Paint It Black by Janet Fitch Read Free Book Online

tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding.
    In the Hall of Remembrance, the cold air was dense with flowers, easels and stands and baskets, like someone just won the Kentucky Derby. The beige drapes rippled softly, and on the left, a separate side area, the family sat hidden behind gauze curtains. She could hear sobbing under the music. She should be sobbing like that. He deserved someone better, a girlfriend who would run up there and throw herself on the coffin, screaming. Not sitting back here, stoned, unreal, as if this was happening to someone else. Ahead, people talked and shook hands, they all knew each other. She was the outsider. This was his other world, that she had never seen.
    A man with a lion’s mane of gray hair came in, tanned and blue eyed, wearing a wrinkled trench coat, and you could hear the buzz of conversation, people rising to shake his hand, squeeze his arm, embrace him, it had to be the father, Calvin Faraday. He wouldn’t come when Michael was alive, but he could manage to attend the funeral. Big of him. Making a theatrical entrance, all that was missing were the trumpets. He went through a door to the family area behind the gauze curtain and suddenly, they could all hear Meredith’s voice, its angry shrillness, screaming at him. A few moments later, he was back, red-faced, raking a hand through his great head of hair. He took a seat among the old people, put the little hat on, his broad shoulders expressive, shrugging, embarrassed, apologetic. His hair was too bushy for the satin cap, it kept falling off, he had to hold it on with one hand.
    The crowd wasn’t large, plenty of room in the hall, eight or ten empty rows between her and the rest of the mourners. Didn’t they know a million people, his famous parents? But maybe they were keeping it quiet. A few old friends, second cousins. Nothing in the
Times
this morning, no obit. Michael would have hated that, it was his favorite part of the paper. Maybe Meredith just couldn’t bear calling people—it was too cruel. Someone had to, but how could you have the strength? Flying all the way back from Uruguay or wherever. Michael’s father looked hagged out under his tan, he was older than Meredith, must have come straight from the airport. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, the way Meredith screamed at him, he was old, it couldn’t be good for him. Even if he had been a shitty dad.
    The canned music stopped and four old men came onstage with their instrument cases. They sat in a half circle of folding chairs, their sheet music already on the slender stands. Black cases opened and beautiful amber instruments emerged into the old hands. They began to play. It was the Brahms. Yes, that was right, Meredith was right to choose the Brahms. Michael had loved this. The little flavors of Bach you could hear from time to time. He’d even put on the Bach so she could hear it.
    “Bach believed the world made sense,” Michael explained. “He believed in God. Now listen to the Brahms.” He put the other back on and folded himself next to her on the furry blue couch. She listened hard, and yes, she could hear it, the same melodious order as the Bach, but then it all fell apart, into stormy wildness. “It’s like he’d like to be Bach, but can’t keep it together,” she said.
    Michael was just like that too. He wanted God, but he was too full of moods and doubts. And she had lost that world, where she could sit on the blue couch, listening to music with her face pressed to his chest. She felt the tears coming, but she didn’t surrender to them. She didn’t know who she would be crying for. For him or for herself.
    The quartet ended, but the old men