Strong Motion (6 page)

“This is our son, Louis,” Melanie said. “Louis, this is Mr. Aldren, Mr. Tabscott, Mr. Stoorhuys—”

Mr. Who, Mr. Who, Mr.—?

“Good to know you, Louis,” they chorused, pressing his flesh. The same courtesies were then extended to Eileen.

“Peter’s dad,” Mr. Stoorhuys added for Louis’s benefit, waving a hand at his son, to whom he bore a resemblance both unmistakable and unflattering to himself. Seen from close up, Mr. Stoorhuys did not actually match his two companions. Mr. Aldren and Mr. Tabscott appeared to be real Men, men with the beefy faces and inflamed-looking bull’s nostrils of frequent beefeaters, men who were emphatically not “young men” and even more emphatically not “women.” They had gold chains across their necktie knots and a hard red shrewdness in their eyes.

Mr. Stoorhuys was more nervous and lanky. Three inches of shirt cuff stuck out of his jacket sleeves on either wrist. His hair grew in half a dozen directions and half a dozen shades of gray; a long, seventies-style forelock rested on his dandruffy eyebrows. He had sunken pitted cheeks, teeth so large he seemed unable to keep his lips over them, and bright intelligent eyes that were engaged in looking over his shoulder even as he stood facing Louis, one hand raised to keep him on hold.

“Louis,” Melanie said. He turned to see her standing on one leg, leaning through bodies. “Maybe you’d like to get me a cup of coffee.”

“Actually—” Mr. Tabscott pinched the cuff of Louis’s jacket. “I think the, uh, service is going to start here in a minute.”

“Yes,” Mr. Aldren said. “We’re going to sit with your mother if you don’t mind.”

“Good to meet you, son.”

“Good to meet you, uh, Louis.”

Mr. Stoorhuys followed them, escaping his stillborn conversation with Louis the easy way: by just leaving.

The drab crowd was herding itself towards rows of function-room chairs set up facing a lectern and a grand piano on which a Japanese man with expressive shoulders and a ponytail had begun to play the Pachelbel Canon. Louis’s father, with his academic’s respect for lecterns, had already taken a seat. Eileen stood hugging Peter’s chest. And a tableau presented itself: Mr. Aldren leading Melanie away, his elbow linked with hers, and Melanie not needing to be led but walking with him as naturally as if they were sweethearts on a boardwalk; Mr. Stoorhuys following with a grip on her other arm, smiling his smile that was not a smile, lagging behind for a moment to look over his shoulder through the rough tufts of hair in his eyes; and Mr. Tabscott like a rear guard with his back squarely to the three of them, unambiguously warning off anyone foolish enough to pursue. A white hat and a yellow linen dress—a lady as little a man as at least two of these men were ladies—fenced in by dark pinstripe.

Louis, staring, extended one finger and rammed the tip of it into the bridge of his glasses.

The Canon had grown deafening. Melanie sat down between Mr. Aldren and Mr. Tabscott with Mr. Stoorhuys crowding in from Mr. Aldren’s side, his thin arm almost long enough to reach behind all three of them, five inches of white shirt cuff showing now. Louis roughed up the pastel broadloom with a heavy shoe. Asking Eileen who and what these men were was not an option; she had her cheek against Peter’s necktie and was feeling around under the back of his jacket as if looking for the key one wound him up with. Their lips were moving: they were conversing inaudibly. They and Louis were now the only mourners not seated in the array of chairs. An ashen-faced woman in a caftan had stationed herself behind the lectern and was resting one elbow on it as she gravely watched the pianist. The pianist had begun to grapple visibly with the Canon, trying to enforce a ritardando while hurrying the ponderous chords to find a respectable point for breaking off. The Canon was showing its backbone and seemed far from surrendering.

Louis walked over to the young lovers in their invisible sphere of oblivion and stood, as it were, outside their door. “Hi, Peter,” he said.

Peter seemed to have a reflex problem. It was three or four seconds before he turned and said, “Hey, how’s it going.”

“Fine, thanks. Wonder if I could talk to my sister for a second.” Eileen removed herself from Peter and gave some attention to her hair. By almost but not quite meeting Louis’s eyes she managed to appear entirely absent.

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Louis said.

“Didn’t say you did.”

“Mom give you a hard time or what.”

“Let’s just not talk about it.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“I’m going to go sit with Peter, OK?”

She left him standing in the middle of the ballroom, ten paces behind the last row of chairs. The lights shone more brightly on him than on the fifty or so assembled mourners, more brightly even than on the ashen moderator, who, after a nod of appreciation to the sweating and victorious pianist, looked squarely at Louis and said, “We may be seated.”

Louis held his ground, arms crossed. The woman closed her eyes with raised eyebrows. Then she put on a pair of glasses that were chained to her neck.

“We’re assembled here today,” she said, reading from the lectern, “to honor the memory of Rita Damiano Kernaghan, a mentor unto many of us and a friend unto all. Can you hear me in the back row?”

The only person in the back row, Bob Holland, gave the woman a captain’s salute.

“My name is Geraldine Briggs. I was a friend of Rita Kernaghan. I knew her well. At times, we were as sisters unto one another. We laughed together, we wept together. We were as little girls, sometimes.”

The pallid mourners were listening raptly, their heads like so many compass needles pointing at the lectern. The men with Melanie, Mr. Stoorhuys included, sat with their fingers pressed into their foreheads.

“When first I met Rita at the Empowerment Center in Danvers in 1983, she had just penned a book entitled
Beginning Life at 60
, familiar to many of you, I’m sure, and seemed, she did, a perfect embodiment of the principles limned therein. Rita had learned that the soul is eternal and youthful, gay and joyous, filled with glad melodies. Age is no impediment unto the soul. Nay, death itself be no impediment. She had been a simple peasant girl, a gatherer of flowers and scented herbs, in Napoleonic times. Why should she not then make glad melodies even now when, a careworn widow, there was nought to be wrought of life but, nay, begin it again? Why should not we all? In her workshop, we hearkened unto her message. We learned. We grew. We laughed. We became as young again. We were healed, healed not as the modern world would have us healed, but spiritually. Nay. A new world was opened up unto us by her.”

Louis, standing rock-like, watched Mr. Tabscott bury his face in both hands. His jeweled watch gleamed.

“But nay, what is the new but that which is most ancient? And what. What is death but the beginning of new life? Another turn in the eternal cycle? A young babe born? Let us therefore tell glad stories today. Each one of us as so desires, let them stand and celebrate with glad stories the eternal life of Rita Damiano Kernaghan and, nay, of us all!”

Here Geraldine Briggs paused and a woman in the front row popped up from her seat. She immediately sat down again, withered by a look.

“I see among us,” Geraldine Briggs continued, reading, “friends of Rita’s. Family of Rita’s. Friends from her years of labor as a secretary. Friends and loved ones from all walks of her life. And so, friends, the Empowerment Center, which I’m proud to direct, has in accordance with Rita’s express wishes requested that in lieu of flowers donations be made in Rita’s name to the Empowerment Center. The name of the fund is the Rita Damiano Kernaghan Fund. This is fund number 1145. Envelopes for giving are still available by the coffee urn. But nay, nay, let us now. Let us now hear glad stories!”

The first glad story was delivered by Mr. Aldren, who rose halfway from his seat and spoke in a guarded monotone. “Rita Kernaghan was an employee with us at Sweeting-Aldren Industries for some twenty-four years and was the, uh, wife of the principal architect of what is known to be one of the Commonwealth’s high-tech and high-finance success stories of the, uh, last couple decades, and I and some fellow officers are here to, uh, pay our respects. She was a fine—fine woman.”

Mr. Aldren dropped back into his seat and Geraldine Briggs, eyes closed, slowly nodded. Then the eager woman in the front row popped up and faced the congregation. Once, she said, after a class at the Empowerment Center, Rita Kernaghan had given her a bronze amulet to wear on her neck. The amulet had cured a large wen that was on her chest. Out of gratitude the woman had sent Rita a box of Harry and David’s pears. Six months later, at a festival of the vernal equinox held at Rita’s estate, the woman was taken into Rita’s living room. For six months the box of Harry and David’s pears had been stored close to the focus of power of the Pyramid on Rita’s house. Rita and the woman pried the staples—the staples were copper and heavy-duty—pried the staples out of the box. The pears were not rotten. The woman and Rita shared a pear, trading bites. It was good. The woman sat down.

Geraldine Briggs smiled uncomfortably and coughed a little.

A man with dentures like carp teeth stood up and unfolded a clipping. It was an editorial from the Ipswich
Chronicle
. The editorial was a thanksgiving that explicitly invoked the Judeo-Christian god and thanked him that property damage in the recent earthquake had been minor. The editorial noted that Rita’s famous Pyramid, so much in the news in recent years, had not protected her when push came to shove; damage on the Kernaghan estate (still slight) had been among the most severe. The man folded up the clipping. He said that he had taken two of Rita’s workshops. He said Rita had never maintained that the Pyramid offered eternal life in the present existence. That was not the point. It was this man’s personal view that the Pyramid had in fact served to
concentrate
the earth forces in the neighborhood—

“Yes,” said Geraldine Briggs. “Yes perhaps. Other stories?” A woman rose to describe an occasion on which Rita had cried upon hearing of the death of a young person.

Another woman rose and told of Rita’s refusal to accept money from a person ill able to afford a workshop.

Another woman rose and spoke of her friendship with Rita during the Ming Dynasty.

It was not clear what sort of story besides Mr. Aldren’s would have pleased Geraldine Briggs; certainly few of these stories did. But having opened the door, she was powerless to close it. The anecdotes poured out, ranging from the sentimental to the borderline insane, and their accreting weight slowly unmanned Louis, uncrossing his arms and bowing his shoulders, until finally he went and sat down by his father. His father seemed to be having a grand time, tossing his head back in delight, feasting on the dismal confessions as though they were popcorn. He went so far as to frown at Geraldine Briggs when, for the third time, she said, “Well, if there are no more . . .” She paused. It finally seemed as if there really might be no more. “If there are no more stories I think we’ll—” But yet again she was forced to stop, because Melanie had sprung to her feet.

Melanie smiled prettily, twisting her head around to meet as many eyes as possible, leaning back to catch a few more. The only ones she avoided were her family’s.

“I knew Rita Kernaghan, too,” she said. “And I wanted to tell you all that I
firmly believe
she’s already reincarnated! I believe she’s now . . . a parakeet! Isn’t that marvelous?” She clasped her hands in front of her and swung them like a happy girl. “I just wanted to tell you all how marvelous I think it is that she’s a parakeet now, how simply marvelous. That’s all I have to say!” With an unfortunate little wiggle of her bottom, and with one hand on her hat to keep it on, she dropped back down between her protectors, Mr. Aldren and Mr. Tabscott. The protectors traded smirks. The drab crowd, with dawning outrage, turned to Geraldine Briggs for guidance, but she appeared to have something urgent to say to the pianist. Eileen and Peter were whispering and nodding, maturely pretending not to have particularly noticed what Melanie said. The crowd began to murmur: Honor the dead! Honor the dead!

Louis was looking at his father, who in turn was looking at his wife. Once the surprise had faded there was nothing ramused or affectionate or even angry in Bob’s expression. It was pure disappointed disapproval. And, as such, an expression that only love could sponsor. He would have looked exactly the same if Melanie had said, “I’m being unfaithful. That’s all I have to say!”

The pianist had struck up a New Age melody, cosmic and burbling. “PEOPLE!” Geraldine Briggs shouted. “People, people, people. We have now heard BOTH sides, the glad and the unenlightened. So let us now go forth into the world with GLADDENED HEARTS AND SOBERED MINDS. REMEMBER THE ENVELOPES. AMEN!”

The drab men and women rose. As they headed for the refreshments they slowed and walked in half circles around Melanie like sullen, beaten hounds. She smiled and nodded to them all as she chatted with Messrs. Tabscott and Aldren and Stoorhuys, these favored hounds crowding around her. Soon Louis and his father were the only people still sitting.

“Sweeting-Aldren?” Louis said.

“Nature’s helpers. Herbicides, pigments, textiles.”

“Mom has something to do with them now?”

“You could put it that way.”

“She was so rude.”

“Don’t judge her, Lou. There’s no reason for you to trust me on this, but please don’t judge her. Will you do me that favor?” Coquettish was the only word for the way in which Melanie was accepting an ordinary cup of coffee from Mr. Stoorhuys, pretending to be tempted against her better judgment. “I thought I was going to
scream
,” she went on to Mr. Aldren. For one brief moment, in the unblinking intentness of the smile Mr. Aldren had trained on her, the smiling wolf behind the smiling dog showed through, the cruel and hungry animal biding its time. He said, “You’re free for lunch, I assume.” To which Melanie replied, “I think I can squeeze you in.”

“Look at her,” Bob said. “Have you ever seen her so happy? You don’t know how long she’s had to wait. Hard to begrudge her a couple happy hours.”