Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (19 page)

They also talk of Marie and a heart’s calling. They decide that there would not have been better hands to hold Annie than the gentle and warm fingers and wrists and arms of Marie from Sonoma County who no doubt at the very minute they are about to enter a new and noisy, tangled unborn jungle is either changing someone’s catheter, measuring a dose of morphine, or cradling someone’s body in her arms.

“Enough,” the cabdriver finally tells them with an accent that is as dark and rich as their morning coffee as he pulls in front of their hotel. “No more dying talk now. This is New York. New York keeps on moving, no matter who dies. That is who we are.”

The hotel is a breathtaking elegant step back into time for women who have been around the block but who can usually be found at a sixty-dollar-a-night chain hotel, inside of a tent, or sleeping on a friend’s couch while dressed in a well-worn pair of sweatpants, a faded T-shirt and an aging pair of flip-flops.

“Oh, sweet God in heaven,” Jill whispers, standing in a lobby that looks as if it has just escaped from a European history book. “Katherine, are you certain we are at the right hotel?”

No one moves while Katherine confirms their registration and they are ushered by smiling men in red suits with tiny red hats to the top of the hotel and two adjoining executive suites. The rooms are an exquisite array of tables, chairs, sitting rooms, and bathrooms that immediately make the women feel as if they have not only been transported back in time, but transplanted into someone else’s life as well.

“Do you think Annie stayed here?” Rebecca asks, moving to the window only to discover a view of Central Park that makes her say, “Holy shitski.”

“I suppose,” Laura says, following her to the window. “She could have had her honeymoon here or she could have met someone here or had a one-night stand. We didn’t know
everything
about her. That would be impossible.”

Jill discovers a note on the bed and four bottles of champagne chilling on a table. She opens the note, reads it, and then turns to wave it at the other women.

Katherine takes the note out of her hand and holds it out as far as her arm can reach because her reading glasses are stuffed inside of her bag.

Tonight . . . drink every last drop of this outrageously expensive champagne. Do not leave these rooms. Order room service. Take long baths. Have a slumber party. Tomorrow, do the town. Eat out. Go to a bar. You will know where to drop me. Live large. Laugh. You deserve every frigging moment of this. I adore all of you. Love, Annie.

The champagne tastes like gold. They lick their glasses and squeeze their eyes shut while they drink it and imagine it is the stuff kings and queens sip for Sunday brunch. The women quickly claim the space as their own, throw their bags and jackets and cell phones from one end of the suite to the other, and they use the crystal glasses at the bar. They toast Annie and each other and they call home and then they call Marie, who is in the middle of an assessment of a new patient, and Marie orders them to drink faster and call her in three hours because she is also on hold with her travel agent. They jump on the beds, order hors d’oeuvres, and then they draw straws for the whirlpool bathtubs.

The champagne goes right to each one of their heads and they could care less. They lie on the floor and put their feet up on tables that cost more than all of the furniture in their entire living room. They forget about all the parts of each other that drive them crazy. They run their hands along the sides of the long golden drapes, they lean into the windows and watch people—tiny ants below—in the park, they write notes on the gold stationery, and then they push all the chairs together, order dinner and really good wine, and they have a feast of food and words and memories.

Before they fall asleep, before someone finally says, “I cannot have one more sip of wine,” Laura asks everyone to be quiet for just a second, which is no easy task. She tells them to close their eyes and to imagine all the voices of the past that were once alive in their suite—the sighs of lovers, the phone calls to Sweden, the lost moments spent gazing into the glittering sky after events like the stock market crash, a huge parade, the end of a war, the Towers’ collapse. Laura mesmerizes them with her voice and with what they know that she knows about the past worlds hidden under the thick carpeting and the golden wallpaper and in the lining of the carved mahogany drawers.

“Think of everyone who danced here,” she tells them. “The women in long skirts who threw back the heavy drapes and little boys who were told ‘hush’ as their grandma slept on the divan, and the maid who stood guard, dreaming of the moment when she could race home to hold the hands of her own lover.”

Think, she tells them, of Annie. Then make up your own story, she asks. Believe whatever you want of her in this place, this insane and wonderful city. Make it up. Make it real. Hold it in your own hand and dance with it, Laura instructs, dance with it all the way to your bed and all through the night and every time you think of this city and this night.

Before dawn, in that bleak hour when every person, every being wants to stay asleep forever, each one of the women stirs for just a second. Laura, Katherine, Jill, Balinda, Rebecca and even Marie, even Marie stirs and sees or thinks she sees the shadow of someone with her head tilted back and a glass in her hand, laughing so hard that she seems to lose her balance.

Later the following morning and the next day and for years after that, no one speaks of that laughing shadow. They all think it was a dream—this dancing, lovely happy woman who seemed as if she was born to have fun. They think it was a dream, but they never forget.

They never forget.

21

It is just past noon when they finally decide.

They have missed the high tea thingamabob in the hotel rotunda. They have missed breakfast but not the ordering of extrava-gant quantities of dark, rich coffee and pastries loaded with sugar. They have missed six cell-phone calls and the crack of dawn, and two knocks on the suite door from a maid and the hotel manager, who forgot to deliver fresh flowers the night before.

“Okay, you guys,” Katherine finally says. “We need to seize this day or what is left of it. We have a funeral to get on with here, for crying out loud. What should we do?”

Climb to the top and sneak onto the roof? No.

Take one of the funky buggy rides and throw her around in the park? No.

A very she-she or he-she bar? No.

The library. Books. She loved books. No.

All around. A little here and a little there. Fifth Avenue. Alphabet City. Harlem. No.

They think some more. Balinda pages through the book on the desk to find the latest hot and trendy nightspots for dinner. Katherine paces. Jill stands and looks down at the park. Laura lies very still on the bed.

Balinda comes up with it and she does so as an accident. She is reading the names of the recommended restaurants and places to visit while in the Big Apple out loud and when she mentions the boat tour around Manhattan Island, they all look up at once and say, “That’s it!” at the exact same time.

“That’s it?” Balinda asks, not really sure but pretty sure.

“Oh yes.” Jill moves from the window and claps her hands together. “The boat tour. That’s perfect and it’s a heck of a lot of fun, if I can remember back that far.”

Everyone agrees, even Laura, who looks as if she may have had a wiser thought come into her head. But she doesn’t object and they all look at her with gratitude for her silence. So it’s decided. Lunch wherever they find it along the way. The last tour of the day. Red shoes all around. Scarves wherever they want to wear them. The ceremony. Dinner on the way back and then they must hit—because of Annie’s orders—at least one New York City bar before they can slip in between the perfumed linen sheets again and sleep like drunken babies.

In New York, which celebrates the thin and the fat and the happy and the demented and the joyful and the grieving, they look—well—different. But they could care less, because they are the pallbearers for Annie G. Freeman. The hotel lobby is loaded with dark suits and long skirts as they parade down the set of steps and cross the thick carpeted hall. Several people standing by the desk look at them and stare. Katherine, who is becoming even more boisterous with each passing second, blows them a kiss and then makes certain the shoebox with Annie’s ashes is inside her carrying bag along with her water bottle, cell phone, and the funeral book.

The doormen tip their hats and one asks, “Can I do anything, please?” and Rebecca tells them they need a ride to the boat.

“The boat?” quips Jill. “It looks like you just got off the boat.”

They ride in a taxi with the windows open and Jill in the front seat with the driver and with an air of anticipation that makes everything seem brighter and more crackling than it probably is but Annie G. Freeman’s traveling funeral mistresses are on a mission and they know they are looking at the same streets, maybe some of the same people, in one of the places that captivated and captured a piece of Annie and that, for sure, makes everything beyond just a bit brighter. Their own stuff, just for now, is not allowed on this part of the journey.

“Hey!” Balinda shouts out the window. “Look at that!”

They all look out the window and what they see is another parade. A sudden New York parade where a man dressed not unlike them in colors that glow in the dark and blowing a silver tuba is walking down the sidewalk and gathering up passersby who have formed an imaginary band behind him.

“Do not stop this cab,” Jill orders the taxi driver who glances down quickly at her red high-tops with a polite smirk even though he has seen worse. He wonders if they are all members of some new women’s terrorist group about to take over the boat tour. He imagines it even as he thinks it and he does not stop.

The tuba echoes behind them as they swerve down an avenue where a double-decker green-and-white boat sign proudly announces that it will take them to see three rivers, seven bridges and five boroughs.

“That should do it,” Laura says with confidence as she stands in front of the sign. “There’s plenty of room in all those places for the ashes of Annie.”

Rebecca tells Katherine that Annie has become such a seemingly live part of her own funeral that maybe they should buy a ticket for her. Then they imagine what it would be like if Annie G. Freeman was with them like she was with them just months ago.

Would they be in a different city? No.

Would they talk or drink or laugh less? No—maybe more.

Would they try something new? Yes.

Would they defer to Annie, the know-it-all queen? Yes. Often. Even Katherine.

Would the entire adventure be a revealing, intimate escapade that might be followed by years of follow-up discussion? Oh, yes.

And then, then they wonder why they waited. They wonder why everyone waits to send the note, make the call, say the one thing you know you should say.

“Death,” Jill states, “does this to people. It slaps the living upside the head and it makes us ponder and exchange events and feelings that might stay hidden.”

“It’s like a narcotic, when you think about it,” Katherine agrees. “Look at us, for crissakes. We are dressed like clowns and we’ve abandoned our routines and our kids and our husbands and our jobs to do this funky funeral thing. We’d never have even thought of this unless Annie had died.”

The conversation races like the avenues of Manhattan until they see water shimmering at the end of the next block. The taxi driver watches them leave the taxi and hop onto the long blue boat, smiling widely and thinking that “those women are up to something” and he wishes he could go along just to find out what that something might be.

They stake out the entire boat and decide to claim the back seats, perfect for spreading ashes when no one is looking, and then they settle in, wait for the cruise to begin, and share stories of other places and times they shared with Annie G. Freeman.

For a while then there are no lost loves and no overbooked workdays. For a while everyone is safe and none of the children have problems. For a while everyone knows who they are and where they are going. For a while they can set aside remorse and loss and the wider arc of grief that encompasses everything and everyone. For a while nothing any of them says or does will irritate anyone else. For a while they can sit in the moment, sit and not worry or shift a wad of guilt from hand to hand or imagine what it will be like in a week when they are not here in this traveling funeral brigade.

Both Katherine and Rebecca agree that the best times with Annie, the greatest moments, were the quiet ones. Driving in the car, sitting on the back steps and drinking strong coffee or stronger whiskey. Hiking for hours in mostly silence.

“I loved talking to Annie about books,” Laura tells the group. “Before I even thought about buying a book, or reading one for that matter, I always called her and she almost always knew something about it or the writer or some far-fetched review. I loved knowing I could count on her that way.”

Balinda listens as Rebecca says it was Annie’s garage light that made her happy. She said she loved seeing the light on because it meant Annie was home.

“No matter how together we are, how many friends or kids or partners or dogs or goats we have, there are always moments where we not only feel alone but lonely as well. That damn light of Annie’s was like my security blanket,” Rebecca shares. “It was a light in the darkness, yes, but it was really knowing that I could count on her. Having her to be there for me in a heartbeat if I needed anything is the thing that I miss every goddamn day.”

Katherine talks about Annie’s voice in such quiet tones it takes everyone a few minutes to realize that she is crying.

“I’m okay,” she assures them. “Thinking about Annie’s light makes me think about how when I heard her voice, my heart would race, and I could just picture her and what she was doing and that she was close enough to drive to if I really needed her. God, how I loved just talking to her. Sometimes I’d sort of freak out if I couldn’t get her on her cell phone or at home or work.”

Sometimes, she tells them, she still answers the phone thinking it might be Annie and she forgets. She forgets that Annie has died and that it won’t be her on the end of the phone line and then the second she hears another voice, anyone’s voice—a telemarketer, her daughter, the phone company—she gets so angry she wants to take the phone and throw it out the window.

“It’s just her voice for me that always made me feel loved. That was it.”

Balinda cannot speak of Annie except for what she has learned of her the last two days and what Laura has shared with her. She cannot say for sure but she thinks what endeared her to Annie the most would have been her brazen spirit.

“I never met her but I bet she would have told me to find ways to move forward and that I’d still be able to help my mother,” she says, rising to move to the railing opposite Jill. “I bet I’d miss her advice and I bet I’d miss some wild-ass adventure, like this, that she’d cook up in between whatever else she did.”

Brazen and fun, the other women agree, pretty much would be a good thing to miss and it would be true—that was Annie.

Manhattan looks like a towering mass of concrete from the backside of the boat but it is fascinating and uniquely beautiful no matter how the women look at it. The wind is just a tickle around their necks that picks up as the boat speeds around the first turn and the tour guide begins trotting back through time with the handful of visitors who are on board for the final trip of the day. Annie’s pallbearers are not interested in the founding fathers and mothers who set up camp on the island that is such a swirling mass of energy it glitters and seems to move to its own beat. They are not interested in purchasing key rings or cold drinks or in the opportunity to personally rent an entire boat for a private party. They are only interested in figuring out how to distribute Annie’s ashes without the other tourists becoming part of the ritual.

“Let’s stake out the territory,” Rebecca suggests. “We kind of look like a gang with these scarves and shoes anyway. Maybe they’ll all be scared of us.”

The mere thought makes everyone begin laughing hysterically.

“Look at us,” Jill snorts, pulling at her T-shirt and slapping her stomach. “I can see why someone would be scared as hell of me.”

They do it anyway because, besides the fear factor idea, it makes sense. Laura stands guard at the entrance, Jill and Balinda stay at their corners, Rebecca rises to stand at the edge of the steps that go upstairs, and Katherine stands in the middle of the back railing holding the shoebox.

There is a slight chance that someone will come to the back of the boat, but the other tourists are huddled around the front of the boat and asking questions of the guide who occasionally shouts up to the captain. Not much chance there will be a raid where the women are.

They guard and then they wait because they really don’t have a plan.

“We could just do it all at once, huddle back here, and do it like that,” Laura finally suggests. “It would be the one-two-three version of the traveling funeral. We haven’t done that yet.”

They think for a moment and then Rebecca says it would be better to spread it out.

“I think more than one thing happened to her here,” she explains. “I think she had tons of adventures here, had fun, embraced a whole new part of the world, probably fell in love—it would be wrong to assume that New York was just a one-shot deal.”

That’s true, everyone agrees, but they also agree that it doesn’t so much matter how it’s done but that it’s done and done by them. The boat sways a tiny bit and their red scarves begin to blow and the sun takes a straight shot up and rides as high as possible, dismantling clouds and taking the reins of the day.

Katherine finally suggests that at each turn, one of them spread the ashes and do or say whatever they want to.

“That way,” she explains, holding tightly on to the shoebox, “we’ll have the entire island covered and we can let our guard down just a bit.”

Just as she finishes talking, a couple pushes past Rebecca and says, “Mind if we stand here?” and stops to rest against the railing right in the middle of the traveling funeral. The five women are speechless for a second and then they all want to laugh at what it might be like to try and explain why they commandeered the back end of the boat.

“Oh, we’re just having a little funeral this afternoon with our friend Annie,” one of them would say. “She’s right here, yes, that’s here right inside of those cute red high-tops. Oh, no, no don’t worry, we won’t get any ashes in your eyes and even if we do, it washes out. She was a fun gal. Loved boats and all. We thought we’d take her for one last ride.”