Page 89 of The Dead Romantics

Ben leaned against the doorway, looking into the room with my dad’s coffin. He said, “I like your Dad’s style. Great tux.”

“It was his favorite,” I replied.

Carver gently closed the lid of the coffin. For the last time. Then he moved out of the red parlor room where Dad was and gathered up the cups from the end table. I lugged the trash can with me, and held it out for Carver to dump the cups into.

A stereo sat atop the table, usually reserved for some sort of somber organ music during wakes and visitations. I couldn’t remember if we had it playing today.

My brother gave a sad sort of smile as his fingers skimmed across the stereo buttons. “Remember when Dad played music while we cleaned up?”

I groaned. “He had Bruce Springsteen onrepeat.”

He chuckled. “Remember that time he pulled his back out wailing on an air guitar to ‘Born to Run’?” His eyes squeezed at the edges, prickling in the only way he knew how to cry. His voice was thick as he said, “God, Florence, I wish he was here.”

“Me, too. And—I do need help. With the will thing. Mostly the crows. And your... cherrywood birdcage.”

He gave a mock gasp. “Oh. My. God. Is Florence Day actually asking forhelp?”

“Please don’t make this a big deal—”

“Al!” he called to our youngest sister, in the blue room. “Florence actually asked for ourhelp!”

Alice poked her head out of the doorway. “Fuck that,” she replied.

“So that’s a yes?” I rebutted, and my sister stuck out her tongue and withdrew into the blue room again.

Carver bumped his shoulder against mine. “Alwaysa yes.” Then Mom called him from the third parlor to help her move some vases, and he scrubbed me on the head as he went. I smoothed down my hair again, muttering to myself.

“Question,” Ben said, coming back to me as I finished cleaning the table with the stereo. “Did Lee get anything right?”

“Hmm?”

“In his book.”

I tilted my head. “He wrote that we listened to Beethoven’sFür Elise—Carver went through a classical music kick—and that Dad danced with skeletons. Which he did,” I added, “but only on Halloween.”

He snorted a laugh. “I bet it was terrifying.”

“Oh, absolutelynot. He’d do this thing where he’d throw his voice and move Skelly’s jaw—it was funny! He was funny. And maybe a little funny looking,” I conceded, and absently ran my fingers across the stereo’s buttons. “I think the worst part is that Lee thought my childhood was something sad and lonely. And maybe sometimes it was. And it wasn’t always great—but god, Ben, it was good. It was broken a little, and banged up, but it was good.” I pulled open the drawer beneath the stereo to show Ben the CDs we had, the ones Dad played. “It was so good.”

Because Dad collected songs and danced Mom around the parlor—and together they taught us how to say goodbye. They taught us a lot of things that most kids rarely even thought of. They taught us how to grieve with widows, and how to console young kids who didn’t quite know death yet. They taught us how to put makeup on corpses and drain out the blood to replace it with formaldehyde, how to arrange clothes so the hospital bruises from the IVs and shock paddles and stickers weren’t quite as prominent. How to frame flowers on a casket to disguise how few some people received. Mom and Dad taught us so many things, and all of it led to this.

They gave us the tools to figure out what to do when they were gone.

And now Dad was.

I took out the topmost CD. A burned silver disc with Dad’s scratching scrawl on it.

Good Goodbyes.

I couldn’t remember how many times, after long viewings and sad wakes, Dad would call us to the funeral home to help clean up—just like this. Just like now. The Days Gone Funeral Home was small, and Dad didn’t like overworking his employees if he didn’t have to, so he workedusinstead. I always made like I hated it, the too-clean smell of disinfectant and floral bouquets, the bright rooms, the dead people in the basement, but I had a secret:

I never hated it as much as I said I did.

By the time Mom had dragged me and Carver and Alice to the funeral home, usually on school nights, Dad had already shrugged out of his coat, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the tattoos he’d acquired in his youth (that most of Mairmont would gasp at if they knew). He’d put on this CD, and beckon us into the house of death with a smile and a good song.

“Want a listen?” I asked Ben, showing him the disc like it was a secret.

“What is it?”

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