Chapter 22
WILLIAM
The church was open, even though it was empty.
No priest or choristers, none of those women in silk blouses and heavy shoes who always looked at William like he was there to steal from the collection plate.
The structure was unadorned, both inside and out: weathered gray shingles, boxlike wooden pews, and a lone cross—just two mahogany planks nailed together—behind the pulpit.
The windows were clouded with age. The carpet was the color of red wine.
The rehearsal would not begin for an hour, but William did not know where else to go.
In his hotel room, he hadn’t slept. He’d kept thinking of Lewis, waiting for his call, and Aunt Eleanor.
He wondered if there was a smell—not the one he knew, tobacco and dried rose petals, but the real, distilled scent of her in the morgue.
In Hinduism, the body must be cremated within a day.
If they were Muslim, she would have been washed and wrapped in a sheet.
But she’s not dead, he told himself for the hundredth time.
For the duration of the weekend, he had to be the William left in the hallway, none the wiser. To pretend nothing was amiss.
He sat down in one of the back pews, idly picking up a Bible and returning it to its shelf.
In the row ahead of him, a small circle was gashed into the wood with two horizontal Ls at its center.
A symbol he did not recognize. It looked freshly carved, the deeper cuts revealing the pew’s pale marrow.
A door opened behind him, and William was startled to find his mother in the entryway, wearing her trousers and white button-up, the sleeves rolled to her elbows.
“William,” she said, equally surprised to find him. “What are you doing here?”
William stood up from the pew, a warmth flaring at his cheeks, as if his mother had found him in a state of undress. He’d never spoken to her about the services he’d been attending, knowing that she wouldn’t understand. That she would, if anything, be troubled by it.
“I went for a walk and sort of ended up here,” he said.
“Me too. There’s not much to do on this island if you don’t want to sail or swim.”
They looked away from each other, as if unsure what to say next. He and his mother shared none of the fiery animosity that burned between her and Shay, and although most would say this was a good thing, sometimes it just meant they were silent.
“I didn’t really see you at the party last night,” she said, running her hand along one of the windowsills.
“I was with Oscar and Scott and Vivian.” He hoped he could avoid her knowing about Mr. Pruitt.
“The cousin gang. Scott seems better.”
“I think so. He’s reading poetry.”
“Really?” she said. “Who would have thought.”
“Scott’s really smart.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
William changed the subject, not wanting to argue. “Have you seen Shay today?”
“No. You didn’t see her last night? I told her she had to try to talk to everyone.” His mother walked toward him. The back of his thighs strained against the pew he was leaning against, some part of him instinctively pulling away from her.
“I did, but we didn’t really get to talk like I wanted to,” he said.
“Is there something you need to talk to her about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something you’re not telling me?” His mother looked at him very intently.
“Such as . . .”
“Something about Eleanor?”
William’s mouth opened and closed, and he felt the words take shape in his throat: She’s dead. She’s dead. They swelled, threatening to stop his breath.
“I’m assuming Eleanor told you everything,” his mother continued.
She looked resigned, like she had no choice but to talk.
“I know she probably said it was ridiculous that I felt I had to help pay for the wedding, but it’s the bride’s family who, well, you know.
It’s tradition. And just because we don’t own an island doesn’t mean we’re not capable.
And her family, your father’s family, helped to rebuild downtown Chicago. They dined with Potter Palmer.”
William felt both relief and disappointment in equal measure, a part of him wanting his mother to pull the confession from him like a poison, to open his mouth with her fingers and force him to retch the words out. “Aunt Eleanor was going to help pay for the wedding?”
“Didn’t she tell you? Well, she already paid the deposit, but she had to bring the check for the rest for the hotel—their staff have arranged everything. And I’ve tried phoning her, but I think she must be angry at me. You know how she gets. It’s not the first time she’s avoided my calls.”
“I had no idea.” But of course his mother would have asked this of Aunt Eleanor.
To try and keep up appearances. He felt the stirrings of anger, that instead of talking about how Aunt Eleanor would not be there for one of the most important days of Shay’s life, they were talking about a missing check.
It was predictable, that this was what would matter most to his mother. “Does Shay know?”
She sighed. “No. Well, unless Mrs. Pruitt or Andrew said something. We’ve barely talked about the wedding. She doesn’t seem to care whether—but this isn’t anything for you to worry about either. I’m sorting it out.”
“How?”
“How . . . ?”
“How will you sort it out?”
“That’s my business. These are my affairs.”
William’s anger grew. “That’s not really fair—it’s my family too. Shay’s my sister.”
“Well, what do you think I should do then? I’m all ears.”
“I mean, the Pruitts have the money—”
“Have you met the Pruitts? No, I’m not asking them for a thing.”
She looked around the church, at its pitched ceiling and the flags wrapped around themselves beside the lectern, making it clear that she was done with this particular conversation.
It reminded William of how, if he and Shay were being too rowdy in the backseat of their station wagon, she would turn up the volume dial until he couldn’t hear himself speak.
“I haven’t been in a church in, what, four years?” she said. “Since your father died.”
“I wondered if maybe you’d been without me.” He could hear the sulkiness in his own voice and hated how it made him sound like a child. “I miss going at Christmas.”
“You do? When you were younger, you both hated it.”
“I don’t know if I hated it.” He rubbed the pew’s edge with his thumb, remembering a recent visit to St. James, an Episcopalian church desperate to attract young people.
Hand-knotted tapestries hung in the apse, and the priest punctuated his sermon with slang William had not heard any person his age actually use, rhapsodizing about vibes and grooves.
Members of the youth group had cornered him afterward with a fervor bordering on rabidity.
He wondered if this was how the people of Synanon first came to Shay.
If, in some way, both she and William were searching for the same thing. “I just didn’t understand it.”
“Well, your father hated it. He always said churches made his skin itch.”
“Why did you have his funeral at a church, then?”
His mother gazed out the window. She seemed unable to look at anyone directly during the rare moments when she spoke about William’s father, almost like she was looking for him, as if she thought he would appear and answer the question for her.
“I—well, if I didn’t, it felt like I would be admitting to something. I didn’t want to make it look like we had no choice.”
William nodded, remembering the closed casket, and how he’d been so frightened that somehow it would float open, like a door unclicking from its lock in the summer breeze.
After the funeral, his father’s battered loafers were left by the back door.
A can of his Mennen shaving cream remained in the shower, which his mother eventually explained she had left there for months because she thought William could use it, as if he could just pick it up like it held no weight.
Aunt Eleanor was the one who had finally thrown it out, who had steadily swept the house of his detritus, muttering that this was not how you remembered the dead.
He thought of Shay at her engagement party, yelling at William on the balcony. William yelling at her.
“You know, in Madagascar, every five years they open up coffins and wrap the dead bodies in fresh cloth. They spray them with perfume and dance around with them,” William said.
His mother turned to him, a dry laugh bubbling up from her chest. “Why on earth do they do that?”
The front door slammed open. A priest in a collar and short sleeves entered the room, dragging a vacuum cleaner behind him, saving William from having to answer.