THERE WAS RELIEF, to Mary-Beth, in planning her only child’s funeral. She felt guilty for the feeling. To plan a funeral meant to admit defeat, Calvin’s defeat and hers too, both of them squashed out at last not only by Tommy but the girls, and the Pigs, and Ronald Lee Book, Unofficial Mayoral Douchebag of Miami, and the teachers and parole officers and correctional officers and social workers and Your Honors, and the system of selective lifeboats (MONEY! It’s always the money!), and the cuntish polo-shirted neighbors who’d kicked Calvin like a Hacky Sack from place to place, who’d painted LUCIFER/AURORA on Mary-Beth’s Burbank Blue door, and Syl’s I told you sos, and Cal’s episode of Cops, and the snitch therapists, the whole world it felt like most usually, and of course, Mary-Beth would not leave out the person who’d run over her son.
Five times, forward and back.
The steps of planning a funeral transformed the taut pain of her chest into something coherent, productive. She remembered Calvin telling her the universe was always expanding, like a strip of dulled elastic, a rubber band at the bottom of her junk drawer. One day, without warning—Calvin had said—it would all snap. That’s how this death pain felt, a rubber band stretched beneath the bones of Mary-Beth’s feet, then secured at the top of her skull where headaches came on. She was an overblown balloon animal, skin thinning, and though her whole life had been spent waiting, she knew now, without Calvin, that annihilating snap might arrive sooner. There was some relief there, too.
Detective Carmen Durham hadn’t called Mary-Beth since she identified the body one week ago. Nobody had called her. There was no police unit left in the town nearest Gateway, the station boarded up for years (only Luckens selling bootleg T-Mobiles outside the station’s old door), so they were outsourcing the investigation to other units now. That’s what Syl said.
Ordering the finger foods, choosing a picture of Calvin for the program, selecting a nice and respectable place for a funeral—these tasks felt easier. Soothing, almost. These tasks were, simply, something Mary-Beth could do. For days Syl brought her the options—Deerfield or Palmetto or Broward, Pastor James or Pastor Finley, how many speeches, what songs—and Mary-Beth would close her eyes and picture it before offering an answer.
Syl had moved into Mary-Beth’s bedroom, Mary-Beth in the living room. This was on Mary-Beth’s insistence. She was more comfortable on her couch, ashtray one reach down, whorls of the TV glow reflecting in her special glass, upside-down little people in there, lulling her to sleep.
In the week since her arrival, Syl had begun to stink up the house, and Mary-Beth told her so. It always smelled like something now, someone else—those Indian meals from the fancy row of the Publix freezer, cloudberry angel wing perfume, lemon bug repellent, the LA Looks hair gel that farted out the bottle and into Syl’s palms. That, and all of Syl’s shoes and clothes smelled like horse shit, no matter how often Syl said that shit was just grass and grain, molasses concentrated, it was still shit. Mary-Beth hated living in grief with those smells.
Syl always hiked the AC way down on account of her hot flashes, which slicked the tile too cold. Mary-Beth had to wear her North Pole elf clothes around the house, those green and red stripes, bundled. When Syl needed formal paperwork signed, Mary-Beth would take the whole operation out the sliding glass doors to the back lawn, remove a few layers of clothing, then scribble her name a million times on the dimpled glass table. She sucked her orange baby food pouches—her toothaches worsening by the day. She wiped Misty ashes from the pages, leaving gray smears and tiny burns on words she could read but not understand. What casket? What wood? What money? The papers crinkle-shrunk in the humid air. July wrapped her body and squeezed.
Mary-Beth’s yard dipped down to the communal lake. Encircling it: identical condos like a roll of Smarties, and a few gators spread out on the shoreline sunbathing at all hours, iridescent in stillness, even at night. The Lakeness Monster she used to call each gator when Calvin was little. Back then they’d lived in Dade County on a different canal, but still—those goddamn gators. She dreamed constantly of Calvin’s legs and little feet dangling from the open jaw, then disappearing under a body of black water. Never get too close to sitting water, she’d said to Cal. Never make eye contact. And if the monster comes at you, throw your arms up, make yourself big, and run a zigzag fast as you can.
The zigzag thing. Thinking of it now, she wasn’t sure where she’d heard it, if it were ever even true.
The theme of the funeral was Calvin’s favorite things. A funeral doesn’t need a theme, the theme is funeral, Syl had said, but Mary-Beth would make sure people knew more about her son than what they’d read or heard. She wanted them to know there was so much at the core of him, so many things he loved, curiosities, even things he collected. She spent hours outside at her little table, chair wobbling on grass, clipping images from magazines and catalogues and the TV Guide too. With a glue stick, she collaged using sheets of construction paper, swatting mosquitos right onto the pages.
What she could afford in the end was the Bohner and Sons Funeral Parlor in Boynton. She hadn’t expected anyone to come. Mary-Beth had considered holding the funeral at Gateway to Grace so those monitored could attend—but she’d also wanted something nicer than the Gateway chapel with its papier-mâché crosses and hearts. She wanted tasseled embellishments for her son. A pastor in a heavy robe. Real, breakable plates. A carpet.
Bohner and Sons had one room for the service, and another for food and beverages. Arriving early, Mary-Beth and Syl wedged collages between clip stands they’d found at the Festival Flea, copper coiled hearts that held the images upright in the center of every table. The colorful sheets lit up the parlor, and this small detail will be one of the few things Mary-Beth will remember of this day, a fleeting sliver of beauty, all those glossy cutouts—Will Smith, the solar system, every breed of dog and reptile, Cartman and Chef from South Park, hermit crabs, the gecko from that Geico commercial, Kid Rock, Harrison Ford, bald eagles, Animorphs, French fries, images of surfers, wakeboarders, mountain skiers, waves from the pipeline of Hawai‘i, Sylvester Stallone, the Eye of Providence Illuminati pyramid, and of course, photos of Mary-Beth and Calvin together through the years.
Mary-Beth hadn’t expected so many people to walk in, find her sitting alone at a table, greeting her early. Ten people, then fifteen. Twenty! Prolonged eye contact as they clamped her hand between their own and said very sorry. She knew from working the gas station that direct eye contact meant two things: aggression or respect. Often, she’d found, it was a little of both.
Thirty people, then forty. Mary-Beth got up and stood near the door of Bohner’s in her black blazer and skirt, shoulder pads sewn in from the ’80s with rhinestones glinting at the seams, doing her best to remember each face. How did they all know her son? Surely, she thought, she’d know every person who’d ever mattered to him—Rhea, the server at Jack in the Box, who sometimes brought the boys food when they lived under the bridge; a few guys released from Dade Correctional; everyone from Gateway without a monitor—but most of these faces were new. After a while, Mary-Beth sat down at the table again, stopped counting.
A gilded mirror hung across from her in the parlor. She could see those entering behind her, and her own reflection, too. Syl had French braided her hair tight for the occasion, and Mary-Beth had carefully shaved her own face and neck, no chin stubble. More people entered. Walter from the pet store. Howie and the twins (ugh) who slow-hugged and regarded Syl as if she were the mother in grief. Then more strangers, whispering. Drinking from water bottles around the doorway. Plucking the collages from their clips, inspecting Mary-Beth’s work. Mary-Beth knew the look of junkies—she always knew—they stood out in the crowd like a comfort, their ill-fitting clothes and jitters, borrowed black suits, one lady still in her coochie-cutters, those who called her Fairy-Beth. But these other strangers were prancy, collared shirts and hair a single color. Who were they to Calvin? Were they undercover investigators, finally doing their job? Mary-Beth gave the third degree to anyone who’d ever stepped into Calvin’s life, asking after their faith, their motivations and intentions, but this was always and only to protect him. At that, her life’s main purpose she’d now failed. So she didn’t ask.
As she looked from person to person, only one question remained: Did one of them do it?
The priest led the way down the aisle, holy smoke rising from his thurible. The censer swung from a chain in his fat chapped hand as the room wafted wood and spice, everyone turning in their seats to watch Mary-Beth follow in her performance of mourning. Because that’s how it felt to her in that moment, like a performance. Her pinkened eyes darted from face to face, because she thought they should, because she wanted everyone to know something of her pain, of the unjustness of the whole terrible ordeal. Then she thought of that road again, the blood of it. The red and black rock of her baby. She wanted to be back at the scene of the crime, or in Calvin’s studio apartment at Gateway, or in the McDonald’s drive-thru, anywhere other than this parlor with its artificial rose scent and shampooed rug; she wanted to be anywhere she might feel him again. She accidentally smiled in all this emotion, a misfire of the mind. She remembered her own gums, her two graying front teeth and wide gaps around them. She pinched her mouth closed.
The priest spoke. Mary-Beth did not.
Instead, Mary-Beth had asked Syl to read from pages she wrote. Syl stepped up to a podium in fancy black nylons and those same stupid shoes. Howie must have brought the nylons down from Ocala specifically for this. Syl made a whole production of wiping a single tear from her eye with an old-lady handkerchief, and already Mary-Beth regretted asking her to read.
Sylvia Packman here, hello, Calvin’s Auntie Syl. I’m going to read on behalf of my sister, Mary-Beth Boyer, she began. The crowd all turned to face Mary-Beth in her seat. Syl tried for her eyes, trying for a special moment, but Mary-Beth stared straight ahead.
Anyway, these here are her words, Syl read.
Life was hard for my boy since the day he was born, and it didn’t get much better from there. He had his health issues as a baby, and they put him in a box of light, to keep him alive and breathing (I was there for that—Syl interrupted—that’s true, that was a hard time. Bless our doctors, Lord, bless them). Calvin held my finger every day just wanting his life, and I did my best to give that to him. I would continue to always give that to him.
Calvin loved to skateboard as a kid and he loved water sports. He loved all animals except mice (I’ll add, Syl said, he was an adequate stable hand), he liked cars and NASCAR, and he talked like he could be a mechanic one day, because he understood engines. There are too many things to list that my son, Calvin, loved, so I encourage you to take time with the collages I made about him. He could have had a lot of different futures if he’d had the chance.
My son was my best friend, and he overcame so much, more than most people in their whole lives, and he was thirty-five when he got murdered, only just beginning. The government fucked him, excuse my language (Lord, these are my sister’s words, remember, she chuckled), but he dealt with it with the presence of our creator and in keeping good spirits. He had demons like the rest of us (Syl paused here; she looked up and around at the crowd like her sapped face had something to say), but he worked hard to overcome these, too.
He was special, Syl read, toward the end of the speech. And God knows he will be missed, and in time, with the prayers of others, justice will be served for this horrible, horrible tragedy. I promise not to rest until it is.
Syl didn’t move from the podium when she finished reading. She fussed with the paper, which crinkled at the microphone with awkward noise. Then she closed her eyes like she might add a memory or two. Maybe something was coming to her. Say something, Mary-Beth thought. Just one, happy thing.
Syl did not, though she tripped a little as she stepped away from the podium in silence. She’d folded up the speech into a slender, white baton.
Cars trailed the hearse a few blocks to a cemetery, where Mary-Beth stood near the hole a tractor had dug, bouncing her knees. She couldn’t stay still. She looked for birds, planes, sky writing, any sign from Calvin, but there were none. Everyone gathered, looking down into that hole. Mary-Beth stayed looking up.
As the priest recited Scripture, the casket lowering in uneven, harsh jerks, Mary-Beth remembered the first time and then the many times after that Calvin had kicked in her stomach. Before he was born, they’d had their own ways of communication. When she’d asked for a signal, he’d kick, a thud so real, knocks coming in elaborate patterns like a Morse code only she understood. Moving like that, her unborn son reminded her of a dog twisting and shaking in his own dream, running after something no one else could ever know. Stouffer—that was their dog’s name, their old lab mix, Cal’s first dog. He was a good dog. He, too, had been flattened by a car.
Keep us in life and death in Your love, and, by Your grace, lead us to Your kingdom, through Your Son . . . the priest went on. Dirt hit the casket in pebbled smacks, then the three holy palmfuls were done. The dirt smelled blank, originless. The prayers, suddenly over. People moved and hugged Mary-Beth, though she didn’t lift her arms to receive them. Birds cawed, and the sound of a soft rain came on, leaves stinging with drops. Genie or Nicola, she couldn’t be bothered to tell which niece was which, said to one of the strangers: He was a friend to some and an enemy to others. Mary-Beth pocketed this as something to ream Syl about later. Disrespectful little bitches—the girls weren’t even wearing black, not even chinos, they wore jeans, for Christ’s sake! She imagined pushing the talking twin into the hole, but didn’t want her anywhere near Cal.
No Tommy in all this. She’d looked for him at Bohner’s and again here. No flashed badges either, no cuffs suddenly revealed to click behind the proper person, her son’s killer. The disappointments would always keep coming.
Mary-Beth looked down at last. It seemed so shallow, for a grave. Lime rock and sand, not as dark and endless as she’d expected. Cal was right there. From her jacket pocket she pulled a green plastic Citra Sipper plug, the hard straw used to jab citrus, to drink right from an orange—Calvin’s favorite pastime. She tossed it in the hole, and it let out a tiny, unsatisfying plink on the casket before rolling off into the dirt. Mary-Beth said, You keep that, baby.
No more tears. She wouldn’t give that to Syl, or the girls, these strangers, whoever else was watching. You keep that. She held her eyes on the wood shine. She could see dark clouds rolling, stretched and distorted, in the lacquered reflection. It occurred to her that this, this view here, would be the last time she’d ever see her son. Of all the surfaces that had ever divided them—phone receivers, panels of bulletproof glass, brick walls, the chain-link fence between the underbelly of the bridge and the highway, the windows of her car, of police cars, windows upon windows upon windows—this would be the last.
Mary-Beth could not immediately situate the sound. She thought, Oh, even more people, when the crowd came screaming. Fifty now, maybe sixty, rounding a stand of trees. But these new guests had signs, and those signs had photos of her son. She thought, Oh, where have these signs come from, she hadn’t printed any, and what an effort to have made them. It wasn’t until the crowd drew closer that she could make out what was what—the crowd in green wigs and stretched burglar masks, and then she could hear them, too—the prancy strangers around her joining in, the priest asking for silence, robe spinning—then one massive chorus: God Hates Calvin Boyer. All Pedos Fry in Hell. Justice for Survivors. Save Our Children.
Mug shots of Calvin, her boy looking frightened, teeth crossed like pick-up sticks. The signs bobbed up and down.
And on other signs, enlarged yearbook photos of Linzie King. Elastic choker, chapped lips and blunt bangs, Linzie, a little girl then. Red letters stamped over her cheeks, dripping like movie blood. The signs read HER TURN.