The best thing about Joy was her grief. Two children dead in the same car accident. A corvette, a tree. Bobby and Jules. Bobby at 22, Jules at 18. I wasn’t alive then. I didn’t know Joy in the peak of it. Apparently, she handled it with grace.
Joy’s funeral is a funeral. Psalms and floral arrangements by the chancel. It’s called a chancel. The bald priest speaks a whole lot of Jesus. There are maybe twelve people. Not even her living children show up. Some argument about money. If they were here, there’d be three more leather jackets and two more motorcycles. At least 40 more tattoos. A handful of pills stashed in one purse. Three packs of cigarettes.
Instead, there are easter lilies, white roses. Light from stained glass plays on the priest’s bald head. He wears satin graduation gowns, says something about Jesus. Our savior. Something about god. Our savior. The church pews are hard, cold wood. Pine maybe.
My mother says she was a miserable person. Joy. She lived miserably and died miserably. Before I was born, she cheated on her husband with his brother. When I was a baby, she stole my mother’s credit card. A few years back, she was caught shoplifting from the local co-op.
Joy had been dying for over a decade. My mother threw her a living wake 13 years ago. This was the last time I saw her. She was a skeleton in a t-shirt that said America across the chest.
Here, at the funeral, there’s no casket, no body. It’s just the baker’s dozen people who showed up out of obligation. Beside me, another aunt sighs. She’s not big on Jesus either. Or maybe she’s not big on Joy. Of Joy, my mother says, I loved her, but she never tried to be better.
There on the wood pew, I read the pamphlet about Joy. There’s a note about Bobby and Jules. About Joy joining them in heaven. She’s not young in the picture. She looks like I remember her looking. Her hair stringy and bleached blonde. Wrinkles carving up her face. Chin and jawbone jutting out. She’s smiling, which is odd. My mother called the picture bullshit. She whispered it. That’s bullshit, she said. Joy smiled five times in her life after the accident.
Bobby had a successful career in masonry when he purchased the corvette. That day. Was driving to show it to his father, my uncle. Jules was just awarded a scholarship in computer science. She was along for the ride. To celebrate. Jules died on impact. Bobby was in a coma for weeks. When they finally pulled the plug, he lived four days longer than he was supposed to.
When the church service ends, we move to a sad hall where there’s some wilted lettuce take out in a corner. None of my relatives recognize me. It’s been years. 13 since the wake. 20 since I’ve lived in California. I stand near my mother. No one cries.
There are photos of Joy as a young woman on the four circular tables in the hall. In one, she’s in Hawaii. Young young. She was born there. Both my grandparents: naval officers on the Pacific front. In the photo, Joy has a lei around her neck. A dazzle of hair frames her face. She wears white linen. Her feet bare. A teenager maybe.
My mother doesn’t seem particularly one way or another. Not sad, not not sad. Joy was dying for a long time. Joy wanted to die. These are things my mother has told me.
And also: Joy really died in that accident.
I want to see a picture of Bobby and Jules, but I don’t know how to ask for it. Not here.
Grief on grief.
One of Joy’s granddaughters approaches. She wears blue and white floral. I don’t know when we stopped wearing black to funerals. I wear black. And heels. And I have shaved my legs. And my hair is back in a tight high bun. This granddaughter has long curled brown hair, limp now in the afternoon heat. She’s ten years older than me. Joy had children young.
The granddaughter’s dress clings to her. Especially in the middle. It bunches there and she tugs at it constantly. She stares at me. That expression: seeing a ghost.
You look just like her, she says to me.
Who? My mother asks.
The granddaughter points at me.
My mother says, quickly, and with heat: My daughter is nothing like her.
A sharpness we all feel. The room quiets.
The granddaughter speaks again: Like Jules. She looks like Jules.
The room around us is still.
My mother looks at me, really looks. Eyes big and marble blue. I can see she sees it too.
Oh, my mother says.
The granddaughter blushes. I never met her, of course, the granddaughter says. But the pictures.
Of course, my mother says. This is my daughter, my mother says.
Hi, I say. I’m sorry about your grandmother, I offer.
I’m sorry about your aunt, she says. And she hugs me. Sorry, she says.
My mother weeps.
I shake my head, as if to say don’t be sorry. Don’t weep. As if to say no.
How much can one family hold?
This much, I realize, wrapping my arms around my mother.
We can hold this much.
