Chapter 41 - The Family Section

For several days after his mother died, Focus Man spoke about things that could be arranged.

There were calls to make, a trip to Southern California, clothes to take and people who needed to know where to be. Jill had the details, or knew whom to ask. When she told him the funeral would be at Forest Lawn, he said yes. He had known that was where their mother would be buried, but until then the knowledge had belonged to some distant time when knowing it would become necessary.

Her place was beside her first husband, near his parents, in the family section. The arrangement had been made long before she moved north.

After her second husband died, she had come to Northern California to be closer to Jill and Focus Man. There had been practical reasons for the move, and she had spoken of them practically: the distance, the house, the pleasure of seeing the family more often. She had brought furniture, photographs, dishes, and boxes whose contents became familiar again only when she opened them. For a while, whenever someone asked where she kept something, she would answer as though she were still in the old house.

Now they were taking her south.

Claire traveled with him. He was glad of her company and grateful that she didn't expect him to explain how he felt. On the journey, they talked about ordinary things when there was something to say. At other times, she read or looked out the window, leaving him room to sit without conversation.

He thought he was doing reasonably well. He was tired, and certain details could catch him unexpectedly, but there was enough happening to keep his attention occupied. He could ask about arrival times. He could make sure they had an address. He could answer when someone asked whether he was all right.

The family began gathering before the funeral. Brothers and sisters arrived from different places, carrying bags and news of their journeys. Some he had seen recently; others he hadn't seen for longer than he wanted to calculate. All his mother’s children had come, those she had given birth to and those who had entered her life through marriage. In the days ahead of the service, each had found a way to get there.

There were embraces that lasted longer than usual. Someone asked about someone else’s children. A story began with the words, “Do you remember,” and brought a laugh from several people at once. Then a silence would open where his mother might once have supplied the part they had forgotten.

Jill moved among them, answering questions. Dave stayed close enough to help without following her from room to room. Focus Man watched him take a bag from an arriving relative and carry it away. Later he saw Jill standing alone beside a table, looking down at a piece of paper. By the time he reached her, someone else had asked her something, and she was answering.

He knew they were tired. He had known it before they left home. Here, with all the family around them, he found it difficult to work out how to relieve them of anything that hadn't already been done.

His mother’s sister came with her family. When she embraced him, there was something familiar in the way she put a hand against his cheek before letting him go. He had prepared himself to see relatives. He hadn't prepared for that small resemblance.

Longtime friends came too. Some had known his mother when her children were young, when the household was full and a meal required quantities of food that still seemed improbable to him. They remembered things he had never heard about, evenings before he was born, outings he had been too young to remember, kindnesses she had not thought to report.

One woman took both his hands and told him how much his mother had meant to her. He thanked her. It was all he could manage, though she seemed to understand more than he had said.

On the morning of the funeral, he dressed carefully. He checked his pockets for his keys and the folded directions he no longer needed. Claire straightened his collar, then rested her hands briefly on his shoulders.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

At Forest Lawn, he recognized the family’s names before he had taken in much else. His mother’s first husband was there, and the parents beside whom he had been buried. He stood looking at the places they had occupied for years and the place that had waited for her.

Around him, the family gathered into smaller groups and came together again. People lowered their voices as they approached. He heard someone greet Jill, then another person ask where they should stand. Dave guided an older relative to a chair. Claire remained beside him.

There was comfort in seeing everyone, but it was a difficult comfort to receive. He had wanted them all there. Now their presence made the occasion unmistakable.

He looked across the gathering and saw the children his mother had raised. They were grown, some with grown children of their own, but he could still recognize the old household in them: a familiar way of standing, the inclination of a head, the expression someone wore while trying to hear. He remembered voices coming from different rooms, a door closing too hard, his mother asking who had finished something without putting it on the grocery list.

The service began while he was still looking at them.

He listened at first with the concentration he brought to any occasion when it mattered that he understand. There were words about her life, the family she had made, the people who loved her. He could follow them. He could agree with them. Then he heard her spoken of as someone whose life was complete, and his attention faltered.

His face tightened. He swallowed and looked down, expecting the moment to pass.

It didn't.

He tried to draw a quiet breath, but it caught in his chest. Tears fell before he could reach his handkerchief. He pressed it against his face, aware of the people beside him and unable to stop.

For a few moments, he was embarrassed by how openly he was crying. He had imagined grief as something he would carry through the service with enough composure to speak to everyone afterward. Instead his shoulders moved, and he couldn't trust himself to take a full breath. Claire put her hand around his arm.

He kept his eyes lowered. There was no particular memory he could identify as the cause. His mother at the stove, his mother answering the telephone, his mother asking about work—all of them seemed present at once, along with the woman in Jill’s spare room who had been pleased when he came through the door.

He had gone when Jill called. He was grateful for that. He had held his mother’s hand and sat beside her. But there had been so many other days, and now he couldn't keep those apart from the ones he had managed to give her.

Someone near him moved, and he glanced up. Jill was looking toward the front. Dave stood beside her. Focus Man saw her face only briefly before his eyes filled again.

He couldn't have spoken to her then. He would not have known where to begin.

The service continued. He heard some of it and lost some of it. When everyone stood, he stood with them. He wiped his face, put the handkerchief away, and took it out again.

Afterward, people approached him without making much of his tears. A brother put an arm around him. His aunt held him close. One of his mother’s friends began telling him something, stopped to find her own handkerchief, and then finished. He found that he could listen again. He wanted to hear what she remembered.

They remained near the graves after the formal gathering had begun to loosen. Some people were discussing where to go next. Others lingered, reluctant to be the first to leave. Focus Man looked at the family section and tried to place his mother there beside the people she had lost so many years before. He thought of her moving north, learning new roads, finding her way through another grocery store. She had carried this place with her without speaking of it very often.

Jill came to stand beside him.

For a while they watched the others.

“Everybody came,” he said.

“Yes.”

He looked at her, wanting to thank her for more than the arrangements. The words formed too broadly in his mind. He could hear how inadequate they would sound before he said them.

“You and Dave—”

Jill turned toward him.

He stopped and took a breath.

“Thank you.”

Her face changed a little. She nodded, then looked back toward the family.

A few minutes later, Dave came over to ask whether they were ready. Jill said she needed to speak to their aunt before they left. Focus Man waited with him while she crossed the grass.

He was tired now in a way he hadn't been that morning. His face felt swollen, and the handkerchief in his pocket was damp. Claire stood a short distance away, speaking with one of his sisters. She looked toward him, and he nodded to let her know he was coming.

When Jill returned, he walked with her toward the cars. At the edge of the path, she stopped to adjust something in her bag. He waited, then offered her his arm. She took it, and they finished the walk together.