Chapter 6
6
The walls of the building haven’t crumbled under the weight of familial drama by the time Ezra walks into the funeral home the next morning.
It’s more of a relief than he expected.
He follows Aaron through the staff entrance, shivering slightly in the cold morning air and then in the chill of the air-conditioning. It’s still chag, so there won’t be much happening until the holiday ends after sundown and ritual work is permitted again. The building is quiet without the constant hum of voices and shuffling feet that usually fill the halls, mourners gathering and staff moving quietly and efficiently around them, readily available yet invisible until they’re needed.
Despite the early hour, there are voices coming from the open door to the main staff office as they make their way down the hallway. “Melissa,” Aaron says by way of explanation when Ezra shoots him a questioning look. “She said she wanted to come in to get some paperwork done, and I wasn’t going to tell her no.”
“Is that you, Aaron?” Melissa, one of the other funeral directors, pokes her head into the hall. Her reading glasses are tucked on top of her head, her regular pair perched on her nose and magnifying the laugh lines around her eyes. She’s worked for the Chapel since Ezra was eight, and he’s never met anyone else with her ability to go in less than a minute from pastoral compassion to putting the fear of God into a doctor who forgot to sign a death certificate. “Oh! And Ezra!”
“Hi, Melissa.” Ezra accepts her hug, remembering to turn his head to avoid being poked in the eye by one of the pens stuck haphazardly through her hair to hold her bun in place. “How were your seders?”
“Calmer than yours, from what I hear. I can’t believe your mother would just quit on the spot like that after all these years.”
“Tell me about it,” Aaron says, remarkably smooth, before Ezra has a chance to look at him. “Fortunately, Ezra’s volunteered to step in and cover us while we figure things out.”
“Mensch that he is,” Melissa agrees, squeezing Ezra’s arm. “It’ll be good to have you back around, honey. We’ve missed you haunting the halls!”
“Ha,” Ezra manages. “Yup. Looking forward to it.”
Aaron clears his throat. “Is Jonah in?”
“Not yet,” Melissa says. “I think he was on daycare drop-off today.” Jonah, a tall, wiry man around Aaron’s age, took over the vacant funeral director position when Uncle Joe retired. He has three kids under the age of six and Ezra has never seen him looking anything other than absolutely exhausted or without a travel mug of coffee the size of his head. “Bless him,” she adds.
“Or something,” Aaron says with an exaggerated shudder. “You know he and Lori are thinking about a fourth?”
“More power to them, I suppose,” Melissa says. “I was happy to be one and done.” The phone rings behind her. “I’d better get that. Ezra, we’ll catch up later, okay? I want to hear all about everything you’re up to.”
Ezra has enough time to wave before she’s ducking back into the office. He catches the way her voice shifts into smooth professionalism as she picks up the call.
“?‘Can’t believe she quit on the spot’?” Ezra murmurs as they head down the hall, not sure if they’re quite out of earshot.
Aaron has the grace to grimace. “I had to tell her something,” he says. “But I wasn’t going to spill all the gritty details. Not without Dad saying it was okay.”
“It’s Melissa,” Ezra points out. “She can sense gossip six miles away.”
“I’m counting on the post-Passover rush to distract her,” Aaron says. There’s always an influx after a major Jewish holiday, the elderly and sick who were holding out for one last gathering or ritual finally willing to let go.
“Good luck with that.”
The door to Dad’s office is shut when they pass, the soft murmur of Dad’s voice just audible through the heavy wood, surprisingly calm. Aaron pauses by it, his fingers fidgeting at his side as if preparing to knock. Then he seems to think better of it, shaking his head and moving on down the hall.
Unlike Dad’s office, all dark wood furniture and unremarkable art prints and severe lines, Aaron’s feels organic. The soft gray walls make the green of the plants scattered across the windowsill and coffee table and shelves seem brighter, proof of life. There’s texture to the chairs and the area rug around the little coffee table in the other corner of the room, a few extra tchotchkes and photos on the desk and bookshelves.
“You’ve redecorated,” Ezra remarks, dropping onto the sofa.
“ Becca redecorated,” Aaron corrects, sitting down in one of the chairs across from him. “Three months ago, maybe? She said it was enough for me to be taking over Dad’s old job, I didn’t need to keep his office the same.”
Ezra spares him a smile. This room had been Dad’s before Zayde died, the big office next door remaining empty for almost two years after his death until his father was convinced to take it over. Ezra might be the only one who can see ghosts here, but Zayde’s presence lingers, and Dad is haunted, too. “The plants are a nice touch.”
“Also Becca,” Aaron says. “Though she keeps telling me she’s going to switch me to fake ones if I don’t stop killing them.”
Ezra raises his eyebrows at the little cluster of pots in the center of the table. “They’re succulents,” he says. “You have to, like, work to kill these things. I had one that I didn’t water for like six months because I thought it was fake, and it still didn’t die.”
“I don’t have Mom’s green thumb,” Aaron says glumly, eyeing the plants.
The mention of Mom thickens the air, summoning a weary tension that hangs between them like a fog. Aaron’s eyes dart toward the wall that adjoins Dad’s office, just briefly, and then he slumps back in his chair, pushing his glasses up so he can rub a hand over his face. It’s a gesture they share, picked up from Dad and Zayde when they were still too young to notice where it came from. Becca does it, too, though more delicately, mindful of her makeup.
“Has he said anything?” Ezra finally asks.
Aaron scoffs, shaking his head. “Come on.”
Did you ask, Ezra wants to press, but he knows the answer. Aaron and Dad get along as well as they do because they never rock the boat. Maybe it was wishful thinking to hope that this might be enough to make Aaron push against the boundaries of Dad’s well-established comfort zone, but apparently not. He lets it go. “I’m still trying to figure out what to say to Mom.”
“You could wing it.”
“Not really my style.” He can’t really remember the last time he said something important that he hadn’t run through at least twice in his head. “I’m going to try to text her tomorrow, maybe tonight if I can get my head around it, I’m just…”
“Hey, it’s not like I blame you.” Aaron gives him a crooked half smile. “She wasn’t exactly subtle about trying to get you on her side the other night.”
Ezra huffs. “Noticed that, did you?”
“I’m not that oblivious.” Aaron grimaces. “I mean, she’d already dug a pretty deep hole for herself, but trying to drag you in with her with the whole Well, we’re all gay here so clearly you should be on my side bit was shady.”
“Thanks for the solidarity.” He toys with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. “I’m not used to not knowing what to say to her. Even when she’s driving me halfway out of my mind, I still usually know how to talk to her like she’ll eventually listen to what I’m saying. But this is…”
He trails off, not really sure what he can say. Aaron gives a quiet hum in response but doesn’t offer any advice. Aaron has always been happy to play the protector and the spokesperson, but whatever gene that was supposed to bestow sage wisdom upon eldest siblings seems to have skipped over him. “What’s Becca say?” Ezra grimaces, and apprehension dawns over Aaron’s face. “You haven’t talked to her about it?”
Ezra rubs at the web between his forefinger and thumb, pinching the skin absently. “She’s taking this so hard already,” he says. “I don’t want to make things worse for her.”
“She’ll have to talk to Mom eventually,” Aaron points out.
Ezra shakes his head. “Let me mellow them out a little,” he says. Trying to get Mom and Becca to come together smoothly is like trying to force two magnets to join at the same pole. “Then they can talk.”
Aaron looks at him, thoughtful and quiet.
“Okay,” he says. “You know best.”
—
Ezra takes over Mom’s office out of practicality, since everything he’ll need to do her job is already there.
But it’s strange to be here without her. Mostly because it doesn’t… feel like her anymore. When she wasn’t playing the dutiful Funeral Director’s Wife, Mom’s energy—large and loud and sweeping—filled any room she entered. Now it seems dull and blank and almost devoid of character. It’s as tasteful as almost every other room, done in cool greens with undertones of gray, with framed abstract black-and-white art prints on the walls and a few succulents scattered across the room. When Ezra snoops through her shelves, he finds mostly books on workplace culture and employee development, as well as a smaller section that seems to focus mostly on Jewish rituals and the funeral industry as a whole.
The only things that still make the room feel at all familiar are the family photos lining the desk—snapshots from Aaron’s bar mitzvah, Ezra’s college graduation, the trip they took up to Vermont the summer after Becca finished high school. He spends a good five minutes studying them, looking from one to the next in chronological order, as if he can place the exact moment Mom checked out of her marriage by staring at her body language, before giving up and flopping into the desk chair with a sigh.
Cool air prickles against the back of his neck. He doesn’t bother turning his head. “Don’t start,” he says, hoping no one walks by the open door and catches him talking to an ostensibly empty room. “I’m not here because I want to be.”
He can picture Zayde’s frown without having to look. When the unpleasant chill doesn’t go away, he glances over anyway, just to be sure.
Zayde is frowning, but it looks more concerned than disapproving. Ezra frowns back. “What?”
Zayde purses his lips and then disappears.
Ezra stares at the empty space where he’d been standing, then drags himself to his feet to go find a cup of coffee.
Halfway through his second day, Aaron pokes his head in and asks if he has a suit. Ezra’s blank expression must be answer enough because Aaron shoves a credit card at him with instructions to go get one tailored by the end of the day. “I forgot how often Mom came to the services to help with logistics,” he says, ushering Ezra toward the exit and out into the parking lot. “We’ve got two lined up tomorrow, and not enough ushers, and you know the basics.”
“Okay, but I don’t know where—” Aaron’s already jogging back inside, phone in hand, and Ezra slumps against the side of his car. “Cool,” he says, and sends a mass text to everyone he thinks might know where to find a trans-friendly tailor on extremely short notice.
The amount he ends up charging to Aaron’s card makes him wince, but it’s worth it when he looks at himself in the mirror at the tiny tailor’s shop in Cambridge, his shoulders broader and the lines of his torso straighter than he’s ever seen them.
It’s worth it all over again when he shows up at work the next morning and catches Jonathan in the smaller of the chapels setting out discreet boxes of tissues with a Volunteer Usher badge pinned to his lapel. In response to Ezra’s hopefully subtle question, Melissa tells him that Jonathan has been doing more volunteer hours with the Chapel for the past few months—mostly chevra work, but generally making himself available for whatever is needed. Including, apparently, weekday funerals.
“I don’t think he’s working full-time yet, poor thing,” Melissa had said, sympathy in her voice. “Not that I can blame him.”
With the amount of time Jonathan spends there, maybe Ezra should be more surprised that they haven’t crossed paths sooner. But then again, he’d spent the last several years avoiding the place like the plague.
When he sees the way Jonathan’s eyebrows fly up at the sight of him, recognition and amusement sparking in his face, Ezra suddenly regrets not visiting more often. “Don’t you clean up well.”
The way he says it is light, teasing, but there’s a touch of heat to the words. Ezra feels an answering warmth creep up his neck. “Don’t tell my roommates,” he says. “They think I only own yoga pants and joggers, and I want to keep it that way. It keeps expectations low.”
Jonathan laughs. “My lips are sealed.”
Ezra’s saved from having to watch the way his dark eyes crinkle at the corners when Jonah calls him over to put out the cones in the parking lot.
If his cheeks are still flaming by the time he gets there, Jonah is polite enough to pretend not to notice.
He spends the better part of a week learning the systems that keep the Chapel running: software, filing systems, decoding the complicated way Mom organizes to-do lists. There are things that he already knows from growing up here—how to answer the phone, how to fill out the first call sheets, how much information he’s allowed to take before passing an intake off to one of the licensed funeral directors. His office is tucked out of the way of most of the foot traffic, and he goes back and forth between enjoying the quiet and desperately missing the buzz and barely organized chaos of the QCC.
Ezra never finds out the specifics of what Aaron tells everyone about what happened at their seder from hell. Dad makes himself scarce, as much a ghost as the occasional spirits Ezra catches out of the corner of his eye, appearing to talk with clients but otherwise barring himself behind a closed door, leaving Aaron in charge by default. Melissa and Jonah take Ezra’s presence in stride, and other than getting a little tired of introducing himself to the newer volunteers and burial society members, the transition goes smoothly. Whatever Aaron said, it got the point across.
But maybe he should give Aaron a little more credit. For all the contrasting ways Ezra’s used to thinking of him—the golden child groomed for the responsibility of the family business, the human disaster Ezra’s been emotionally managing since he was about four—he’s also a professional. More important, he’s a professional in a horrendously close-knit community with generations of gossip and baggage. Rumors are already spreading, given that Rabbi Isaac heads up one of the most well-known synagogues in the area, and Aaron’s smart enough not to hand out any information that might throw fuel on the fire, no matter how much he trusts the people who work at the Chapel to be discreet.
Whatever Aaron said, or didn’t say, no one asks any questions.
The walk through the Chapel at the end of each day feels miles longer than it should, like the very floor of the building is trying to keep him from leaving. He finds himself staring down at his feet so he doesn’t make eye contact with any wandering ghosts that appear almost purposefully in his path the moment he tries to leave.
It’s harder than he expects, guilt prickling over his skin with every step, and he can never manage to resist one last look back over his shoulder before he walks out the door.
But then Zayde will be there, his lined, somber face determined, standing between Ezra and the corridor. He shakes his head and nods at the exit. Pointed. Firm.
Is he protecting the ghosts from Ezra, or Ezra from the ghosts?
Ezra takes the hint, and goes.