The Funeral Makers (19 page)

When Chester Lee saw the young doe in the road, saw it jerk its head, frantic for a direction to run, it flooded his memory in a flash, the boiled white skull that had hung on his bedroom wall. It was the first deer he had ever shot. He was thirteen and downed it with four badly placed bullets until it could no longer run but crawled under the boughs of a young cedar that were heavy with snow. He had broken the boughs away, exposing the injured animal, whose blood lay like rose petals on that thin layer of snow that hunters love and bleeding deer dread. It's a white sheet of paper spread out over the woods to collect the dots of blood that drop, so that the hunter, using his gun like a pencil, slowly, easily connects the dots.

Chester Lee had stared down at the animal and felt remorse at what he'd done. He could not bring himself to unsheathe his knife until he heard his father and brothers catching up to him. Before they could see what would be a weakness to any man in Mattagash, Chester Lee had pulled out his knife and slit the creature's soft throat, shouting back at the men behind him, “The little bitch put up a good fight!”

Later, as they dragged the dead deer away, he saw the cedar boughs scattered about on the snow and knew that in Mattagash, as it was in nature, everything you put up to protect yourself, to shelter yourself, would be broken away by somebody, sooner or later. Your very hide would be stripped from your bones, leaving you naked and shaken beside the red drops on Mattagash's white snow.

And later, when his brothers showed him how to push a wire up into the cranium and pull the brains out so that the skull could be boiled, then varnished and hung as a trophy on the wall, he had felt the same remorse return. Digging out the animal's brain was like stealing its secrets, its memories of the fresh, deep woods and the soft belly of its mother. Simply because it had been born a deer.

Because it was his first deer, and although he couldn't give words to his emotions, he felt they were kindred spirits. That Mattagash had robbed him of his past simply because he had been born a Gifford. And many times over the years when night had settled about the house and darkness rolled in around his bed, he would come awake in a sweat and see the gleaming skull, the eyeless sockets, the horns like a crown of thorns on its head. He would think of Jesus and the blood that spilled from the cross and he was afraid of hell then, afraid of his sinfulness, and of the skull that hung like crossbones on his wall.

He could not stop the Packard in time. The deer didn't run, but stood, stunned by the invention of headlights, stood looking into them like mirrors, until its bones met the metal of the machine and crumbled inside its skin like pieces of chalk as the body slid gracefully across the hood and crashed through the windshield, leaving it in tiny bits of glass, like fragile blue tears.

The sensation of being inside an automobile as it left the firm earth and became airborne for two seconds was, to Chester Lee, one of amusement mixed with fear. As though he were in a chair on the Ferris wheel that had broken free and was falling, and he almost giggled, almost cried, in the seconds he had left. And then the sound of metal against hardwood, against birch and pine, as if a lumberman's ax was busy at work, the same noisy sound his ancestors had brought years ago to that quiet place, was the last thing Chester Lee Gifford heard as the steering wheel lurched at his chest, as glass flew at his flesh, as blood rushed to the gaping spaces where teeth had been and then burst up, bright red, from inside him, as though he were a thermometer on a hot day, filling his mouth with sticky blood. His hands unclenched the wheel and flew like Raggedy Andy's against the door and dashboard. As his broken chest settled back against the plush seat in the now-motionless car, he felt almost embarrassed to be caught so helpless, to be stumbled upon in the morning looking so grotesque, and he knew, as he said good-bye to Mattagash, that the Packard, the one thing in the world he felt he could trust, had turned against him.

“Marge McKinnon went ahead and shriveled up way before her time. It's that damn McKinnon blood. They get a notion into their heads and there's no turning them around. She's so stubborn she's even more stubborn than a McKinnon. There must of been some of that French Canadian blood mixed in with the McKinnons over the years that no one wants to own up to. Them frogs is as stubborn as anybody.”

—Gladys O'Rourke, Childhood Friend, 1957

Sicily had been asleep for only two hours when the phone rang at seven o'clock. She was hoping Ed might get up and answer it, knowing what kind of night she'd had, but on the fourth ring she realized he must have had more than the usual to drink and didn't hear it. She stumbled, half asleep, down the hallway, holding one railing of the stairway as she made her way down to the phone. It would probably stop ringing just as she reached it. Bert Fogarty and his wife had an extension in their bedroom. If Ed wasn't so obstinate, they could afford the few extra dollars each month. He spent tons more on the booze he put away.

“What Pearl must think each time she comes home. She must feel just like that Margaret Mead when she stepped off the boat into that litter of natives,” thought Sicily, and answered the phone. She yawned as she said hello. It had been an incredible night. Marvin Sr. had called after one o'clock to tell them that Marge was sinking fast. The nurse said her blood pressure was dangerously high and she feared the worst. Sicily had phoned for an ambulance, then she and Pearl had gone out into the rain to see their oldest sister wrapped in blankets on a stretcher and whisked to Watertown as fast as slick roads would allow. Arriving in Watertown twenty minutes after the ambulance, the sisters and Marvin Ivy waited for word. But Dr. Sullivan sent them home to get what sleep they could for when they'd really need it. It was too soon to tell.

Back at Marge's, they made coffee and listened to a bizarre tale of attempted rape and car theft as they answered phone calls from curious neighbors who had seen the blue light flashing by in the night. Since Marge McKinnon was the only ill person in town, they wondered if the ambulance had come for
her
. It didn't matter that it was almost four o'clock in the morning.

Between phone calls and listening to Junior lament his loss, Pearl kept saying, “
Thelma?
Are you sure he wanted
Thelma
? Could he have meant it for the nurse?”

Finally, after calling the hospital once more to be told that Marge was the same, they'd gone on to Sicily's and left the Ivys still in a tizzy.

Sicily and Pearl had finally turned out the lights a few minutes before five o'clock. Now it was seven and she heard Dr. Sullivan say, “She's gone. I'm sorry.”

After Sicily put the receiver back on the hook, she stood for a while looking out across the river at the fire of the trees. She wondered if Marge's soul was walking just then, among the leaves, a wisp of a girl again, dancing between the magnificent white birches, her hair thick and auburn the way Sicily could almost remember it. Tears rolled down her face, tears of sadness and guilt because she had not come to love her sister in spite of the faults. Because she had forgotten until then what Marge's young face looked like in the lamplight as she leaned down to kiss Sicily good night.

“I hope her soul stays along the river,” Sicily said and went to Amy Joy's bedroom. Cynthia and Regina were sleeping soundly on the two cots Sicily had brought up from the basement and unfolded. She sat on the bed and waited a few seconds before she put a hand on Pearl's shoulder and shook her gently.

“What?” said Pearl. “What?” Then, when she saw Sicily, “What time is it? Have I been sleeping that long?”

“She's gone, Pearly,” said Sicily, her mouth quivering at having spoken the words, having now made Marge's death official.

“Oh, no,” said Pearl softly. Knowing that something bad was going to happen was not at all like having it happen.

“Marge is gone,” Sicily said again, and Pearl pushed back the covers to slide her legs over the side of the bed. The two sisters sat quietly, side by side, until Sicily reached for Pearl's hand, took it in her own, and held it.

“Knowing her,” said Sicily, “I always thought she'd beat it. That one day she'd just up and outta that bed and be well again.”

“I guess I knew she couldn't. I see more of death than you do. Even the young and rich, Sissy.” Pearl felt tears come to her eyes. “Beneath all that tough stuff, she was only a mortal human. We're all only human. We'll all go too.”

They said nothing for several minutes, both watching a beam of sun that came through the parted curtains, past the geraniums in the window, and landed squarely on the seat of a chair, as though it had come in just to sit down.

Then Pearl said, “She must've felt this way when Mama died. Only worse. She was all alone with no husband or family.”

“She was like a mother to us,” Sicily agreed. “It must have been hard on her back then, a young girl with two children to raise.”

“And that old devil to live with,” said Pearl, and Sicily was not even shocked at the anathema. It was the same word she had often conjured up in her own mind to define their father, Reverend Ralph, but she had always kept it to herself.

“Well, at least the rain's done,” said Pearl, still looking at the yellow stream of sunlight. “A funeral's bad enough but rain makes it so much sadder. Everyone huddled beneath black umbrellas and chilled to the bone and so much water you can't tell anymore who's really crying and who isn't. I've seen a hundred of them in the rain. At least the rain's done.”

“I'll get us some breakfast,” Sicily said and left Pearl sitting on the bed.

“I suppose there's no need to hurry now,” Pearl thought and began to straighten the blankets. Her granddaughters were still asleep and she looked upon them fondly for a few seconds. They were enough to drive her to an early grave at times, but watching them sleep and thinking of Marge with no one to carry her blood mixed with theirs down through the years, Pearl was thankful for Junior's children.

“Maybe they'll outgrow it,” she thought and took a dress from her suitcase.

When Sicily opened the front door to bring in the two quarts of Maine dairy milk, she saw Amy Joy asleep in a yellow raincoat under the lilac bushes, her head resting against the little vinyl case Sicily had gotten her with Green Stamps as a Christmas present.

“What in the name of God?” said Sicily. She'd been so accustomed to Amy Joy spending the night at Marge's that she had not missed her on the sofa when the frantic call from Marvin had come, nor when she answered the phone at seven.

“I've had so much on my mind that God only knows what that child's been up to,” Sicily said. Slippers on, she padded out through the damp grass to retrieve the water-logged Amy Joy.

At the sound of her mother's voice, Amy Joy sat up and sneezed. The raincoat couldn't protect her shoes and bobby socks, which were soaked with rain. Sicily saw that she was shivering.

“I can't wait to hear the story behind
this
stunt,” Sicily said, helping Amy Joy to her feet. The raincoat made squeaking sounds. “You look like a dandelion laying here in the yard for the neighbors to enjoy. Will I ever see you grown up and married, with a family of your own? Knock on wood, their last names won't be Gifford.”

“I was waiting for the milkman,” said Amy Joy, her sneakers squishing water as Sicily marched her to the house. “I wanted him to leave a quart of chocolate milk.”

“Well, you're a hell of a watchdog, Amy Joy. He tramped right by your head and left my milk, and I suppose he ain't gonna blab this up and down the road today on his stops. I suppose he ain't gonna say to every woman who buys a quart of buttermilk from him, ‘You'll never guess what I saw rooted under Sicily Lawler's lilac bushes?'”

When they were both on the front porch Sicily said, “Oh my God,” and put a hand to her mouth, remembering what was more important that autumn morning than the milkman's gossip.

In the kitchen she helped Amy Joy out of the wet clothing and wrapped her in a blanket. She fixed her a cup of hot cocoa and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. There would be time to diet after the funeral. Amy Joy sat at the table, waiting for her toast and giving in to the occasional sneeze.

“Take four of these Johnson & Johnson baby tablets,” said Sicily, holding the little pink pills out in the palm of her hand. “I can always tell how big you're getting by how many baby tablets I give you. It used to be you were just a baby and could only take a fourth of one mashed up in some milk. I suppose now you're really more than old enough to take aspirin. It's just trying to keep you little, I guess, that makes me get out the Johnson & Johnson baby tablets.”

“I'll probably be taking fifty someday,” said Amy Joy. “A whole bottle at a time.”

Sicily laughed at this but she knew she had to tell her daughter about Marge. It was just that Amy Joy already seemed so consumed with sadness that she hated to add to her adolescent troubles. But after Amy Joy had sipped some of the cocoa, she said, “Honey, Aunt Marge is gone. She passed away this morning.”

Amy Joy looked at her mother and said nothing. She tried to cry but was too exhausted. What she did feel was a stab of guilt that she had rarely looked into Marge's room these past few days, rarely let Marge or her illness enter her mind, so cluttered it was with visions of lassoing the elusive Chester Lee.

“I'll miss her,” she said to Sicily, who had started to cry but stopped long enough to say, “We all will, honey. All of us.”

Pearl came into the kitchen red-eyed, followed by her granddaughters. The girls were still sleepy and unusually quiet. They could sense, as children do—even Junior and Thelma's children—that grief had struck the adult world a blow.

“I'll go wake Ed,” said Sicily just as he walked, hair tousled, into the kitchen and poured himself some coffee.

“Marge passed away,” Sicily told him, not knowing what his response might be.

“When?” he asked, with a man's instinct for detail, and stopped pouring.

“At a quarter to seven this morning. They took her to Watertown last night. You were asleep and I didn't want to wake you,” Sicily lied, not wanting to say that Ed was dead drunk. She took tomato juice from the refrigerator and poured him a glass, then coaxed three aspirins from their bottle and placed them beside the glass of juice.

“She's done that so many mornings she's forgotten what it's really for,” thought Pearl and buttered the toast that had popped.

“I'm sorry, Sicily,” Ed said. “I'm really very sorry.”

Surprised at his reaction, Sicily burst into tears and Ed came to her and put his big arms around her.

“She's better off,” he said. “She was unhappy for so long.”

“I suppose,” said Sicily. “But I can almost remember her when she
was
happy, and, oh, I miss
that
Marge so much.” Sicily pulled a battered tissue from her apron pocket.

“She was the only mother you knew,” he said.

“Yes, she was.”

“And the only father.”

“I know it.”

“Amen to that,” said Pearl. “She was both mother and father,” and put cereal and toast before the two little girls.

“I want some orange juice,” said Cynthia.

“Me too,” said Regina.

“Monkey see, monkey do,” said Cynthia to her sister.

“I am not a monkey!” said Regina, her mouth full of toast.

“Are too.”

“Am not! Am not! I'm a girl! Grammie, am I a girl?”

Pearl didn't even care that the children were arguing. Life was going on, as it should.

“Yes, you're a girl,” she said. “Now eat your breakfast.”

When Pearl's two granddaughters finished eating, she sent them outside to play in Amy Joy's empty playhouse. Then she helped herself to a bowl of fruit cocktail, a boiled egg, and toast. Ed had passed on breakfast, as was usual, and sat at the head of the table drinking black coffee. Sicily tried to eat one slice of toast, just to put something in her empty stomach to give her strength to go through what lay ahead, but she gave up and sipped her coffee.

“Amy Joy, stop making those noises,” Ed said, breaking the silence that had settled in the room.

“What noises?”

“You know what noises. You sound like three baby pigs at a trough big enough for two.”

Eating fruit cocktail for Amy Joy was a ritual involving a process of elimination. The pineapple chunks, which she disliked, were eaten first. But the cherry, a fruit she prized, was saved for last, and all other pieces around it were eaten first. Then the syrupy liquid it lay floating in would be sucked up until the cherry lay helpless and exposed on her spoon. It would take Darwin only a few breakfasts with Amy Joy to conclude that eventually all fruit in a can of fruit cocktail would evolve to look like cherries in some distant millennium.

“It's only fruit cocktail,” said Amy Joy.

“Well, let it
sound
like fruit cocktail and not swill.” Ed stood up, rinsed his cup in the sink, and said to Sicily, “I'll be upstairs if you need me.”

After he'd gone, Amy Joy looked at her mother.

“Who put a cold turd on
his
cereal?” she asked.

“Amy Joy, do you make up those things all by yourself?”

“Sometimes,” said Amy Joy, and hoisting her blanket up so as not to trip, she left the two sisters sitting alone in the kitchen.

“I think she hears a lot of that at school,” Sicily said to Pearl.

“Of course she does,” said Pearl.