Easters

I'm watching a man be swallowed whole by a poorly constructed casket and a newly minted widow passes by me. I cannot remember her name. She is Mason's mother, one of the whispering ladies. Sweat glues my suit jacket to my body. I'm thankful for the color black that masks thin embarrassments and honors thick sorrows.

I'm standing at the top of a staircase the color of week-old tangerines. My small nails click-click along the false wooden panels that line the descent. They turn sound into brittle shadow. My small nails cannot click-click against the shadows. They swim down into the belly of the orange creature, where the stomping and the shouting of the other kids can only enter in their afterlives. Almost three decades later, I wonder if sounds have funerals and if they too are swallowed by little caskets, them too poorly constructed, them too watched by sweaty almost-mourners, them too grasping at the flicking tails of names in flight. I stare at the agitated bulb and imagine it to be the source of the whispers between my mother and Mason's. One is inquiring as to why I won't play with the other children. Is he mourning well?

Is she mourning well? The regiment of friends and family draped in shadows engulfs me and I lose the ability to tell one from the other. My mother appears behind me and tells me to pay my respects to Mason. I wouldn't recognize him after all these years. The last time I saw him, we were maybe eleven years old. It's the proper thing to do. I'll try.

I'm sitting in the corner of Mason's father's house waiting for him to be done explaining his new game. My father and his father are sitting on a crinkled black couch lazily sipping Heinekens. The droning sounds of a baseball game and the broadcast conversations about the event slither along the crinkles and into our fathers' bones. Neither smiles and I learn later that this is how men have a good time. Mason tells me he will play the game first to show me how it goes. I tell him I have the same one at home, and for the second time, he doesn't hear me.

In the basement, my small feet dig themselves into the cool orange carpet. I pull at the thick fibers with my toes and try to uproot them to keep as memories of this alien sanctuary. I have not yet learned that memories will burrow into my body whether I intend for them to do so or not; I have not yet learned how badly I will want to uproot them and cast them into white flames. The basement is littered with plastic action figures of every color except pink and yellow. I have some of these same toys at my very distant home. Small hands pressed flat against the superheroes, I construct a small hatred for Mason and his charlatan playthings. He has no right inviting me to his house. He has no right owning copies of the toys I own. Behemoth cardboard boxes line the walls, each with a different name etched in black marker. I press my hands against their cool surfaces and let the lettering become my sixth and seventh and eighth fingers.

In the waiting room we joke about what we would do if our daughter were born with extra digits. It's a milder expression of our true fears, the ones we can't speak to one another, the one's that will end our marriage four years from now. The doctor says it's nice to see us again and that you're looking healthy. I wonder if it is ever nice to see anyone and you wonder if you're looking healthy. She asks if you're feeling alright and as her mechanical assistants poke and prod your swelling body, she tells you everything seems alright. You squeeze my hand and I trace your slim fingers, placing my consciousness along your soft knuckles, above the ring I gave you, unto the hand that would later untie my heart from my soul. Two months from now, you'll be the happiest woman alive, she says. She tells us to have a good day and we do our best to.

It's nighttime and my daughter has fallen asleep with her soft head somehow discovering comfort on my bony knees. The screen lights up and it's my mother's voice. She asks if my daughter is healthy and within the question are a dozen others, spilling noiselessly into the hollow of my chest. She tells me that one of my father's old friends has passed away and suggests I come to the funeral. Do I remember Mason?

He presses his face against the window and laughs at the oily print it makes. I try hard to find the missing humor. The smoke from our fathers' cigars folds into the blackness of night. Mason opens the door and asks his father if we can join them on the patio. A grunt returns from the other side and he happily clambers onto the false stone, the slapping of his feet on the cool surface makes me consider his various similarities to an overgrown amphibian. I watch Mason and our fathers watch the silent darkness. The television is painted with the faces of various baseball players, all smiling.

The funeral is held at an old Methodist church. We attended a wedding here once. You whispered obscenities into my ear and laughed noiselessly as my hand slid into the small of your back. The pews are filled with mourners and old acquaintances reacquainting, the echoes of their conversation rolling along the floors like thick mist. The sitter texts me a photo of my daughter painting the bathroom mirror with shaving cream. An empty smile weaves itself into my mouth and I wonder how much faster she could have finished her masterpiece if she had been born with extra fingers.

It's almost midnight and I know I should have gone home an hour or two earlier, but the weight of unfinished arguments hangs from the base of my skull and another would snap my brain stem. You tell me how busy you will be on Easter weekend and how important it is for our daughter to spend it with familiar faces, the ones at school, how much more sense it would make for her not to come here. You back away from her existence one great stride at a time and I cannot stop you. You won't tell me where you'll be or who you're spending Easter with, but the evidence of an impending vacation litters your apartment. I know you don't care for Easter celebrations at all, and that when you were a child, you locked yourself in a closet to avoid Easter egg hunts the same way I had locked myself in a basement. We both know our daughter is doomed to do the same, but only one of us wants to be around for it to happen. You ask about the sitter and there are knives in your mouth as you describe her attitude. I ask you why you won't spend more time with the girl we made and you tell me you're moving across the country. The ashtray on your bed holds the remnants of my heart.

Mason's mother thanks me for coming and she hopes I am doing well. I conjure a mild smile and tell her yes I am, thank you. Beneath the black fabrics, I suspect she is made entirely of bones.