Off The Grid (Kindred Series-3)

Off The Grid - 5

saying good-bye

            The funeral is huge.  It’s also in a church, which I’ve never set foot in before.  Before the service I walk to the front of the building with its high arches and colorful paintings and stare.  I stare at the angels there.  Their white wings and their perfect faces, their half lidded eyes stare back at me with impassive eyes.  I don’t see myself reflected in them; I did see myself reflected in MJ when she’d been alive.  Human.  Special, because face it, Mary Jane Lazar had been special.  A nurse, a caretaker and the mother to someone who hadn’t even been her child, so I stare upward, hands deep in the pair of tailored black pants, my chestnut hair braided the way that MJ had always liked it, trying to figure out why, and if, I came from those beings painted in the church.

            One of Fritz’s brothers, Frank, comes over and leads me back to where Fritz is standing, talking to the priest.  He’s talking about how he’d known MJ from childhood.  Someone else comes along and Fritz swings an arm around me, and we walk down the empty aisle that is lined with family, friends, co-workers, and other assorted loved ones. 

            I listen intently to the service, never having been to one before.  Had my mother, my birth mother’s funeral been this way?  No, she’d died alone with a child whom she had never known.  We then go across the street to the old elementary school, where a feast has been prepared by women of the church.  I think of the enormous amount of food that is already at our house and envision myself eating and eating for days, with no end in sight.  I can handle that. 

            Once there, people who knew MJ well talk to me, and talk to me, and I smile and nod.  Saying nothing. 

            Hell, everyone knew MJ.  Everyone asks if Fritz will stay now that she’s gone, he’s not from around here they say when no one thinks I’m listening.  I’m not either, I think – I’m not from here, why should I stay?

            My otherness, my oneness tugs at me, sets me aside and apart.  I walk around the space of the funeral home detached and watchful.  Fritz navigates with ease, nodding, hugging, crying but I sense that he’s worried.  More than likely about what people will think.  We are alive.  Not a scratch on us.  The blood on our clothes easily explained away that we had tried to save MJ.  A miracle, a few of them say as I ease by.  

            Sure.  I guess so.  If I’d had to choose between Fritz and MJ, who would I have chosen? 

Fritz? 

MJ? 

The question rapes me, plunging me into a darkness that I can’t seem to pull from.  Sitting at the table with Fritz as we eat the food that feels like every woman over 40 in the community made.  I pick at my food.  Tossing it around the plate, smiling when I should, I don’t want to eat here.

            “You okay?” asks Fritz.  He reaches over and tucks a strand of wayward hair behind my ear, the back of his fingers brush my cheek.  I look over at him, fake streaks of grey in his hair. 

            I shake my head.

            I’ve stopped talking again.  I can’t form the words, the pain in my chest and soul have swallowed my ability to speak.  I struggle to say something and Fritz jus says, “Shhhh.”

            I wonder, silently, how long it will take for me to find my voice again.

            Fritz tells me I don’t have to go back to school until I’m ready.  I spend my days working on the car.  The car is a 1968 Ford Mustang.  It had been Fritz’s when he’d been in high school, and he’d blown the engine, so it had sat in a storage garage until now.  Now, it’s mine.  The engine is now fully rebuilt and purrs the way an engine should.  The rebuilt transmission and new clutch have also been installed. I am now working on the body.  It wasn’t in bad shape and Fritz had sprung for back panels that were in better shape.  I’m diligently finishing putting on the back bumper when I hear something, no, someone coming down the driveway.