twenty-eight
Baron Dolce
Everyone’s crying except me. Everyone thought I was the smart one, but Duke managed something in his short life that I’ve never been able to accomplish.
He figured out how to get everyone to love him despite themselves, despite all the crimes and trespasses he committed, the same evil that they hate me for.
They could forgive him, because though he was a monster, he was also human.
I’m the inhuman monster, the one they can’t love because I don’t crave it, because I don’t see the point in getting them to love me.
All the tears flowing down the toughest faces in Faulkner can’t save him.
They don’t bring him back, rising like smoke from the grave, don’t make him laugh recklessly or dance wild as a flame.
They don’t turn back the clock.
They don’t open the eyes I watched close, don’t bring the light back into them, the spark, the life.
And what’s the point of love if it can’t do that?
Without him, I will never know. He can’t explain it to me, make me see. From this day forward, I will always be an outsider, an observer; this human world with its human emotions an alien land to me.
When I look down at Mabel, she’s crying too, her face wet and soft as a baby’s.
She clings to my chest like one of those damn koalas Duke was always collecting at the end, so I put my arm around her in case she collapses with grief, falls on the coffin and grasps that instead of me, demands to be lowered into the ground because what point is there in a life without him?
Maybe that’s what love really is. It’s not everything, but it’s a reason. A reason to stay up here when the priest closes the book somberly, and later, after we fly the body back to New York, a reason to stay up here when they lower the coffin into the ground next to Dad.
I look down at my brother, but he’s not there.
It’s only a body, like a mannequin. He’s flawless in death as he was in life—his hair styled, his cheekbones strong, his chin square.
He looks like he could sit up at any moment, laugh at us for believing anything could kill the invincible Duke Dolce. But it wouldn’t be him. He’s gone.
He always walked on the edge because he knew he’d never fall. That I would always catch him.
But I didn’t.
I lost sight of him, lost my grip and let him slip away.
I didn’t know he’d already let go, that if I released him, even for a moment, he wouldn’t hold on.
I should have noticed. I knew better than to lose focus.
Only one of us could ever be anything at once.
That’s how it worked. We were two halves of the whole.
If he was being stupid, I had to be smart.
If he was being reckless, I had to look out for him.
If he was being selfish, I couldn’t be selfish at the same time.
But I was. I went after what I wanted, apart from him. I wanted this one thing of my own. For years, I dreamed of seeing the light vanish from a man’s eyes. Now, it’s the moment that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Everyone is silent for a long moment after Father Salvatore is done. I wonder what secrets he keeps about Duke, if he witnessed his trips to Thorncrown with Dad, if he was there. I wonder who else here keeps secrets about my twin, secrets he never told me, and now he never will.
There are so many faces in the crowd I barely recognize.
I don’t know how many people attended Judge Darling’s funeral earlier this summer, but it couldn’t have been many more.
And there’s no doubt that more tears flow here.
Duke touched people in a way that’s rare, a way that not many people can.
Even Harper is sobbing in Royal’s arms beside me, like she doesn’t care that it’ll ruin her tough-as-nails reputation, like he didn’t tie her to a tree and leave her for dead every bit as much as I did.
Even Royal is crying, silent tears carving tracks down his cheeks.
Suddenly, Mabel steps away from me, takes a deep breath, turns her face to the blank white sky, and screams. It’s a long, mournful howl that cuts through the silent sobs and muted sniffles, obscene in its power in the somber situation, hideous against the backdrop of assorted flowers that she insisted on, buying out every flower shop in town and then going to Little Rock for more.
Everyone stares at her in shock. Her face goes red, but she takes a deep breath and does it again. She knows she’s making a spectacle, which is so unlike quiet, bland little Mabel Darling that no one stops her.
Finally, as she draws a breath for her third scream, which seems more calculated than anguished, I grab her arm. “What are you doing?” I mutter.
This is something my mother would do, wanting people to notice her and her grief. Even now, she’s silenced into shock by Mabel’s outburst.
Mabel turns to me, her expression determined even with the dark splotches on her cheeks.
“Duke once told me that he wanted his funeral to be a big deal. He said he wanted everyone crying, and he wanted wailers. I don’t know what that is, exactly, but I’m doing my best. He said we should grieve for the rest of our lives.
Why is that so much easier than honoring his other wishes?
He didn’t want us to mourn quietly, privately.
He wanted us to be loud. So I’m being loud. ”
If I doubted her grief before, I can’t now. Being loud, being seen, embarrassing herself—these aren’t things Mabel does. She would rather suffer the worst agony, the worst violation.
But she’ll do it for him.
Even though it’s too late to show him that she’d do it for him, she’s doing it.
I nod, though I don’t like it either, and she takes a breath again, deep into her lungs.
This time, when she wails, another voice joins. Surprised, I glance sideways and see Crystal joining in. She steps forward and grips Mabel’s hand, and, with tears streaming down her face, lets out a warbling hiccup of a cry.
“If that’s what he wanted, then that’s what we’ll do,” Harper says.
She grabs Mabel’s other hand, throws back her head and lets out a mournful howl.
Magnolia takes Harper’s other hand and lends her voice, the high, musical note in it adding sweetness to the chorus of voices.
Gloria and Colt join in, though I’m not sure if men are supposed to wail for the dead.
I don’t know when they came back, but they appear from the crowd.
More girls join, making a circle around the casket, their heads back, mascara running, voices breaking with grief.
There’s Mom, and our grandmother, and Eliza, who came down even though they’ll be flying back for the funeral and the burial in New York.
There’s Dolly and the Walton twins; Mabel’s mother and DeShaun’s sister; Natalie Fox and Daria Diaz and Lacey Murdock and a dozen other girls whose hearts he broke when he treated them the way he treated everyone.
But they still loved him.
We all still loved him.
Their voices join, twist and twine, rise and fall, the air vibrating with the sound waves, until my ears ring.
Dolly’s baby starts to cry in her arms, and then Crystal’s kids do, and more babies add their distressed shrieks to the din.
Somewhere, a dog starts barking, and then another, until the howls seem to spread over the whole town.
The grief is too big for Faulkner, too heavy.
It mutes the world like the low, featureless white of the clouds that cast the world in a dull gloom, blanketing and swallowing everything in shadow.
It goes on for a long time.
When they’re done, the crowd starts to trickle away.
“Two funerals in one week,” Crystal says, staring at the casket with bloodshot eyes. “It’s too weird. It’s like this town is cursed.”
“Dixie didn’t die in this town,” I point out.
“She was just getting famous,” says one of the Walton twins. “So sad.”
“Not famous enough,” Magnolia says, glancing at Colt. “Almost no one went to her funeral. I heard there were only, like, ten people there.”
“I can’t believe it was just a car accident,” says the other twin.
“ La Muerte says the band killed her,” says the first.
“You believe some conspiracy theorist online who won’t even show their face?” Gloria asks, looking skeptical. “ Mass Hypnosis wasn’t even in the same state that night.”
“Not that we know,” says her sister. “One of them could have flown to Tennessee.”
“Why are we questioning the police?” Mabel asks, frowning. “They ruled it an accident. There were no marks on the road, so she didn’t even brake.”
The Walton twins give her a funny look. “I know, but it’s like, the most boring way to die. She would have wanted something exciting, so she’d be remembered forever. Like a bombing or a mass shooting or—”
Her twin elbows her, and she snaps her mouth closed when she realizes I’m right here. No longer a twin because my brother went out in an ‘exciting’ way, a random, unexplained drive-by shooting in a nice part of a small town.
“Sorry,” they mutter, scampering away.
Harper wraps herself in Royal’s arms, pulling them around her. “I’m glad Olive isn’t here for this,” she says. “I’m glad she never has to know.”
“I wouldn’t say never,” I mutter.
Harper aims a sharp look at me. “He wouldn’t want you to hurt her. Or her sister.”
“She’s right,” Royal says. “Killing someone he loved won’t avenge him. I know it’s not what you’d do, but it’s what he’d do. It’s what he’d want. That’s how you honor his memory. It’s all we can do.”
That’s the part that stops me. That’s stopped me from going after them already. I had to be here to honor his wishes, even though he’s not. I’m all that’s left of him. So I carried on with what he wants. Flowers. Wailers.
Stopping short of vengeance isn’t in my nature, though.
“She’s right,” Mabel says gently. “I think… I think we went too far. I got carried away. Maybe we all did. But we have to stop. If we don’t stop now, it will never end.”