Can’t Keep a Good Girl Down: A Roller Coaster Ride through the Other Side of Nashville
Today, September 11, five days after the call that changed everything, a dozen of us are driving five-and-a-half hours up to Lafayette, Indiana, to attend John’s visitation and funeral. This is first visit to Lafayette and West Lafayette, home of Purdue University, John’s alma mater.
To cut down on cars, save a little cash, and to allow everyone to travel together, Neal Cappuccino rented us a minivan. Chark reserved a couple rooms at a nearby Days Inn, and John Delworth arranged for a few folks to stay at a friend’s apartment in Lafayette. All this happened without me knowing how. The van, the hotel rooms, just sort of appeared. I knew I was going to Indiana, but the idea of planning the trip never occurred to me.
Because we had to drive straight to the visitation, I had to get up early enough to wash and blow-dry my hair, apply a full palette of makeup and put on my most-modest black dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. Even at eight in the morning, and even in September, the sun beats down through a haze of thick, humid air. Hopefully the van won’t be a sweaty, stinky rolling sauna, thus ruining all of my handiwork.
The next 24 hours whiz by. We arrived to the visitation right on time. I climb out of the van feeling knots in my stomach. Julie, Dana, Alyson, and I make an immediate detour to the restroom. I take a deep breath and turn to Julie, standing at the mirror next to me. Without words, we say, “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” I’m not ready for the uncomfortable conversations with family members and friends I’ve never met. I’m really not ready to see the coffin.
Once we rejoin the guys, we all make our way to the viewing room. I offer warm greetings and condolences to John’s father, John’s older brother Mike and Mike’s wife, Connie. Mike and Connie introduce me to John’s mother. She’s a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with short, dark hair. She’s wearing a smart black suit. She looks nothing like John, who was fair, blonde, and solid. I have no clue what to say to her.
A few minutes later, John Mercer, John’s best friend since grade school, approaches Warren and me. Mercer (that’s what everyone calls him), greets us as if he’s welcoming old friends into his home. His smooth, fair skin and a round, open face show no signs of lost sleep, of nights spent weeping (unlike mine).
On the opposite end of the room, John’s high school buddy Keith Hajjar, a drummer who lives in New Orleans now, is chatting with Jay McDowell and Jay’s girlfriend, Wendy. Gentle and cool, Wendy does not have one hair out of place on her dark brown bob. Her deep red lipstick and thickly lined eyes are both perfectly drawn and smearless. She’s wearing a black pencil skirt and a short-sleeved blouse that has no wrinkles, though I know they drove up this morning like we did. I admire her ability to look so good all the time, even at Robert’s in the summer. No matter how much I fuss, hairs go astray, mascara smears, or the skirt ends up sticking to my shins.
A pair of newlyweds from Atlanta, Kat and Matt, are in the middle of what looks like an intense conversation in the opposite corner of the room. Matt was one of the many people that called Warren the day of. So was Keith.
In that instant, as if he knew I had just thought about him, Keith walks over to Mercer, Warren, and me.
As typical of the past few days, I’m only partly paying attention to their small talk. “Do you guys still hang out at that honky tonk place, the one with the boots?” Keith asks.
“All the time,” Warren says. No one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the person-sized mahogany box, bookended with floral arrangements, that takes center stage. No one wants to face it, not yet — except for the silver-haired woman in the black pantsuit currently bowed over the coffin. Who is she? An aunt? A high school teacher? No clue.
Chark walks over to join us. He waves his hand toward a large bouquet to the right of the coffin. “The purple ones are from all of us: me and Jenny, you and Warren, Blair and Neal. What do you think?”
“It’s really pretty,” I assure him. “Purple is my favorite color.” With Sympathy flowers — another detail my friends took care of on my behalf. I’m sure glad someone else can function more effectively than me.
A balding gentleman with a bowling ball gut and a dull grey suit approaches Warren and me. “Hi, I’m Jim,” he says with a firm handshake. “I’m a friend of John’s dad. I’ve known John and Mike since they were babies. My wife and I live down the street from John Senior. and his wife, Etty.”
Warren and I politely introduce ourselves as John’s roommate, and John’s — pause — girlfriend.
“Oh, yes…,” the portly man says. “I heard there was a recently exed girlfriend.”
Well there you go. I am not “widow,” I am not just a “friend.” I am the recently exed girlfriend. Do they have a box for that when you fill out a credit card application or renew your driver’s license? What a terrible ID.
Thankfully, Jim excuses himself to join a plain, middle-aged couple he seems to know well. They are most likely other friends of the family that don’t feel compelled to introduce themselves to the out-of-place young folks huddling together in various spots in the visitation room.
I continue to steal glances at the person-sized mahogany box. What does he look like? He fell and presumably broke his neck. What about his head? Does he look “normal” or disfigured? I’m terrified to look. I want to remember him handsome and vibrant and alive. I don’t want this image — a shell in heavy make-up — to stick when I think of him.
The coffin’s upper lid is open, exposing John’s body from the chest up. I imagine John leaping out of the person-sized mahogany box, as if all of this were just a twisted joke. As if he had been in a coma all this time and suddenly regained consciousness in the middle of visitation. At the same time, I realize the horror of this scenario and shake my head to clear the thought.
“Do you wanna…” Warren whispers in my ear. It’s time. As I approach the edge of the coffin, I’m relieved to see his body looks as normal as it could look with loads of makeup. He’s wearing the blue suit Cathy, from the funeral home, mentioned on the phone. I’ve never seen him in a suit before. The most dressed up I’ve ever seen John was the khaki pants and long-sleeved polo shirts he wore to work.
“That doesn’t look like John at all,” Warren says. I wrinkle my brows. “They put so much make up on him that you can’t see the black circles under his eyes. He always had those, even when he wasn’t hung over. I think he came out of the womb with dark circles under his eyes.” I didn’t notice. The shock of seeing him lying there eclipsed the finite details of his complexion. His hair looks fine.
I close my eyes to say a prayer. I guess that’s what you’d call it, though I’m not really experienced at such things. Silently to myself, to him, I say, I hope you are at peace wherever you are. I’m sorry I never had the nerve to tell you that I love you. I wanted to so many times and I guess I was stupid for waiting for you to tell me first. But I do love you. I always will. Maybe you will find your soulmate up there.
After the visitation, Mercer takes the Nashville posse to Lafayette Brewing Company, a local brew pub with surprisingly good beer. We spread out along the long, cherry wood bar and order a variety of stouts, lagers and amber ales — all made on site — as well as burgers, sandwiches and thick-cut French fries. The smell of yeast from the adjacent brewery permeates the dark wood walls.
Alyson, who found a spot a few barstools down from me, walks over after the waitress takes our order.
“You know…I think I’m going to ride back with Cat tonight. Is that okay?”.
Suddenly, a wave of guilt washes over me. I realize with all of the activity and people and my effort to keep up with everything going on, I neglected my rock-solid good friend, who sat in a hot, sweaty van for five hours and attended a visitation mainly to give me support. And I barely recognized it.
“Oh no, really?” I say. I want her to know I’m not mad, and I suddenly want to tell her how much her presence here means to me, but I’m too chicken to be that open. “Well, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to stay the night. It’s not like going to a funeral in Indiana is the most fun thing in the world.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, it’s just, you know, Cat has to work in the morning and he’s afraid he’ll fall asleep because we left so early this morning. Everyone’s here, so you’ll be okay, right? I can stay if you want me to.”
“I’ll be fine. Cat will appreciate the company. I’m really glad you came.” I can’t express how crappy I feel for ignoring her. “I’ll call you when we get home.”
I watch Alyson and Cat make their way down the long corridor of the brew pub and then turn to my first beer of the night. Boy do I need this.
“Well, the visitation went well, don’t you think?” Dana asks me, leaning in toward my shoulder. She’s not making small talk. She really wants to know what I think.
I take a gulp from my pint glass. “Yeah. It was nice to meet John’s mom finally. She’s so tiny and quiet — not at all like John. He didn’t talk about her much. I remember that he said she got into religion after she and John’s Dad divorced, but that’s about it.”
“But how are you doing after all of that?” Dana pressed on. “It was pretty intense, seeing…everything…”
“I’m okay,” I lie. “It was a shock to finally see him, and to see him like that.” I tell her about the phone call from funeral home Cathy and take a sizable gulp of beer.
There’s so much more I could say, so many thoughts — about my paralyzing grief, the deep sadness of realizing he’s really gone, of how grateful I am to have a vanful of friends to be with me — buzzing through my brain that I can’t express. Not because Dana wouldn’t give me her ear, but because there is a blockage between my brain and my mouth. I keep my thoughts and feelings behind the barrier like I usually do, behind my wide smile and “innocent” blue eyes. When we get back home, I should write in my journal, I think. I should have been writing all along, but the notion of picking up the pen seems like such an effort. Still does. Tomorrow. Starting tomorrow.
