Page 7 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

“Uh. Yeah. Right.” I rub at my breastbone, but the tightness doesn’t go away. “Well, I guess I’ll let you go.”

She squeaks out a few words I don’t understand as she cries.

“I’ll talk to you later, Shayna,” I say and quickly hang up, realizing how wholly unequipped I am to deal with all of this.

By the time I leave the kitchen, two of my mom’s friends are back, already making themselves busy. They tell me they’re here to help. Aunt Joanie is upstairs helping my mom shower and change, while the friends go about cooking and doing laundry. It’s helpful to have them here, I guess. Otherwise, I’d be dealing with my comatose mother alone. But no matter who comes in through the door, no matter how many Tupperware meals are shoved into the freezer, they can’t make this better or normal. This isn’t supposed to be.

None of this is as it should be.

At about nine o’clock in the morning, after I’ve aimlessly flipped through every television channel in my parents’ cable subscription, two men show up at the door. They’re both in suits and, from their physical similarities, obviously related. I don’t recognize the older man, but I recognize the younger one.

He’s a boy I used to love when I was a girl who had nothing but dreams in her head and hearts in her eyes.

That girl is dead like her brother. But this boy… He’s very much alive.

Like Ray, Vince was three years older than me. His hair was always adorably shaggy and often stuck out from under a baseball cap. He usually hung out at our house on Fridays and played video games with Ray while I made up reasons to be around them.

Standing in front of me now, he still has the same dark hair with a cowlick and gently assessing eyes.

“Hi, I’m Robert Mancini from Mancini Funeral Home,” the gray-haired man says, his wire-rimmed glasses perched on a big nose. “This is my son, Vincent.”

He leans into me. “Hey, Cass. I’m not sure if you remember me.”

I blink. Vince is older and slighter broader than I remember, but, “Yeah, yeah, of course I do.”

He nods, his lips turned down. My brother and Vince were best friends for years. They played baseball together through high school, and with his hunched shoulders, Vince seems to be taking the loss pretty hard too.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your brother,” Mr. Mancini tells me. “My sister-in-law is friends with your mother, and she asked me to meet with you. I couldn’t believe it when she called me.”

“Thanks for coming over,” I say and lead them to the dining room we never use with expensive cream-colored chairs and a dark wooden table. As I sit across from them, my throat tightens. “I’m not sure about what to do with…”

Mr. Mancini smiles sadly and squeezes my hands that are folded together on top of the table. “Don’t worry. We’ll walk you through this. Are your parents here?”

“My dad’s out, and my mom is…upstairs.”

“It’s okay,” he says, understanding we won’t be seeing either of them anytime soon, and opens a folder with a notebook in it to begin whatever it is we’re going to do.

I want to stop him, shout, and rip the folder away. I don’t want to deal with this, with any of this, with or without my parents. But if I have to be here, my parents should be here too. Why do I have to do it alone?

The cement in my chest hardens from resentment, and my skin is tight enough to explode into a million pieces with my next breath.

Vince moves around to my side of the table and takes a seat next to me. “Hey,” he murmurs close to my ear, his shoulder brushing mine. “I know how close you were. We’re here to help you any way we can.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat and look Vince in the eyes. They’re a light hazel, a stark contrast to his tall build and prominent nose. “Thanks.”

Mr. Mancini spreads out papers on the table with different colors and fonts. “It’s hard to plan anyone’s funeral, but I can imagine this is especially difficult for you and your family. If at any time you want a break, let me know.”

I lay my hands flat on the table. May as well stick a knife through them. It would be less painful.

“We’ll start with the program,” Mr. Mancini says, and he leads me through an hour-long process of deciding how to bury my thirty-year-old brother. We discuss songs, pictures, poems, prayers, and eulogies. Whenever there’s a question I can’t answer, Vince offers advice and nudges me along. At one point, he tells me there is no right answer and I should do what I think is best because that’s what Ray would do if the roles were reversed.

This makes me laugh. If the roles were reversed, I’m not sure Ray would be sitting here. He was always useless when it came to planning anything, worse than me. He once tried to plan a surprise party for Shayna and never made up an excuse for her to come home from her shopping trip, so by the time she arrived, the pizza was cold and all the guests had left. I ate the birthday cake in silence while they argued over who ruined the party.

“Now,” Mr. Mancini starts, opening his planner, “do you have a time when you can come in to finalize everything?”

I pick at my thumbnail and begin to answer once again “I don’t know,” but my dad walks in the front door. He stops when he sees the Mancinis sitting with me.

“Can I help you?” he asks with a furrowed brow.

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