She tried to picture herself the way she was then, fifteen years ago. Fifteen. Numbers are numbers. She remembers becoming a total of fifteen years; it was her age once. It felt old, then, an achievement.
That was before she became pretty and now, as she’s trying to remember, it seems a while since she was pretty. Maybe she was then, when it happened. Did her face change? Her body? Did confusion etch lines, drag down skin, that was different before it happened?
What did she look like fifteen years ago?
She can check the photo of her in the line—a line-up of greeters at the funeral home. She greeted people, she remembers (nudged to remember only by that photo), standing next to her sister, who’d flown up from Florida, and her cousins, who had driven across Pennsylvania to get there. “There” was Delaware. She and her husband were living in a hotel, a motel, having taken a plane (maybe two; it was Southwest and there was a connection—a numb moving around somewhere before another plane) to get there. The husband, he must have been in the line, too. But then, who would have taken the photo?
“The casket, too,” she said, gesturing to his camera. He had winced, Are you sure?
“Yes.”
Her son, the brother in this scene, was not in the scene. He didn’t want to come. It was too hard for him, and she understood. He wouldn’t have wanted to see a favorite uncle of his from the past arrive so drunk. She’d never tell him. They’d all just grasped hands and nodded anyway; there was nothing really to say, and the late afternoon, the evening, went on.
She looked okay. It was a new suit she’d just happened to have purchased – well, she was always buying things—a gray pant-suit, perfectly respectable, perfect for this occasion –and what was this occasion again? She was dressing in the new suit she’d packed, she had to remind herself, for her daughter’s funeral.
Was that a real occasion?
They were all there. All. Not the son. Friends, many friends, the original father’s side of the family, the original father himself in a wheelchair in another room. The friends. The close friends, dressed in the glitter, the sparkles that she liked, also the people that knew her in general. How could it be?
She must have been pretty then, she thinks now. She must have looked okay and must have moved her mouth and spoken words; yes, of course she did. She just doesn’t remember.
And after, after they got home, her husband and her, she wasn’t mute, no, not mute—she could manage to function—it just seemed so unnecessary, so pointless, to say anything. It took energy, even riding in the car when he was driving, so much energy to comment on anything—where they were going (he knew), whether she was hot or cold (was she, either?), if she liked the weather (did it matter), if she wanted to “do anything” (sure, whatever he wanted) or get something to eat? (if it was sweet, if it went down easily) but she didn’t even qualify anything with words. She just nodded.
It seemed so very pointless to say anything, to move her mouth, to have thoughts. She probably looked all right, maybe even pretty; she didn’t check, didn’t talk much. Language seemed so willful, words too much to bear.