining against his shirt. His calf muscles, already generous and round, flex to support his reach. On the outside, he appears strong. Inside, he is soft. The two are separated only by a soluble layer. He keeps so much of himself hidden down deep, but none of it is particularly difficult to access. It is there, ready for the taking, if only people pay close enough attention.
I’m worried about what returning to the station might mean to him. To his soul. He is good at his job, but at what personal cost?
I never mentioned the alcohol at the funeral. I don’t know how concerned I should be. I don’t know how much leeway he should be given, considering the circumstances. Letting it go is easiest, and right now I’ll do just about anything to keep from rocking the boat.
Gabriel finishes making breakfast. He carries two plates to the table and places one in front of me. We eat quietly. Gabriel is wrapped up in his thoughts.
“Are you looking forward to work?” I ask buoyantly, my tone lifting at the end of my sentence, as if I don’t know how conflicted he feels. Yesterday he told me he didn’t want to go back, but today might be different. That’s how grief often works. What you didn’t want yesterday might be exactly what you need today.
Gabriel finishes chewing his last bite and pushes his plate away. He props an elbow on the table and reaches for me, hand curving over my cheek and tucking my hair behind my ear. He lets it rest on my jaw.
“No.” I don’t like his resolute tone. I can hear how he doesn’t believe he has a choice.
A surging desire to remove all his pain rises within me. “Then why are you going?”
He stares into my eyes. “I’ve been wondering why I continue. Why I do this to myself. Then I remember you. The look on your face when I opened your bedroom door that night. The weight of your body when I carried you. The relief in your eyes when I handed you over to the paramedics. You became my world.” The pad of his thumb strokes my cheek. “Every person is someone else’s world. It’s my responsibility to preserve that.”
I open my mouth to tell him none of that matters if he’s unhappy, but then he kisses me, long and slow, the kind of kiss that asks for more. We both need to go to work, but I can’t stop this. His mouth, his hands, his heart, he needs to give it all to me as much as I need to have it.
I’m wearing only my nightgown, so it’s a matter of seconds before I’m on my back on the table and he’s inside me.
Gabriel leans over, his body bent like an uppercase L. His kisses, so tender against my neck, juxtaposed with what his lower half is doing.
I love it. I love how he gives me his soul at the same time he gives me his body. This man. This man . I cling to him, wrapping my legs around his back, slipping my hands under the shirt he didn’t take off. I pretend my love can seep through my palms, soak into him and carry him into his day, providing solace to his wounded heart.
He finishes a moment after me, his lips on mine and his whispered I love you filling my mouth.
He kisses me once more, then helps me off the table. He waits for me while I place our dishes in the dishwasher, and we go to our bedroom to get ready for the day.
We leave together, pausing at the front of our cars. When I kiss him goodbye, I tell him, “I love you. I support you, always. I am Team Gabriel, no matter what.”
A smile curves his lips. He hasn’t smiled much lately, and I’m grateful even for this tiny one. “Who’s the opposing team?” he asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. It could be anybody. But whoever it is, I’m on your team.”
His eyes fill with emotion. “It’s us against the world?”
I nod once. “You and me, hero.”
He smiles again, bigger this time. I think I’d do anything to see that smile. He tells me he loves me, then he leaves.
I get in my car and pause, gripping the steering wheel and filling my lungs with a deep, burning breath.
Everything will be ok. The world continues turning, and Gabriel is still Gabriel. As long as those two things remain true, everything else is extra.