Chapter Eighteen Portland, OR 2009 #2
That was when the dry eyes really disappeared. Handkerchiefs were whipped out and tissues passed down the aisle, everyone sobbing as the repeated hallelujahs rose from the piano like a snake being charmed out of its basket.
“Oh wow.” Even Grimshaw seemed touched by the tribute—though he might have just as easily been touched by the sight of Chrissie sitting ethereal and serene as her fingers flew over the keys, a decorous black dress hugging her body and an actual string of pearls at her neck.
“Where did Chrissie learn to play like that?”
Despite the several people urging them to hush, Scarlett turned to face him. “You’ve never heard her practice?”
He shook his head, sipped, and passed Scarlett the flask. “No. Never.”
“She didn’t tell you about all the lessons she has to take?” Scarlett took a long sip in an attempt to rally her thoughts. Was he being serious? Had Chrissie really shut him out of this part of her life? “Or about her…brother?”
Grimshaw’s brows rose into his swooped hairline. “She has a brother?”
Scarlett wasn’t sure why those four words pleased her so much, but they did. She liked thinking of the vast difference between the Chrissie that Grimshaw knew and the Chrissie she did.
She doesn’t love him. She never has. He’s just some bookish yogurt boy she’s practicing on until she finds the real deal, and he has no idea.
This feeling of satisfaction only grew when Grimshaw frowned and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not even sure why we’re together,” he whispered glumly.
Scarlett drank a toast to that and then, as the song ended and everyone gave in to their sobs, she drank a toast to that, too. “Tell me all about it,” she soothed.
Grimshaw was only too happy to comply. “She says she’s fine with the way we are, but I dunno. If that was true, wouldn’t she be less…distant? It’s like she’s the Platonic ideal of a girlfriend instead of the real deal. Perfect but untouchable, like a chair I’ll never get a chance to sit on.”
Scarlett knew this was just Grimshaw’s Introduction to Philosophy class talking, and that he didn’t mean to imbue his words with such heavy sexual innuendo, but she laughed anyway. Since the flask was empty by this time, he laughed back, which set her off even more.
“If you want to sit on someone, all you have to do is ask,” Scarlett said, avoiding the curious glances from the sobbing masses around her.
One of the nice things about losing the most important person in your life was that you could laugh at her funeral all you wanted, and the most that anyone could do about it was judge from their safe, lofty, no-dead-grandmother heights.
No one would call her out for inappropriate behavior, even if she were to slip out of this nightmare and disappear into one of the dark hallways.
In fact…
As she tottered to her feet and pushed out of the pew, she caught a glimpse of Chrissie.
Her friend had yet to get up from the piano, her hands at rest as they sat clasped in her lap.
She looked for all the world as though she’d been born for this exact moment—dry-eyed, calm, prepared to face the worst that life had to offer without so much as a hair out of place.
There wasn’t even a change in her expression as she watched Grimshaw take Scarlett by the hand and lead her away, both of them tripping over their feet as they made good their escape.
The same could not be said of the person just inside the doorway to the church, standing awkwardly in a navy blue suit that was two sizes too small for his lanky frame and clutching a bouquet of drooping carnations that were somehow both too much and not enough for their intended purpose.
“Grim, what are you doing?” Mitchell hissed as he looked first at the flask clutched in one of Grimshaw’s hands and then at the other, which tightly held Scarlett’s own. “The service isn’t over yet.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over.” Grimshaw proved himself worthy of every inch of his six-foot brooding perfection by looming over his cousin and leering, “Scarlett is upset, so I’m taking her somewhere different. Somewhere better.”
“It’s a funeral. Everywhere is better than this. That’s not the point.” Mitchell turned his hurt, puzzled expression on Scarlett. “C’mon. I’ll take you back in. I’m sure no one will notice if we slip in through the side.”
Scarlett recoiled from him and those sad, pathetic carnations as though they were both poised to attack.
“I don’t want to go back in. I don’t want anything to do with all those people crying their eyes out and telling stories about Grandma like any of it matters. Chrissie will take care of it for me. Chrissie takes care of everything.”
“Yeah,” Grimshaw added on a hiccup. “And what’s more, Chrissie likes it.”
Grimshaw pushed past his cousin easily, his larger bulk and alcohol-fueled belligerence making him the physical superior of the two. Mitchell staggered back, the petals of the flowers falling to the tiled floor in a flurry of faded colors.
“Why are you guys acting like this? I thought you loved Chrissie.”
Scarlett would never be able to say for sure which of them Mitchell was talking to. His eyes were trained on his cousin, but the question belonged to Scarlett and Scarlett alone.
Because she did love Chrissie. She loved her more than any other person on the planet, more than the combination of every single attendee reciting psalms in the next room.
She also knew that if one more person sang her friend’s praises today, Scarlett would scream.
Just once, couldn’t Chrissie drop the perfect facade and show how much she was hurting inside?
For one day—the day of her grandmother’s funeral—couldn’t she be the hot mess so Scarlett could step up and be the heroine?
“Chrissie has nothing to do with this,” Scarlett said as she and Grimshaw stumbled-walked over the flowers and toward the exit. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder at Mitchell for fear of what she’d find there.
Shock. Horror. Disappointment.
In other words, all the things she felt in herself and somehow couldn’t contain.