Looking Good

“Alright, is nobody going to say it?”

Silence greeted him from the three others who stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

“She might look better dead.”

The silence from the others broke with sharp exhales from their noses, and accompanied by biting lips.

“What?” Greg continued, “I’m just saying you all saw what she was looking like near the end. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“We all know she was worse for wear dumbass, cancer does that to someone. Doesn’t mean you have to go and say she looks better dead,” Greg’s brother, Geoff, said. “She’s still our mother.”

“You laughed.”

The back of Geoff’s hand found contact with Greg’s arm as he hit his brother.

Another moment of silence grew as the four brothers looked down into the casket at the woman who birthed and raised them. She now reclined in her box, still, lifeless, and all dressed up for her last show.

The four of them, George, Geoff, Greg, and Grant stood in the funeral home together. The wake for their mother would start before too long, though no one else had arrived yet. So they took the time to be with their mother while they could still pretend that on some level she was there with them.

George spoke up from the end of the line, “remember when Greg threw up on her dress five minutes before she was about to leave for the Community Center Awards night?”

His brothers smiled and laughed slightly and more freely than with Greg’s comment.

“Well, mom was partly at fault for that. She told me to make dinner for myself since she was in a rush to get ready. How was I supposed to know that much whipped cream was going to make me sick? I was five.”

“Dad wasn’t thrilled about that when he got home,” Grant chimed in.

“No,” Greg said before he changed into an impression of their father: “aw hell Greg, what’d you eat?”

A loud laugh escaped from the small gathering of them at that. Out of the four of them, Greg had the best impression of their father.

“There wasn’t enough time for her to change. So she had to wear her sweatshirt of off broadway Phantom over her dress,” George continued, “still get the award though.”

Even though Greg and Grant were too young to remember the full events of that night, the photograph of their mother and father at the award show stood framed on their mantle since then. Their dad in his nice but worn three piece suit, and their mom beaming a smile, holding a small trophy, and Phantom of the Opera sweatshirt on over her knee length royal blue dress.

“Do you think that’s why she always said Phantom was her favorite even though she never liked any other Andrew Llyod Webber show?” Geoff asked.

“I just figured it was because she was the understudy to Christine during the run of that show. That was her shot for getting on Broadway afterall,” Grant said.

The other three turned toward the youngest brother.

“Wait, mom almost got onto Broadway?” George said, his eyes fixed on Grant who looked between his brothers.

“She never told you?” Grant asked them.

“No,” George said as the other two shook their heads.

“Oh,” Grant said, in a voice like a puppy that tore up the cushions when his owners were at work.

Slowly they all looked back down at the casket and their mother. His new knowledge that he carried a family secret suddenly made him self conscious. He felt like he shouldn’t continue, though having already started he knew his brothers wouldn’t let him stop.

“She told me when I was six or seven, so I didn’t think much of it at the time. I figured it was just something everyone knew,” Grant started to recount. “During that run of Phantom the actress for Christine got food poisoning and missed a full weekend of shows, so mom got to fill in. She said it was one of her best weekends ever on the stage.”

Geoff nodded, “right, I remember her telling me about that weekend.”

George and Greg nodded with Geoff’s statement.

“So how did that weekend almost land her on broadway?” Greg asked.

Grant took a breath before he continued, “well she also told me there were two producers that were at one of the shows that weekend. They got her info from the director of the show and reached out to her that Monday about a leading role in a new production. Something starting in Chicago and then going to Broadway after opening.”

George, Geoff, and Greg’s eyes went slightly wide at the information that their mother had kept from them their whole lives.

“Why didn’t she take it?” George asked.

Grant chuckled slightly, “she met dad.”

“What?” Greg asked with a slight exhale of exacerbation.

“Yeah, after the last Sunday show that weekend. Her and the rest of the cast went out for drinks at a bar near the theater. While she was there she met dad, he asked her out to dinner, and she told me she wanted to see where it went. So she told the producers ‘thanks but no thanks’ when they called her.”

The three older brothers stood in silence as they thought about the revelation about their mother.

“She gave up a shot at her dream, for a first date?” George said.

“Yeah,” Grant said through a melancholic laugh, “she did, and with dad.”

All four shared a laugh at the thought.

“Hey,” Geoff chimed in, “I’ve seen some pictures of dad back in the day. He didn’t look too bad. So I can see it.”

They all laughed again.

“Oh god, I forgot,” Grant said through the laughter as his own laughter grew. His brothers looked at him.

“When they met at the bar and mom told him about being an actress, and the show,” Grant continued as he fought back his laughter. “He told her he loved Russell Crowe, and it was cool they made a stage show of the movie.”

“No!” George said, as the other three joined Grant in more uproarious laughter.

“Is that why she threw out the DVD of that when dad pulled it out of Grandma’s things?” Geoff said through his laughter.

Greg held his stomach, “and she said yes to going on a date with him?”

The four all laughed harder at the question.

“Well she didn’t like Webber musicals to begin with, so maybe that worked in dad’s favor,” Greg said.

They all laughed hard for a few more moments before it slowly died off. They stood again in silence, slight smiles on all their faces. George looked to his side at a small table they had set out next to the casket that held a collection of framed photos. One of them being the photo from the community awards night with the award from the photo next to it, several family photos of her, their dad, and various numbers of him and his brothers depending on when the photo was taken. At the center of the table stood the framed photo of her and their dad on their wedding day. They both smiled wide as they stood next to each other and had their arms around each other.

“Did she tell you if she regretted not taking the offer,” George said as he looked back over at his youngest brother.

Grant shook his head, “not expressly. The only other thing she said was that it was the best first date of her life, and she was glad that she asked him for a second.”

They all chuckled again, “that sounds like mom,” Greg said.

“For what it’s worth,” Geoff said, “I don’t think she regretted it. Anyone who can smile as much as she did that night when she had vomit on her dress, an old sweatshirt on at a formal event, and holding a plastic trophy must have been happy.”

Grant and Greg nodded.

“She did say that it felt better than getting a Tony,” George said, his eyes back on their still mother in the casket.

Grant turned his head to the side slightly, “I wonder if it’s the award she was talking about.”

“I just hope she didn’t mean the vomit,” Greg said.

“Dammit Greg,” George said, as the four of them laughed again together.