Casket Case

Chapter 7

The bell above the door rings; after a moment, Nora recognizes Mr. Sanderson. It’s been years since she’s seen him. His older son, Ben, was in her class at school, and his younger son, Ethan, was only a few years behind. They lived down the street, and they used to invite Nora over to jump on the trampoline with them during the summer. Their families had gone to many of the same community events and church barbecues over the years.

“Hey, Mr. Sanderson,” Nora says as he approaches the counter. “It’s been a while.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you, Eleanora, but you look so much like your mother.”

She hears the crack in his voice, the telltale sign that they aren’t planning for a future funeral.

“How can I help you?” she asks.

He looks away to gather himself, so Nora tries again.

“If you’ll just tell me who we’re planning for and when it happened, I can walk you through it from there.”

“It’s Ethan.”

This information knocks the breath out of Nora’s chest. She had assumed it would be a grandparent or even Mrs. Sanderson, but her mind hadn’t gone to the boys. She freezes, unsure of what to do next and certain that her dad could have handled this moment better.

“My God,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

She fiddles with her necklace in lieu of showing emotion, since someone has to be in control, and it should never be the parent of a dead child. She knows how to hold herself together. She gives him a moment to compose himself.

“Car accident near Fort Payne late last night,” Mr. Sanderson explains. “He was on his way home from Ohio.”

Nora tries to remember why Ethan would be in Ohio. Had he moved there at some point? The information was jumbled up in the odds and ends Nora had accumulated about people she hasn’t seen in a decade and might never see again. Ethan had gotten a scholarship to Kent State and met an Ohio girl and stayed after graduation. Nora’s mom had told her that before her own car accident.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. I know everyone was really proud of him.” Nora hears her dad’s voice reminding her that Mr. Sanderson is here for a purpose, not for comfort. There isn’t much comfort in a situation like this anyway. “I’ll go through some common options, and we’ll figure this out together.”

Mr. Sanderson chooses a simple casket, black with a sage interior because Ethan liked green. Nora usually handles only the casket part, but she walks Mr. Sanderson through some ideas for the burial and any services he might want to have and puts him in contact with the right people to take care of it.

“I’m sure I’m forgetting something,” he says as they’re wrapping up. “Melanie usually handles things like this.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Nora says. “If you have any questions, please call me. If I can’t help, I have an arsenal of phone numbers.”

“I appreciate your help. I didn’t know where to start. No one prepares you for this.”

“I’m glad I could help.” She gives him a folder with copies of forms and business cards for florists, churches, and anything else she can think to include.

Mr. Sanderson stops on his way to the door. “I wonder if they’re together now, Ethan and your parents.”

“I’m sure Dad is showing him around,” Nora says, hoping this is the right answer. She has no idea where anyone is, and that reminder lands on her chest like a stone falling down a well. “See you at the service.”

He tips his head in her direction and walks out onto the sidewalk.

Once the door closes, Nora sinks to the floor behind the counter. She doesn’t usually react this way when someone dies, but her parents’ faces are in the front of her mind now. The memories are flooding in, and she knows she has to get a handle on herself. If she gives them a yard, they’ll take the whole field.

Instagram therapists have taught her how to calm herself down. She needs to clear her mind. She concentrates on breathing. She thinks about nature. A tree. Leaves. Roots stretching out underneath. Stretching farther than any of us can see.

She puts herself back together and calls her grandpa. This is what small-town people have been raised to do. They call the next person in the chain.

“That poor boy,” he says. “His poor mama.”

“Mr. Sanderson was holding it together. I don’t think it’s hit him yet.”

“You all right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine, I guess.”

“Why don’t you come over tonight?”

“You have Bible study,” she reminds him. Grandpa never misses the men’s Bible study class, mostly so he can say he never misses it and for the hour they spend discussing college football after the lesson.

“We can have our own Bible study at the house,” he says. “I’ve been wanting a closer look at Leviticus.”

She laughs. “I’ll pass. But thanks.”

Nora closes down the store and heads home for the day because entrepreneurs can do that. As soon as she walks into the house, she feels it. The sense that someone else is there. The same feeling she gets when someone walks up behind her. She’s felt it before, and it has never amounted to anything. But the chance is always there. The chance that she’ll open her parents’ bedroom door and her mom will be sitting at her vanity swiping blush onto her cheeks. The chance that her dad will be watching some old football game in his recliner. The chance that the whole thing has been a dream or hallucination.

The house is empty. The rooms are empty. She knows this. Still, she finds herself in the hallway, running her fingertips along the wallpaper below the row of family photos and dragging her feet to postpone the inevitable. She pauses at her parents’ door, hand on the cold doorknob, giving herself the opportunity to snap out of it. When she opens the door, the room is empty. As empty as it’s been for a year. She notices her mom’s things on her vanity. Her brush full of dark hair with strands of gray still wound into the bristles. Makeup spilling out of her makeup bag. Two necklaces and a pair of earrings next to a monogrammed Tervis tumbler of water.

The floor creaks when she steps across the threshold, and she remembers how these stupid floors always let her dad know when she was trying to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night. The room is mostly clean, except for a solid layer of dust that she should probably take care of at some point. She remembers when her dad begged her and her mom to let him paint this room crimson, and now she realizes he was probably just doing it to make her laugh, and she did.

Her parents hadn’t gone to college, but her dad was obsessed with the University of Alabama. He thought Tuscaloosa was the greatest city on the planet. He was so excited when she got her acceptance letter. He told anyone who would listen. Her dad had done so much to make sure she was able to go there, even if he hadn’t been able to, and she had taken it for granted. She had taken everything they did for her for granted.

A tear falls down her cheek. Nora doesn’t like the way crying feels. Like she can’t control her body. Being sad is one thing. She can still work or attend social functions while sad. Crying makes a thing into a thing . Here she is, making her parents’ death a thing . Again.

She’s still sitting on the edge of her parents’ bed when Garrett calls.

“When will you be back?” she asks after the small talk.

“In an hour or so,” Garrett says. They haven’t seen each other in fifteen days, and she’s worried that the distance has made things weird between them. She’s worried that the worrying about it makes it weirder.

“Can I see you?” she asks. She knows this question reeks of desperation, but she can’t care about that right now.

“Yeah, I’d offer you dinner, but I don’t have anything at my apartment. We can go out if you want.”

“You can come to my house,” Nora says. After she blurts that out, she remembers he’s never been to her house. She had always volunteered to meet him at his apartment, afraid he would judge her for living at her parents’ house in her thirties.

“I’d like that,” he says. “Will you text me the address?”

As she sends him the information, Nora’s anxiety reminds her that Grandpa is the only other person who has stepped foot in her house in the past year. The adrenaline wakes up and takes over. She wipes down counters and lights candles. Does the house stink? What if it does, and she’s become conditioned to it? She makes her bed for the first time in months. Nora’s version of laundry usually means she washes and dries her clothes and then forms various piles around the house to avoid folding and putting them away. She tosses one pile at a time into the back of her closet for Future Nora to address.

Her bathroom could be worse. Nora had spent one of her recent lunch breaks browsing Rabbittown Pharmacy to restock her dwindling beauty supplies, and she had deposited all of these new purchases in a pile on her countertop. She slides what she can into cabinets and drawers and organizes the most normal products into some semblance of a display on the back corner of the counter.

Nora’s fears about the state of the house make her forget about something else she needs to straighten: herself. She catches a glimpse of her unbrushed hair in her bathroom mirror and freezes for a moment at the thought of greeting him after fifteen days in her dad’s Alabama sweatpants and an oversized, stained T-shirt.

She crawls into the closet to sift through the piles and grabs the first thing that feels like jeans and the first shirt she can find that smells like laundry detergent.

Strip. Airplane bath. Deodorant. Underwear without holes. Clothes. Hairbrush. Powder. Mascara.

As she makes a final sweep, she sees headlights across the front of the house. He rings the doorbell, and the butterflies in her stomach wake up from hibernation. She’s excited and nervous, and she forgets about the shape of her house and her clothes, and she can’t get to the door fast enough.

When she opens the front door, Garrett is standing there on the porch with his hands in his pockets. He must be the person magazines are referring to when they describe a day-to-night look: suit pants but no jacket with his top two shirt buttons undone. Have his eyes always been such a vivid green?

Garrett’s face looks a bit haggard at first, like his trip has been exhausting, and maybe more than just physically. Once he sees Nora, he smiles and his face brightens as if he’s finally reached the finish line of a race.

“Hi,” Nora says.

“Hello,” he says, his smile growing.

She gestures for him to enter the living room while she holds the door open.

All of the feelings she has carried for the past couple of weeks are replaced by relief and excitement, and she can’t wait any longer to touch him. She stands on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck and press her body against his. “I missed you.”

Garrett tilts his head to touch his forehead to hers, and then he kisses her so gently Nora thinks her heart might stop. She pulls him closer, as if maybe they can fill all of the space that formed between them while he was away.

He kisses her with more feeling. “I missed you, too,” he says. “I forgot to say that.”

If Nora could smile any bigger, she would. “How was your trip?”

“Too long,” he says, pulling her into a hug, as if he has been gone forever. “You smell good.”

She laughs nervously, remembering where her clothes have been. “Don’t smell me.”

“Too late.”

“Where were you today?” She pretends to smooth out the front of his shirt, but it’s just an excuse to touch him.

“Scottsboro this morning, I think. God only knows at this point.”

Slightly alarmed by his tone of voice, she examines him closely to find that his hair looks less than perfect, and there are bags under his eyes.

“Is everything okay?” she asks.

“Yes. Why?” he asks. He kisses her cheek and her jaw and her neck.

“You seem—I don’t know.” She gasps when she feels the tip of his tongue. “Not your normal self.”

“I’m just tired,” he says, raising his head to kiss her lips. “Are you going to show me around?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.” She turns and gestures like Vanna White. “Welcome to my house. This is the living room.” She leads him through to the kitchen and the dining room and back to the living room. Besides cleanliness, she hadn’t had time to think about what it might look like to him. How it might feel when he got the full picture of his thirty-year-old girlfriend living in her childhood home with everything just as her parents left it.

“Is this you?” he asks, pointing at a framed photo on the wall of a dark-haired little girl pulling a baby doll in a wagon.

“Yeah, that’s me. I used to pull that wagon around the neighborhood.”

Garrett turns his attention to the other photos in the room, examining them one by one. “Your parents?” he asks, picking up a framed photo from the edge of a side table.

“Yeah, that was maybe five years ago. It was their anniversary,” she says.

This part of the “after” is new for Nora. She has never had to talk about her parents to people who have never met them and now can’t ever meet them. She has to carry their stories on her own, and hope she gets all of the details right.

He nods. “You do look like your mom. What was her name?”

“Anita. My dad was Billy. Well, William, but that’s his dad’s name. My grandpa.”

“Is Nora a family name?”

“Eleanora,” she says. “Technically.”

“You never told me that.” He laughs.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” he says, putting the frame back where he found it. “I like your name.”

“It was my grandmother’s.”

“I told you I like it,” he says. He takes one of her hands and laces their fingers together. “Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“No,” she says, but she sort of is. She’s ready to defend her space and all the things in it.

“Good,” he says. “I’m tired. And hungry.”

“We can eat.” In her rushed preparation for his arrival, she never thought to check the fridge. Other than shredded cheese, she has no idea what is in there. She knows she has a pantry full of boxes and cans and God knows what else that she’s never cleaned out. The freezer is full of bags of vegetables from yearspast, and the deep freeze one in the laundry room is full of casseroles from when her parents passed.

As she starts toward the kitchen, she knows she should probably communicate this issue before he sees it for himself. “Listen, I should be honest.”

“What?”

“I invited you over here because I wanted to see you—”

“And now you don’t?”

“No, I do! I just didn’t think it through.” She was too busy worrying about what he would think of the potentially expired store-brand face wash on her bathroom counter. “I don’t know what food I have to offer. I swear my mom raised me better than this.”

He exhales. “You scared me.”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

He massages his temples. “I don’t know. It could have been anything.”

She pulls him into the kitchen and points to the counter where she had thought to put out two actual wineglasses next to the bottle of fourteen-dollar cabernet she’d bought at the pharmacy. She had purchased this slightly nicer bottle instead of her usual choice in hopes that Garrett would come over and drink it with her when he was back in town. “I do have wine.”

She has started peeling the foil off the top when Garrett steps up behind her and loops his arms around her waist. She leans into him and kisses his cheek. She notices that he’s still somewhat droopier than usual. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Let me see that before you hurt yourself.”

“I’m very good at opening wine bottles,” she says. Still, she slides him the bottle and the electric wine opener, because she will always let someone or something else do manual labor on her behalf, as evidenced by the automatic corkscrew.

“I know.” He smiles. “I like talking to you after you’ve opened one.”

This surprises her. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs, and she can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Your voice is different.”

“What’s wrong with my voice?”

“Nothing is wrong with it.” He pours two glasses and hands her one.

“Can you elaborate?” she asks.

He purses his lips while he’s thinking. “What is that magnet?” he asks, pointing toward the refrigerator.

“Don’t change the subject.”

He laughs. “I was trying to think of how to describe it. You’re just more…I don’t know.”

“You don’t want to tell me.”

He’s rubbing his temples again.

“Why are you doing that?” she asks.

“Doing what?”

“Rubbing your head.”

He covers his face for a moment, but she can tell he’s laughing. “I think drunk you likes me more than sober you. That’s all.” He crosses his arms, waiting for her response.

She thinks back on their late-night phone calls; she has never said anything outrageous. She didn’t even drink that much, and she knows this because she didn’t take her glass or the bottle to her bedroom except for that one night. When she wakes up next to a wine bottle, she knows she’s going to have a hangover even before she feels it. The whole time he was gone, she was sober enough to turn everything off and to remember to lock the doors and to switch to drinking water sometime before bed.

She reaches out and touches his face, and he leans into her palm. “You’re cute when you’re exasperated,” she says.

He kisses the palm of her hand. “I’m not exasperated.”

“You’re tired.”

“Yes, I’m tired.” He picks up his wineglass and holds it out to her. “And I need a drink.”

She clinks her glass against his. “To needing a drink.”

They both take a sip. “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” he says.

“Well, thanks.” She rolls her eyes. “Sorry I’m not as fancy as you.” She sets the glass on the counter and starts rummaging through the fridge.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just wouldn’t have picked it out.” To be fair, the label is a skeleton wearing a top hat while riding a unicycle. Garrett steps behind her, watching her dig through the produce drawer. “Hey, whatever you were going to eat is fine.”

All at once Nora feels stupid, and she’s sure he thinks she’s stupid, too. Like her house is stupid and her life is stupid. She feels a lump in her throat. She closes the fridge and crosses her arms. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

Garrett tilts his head, and Nora’s face heats. She wishes she could be anywhere but here.

“Do what?”

The lump in her throat grows, and she looks away, willing herself to be normal.

He puts his hands on her arms softly, as if he’s trying to calm a feral animal. “Nora, I’m sorry. The wine is fine. More than fine. Can we please talk about it?”

The apology in his voice sets her off, and she starts to cry. She tries to stop it, but she can’t. Once again, her body is in control, and she has no say in the matter.

“Please don’t cry. Look at me.”

She does, and his green eyes search hers, wanting to help, wanting to understand. That does it. Nora is full-on Bachelor -contestant-crying in the middle of her kitchen. Garrett winds his arms around her, and she sobs into his shoulder.

“Baby, please don’t cry,” he says. That’s the first time he’s ever called her that, which feels important in the moment, but she won’t remember it later. “Please talk to me.”

Finally, around her sobs, she says what she’s known all night and what she should have said when he walked in the door: “I’m sorry. It’s been a bad day.”

They stand there in front of her refrigerator, and he holds her while she cries. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. Nora is positive he’s retracing his steps, trying to figure out how he wound up dating a lunatic. He rubs her back and waits for her to calm down. Eventually she does.

She pulls away, sniffling and wiping the tears from her face. When she looks up at him, he’s waiting patiently for an explanation. “I’m sorry. I feel like a jerk. Please just go. You don’t deserve whatever this is.” She gestures at her ugly cry face.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. He runs his hands up and down her arms, unwilling to pull away completely.

“You don’t have to do this. You can really just go. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want to go,” he says firmly. “I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

Nora stares at him for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. She figures she’s ruined everything already, so she might as well be honest. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I found out today that a guy I grew up with died last night. His dad came in and bought a casket, and I guess I’ve been upset ever since. I’m sorry. I thought I was fine, or I wouldn’t have invited you over. Clearly, I was wrong.”

Garrett hugs her then, tightly, and she hugs him back, waiting for whatever happens next. He pulls away but only far enough to rest his forehead on hers for a moment. “I want to be here with you,” he says. “I want you to tell me these things.”

So, she does. She tells him about Ethan’s accident and how their families used to be close. How he had a whole life planned, and now it was gone. “I guess it was just a surprise. It made me think of my parents. And how things used to be. I don’t know. It was a long day.”

Garrett holds her in front of the refrigerator for who knows how long. She prays to God and whoever else is listening that she hasn’t ruined everything.

She whispers, “I’m sorry, Garrett,” because she knows she’ll cry again if she tries to say it any louder.

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She decides to will her composure to come back by changing the subject. “Yes, I did. Do I have mascara all over my face?”

His brows furrow. “No.”

“Can I trust your judgment?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to leave?” she asks, examining his face for some sort of clue on how fast he plans to run away.

“Do you want me to?”

“No,” she says.

“Then I’ll stay.”

She nods, trying to think of a way to change the subject. “Do you want a grilled cheese?”

He smiles, and some of the tension leaves his body. “Yes. Please.”

She shows him her tried-and-true procedure: real butter, homemade sourdough from her Uncle Ralph, a Kraft Single, and shredded cheese of a fancier variety (tonight they have Monterey Jack). After dinner, they move to the couch and start a movie on Netflix that everyone on the internet has seen except for the two of them. Garrett pulls her close to him, and it doesn’t take long for her to realize that neither of them is in the mood for the movie. On his third deep sigh, she leans up so she can see his face.

“We can watch something else,” she says.

“Watch whatever you want,” he says. He looks what Nora’s mother would call “ragged.”

She turns off the television and shifts, so they’re facing each other. “I can’t tell if you’re upset about something or if you’re just tired.”

He laces their fingers together. “I’m mostly just tired.”

“Do you want to talk about the rest of it?”

They stare at each other for a bit. Nora doesn’t mind the silence, but she can tell he has more to say, whether he’ll decide to or not.

He takes a breath. “Sometimes my job is just hard.”

“How so?”

“It’s a lot of moving parts and moving people and figuring out all of that.”

“Isn’t that what logistics is? I looked it up.”

He smiles. “Let me rephrase: sometimes I have to work with multiple parties, and it can be frustrating trying to make sure the moving parts are moved correctly.”

“And you were training someone?”

He nods. “I had to slow everything down, which wasn’t always ideal.”

His description is vague, but she can tell that’s how he wants it, so she leaves it alone. She has caused enough drama tonight.

“I also hated being in hotels for so long.” He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand.

“Why? Hotels are fun.”

“These weren’t exactly five-star.”

She crinkles her nose. “Did you have bedbugs?”

He laughs. “No.”

“Thank God. You’re as good as done once you have them.”

He rolls his eyes.

She squeezes his hand. “It’s true!”

“Have you had them before?” he asks.

“No, but I’ve read about them.”

“Of course you have.”

“Well, the tiny bottles of shampoo are nice, right?”

“I just wanted to be in my bed.”

“That’s fair.”

“I missed sleeping next to you.” He says this confidently, but she can tell by his stare that he’s waiting for her reaction.

“Were you lonely?” she asks.

He nods. “And cold.”

“I was lonely and cold, too.” She slides closer and tucks herself under his arm, and he wraps her up with both arms. “I’m glad you missed me.”

He kisses the top of her head, and maybe that’s not an erogenous zone, but she still feels it from there to the tips of her toes. She barely knows him, so she’s probably rushing it. She’s probably just trying to latch on to this warm body that has inserted itself into her solitary life. He’s here for work and has no reason to stay, and Nora doesn’t intend to leave. Maybe the depth of her feelings doesn’t make sense as far as logic is concerned, but she can’t help it. She wants him here, and she wants to take care of him, and she wants him to take care of her.

Before she can overthink it, she asks, “Do you want to go to bed?”

He nods, and she leads him to her bedroom.