Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (3 page)

". . . and since you have trespassed the space in front of their lair," he announced, "you will be attacked by a low-flying straight line of stringrays-"

"Arch!" I stuck my head into his room. "Hate to interrupt. Breakfast."

He looked up at me from his neatly made bed. He was already wearing his white shirt and black pants. Soon he would cover this outfit with one of our white chef's aprons.

"To be continued," he said, and hung up. Behind the glasses his eyes were inscrutable.

"You're all right?" I said, half statement, half question. "I'm not hungry," he said with straight-lipped calm.

"For eggs or anything. Let's just go."

And so we did. Patty Sue ate all the eggs. We packed the van and set out.

The air was cool but calm, quite different from the snarling frost-blowing beast an October day could be. At eight thousand feet above sea level, snow and cakes fell unexpectedly. After eleven years I'd learned how to adjust the recipes, but driving the van through storms and over ice remains a challenge. This day the aspen leaves moved languidly as the van sputtered out of the driveway's dust. Above, the sky was deep blue and cloudless, as if nature were holding her breath before the first storms. Starting the descent to Main Street, we passed a vacant lot and had a glimpse of the far distance.

"Oh," said Patty Sue, "what is that?"

She was pointing to the town's namesake, the Aspen Meadow, now a large patch of gold in a green-and-brown quilt of trees about seven miles away. This patchwork of fall color nestled at the base of mountains already blanketed with white. I explained to her that that area was known as the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. There, I added as we turned onto Main Street, the forest was so thick that during dry spells even hikers were barred entry, for fear of forest fire.

"Arch knows all about the Aspen Meadow," I announced, hoping to invite him out of his silence. "He's done drawings as part of his school work."

"You do?" said Patty Sue as she turned to face him. "You have?"

"Oh, I guess," said Arch in a flat voice. "The Webelos hike in for the last pack meeting of the year," he said. "The woods are real deep. We see a lot of deer and elk and foxes and stuff like that. But to get in you have to go down a long dirt road. Fritz fishes the upper Cottonwood in the summer, and Pomeroy Locraft raises bees." He thought for a moment and then explained to Patty Sue, "I used to help Pom with the hives, last spring when I was studying bees."

"And flowers," I added.

"Did you get stung?" Patty Sue asked. "Did you catch fish?"

"I caught some trout," said Arch. He thought for a minute. "The bees never stung me." I looked at him in the mirror. He was shaking his head at Patty Sue, as if he were twenty and she eleven. He explained, "You learn how to be careful. Pomeroy taught me stuff like wearing white around the bees." Arch sighed. "He taught me a lot."

"This Pomeroy," I said to anticipate Patty Sue's next question, "teaches driver ed over at the high school and does the apiary in the summer. Pomeroy is also recently divorced." I stopped at Main Street's one red light and smiled at my housemate. "A new single person in town can be an interesting part of the landscape, too."

"Oh," said Patty Sue.

"Will Dad be at Ms. Smiley's?" asked Arch.

"Yep," I said, and pushed the van's grinding gears into first. "Vonette and Fritz, too. Plus all the teachers from the schools."

Patty Sue said, "I've never seen a dead person." "Don't worry," I assured her, "we're not going to the church at all. Plus it's not that kind of wake. They'll have the funeral and the interment while we're setting up. All we'll see is live people."

Patty Sue paused and then said suddenly, "I never knew anyone who killed herself."

I did not answer but glanced again at Arch in the rearview mirror. He was looking out the window, but sensed my eyes.

"It's okay, Mom," he said. "You can talk about it."

"All I know is," I said quietly, "what I've heard. She was out doing errands Saturday morning. One week ago today. On Monday she didn't show up for school and didn't call in. They got a substitute." I coaxed the van into second and turned onto Homestead Drive before going on. Apparently one of the teachers came over at lunchtime to check on her and to bring some papers that needed correcting. The door was open. Laura was in the bathtub. Dead. Razor in her hand and dried blood all over, I guess. No note, but no sign of a fight or anything. There was an autopsy." I cleared my throat. "I think that's routine. Anyway, the guy said suicide." I paused. "Except that it just seems so sad. Premature."

I glanced at Arch. He was intent on the view out the window. The van released another cloud of dust as we turned onto Piney Circle, a dirt road where wood- paneled houses peeked out from behind stands of ponderosa and lodgepole pine.

"So did you know her?" Patty Sue asked.

Alicia's question. Why did people inquire so suspiciously about your prior acquaintance with a suicide victim? Were they trying to ascertain guilt? If you had known her better, she wouldn't have done this? If you hadn't known her at all, you were off the hook?

"She was Arch's teacher last year and two years ago. I saw her at conferences," I replied. "Sometimes I saw her in exercise class. That's it." I thought for a minute. "She was funny. She could make you laugh talking about how she was going to be a taxing person for the IRS, things like that. And she was a special person for Arch."

I looked again in the mirror. My son was holding his hands over his eyes. I pulled over onto the graveled shoulder and turned to face him.

“Arch," I said. "You don't have to do this. Listen, we can manage with just Patty Sue and myself serving. You don't even have to come at all."

Patty Sue and I sat as Arch sobbed quietly. I handed him a tissue. I shouldn't have talked about Laura Smiley, after all. Arch blew his nose and coughed as people do when they want it to look as if the real problem is sinus congestion, not heartache.

"It's okay," he said. He cleared his throat. "Let's go. Please."

I said, "You really don't have to."

"Yeah," he said, "I do."

We turned off Piney Circle and onto Pine Needle Lane. Whoever had named the streets wanted to remind us we were in the mountains. The lane was a dirt road that would take us to Laura's house. She had lived close to the center of town, in a hilly area once peppered with log cabins. In the Forties, Aspen Meadow had been a rustic retreat from Denver for the well-to- do. Now the largest portion of residents made the hour-long commute to Denver to work. In Laura's residential area small A-frames and wood-paneled houses built in the Fifties and Sixties were sandwiched between a scattering of remaining cabins. The resulting architectural mishmash made the area not a good investment for the commuters, but a haven for teachers, artists, waiters, and others who could not afford a ritzier neighborhood.

The van shook as we started down the steep, dusty driveway to Laura's bungalow. The aunt from Illinois had flown in and rented a car. It stood outside the open garage, as she had planned to take a limousine to the funeral. She had left us enough room so that I could just edge the van in next to the garage door.

Fortunately the aunt also had remembered to leave the door unlocked. We pushed in with our crates, boxes, foodstuffs, bowls, and cups.

Once inside I took a deep breath. A professional service from Denver had been in to clean. Their assignment included, Laura's aunt had crisply informed me, disinfecting and regrouting the bloodied bathroom tile. This was about the fifth time I'd done a postfuneral meal in the home where a person had died. I shivered in anticipation of any lingering smell or sense of death.

But here there was none. Large bouquets of flowers, florist's mixtures of carnations and gladioli, snapdragons and baby's breath, crowded the counters in the brightly wallpapered kitchen. Only the cinnamon smell from the carnations and the piney scent of disinfectant lingered in the air.

The house was small. We carted our boxes through the. garage into the kitchen, which adjoined a larger dining- living room combination. The guests would be parking around the side near the aunt's car. On that side there was a walkway to the front door, which opened into the dining-living area. I surveyed the room to figure out how to set up the tables and arrange the flowers between the plates and food. Like an investigator at a crash site, I did not want to think about the tragedy that had happened here. We had a job to do. The living had to eat.

Nevertheless, pacing off the living room for measurement, I kept expecting to feel some eeriness in the house. What was actually discomfiting was that the whole place seemed so terribly cozy. Two of the living room walls paneled in diagonal beetle-killed wood glowed green-gold in the sunlight. Shelves and cabinets dotted the other walls. There was a wall of photographs. Deep blue carpet covered the area where the floor was not wood. In addition to the photos there were painted pictures of snowy mountains and snowy fields and brooks with snowy banks. Laura's two wing chairs looked newly reupholstered, as did the two old but not antique love seats. The fabric on the furniture and several throw pillows was a print of spring flowers-periwinkle blue, kelly green, sunshine yellow. With the blue rug and rows of wooden shelves and cabinets, the big room was lively with color. Nowhere in sight were the browns and grays and blacks, the filth or lack of care one would expect of a suicidal personality.

The three long tables ordered from Mountainside Rental lay piled like slabs of rock on the blue rug. They would all fit. We pushed the love seats and chairs into conversational groupings, then cracked open the tables and arranged them in a horseshoe shape. Arch unfurled the tablecloths while Patty Sue and I began to unpack the food.

"Listen to this," I said a few moments later. I had just closed the refrigerator and was perusing the homemade magnets and cartoons with which Laura had festooned the door. Arch and Patty Sue were in the living room setting out silverware and plates in the areas between the flower baskets.

I read, " 'This refrigerator is cooler than Dave Brubeck.' Uh-huh. A woman should be more than a cute dish in the Cabinet. She should be Secretary of State.' Very funny. 'The only time I COOK is on the highway.' Ha!" I turned to the dining room, where Patty Sue and Arch had begun unraveling extension cords for the coffee machine. "How could a funny person get so depressed?"

After a minute Arch said, "Oh Mom, you know. She was I always making jokes. ‘A school is for fish,' stuff like that."

"Right," I muttered, then read above the stove: "When is a pig a canine? When it is a hot dog." By the sink: "I went to plumbing school and told them to make me into Farrah Faucet."

Patty Sue joined me. Her face was paler than usual. She said, "I feel kind of spooky. Please tell me again what you want me to do. I mean, when the people get here."

I explained her duties once more, then showed her the bathroom, in case folks asked for directions. To my relief the aunt or the cleaning service had put up an opaque white shower curtain, whose new- plastic smell was overwhelming. It was drawn across the tub. I couldn't help it: I poked my head around the curtain while Patty Sue checked her lipstick in the mirror. The bathtub was spotless. What I had expected to find I did not know. I hustled Patty Sue out to the kitchen to show her where everything would be. Arch was busy slicing lemons to float in the lemonade pitcher.

When Patty Sue was occupied in the living room opening bottles of wine, Arch said to me, "You know Dad has a new girlfriend."

I said, "I know." I was looking through Laura's pantry for extra sugar in case we needed additional lemonade. I had brought the rest of the new bag, but the warmth of the day made me worry about the possibility of needing more. The only thing I found was some flour she had put in a canister sporting, naturally enough, a painted flower. Since I knew no homonym for sugar, I gave up.

"Maybe she'll be here," said Arch.

"Right," I said. I turned to him. "The girlfriend. Do you care?"

He stared down at the lemons and I was immediately sorry. I knew his warning was meant to prepare me for not caring, not him.

"Sorry, hon," I said. "I've just got a lot on my mind." "Will Vonette be here?" he asked. "I wanted to talk to her yesterday but Fritz said she was sick again."

Arch did not use words like grammy or grandpa because John Richard and I had never taught him to. He had a child's devotion to his grandmother, who doted on him. Fritz had always been too involved in his practice to pay any more attention to Arch than recognizing him. But Vonette's "being sick" was the euphemism the adults in Arch's life used to refer to her cocktail hour beginning at eleven in the morning. I often wondered if Arch knew, or suspected, the truth.

"Sick again," I repeated as I scanned the kitchen. "Yes, Marla told me that."

"They're coming," called Patty Sue from the other room.

"Quick, slip on your apron, kiddo," I told Arch. "Then go to the front door and greet people. Tell them to leave coats, if they have any, in Laura's bedroom, which is on the other side of the living room." I hesitated. Then I said, "And show them where the bathroom is."

His apron was in place; he raised fearful brown eyes to mine at the word bathroom.

I put my hands on his shoulders. "I checked it, and it's all clean."

He said, "I really don't like this. I'm afraid." And so, for different reasons, was I.

-3- Parsley tendrils brushed the sides of the

salmon and the exposed pink backmeat when I set the silver platter down on the long main-course table. I ladled the mayonnaise into a crystal bowl and placed it next to the salmon. Then I carried out the asparagus and the rest, including a packet with the mushrooms I had minced to replace the Jerk's tomatoes. Arch had ushered the first group into Laura's bedroom to leave their coats. The murmur of voices and click of heels on the brick walkway filtered through the air.

Backing up to the kitchen, I gave the room a quick scan before putting on my apron. Catering a reception was much like directing a play: the props and actors all had to be in place before the entertainment could begin.