PSL: Quentin's Funeral

[whatisay]

Capitol funerals are oleaginous with wealth. Today they assemble to commemorate Quentin Compson not just with tears, but with commissioned oil paintings, fireworks, an orchestra playing some lugubrious dirge, with wines ages two hundred years and flowers genetically engineered to have the deceased's initials appearing naturally on each petal. The young man's body is no longer a matter of sodden, lifeless flesh but ash compressed into a shimmering jewel, set at the middle of a wreath of designer oleander at the base of a portrait picturing him more present than any who knew him ever saw him. The painted eyes look aware, like they're taking in every detail around them, while in life Quentin always seemed a step out of time, thinking of something else, half-listening to the conversation.

Jason, fifteen years old, hasn't seen his father sober since the older Jason went to identify the wax-white, water-bloated corpse in the mortuary. This Jason, in a new suit with a tag on the back of his shirt that itches his neck, had stayed home with his mother, listening to her mewl about how could this happen to her, how could Quentin have done this to her. He'd expected to feel something when his father came home, either relief or grief, because everyone was supposed to feel something when a sibling died, but the only emotion that had surfaced was a strange sort of unease that he'd quickly choked off with disgust that his father didn't even bother to come straight home, and instead arrived drunk.

"Did you drive like that?" Caroline had asked. "Did you want me to have to identify a body today too?"

The older Jason's drunk at the funeral, too, trying his best to stand still and not sway next to his black-clad wife and eight-months-pregnant daughter and her new husband. Benjamin's been left home; his crying would be "upsetting". Uncle Maury's had a few too; Jason's starting to suspect that maybe he's the only sober one, sharing company with Caddy's fetus. When the eulogy ends, having described a person Jason's certain never actually existed, there's a reception with pay-per-plate seating and photographers and fireworks in the background.

His mother pretends to faint from crying, although her face is dry, and calls for Jason, her 'last remaining son', to come help her. Jason slips outside just out of her eyesight, not wanting to engage, hoping she just assumes he didn't see or hear her while Maury props her back up. He heads round the back, slouching on a bench in sight of the parking lot, reconnoitering every half hour or so to see if things have died down. His nose, fresh from a rhinoplasty, is straight now, but there are fading bruises under each eye, covered by slight makeup. He undoes his tie and unbuttons his jacket, then finally just flings the latter off onto the lawn somewhere.

At some point his father goes to a microphone and starts rambling about the nature of time and his daughter's wedding and then Jason's just done, incapable of anything but disgust with everything here.

He heads back to the bench and picks up some pebbles, chucking them at the pigeons just to see if the birds will fly away.

Comments

[whatisay]

Jason's humiliated enough. He wonders if he might be able to feel something like grief if shame weren't eclipsing everything inside him, watching his mother catch the vapors and his dad, having finished venting his gin-soaked spleen into the microphone, sit back down at the table. There's an awkward silence, with only the hum of the microphone in the background, while people wonder how to respond to the incoherent, slurred lecture from the father of the deceased, and then the attendees mercifully rev up their conversation again to talk about fashion and television.

"Hey. You." He hails Trey down, not bothering to give him a second look even though he's seen this teenager a handful of times in his life, serving plates or setting up pallets of food, and gestures to his own father, who is getting up from the table he's at now and tottering towards the bar again. "Intercept him and give him something virgin, alright?"

The last thing Jason wants if for this funeral to end with his father passed out or vomiting. He stays at Trey's elbow, like he's going to make sure the operation goes smoothly.

"We shouldn't even allow him out in public anymore," he says under his breath. "We should just lock him in the yard with the retard."

[reallynow]

There isn't a lot Trey knows personally about Jason. He knows bits and pieces about his family from the gossip he's been picking up on, particularly since that train is gaining more and more momentum lately. You tend to overhear a lot when you're young and short petite and handing out drinks to people who don't look you in the eye. It's pretty easy to dehumanise people who dehumanise you, it's easy to viciously rip their lives apart by buying into rumors and getting into gossip. Even so, he feels bad for Jason. It's partly from the secondhand embarrassment and partly from a similar age group, but it's there.

Were it anyone else, he'd probably have milked a bribe out of a job like this, but considering it's a Compson funeral they're already paying his pocket money. "Seriously?" He can't help asking, but he shuts his trap quickly. He could argue, but realistically the guy is so drunk he probably won't even notice.

"Alright, sir. You got it." He slips the sir in to at least compensate for some of the casualness in his tone. Approaching the older man with his new shadow but acting as if it's perfectly normal to have Jason hovering around him.

The muttering earns a sincere laugh from Trey, and it's an obnoxious enough sound to make him cover his mouth as apologetically as possible. "It's not like he'd know the difference between that and a party, right? Just play music." He suggests, glancing at Jason with a raised brow. "Are you going to follow me the whole way there?"

[whatisay]

"Seriously. It's bad enough having one family member drowned." The official story is that Quentin fell off the bridge at his prestigious school during a party, and there have been a few fluff pieces in the newspapers about the dangers of teenage drug use since then, but it's an open secret that the eldest Compson sibling tied weights to his feet and drowned himself. That the suicide note was addressed not to his family but to his roommate. "You can't breathe liquor any easier than you can water."

The careful rearrangement within the Compson household has already been set into motion, Jason sliding in to fill the space once occupied by his sister, only he's controlling where she was organized, paranoid where she was attuned. Jason hovers. Even when he gets the message from Trey to back off for a little bit, he still hangs at the periphery of Trey's vision before going back to a full-on stalk.

That gets something of an ugly snort out of Jason, like he isn't supposed to laugh at his own father like that but he didn't catch the laugh on the way out quick enough to kill it. It doesn't make Trey likable, really - it's just like realizing that your box of cereal has knock-knock jokes printed on the inside label, that the person catering your food is also a humor-dispenser.

"Someone's got to make sure things get done right around here."