Cups
by Sean Lyon
It is better to do something than sit. That’s why I volunteer to walk to the grocery store to get the cups. The caterers didn’t bring cups, which doesn’t make sense.
The weather is frigid, and I do not have gloves. That’s probably best since I only own black gloves. I was told that white is the color to wear to a funeral in a Buddhist church. My only pair of white slacks are sheet thin. My legs get cold awful quick.
The Buddhist church is uptown on the riverside. The wind is so brutal. For just a minute I’m thinking about only the cold, and not about Glenn. The cold is kind of like the cups, and with both I feel for a moment a bit better, a bit distracted.
I pass people who I know will be there back at the church. There is a warmth in their eyes, a caring, and with it a frown. I was very close to Glenn and his husband Diasuke. In a way, I have received condolences, too.
Diasuke is grieving completely. That’s why I left to get the cups. After a whole week, I could not view anymore. His eyes look pummeled shut. His neck looks snapped the way his head dangles. Their daughter, his daughter, Lily, she is only seven. I’m her godfather.
“I’m here for you,” she says to him.
It is confusing. She doesn’t know that she is involved in tragedy. She has come to me in the past week to tell me, quietly, that she misses daddy—she calls Diasuke papa and calls Glenn daddy.
I tell Lily that grief is not just crying like after a failed test or bumped head, so it is not a matter of facing it and accepting it and not crying.
“Crying is an important part of loving someone who has died.”
Although I didn’t plan to say it, or didn’t know what it meant, that’s what I shared with her.
She will explode with issues when she grows up, I know it. She is already adopted, and now this. That’s the phrase I keep thinking when it comes to her. Adopted, now this. What is that?
I already lost my innocence, so there is little left to protect. I’m going to crack because old people are cracked. I want to protect Diasuke, and Lily especially, but instead I protect myself by getting the cups, and even that’s not working anymore. It’s supposed to help, but is no better than rubber bands wrapped around a broken arm.
I blow into my hands. I yell about how cold it is.
When I enter the grocery store, it is a relief to have to hunt for the cups. I should ask for help because the remembrance is beginning soon, but I would rather find the cups myself. There I am walking about the store, not looking at aisle placards to help locate the cups.
In the desserts, I have a look at the ice creams. There are as many ice creams these days as there are wines. I would like to eat some, but there is no time, and it doesn’t seem right. And I’m freezing already.
After finding the cups, I’m unsure how many to buy. I should buy more than enough. Three hundred. Though, people won’t be drinking liquor at a Buddhist church. One hundred.
“Holiday party?” the young, male cashier asks me, eyeing my white suit. He is smiling, like I will tell him that me and all my friends are going wild on a Saturday night in December.
“Nope.”
“Well, good night then.”
On the walk back, I switch which hand to carry the cups with and which hand to bury in my pocket. The wind is treacherous. It raps against the plastic bags and tilts them nearly horizontal.
When I left for the cups, I was good and warm inside the church. Incenses were lit and the church filled with a pleasant smell. Things happened very quickly. Now though, now seems like a whole day in the span of a few solitary minutes.
I see a friend. She crosses the street and walks with me. I pick up my pace because she is harried and walking much faster, trying to make it in time.
“I can’t believe I’m running late,” she says, “I’m going to cry.”
“The narrative of the night will not be that you were late.”
“I walked the wrong direction. Damn it to hell.”
She is going to cry into her bright lovely floral-patterned scarf.
“It will be all right. We are right around the corner.”
She wonders what I’m doing, and I tell her that I volunteered to get the cups from the grocery store because the caterers, unbelievably, forgot the cups.
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” she says, and then, “How is Diasuke?”
“Inconsolable. Truly.”
“He loved him.”
It is so. He did. We cry, walking faster. We walk abreast through the front door of the church. Two friends with one less friend.
Someone thanks me for getting the cups. The smell of incense is thick as dirt.
I walk to the second row, ten feet from a framed picture of Glenn, smiling, an easy thing for a happy man. Lily sees me and waves like she waved at Glenn, Diasuke, and me at her Kindergarten graduation less than two years ago. My sobbing cannot be muffled. A big, brave girl, she leans over her chair and touches my chin, making me look her in the eyes.
I should think of her as a strong angel. Lifting me, the beleaguered, high into the sunlight, but I do not have such a buoyant heart. She has not yet been brought low by the inevitable pain of her life.
I hear the first bell of Glenn’s remembrance chime out, singular and clear, like a puff of cold air in a very warm place.
Sean Lyon [he/him] is a writer, and as luck would have it he has stories published online at Bridge Eight and Cleaver Magazine, as well as poems in print and online at Straylight, Literary Orphans, The Main Street Rag, Typishly, Washington Square Review, HOOT Review, and One Sentence Poems. A native Texan, Sean now lives in Brooklyn. He can be found on IG @ShoonLoon and reached at SeanRobertLyon@gmail.com.