Page 32 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

“Yeah. Hey.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Not really.” I glance at the time on my phone. “Only 12:13.”

“Only 12:13,” he repeats with a sleepy laugh.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Kind of,” he says. “I fell asleep a little while ago.”

“I just got out of work,” I tell him, imagining his eyes closed and hair sticking up, cheek creased from his pillow and sleep. I don’t let myself imagine what he sleeps in.

“Everything all right?” he asks quietly.

I stare up at the dark sky, stars twinkling here and there. I want to talk to Vince in person, with his pretending not-to-smile smile, but I don’t know how to ask. More likely, I’m too chickenshit to ask. So I settle for his voice in my ear instead. “What do you think happens when we die?”

“Hmm,” he says after a moment of silence. “I don’t think there is one answer.”

“What’s that mean?”

His voice becomes stronger, as if he’s sitting up, fully awake. “A lot of people believe different things, and I don’t think any one is right or wrong. I think maybe it all kind of happens, like whatever you believe will happen…does.”

“As in heaven or hell or one hundred virgins?”

“Yeah. I guess…”

“What if you don’t believe in anything? What if you think the end is the end?” I’m sincerely interested in his thoughts. He is the expert.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it much.”

I sit up. “But you bury dead people for a living. What else is there for you to think about?”

He yawns. “You ever read Peter Pan?”

“No.”

“It was my favorite book when I was little,” he tells me, and I smile. I don’t know why, but I like knowing that little factoid about Vince.

“He says ‘To die would be an awfully big adventure,’ and I guess it’s true. It’s the biggest adventure of them all. It’s inevitable we’ll all find out what’s on the other side one day, whether it’s a big guy with a beard or an island in the middle of the ocean.” He pauses for a few moments, building my suspense. “I don’t know what it’ll be, but I’m okay with not knowing for now.”

I’m okay with not knowing for now.

It’s not life-changing, yet it’s so perfectly uncomplicated. Like Vince, uncomplicated. I want to be like that, like him. Easy like Sunday morning.

I try to push away thoughts about what Sunday mornings would be like with him. Probably lazy and warm, hazy and still. The kind of stuff Pinterest aesthetics are made of.

I’m tempted to confess all that’s tumbling around in my head, but I can’t. It’s physically impossible for me to even form the syllables with my lips, although I think he already knows that about me. Like my brain, my heart, and my mouth don’t exist on the same plane. They don’t speak the same language.

Before I can begin to explain what’s inside me, he says, “I’ve seen what grief can do to families, and I know you’re trying to parent your parents right now.”

“Parenting my parents? Is that what I’m doing?”

“Seems like it to me.” He clears his throat, his voice coming through louder, and it sounds as if he’s right next to me when he says, “I know I’ve said it before, but you’re doing okay, Cass.”

“Feels like I’m drowning.” I straighten my neck to lift my head higher, keeping it above the water.

“Just breathe,” he says. And I do.

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