Onion got a strange look on her face and held up an index finger. We had just sat down at our table in the crowded cafe for lunch.
“Wait a minute. Listen! Hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Dave.
I instantly knew what Onion was talking about. “I hear it. Something’s up.”
It was one of those unusual times when you could hear and feel and see it all around, that slight electric buzz that says something big has happened or is about to happen. Maybe it was the way people were hunched together at the tables, or standing in small groups rather than sitting, or the “floaters” who were moving methodically from one table to another as if on a mission to spread the news, whatever it was.
One of those floater-messengers appeared at our table. I knew that whatever the news was, it must be pretty big because our messenger was a tall metal-head wearing all black and sporting an ugly neck tattoo, someone I don’t think the three of us had ever spoken to. He stood there grimly, like an angel of death or something, staring darkly down at us as if what he was about to say would forever change our world. His black shirt even had an ominous flaming skull above the name of some heavy metal rock band I never heard of, as if our messenger knew this morning when he got dressed that he would be delivering awful news.
“Yes?” Onion finally asked, sounding more annoyed than curious.
“Did you guys know Maggie Sutherland?”
I shook my head. Dave shrugged. We glanced at each other, drawing a blank.
“Yeah, I know her. Well, sort of,” Onion backtracked. “I went to grade school with her. We haven’t talked in years.”
I guess Dave and I still looked clueless, so Onion helped us out. “She’s the short little cheerleader with the long curly hair who only smiles when she’s cheerleading.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering her now. In four years, I had walked by her maybe a dozen times. Onion was right—she never smiled.
“So what about her?” Onion asked.
Our black-clad messenger’s eyes flashed. “She’s dead.”
Onion took a short, sharp breath. “What happened?”
He hesitated, almost as if savoring the suspense. “Her dad found her body in her room last night. They think she had a heart attack from being anorexic. They said she only weighed seventy-five pounds, all skin and bones.”
He said that last part with a kind of creepy satisfaction.
“Wow,” said Onion, looking away from all of us.
I didn’t know what to say. Dave didn’t say anything either.
The heavy metal death messenger nodded once, his terrible message delivered, then turned to continue spreading the news.
“Another dead one,” Dave said flatly. He stared down at his empty coffee cup.
Unlike the private funeral for Paul, the line at the funeral home where Maggie was being waked went out the door and around the block. Most of the mourners were students, with just a sprinkling of teachers and other adults. Since Onion knew Maggie’s parents, she thought it would be disrespectful not to go but didn’t want to go alone. Dave couldn’t or wouldn’t attend, so it was just me and Onion. I think Dave had had enough of death for one year. Onion had borrowed her mother’s car to get us there.
As we waited in the slow-moving line, we heard all the cliché remarks about “another death in the family,” that we’ve “lost two in a row now,” and “much too soon,” and so on and so on. When we finally arrived at the front of the room, I could see there were flowers absolutely everywhere, with more still arriving.
As we crept our way forward to the front, we could see that Maggie was dressed in her cheerleader outfit, with two pompons on either side of her.
“Oh, no,” Onion whispered to me in surprising indignation. “Our cheerleaders don’t use pompons! That’s the pompon squad! Don’t they know the difference?”
“Do you want to tell her parents that, or would you prefer to yank the pompons out yourself?” I replied softly. “Let her parents bury her the way they want to. It’s none of our business.”
As we grew still closer to the open casket, I saw that like with most dead people, her face had been painted a living hue that wasn’t quite accurate, as if they had tried to make her look natural in death but hadn’t quite succeeded.
Then it was finally our turn to kneel in front of her if we wanted to say a silent prayer or goodbye or whatever.
“Go ahead,” Onion said quietly. “I’ll wait here.”
Since I thought it would be rude if neither of us went, I kind of lumbered forward and knelt.
Up close, her tightly closed mouth was just as I remembered her from our few hallway encounters since I don’t think she ever said a word to me. What was most unsettling though was how sunken her cheeks looked, probably the reason for the heavy-handed makeup. I guess not eating would do that to you.
I bowed my head, figuring that people were watching me. At least it felt like all eyes were staring at the back of my head, true or not.
So long, Maggie. Sorry you didn’t eat enough.
I stood up. Then, as if it were irresistible, I slowly reached out and touched her peaceful, folded hands with my fingertips—why, I didn’t know.
Her hands were shockingly cold, like she had been in a freezer or something. I instinctively snapped my arm away, realizing almost immediately that if anything looked rude, that sure did. I swallowed hard to keep from make a sound as I backed away, wondering now if my mom would have been as cold had I responded to her beckoning hand and given her a hug the day she died.
When I returned to Onion’s side, I half expected to see at least a few scornful faces for that bizarre action. Instead, no one seemed to be paying any attention at all.
Except Onion.
“What was that all about?” she asked quietly.
Two people brushed wordlessly past us to take my place by the casket.
“Nothing,” I whispered back, still a bit rattled. “Her hands were ice cold, that’s all. I was surprised.”
“Well, of course they’re cold!” she whispered, louder than she had to. “What did you expect? She’s a stiff! With no heartbeat or circulation, metabolism is no longer possible and hence no body heat is produced. As a result, the body cools down to the ambient air temperature. Sometimes that process is accelerated by the embalming fluids the mortician uses to replace the blood, depending how soon the body is prepared for viewing. Didn’t you listen to anything they tried to teach you in anatomy?”
I cringed throughout her explanation as I frantically signaled her to not to whisper so loud.
“Will you keep it down?” I tried not to raise my voice, too, as I glanced around, desperately hoping no one was eavesdropping on our conversation. To my relief, no one was.
I took one last look at Maggie before we moved on to express our condolences to her family. It suddenly seemed strange that I would never see her walk by me again. Even though we were never friends, the hallways were going to be yet another person empty now, just a little less crowded in a sad sort of way.
I never knew what to say to family members at a funeral. Sometimes I’d listen to what the people in front of me say so I didn’t repeat it and sound like a lame copycat, but no matter what I finally blurted out, I always managed to sound lame anyway.
It was finally our turn to greet the family, her mother and father first. Since I had never met either of them before, I wasn’t going to throw my arms around them like I had seen a few of the cheerleaders do. The only reason I knew who all the cheerleaders were was because they had shown up wearing their uniforms in an obvious show of camaraderie. That was a nice touch, although an expected one.
Onion nudged me to go first.
I politely shook Mrs. Sutherland’s hand. “So sorry for your loss,” I said, not having heard that from anyone ahead of me.
Fortunately, that didn’t sound too terribly lame.
She shook my hand rather mechanically, having already shaken what must have been hundreds of hands before mine with hundreds more to come. I know wakes are meant to give survivors a chance to find some closure in addition to honoring the dead, but a long, crowded one like this had to be really grueling. So I wasn’t upset at all when she just gave a faint sigh in response, her expression totally blank as if she had not only run out of words but emotions, too.
Mr. Sutherland was another story. He still had his emotions, all right—he looked angry and on edge, as if somehow this was all our fault, and here we were back at the scene of the crime. He fixed me with smoldering, bloodshot eyes, ones that nearly made me admit guilt by looking away rather than continue to return his gaze.
I was hesitant to shake his hand, afraid of being caught in a relentless bone-crushing grip, but I didn’t want to seem impolite at a time like this, and so I took a chance and stuck out my hand.
His grip was surprisingly soft, and I realized he had no idea of the anger he was projecting.
I relaxed a bit. “Sorry about your daughter. I wish . . . I wish it could have been me instead.”
If I could have done a face-palm without anyone noticing, I would have. Where on Earth did that come from? I didn’t dare look at Onion to see her reaction.
Mr. Sutherland looked startled and his entire appearance softened. “Thank you. But I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m George,” I said.
“Oh,” he said brightly, as if his daughter had spoken about me all the time, when in reality I don’t think his daughter even knew my name.
Mr. Sutherland’s expression turned profoundly sad and his shoulders dipped low. “I’m glad it wasn’t you, George. This shouldn’t happen to anyone. She lost weight so gradually, so slowly, and you think, ‘look, she’s still just your little girl . . .’”
For a few seconds nothing happened, and then he threw his arms around me and squeezed a bit too hard.
I stepped aside so Onion could face him. Her eyes were wide open as if she were stunned.
“So sorry,” she said simply, then briefly touched his arm.
And she turned to look at me as if I had sprouted wings or something.
A few steps away was a young boy who sat on the floor playing with some toy cars. He looked to be no more than four or five. So close to Maggie’s parents, the boy could only be Maggie’s little brother. He was wearing black dress pants and a white shirt with a red bowtie. The mourners streaming by ignored him.
I squatted down to say hello.
“Say, that’s a spiffy bowtie. Wish I had one like that.”
He shrugged and kept pushing two of the cars across the carpet.
“Are they having a race?”
“Yep.” He kept his focus on his cars.
“Who’s winning?”
“This one.” He paused and pointed to a blue car.
“Oh. Does he have a name?”
“Bluey.”
“That makes sense.”
He smiled a little, but still wouldn’t look up.
“Is that your favorite car?”
“Yep.”
I decided this conversation was much better than talking about what happened to his sister.
“Do you have lots of cars?”
“Yep. I only brought four of them. Daddy said that was enough.”
“Is that how old you are?”
He nodded.
“Well, then, that’s one for every birthday you’ve ever had, isn’t it?”
His face brightened as he realized that was true.
“Say, I’ll bet you brought your fastest cars, didn’t you?”
He nodded again, more vigorously.
“Well, good luck and keep racing, okay? I hope Bluey wins.”
He finally looked up at me.
“Okay. My name is Tommy. What’s your name?”
“I’m George.”
He stuck out his little hand.
“Well, thanks for coming to see my dead sister, George.”
As we shook, I had to catch myself with my other hand to keep from falling backward.
“Of course, Tommy. I’m so very sorry.”
He went back to pushing his cars and then paused.
“George, do you think Maggie is in heaven now like everybody says?”
“Sure. What do you think?”
He looked up at me with a worried expression.
“I don’t know where heaven is, so I won’t see her anymore.”
I had no answer for that.
Tommy went back to his cars.
“Goodbye, Tommy. Take good care of yourself, and your family. I’m sure that’s what your sister would have wanted. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I briefly patted his head, hoping to offer a bit more comfort than I could in words.
When I stood up and turned around, I was startled to see tears running freely down Onion’s cheeks.
“Come on,” she said. She practically pushed me out of building.
When we got outside, she glanced around then kissed me hard on the lips, bending me backward.
Then she grabbed me by the lapels and shook me.
“I never kissed you, got it?”
“Well, I . . .” I didn’t dare make a move to wipe the slobber running down my chin, a combination of spit and tears.
“You’re a sweet, sensitive guy, but if you ever tell anyone I said that you’ll really be sorry. Understand?”
“Sure, uh—”
“Good.”
And she let me go.
I followed her to her mother’s car, hastily wiping my face with my handkerchief only when I certain she wasn’t looking.
We got in the car and she drove me wordlessly home, sniffing from time to time. When I got out, she raced away before I barely had the chance to close the door.
That was the first and only time Onion kissed me, or even paid me a nice compliment. And since it was always wise to take Onion’s threats seriously, we never spoke about it again, just as she demanded. But it was something I’ll never forget.
That night I wrote a short poem about what happed to Maggie. Like my poem about the anxious soldier at The Post, I’m not sure why I wrote it, but here it is:
THIN IS IN
“Pity the starving,”
He sighs at his party,
While an unknown diet
Rages in his daughter’s room.