Laughing at a funeral

The footy stops and starts in front of him; the favourites are losing and the ref is making bad decisions. Outside, the distant hum of a mower steals the orange from the sun, and the pollen and dust refuse to set. Michael and the neighbourhood kids play silly buggers in the street. The Old Girl tosses a plate at him. It bounces around like a hoola hoop before plunking on the table. She’s cut the devon sandwiches neatly in two and tomato sauce oozes out like a wound. His eyes don’t leave the screen as his Adam’s apple pulls back at the beer to the roar of the crowd and drone of the whistle. He’s getting old. Almost forty, but he looks much older: years in the sun and ocean have pulled and sagged and clawed, and made blotches of his face. Was this it? he would find himself thinking, like a kid with a maze, tracing from the finish to start. But his mind would always find itself at the same dead end. He remembers her. Not that he ever loved her. In fact, he never really liked her: more of a childish indifference, and it puzzled him that his mind would hold him hostage on this carousel. He remembers the first day he met her. She had a flower stuck behind her ear. He remembers how its thick petals peeled away from one another to reveal the yellow nectar. And the scent. He remembers how she’d tease him for having a penis, and his parent’s laughter when he had asked.
It’s ya jelly bean, his father bellowed, slapping his leg.
And he remembers the splashing her arms made as the water drank her down. He didn’t cry at the funeral. But perhaps he should have. It seemed to make things worse, him not. Her mum said, are you okay? I know you two were close.
I’m good.
She asked him to put some flowers on the coffin.
Ok, he had said a little reluctantly.
On his way down, on account of him trying to act all solemn and not looking where he was going, he damn nearly ran into the girl in the box. The surprise of it forced out a laugh. He felt everybody’s eyes branding their guilt into the back of his neck, like piss in the snow.
Did you just see that? they’d be saying. That boy was laughing. Laughing at a bloody funeral.