Page 3 of Good at Being Alive
“Take the Xanax, Rebecca,” saysJill. “We’ve got everything covered.”
Xanax? Everything isalreadytoo surreal as it is—I pinch my thigh, half certain this is a nightmare. Apparently it’s not.
The press reports on the train crash as if it’s a miracle. Only thirty-one people, three percent of the train’s passengers, died. Of a thousand passengers, my family made up ten percent of the fatalities.
It really happened, Bex.I pinch myself again.It’s not a nightmare.
I slip the Xanax into my pocket when her head turns. Today, of all days, I don’t want to embarrass my family. Their funerals—three at once, the height of efficiency—should be the rare occasion when I don’t shame them. If there’s a heaven, I want them to be sitting there thinking,Oh thank god, she’s not making an ass of herself for once.
I also don’t trust Jessie’s sisters. There’s nothing especially alarming about any of them, but there wasn’t anything especially alarming about Jessie either, and I still had to tread carefully.
“This belonged to our mother,” says Jenny, holding up some vase on the mantel. If she had a purse big enough, I suspect she’d slide that vase rightin.
Maybe that’s why I don’t trust them—because they’re circling ever closer, like hyenas nearing a carcass. They shed tears for Jessie and Bronwyn at first, but I’ve sensed self-preservation stealing over all three of them for the last day or so, ever since the will was read and they discovered everything is going to me. They now want to run through the house like game show contestants, grabbing every valuable they see.
Joanna emerges from the powder room a moment later, frowning at me in the exact way Jessie used to. None of the sisters care for me, and this week has made that worse.
They don’t understand why I’m not crying. I haven’t cried once in the week since the accident, but it’s not that I’m not sad. It’s that I can’t grasp that it’s happened. I’m underwater, pressed deep by its weight. The sounds that reach my ears don’t make sense—everything I look at is dark and slightly blurry. What I’d really like to do is sleep. I just want to sleep for a very long time. And not allow these vultures to steal all my family’s shit while I doso.
Jill looks at her watch. “We should go.” She holds out her hand for the house key, as if I’m a child playing with a valuable. “Head to the car and I’ll lock up.”
“I’ve got it,” I say staunchly.
They glance at one another with a look I’ve seen several times this week.There she goes again, being a pain in the ass. Jessie warned us.Maybe Iambeing a pain in the ass. Or maybe there’s something Jill wants to snatch once I’m out of the house. Given how annoyed she is, my money is on option two.
I lock the door and stumble to the waiting car, flanked by three women who dislikeme.
I shouldn’t be going through this with them. I shouldn’t be alone. I shouldn’t be here at all.
I’m still alive because I got drunk the night before my flight and arrived at an airport too late. I’m still alive because I didn’t care enough to arrive on time, because my family was filming a show intended to save my dad’s business, and I basically blew it off.
The limo heads toward a church I dislike, at the wrong end of town. After the burials, there will be a reception at the country club my dad and Jessie joined a few years ago—one of those places that takes pride in the way it hasn’t moved forward with the times. Cell phones and denim are forbidden. Women aren’t allowed on the golf course before one p.m.
It annoyed me that Jessie wanted to join, that she was so enamored of the club’s prestige that she was willing to overlook the way it marginalizes pretty much everyone who isn’t a balding Caucasian male.
And you’re here resenting a woman on the day you’re burying her, Bex. So which of you is worse?
We arrive in the church’s parking lot forty minutes early. Everyone watches as I climb from the car. A heavyset man with gray hair practically radiates disdain for me—the Henchman, perhaps, here to ensure I’m appropriately dressed and not carrying a flask. If so, the joke’s on him: I’m not wearing panties, and the flask is in my purse. Sure, I don’t want to shame my family, but emergencies happen.
Linda, my dad’s longtime assistant, walks over while the aunts bicker about what we should do next and pulls me toward her. “Oh Bex,” she whispers, choking on tears. “I’m so sorry.”
I want to cry with her. I don’t know why I’m so numb, why I can’t seem to feel anything. I want to promise her she’ll always have a job, but I don’t know what happens to the company now, without the show.
“You need to stand by the door,” says Joanna, placing herhands on my shoulders and pushing me in the church’s direction, “so you can thank people for coming.”
I turn to stare at her. There’s been a lot of this over the course of the week. A lot ofyou need to…
You need to host an event after the funeral.
You need to write the death notice.
You need to call people.
I don’t understand why we expect a person who’s experienced a devastating loss to…perform.To offer a eulogy. To choose between an open bar or beer and wine only and to decide if finger sandwiches are really worth three grand. I don’t understand why we expect a grieving person to design in memoriam handouts and drive to Staples at rush hour to pick them up, to accept the hugs of strangers for hours on end and thank them for telling you how sadtheyare.
Jesus fucking Christ. I already need the flask.
“Rebecca, let’s go,” says Jenny.
