Ashes, Ashes

6 - Ceremony

That just left Richard, and he stood staring at the mostly-empty box of ashes for a long time, a complex dance of emotions roaming over his face. His dark eyes were glassy and hard, and he seemed to stare past the ashes, past the ground, deep into some other place. 

After a long silence, he said, "Do you guys remember the fish?" 

It took a minute for my brain to figure out the context, but then it slid into place like a puzzle piece and I barked out a laugh of recognition. 

The fish, of course. 

Laurel had bad luck with aquariums, but it never stopped her from trying to keep the damn things going. Freshman year, when we were still living together in a dorm room, she got this idea to get fish. They were the only pets that were allowed in the dorms for some reason, and Laurel said it was important to be around things that were alive, so she bought an aquarium and some fish. 

And she was really terrible at raising them. 

She got a little better by the end, a few years of learning curve, but she still went through a lot of fish. She'd find them floating in the tank, pale bellies turned upward, and every time she would be crushed, and every time we'd have to lay the damn things to rest. They couldn't simply be flushed or put in the trash; each cheap goldfish and crumpled betta had to be sent into the afterlife with the proper ceremony. 

It occurred to me now, in hindsight, that maybe it was less about her love for the fish and more about some weird fascination with death, some need to get close enough to touch it and ceremonialize it and tame it. And maybe that's why it all stopped when her mom died, and why she had stayed so adamant about not having a funeral of her own, because her fascination with mourning broke away from her fascination with death and was left behind. 

At the open space in the mountains, Dawn and Liza were looking at the rest of us in confusion. Dawn, of course, because she hadn't been there for it -- by the time she showed up in our life, Laurel had moved past the fish and her macabre fascination with burying them -- and Liza because I guess that wasn't a part of Laurel's life that she'd been part of. 

"Do you remember all the parts?" Abby asked.

"Yeah." Richard's mouth twitched in a smile, and in that moment he looked dangerously close to breaking, his face on the verge of crumpling inward with tears. "I remember." 

He dug down into his pocket, pulling out a pack of menthol cigarettes and a battered silver flask.

Parker, Abby and I drew in close, forming a lopsided circle, and the others followed cautiously after. 

"Okay. So Laurel used to have these fish, right?" Richard was explaining, and his voice strengthened with the telling. "And every time one died, we'd go out in the desert and bury it. And there was a ritual to it, right? Because of course there was." 

Abby was digging in her pocket for her phone, frowning at it. 

"So first we all light up a cigarette." 

"I don't smoke -- " Dawn tried to protest, and Richard silenced her with a disgusted look. 

"Doesn't matter. It's the rules." He lit a cigarette and passed it to her, then lit one for himself and handed the pack and the lighter to Parker, who stood next to him now. "We all light the cigarette, and we flick the ash...okay, so we're supposed to flick it on the grave, but here..." his eyes fell on the box of Laurel's ashes, or what was left of them. He hesitated. 

"Ash to ash," I said. "That was her point." 

The cigarettes made their way to me, and I lit one, almost choking on the harsh smoke. I haven't smoked in years, not since I started working at the hospital with its fiercely protected tobacco-free policy. 

We flicked our cigarette ashes in with the last of Laurel's ashes, and it felt sacrilegious but somehow right. 

"Right. And then we all pass around the flask and drink," Richard continued, lifting it to his lips and taking a long swig before handing it off to Parker. "And then pour out the last of it." 

"And Laurel used to do this?" Liza asked, her brow furrowed, lips pursed. She sounded equal parts skeptical and awed. "For her fish?" 

"Every damn time," Parker said. 

"You forgot the music," Abby said, lifting her phone over her head. Music poured out on the tinny phone speaker, hard to make out, but the driving beat and rhythmic screaming marked it as the kind of hard rock anthem Laurel usually had in her car. 

Richard did cry then, a tear letting loose from the corner of his eye, and none of us said anything else, just smoked and drank and stared down at the last of the ashes. 

When we were done, Richard nudged the box over onto its side, upending the cremains onto the stone, and poured out the few remaining drops of liquor from the flask. We stared down at it as the ash swirled and blew sideways in the rising wind, breath rising in smoky fog in air that was growing progressively colder as the sun crept down to the horizon. 

"Now what do we do?" Liza asked, when the music had stopped. 

Richard looked up, meeting my eyes as if for confirmation. "If I remember correctly, now we get wasted."