Tiny Beauties Everywhere

Katie Cabara had always thought it would be nice to be a psychopath, to have the highs and lows of emotion, the treacherous peaks and valleys of human existence, replaced with the steady, numbing reverb of nothing. And when she discovered that she was one, it gave her a sweet pinch of relief, maybe even happiness would be a better word for it.

If nothing else, it seemed a time saver. Without the pressure of adhering to the social expectation of mourning, Katie would be at a soccer practice right now, just as she would have been on any given Saturday between the hours of noon and two. Without the need to mourn, she would have four extra hours of her weekend to spend as she pleased. Not in dark clothes she dislikes, in a stiff hairstyle she dislikes even more, watching as relatives and neighbors she knows and doesn’t know voyage upstage to talk in front of her dad’s photo. Their shadows fall back on the church’s projector screen, blotting over her father’s motionless smile.

Katie’s father never had a still smile. It would have always moved, accompanying a laugh, or a throwing back of the head, or just a squinting of the eyes. Whoever had decided on this photo had done a bad job. Should have given them an easier task – setting up the podium maybe, but then they probably would’ve put it at the back of the room, under a table. The picture of her dad makes Katie’s lack of emotion feel like a natural reaction; she imagines at least a few people in the room are not having much trouble putting their sadness away with such a bland image locking eyes with them. Of course, scanning the crowd in search of them won’t help, everyone would be pretending. She stares at her feet and counts, one, two, three, four, five, then looks back up. Katie has seen in movies that looking at the ground is common at funerals, and figures this is how one is supposed to act.

Of the others who feel like she does right now, Katie figures that her mom is not one of them. Her mom barely ever cries, at least not that she’s seen, so the tears leaking down her face now are out of the ordinary. Except, there was the day her mom had woken up to find her dad dead beside her, and the tears that had come then. It had been a Wednesday, and Katie had soccer practice before school, so the alarm had gone off earlier than normal. She’d shut it off quick, letting her brother and sister sleep in, and gotten dressed and headed downstairs. And that’s when she heard the soft pitter-pattering sobs from her parents’ bedroom door, at the bottom of the staircase. It was a strange form of crying, light sniffles, at the pace of hyperventilation. A type of crying that seemed beyond help. Katie had known it was coming, or more like she had heard her dad tell her that it was. It had never seemed real. Like the sun going into a red giant phase. As incomprehensible as it was inevitable. And here it was. Her mom was holding her dad around the face, and Katie’s feet had sunk into the floor. Did she comfort her? Did she cry too? Did she tell her mom to snap out of it? What about now? Does she tell her it’s going to be okay? It feels wrong to lie to someone whose tears are genuine, and Katie’s mother is not one to fake her tears. Katie’s mother is not a fake woman. Does she tell Mom to stop it, because seeing the same type of crying here as in the bedroom that day makes no sense, because in the bedroom there was nobody to put on a show for?

No.

Daniel Cabara was a philosophy teacher at a local college. He’d been a wonderful teacher; everyone who took his classes said so and his house’s mailbox would often have no less than three ‘thank you’ cards in it at the end of each semester. He’d been well-liked, beloved by the neighborhood moms and respected by the neighborhood dads in a distant and awkward sort of way that factored in his inability to build a deck. He’d been a uniquely awful craftsman but deserved a certain sort of reverence in spite of it.

Those at the funeral reception represent a strange coagulation from the different facets of his life. Some of his fellow teachers in the philosophy college, all impossibly thin, pensive-looking people at least twenty years Daniel’s senior. They look like people who would try and discuss a movie during the movie. Brennan Miloker, a TA who’d been to the house a few times for dinner, and who had a spill of something that looked like sweet and sour sauce on his shirt, a red nebula that had made itself at home in the white fabric. Relatives Daniel spoke with nearly every month, and relatives generally ignored except for yearly correspondence over text and Christmas cards. Little league coaches from his kids’ teams over the years, trying to look tough by crossing their arms and breathing into a closed fist. Mothers and fathers of their school friends. One in particular was at the podium now, Ms. Forester, who has mascara running down her cheeks in a way that seems designed to highlight her tears and looks natural in tandem with the poorly selected photo of Daniel behind her. And then Daniel’s family, of course, the group everybody wants to stare at and nobody wants to make eye contact with. Talia, his wife, Katrina, his eldest daughter, Eduardo, in the middle, Jessica, his youngest.

Katie Cabara is a tough girl. Her soccer coaches know it, and so do her teachers from any class that loosely allows for debate. Social studies in particular. She’s pretty sure Mr. Welsh finds her insufferable by this point in the year. She’s the most mature of her father’s children too; at thirteen, she’s nearly old enough to vote. People at the funeral have to be wondering how she’s holding up. They must be stealing glances at her, and so she gives them a reaction to ponder, looking down at her hands and tracing the lines. She’s seen this in movies too, and she’s been alternating between hand-tracing and floor-staring to prevent anyone from catching on that she’s just going through motions. Her Great Aunt Oleah had told her once that this line, the one looping around her thumb, was called her life line. There were others too, a love line and a marriage line and the lines branching out from Great Aunt Oleah’s cuticles, and a pipeline of bullshit from the old woman’s brain out of her mouth. Plus a spoken line her great aunt would have used to try and sell Katie a deck of spooky-looking cards that didn’t even have a game that went with them. What a waste. Luckily her dad had noticed the two of them talking and placed his hands on Great Aunt Oleah’s shoulders, steering her into the kitchen for eggnog.

Katie looks back up at the podium, where Ms. Forester has given up the spotlight. A pause settles on the church room as everyone wonders if now would be an appropriate intermission to get a drink of water from the fountain outside. Or maybe it’s just Katie. But she knows if she moves at all, it’s an indication that she wants to speak. People’s vision is movement-based, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. She watched that with her dad a couple of years ago, and it was more educational than she would have thought. One of their movie nights, with her dad strumming his guitar on the armchair and her on the couch, turning up the volume to overtake the sound of her chewing Oreos.

No. Moving is out of the question. If she has to speak, she doesn’t know what she’d say. If she says what she feels, people will know. “He was my dad, and now he is gone.” She knows she isn’t supposed to be a psychopath, that it’s not a desirable trait from most people’s point of view. If she goes up there, it will be nothing but embarrassment.

Luckily, someone in the back of the room shuffles forward, and the room exhales. The crowd parts for a woman in black pants and a navy top, with brown hair swaying at her back. When Katie sees who it is, she inhales again.

Katie didn’t even notice her before now. She must have been lurking around in the back of the room by the lemonade cooler, avoiding stares, while Katie and her mom suffered up front next to the podium. Smart of her, but frustrating. Katie would have done that given the chance. Lemonade sounds good for one thing. Might even give her a brief illusion of being at soccer practice. But she was told her seat was at the front, and she followed her mom there. She’s starting to think being thirteen isn’t as adult as people say.

As the woman reaches the podium, she clears her throat – not that she needs to. The entire room is violently still. The woman takes out a speech and lays it out on the podium. There’s an echo for every crick, every flap of the paper.

“If any of you don’t know who I am, my name’s Alice. I’m, uh, Daniel’s sis… sister. Fuck… sorry, just saying his name gets me started again.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Katie is thinking of Eddie, of Jess. Of the morning when Katie saw her mom disintegrating one tear at a time in the bedroom, and moments later she’d seen Eddie at the top of the staircase, plaid pants and cartoon bedhead, wiping his eyes.

“Katie, what are you doing up… do you have soccer? What’s that noise?”

“Sorry, I tried to turn the alarm off. Go back to bed. I’ll make pancakes or something for when you and Jess are up.”

No.

Katrina Cabara diagnosed her own psychopathy two days after Daniel Cabara’s demise. After that first day, she had begun to wonder when the five stages of grief would begin their siege against her. Denial arrived first, or was at least supposed to; she knew that from a google search. But her father was dead, that was fact. There was no denial to be associated with it. And the rest of her family had seemingly already plunged into the next stage, depression. Over the ten days between Daniel’s death and his funeral, neither of Katrina’s siblings left the house for any reason other than school, and her mother spent most evenings beneath a weighted blanket on the couch, staring through the TV, only vaguely aware she was crying. Why wasn’t that the case for Katrina? To her those ten days had been almost completely normal, save for her father’s absence and a sudden overabundance of people apologizing to her. She’d always considered herself tough, but this seemed different. Something had to be different.

The films she had seen gave her some semblance of which traits she shared with psychopaths, the key one being the inability to understand or experience emotion. She knew that her mom’s reaction, that Eduardo and Jessica’s reactions, were supposed to be what she felt. A death in the family was as good an excuse for tears as any. But she had remained dry-eyed for all ten days, and she didn’t even have to try very hard at it some of the time. Only someone who couldn’t feel would spend a funeral reception browsing the room they were in instead of looking at a picture of their loved one, no matter how bad of a picture it was.

The room they are in is all off-white. Rotten eggshell linoleum floors, plastic folding chairs and benches in the dirty cream-color of sheep, Easter yellow wallpaper stretching to a skylight that lets in a brilliant gray sky. With the cool blacks and warm blacks and midnight blues and charcoals of the clothing in the room, it looks like a black-and-white photo just starting to evolve into color.

Katie Cabara tries to focus on this instead of Aunt Alice’s speech. But the room isn’t much better. So she tries something new. She picks the individual words Aunt Alice is saying, or phrases, and lets her mind wander with those.

“I remember, when we were kids, Daniel and I would be at the beach, and…”

Beach. Aunt Alice had taken Katie to the beach. Usually once a summer, her red sedan would pull up to their house to abduct her and Eddie and their boogie-boards for the day. Eddie loved the sunroof in her car, and Aunt Alice would always flash them a smile and keep it open as they turned onto the freeway. Until the wind started to resonate and make a noise that she said sounded like death.

Two years ago, she’d tried to take Katie and her brother to a different beach than usual, north of the bay. She mentioned she’d gone walking there with a friend a few weeks ago and knew from the moment her feet sank into the brown sugar sand, caramelized by the sun, that her niece and nephew would fall for it. The whole car ride it was “get ready, you two!” and “who’s excited?” and “you guys think you’ve been the good beach now, you don’t know shit – oh, sorry, crap!” They’d arrived around noon and walked ten minutes down a blacktop ramp, windblown boogie boards scuffing their heels. A few steps from the legendary sand, Katie looked at Aunt Alice’s face and saw that her brow was folded, her mouth downturned. Then something happened, her mouth dropping into a smile, her eyes growing in horror, as she spun around and crouched down to Katie’s level. Eddie bumped into Katie from behind and gave her a peek around Aunt Alice’s shoulders. It was the first time she had seen exposed breasts.

Aunt Alice held up a hand to guide Katie’s eyes back to her own, and had hissed, “don’t tell your dad,” before herding them back up the ramp.

Eddie had let it slip later that night, and her dad had laughed and laughed and

No.

Aunt Alice flipped to the next page of her script. “… had an amazing life, he had an amazing family, who…”

Family. Pass.

“There’s this movie,” Aunt Alice continued, “that I watched a little bit ago…”

Movie. Maybe after the funeral is over, Katie and her friends will go see a movie. She tries to think if there are any good ones out right now, ones that she hasn’t seen yet, ones that her friends would enjoy too. She knows her dad has turned her into a movie snob, and that the cookie cutter action movies or rom coms her friends will flock toward no longer pique her interest. But either way, a movie would be nice. It seems like something she would want to do on a normal Saturday. She almost checks her phone to look for showtimes before remembering where she is. Instead, she scans her memory for movies running trailers right now; she wouldn’t want to be disrespectful.

Hell or High Water comes to mind, a sort of western-looking one. But that’s R. Katie and her friends can’t get in. Thirteen is turning out to be nothing but disappointing. There’s some movie called Nerve that looks a little stupid, but her friends are more likely to go with her. There’s one called Captain Fantastic – that one might be R too now that she thinks of it. She remembers having it on her list to go see, though. Something about a single dad who raises his kids out in the woods.

After that morning, after pancakes and sitting on the couch all day, listening to her mom’s phone calls from the other room, she went to the movie theater. Not with anybody, she wanted to be out of the house more than anything. She’d snuck into the garage and wheeled out her bike and rode it out of their neighborhood, everything outside suspended in amber from the golden hour sunlight. She’d made it all the way down 8th Street, over the train tracks and then south onto F, around four blocks from the theater when her phone went off for the second time. Her mom, urging her to reveal her location, begging her to come back home. Something in her voice made Katie decide to relent, and she turned around.

When she got home the golden hour had ended, and the neighborhood had unfroze. Mr. Sayers was at his mailbox with a porcelain mug in one hand and a stack of trash-destined coupons in the other. Mr. Sayers was over a lot at their house, making drinks with her dad that Mom wouldn’t let her taste, or talking about fantasy sports, whatever those were. He had a voice like an old truck and a laugh that announced his presence down the block. They saw each other at the same time, and she slowed down to say hello. He waved back her, his bright eyes suddenly assaulting her with sorrow, with pity. Her legs, suddenly not under her control, stopped the bike in the street. They sat in silence for a few moments before he sniffled and cleared his throat. It didn’t matter. His voice broke anyway.

“Rough day.”

She felt something unseen squeezing her heart, her lungs, her face, and she ran inside.

No. No.

The church room allotted to the mourners has its air conditioning on, a bad decision for this time of the year. The weather outside has dipped down to the mid 50s, which is mid 30s for Northern California. Most of the attendees of Daniel Cabara’s funeral reception are shivering, having resigned their jackets at the church’s entrance. Daniel himself always ran warm, so he would’ve been right at home. Katie Cabara thinks perhaps the air conditioning is a misguided attempt at an homage, something to make her dad comfortable – no. Probably not.

The eulogy from Daniel’s sister finishes, and the rest of the people in the room offer up their tears and their smiles of appreciation. And applause, which she begins to think is a strange reaction to be expected for a eulogy. Katie looks down at the floor again and counts to five. While she’s down there she notices Eddie’s left shoe untied next to her, black laces snaking out like cracks in stone, or a network of rivers. It would make for a great picture, the kind of photo you’d see in black and white in a museum. She almost fixes it for him, but it doesn’t seem like the time. If he trips when he stands, she’ll pretend she didn’t notice it.

Aunt Alice moves down from the podium and slinks away to the back of the room, stuffing the folded paper away. As she passes the crowd again, Katie’s eyes lock with Mr. Sayers, then dart away. She begins to eye the rest of the attendees, wondering which of them has the guts to follow a dead man’s sister’s eulogy. Her eyebrows raise when she realizes it’s Brennan Miloker, the TA. She almost laughs at how underwhelming it is, her aunt’s undoubtedly incredible speech building up to this scrawny boy with lumpia sauce on his shirt and hair that reminds her of oatmeal for some reason. But here he is.

He wanders up front, stain around forty percent hidden by his suit. The room quiets as he begins to speak, and Katie decides to listen.

“Hi, hi everyone. Most of you probably don’t know me, I was Professor Cabara’s assistant for the last couple of years. And, uh, well, it’s probably weird for me to be the one doing this, since I probably knew him the least of any of you. But. I’ll just go ahead and start it.”

He ambles to a computer at the edge of the room and fumbles with a thumb drive. Katie watches the screen in anticipation, ready for the terrible slideshow that’s coming. Some lighthearted pictures Brennan has collected, some other ones that will send a gentle wave of sadness over the room. Except for Katie. She won’t feel a thing. She’s seen all the pictures already, and they’re all like the one on screen right now. Motionless. They’re really just paper.

A voice emanates softly from the computer, and Brennan mutters “shit.”

Did he put narration on it? Katie bites the side of her tongue to keep from smiling. The first of Brennan’s pictures appears on the projector, a grainy one of her dad in his office. She’s seen the room a couple of times, and remembers her dad calling it the one philosophy professor’s cliché he allows himself. Mahogany and burgundy and brown leather all the way through, an organized mess of books.

No. She goes back to Brennan’s silly little PowerPoint.

And then he clicks play.

Katie hears her mom give a shaky exhale next to her as her dad adjusts in his chair and runs a hand over his eyes. “Hey,” he says.

No.

“Well, to start. To my wife and my kids, I’m sorry I didn’t use you guys to make this video. I kinda wanted it to be a surprise for today, whenever today is.” He smiles, his eyes crinkling along the edges. “Hopefully by now, I’ll have said everything I’ve wanted to … if not, that’d be a bummer…” This gets a couple scattered, uncertain laughs, and Katie tightens.

“I really just wanted you guys to have this after I’m gone. It’s not much, really. There’s no point in here where I reveal the key to happiness to you all, even though I know what it is.” More people laugh at this. Katie feels her mouth twitch. “There’s no more words of advice for me to give to Katie or Eddie or Jess, their mom’s got that covered from here on out. It’s really just. I dunno.” He pauses. “Like I said, it’s something for when I’m gone. In case the next few months of me being sick are hard, I’d prefer you remember this instead of those.”

No. No.

From off camera, he picks up his guitar and begins to strum.

No. Please, no.

Daniel Cabara knew how to play hundreds of songs, including some his daughter was fairly impressed by. He’d shift between chords, pluck a powerful note on one string and completely evade its neighbors, shape his hands into feats of contortionism that, when they changed, flowed like rapids through a river. There had been times when Katie asked him not to play during movie nights because it had been distracting to watch. Mesmerizing.

He’s not doing that now. It’s a simple song, soft on the ear, a melody that Katie doesn’t recognize at first. Mom seems to, she has a hand over her mouth and her eyes closed. His fingers move along the strings, dancing almost. Katie remembers the pattern. Three fingers together, then two together higher up, then three in a triangle. Repeat. They were watching Gone With The Wind. She’d gotten bored and started staring at him, a pillow squeezed between her chest and crouched knees. He’d clearly noticed but didn’t seem to mind.

“What song is that?”

“You wouldn’t know it. It’s from before you were born.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Someday, yeah.”

“Why not now?”

He leaned forward and grabbed an Oreo. “We’re watching a movie.”

No. No. No.

She’s on her feet before she knows what she’s doing. The chair makes a noise like a chalkboard when she stands and she feels herself push someone, an adult, out of the way. She can’t stand this room, that’s all. It’s too white inside between the linoleum and the wallpaper and the shirts and blouses of all the people around her and even in the windows the sky is white, which it’s not supposed to be, a blinding white that’s whiter than snow or paper or anything she’d think of, to the point where it’s barely even a color anymore. The sound of strumming fades from her ears, and she leaves her jacket behind even though it’s cold out.

* * *

She crouches on a bench and stares at the ground. She figured it would be raining outside; movies make it seem like it’s always raining during funerals. It actually isn’t all that surprising, there’s a drought or something. She’s heard people talk about it. Most of the grass on the church’s lawn is dying, turned tan and brittle, giant splinters of wood. Like the kind that come out of the giant saw that Mr. Sayers uses sometimes.

No. Stop it.

The bench is facing one of the grass patches, a wide circle around the size of her classrooms with a pair of concrete benches at north, south, east, and west. Each of the two benches has a heavyset terracotta pot between them, and some flower, a lilac maybe, sprouts from the soil. She knits her hands for a few moments and then places them in her lap.

Something shimmers in the grass and gets her attention, and Katie almost jumps when she sees an earthworm wriggling along. Cringing at the sight, she studies it as it works, laboring over the blades, finding a new pathway in each moment and flowing into it. She follows its trajectory out into the middle of the grassy circle. It has a long way to go. She almost considers bending down to carry it out there; if Eddie were here, she’d ask him to do it. Or if Jess were here, she still likes bugs. Or if Dad were here –

“What is it with bugs?”

She shrugged and scrunched her nose. “It’s not all of them. Just the ones that are all shiny or crunchy looking. Like, ants are okay.”

“Weird how that works. You know, given how big we are bugs are probably afraid of us. Or maybe we’re too big for them to even register. Or maybe they’re not afraid of all of us. Just you. You are pretty shiny and crunchy looking.”

“Stop…”

“Sorry.”

There’s a clacking of shoes on concrete behind me, growing louder. I don’t look to see who it is, or if they’re here for me. No. Here for Katie. Eventually a navy top flashes in her peripherals, and Aunt Alice sits down on the bench next to hers, hidden by the planter. I’m – no, Katie – no, I am grateful I have the lilacs to hide behind.

Aunt Alice says nothing for a few moments. Maybe she’s also looking at the earthworm.

Then: “What’s up?”

Katie keeps quiet.

“Seemed like you could use someone to follow you out here.” She pauses. “Your mom talked to me some about how you’ve been doing this past week.”

Katie lets the statement dissolve out of her mind. It’s a little hard to see the earthworm now, it’s mostly buried itself under the grass.

“Aren’t you cold out here? I can get your jacket if you want.”

Katie is cold, but she – I give her nothing. Just let her ponder over that poker face I’ve perfected. Nothing behind it. Nothing at all. Nothing given away.

I feel her look at me. “Katie, you have to talk to me.”

There’s another moment of silence.

“Sorry,” Aunt Alice says. “Ignore that. You don’t if you don’t want. I don’t know. Your dad would know, probably, if he were here.”

“He’s not though.”

Her gaze returns to me as I say it. I – Katie shifts so she’s behind the flowers.

“Our family dog died in my junior year of college.” Katie can’t see Aunt Alice’s face, but her voice sounds different. More somber. “Just old age, nothing we weren’t expecting. Daniel and I found out over the phone from our parents. I hung up as soon as they finished telling me. Just was like, ‘alright,’ and tried going about my day. I did what you’re doing, or what I’m pretty sure you’re doing. It wasn’t just because of the dog, really… I kinda just felt like that about the whole fucking world. It was that part of growing up for me. I mean, you wouldn’t know this yet, probably. Hopefully. I guess with everything going on right now, you might know it already. But anyway, that part of life where you just… realize how much sadness there actually is out there. I remember thinking one time that if I didn’t block it all out, I’d never stop crying. That’s what you’re doing, right?”

Katie doesn’t move. She can’t. I can’t.

“Forget it. If you’re feeling like I was, you don’t want someone to tell you how to feel right now. So I won’t. Just… when you need to, you can come talk to me.”

I don’t want to talk about it. I never will. What would there even be to talk about? Feelings? Grief? The unfairness of everything? The hole he left? None of those apply to Katie. She’s tough. All the way through. Katie – I don’t feel those things. I only feel the hollowness. I only feel the squeezing sensation again. No, Katie feels it again, tightening around her heart and her lungs first, forcing something outward, something she doesn’t want. And then tightening around her face, near the eyes. She squeezes them shut. No. No.

“Rough day.”

“Katie, what are you doing up… do you have soccer? What’s that noise?”

“There’s no more words of advice for me to give…”

“What is that, a worm?”

Aunt Alice extends an arm and points at where the earthworm has resurfaced, heading toward a patch of dirt on the right side of the grass. I swat away the tears in the corners of my eyes and nod. The worm twists and unspools, in a way that makes me think of a ballerina somehow.

“Woah.” It’s not really voluntary but it comes out anyway. My voice sounds choked – or maybe it’s Katie’s voice, it’s hard to tell.

“I thought you hated bugs,” Aunt Alice says.

“I do.”

She nods. “Yeah. It’s weird but death always seems like it makes cool shit like that stand out. There’s little things like that all over the place. My theory is that when you spend so much time thinking about your own grief, it’s just so nice to notice something else that even the things you hate look pretty. I dunno though. Your dad was the smart one, so he probably knew what it’s really about.”

“I miss him,” Katie allows. There are more tears forming. I brush them out.

“Me too,” she says. “I’ll really miss him. Mostly. The asshole never let me forget that time I took you and Eddie to a nude beach on accident.”

The image of Dad laughing and laughing hits me. “She what? Oh my God, she would.”

A smile forms. So do more tears. “When Eddie told him, he spat Coke on Mom,” Katie offers. She slides forward and dips her head low, smiling at the ground.

Aunt Alice snorts. “Asshole.” A staccato laugh comes from the other side of the planter, and I return with my own. There are still tears, which is confusing. Aunt Alice stands and shakes her head. I wipe away the sadness and the laughter from my face as much as I can before she can see, but more just comes. She walks back inside, shoes clacking off behind me. I’m sure the video has ended by now, but when she opens the door, I can hear strumming.

“Will you teach me?”

“Someday, yeah.”

“Asshole,” Katie says.