Chapter 7

Even though I’d been to the Mancini Funeral Home already, coming here today is worse than walking into it for the first time. I’m burning up inside, sweating through Ray’s Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, even as my fingers are ice cold. My belly churns so much, I regret not putting on makeup this morning, in case my skin is green with nausea. And my heart…

I place a hand over my chest. My heart hammers an unhealthy rhythm against my palm.

Vince and Mr. Mancini are in the foyer waiting for us—Aunt Joanie, my grandparents, Mom, Dad, and me. Vince touches my elbow, his face solemn and despondent, and I almost, almost lose it, but I don’t. I can’t. I keep it together for the day ahead, for my brother, for my parents.

They take our coats and offer us water or coffee, which none of us accepts, then escort us into a room to the right. Vince had previously told me it was their biggest room, and they expect to have a large crowd today. From the number of people who’ve left me messages, I expect the same.

What I don’t expect is the casket. Intellectually, I knew it would be there. Emotionally, I’m not ready. Seeing it—him—takes my breath away. I steady myself with a hand on the chair next to me as I try to breathe, but it’s impossible with the way my chest is caving in. I gulp down air like I’ve run a race. These past couple of days, all of the announcements, sympathy notes, decisions about wood and felt, it’s been one long marathon culminating in this, and it’s worse than I thought. So much worse, and I’m not prepared.

Those tears I thought wouldn’t come suddenly rack my body. I wipe at my cheek, but it’s useless.

I’m having the opposite of an out-of-body experience; I’m trapped here. I can’t escape the taut skin stretched over my ribs that can barely contain my heart. Everything hurts. I want out of this situation, and I panic. Maybe I’m having a heart attack now, too.

I inhale through my nose, exhale out of my mouth over and over. I try to relieve the weight pushing me into the ground and focus on my surroundings. The walls are painted a light peach, a happy, vibrant color. The playlist I’d made is already on, and “Born to Run” filters in through hidden speakers. The memory boards are all up at different places around the room, among the rows and rows of chairs. And there, opposite me, is the dark mahogany coffin, the top lifted, displaying the lifeless body of my brother.

I go right to him.

I hear tortured whimpers behind me, and I know what my family is experiencing, but I can’t take my eyes off my brother to check on them, because in front of me is Raymond John St. George. With his wavy hair and uncharacteristically straight lips, he has his hands folded over his gray-and-blue Panthers baseball coaching shirt. I touch his fingers; they’re cool and hard. I touch his chest; it’s cool and hard. His ears, cheeks, and arms are the same, cool and hard.

This isn’t Ray, rather some weird, sewed-up, wax version, but it’s the only version that remains. Wherever he is now, I hope he can hear me.

“Hey, bro,” I say, my voice barely audible even to myself. “What’d you do this for?”

He doesn’t answer.

“You’re leaving me a real shitshow, ya know,” I whisper and lean closer to him. “Mom’s gone off the deep end, and I haven’t seen Dad in so long, I don’t remember what he looks like.”

He doesn’t laugh at my joke.

“I’m wearing your Bruce concert T-shirt,” I tell him, tugging on it and then my black skirt. Suddenly my clothes are itchy against my skin.

“This really sucks, you know. Really, really sucks.” I fix the collar of his shirt as my whole face begins to hurt from the tension running through my features. “I don’t know how to handle all of this. If you’re trying to play a trick on me, I give up. You win.”

All the times he fooled me into doing something he wanted always ended with a charming smile. It was all in good fun. But this time, he’s not smiling. There is no way out of this, no just kidding or playful high five. This is the end. And I’m scared.

Without my big brother, I’m afraid to face what comes next. Whether it’s the next ten hours or ten years, I can’t lean on him anymore. Without him, I’m by myself. I don’t have a brother anymore. I’m an only child. I don’t like this. I don’t want it.

I stand by his side alone for a while until Aunt Joanie steps next to me.

“Handsome, even now.”

When I nod at her words, she pushes my hair away from my eyes and kisses my cheek. She wraps her arm around me as we silently stare at Ray lying in front of us until she squeezes my arm. “Come on, let’s sit down.”

I let her guide me to the front row of chairs on the side, a few feet away from the casket. Mom is zoned out again, probably from another pill. Dad is antsy, walking in loops around the room, inspecting everything in it, passing the casket with a hovering hand, as if afraid to touch it.

Shayna and the girls come in, and she stands in front of my brother, crying. I wonder if, after everything that has happened between her and Ray, she still loves him. She certainly gives the impression of a widow in mourning, and I’m not sure how to comfort her or if I’m even supposed to. Normally, I’d whisper something to my brother about how she’s always late—as if I wasn’t—then he’d elbow me and roll his eyes. I imagine if Ray were alive, he’d tell me to hug her, so I do. He’d tell me to act like I mean it, so I do.

The girls, in matching purple dresses, hold hands. I hug them too, and they show me the cards they made for their daddy. Their scribbles kill me because I know how Ray held on to every single one of their stupid drawings. He’d crow about the beautiful bunnies and magnificent family scenes, but I don’t have it in me to do the same. I don’t know how to do it anyway. I take the cards to put them under my brother’s hands, his stiff fingers difficult to move over the colorful markings, then hold each girl up so she can see him. Lucy pats his cheek, and I try to choke down the lump lodged in my throat, but it’s impossible when Lara kisses his forehead. They’re so in love with their dad, oblivious to what any of this means.

Shayna thanks me, and we hug once more before she puts on sunglasses and sits at the end of the row, on the other side of my parents. The girls follow her, pulling out Moana and Ariel dolls from their bag.

And then it begins.

In a single-file line, people filter into the room. One after another, they all come. It seems like all of New Jersey is here. People I recognize, family and old friends, and people I don’t know, but who spend time introducing themselves to me, explaining how they know Ray and how much they love him.

Ray’s girlfriend shows up. I only met her once, but I know her name is Nell. She’s wearing a black blazer over a Bruce Springsteen shirt, with her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and her pale skin is blotchy and red.

For a minute, I fear this funeral will transform into a soap opera, but Shayna has her head down, and Nell scurries through the line. She places something in the casket before taking a seat in the back, far away from us.

RJ’s baseball team shows up, all the players in their uniforms, and my eyes are so blurry with tears, they’re one big blob of gray.

Dad shakes their hands. Mom can’t look at them. I hug and thank each one for coming.

His students and coworkers arrive. I’m told the school arranged buses to bring them over. I accept all of the cards and art projects scrawled with notes written to Mr. George.

By the time I look at the clock, almost three hours have passed, and the funeral hasn’t even started yet. We wait until every last person has come inside the room, and then Mr. Mancini tells us we will begin the service.

It’s standing room only.

A priest from my grandmother’s church is up first, reading and talking about some passage from the bible. Nana’s at the end of our row, burning through her second box of tissues, while Pop is stoic next to her. She demanded the service have some religious elements, and who was I to argue with a woman who, in her words, is “close to meeting God.” With the way she’s wailing, you’d think she was going to throw herself into traffic to follow Ray into the ground. She’s so loud, I’m sure Jesus himself would come down from the cross to tell her to cool it.

Aunt Joanie reads a poem, and then it’s my turn to speak.

I lick my lips and crumple a tissue in my hand so it’s practically unusable as I stand behind the podium. I clear my throat, look out over the packed room, then clear it again. I sniffle, and it resonates through the microphone. I apologize.

I’ve written and rewritten this eulogy so many times over the last week that my thoughts are mostly a jumbled stream of consciousness typed on paper, and I tell everyone so. They laugh, and I wipe the sweat dotting my upper lip.

Using my index finger as a guide so I don’t lose my place through my hazy vision, I start reading. First, I thank everyone for coming. I thank them for the cards, baskets, and flowers, but make a plea for no more casseroles. “We’re out of room in the freezer,” I say. “But if your heart tells you to send chocolate, we have plenty of room for that.”

The room rumbles with low chuckles again, and I take a breath before I go on. “To say this has all been a nightmare would be woefully inaccurate. This is much worse, but I haven’t yet found the word for the horror movie our lives have become. The death of my brother has left all of us, me, my parents, Shayna, and the twins, in what seems like permanent darkness. With Ray gone, he’s taken all of our sunlight with him.”

I pause to wipe the tissue under my eye, determined to get through this for my brother. This eulogy is the last gift I can give him, so I will finish it as best I can. “I’ve never felt pain like this before. It’s razor-sharp and cuts like it may never go away because just when it recedes, it comes back, stabbing in a whole new place. I’m in pain, like everyone here is in one way or another. Everyone but Ray. I’m told when he died, there was no pain. He left us in an instant, like he closed his eyes and went to sleep, and that, at least, is something we can be happy about. Or as happy as we can be.”

Someone lets out a weepy hiccup, and I think it’s my mom.

I tell everyone how much Ray loved teaching and coaching. I tell them how he enjoyed being a dad. How his favorite thing was drinking imaginary tea from plastic pink teacups and dressing as Cinderella when the girls wanted to play princesses. I tell them how fun he was to grow up with and how awful, like the time he locked me in a steamer trunk, convincing me he could perform a magic trick and make me disappear. Everyone laughs.

I read off some of his favorite movies and songs. I tell them about how he sang all the time and never forgot to send me a sympathy card on the anniversary of the death of the hermit crab he’d given me when I moved to New York City. “I can’t even keep plants alive, so I don’t know why he thought I would keep a crab alive. But it’s probably why he got it for me, because he knew I wouldn’t, and he’d be able to taunt me about it in perpetuity. I guess now he and Captain Hook may be hanging out together as we speak, so the joke’s on him.”

I raise my head, met with a sea of sad smiles and red eyes.

I blink, clearing my own eyes, and go on without the paper. “The past couple of days, I’ve learned a lot about the heart. I’ve learned it’s the strongest muscle in the body. And that it can break into a million pieces, yet the body will still go on. I’ve learned one second, the heart can work perfectly normally, and the next, it stops. I was told my brother’s heart was enlarged, and you could argue it was literally and figuratively enlarged because he had so much love to give. Although, I’m not so philosophical about it. I’m mad. I’m really fu?—”

I stop, realizing I can’t say that word here. Not now. I swallow it down and continue.

“I’m really, really mad. Because while Ray’s big heart killed him, we’re the ones left with a Ray-sized hole in our stupid, normal-sized hearts.”

I glance over to the side where Vince is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, but I catch him wipe a tear away from his cheek. He nods in encouragement, and I look back to the crowd in front of me, offering them whatever kind of smile I can muster. “Thanks again for coming today. On behalf of my family and brother, we appreciate and love you all.”

I take my seat quickly, sinking into the stiff chair as disbelief settles over me. I just gave the eulogy, the last words, about my big brother. He’s gone.

He’s really gone.

Mr. Mancini stands and gives instructions to exit. Vince opens the doors and directs everyone to where they should go to line up their cars. Mr. Mancini escorts me and my family out of the room, but I can’t take my eyes off the casket, and I stop walking as panic seizes me.

“Is it weird I don’t want to leave?” I ask him.

Mr. Mancini shakes his head. “Why don’t you stay here? Take your time. Go to the car whenever you’re ready.”

I step to the side, allowing the crowd to file out of the door next to me. Most of them stop to hug me or tell me what a wonderful job I did. Uncle David informs me he didn’t know I could speak so well. I shrug in response, not wanting to tell him I always spoke well; it’s only no one knew because my brother hogged up all the air in the room, leaving none for me. I didn’t mind, though. I was just as transfixed by him as everyone else was.

Once the room is empty, save for the pallbearers—some cousins and friends, including Vince—I walk over to my brother one more time. I trace his eyebrows, touch his shoulder, and knock my fist to his fingers. “See you ’round, Ray.”

Vince makes me aware he’s behind me by offering a soft, “You’re okay, Cass.” When I acknowledge him with a raised shoulder and quivering lip, he slides his hand along my shoulder blades and curls his fingers around my neck, stroking his thumb along the top of my spine. “You did everything you could, and you did it well. There’s nothing left except this last part, but it’ll be the hardest.”

Then, with his free hand, he lifts my left, twining our fingers together, and brings them to the lid of the casket. I feel the heat of Vince’s chest against my back, his mouth close to my ear, his breath slow and steady, a reminder for me to breathe too. Together, we close the casket, forever covering Raymond, and I immediately turn into Vince, crying into the lapel of his suit jacket. One of his hands tangles in my hair, cupping my head, while the other smooths up and down my back. He doesn’t say anything, simply holds me and lets me cry, while I try to remember what my brother looked like alive. His big smile, his goofy walk with big arm swings, his habit of biting his nails raw, I try to burn it all in my brain. Instead of the casket.

Vince eventually hands me a handkerchief, and it actually draws a soggy smile out of me. “What is this? Nineteen fifty?”

He shrugs, wiping my cheeks and under my nose when I don’t move to do it. “It’s all part of the vibe.”

I breathe out a waterlogged laugh and press my forehead to his shoulder. “It works for you.”

“Come on,” he says, slipping his hand to the back of my neck again. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

My parents, Aunt Joanie, Nana, and Pop are already seated inside the funeral car when Vince opens the door for me, and after he tips his chin to me, silently directing me inside, I hesitantly sit down. A few minutes later, we’re off on a slow-moving ride toward the cemetery. Out of the back windshield, the line of cars with blinking lights goes on forever, a depressing parade, creating traffic jams at every intersection.

At the cemetery, we make our way out to the spot below a slight slope, where a hole in the ground is waiting. Mr. Mancini tells us to have a seat, but I can’t. Not with my eyes trained on the two rows of baseball players lined up on either side of my brother’s casket as it is carried toward us.

Vince is right. This really is the fucking hardest part.

I can’t.

It’s too hard.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t.

Someone hands me a long-stemmed rose to place on the casket.

How stupid. Ray doesn’t care about flowers.

Nana wails next to me.

Mom’s hands are wrapped around the sides of the folding chair, knuckles white.

Dad’s head is bent, tears spilling down his face.

The crowd is gathered in a claustrophobic circle around us. I need to get away, and I push through them before it’s over, not able to stay there one more second. My limbs ache and throat burns as I run down a path to where a statue of an angel stands with huge wings and open arms.

I guess it’s supposed to be comforting, a waiting angel.

An angel of death.

I scream.

I scream so loud I hope those angels in heaven hear me.

I tear the stupid fucking rose up into pieces until the petals litter the ground around my feet.

And I scream again.

Someone—I don’t know who, but I know it’s not Vince, and I fleetingly and bizarrely wish it was—puts their hands on my shoulders, tugging me to a standing position. I cover my eyes, sobbing into my hands, not caring to pay attention to where I’m going. None of it matters.

I’m guided into the car, but I don’t want to face my family. Hunching over, I stay hidden, pulling my coat collar up around my neck. I want to disappear.

But I can’t, at least not yet.

We arrive at the Italian restaurant I’d booked for the reception to be held, and Mr. Mancini helps me out of the car. It seems like everyone who was at the funeral shows up. The place is packed. People apparently love free chicken parm and ziti.

I’m not hungry but get a small plate of food to push around as different bodies rotate like a merry-go-round next to me. Some offer stories about Ray, some slide me checks for Lara and Lucy to help with their needs, and yet others still act like dicks, especially the aptly named Uncle Dick.

He brushes his finger over his upper lip, a habit I’ve come to know over the years, and taps the table next to my elbow. “Good thing it’s been a mild winter so we can bury him today and not wait for the ground to thaw, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, dropping my napkin on my plate. “Thank god for global warming.”

I stand up, shoving by him and others motioning for me. I’ve given everyone else everything I have this week—my heart, my mind, my attention. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want a bottle of wine, solely for me.

I shout it out loud when I get outside. “I just need some wine!”

“All right?”

I jump a little, startled by Vince lounging on a bench. “What’re you doing here?”

“Too hot,” he says, tipping his head to the restaurant. “Want to sit?”

“No.” Didn’t he hear me? “I don’t want to sit. I want to get wine. They tried to make me pay in there. I mean, can you believe that? My brother was put into the ground—” I wiggle my arms out. I still can’t believe it. “—and then we come here because I put this whole luncheon together, which they are profiting well off of, by the way, and they want me to pay for a glass of wine.”

Vince shakes his head with an amused smile.

“I’m serious,” I say. “Today, of all days. I can’t even get a goddamn glass of free wine.”

He stands and steps off the sidewalk, gesturing for me to follow him.

“Where are you going?”

He momentarily stops. “To get you wine. You coming?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Vince’s car is not a hearse or a big boat, but a rather bland sedan. I drop into the passenger seat, and on the way, we listen to a Golden Oldies channel on the radio, weirdly fitting for Vince with his dark suit coat and sideswept hair, save for the cowlick. The soft crooning is blessedly, pleasantly mind-numbing.

He drives me to the liquor store and tells me to pick out whatever I want. When I point to the Dom Perignon in the special gold package, he laughs and offers wine in a box instead. I settle for a cheap bottle of Zinfandel with a twist-off cap, and he doesn’t say anything when I immediately open it after we get back in the car.

As Elvis Presley sings one of his ballads, Vince drives to a park in the next town over with a manmade lake and walkways that would be decorated with blooming trees if it weren’t still winter. He tells me to stay put for a minute then gets out of the car to search for something in his trunk. A few moments later, he opens my door and plops a beanie on my head. Then he takes my hand in his and guides me to a bench by the water, where we sit close to each other, sharing body heat. He doesn’t say anything, merely sits next to me while I sip straight from the bottle of wine and watch as the sun sets on the saddest day of my life.