Christine rounded the dinner table placing folded napkins atop of plates as she set silverware off to the side. The turkey roast had just finished in the oven, and her husband was standing in the kitchen preparing the carving knife.
The setting quite reminded her of the little illustrations in the magazines her mother used to purchase during the holidays, and she smiled knowing her mother would be proud of her work.
She was admiring the baking dish filled with homemade mash potatoes when her three children came running into the dining room, shaking the room and all its contents. Circling the table, her youngest shrieked as she was tagged it, and turned around frantically to take revenge on her elder brothers.
"Hey!" Christine yelled, wide-eyed as her gaze flickered between the kids and the pointed china cabinet filled with priceless dishware. "Stop running, someone's going to get hurt!"
Her youngest was just an arm's length from her eldest when the tuning notes of a violin drifted from upstairs, and they all seized their antics, turning towards the archway closest to the staircase. The children all hurried out of the dining room to the end of the staircase, and she followed along, listening to the familiar opening notes of Vivaldi's "L'auttuno."
She watched as her father flowed steadily down the steps, his eyes locked on where his feet were stepping as his mind remained on the violin tucked beneath his chin. She smiled when he reached the final step, and all her children gathered around him, watching in awe as he played like he'd written the song himself.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," the pastor's words sliced clean through her daydream, his voice catching at a particular instance that brought her attention back to the world around her, "for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
She swallowed, her throat hard and dry as a rock. It was quite funny—well, perhaps not that funny—how easily she could forget where she was this past couple of days.
She stood before the casket alone, a few faces offering a solemn smile of assurance and either a hug or a weak shake of her hand. Some faces she recognized—people her father had worked with during his travels, a few family members she'd not seen in a long time, and lastly Mama.
The old lady approached her, limping slightly due to a bad hip. "My dear," she said, taking both of Christine's hands between her own, "you look beautiful today."
Christine's lips curled into something that she hoped resembled a genuine smile. "Thank you."
Mama shook her head and gave a small squeeze to Christine's hands. "Are you sure you're going to be okay spending the night alone? I can always get one of my neighbors to look after Mr. Valerius, you know."
Christine shook her head and squeezed back. "I'm sure, Mama. Thank you, but I will be fine." Mama's eyes began to roll, and her mouth opened to insist further on her proposal, but Christine cut her off, "I have already spent the past four nights on my own, another few aren't going to hurt me. Besides," she added, "Meg promised she'd be here by Friday, and then we'd have a whole girls weekend together." She tossed in another smile, hoping it was convincing enough.
Despite Mama's raised brow, she shook Christine's hands in a gesture of trust and sighed. "Alright then, my dear. Just... don't hesitate to call if you need something, or if you run out of my ham and baked mac-n-cheese."
Christine laughed as they released hands. "I promise I won't."
Mama offered her one last unsteady smile—one Christine could tally with all the others—and turned to head back towards her car.
Everyone was gone now all except for the funeral directors who were patiently waiting to the side. It is part of their job, she thought solemnly, to wait. Even if it meant they had to bury her as well.
Christine turned towards her father's closed casket, and then towards the funeral spray at the head of it. She recalled how her father would purchase a rose for every day that her mother was not feeling well and how her mother had laughed when there were soon three vases filled with roses in her hospital room.
"At this point, you might as well plant me a garden," she joked, her voice weak.
He understood she was joking by the small, playful twinkle of her eyes, but she had sparked something inside of him, and soon enough their entire flowerbed was filled to the brim with roses. He had stained his favorite button-down with dirt from the garden, not thinking to change his clothes after he'd returned from buying out just about every home improvement store with a gardening center in town. It didn't seem to upset him one bit, Christine recalled, as she'd never seen him smile so much since her mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
She plucked a single rose from the funeral spray, selecting the brightest one, and rolled it between finger and thumb as tears pricked her eyes. Absently, she opened the casket and tried her best to smile at the man before her. Lifting the hands that had once played and loved and gave, she slid the stem of the rose beneath them and set them back onto his stomach. Slowly, shakily, she smoothed back his hair and placed a kiss upon his forehead as she would every night before she trotted off to bed. She couldn't help but sob now as his hand did not reach up to caress her one cheek while he gingerly kissed the other. No longer would she be able to say good-night and receive a good-night back.
"Christine?"
Her entire body froze, and she remained leaning over the casket for a moment until she finally gathered the courage to straighten herself and turn to the man behind her.
Soft, worried eyes greeted her behind a black ski mask. A man she'd not seen in almost nine years now stood before her, dressed in a suit obviously too large for his frame.
She wasn't sure how to react. All the questions of whether she was seeing a ghost or perhaps a figment of her imagination—that she'd possibly already gone insane—all disappeared as she stepped forward and pressed herself into him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as possible as if to check that he was real.
"Erik."
They sat at a booth of the old diner her and her high school friends used to frequent, a newspaper clipping of her father's obituary laying on the table between them.
Christine shook her head and exhaled something of a half-laugh. "I still cannot believe they misspelled his name."
"I'm sure it happens all the time," Erik replied, lifting the clipping to glance at it one last time before he slipped it back into his coat pocket. His lips quirked at the sight of it: Gus Daae. "At least they managed to spell the last name correctly. Otherwise, I don't think I would've given it a second look."
"So what," Christine said, narrowing her eyes at him, "you just happened to be driving through town and decided to pick up the paper to see what was going on?"
He chuckled slightly as he raised his coffee mug to his lips, sipping on the scolding-hot beverage. "It may be a surprise to you, but I'm actually a subscribed member to the newspaper. There's this whole process to having a newspaper mailed to you when you don't live within the town or city."
Christine remained peering at him in a skeptic manner, her lips pursed. "You know, you never quite gave me a heads-up before you moved."
Erik leaned back in his seat, eyes rolling in the direction of the window beside them. "Yeah, well that's a long story..."
"I've got all night," Christine said, leaning over the table towards him with a mischievous smirk, her head perched on her fists.
He grinned back and fixed his coffee between each of his hands, sighing deeply. "My mother and father were never quite on good terms. They always seemed to be looking for something to argue about: putting the meat in the cheese drawer, leaving the laundry sitting out instead of hanging it up, forgetting to buy more paper towels."
Christine sniggered lightly at his remarkably absurd list.
"The morning I returned from prom, my mother had just snapped," he said shrugging indifferently. "I came home and she already had all of my things packed up; she was ready to leave."
"She didn't give you the option of either leaving with her or staying with your dad?"
"My mother was rather dependent on me at the time. I believe in her mind I was a reason to carry on living." His fingers tapped mindlessly at his mug, his eyes glued to the deep black liquid within it.
"And so that was it?" Christine asked slowly. "You couldn't come and visit?"
"There was no way my mother was ever going to allow me to drive back here. Not while I was living under her roof."
Christine nodded and settled back into her seat, trying to think of the best route to changing the subject. "So what have you been doing this past couple years?"
He sighed and his eyes finally found hers once more. "Not much, if I'm honest. Still working in the theatre business."
Christine laughed lightly. "Seems like you haven't changed much."
Erik shrugged as their waitress approached the table with Christine's Belgian waffle and a syrup dispenser, slipping the plate before her. Before she could ask whether they needed anything else, Christine requested some strawberries to top off her waffle. The waitress nodded and spun back in the direction of the kitchen, offering Erik a quick glance with a bonus smile that read of nothing more than being friendly in hopes of a decent tip, although he had already decided against meeting her gaze.
Erik raised his eyes from a blank spot of the table they'd been fixed on to Christine and grinned. "Seems like you have not changed much either."
Christine rolled her eyes and smiled as she spread a pad of butter over the grooves of her waffle. "So are you staying in town or do you plan on heading back before the night is over?"
Erik tapped his fingers thoughtfully as if in debate. "I was thinking of finding a motel to stay in for the night, but it seems like the old Motel 6 had trouble staying in business."
"Why don't you stay with me?"
Christine felt it was only proper to offer up her bed for the night, considering he had traveled just to attend her father's funeral. The look in his eyes, however, made her feel suddenly foolish for having suggested it.
"I mean," she began correcting herself, "if you'd like. You don't have to." She ducked her head and began slicing her waffle into quarters.
Erik cleared his throat slowly, almost painfully. "I don't want you to feel obligated to host me."
Christine shook her head. "You are no burden, Erik." Her eyes caught his behind his coffee mug as he drew another sip from it. "Besides," she added, smiling cautiously, "I think we've both got a lot of catching up to do."
One - Harry Nilsson