Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (20 page)

They wait it out, ready, each one of them, to say something to get the couple the hell out of there but it turns out their own silence is enough to do the trick. The woman looks around after just a few minutes and discovers that five women are staring at her and that they all have on red tennis shoes and red bandanas and they look, well, they look just a little wacko.

She leans over, whispers into her companion’s ear, and then he turns slowly and not so smoothly to look at them—their feet first. He gets it after he does see that the five women are indeed staring at them and that he and his wife must have walked into something terribly interesting but definitely not open to the public. The couple leave without saying a word.

“Close call,” Balinda says. “Maybe we should get started.”

“Imagine what you will now of Annie and her life here,” Katherine suggests. “Imagine it, and throw that part of Annie’s life, that passion, that notion for living right back out there when we do this part of the funeral. I’ll go first. Is that okay with all of you?”

Of course it is and Katherine has Laura hold the box as she gently removes the cover and opens up the shoes. The women cannot help it. They abandon their posts and cluster around Katherine and they watch as she reaches into the shoes and then holds the ashes into the wind.

Katherine imagines the laughter that constantly freshened Annie’s heart. She honors that and then she wishes it for herself, right now, forever, especially the second she gets back to California.

The boat sways and the women take turns making their wishes blend with the ashes into one sweet and soft place that rides behind the boat.

Jill thinks it was the love—when to hold it and when to let it go.

Balinda thinks it was adventure, newness, trying the impossible.

Laura goes for the elegance. Dipping your fingers into a luxurious world and enjoying every last second of what you feel and find there.

Rebecca closes her eyes and imagines screaming fun. The kind of fun you remember your entire life. The kind of fun you have with your best friends and never regret for one single second.

When they dock, the invisible trail of ashes dances in circles in the rising wind. The pallbearers leave the boat, salute the sky, and stand to look at the clouds—in the exact same spot where the invisible ashes are moving apart to be consumed by the entire universe. And in California, just then, Marie has drifted down a long gravel highway near her fourth appointment so she can catch a glimpse of a hidden pond. She stops for a moment, opens the car door, decides no matter what she will fly to Minnesota in the morning, places her hand over the top of her eyes to shade them from the sun and swears she sees a swirling line of darkness—as thin as a thread, ashes in the air, moving across the horizon to the east. She blinks and the line has disappeared.

22

Rebecca wants to sell her house and move into the hotel.

“Maybe they wouldn’t notice if we never left,” she yells through the bathroom door while she puts on the rest of her makeup. “What if Annie left a credit card with them and that’s part of the deal—that we get to live here the rest of our lives and have people wait on us and sheets that feel like heaven and a totally stocked minibar and pastries delivered every morning . . .”

She’s interrupted by Laura, who is sick of Rebecca hogging the sink.

“Snap out of it,” Laura tells her, laughing. “This is a dream. Get it? A wild wonderful dream. When I snap my fingers, you will wake up and remember nothing and very quickly walk away from that sink.”

Rebecca whines. She does not want to wake up. She does not want to think about getting on an airplane or leaving New York or waking up in a new place. She whines that she has no intention of ever using her own washer or dryer again and if her hands ever touch a plastic garbage sack it will be only to set out her clothes for the butler to take to the dry cleaner.

“You are really getting into this, aren’t you?” Balinda says from the couch where she is waiting for everyone to finish getting ready for their night on the town. The women have agreed to dress the part for their evening and have lined up all of the red shoes, including the ones containing Annie, along the deep windowsill looking out toward Central Park. Katherine and Balinda cannot bear to part with their scarves even for one evening and they have tied them into each other’s hair. They have no idea where they are going, what will happen next, or how in the hell they will get Rebecca out of the bathroom.

“Hey, big mouth, your turn to write in the funeral book,” Rebecca says, grabbing the fast-filling book off the desk and throwing it into Balinda’s lap. “Write—then we go.”

Balinda hesitates. She hesitates and remembers where she came from, what she must go back to, and how she came to be with such a marvelous group of women during a time that goes beyond interesting and fabulous. A time that makes her take the book and hold it under her chin as if she is cradling the baby she will never have. For the very first time in many years she is feeling as if her life may hold some kind of possibility.

She writes slowly and as she falls into her writing the other women become quiet. The banter ceases and they retreat while she writes. They retreat and they watch and their own minds and hearts fold into the turns of fate that have given them a chance of a lifetime because Annie G. Freeman has died.

B
ALINDA
T
HOUGHT:
When I was a teenager I remember watching my mother sit on the back step of our apartment building while the neighbor women talked. My mother could barely speak a word of English and she fought learning it even though it isolated her. My mother would sit on the step and watch the other women talk while they drank coffee out of white porcelain cups in the tiny slice of grass that served as the neighborhood park. The women were working on becoming Americans, and my mother, who was homesick every single day, would not join them. She missed so much because of that and I felt guilty, always guilty, about having my own friends and life. Her choice was not my choice, but over the years that I have been taking care of her I let my own friends slip away because of my mother. I have become what my mother was. This traveling funeral for a woman who died before I even met her has not filled me with regret for what I am doing but regret for how I am doing it. I do not have to be isolated. I can resurrect my world and I think how wonderful this is—how you’ve given me back something, Annie, because you chose your own friends so well. I am trying to be brazen. I am trying not to worry about my mother every second that I am here. I am trying to fall into this break in my life and hoping that when I leave I will take it all with me and make your traveling funeral part of my life and world. Thank you, Annie, for showing me how to live in the midst of your own death.

A
NNIE
T
HOUGHT:
I don’t know you, Balinda, but I think you know now that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because my world, my life, was lined with a richness and breadth of experience because I gave in to it. But I didn’t always have that. I learned to do that and you can relearn to do it as well. Each one of these women would throw herself in front of a train for you. They are kind, generous souls who have been dragged through the mud in their own lives. Your dance with your mother is a gift of grace. This funeral, as you now know, is about learning how to dance. Dance, Balinda. Just dance.

When she finishes Balinda feels as if she should get down on her knees and kiss the feet of Laura, Rebecca, Jill and Katherine. She paces her mind back just three days and thinks about how desperate she was and how she could think of no one to call but Laura. She thinks about the power of that single relationship. She thinks about Laura coming over at two in the morning when her mother fell and she needed help lifting her back into bed. She thinks about Laura making her watch old movies with her and drink tea from wineglasses because there was no wine. She thinks of Laura coming over to turn on the house lights so her mother would not be frightened when Balinda brought her home from the doctor’s office. She thinks that without Annie’s friend Laura this might be her traveling funeral.

“Laura,” she says, rising to find her flipping through a tourist book with Jill. “Can you come here for a second?”

“You okay?”

“I was just thinking about how much you mean to me, Laura. I’m a bit of a sap right now because I just wrote in the funeral book, but I want you to know that I never take you for granted and that I remember everything you did for me and that without you . . . I don’t know what I’d do, Laura.”

“Oh, honey,” Laura answers, opening her arms so that Balinda can walk into them. “This is what women do. This is what you’d do for me. It’s okay. I do it because I want to, because you are my friend, because I care for you so very much.”

“What we talked about on the boat earlier today, about how death brings out some interesting aspects of life—well, my God, it’s so true, isn’t it? I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d be staying at a four-star hotel with a bunch of women who are about to go out on the town in the middle of the week as part of a funeral celebration. I was desperate for a break. So desperate it was embarrassing.”

Laura tells her it isn’t necessary to apologize. Exhaustion and sacrifice, she explains, are a deadly combination.

“We’ve all been there,” she adds. “It isn’t easy to watch someone die, to think that a part of you is dying too. How bizarre when you think about it that dying is as much a part of life as living. Oh, sweetheart, you deserve to be here, and something you should know is that Annie would have wanted you here. She would have. So it’s okay and thank you for appreciating me. Thank you, sweetie.”

Balinda suddenly feels like a queen. She feels light and free. She knows her mother is resting comfortably and that the nurse has propped up her legs just the way she likes them and left the television on so that a low hum fills her room. She’s called the care facility so many times in the past two days they finally asked her to trust them and put down the phone. “Your mother is in good hands, you know that, Balinda,” the nurse told her, speaking in Polish so that she would get the hint that her mother was well cared for. “Enjoy the break.”

Before the women leave their suite, once again Jill reads them the note from Annie they found on the bed when they’d arrived. She reminds everyone that they are supposed to have a great time, see the insides of at least two bars, and eat at some locally exotic restaurant.

They decide to walk. They also decide not to ask anyone for directions or for a tip on the best restaurant. “We’ll know,” Jill decides and everyone agrees. That’s when Katherine flashes a credit card. She let’s them know it was included in the packet with the tapes and that dinner, dancing, drinking and any other disgusting thing they might care to do will be covered. “This night, like all the rest, is on Annie.”

“See, we can stay forever,” Rebecca shouts as they begin hiking down Fifth Avenue. “The world is ours.”

“The world might be ours,” Jill tells her. “But my guess is there is a limit on the credit card so we should just buy half the store and not the whole store.”

It’s early evening in Manhattan and although the hum of the busy day has receded a little there is still a gallery of excitement—taxis jamming the streets, couples dodging traffic to find a place for a drink, live music drifting in and out of restaurants, a sky ablaze with a chorus of lights that blast from earth to clouds 365 days of a New York year.

Annie’s traveling funeral is on fire. The women, proud of their mission already accomplished, serenaded by their own blossoming friendships, mourning the loss of a woman they all loved in ways that are new and raw and wonderful, feel anything is possible. They link arms and form a moving pyramid down the street, silently thinking similar thoughts.

How fun this is . . .

How Annie would have loved this . . .

How happy I am at this moment . . .

How in two hundred years I would never have guessed this moment possible . . .

How extraordinary life can be if you take your door off its hinges . . .

They walk in glowing silence until they see a dark shaded patio that is covered in blinking Christmas lights. From a distance all they can see is a forest of green that forms a small canopy around the porch—an oasis—and they hear the very quiet tunes of a woman singing jazz that is probably recorded but sounds real and sweet and terribly beautiful. They all stop at the same moment, exchange glances, and agree without saying a word that this is where they will have dinner.

The restaurant is a cave of modernity that comes with soft purple walls, gleaming floors, white tablecloths, and black-and-white photos of female movie stars—all women. The entire place is women-centered and they wonder if they have not stumbled into a lesbian-favored establishment. The bartender is a woman. The waitresses are all women. The entire place reeks of estrogen and femininity and the wide strokes that only a woman can bring to the world.

“Excellent,” Katherine exclaims as they find seats at the bar and reserve a table outside. “If this place was here when Annie was in town I am beyond certain that she spent a great deal of time here. This joint is fabulous.”

“Fabulous” quickly becomes the word for the night as the women raise their glasses of wine as a tribute to Annie who brought them to the very spot where they are toasting her, and then to each other. To each other, first for having had the fine sense to know and embrace Annie as a friend, second to have the guts to embark on a traveling funeral with the rest of them, and third to be bold enough to be risking the most valuable commodity available—time.

“And,” Laura adds, “for putting up with Katherine’s bossy ways.”

“And your know-it-all attitude,” Katherine chimes back.

“And my cry-baby crap,” Balinda adds.

“There’s my shitty attitude,” Rebecca says.

“And me sitting around and feeling sorry and being regretful,” Jill concludes.

“To Annie,” they clink, in a chorus of words that mingle with their glasses and create a chime that makes everyone in the restaurant turn their heads. “To us,” they add, moving to form a solid circle so that they can touch each other, so that their glasses meet in a wide arch, so that they can freeze this moment forever in their minds as a gift they received and then gave right back to the woman beside them.

Dinner is slow and sweet. They decide that in keeping with the spirit of change and chance and letting go, they must each order something they would not usually order. Fish, meat—a salad made out of something they did not know existed—anything different and new.

And they toast endlessly, falling into their dinner and drinks as if they have been marooned on an island for years and years and were rescued by friends who never stopped looking for them the entire time they were gone. Their conversation maneuvers from where they are to where they have been and back and forth in between both of those destinations. They laugh constantly, pick on each other, and they talk about love.

“Funerals and love—it kind of makes sense,” Jill asserts. “It’s a terrific time to not only think about how you loved the person who has died but it’s also been my experience that funerals make us think about all the still-living people we love—kind of like shuffling through your own life’s Rolodex to see if there is anyone you should call or write or go visit.”

“I bet every single one of us, though—especially after a funeral—has thought about what we’d do if we knew we were going to die. What if you woke up and whatever superior force you believe in was standing by your bed tapping His or Her finger on Her watch and saying, ‘You have twenty-four hours, honey—get cracking.’ What would you do? Would you run to the people you love? Would you do what you love? Or would you stay in bed?” Rebecca asks.