Page 4 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
THE FUNERAL IS HELD ATour church in Winnetka. All of our relatives fly in. Cousins and uncles and ex-wives and third cousins and third uncles and third ex-wives—people with whom I share blood but whose names I don’t know. We fill every pew in the chapel. A big wooden box sits at the front, boy-sized, like a trick at a magic show. I understand that this is not a magic show. I understand that my brother is inside that box, and he won’t come back out.
—
IN THE WEEK WE SPENDat home before returning to Cradle, as I endure Henry’s wake and funeral and hugs from relatives I don’t know and paper plates sagging beneath cheese triangles and fruit salad, I cling to the fact that it’s just a week. Just one. After that, we’ll return to Cradle for the summer, and everything will be better. Mom calls the blue-green waters that surround the lake “healing.” When I ask her why, she says human beings come from the water, that we’re conceived in water, that we evolved from creatures who swam. So that’s what I tell myself during that miserable week in Chicago.We’re going back, I tell myself. We’re going back. And when we do, we’ll heal.
—
A WEEK LATER, WE RETURNto Cradle. We fly in on the jet. It has eight seats, just big enough for our family. We’re one brother short, but every seat is full.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at the oblong purple thing fastened into the seat next to Dad. It looks like a tulip vase, all curvy and long necked.
There’s a long silence.
Finally, seventeen-year-old Karma says, “That’s Henry.”
I look back down at the object. That’s Henry?
“No,” I say. “That’s a vase. Dead people don’t go in vases.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“No,” I say again. “Flowers go in vases. Dead people go in coffins.”
Karma smiles sadly. “Sometimes. But sometimes, they go in one of those instead.”
“It’s not a vase, Gup,” says Clarence from across the plane. “It’s anerrrn.”
Anerrrn?
I turn the word over in my head. Anerrrn. Huh.
This is a surprise. There was a coffin at the funeral; I assumed my brother was inside. I assumed I wasn’t allowed to see him, that seeing him was Big Kids Only. A lot of stuff in my life is Big Kids Only, especially since Henry died. But I know how funerals go. I’ve seen them in movies. And movies tell me that dead people go inside a coffin and then into the ground. So I assumed that, after the funeral, my family took him away and buried him in a graveyard with all the other dead people, the way they’re supposed to.
I was wrong.
—
SHORTLY AFTER ARRIVING ON THEisland, we gather on the porch of Sunny Sunday. The boys clear away the tables and lounge chairs. They lift them overhead and carry them down the rocks, leaving them scattered about like a poorly arranged living room. We clusteronto the empty patio, the whole family. Dad stands before us, his back to the lake. Clutched between two trembling hands is theerrrn.
I glare at it. As it turns out, not only is Henrynotsafely underground, he’s trapped inside a tiny tulip vase. What an abomination. How did they fit him in there, anyway? Did they shrink him to the size of a teacup? Did his body dissolve into a cloud and whoosh down the neck, like a genie?
Dad is talking. Cradle Island will be Henry’s final resting place, he says. Dad will scatter Henry’s ashes at the center of the island.
Ashes?
Ashes like after a fire?
“I’m going to scatter them alone,” he continues, “so the rest of you won’t see where.”
Ashes like ugly grey powder, all thin and useless? A puddle of spent wood that used to be flame, and before that timber, and before that a tree, tall and sturdy, so tall it saw everything, saw clear across the island?
“Your mother and I…” He glances at Mom, who meets his gaze with watery eyes. “We don’t want Henry to be just one rock or bush or tree.” He smiles. “We want him to be the whole island.”
I watch Dad’s thumb. I think about burning trees. His thumb traces little absentminded circles along the bottom of the vase, slowly, affectionately, as if he believes the vase can feel it. As if it were made of skin, not ceramic.
And that’s when I understand.
“What the hell did you do?” I blurt without thinking.
