“Of course you did.” Ellie expected no less. Her only surprise is that he didn’t also arrange for mood lighting and music.
“Anyway, his first words to me are literally ‘I’m falling in love with someone.’”Belt hesitates for a moment. “I may have flirted cautiously at first, then shamelessly after about five minutes. In my defense, it did not seem unwelcome. Also, I may have asked him out before I realized he was talking about the song fromNaughty Marietta.”
“While you were jogging on the treadmill?” Ellie eyes Belt incredulously and laughs.
“Look, multitasking is a thing. Also, if you can flirt and jog at the same time, you’re not overtraining.” Belt is as dry as Daniel. He may be joking, but Ellie never will know unless she asks.“Daniel’s surprisingly adorable once you realize he has not come to reap your soul. At least not today.”
Belt grins. He toasts Ellie and Daniel with his glass and takes a sip. Daniel’s embarrassment dissolves into a smile.
“He sang Captain Richard Warrington in a production ofNaughty MariettaI saw.” Daniel is in full explanatory-comma mode, which invariably negates any possible discomfort he feels. “He interpolated a fabulous high E-flat at the end of ‘I’m Falling in Love with Someone.’”
Plates and plates and plates of bao arrive, along with green beans, and fish. The branzino is still sizzling and the spicy garlicky perfume of the beans fill the air. Servers place steaming bowls of white rice before them.
Ellie immediately reaches for the closest plate, the fried chicken bao with a pickle garnish. Daniel starts to fillet the branzino. Belt surveys the feast in front of him and reaches for the pork belly bao.
“So, Belt, what are you doing afterCarousel?” Ellie slides a bao and some pickles onto her own plate. “Another musical?”
“He’s coming home with me.” Having taken some fish, Daniel pushes some green beans onto his plate.
“Bel canto opera.” Belt picks up his pork belly bao. “I’m singing Don Ramiro inLa Cenerentolain DC in three weeks.”
“Are you going to be able to make it to Mom’s funeral?” She idly picks up a bao. “You don’t have a Saturday matinee or something?”
Belt and Daniel exchange glances. Ellie wonders what she’s done.
“Ellie.” Daniel’s voice gets ostentatiously gentle. Ironically, to Ellie, whenever that happens, that’s when he sounds the scariest. “The funeral is in two weeks. What did Chris tell you?”
Ellie sighs. Chris told her the wrong date. Ellie has no idea what Chris has in mind for Ellie a week after the funeral. It’s entirelypossible that Chris has nothing in mind. Making Ellie miss her own mother’s funeral is merely yet another bit of spite.
“Oh, I’m sure Chris just got her dates mixed up.” Ellie takes a bite of bao.
Ellie doesn’t really believe this, but she also doesn’t want to deal with it right now. She’d rather have a fun dinner with her cousin and his boyfriend.
Daniel also doesn’t believe this, but he’s hiding it surprisingly well. Ellie can only see the strain because she’s known him for decades. A righteous condemnation is all set to burst out of him. Belt, however, seems to accept it. He also acts so well that he does it for a living. All three of them have chosen to accept this polite fiction for now. No one wants to ruin dinner.
And dinner is not ruined. Daniel settles down, eventually. There is another round of cocktails. When all the plates are empty and they are full, there is no bill, but there is a visit from the chef, who bids Daniel goodbye with a hug. Everyone agrees that they should have dinner together again, and that is not a polite fiction.
CHAPTER 5
Mom’s funeral is exactly as awful as Ellie expects. The hundred or so mourning Mom are squeezed into a dull box at the funeral home meant for seventy at best. Even so, a ring of empty chairs pointedly surrounds her like the poisoned space around a mold. Discreet cameras at the edges of the room and a director sitting at a control board livestream the funeral.
August is everything she doesn’t miss about metro DC. The odor of flowers, sweat, and, oddly, nutritional yeast form a sweet, heavy blanket that smothers everyone and presses the air out of their lungs. In its defense, the area would be a sauna even on the coolest and driest of days.
The preacher drones on from a dais at the front of the room. An interpreter stands next to him interjecting English into the pauses between the Mandarin. The English is adequate. However, it bears only an incidental, maybe accidental, resemblance to the Mandarin. Ellie has to restrain herself from shouting, “Yes, that’s what he said but that’s not what he meant.” Her only experience interpreting is Mom pressing her into service, as a child at the supermarket, for example, and eventually as an adult with the oncologist. Even she, however, can do better than this. Certainly, Mom deserves better.
Two giant stands of flowers trap the preacher and interpreter on the dais. One stand holds a tasteful wreath of white and green. The other holds a paisley explosion with the words “From Ellie”scrawled in black on a red ribbon that splits the arrangement like a gash.
Ellie sighs. If she’d thought to send flowers, maybe Chris wouldn’t have sent some for her. Because of course Chris sent flowers in Ellie’s name. And, of course, those flowers have to be garish and inappropriate. There’s no point asking Chris why she did this. She’d say, innocently, that she simply bought the flowers she thought Ellie would want to send. Now that Ellie thinks about it, what Chris would really say is a daughter who loved her mother—or at least one who didn’t kill her mother—would have thought to send flowers herself. Ellie is willing to admit Chris has a quarter of a point. Then again, even if Ellie had sent something, they would have shown up next week. Chris takes it as a given that Ellie must have simply misheard her. After all, why would she give Ellie the wrong date? Ellie will grant Chris another quarter of a point, but she won’t like it.
One after another, eulogies render her mother into an undifferentiated mass of pity and saintly suffering. Mom asking for a slice of mango before she fell into a coma is mentioned. Chris, who didn’t want Mom to get fat, hiding food from her in what turned out to be the last few months before the coma, is not. Mom grinding away for minimum wage at Taco Barn is mentioned. Mom diagnosing and repairing the workings that create the universe when everyone else was stumped is not. Even the Chief Architect of the skunkworks falls into platitudes. Why the universe keeps working is something most of the mourners don’t even know to think about. If clean water always comes out when you turn on the spigot, you don’t care about the infrastructure that gets the water from the reservoir to the tap and makes sure the water is safe to drink. A funeral is neither the time nor place to tell them.
As Ellie withstands the eulogies, her hands grip the seat of her folding chair and she clamps her mouth shut or else she’ll scream. By the time they’re done, her mother is a pathetic figurediminished and neatly secured within the bounds of the audience’s polite grief. Ellie is livid.
The reception grinds away in another dull box down the hall. This one seems larger but only because there are no chairs. Long tables are pressed against the wall. Platters of indifferently piled cold cuts, crackers, and cheese fill half the tables. Bottles of soda, tubs of ice, plates, and cups fill the other half.
People chat in tight circles throughout the room. Most of the circles are either maintainers or family. The intersection between the two groups isn’t huge. Chris is working her way from one circle to the next. Ellie supposes she should too. She knows it won’t go well, but it’s still her job to thank everyone for coming and for paying their respects.
Ellie avoids Daniel’s parents. They abandoned Daniel as a kid. She doesn’t need a lecture about betraying Mom, and definitely not from them.
