Page 1 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

CHAPTER 1

Silver tinfoil crinkles between my fingers as I stuff another drugstore chocolate into my mouth. A fantastic way to spend Valentine’s Day, on a daybed in my parents’ basement, scrolling through Instagram. At twenty-seven years old, I know I don’t have a great grip on this adulting thing, but I am trying.

I’m that oft-maligned lost boy and apparent ruiner of all good things. They write articles about me, make fun of my love of avocados and inability to save any money for a house. Though true to form, after living in New York City for a few years, I crawled back home to Mommy and Daddy to live in their basement since my old bedroom had been converted into an exercise room, and god forbid we move the dust-collecting BowFlex machine.

It’s arguable that at this stage in my life I should have more than student loan debt and a closet full of black clothes to my name, but as a journalism major and Hellenic Studies minor, I’m qualified for exactly nothing. But when they told me I could do anything I put my mind to, I believed it.

As a kid, I used to read Rolling Stone magazine, literally flipped through it with my hands. The same hands that ripped off the covers to tape them to my walls, and I’d dreamed of working there, writing articles on the musicians I loved and funny, lucid pieces on politics and what my generation cared about, things like gun control, equity in the workplace, flying buses that ran on beans and peanut oil.

The problem is, newspapers and magazines don’t exist anymore. There are no full-time staff positions, only occasional contract work for pop culture rags that pay pennies. So, instead of living the dream, I spent three years as the assistant to a celebrity whom I cannot name because of the nondisclosure agreement, barring me from discussing the temper tantrums, shoe-throwing, and lesbian affairs. As if the affairs are something to bat an eyelash at and not the shoe-throwing.

But the anonymous celebrity gossip and cheap-living hacks earned me a pretty good Instagram following, almost ten thousand. And yet…

“Cassandra,” my mom calls from upstairs. “Will you get up here and clean up after yourself? I’m not your maid.”

I cringe at her tone and scoot off the bed like I’m a child being scolded again. My parents aren’t making me pay rent, but my mom’s made it clear I’m more or less a guest. I’ve been here about a year, and it still feels like they’re waiting on me to check out. But no matter what they think, I’ve been trying. I haven’t even fully unpacked everything, refusing to believe I’m really living with my parents.

By the time I shuffle upstairs to the kitchen, Mom’s gone. I hear her in the living room, and I’m happy I don’t have to face her questions about what I’m doing or if I’ve found any other jobs that don’t involve a place called Sassie’s Lassies with a micro-kilt uniform and bad fried food.

I clean up my single dirty pan and plate from dinner, leaving no evidence of my meal, and then clomp back down to my lair. On the way, I pass framed pictures of me, my parents, and my brother. A family photo in front of some fancy Christmas tree. My eighth-grade school picture with zits and braces. Ray in his high school baseball uniform. Of course, he has the good picture.

I knock it with the side of my fist and take my phone from my pocket. I’m texting my brother before I even sit on the bed, knowing he’ll find my episode this afternoon funny. I mean, I guess it’s funny now that it’s over. But running out of gas on a busy road at rush hour so I had to walk to the gas station in my work uniform of a kilt, knee socks, and tiny white top in freezing temperatures wasn’t too funny then.

Ray doesn’t respond, although he usually doesn’t. He’s terrible at texting and prefers to call people. It’s strange. I’m not good with interpersonal relationships, but I’m great at social media. Ray thinks that’s strange. We’re three years apart but have always been pretty close, and ever since I moved back home, he’s been my only ally.

Which is why when he doesn’t answer my text or call me after an hour, I wonder what he’s doing. I assume he’s fighting with Shayna or out with the girl he’s been seeing, but a scream fractures my thoughts into pieces.

I throw my phone on the pillow when the odd, pained scream echoes again. I scramble upstairs, tripping in my haste. “Mom?”

Once, when I was about ten or so, my mom dropped a heavy bowl on her foot and split her toe open. It was disgusting. She’d shrieked so loud I’d heard it upstairs. She sounds like that now, so I grab some Band-Aids from the medicine basket in one of the cabinets in the kitchen and prepare myself for blood.

But there isn’t any blood in the living room. Only my mom crumpled up on the floor, her hair matted to her red face, the news on the television, and the remote across the room with the batteries out like it was dropped or thrown. Two police officers stand by the door.

My stomach plummets at the sight, and I freeze in place. “Uh… Everything okay?”

Obviously not. Dumb question. But I’m struggling to rub even two brain cells together at the moment, while Mom moves, only enough to let out the same painful cry.

I glance at the police officers with their sad frowns then back to her. My heart pounds out of my chest, and I wipe my hands on my pajama pants, desperate to understand yet knowing whatever this is, it will hurt.

I tug Mom back onto the couch. “What’s going on?”

When she doesn’t answer, one of the police officers steps forward. He’s bulky and out of place next to the female officer, who appears on the verge of crying herself, blinking rapidly.

“What’s your name?”

“Cass.” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Cassandra.”

“I’m Officer Stone. This is Officer Kwon. This is your mother?” He tips his chin to Mom, and when I nod, he asks, “Do you want to sit down?”

I can’t tell, but I think I start to lower down in slow motion, or at least it seems that way, as my mom wheezes next to me. I don’t like it. Her cries box me in, and I’m claustrophobic. I step away from her. “No, I don’t want to sit down.”

“We received a call earlier to respond to?—”

“Raymond!” my mom wails. It’s worse than when the neighbor’s cat snagged one of the baby rabbits living under our tree in the backyard. The keening cry of the baby bunny is unforgettable.

So is this.

“My baby! My baby is dead!”

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