Free Reunion: A Novel by Hannah Pittard Page B

the bottle. “They make a mold,” she says. “They fill in the gaps.”
    This has happened before. All these things have happened to other people before us. The world has thought of everything. Funeral home directors are prepared for anything. They make a mold. They fill in the gaps. A husband buys his lunatic wife an airplane ticket because she can’t afford to buy one for herself and then forces her to get on a plane. My students should be following me around.
    “Elliot is okay with this?”
    She shrugs. “Listen, he thinks it’s unorthodox that Sasha is okay with an open casket, especially since most of Dad’s kids are pretty young. I mean, Mindy is six. And that’s definitely discomforting to Elliot. I think he’d be less cool with it if his girls were going to be here. But it’s what Sasha wants, and she was the last one really in his life, so I guess he wants to give it to her.” She pauses. “So do I.”
    It’s probably indicative of a smallness—the fact that I’m so ardently resisting the rationality of this proposal. I wonder if it’s something as simple as not wanting to see his face again. But then, why? Do I not want to see him because he means so little to me? Or do I not want to see him because I don’t want to see what he’s become, to see what old age looks like on him?
    “If you guys are okay with it,” I say, “then I guess I am, too.”
    “Okay,” says Nell, her head bobbing like I’ve made a really grown-up decision and she’s therefore proud of me, which makes me want to take it back. “This will be good for Sasha. Okay.”
    Elliot comes up behind us.
    “Boo,” he says.
    I jump a little.
    “Bad taste,” says Nell. “Too soon.”
    “You’re in a better mood,” I say. I hand him the bourbon. He smells it, scowls, then tries to hand it back. I wave it off and he hands it to Nell.
    “I talked to Rita,” he says. “She sends her love.”
    Nell and I have been leaning in the doorway, against either side of the doorframe. But Elliot pushes past us and walks over to the screen, to its stain, to its perfect little tear. He traces the outline of the stain with his finger and then, slowly, almost as if he’s dared himself, he pushes his finger through the hole.
    “Unreal,” he says. “Completely unreal.”
    And I think, Yes. I think, You have no idea. None of us has any idea. Fewer than twenty hours ago a man, our biological father, walked out onto this porch, sat down in that rocking chair for some unknowable amount of time, then put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Did he load the gun out here? Did he load it inside and bring it that way onto this porch? Did he give it a second thought? Did he know the night before? What about the night before that? Was there relief? Was there anything at all in that split second after the trigger had been pulled and the bullet released? Was there a dwarf lifting of sadness? A miniscule feeling of joy? These are things we will never know. All we’ll know for sure is that this man, this father, walked out here all alone and did what he did and now we are here. Now we are here.
    Matt Damon, come back to me.

12
going to bed at Dad’s place
    B ad news,” says Nell.
    We’re in a bedroom—what once must have been Mindy’s bedroom, as there are pink images of lamb babies and goat babies and unicorn babies stenciled all over the walls—where we’ve managed to push the knickknacks and dolls and typewriters out of the way in order to create two pallets made of couch cushions and pillows: a largish one for me and Nell and a small one for Elliot.
    “What?” says Elliot.
    “Here.” She hands a bottle to Elliot and a bottle to me. It’s some kind of poison meant specifically for biting mites.
    “Oh,” I say. “Bedbugs. He has bedbugs.”
    “Had,” says Elliot.
    “Not bedbugs,” says Nell. “Biting mites.”
    “Same thing,” I say.
    “No,” she says, “it’s not.”
    “Thou sayest,” says Elliot. Then, after a