Damn These Uncontrollable Tears

I was crying before Owen finished telling me he wanted to call off the wedding. He sat across from me in the booth at the Bellwether Coffee House, his hands wrapped around a cup he hadn't touched. Rain tapped at the front windows. Outside, gulls wheeled over the harbor and the delivery trucks crawled through the wet street. "I don't think we should do this," he said. My chest tightened. I blinked hard. "The wedding?" "The wedding. The marriage. All of it." I reached for the napkin dispenser. My fingers slipped against the chrome. Owen watched my hand. He had watched it do this before: shake when I tried to hide it, curl into a fist when I was embarrassed, flutter uselessly toward my face once my eyes started leaking. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know." "I never wanted to hurt you." "I know." I could hardly hear myself. A tear rolled off my chin and landed on the white table between us. Owen lowered his voice. "This is part of what I mean." I froze. He looked tired, not cruel. That almost made it worse. I could have braced against cruelty. Tiredness asked me to understand him. "Lena, everything gets bigger when you cry," he said. "I can't tell you how I feel without ending up comforting you." My mouth opened, but the first sound that came out was a hiccup. The waitress glanced over. I saw her do it, then looked down at my hands. "I'm not doing it on purpose," I said. "I know." "Do you?" His silence answered. He slid a small envelope across the table. The ring was inside. I had taken it off the night before, not because I knew he was going to end things, but because my fingers had swollen in the heat and I wanted to give them a rest. He had picked it up from my apartment that morning. "I thought you should have it back," he said. The paper felt damp beneath my fingertips. "I can't talk about this here." "I know. I'm sorry." I stood too quickly. My chair scraped backward. The waitress hurried toward us, but I shook my head at her and pushed through the door. Rain soaked my hair before I reached the end of the block. I kept walking, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other holding the envelope like it contained something dangerous. I wanted to get home. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to be the kind of woman who could be dumped in public without making a sound. Instead, I found myself on the steps of a stone chapel, crying so hard that I couldn't read the sign beside the entrance. The door stood open. Warm air drifted out, carrying the scent of lilies and coffee. I thought the service had ended. I thought I could slip into the foyer and catch my breath. Then I heard the organ. I stepped inside. The chapel was full of people in dark coats. Rows of faces turned toward me. A woman in a black dress stood beside the first row with one hand pressed to her chest. Up front, an open casket rested beneath a spray of white roses. I should have backed out. I should have said, I'm sorry, wrong door. Instead, the woman in the black dress looked at my wet face, and something in me gave way. I pressed both hands over my mouth. A sob escaped anyway. Several people glanced back. I couldn't stop. The harder I tried, the more my throat pulled tight, the more my face crumpled. I reached the last pew and sat down because my knees had started to shake. The organ quieted. The woman by the casket turned toward me. Her face was pale and composed, but her eyes were red. She looked at me for a long second, then gave a small nod. I mistook it for permission. So I stayed. The service began again. A man spoke about a woman named Evelyn Hart, her love of bad detective novels and late-night pie, the way she remembered everyone's birthday. I didn't know Evelyn Hart. I didn't know a single person in the room. But when the man's voice cracked as he described Evelyn keeping a chair by the window for her late husband, my tears came faster. I cried through a hymn. I cried through a poem. I cried while the family carried the casket toward the chapel doors. I cried hardest when the woman in black looked at the flowers and whispered, "Goodbye, Mom." After the guests filed outside, I stayed in the back pew, numb and soaked in rainwater. The envelope lay crushed in my lap. Footsteps approached. The woman in black stopped at the end of my row. "Did you know my mother?" she asked. My throat hurt. I wiped my cheeks with the heel of my hand. "No," I said. "I'm sorry. I walked in by mistake." Her expression shifted, but not in the way I expected. She didn't look angry. She looked as if she had been trying to hold herself upright for hours and had finally run out of strength. "Why were you crying?" I looked down at the envelope. "My fiancé ended our engagement." She sat beside me, leaving a careful space between us. "And you came to a funeral." "The door was open." "That isn't quite an answer." "I didn't have anywhere else to go." For a moment, we listened to the rain ticking against the stained-glass windows. Then she said, "I'm Camille." "Lena." "I'm sorry about the engagement." "I'm sorry about your mother." Camille's mouth pressed into a line. I could see the effort it took her not to cry. My own tears kept falling. "You cried harder than everyone," she said. "I'm sorry." "Don't apologize. I'm not upset." She glanced toward the casket. "I think Mom would have liked that. She used to say the worst thing people did at funerals was pretend they felt nothing." "I really didn't know her." "I heard you." Her hand opened on the pew between us. I placed the damp envelope on my lap, but I didn't take it away. Camille stood. "We're having coffee in the fellowship room. You can come, if you want." "I don't think I should." "Maybe you shouldn't." She looked at me. "But you can." I had wanted to leave the moment I entered. I had wanted the ground to swallow me when I realized my mistake. Still, I stood up.