Driving With Dead People (8 page)

Mom and Annie’s mom started talking, and Granda walked over to the side of Annie’s bed. She was going to help break the ice.

“Monica’s in fifth grade,” Granda reported. Wherever we went, Granda introduced me to other children, including at Marsh Grocery Store or Art’s Cafeteria, where she often took me for lunch.

“Me, too,” Annie said.

“Monica hurt her hip roller-skating,” Granda said.

“Oh.” Annie didn’t say where she was hurt.

When it was dark outside and time for Mom and Granda to leave, I started to cry. Annie got out of her bed and crawled into mine, careful not to knock into my leg.

“Let’s watch TV so you won’t think about them leaving,” she said.

As Mom and Granda disappeared around the corner, Annie showed me a remote control, which I had never seen before. We sat in bed and changed channels without getting up.

I looked at Annie. She didn’t cry when her mom left, and I wondered why. How could she be so calm?

The week was long, but it picked up when Mom and Dad arrived with a large cardboard box that had
STANLEY TOOLS
printed on the side; it was filled with all kinds of presents. I had never seen so many wrapped gifts.

“These are from everyone at Galesburg Methodist. They figured you could use some cheering up,” Mom said. Dad looked out the window of my room (probably checking the weather) and came over to the bed.

“You really bummed up your leg,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are they treating you okay?” he asked. I couldn’t believe it. Dad had asked me a question.

“Pretty good,” I said, but as I was starting to tell him about the remote on the television, he walked out into the hallway.

Annie helped me open all those gifts: Monopoly, Barbie dolls,
Ramona the Pest
books, Magic Markers, a Scooby Doo puzzle, thick pads of drawing paper, and a Thumbelina doll. We were excited, but by the time we got everything unwrapped, Annie was too tired to play. She climbed into her bed and fell asleep.

Granda and Mom kept their word and came every single day. On some days Martha Whitmore came too.

Uncle Larry and Aunt Betty drove up even though my cousins Steve and Ellen were too little to come. They brought me the most beautiful gift of all, a huge cardboard castle with colorful cutouts of all my favorite fairy tale characters.

Two nights later Dad drove JoAnn, Becky, and Jamie up to see me. They weren’t allowed in my room, so I had to be wheeled down the hallway to the waiting area on a gurney. It was awkward because it felt so formal. None of us knew what to say.

I told Becky the church had sent tons of presents. I thought she’d be happy about all the new toys (especially the games), but she didn’t seem to care.

JoAnn was wearing a multicolored patchwork halter top she’d made in home economics. She had recently begun wearing high platform shoes, pooka bead necklaces, and striped pants with what she called “elephant legs.” She finally dressed like a girl, only in the coolest way.

I had the impression JoAnn didn’t like me very much. She was never mean, but she didn’t talk to me either. I was really loud and she needed quiet—all the time. When I tried to be quiet, it never worked. But in the hospital waiting room, she walked over to the gurney and put her hand on the side of it. I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what to say.

“You’ll be home soon,” she told me.

“I know,” I said defensively.

“You can play my
Jesus Christ Superstar
album until you’re allowed to go back to school.”

I stared at her in disbelief. No one touched her albums, especially me, who (as she often pointed out) always had marshmallow fluff or dirt on my hands.

“Thanks,” I managed. Dad wheeled me backward down the hallway in the opposite direction of everyone. I looked at Jamie, who gave me the peace sign.

A week later it was time to go home and Annie started to cry.

I told her, “You’re going home really soon and we can visit each other.”

She nodded but kept crying. I used my crutches to get over to her bed. “And we can write letters. I’ve never mailed a letter to anyone.” Annie nodded. I felt sorry for her, but I was happy to be getting out. I hugged her tightly and promised her a letter soon.

When we arrived downstairs, I welcomed the fresh Ohio breeze. I was never indoors, even in winter, and I hadn’t been outside in over seven days.

Granda and Mom were in the front seat, and the car was stuffed with all the toys from church, my nightgowns, socks, and Casper. I fell asleep as soon as we started out of Cincinnati, but I woke up later to hear Granda say, “Did she say how bad it was?”

“This is her fifth hospitalization,” Mom said. “Her lungs were full again.” I didn’t know whom they were talking about.

“What did her mom say it was?” Granda asked.

“Leukemia,” Mom said. “Absolutely terrifying.”

Granda shook her head. “She’s such a pretty little girl. Breaks my heart.”

“She’ll go home for a little while. Her mom thought in two weeks—maybe,” Mom said, and I realized they were discussing Annie. It sounded like she was seriously ill, but I’d never heard of leukemia.

When I finally wrote to Annie, six months had gone by. Her mother wrote to my mom saying Annie had died.

I frantically searched for the Polaroid picture Mom had taken of us in my hospital bed. I looked in boxes under my bed, I rifled through all our photos from the past year. The longer it took to find that picture, the more agitated I became.

Finally I dumped out a manila envelope that held the get-well cards from my hospital stay—and there, among the smiling animals and good wishes, was the Polaroid. We were lying side by side in my bed, and she was wearing that yellow nightgown with the capped sleeves and I was wearing my blue-and-green-checkered nightgown. It must have been taken the first night I was there.

I studied her face for clues of impending death: dark rings around her eyes or a haunted expression. She looked normal, which was worse.

Another one of us gone.

On Easter Sunday, Dad was up at dawn for sunrise service at church. He was in charge of making breakfast for the congregation: sausage gravy and biscuits, scrambled eggs, hot coffee, and orange juice.

Mom allowed us to attend church in jeans or sweatpants for the sunrise service, but after we ate breakfast in the church basement, we all went home and changed into fancy dresses and suits. Christ had been resurrected by then, so we dressed accordingly.

The night before, I thought my mother might have to be resurrected. She and Dad got into such a horrendous fight that he tried to choke her. All of us ran toward the kitchen when the screaming stopped, because it was so jarringly quiet, and we saw Dad’s thick fingers around Mom’s neck and Mom just staring at him unable to breathe or make a sound. Jamie hit Dad in the back as hard as he could and Dad let go of her. Dad stormed out of the room, knocking over a kitchen chair and screaming, “You’re all crazy. You’re a bunch of lunatics. I don’t know why I put up with any of you.” A few minutes later I heard his truck back out of the driveway.

JoAnn poured Mom a glass of water and Jamie was staring out the kitchen window toward the field. I could tell by the way his jaw was clenched that he was fighting tears. Becky and I sat down at the kitchen table. Dad could have killed her. No one said a word.

Finally Mom got up and put two huge pots of water on the stove to boil Easter eggs. The next day was the church egg hunt at Vivian Bank’s farm.

Easter morning Mom told us that Dad hadn’t been trying to choke her. We let it go for the sake of the holiday.

After the sunrise service and breakfast prepared by Dad, who was in “great guy” mode, after fancy dresses and suits, Mom insisted on hiding our Easter baskets in the backyard. Jamie was fifteen, JoAnn was thirteen, Becky was eleven, and I was ten, so no one wanted to hunt Easter baskets anymore. I decided to take Buddy and find the baskets myself.

I was walking up the steps clutching them all to my chest when Uncle Dale, Mom’s only sibling, pulled into our driveway in his squad car. He was a state policeman and always looked exceptionally handsome and important in his starched blue uniform and gold badge. He walked in the side door, and I ran to see what was up. I set the baskets on the living room floor near Jamie and gave Uncle Dale a hug. I could tell by his face that something was wrong. He leaned down and said, “Is your dad here?”

“Yes,” I said, and ran to the kitchen to get him. I figured Dad was going to jail for “not choking” Mom.

Dale followed and told me to run and get Mom, too. I called for Mom and she walked in and nodded her head for me to get lost. Dale was talking in a serious whisper.

I ran back to the living room and tried to distract myself by separating the black jelly beans from all the others that had collected in the bottom of my Easter basket. I handed Jamie a coconut egg. He hated coconut and threw it at my head. “Kiss my ass,” I whispered to him, and he cracked up. I’d been cussing for a while now, but if Mom heard me, I got smacked.

“Bare it and we’ll share it,” Jamie said, and we died laughing. I was so nervous I would have laughed at anything.

Dale was there only a few minutes and waved to us as he left without Dad. Mom and Dad went into their bedroom and slammed the door. They weren’t speaking to each other after what had happened the night before, so now all four of us were worried. We tried to figure out what had happened.

“Granda died,” I offered. (Granda was only sixty-four, but seemed ancient. Every time there was some kind of bad news, I was sure Granda had died.)

“Shut up,” Becky snapped.

“Someone broke into Dad’s store,” Jamie said. “That’s why the state police were called.”

“Maybe Dad’s girlfriend came back,” I said.

“Maybe Sam Lunsford shot Granda as she was driving by his house,” JoAnn said dryly.

“Nobody shot anyone,” Jamie assured us.

“Maybe Dad’s going to jail,” I told them.

They just stared at me.

“Why, for being a fucker?” Jamie said. My eyebrows flew up. We had never used the
f
word before.

Just then, Dad came out of the bedroom, slammed out the side door, and took off running down the sidewalk toward Mammaw’s house. I jumped up and looked out the living room windows. I’d never seen him run so fast.

Mom turned off the record player, which had been playing non-stop Frank Sinatra albums, and yelled, “You kids come in here.”

We slowly filed into the kitchen.

“Your uncle Carl passed away this morning. Your dad’s very upset. So, give me a minute and let me make some phone calls and figure some of this out. Your dad went down to tell Mammaw and Papaw.”

Uncle Carl wouldn’t be driving that Greyhound bus anymore. I wondered what had happened.

“Did Sam Lunsford shoot him?” I asked.

“No one shot him,” Mom replied. “He died in his car.”

“A damn car accident,” I said, smacking the counter. I was always waiting to die in a car wreck. Part of it was the calamities I’d seen on our home movies and part of it was the daredevil way Dad drove when we were with him. Carl’s accident confirmed it for me. We would all die in cars.

“Quit cussing. I already told you.” Mom smacked the side of my head. “And it wasn’t a car accident,” she said. “It was something else.”

We all stared at her, confused. Carl was only thirty-nine years old, not sixty-four like Granda—what could have killed him?

“Stop asking questions,” she snapped, and went into the bathroom to put on lipstick. Clearly, we would be having company.

JoAnn started crying and Jamie had his hand over his mouth in shock. They were both close to Uncle Carl and Aunt Evelyn, spending many afternoons at their house across the field, playing with Paul and Ben. They’d played together all their lives.

It turned out that Uncle Carl was found dead in the parking lot of a restaurant in Cincinnati. He was sitting upright in his blue Mercury with the engine running. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Being suddenly dead was trouble enough, but a young lady was dead too. She was found in Uncle Carl’s passenger seat, and she wasn’t Aunt Evelyn.

All the radio channels were airing the story and saying, “Foul play has not been ruled out.” It would probably be on the eleven o’clock news as well. Dad knew that Mammaw and Papaw always had their police scanner on, so he had to get down there quick before they heard it on there. And someone still had to tell Carl’s family.

Mom picked up the phone and called Dave Kilner to make sure he had gotten the call to retrieve the body from the morgue in Cincinnati. Dave told Mom he would send his brother Hugh instead, so he would be at the funeral home when Dad came over to make the funeral arrangements.

Mom called the rest of Dad’s brothers: Clarence, Bill, Larry, and Ernie, who all headed over to Mammaw’s house and then down to Carl’s to tell Evelyn and the kids.

Aunt Evelyn took the news of her husband’s death badly, but she took the news of the twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend with a heavy sedative.

It was all so dramatic—having to be sedated over Uncle Carl. Who knew he had it in him to have a girlfriend, just like Dad? And now he was dead.

When Dad came back to the house to change clothes, his eyes were swollen and red. I could not believe it, he was actually crying. I didn’t know how to react. He hated me so much, I wouldn’t have tried to hug him or go within two feet of him, but he needed something from someone.

Dad changed his clothes without saying a word to any of us and headed to Elk Grove to go over funeral details with Dave.

Mom took a chicken casserole over to Carl’s house but didn’t stay long. Mom was happy to pour Campbell’s cream of chicken soup over some noodles or make phone calls, but she wasn’t good at tears and hysteria.

The
Elk Grove Courier
carried the story on the front page the next day with the headline:

The family was already devastated and now they were publicly humiliated, as the article laid out where Carl was found and the name and age of the woman found in the car with him. The story continued on the second page, listing those who survived him, and there was Dad’s name right after Evelyn and the boys.

Ironically, right below his own brother’s obituary there was a picture of Dad in his Shriner’s fez celebrating the “newly formed Elk Grove Shrine Club” at the “gaily decorated” Elks Club.

At the mortuary that week Dave let me arrange flowers for Carl’s funeral, which I did by color: yellows to the far right, then pinks, whites, and reds. All greenery was on the left along with the larger sprays. Carnations were placed in the far back. I hated carnations.

Uncle Carl was downstairs with Max Cooper getting ready for the viewing, but Dave didn’t let me go down there. I wouldn’t have wanted to see Carl like that, laid out on the white porcelain table with the two drains in it. It was not comforting to think of a family member being embalmed by Max and made up by Virginia, who had been back from vacation for a while now.

The night of Uncle Carl’s visitation, the Peterson family began arriving at four thirty p.m. I felt a prick of resentment as they invaded my mortuary. It was the one place where none of them could get to me, but here they were, walking through the front door. Dad was the first one through.

I stood by the guest book and greeted everyone along with Dave and Max. I was as much a part of the mortuary staff as I was Carl’s niece, and if I thought of myself as staff, I wouldn’t have to be a part of “them.”

My father stood beside the coffin all night. He wouldn’t leave Carl’s side and kept swiping his nose with a white hanky that had his own initials embroidered on it in navy stitching. He shook people’s hands and, for once, he wasn’t doing it for attention. He wanted to be there, next to his brother, whom he had taught to ride a bicycle and who had worn Dad’s shoes and pants long after Dad had outgrown them.

Then I saw Mammaw and Papaw. They came in through the back and were in terrible shape. As mean as Papaw was, he didn’t deserve this. Mammaw looked red-eyed and confused. They had lost a child. She couldn’t invent a salve for this kind of hurt.

When Dad saw his parents, he hurried over and set up chairs for each of them. He asked Mom to get them coffee. I was watching someone I didn’t know.

Even odder than seeing Dad as a loving brother and caring son was the image that hit me as I walked into the formal room (what I called the “body” room) of the mortuary. I was older now and didn’t need to be lifted up to see inside the casket. I glanced at Uncle Carl lying there, and from that angle, me standing at the foot of the coffin (a Batesville solid maple with beige crepe interior), Carl looked exactly like my dad. I hurried to find Jamie and made him stand in the exact same spot.

“He looks like Dad,” he said.

“
Exactly
like him.”

I gave myself a few minutes to fantasize that it
was
Dad and felt surprisingly unhappy, even sad. Dad was violent, but I didn’t want him in a casket. I didn’t know what Jamie was hoping, but both his fists were clenched.

My big brother was too cool for me to hug, so I wrapped my sweaty fingers around his narrow wrist. We stood there a long time.

The next day we followed Kilner and Son’s black hearse through Elk Grove and onto Highway 64 for the slow ride through Galesburg and then up County Line Road to tiny Clover Hill Cemetery, where all the Petersons were buried. Seeing the hearse in front of us and all the cars pulling to the side of the road as we passed overwhelmed me with grief—for Carl and Aunt Evelyn, for Tim, Ben, and Paul, and for everything that constantly went wrong. I cried for the first time that year. I was afraid I might never stop.