Grave Situation (32 page)

There was a light ripple of
laughter from the crowd.

“But that’s how Cathy was,” Philip
went on. “She wanted to learn everything she could. I rarely saw
her without a book in her hands. Such a gifted child she was, one
with so much promise and energy. School was a breeze for her and
she graduated with honors. When she went to university, she was
studying in the field of biophysics. Then one stumble brought it
all to an end.” Briefly, he paused, his voice choked up, and then
he stood straighter. “Daddy is so proud of you, Cathy. My little
girl. You will always be in my heart.”

Once more Philip looked out at
everyone, smiled, and then began to sob.

Allan shut his eyes.

As the service
ended, the choir sang,
In
Paradisum,
and the pallbearers slowly
carried the casket from the church. Philip and Cathy followed close
behind, their heads bowed, their eyes grave.

It was a beautiful morning outside.
The sky was an impeccable blue, yet the air brought in a slight
chill from the nearby harbor.

Allan paused on the church steps,
took out his cell phone and pager and turned both of them on. Then
he shaded his eyes with a hand and watched Philip and Carol get
into their car behind the hearse.

Allan wouldn’t follow the cortege
to the gravesite. Instead he would go home to change, say his
goodbyes to Buddy and then head straight to Acresville with hopes
of finding a killer.

35

Acresville, May 19

1:00 p.m.

Why’d it have to
be here?
wondered Herb.

As he drove his truck into Rolling
Hills Cemetery and parked in the small car lot just inside the
gates, he was struck first with feelings of nostalgia and then the
emergence of forgotten anguish that he had long
repressed.

It was over eighteen years since he
last stepped foot in this place. He now fought a deep urge to turn
around and leave.

Rolling Hills was aptly named.
Fifty-two acres of gently sloping meadows were graced with mature
sugar maples and crisscrossed with winding footpaths. A crumbling
stone wall, over a century old, enclosed rows of granite and marble
slabs, crosses and brooding angels with upraised arms that rose and
fell in swells of green with seemingly endless continuity. Here and
there, colorful flowers and garlands bespoke the existing presence
of loved ones.

The largest, oldest and only
non-sectarian cemetery in Acresville, Rolling Hills first opened
its gates in 1825. Since then, generation upon generation of
families chose the Hills as their final resting place. Encroached
on the north side of the cemetery was its oldest section. Time had
faded both the epitaphs and the memories they bore. Many of the
town’s first settlers were buried there.

Three years ago the cemetery could
hold no more. It became inactive, yet has remained well tended. The
few burial plots left were bought many years ago.

Herb looked around, seeing no
one.

Perfect.

He came here to locate a certain
grave. Hopefully, the caretakers hadn’t covered it yet with sod.
From a shirt pocket, Herb retrieved a slip of paper and
double-checked the name written on it. He picked up the binoculars
from the seat beside him and stepped outside.

The day was warm, the sun
brilliant. Here and there, fetching arcs of clouds swept the
sky.

Herb followed an uphill path, his
gaze exploring the area.

Strange
, he
thought.

The cemetery wasn’t as he
remembered it. It had grown at an alarming rate—crowded, choking
for breath. Only now did Herb fathom the lives lost in the past
eighteen years.

At the crest of the hill he stopped
and as he looked off to his left, felt his skin rise. For several
moments he stood there, overwhelmed by sudden feelings of guilt and
sadness.

She was out there; he could feel
her.

He knew he should go see her. He
hadn’t visited her since she died over eighteen years ago. The
grief and shame had been just too great.

With faltering steps he started
through the stillness. He cut across the top of the second hill on
a diagonal. By memory, he searched an area near the maple
trees.

Moments later, he stared down at a
small granite marker set into the ground. Dead leaves partially
covered the inscription. There were no fresh flowers. No flowers at
all to mark someone’s remembrance and that embarrassed
Herb.

He knelt down and brushed away the
leaves. The stone felt cool and rough beneath his trembling
fingers. The simple words inscribed were still painful.

Marilyn Elaine Matteau

June 9, 1940 – Oct. 27,
1991

Beloved Wife And Mother

“Hello,
Mama
,” Herb whispered.
“It’s me, your orphaned son.”

Alongside the grave lay an empty
plot for her husband, his father. As Herb stared at it, he became
very still. For a moment he closed his eyes, lost to the
past.

* * *

Herb approached the Acresville
Hospital entrance with leaden steps. When he reached the doors, he
stopped, turned, and looked up at a drab sky that had just begun to
squeeze out a cold shower. He felt as if he were wandering through
a dream, more mind than body. The cars pulling in and out of the
parking lot, the people brushing past him at the doors, the rain
turning everything to a glassy sheen, were all surreal fragments on
his consciousness.

Slowly, he went inside.

In the lobby he pressed a button
for the elevator and waited. The doors opened and a couple of
people came out. After stepping inside after them, Herb pressed the
button for the third floor. The doors closed behind him with a
hiss. On this day his nerves were on edge. The tiny compartment
made him feel caged, almost claustrophobic.

With a bump the elevator began to
move upward. Herb gripped the rail, his face pinched. He shut his
eyes and exhaled a long breath.

Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord
is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the
fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

The chime of the elevator made him
flinch. The doors opened to the second floor. In a mire of anxiety,
Herb didn’t look up. He heard some people shuffle inside, felt the
car shudder with the weight of their unseen bodies. Over their
whispered voices, he heard the doors hiss shut again.

He swallowed.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for
us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

In quick succession, the chime rang
for the third floor. Something inside made him shiver. Lifting his
head, he watched the doors open to a glossy corridor. He stepped
off, resisting the urge to turn back. His slow walk was a series of
half-noticed impressions—a blue-uniformed housekeeper stuffing
soiled laundry into a chute; a gray-haired doctor emerging from a
room, his gaze focused on a chart; an elderly man in a robe
shuffling down the far end of the hallway, an IV pole trailing
him.

Doors ran down both sides of the
corridor. From a room up the hallway came a plaintive cry for
someone named Ivan. Moments later, a nurse hurried past him,
carrying a bottle of medication. He listened to her squeaky
footsteps fade away to silence. There was the sound of a door
closing and then the cries stopped.

Room 532 was the sixth one on the
left, right across from the nurse’s station. As Herb reached it,
his breathing became heavy. He froze in the doorway, ashamed at his
cowardice to enter.

His mother, he saw, was as she had
been the day before, resting peacefully in her bed. A heart rate
monitor was clipped to one finger. An oxygen tube was strapped
under her nose. Overhead, the fluorescent lights captured what
devastation cancer had done to her, a wasting disease that knew no
mercy.

She was a ghost of the woman she
had once been. Emaciated. Bald from weeks of chemo. Her face,
barely recognizable, had become a loose mask collapsed against the
bone. A yellowish hue saturated her skin. The hollows of her eyes
were in shadow.

The hospital had called Herb’s home
an hour earlier. The voice at the other end was soft, reluctant. An
on-duty nurse. His mother had taken a turn for the worse. Family
members were asked to be at her bedside. There wasn’t much time
left. Listening to her, Herb felt the words in the pit of his
stomach. His eyes closed. A painful lump formed in his throat. He
couldn’t speak.

When he put down the phone all he
could think of with certain dread was this moment now. The final
good-bye he’d have to face.

Her bed was partitioned off from
the others by a curtain. Looking around, Herb was surprised at his
father’s absence. At fifty-three, the man had become a withdrawn,
brooding presence. If not working the farm, he would be drinking
alone, mumbling resentments at the world. In his own self-hatred,
he was unable to face the man he’d become or acknowledge the
suffering he’d put his wife and son through. He seemed to care
little about them.

Herb loathed him for it.

There was a chair by the bed.
Gathering himself, he moved toward it and sat. The room was cool
and quiet. He laid a hand on the sheets, inches from his mother’s
arm. She seemed to be barely breathing.

On the other side of the bed was a
heart monitor. The line on the screen had the appearance of a soft
wave rolling.

For nearly a week
his mother had drifted in and out of consciousness. Often she would
only stare vacantly at the ceiling, as if he were invisible.
Incapacitated by the morphine administered to her for the chronic
pain. Other times she would be confused as to where she was.
Thinking she
was still at home, she would
try to get out of bed to do her housework. Too frail, she would
collapse on the floor.

It was hard for Herb to see his
mother like that, wasting away in both body and mind. Everyday it
agonized him more to come here.

He leaned forward in a whisper.
“Mama. I’m here.”

There was no response. For a long
moment, Herb didn’t say a word. The only sound was a steady blip
from the heart monitor.

Her pendant necklace lay on the
bedside table. Slowly, he reached for it. The pendant had a raised
image of Saint Christopher with an infant Jesus on his shoulder.
Turning it over, he saw his mother’s name inscribed on the
back.

For as long as he could remember
his mother had been a practicing Catholic. At a young age, she had
shared her faith with him, reading to him from her Bible whenever
his father wasn’t around. On Sundays, she would take him to church
for morning service. The ritual became persistent throughout his
childhood. Herb took comfort in the church’s tranquility, its open
vastness, and its beautiful stained glass windows. It was also his
refuge away from home. If for only once a week, he could at least
escape.

As a teenager Herb’s church
attendance began to slip. With adolescence came self-consciousness.
He was pressured by how others at school might see him. Something
about a teenage boy going to church with his mother seemed awkward,
embarrassing. His mother appeared to understand.

Now he hated himself for
it.

Only once in that
time had he returned to his faith and to God—three weeks ago when
his mother was hospitalized. For the first time in many years he
slipped into the rear pew. The
church was
jammed. Neither the soothing voice of the minister or the melodious
hymns of the choir did much to quell the storm of emotions raging
inside him.

When the service was over and most
of the parishioners were gone, Herb walked up to the altar. Slowly,
he genuflected, crossed himself and prayed to God for his mother’s
recovery.

Squeezing the pendant tightly in
his hand, he prayed now for the repose of her soul. Then he sat
there, listening to his mother’s shallow breathing.

Muffled voices came from the
hallway. Now and again, a nurse would come into the room, making
her rounds. Herb checked the doorway every few minutes for his
father, but he never showed up.

Probably
drunk
, Herb thought.

Disgusted, he pictured the man
passed out on the sofa at home. How badly Herb had wanted and
needed a father in his life. Someone there to protect and guide him
throughout his early years. Someone there he could admire and shape
his own character after. But all he had was the fear of his
father’s unstable disposition and the conviction to never be
anything like him.

Herb looked at his watch. 7:38 in
the evening. He’d been sitting there for over three
hours.

An abrupt movement came from the
bed, a jerk of an arm. Herb saw his mother’s head turn on the
pillow, heard the change in her pattern of breathing. He leaned
closer, fighting a wave of emotion.