The Smart One (26 page)

Jaz was agitated lately, on the phone with her family often, and she confided in Martha that she didn’t like the “no-good” man that her daughter was dating.

“If she marries him, so help me God, I will kidnap her and leave the country.”

“Is he abusive?” Martha asked. She was imagining Jaz and her daughter running for their lives.

“Is he what? No, child. He’s just a lazy shit.”

“Oh.”

“Mark my words, if they end up getting married, my Marly will work herself to the bone, while he lays around the house smoking dope in his skivvies and watching talk shows.”

“Did you tell her that you don’t like him?”

“Did I tell her? I tell her every day that he’s worthless. I tell him, too, when I see him. It doesn’t seem to help. He don’t scare easy, I’ll give him that.”

Martha tried to imagine what it would be like to have Jaz as a mother, or to be in a family where people just said exactly what they were thinking, shouting their opinion no matter what it was. She didn’t see how much good could come from that.

ONE AFTERNOON, MARTHA WAS IN
Mr. Cranston’s office, looking for a new credit card to give to the bookstore. “The old one expired,” Jaz told Martha on her way out the door. “The new one is on his desk, I think. Just call them with the new number. He’s getting cranky and needs his books.”

The desk was covered with folders and file cards that had notes and lists written on them. Martha felt like she was snooping, even though Jaz had told her to go through the papers. She carefully lifted one set of folders and placed them to the side, then picked up a couple of loose pieces of paper and that was when she saw the manila folder, labeled
FUNERAL
.

She couldn’t believe it. She glanced at the door and then opened the folder before she could even stop herself. It was full of old funeral mass booklets, some of which were marked with Mr. Cranston’s handwriting. There were readings that were circled, and some that were crossed over with a big X, sometimes a NO written next to it for good measure.

Martha heard a noise in the hall and she shut the folder quickly. She spotted the new credit card, grabbed it, and ran out into the hall holding it in the air, like it was a badge proving that she wasn’t snooping. But no one was there.

All afternoon, Martha kept thinking about what it must be like for Mr. Cranston to plan his own funeral. How scary it must be to know that death was coming. Of course, she knew that death was coming
for everyone, but it must be strange to know without a doubt that it was coming soon. He was so organized, so efficient. It looked like just another business file on his desk, just one more thing to cross off his list.

Sometimes, imagining her own funeral, Martha could make herself cry. She didn’t sob, but if she pictured her parents and siblings sitting in a pew, pictured Cathy bent over with grief, she could get a tear or two out. After all, it would be such a tragedy, such a shame if she were to die now.

There were times when Martha imagined that she’d died of a long and drawn-out disease, which would give her time to prepare, as Mr. Cranston was doing. She would write letters to all the people that were important to her, and leave instructions for them to be opened on the day of her funeral. And of course, she’d write an open letter to be read at the actual service. She’d probably have Claire read it—her parents would be too distraught, and Max wasn’t great at public speaking. She could have Cathy do it, but she was a little rough sometimes, and Martha would want the letter to be read with quiet emotion. Claire would be devastated too, of course, but Martha would explain that it was her last sisterly duty, and Claire would come through.

Martha wondered if she was the only one who thought about these kinds of things. She could daydream about her funeral for hours, imagining the people from her past that would show up, the ones that would be shocked to hear the news. She worried sometimes that this wasn’t normal, but then she told herself that people talked about death all the time. At least once a month, usually after she’d had to go retrieve something from the attic or the basement, Weezy would say, “I pity you children, if your father and I die unexpectedly. It will take you a decade to clean out this house.”

Once, her grandma Bets had announced at a family dinner that she’d like to be cremated and have her ashes split between her two daughters. Later that night, Martha overheard Weezy and Maureen talking about it.

“That gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Weezy said. “What do you think possessed her to say that?”

“I think she wants to make sure that she’ll always be with us,”
Maureen answered. “Judging and disapproving our every move from her urn.”

The two of them had laughed, but Martha was disturbed. Maybe she’d like to be cremated too. Then she could be with her family, instead of underground, and they could take her with them wherever they went. But then what would happen after all of them were gone too? Her ashes would be passed around, and then, eventually, generations later, someone would say, “What is this thing?” and they’d get sick of taking care of the urn, probably find it creepy, and put it in the garbage. So maybe cremation wasn’t the best choice.

When she was younger, she’d seen a mausoleum in a graveyard and asked Weezy what it was. “Can we get one of those?” she asked. To her, it seemed like the perfect solution, to be with your family, above-ground, so that no critters could get to you. It was just like a little house. But Weezy had told her no.

“You’ll grow up and have your own family,” she’d said. “And you’ll want to be buried near them too.” But that seemed impossible to Martha at the time, to grow up and have a family of her own. She’d always secretly thought that she could buy a mausoleum after her parents died, but then for their fiftieth birthdays, Bets had given each of her parents a plot in Saint Ambrose’s graveyard.

RUBY KEPT BRINGING PRESENTS
for her father—a blanket, a CD, a new movie for him to watch. Mr. Cranston never seemed to like any of the things that she gave to him, but she seemed determined to keep trying. Once she brought him an iPad, and insisted that he try to play Angry Birds.

“Here, Dad, put your finger here and then shoot the bird like this.”

“What? Why am I doing this?” he asked.

“To try to kill the pigs,” Ruby explained. “I know it seems strange, but I think you’ll really like it. It’s totally addicting.” Ruby had a tendency to sound like a teenager when she talked to her dad.

Mr. Cranston humored her, putting his finger to the screen, and then looking surprised when there was the sound of a bird screaming and pigs snorting. “What the hell is this thing?” he asked.

Ruby had just laughed. “We can put it away for now,” she said. “But you should try it later. I really think you’ll like it.” Martha was pretty sure that Mr. Cranston never touched the iPad again, and sometimes it made her sad, how badly Ruby wanted to find something that would make her father happy.

MARTHA HAD STARTED TO DREAM
about the Cranstons. She figured it was just from spending so much time there. After all, she’d had more J.Crew stress dreams than she could even count. The number of times she’d woken up in a panic, sweating, because no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t get the sweaters to stay folded and in a pile. Oh, those were the worst! As soon as she managed to wrangle one sweater, another one fell out, and another. Around the holidays, when the store was at its craziest, Martha barely slept.

But the dreams about the Cranstons were a little different. In them, Martha was part of the family. They weren’t stressful at all, except for one where Ruby’s hair fell out and she screamed at Martha. But usually, the dreams were just Martha sitting around with the family, watching TV or eating dinner. They sort of reminded her of the dreams she used to have when she was younger, where she was a part of the Huxtables or the
Full House
family.

Dr. Baer told her she might be getting a little too involved. “I understand it’s hard when you spend so much time with a family, and you get wrapped up in their business. But just remember to keep a little distance. You’re there as the caretaker.”

People were always telling Martha not to get too involved. She didn’t understand it. How could anyone be too involved? Didn’t that just show people that you cared? What did people want? Did they want everyone to just walk around, pretending that they didn’t see anyone else, didn’t notice a thing? That was ridiculous.

In college, Martha was always the first one to step up and tell one of the girls if she needed to break up with her boyfriend. “He’s not treating you right,” she’d say. She’d demand that the girl end it. How could she not step in when she saw something bad happening?

The girls that she was trying to help almost always got annoyed with
her. “Mind your own business, Martha,” they’d say. But she wouldn’t let it drop. After all, they were the ones who offered up the information in the first place, who told her about the things their boyfriends said, the suspicions they had about cheating. What else was she supposed to do?

“People don’t want to hear that they’re with the wrong person,” Claire told her once. “And unless they’re being abused in some way, the most you can really say is that you think they can do better. Or that they should be treated better. But that’s it.”

Martha disagreed. She’d just ended a friendship with a girl in her nursing program, Ann, who had refused to break up with her boyfriend.

“Look,” Claire said. “I get what you’re saying. But at the end of the day, it’s not really your business. People don’t always want the truth, and you don’t always know what the real truth is. It’s not worth losing a friend over.”

But Martha had lost a friend. Ann never forgave her for the things that she’d said, and she ended up marrying the guy. Martha didn’t get it. Weren’t friends there to tell you the truth? Weren’t you supposed to get involved?

WHEN MR. CRANSTON HAD A
doctor’s appointment, either Jaz or Ruby took him. He preferred Jaz, because Ruby usually got herself all worked up, thinking the doctor was going to find something fatal during these visits.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mr. Cranston told her once. “I’m already dying. What else could they tell me?”

“Oh, Dad,” Ruby said. She went to the upstairs bathroom and shut herself in for almost fifteen minutes.

“Well, now we’ll never get out of here,” he said. He crossed his arms and waited for her to come downstairs.

“Why does he have so many appointments?” Martha asked Jaz. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“He’s old, child. Things have started failing. He’s having trouble breathing, his heart’s giving out, you name it, it’s happening to him.” She didn’t know how Jaz could be so matter-of-fact about it.

It seemed to Martha that Mr. Cranston got a little smaller each day,
just a tiny bit weaker than he was the day before. Could she be imagining it? When they sat together and read, sometimes he fell asleep in the middle of a page, the book open on his lap, his mouth open with a little bit of drool at the corner. His skin looked so thin while he slept, the veins so close to the surface. Martha knew he should rest if he was tired, but what she really wanted to do was make noise until he woke up and moved around, until he looked alive again.

MARTHA COULDN’T HELP BUT TALK
about the Cranstons when she was at home. She was always dying to share new information about them, or tell her family what she thought was behind the rift between Ruby and Billy.

“You sound a little obsessed with them,” Claire said one night. Claire had started cooking dinner for the family, claiming that she was so bored at her temp job, all she could do was look up recipes on the computer. She’d made some truly amazing things, like tonight’s dinner of tarragon chicken in cream sauce, scalloped cherry tomatoes, and twice-baked potatoes.

“You’re going to send us all to the fat farm,” Weezy said when she sat down that night.

“I’m not obsessed with them,” Martha told Claire. “I’m just interested. They’re interesting.”

“It’s a fine line between interested and obsessed,” Claire said, but Martha wasn’t offended. Claire had never met them, so she didn’t understand. The Cranstons were the kind of people who had an interesting story, who had many interesting stories. They were the kind of people that once you met them, you just wanted to learn everything you could about their lives.

CHAPTER
12

Thanksgiving started weeks before it actually happened. It was the way it always had been. There was shopping to get done, the house needed to be cleaned, silver needed to be polished. There were logistics that had to be figured out—who was coming, who was staying where, who was a vegetarian this year, who was lactose intolerant. There were phone calls to be had with Maureen, to complain about their mother and her absolute refusal to cooperate with anyone on anything. “She doesn’t want to come?” Maureen said every year. “Great, let’s leave her in Michigan. I’m good with that, are you?”

Years ago, when they were both first married and had little babies in the house, they used to switch off hosting Thanksgiving. This didn’t last long. Weezy ended up doing all of the cooking anyway, and most of the cleaning, and honestly it was just easier to have it at her own house in her own kitchen.

The past few years had gotten more complicated, since they started to think that Bets shouldn’t travel by herself. Cathy and Ruth had taken on the responsibility of driving almost three hours from Ohio to Auburn Hills to pick up Bets and fly with her from Detroit. It wasn’t convenient, but none of them could think of a better alternative. Bets, of course, still thought she was fine to travel alone, so Cathy and Ruth had to think of excuses for why they were going to be up that way anyway. “We’re visiting friends,” they always told Bets. She acted like she was doing them a favor, letting them stay at her house for a night before they all flew to Philadelphia.

“Cathy’s coming again this year,” she told Weezy. “I guess some of her lesbian friends live up this way.”