whatisay | PSL: Quentin's Funeral

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PSL: Quentin's Funeral

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.

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"That doesn't mean anything."

Jason knows better than to equate love and family. He doesn't know when he came to that realization, but he's pinned himself to it like a protestor chained to a fence.

"Yes it does," she protests, her brow furrowing deep again. "All mothers love their children, Daddy said so. She's just busy. They both are."

She's not there yet, not yet able to understand why her mother is never there, why she's so distant. She can only take the excuses that her father gives, sweet lies to spare Swann's feelings and preserve the family name.

"She gets me presents, at Christmas and for my birthday."

"Do you think District mothers love their children? They shill them out for extra food and then let them go die in the Hunger Games."

Now it's a matter of stubbornness, of talking sense through Swann's innocence. Jason sits forward with his elbows on his knees, like he's giving her a lecture.

"They don't have a choice, everyone's name goes in the bowls." She says it not out of defense for the Districters, but just because it's a fact, has no bearing on whether or not anyone loves anyone else. "And the mothers are too old to volunteer for their kids."

In fact, she thinks that if any of the Districters don't love their children, it's the Career Districts, encouraging their children to willingly dive into the fray.

"So that's different."

"Then why do tesserae exist? It's so mothers can tell their kids to put their names in extra times and get the family more stuff. That's exactly what it is. And that's not even talking about Careers."

His eyes are cold and hard. "Face it. Not every parent loves their kid."

"Maybe the kids agree to it, to help their families. You make it sound like the moms just want more and more stuff, but if their kids starve, then what's the difference?"

She's frowning, refusing to agree that everyone is bad at their core.

"Most parents do. Why else would they have kids?"

"Don't mothers just want more and more? That's sort of what mothers do." Jason snorts again, but he has a wild, excited, focused look in his eye, like he's shooting at a target.

"So someone's there to take care of them when they get old."

"That doesn't make sense. It's food, they need it for their families, so they have to use the tessarae. That's all."

She's getting more confused, because she doesn't really understand his line of thought anymore.

"I never heard anyone say that's why they had babies. Is that why Caddy's having a baby? So someone can take care of her?"

"And they get it for themselves too. Funny how that works, the kid making the sacrifice and the mom getting the tesserae." He rolls his eyes.

"Caddy's having a baby because she can't keep her legs closed." He pauses. "Don't tell anyone I said that, even though it's true."

"The kid has to do it. They have to go get the tessarae, so they have to be willing to do that for their family."

She doesn't understand, he's talking about tessarae like it's jewels or something that the mothers are hoarding, when in reality, it's just food for a whole family. Even she knows that.

"She has a husband,"

"You'll understand when you're older." His eyes get hard and beady. "Like I said, don't tell anyone I said that. I'd get in trouble. Caddy would get in trouble."

Swann huffs and looks away, jamming her arms crossed over her chest while she pouts. "I'm not going to tell, I'm not a tattletale. Who would I tell, anyway? No one listens to me."

"Alright, fine." But he won't tell her the specifics, just leave her with the implication. He gets up off the bench and sits down next to her, looking at her doll with a scrutinizing, hard face.

"Why do you like dolls, anyway?"

She looks at her doll too, dressed in tiny clothes that cost more than many Districters' entire annual income, and turns her over like she's considering the doll itself, rather than her own motivations.

"They don't say mean things, and they don't ever tell me to go away. And... I don't know, they're my friends. If I have my dolls, then I'm not all alone all the time."

Plucking one of the dandelions from her doll's braid, Swann frowns deeper, bending the doll's legs so she can sit on her own. "This one is Nella. She has the nicest face of them all. Like she's happy to see me."

Jason's penchant for nastiness comes out. "That's really pathetic."

He can't look at the ornately-painted face of the doll and see anything but the minor imperfections of a handmade expensive toy, the slightly off-center iris, the bit of pink that exceeds the line of the lip.

"Don't you have any real friends?"

And this is a situation that should teach Jason but won't: Swann looks at him for a moment, then starts crying, her face scrunched up as she rubs at her eyes with balled fists.

All her life she's wanted friends, tried to make them, but she becomes so timid and anxious around most people that her caregivers essentially put a stop to it, saving themselves time and tears, until she became sort of a prisoner, only being brought out for school and important social occasions where she would be treated poorly by the other children because they all had siblings and spent more time together.

She doesn't want to be an outsider. She just is.

Swann cries but doesn't get up and run away, and her tears are more hurt than angry. Of anyone who could ask such a heartless question, Jason is really the last one to be casting stones.

"Oh, for God's sake, don't cry." He leans back from her, like her tears are something contagious. His mother cries on him, but he doesn't have that bond with Swann, isn't going to pat her back and stare at the wall while she wets up his good dress shirt with her weeping and her snot. He doesn't reach for her to comfort her like most people, like anyone with a heart would.

Then he starts to laugh, not at her, but at the entire situation, all the absurdity milling around them. "Don't cry, you're at a funeral!"

She doesn't understand the joke, and it just makes her cry harder. She's not particularly eager for comfort from Jason, but she's too upset to fight her dress and try to run off right now, and she's not even entirely sure where she'd go -- maybe she'd just lie down in the limousine and sob herself into a nap.

"You're mean!" she chokes out, and twists herself away, the tiny off-shoulder cap sleeves of her dress sliding down her skinny arms. She draws her knees up and presses her face into them.

But Jason doesn't reach for her, doesn't press it further, just keeps laughing like he's cracked up in a way that isn't even at Swann, isn't even at himself, but desperate, holding onto the laughter because its absence is terrifying.

Finally he settles down and goes back to fondling the gravel beside the grass.

"Oh, come off it, Swann. You crying isn't going to get you anything."

She's still teary, but his continued laughter is clearly upsetting her, which only exacerbates her reaction, because now she's scared on top of everything else.

"I don't want anything!" she snaps, struggling to get up in her mass of skirts, succeeding only in rising enough to trip and fall forward on her hands. She sits back on her haunches to sniffle and look at her hands, where she landed on the gravel that's been kicked into the grass, and her hands are scratched and studded with rocks and dirt, oozing blood out around the debris.

"Ow," she murmurs, and it's so much less emphatic than anything else she's said in her tantrum.

"Good one," Jason says, wiping at his mouth because he's just realized he was laughing hard enough to drool. Suddenly he can't remember what it was that was so comical, and he feels that dark, stinging feeling in his eyes again, that urge to cry that he suppresses again.

"Are you done?"

She's staring at her hands with a sort of blankness, and then she holds her hands out toward Jason, eyes big and dull and watery. Her hands are dirty and bloody, and she looks even younger than she is, younger and smaller than the tiny doll she's been crafted into for this funeral.

"Will you get my daddy?" she asks softly, and one look at her palms should make it clear that she actually does need taking care of. There aren't any nannies or Avoxes around to ask help from instead.

"Don't bleed on me," Jason says, shoving his jacket at her so she can wipe the blood off. He doesn't care. It's not a very good suit.

"Fine. I'll go tell your dad. But if my mother sees me and calls me over I'm blaming you."

She takes his jacket mostly just because he's shoving it at her, not because she wants it or has any desire to clean her hands with it. Looking at it with a sort of helplessness, she doesn't do much besides put it on her lap, waiting for someone to come help her.

"All right." Swann doesn't know why it's bad if his mother calls for him, but she doesn't ask about it.

Ilar isn't all that much better equipped than Swann is to deal with the surly brother of the deceased, and it shows in the kindly but hapless way he addresses Jason as the two of them exit the reception and come find Swann on the grass. While Ilar fusses, Jason goes back to the bench and sits, watching with the vague interest of someone trying to connect with the scenes around him and failing, sullen and quiet, scuffing his new shoes against the ground out of spite.

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cigne - 2015-05-07 02:53 (UTC) - Expand

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