Ashleigh

"Ashleigh is dead." Ashleigh with a "l-e-i-g-h," the girl with two names, a nick and first. Like she needed just a little bit of extra space for living.

I can't think of what's the best way to get bad news. I always thought it would be worse to deliver it, to have to suckerpunch someone like that. Anyway I got it over the phone, from Ashleigh's brother. From the man who used to be Ashleigh's brother, perhaps, is more accurate. I thought at first that those thousands of miles of sparking wires had spared him, but later I realized that he was merely unmanned. All his senses debilitated except sound, a disconnected voice failing at redemption, no warm skin to press against or muscle-corded arms to offer in an embrace. As I booked my tickets home I imagined handsome Jackson with damp eyelashes, the phone pressed against rumpled trousers, reddened fingers threading themselves through the forgiving cord. I wanted to sit there with him, together and alone.

On the plane home a day later I sat next to a man from Glasgow, his accent a melodious warble I could barely understand. He intoned about exchange rates in NY in that accent, where an American would have chatted, while I studied his ruddy face and long white fingers and wondered how he managed to have both. I fought his friendliness, that siren call to tell my secrets, worried that to speak to him of Ashleigh would be to try to possess her loss as my own personal tragedy. Me, me, me, look at this hell I'm going through, hear how noble I am in my memories, and rest assured that this is all part of what makes me interesting. And yet I willed him to notice my bloodshot eyes, my grey skin, the rasp of my voice, and was silently outraged when he didn't.

My mother met me at the airport, even though my flight arrived in the middle of the night. She stood quietly against the barrier as me and the rest of Flight 0026 from London poured out into the arrivals hall. I got close to her and we said nothing as I struggled with my overstuffed bag, and then we hugged as if programmed, the joyous meetings of families all around us jostling our carefully silent space. My mother took my carry-on and slid it over her forearm into the crook of her right elbow, encircling my shoulders with her left arm. I leaned into her, grateful for the sudden intimacy.

"God, Mom, I can't believe this is happening."

"So much for 'how was your flight," she said, her lips pressed together and curving up with bitterness at the edges. When I didn't respond, she added, "I'm so sorry, baby."

"I just don't know what happened." We were outside in the parking lot by now, inky blue cold biting through my coat, intensified by the weird and lovely silence of unexpectedly early morning. I felt the need to whisper despite the passing of cars and other lively comers and goers.

From there we said all the things everyone says in the shock of sudden death. I always expected that when my turn came to experience loss, I would be the one who had something new to say, something insightful or at least moving. But no, we had imbibed human heritage like everyone else and I asked the same trite questions, received the same vague and unsatisfactory answers.

She knew only a few details, but as we drove home I made her retell them again and again. I forced myself to make the images ever clearer, to sear into my imagined memory the unbroken headlights nestled in twisted metal, still throwing pools of light against the sheen of sweating pavement. Ashleigh's dark chocolate hair and that single shock of ruby against white skin now translucent, that smiling girl of yearbooks and collages now waxen and empty in the pale moonlight. I struggled to picture more and more and savored the feeling of being overwhelmed.

It didn't take us long to get home, since very few cars traveled the back roads at that hour. I didn't bother putting on pajamas, but stripped down to my underwear and slumped into the cool comfort of my own bed. I imagined a night of tears and brooding and staring at walls. But I slept so deeply that I felt guilty the next morning, and lied to my mother about restlessness and fragmented nightmares.

Ashleigh had been waked twice the day before, but there was a final viewing this morning before the funeral service. I showered and pulled on my scratchy black pants, the only pair I owned. A Celine Dion ballad was playing softly on my alarm clock radio, which I had forgotten to turn all the way off. I frowned at myself in the still steamy mirror, wondering if my legs had always looked so short, and went to blow dry my hair, something I never do. I despaired at how plain I looked, realizing that I wanted to be striking enough to distract Jackson from his own grief. I wanted to walk in and see him standing next to Ashleigh's grotesquely beautiful casket, lifting dull tortured eyes to meet mine as I got closer, my entrance awakening something primal behind them.

But it didn't happen that way. My mother drove us to the funeral home, fiddling with the radio buttons and making the car swerve the whole way. I assumed she was nervous, but I was nauseous when we arrived. Silently irritated, I followed her inside and watched her swoop towards the guest book, the director and the solemn line weaving into the main room, seemingly all in one awkward motion. Although several people milled around on the sunny white tiles, I didn't recognize anyone. I grabbed my mother's arm, hissing at her to stay still. She nodded like a chastised child while I shouldered her to the end of the line.

I couldn't stand still. My calves ached from my too-high heels, and my hands kept fluttering to my rumpled ponytail. But then, everyone seemed self-conscious. The line seemed to rumble with low, timid voices, each trying to manage a balance between stoicism and sensationalism.

One elderly woman harassed her husband, asking again and again, "Did she see how pretty she looked in her obituary picture? Was that her graduation photo?" He just stooped next to her, leaning on her imperious arm, his eyes frightened and uncomprehending. She didn't seem to realize that he never answered.

Someone else, a dowdy-looking girl about my own age, whined "God, I can't imagine what her mother's feeling. I think that's her, she's wearing sunglasses. What are you going to say to her, I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know if I should just give her a hug or something?" I figured she was someone from Ashleigh's university, but I resented her for having gotten ahead of me on the line. I had known her longer, after all, and I knew exactly who her mother was, and her mother knew me, and if I had seen the obituary picture I'd probably know exactly when and where it was taken. I huffed out my breath trying to suppress these urgent bratty thoughts.

The line moved forward a bit and I caught a glimpse of the casket at the far end of the room. It rested surprisingly high on its pedestal, suffused by an eerie periwinkle light. Monstrous wreaths woven with photos and messages crowded its corners, proudly prosaic on their wooden stands like those little white boards people use to teach their children the alphabet. I wished that people had sent potted plants and lined them up in front of Ashleigh instead. I wondered which wreathes the family had picked out, and which were sympathetic gestures. I looked for Jackson but he was nowhere.

**

One stride in slow motion and I was by her side again, searching her silent face. There was that halo of blonde hair I had always been jealous of, impossibly iridescent. There were the marble bones of her face, her rosy blood no longer blooming beneath the fragile layers of her skin like a hot breath on frozen glass. Ashleigh had been beautiful, and so was this cold impersonator. But they were not the same. I imagined her lying on a steel table in a room cluttered with silver instruments and plastic containers, a man in a white coat carefully painting over the blue shadows under her eyes. What had he thought of Ashleigh? Did her youth, her striking looks, make that hour different from all those other dead bodies from over the years? Did he stop to smooth her hair away from her lovely face, to wonder whether she was a good student, whether she had gotten along with her parents ?

I put my hand against her cold, hard forehead, cupped her downy hairline with my palm. With my other hand I smoothed a wrinkle in the satin of her gown, feeling it crinkle like tissue paper beneath a new dress shirt. Perhaps you weren't supposed to touch her once she was in the casket, perhaps they had made her into a shell which would collapse away from the slightest pressure. I was scared of her, and ashamed. She was like those mannequins you're never supposed to touch in fancy department stores.

A moment later Ashleigh's father was standing beside me, looking down at his daughter. He smelled slightly alcoholic and stood too close, leaning into the casket, resting his weight against the glossy wood.

As if talking to himself, he asked, "when did you get in." He used no intonation at all.

"Just last night. I came as soon as...I mean when Jackson called me..."

"Hmm. Well you know what happened then. It was a bad accident."

It was a ridiculous thing to say but I found I couldn't look at him. "Yes, sir. I know. I'm..." I paused and panicked, wondering whether I was still close enough to this family to need to say something more profound. But I desperately didn't want to say the wrong thing. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Hmm. Yes, thank you. Yes, it's terrible. All these people."

I had to assume he wasn't really listening to me, that these fragmented words just floated out him without preparation or logic. I tried to bring him back to me, away from his lonely cloudy place. "How is everyone? How are you all holding up?"

I think I startled him because he tipped backwards a bit and then turned to look at me as if I'd just stepped up next to him, and he even smiled a bit. He hadn't seen me in a long time. We could have just run into each other on the street, outside the local coffee shop. We could be exchanging nothing but polite platitudes.

"Oh, you know how it is. We're getting by. Everyone's been..people have tried to be there for us."

"That's good. You really need that...support, you know...when things happen, it's what makes the difference." And what the hell do you know about it, I silently added to myself. "I saw your wife, she's so strong. You all are, meeting all these people."

"Hm, yes. We do what we have to."

We were silent for another moment, staring down at Ashleigh again. I fixed my eyes on a spot just below her left breast, where there was a slight pull in the fabric of her gown. I wondered if anyone else had noticed it, and who had overlooked it. I didn't recognize the dress as Ashleigh's own. Had someone had to go out and buy it, specifically to bury her in?

"I haven't seen Jackson yet. I'd like to...to offer him my condolences. There were so close, I know. He must be taking it so hard...I mean, you all must be...I mean of course you would be..."

Quietly, he told me that "Jackson is not here. He'll be at the, at the service, but this is the third wake, you know. There've been so many people," he added, as if this explained the absence of Ashleigh's only sibling, their now-only-child.