| Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin |
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| My Cousin's Funeral |
| From: mebn1 |
Two winters ago, I flew home to bury my cousin. Her heart had mysteriously given out a few weeks before her fortieth birthday.
My father picked me up from General Mitchell Airport in a rental car, maybe a Pontiac. After a few miles, he hopped off I-43 and took the lake route the rest of the way to the funeral parlor. We passed by my cousin’s apartment building, where on the last 4th of July of her life, she’d probably stood on her terrace and watched the fireworks crackle in blues and reds over the marina, by Atwater Beach, where Jana and I had lathered our freckles with baby oil in a futile attempt to tan, by the snow patched grounds of Summerfest, where I’d taken in my first concert (Hall and Oates) and my first underage beer (Schlitz, Milwaukee’s finest), and by the lake mansions that dwarfed Gatsby’s. Thick gray clouds bled into choppy little waves that fanned out to forever.
“Can we stop?” I pointed to the road that led to Whitefish Bay High School. My dad parked next to the swimming pool, a body of water that had defined me more than any Great Lake ever had.
My funeral shoes didn’t fit anymore -- my feet had widened after each pregnancy -- so I hobbled up to the tinted glass window and peeked inside the pool. If I squinted, I could make out the worn school record board hanging in the diving well and my name posted adjacent to my twenty-three year old 100-yard freestyle time. How could I be so vain?
I stared at the dark pool, at the red and white flags drooping over the water, and the empty bleachers. I looked for Curt, my gangly coach who wore Buddy Holly glasses and drove a faded green Corvair, for Rebecca, the big talent, who chose cigarettes, Southern Comfort, and boys over swim practice, and for Martha’s mom, the seven a.m. sunlight bouncing off the golds and grays of her bubble-hairdo, while she balanced boxes of warm Long Johns and Crullers from the Whitefish Bay Village Bakery. I could practically smell the sugared grease and chlorine and mildewed kickboards.
And then I saw myself, at seventeen, on the other side of this window. Lean. Intense. Full of hubris. My arms pulling my body through that water, my legs kicking six beats per stroke, and my heart pumping -- as if it could never break. |
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