Obituary Writer (9780547691732) (8 page)

"This is the newspaper reporter Gordon Hatch," Alicia said. "He'll be writing the feature article for the St. Louis paper."

Joe Whiting nodded approvingly, making a strange sound in the back of his throat.

I said how sorry I was, how I had heard such wonderful things about his brother.

The sister, Margaret, shook my hand with surprising strength.

"A feature article? That's interesting." She folded her large-knuckled fingers in front of her, the expression on her face vaguely ironic. "I had no idea Arthur was feature material."

I looked down at my program, folding it in half. "Our feature stories tend to be community-oriented," I said.

She lifted a hand to her chin. A small black purse hung tidily from her elbow. "Community-oriented. Ah, I see."

She had an angular face and a sharp nose, a long sinewy neck, and she was taller than I by several inches. Her shoulder-length black hair was going gray and cut in severe bangs above her eyebrows. Her billowy black dress flared to the knees. Next to Alicia, she towered.

"What section of the paper are you with?" she asked, taking off her glasses.

"I work for Metro," I lied. "I'm on general assignment. I just go where they ask me to go."

"They?" She opened her purse and slid the glasses into a leather case.

"Assignment editors," I said.

"Oh." She smiled, but not in a friendly way, more to say,
Perhaps this can all be explained at a more appropriate time.

I took a seat across the room next to the middle-aged women from the receiving line.

"He looks well," said the big one.

"Yes, he seems to be holding up," the other agreed.

"He's a remarkable specimen, even under duress."

I realized that they were talking about the dog.

"Do you think this means Arthur's wife will take over the society newsletter?" the large one asked.

"I can't imagine," said the other, lifting a Kleenex to cover her mouth. "She's a better-than-average groomer, but she has scant knowledge of the breed."

The service was sparsely attended. No more than twenty-five people had come. One of the bank managers at Portage Savings eulogized Arthur as a model of fairness and good citizenship and said that his performance during the bank robbery showed "a natural impulse for courage."

The minister, Reverend C. W. Johnson, gave a reading from Lamentations and said a few words about Arthur, speaking of him in such general terms that I assumed the two had never met. A cellist played "Fairest Lord Jesus," and a breeder from Mississippi Valley Irish Wolfhounds recalled the day nine years before when Arthur drove out to see a litter of puppies and walked away with majority ownership of his farm.

"He told me, flat out, he'd never even owned a breeding farm before," Clyde Hermann said, tugging at his shirt as though his tie were too tight. "But you know Arthur. He'd done all his research and he knew exactly what he wanted. I gave him my two best sires, and the rest is AKC history."

Margaret Whiting made a brief, somewhat chilling speech that seemed to end before it was meant to, as if her emotions would not allow her to say more. "As children Arthur and I were inseparable. I was born three years before him, but, like twins, we were connected at the core." Her voice trembled as she spoke. "To be happy in this world is to be understood," she said. "I understood my brother and my brother understood me." She looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her, then returned to her seat.

Alicia was sitting in the front row, several rows ahead of me, at an angle that made it difficult to see her face. The collar of her dress was pulled slightly down, exposing the back of her smooth neck, the notch at the top of her spine.

We all sang "O God Our Help in Ages Past." Toward the end of the service, during the moment of silence, I opened my program.

On the inside page was a poem I knew well. My mother had torn it from a book of romantic verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and taped it to the dining room wall when we moved into 102 La Grange:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
...I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

I realized that for all the years that poem had hung on the dining room wall, I had never stopped to read it through, to consider it for what it was: the story of my mother's life.

The service over, Alicia exited through a side door carrying the small box with her husband's ashes. The wolfhound walked beside her, stride for stride, on tiptoe. Joe and Margaret Whiting followed, then the bank manager and the dog breeder and a woman in a tweed suit, then Reverend Johnson, who gestured for us all to rise and join them.

Alicia stood under the green awning with Joe Whiting, who was handing out directions to the Whispering Pines Country Club, where a reception would be held at six o'clock.

"I hope to see you there," she said solemnly.

"Of course I'll come."

And with that, the dinner plans I had made with Thea Pierson earlier in the day must have flown from my mind.

I couldn't leave work until the six-thirty meeting, so it was just after seven before I arrived at Whispering Pines, a modest country club with nine holes of golf, a swimming pool, and a rambling clubhouse, white brick with a green roof.

The reception was held in a dark room behind the ninth tee, where, through the sliding glass doors, we could see the last foursome of the day taking practice swings, polishing their three irons in the evening dusk.

A few guests stood around the buffet, a couple more perched uncomfortably on couches. Joe Whiting, a glass of Coke in his hand, was looking out at the golfers.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Me?" He turned around, pulling his head back, giving me a confused look.

He was maybe six foot four, with a long chin, high cheekbones, and the same large Adam's apple as his brother. He wore glasses now, squarish, thick-rimmed bifocals with a strong prescription, too big for his face. He had a smooth, shiny head, gray hairs around his temples; his pencil mustache was jet black.

"What a beautiful service," I said.

He seemed to have no recollection of meeting me. "Oh, yes. Yes, that's right. A beautiful service. It provided a service for all of us." He smiled broadly, holding his drink with two hands, bowing as he spoke. "For those of us in the service industry, it was a particularly good service. It was quite serviceable." He laughed.

"I see," I said, quickly scanning the room for Alicia or Margaret or anyone to help explain what I hadn't realized about Joe.

"Is Alicia here?" I asked.

"I like Alicia. She has pretty hair, and she gives me treats." He wrinkled his nose. "They're treats for dogs. You can't eat these kinds of treats. They're disgusting to eat."

Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of dog snacks, and I saw for the first time that he was dressed in work clothes: heavy boots and a pair of navy Dickies and a gray shirt with mud streaked on it. Someone must have lent him the blazer he was wearing.

"You're in the service industry?" I offered, indulging him because his outfit and his mustache, so conspicuously dyed, and his labored enthusiasm made me sad.

"I'm in the industrious industry," he said. "I'm very industrious. You can ask anyone."

Joe carried on in this way, and I learned that he worked for Clyde, the breeder who had spoken at the funeral, on a farm up near Winfield. He gave me all the names of Arthur's dogs and the prizes they'd won, speaking in the most cheerful manner, pausing only to push his glasses up his nose or take a two-handed sip of his drink, and I began to wonder if a person like Joe would be capable of feeling sadness.

"Arthur worked in a bank. He has my arrowhead on his desk," he said at one point, speaking of Arthur in both the past and present tense, giving no indication that he understood the loss.

Joe spotted Alicia first. She was huddled in a far corner of the room speaking with the woman in the tweed suit from the morning. The wolfhound lay at her feet with a despondent look.

"Margaret's at the hotel, because she hates Alicia." He nudged me. "She said she was going to the service and that's that. 'That's that,' she said. Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom."

Before he left, I asked him where Margaret was staying and gave him my phone number in case he ever wanted to call, realizing as I was writing it down that this was probably a mistake.

On the way out I noticed that Alicia and the dog were now engaged in what appeared to be a serious conversation. She was looking down at the floor, scratching the dog's face in long, slow strokes from the tip of his nose to the back of his head. His eyes blinked and closed, a contented smile set on his grizzled face.

I started toward them, then hesitated, suddenly tense, deciding we could catch up later. And after a couple of mini ham sandwiches and some oversweet punch, I briefly complimented Reverend Johnson on the service and left Whispering Pines.

Out on the highway, the road was empty, the slow lane all mine, and I rolled the windows down to take in some of the cool October air.

Somehow, it had been an exhilarating day. I didn't know what it meant to fall in love, couldn't remember how it had felt with Thea, except that at the time it was safer than "falling." I'd always been a cautious person, alert to the dangers of the world. But falling was the sense I had of things now.

I couldn't get Alicia out of my mind—in her hat at the funeral, in her burgundy dress, her small hand reaching out, fast forward across my line of vision. Her voice kept turning over in my head. I thought of Czechoslovakia, of where I'd go for lunch tomorrow, of who I'd be five years from now, every possibility colored by thoughts of Alicia, as if we had made an arrangement together, as if she were somehow mine to consider and not the bereaved widow of Arthur Whiting. I knew it was crazy, but there she was, playing on me.

Back home, I threw my jacket on the couch and checked the answering machine. The message light read 2.

I listened to the long squeal of the machine rewinding, wondering why Alicia would have left two messages and figured the first one had been cut off. I worried she might be upset that I didn't talk to her at the reception.

"This is your mother," the machine said, and I knew it meant trouble. "Thea just called from a restaurant down the street from you. She's been waiting forty-five minutes and I've told her to leave—"

I cut it off there, skipping ahead to the second message.

The voice was Thea's.

I pressed the rewind button—I couldn't stand to listen—and fell back in my bed.

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING
, I printed out the seventy-nine advancers, single-spaced, reduced to a small point size, in the order I had written them. I planned to save them as a reminder of my potential.

On my chair sat a piece of pink notepaper, folded in half and stapled, with "Gordon Hatch, Obituary Desk" written in a leaning cursive.

Dear Gordon Hatch,

I was appalled by the way you were treated yesterday. From my observations, you are a hard-working young man who does his part and does it quietly. Nobody deserves to be pilloried like that, least of all someone whose only offense was making a positive change. If you care for an audience or if you need anything, I am at your service.

Regards,
Jessie Tennant

I could see that Jessie Tennant's computer was signed off, her desk cleared; a bottle of Windex stood at the end of a neat row of reference books. Photographs of Sarah Vaughan and Rosa Parks and a postcard print of a toppled yellow rocking chair were pressed next to a calendar under the heavy glass on her desk.

I never respond well to acts of kindness. I wish I could look a person in the eye in a way that says,
What a decent gesture—one day I'll do the same for you or for someone else with you in mind,
but invariably I'm embarrassed by the attention and go out of my way to avoid an encounter. Still, I was comforted to know that I had an in-house supporter.

After starting and scrapping several longer messages, I managed to write back, through interoffice mail, "Dear Jessie Tennant, Thank you very much for your nice note. With gratitude, Gordon Hatch."

I organized my advancers and slipped them into an envelope along with Jessie Tennant's note. I sealed the envelope, rotating it, feeling its impressive weight in my hands, and in black felt marker wrote,

ADVANCERS
September 13, 1988–October 5, 1989
R. Nixon through J. DiMaggio

and tucked the envelope in the pocket of my briefcase.

I had forgotten about the photo of Arthur Whiting that Alicia had left for me at the security desk that first night she called. I took another look at it now—his small eyes, the sharp angles of his face. He did resemble his sister, Margaret, though the similarity had less to do with features than with a common edge, an intensity they seemed to share. The first time I had seen his photograph, he had reminded me of those daguerreotypes of Old West homesteaders. Tall, drawn, remote, even a bit lost. But now I saw a fervor in his eyes that I hadn't recognized before.

I slipped the photograph back into the envelope, and as I did so, I could feel something else at the bottom of the package. I reached in to pull out a folded piece of paper. I assumed that it would be a pleasant note from Alicia, thanking me for placing her husband's obit, but as I opened it I saw a grid—one of Arthur's weekly schedules.

Attached to the schedule was a yellow Post-it note. "Copy and send to Margaret." Someone, I assumed Alicia, had written it in a hasty print. Typed along the top of the spreadsheet was "Schedule for the Week of September 30 to October 6, 1989." It was partially filled out, through Wednesday, October 2. I got the chills thinking of Arthur at his computer working on this document not knowing that he would die the next day. I wondered if his own hand had touched this same piece of paper.