Page 63 of Summer After Summer

Ash and I walk past him and take two seats in the last pew. The church is simple, with little adornment. The low murmur of church-talking fills the air.

“What’s going on with you two?” Ash whispers to me once we’ve taken a seat.

“Nothing. I told you. We’re maybe having lunch in a couple of days, that’s it.”

“Do you want more?”

I sit back on the hard seat. My rib still hurts, and I’m grateful for the cushion the pill I took right before we left gives me. “What I want is to get through this funeral without bawling my eyes out.”

Ash is stricken. “I didn’t even think of that. This is where …”

“Yes.” Where my mother was buried, the last funeral I went to.

Ash came to the funeral, clutching her parents’ hands. She was the only friend who did, everyone else opting out of the sad event. I didn’t want to be at that funeral either, but I wasn’t given a choice.

Ash reaches for my hand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“What do you need from me?”

“If I want to go, don’t argue.”

“Of course.” She sits back and opens the program. “We’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“Good.”

“And I’ll lay off the Fred stuff.”

“Thank you.”

The organ starts and we go through the familiar rituals. The family walks in and takes their seats, and the minister tells us to rise and sit in a predictable pattern. I try not to think too much about what they’re saying, pushing back the memories of these same words and readings from my mother’s funeral. Charlotte so cold, almost frozen. Sophie in tears for days, her face pressed into my shoulder. William, solemn, sober, resolute.

When I can’t help myself, I watch Fred, his head bowed, his hands holding his rolled-up program. His jaw is tight, and I know him enough to know that he doesn’t want to break, and he’s doing everything he can not to.

And then the minister invites him up, and he rises to speak.

I grasp Ash’s hand. I want to run, but I’m rooted to the spot.

Fred coughs, covering his mouth, then pulls the microphone toward him. He’s taller than the podium is set up for, so he stoops.

“Most of you know that I lost my dad when I was young. When that happened, I felt at sea. So my uncle, he did the funniest thing. He took me to sea. He came to Boston, and he chartered a boat, and he took me out into the bay. It was a cold day, stormy, and we really shouldn’t have been out there. But he wasn’t afraid. He’d seen worse he said, and so had my dad.

“I remember him standing there in his yellow slicker with the waves kind of tossing up on him, and his arms were out wide, and he said, ‘Sometimes you have to embrace the sea.’ And I knew what he meant. He meant that when bad things happen, you have to lean into them. You have to embrace the bad times because that’s when you learn—when you know—what you’re truly made of. He did that for me that day, and he stood by me every day after that. Whenever I needed him, he was there.”

Fred pauses and wipes a tear off his cheek. “These last five years, while he’s been sick, I got to give some of that back to him. And you did that too—this community. He loved living here, walking on the beach, seeing the seasons come and ago. ‘Live near the ocean,’ he always used to say to me, ‘and then you’ll know you’re alive.’”

I lean against Ash, and she puts her arm around my shoulders.

“So, I wanted to thank you on his behalf and my aunt’s for being welcoming and helping to make his last years happy ones. We’re all at sea, but we’re going to embrace that. I hope you’ll join us.”

He steps off the podium as my tears fall. His loss pierces my soul the way our ending did.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say as the organ starts up and the priest lifts his hands in front of him, inviting us to stand and sing.

Ash doesn’t fight me, and we slip out of the pew. I take a last look at Fred over my shoulder, and something in him senses me watching. He turns and meets my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I mouth.

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