Arcadia's Gift(14)

Our aunt presented us to our parents like china dolls to be inspected. Mom looked like someone had beaten her with a hammer and superglued her back together. Her navy blue suit, freshly blown out hair and make-up were perfect, but anyone could see all that was only a thin veneer barely holding the pieces of her together. She reached forward mechanically and straightened Aaron’s tie. Her eyes reflected a glassy shine.
Dad stood shifting his weight from foot to foot as if his dress shoes were too tight. He drew me in next to him with a light squeeze on my shoulder. Once Aaron and I were between them like a buffer zone, the receiving line began moving again.
Thick grief washed over me with every new person who stood before me, making it difficult to breathe. I let my body shift into autopilot. While my arms hugged and my head bobbed in mute acknowledgment to the whispered words of sympathy, I shrank into myself and tried to fight off the urge to blow chunks all over my shoes. The line was insanely long, winding its way out the door, and after an hour, Dad let Aaron and I retreat upstairs to the family lounge to relax until the service started.
Away from the crowd, I finally felt like I could breathe again. I waited on a couch, letting a mug of coffee grow cold between my palms as various family members rotated in and out. My thirteen-year-old cousin, Geoffrey, sat in the corner playing Mario on his DS until Aunt Tina hustled him out with orders to talk to our great-aunts.
Aaron and I didn’t speak. He sat across from me on another sofa with his eyes closed as if catching a cat-nap, although I could tell by the way he flinched whenever someone else entered the room, that he was wide awake.
When it was time for the memorial to start, our grandma came to fetch us. While my family is not religious, Grandma hired Bronwyn’s father to hold the inter-faith service. As we entered the small chapel, I saw with horror that our front-row seats were situated directly in front of the casket. Panic hit me hard. I wasn’t ready to see Lony. Somehow, seeing her body lying in that coffin would make her death official, and I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that. I swallowed hard and stared at my feet the whole way up the aisle. I discovered with immense relief once I sat down that my line of vision was low enough to prevent me from seeing inside the box.
Just before Pastor Tom began to speak, someone sank into the seat on the other side of Aaron. I looked down the row to see Cane Matthews. I’d forgotten all about him. My parents must have invited him to sit with the family. His face appeared to be carved out of stone, as if betrayal of the slightest emotion would cause the whole thing to crumble off his head.
The ceremony passed in a great rush, each second bringing me closer to having to say my final good-bye to my sister. While Pastor Tom talked, I fingered the vintage butterfly hair clip that I had stashed in my pocket. I’d found it a couple of years ago in a junk shop downtown. The wings were made of delicate sheets of abalone and tiny rhinestones formed the body. Lony was constantly stealing it from my jewelry box, leading to many arguments about how I should just give it to her since I rarely wore my hair up. The thing is I probably would’ve let her have it if she hadn’t been so demanding about it. Instead, I held onto it out of spite. The clip now was fastened around a badly composed poem to my sister that I’d written in third grade. A few of the words were misspelled and the overly melodramatic lines didn’t really rhyme, but Lony had kept it pinned to her bulletin board in her bedroom ever since. I planned to slip it and the hair clip into the casket before it was closed.#p#分页标题#e#
Aunt Tina gave the eulogy for the family. Grandma had asked me to do it, but I begged off. I didn’t like public speaking on a good day, and there was no way I’d be able to hold it together on this one. My aunt’s words washed over me without sinking in. My mind whirled with all of the things I wanted to say to Lony before they closed the casket on her forever. The last time I’d seen her, she and Cane had been bickering. I snuck a glance down the row at him. The muscles of his jaw twitched beneath the surface of his freshly shaven skin, and his blood-shot eyes appeared tired and dry. It was sad that her final moments had been spent fighting. When the eulogy was over, our family remained seated while ushers dismissed everyone else with instructions that the burial would be a private, family ceremony.
Once the bulk of the crowd cleared out of the chapel, our family members drifted up one at a time to kneel on the velvet cushion before the coffin to pay their last respects. I waited as long as possible. I didn’t want an audience.
When my turn came, I settled on my knees beside her and folded my hands on the waxy wooden rail. Carefully, I allowed my gaze to drift over my sister from waist to head.