Chapter 15 - Stay Until the Screen Sleeps
The doors were already open when I got to them. That was the first difference I noticed. No hands held them shut, no shoulder blocked the gap. Warm air from the main room moved out into the hallway and touched my face, and I could hear chairs settling and low voices folding down into quiet.
The funeral director stood to one side with his hands clasped in front of his jacket. He nodded once when he saw me. It was not encouragement. It was confirmation that the room was ready.
I stepped in alone.
The carpet softened my steps. Guests turned the way people do at funerals, a quick look and then away, careful not to stare. I kept my eyes on the rows ahead. My dress clung damp at the back. I breathed in through my nose and let it out slow so my shoulders would stay level.
The two security men were posted by the side doors. Their hands were at their sides now. One of them glanced at me as I passed. He did not move forward. The other kept his gaze fixed on the back wall. I felt the absence of their grip more than I had felt the grip itself. My arms were light and strange without it.
She was in the front row. I had expected her to look at me right away, but she didn't. Her hair was still pulled back, her earrings caught the low light when she turned slightly to speak to the woman next to her. Her hands rested folded on her lap. She looked tired in a way the dim light could not hide.
There was an empty chair at the end of the second row with a folded program on the cushion. My name was written on the small card tucked into it in plain black ink. My first name and my last name. His last name.
I had practiced not rushing. I walked to it and picked up the program and sat down by myself. The chair creaked once under me. I set my purse at my feet and laid the program flat on my knees and smoothed the corner with my thumb until it lay still.
A man two seats down cleared his throat and looked forward. Behind me someone whispered and then stopped.
The funeral director walked to the front and stood beside the memorial screen. The screen was paused on my father's face, frozen in blue light. He did not introduce anything new. He said we would take a few minutes to finish the tribute and sit together afterward. His voice stayed low and even.
She did not stand. She did not lift her hand. She kept her eyes on the screen, her mouth pressed in a thin line, and left her hands where they were. I watched that more than I watched anything else, because I knew what it cost her not to act.
The tribute started again from where it had stopped. Photographs moved slow across the screen. Him younger, standing outside a brick building with his hands in his pockets. Him at a table with papers spread out. Him looking off to the side, not smiling much. Quiet piano played underneath, simple enough that I could hear my own breathing over it.
I did not cry at first. I just watched him move through those years I had not been allowed into. My chest ached in a dull way, and I let it ache without trying to push it down. When the tears came, they came quiet. I wiped the left side of my face with my fingers and kept my eyes up.
At one point she turned her head a fraction. Not toward me exactly, toward the aisle between us. Our eyes met for half a second. There was no softness in it. There was something else, something like acknowledgment that she was done fighting me in this room. She looked away first and back at the screen.
The last photo held a beat longer than the others. Then the image faded. The blue tint thinned out, and the screen went dark. You could see the black border standing around it and a faint reflection of the room lights on the glass. No one stood up right away.
The funeral director thanked everyone for coming. Chairs shifted. People stood in small groups and spoke in low voices. Someone near the back started crying softly.
I stayed seated.
I had thought about this moment the night before in my apartment, sitting at the kitchen counter with the program from the first service and the lawyer's card beside it. I had told myself I would not measure staying by what anyone else did. I would stay until I was finished, and then I would go because I chose to.
May you like
So I sat while the first row emptied. She stood with help from the woman beside her and walked slowly toward the side door without looking back. The security men opened the side doors for the guests and then stepped back against the wall. No one came toward me. No one told me the time was up.
When the room was mostly quiet, I stood. My legs felt stiff. I looked at the dark screen one more time and nodded, though there was no one left to see it. I picked up my purse and walked out down the center aisle on my own, past the empty chairs, into the hallway where the light was brighter and the air moved easier.
