Dead To You

34. peonies

It was a word I had never heard of before that evening, but the Rosenbloom-Prestons were hosting a repast in their home after the funeral, after the priest concluded the service with a prayer that he crossed over his chest and we all stood as the pallbearers gripped onto the brass handles of an vacant casket, careful and synchronized footsteps up the aisle and out of the sanctuary then down the front steps of the cathedral.

Noel was one of them, on the side closest to me, his chin finally lifted from his chest, but his gaze was hollow and still, like it had nowhere to land, and for whatever reason, it hurt worse to see the dissociation creeping in there into his eyes than it did when they were filled with glimmering tears. My mother and I waited in our pew as the rest of her family spilled out from the front of the sanctuary and walked past us in a single file, and I tilted my head just enough to catch a glimpse of the casket being loaded into the back of a hearse, not realizing that it was our turn to walk out until my mother briefly touched me on the shoulder.

The repast—which evidently was the name for the meal had after a funeral—technically started in forty-five minutes but in the invitation that had been sent to us the Rosenbloom-Prestons stated that we could head over to their house as soon as the funeral was over if we wanted. I wasn't exactly sure that was what I wanted, but my mom thought it made more sense than going home or something until the repast started.

"We don't have to go," she reminded me in the car, after typing their address into the GPS and mounting her phone to a clip attached to the air conditioner vents, blasting cool air against the exposed skin of my legs before I reached over and pointed them away from me. "Not if you don't want to, Ivy."

I nodded. "I know, but...I should go. And we already told her mom we would be there."

It took my mother noticeably less time to absorb the grandeur of the Rosenbloom-Preston mansion than it had for me that first night I brought them a hopefully decent lasagna and a plate of snickerdoodle cookies earlier that week, still daunted as I gazed up from the passenger side at the enormity of what was somehow supposed to be a home behind all that polished stone and amoretti fountains.

The repast was held in the back garden, pale beige gravel crunching beneath my heeled sandals before I hesitated a few steps from the back door we had been led through by a man I could've only assumed was a butler or some sort of maître d', my eyes roaming over the white tents assembled on a vibrantly emerald lawn with a full-length charcuterie table shaded underneath one, uncovered oak tables below the others. White plates were tiered like ceramic pillars beside rolled sage cloth napkins with gold flatware neatly arranged, floral centerpieces with baby's breath and eucalyptus leaves combined with pale pink peonies attracting an impressively large bumble bee across the table.

There was an open bar near the patio, a bartender dressed in a vest with a name plate glinting in the setting sun shaking a cocktail into a martini glass, near an out of season rose bush that fluttered in the breeze like the lights strung up around the back garden.

I lingered there, hesitant, for a moment too long as I reminded myself that until that week, I had never even heard of a funeral repast before so it wasn't like I knew what one should look like, or feel like, but as a silver platter was held out to me with an assortment of canapes by a server named George, according to the engravement on his name plate with a pointed remark about how the ones with smoked salmon were especially popular tonight, I found myself furrowing my eyebrows in response.

After politely rebuffing the appetizers, I timidly treaded further into the back garden as genteel laughter erupted from under the same tent as the charcuterie table, hands gripping goblet steams and sweaty old-fashioned glasses, and I wondered for a moment if they were talking about Bridgette, sharing some old anecdote everyone else had almost forgotten about, but then I realized that they were actually discussing a road that needed to be repaved and speculating about their tax dollars.