The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  “We have Mrs. Norton’s funeral service tomorrow. What do we need for that?” She looked across the desk.

  “The coffin was supposed to come today, but I haven’t checked to see if it’s been delivered,” Artie said.

  “But she’s already in a coffin,” Ilka said. She was in the cold room beside Ed McKenna and the dog.

  “She’s not in the one we ordered. I had to lay her in another one until it came. I finished working on her; she’s ready. I was thinking that later we could use the coffin for Mike Gilbert, so I used the cheapest one we have in storage. We need to move her over into the right coffin today, so it’ll be ready tomorrow morning, in case the family shows up early to decorate.”

  “Did they arrange for music?” he asked Sister Eileen. She shook her head.

  “I informed them that they can use CDs or connect to an iPhone over our sound system,” she said. She added that a choir would be singing at the chapel.

  “What should we do if the coffin doesn’t arrive?” Ilka asked. “Do we have another one we can put her in?”

  Artie shook his head. “They’ve paid for a glossy black coffin with glitter. If that’s not what she’s in, we’ll have to give a refund. And anyway, it’s too late to tell them we can’t deliver, so that coffin has to come. It might be a good idea for you to call the supplier, if you don’t already have a tracking number. Then we can follow it on the Net and see how far away it is.”

  Sister Eileen said nothing, even though she was the one who dealt with the suppliers.

  “What about one of the coffins we have in storage?” Ilka suggested. “One is light blue; another is white. And we have that big black one that was in the garage. Is it in the storage room now?”

  “We can’t use that one; it was delivered by mistake and will be picked back up. It’s way too expensive to keep.”

  Ilka didn’t answer, but she wrote: “Find coffin.”

  “We’re low on formaldehyde,” Artie said.

  “Let’s finish this first,” Ilka said. “What else do we need for tomorrow?”

  “Flowers are to be delivered, and there will be catering,” the nun said. “I’ve ordered both.”

  “But the Norton family is bringing the flowers,” Ilka reminded her.

  “There are always flowers in the chapel and out in the foyer during funeral services,” the sister calmly answered. “Those are the flowers I ordered.”

  Ilka nodded and made a note of it.

  Sister Eileen hadn’t touched the coffee or the chocolates, and suddenly Ilka remembered that she usually drank tea. How could she have forgotten?

  “I’ve spoken with Ed McKenna’s daughter,” the nun continued. “She’s coming to see her father this weekend. It sounds like she wants to take him home to Albany, which means we’ll need a zinc coffin.”

  Ilka lifted an eyebrow. “For the plane,” Artie explained. “When the deceased are flown, they have to be in zinc coffins.”

  Ilka nodded thoughtfully when he added that there were many on domestic flights.

  “The distances are too long to drive,” he said. “But there are strict rules for transporting them, of course. The coffins have to be zinc lined and contain absorbent material. We use charcoal powder. And then there must be a pressure equalizer. And the deceased must be embalmed. And usually the coffin has to be wrapped so the other passengers can’t see there’s a dead body on board.”

  Suddenly he seemed to take her wanting to be fully informed very literally.

  “If there isn’t anything more, I’d like to unpack my things now,” Sister Eileen said, a bit sharply. She stood without waiting for an answer.

  Artie was also on his feet. He wanted to take care of Mike Gilbert so his mother could view him when she came.

  “How much formaldehyde?” Ilka yelled after him.

  For a moment, she sat alone, staring into space before slowly rising and walking over to find the file with the Nortons’ funeral service notes. After laying it on the table, she walked out to the sister’s desk in the reception area. A calendar lay open on the thick green desk mat; beside it lay a black leather-bound telephone book with JENSEN FUNERAL HOME printed on it.

  Ilka found the order book in the top drawer. It wasn’t difficult to locate the coffin supplier where most of the sister’s orders were made. She cleared her throat and dialed, with the order number on Mrs. Norton’s coffin in hand.

  “Why do you say you can’t deliver coffins to us?” she said, baffled by what she’d been told. “You just received our order. You could have said you don’t want to do business with us anymore when we sent the order, to avoid this terrible situation we’re in. The family is in. We’re holding a funeral service tomorrow, and the relatives expect to see the deceased in the coffin they ordered. No, I will not listen! You listen. It’s unprofessional and horrible, what you’re doing. Maybe it’s right that we’ve exceeded our credit and you’ve had to send several reminders. But as you might know, Paul Jensen is dead and I’ve taken over and I’m trying the best I can to finish the agreements the funeral home has made. Of course we will pay what we owe you, but you must deliver the coffin we need now. And I’d like to—”

  Ilka didn’t know when they’d hung up; all she knew was that she was listening to static. She looked up and saw Sister Eileen turn around in the doorway—hadn’t she gone over to unpack? How long had she been listening? She didn’t care for the nun observing her like that.

  She found two more coffin suppliers in the order book and made a call. “Yes, we’re prepared to pay extra to have FedEx deliver it today.”

  Her tense shoulders relaxed, and she leaned back in her chair. The supplier asked for the name and address of their funeral home.

  “Jensen Funeral Home,” she began, but was interrupted before she could give their address.

  “Unfortunately you what?” This time Ilka tried to control herself and sound friendly. “I can assure you we’ll pay what we owe you. We’re in the middle of a sort of generational change here; we’re putting in new systems to stop this type of error.”

  Generational change my ass, she thought. She briefly debated with herself whether she should continue this way until she found a supplier who didn’t already know them.

  “Yes,” she said, “please send a bill on what we owe. Have a nice day.”

  After trying two more suppliers, she gave up in anger. She went out and hammered on the preparation room door until some sort of electric machinery was shut off and Artie opened up.

  She couldn’t help noticing the naked body on the steel table by the wall. She stiffened for a moment, but then she pulled herself together and walked inside. “It can’t be true that we owe money to every single coffin supplier in North America, can it? I can’t buy a coffin anywhere.”

  Artie shut the door behind her. He walked over and turned down the Beach Boys; then he glanced at the steel table as if he should be protecting the body. He wore a green apron and an elastic band around his longish hair. He struggled to take off his mask, which was tangled up in his glasses.

  “That sounds about right,” he said, after the mask was finally off. He stunk, and Ilka instinctively backed off a few steps. “You probably should’ve let the sister call around. She can usually finagle a coffin out of them, even though they’ve shut us off.”

  “You could have told me that. What do we do now?”

  He shrugged. “You’re the boss!” His eyes twinkled a bit.

  Ilka stared at him in anger, then turned on her heel. She was determined to get hold of a coffin, even if she had to nail one together herself and paint it black and spread glitter over it.

  “They sell coffins over at Costco,” he yelled at her back. “The closest one is in Pleasant Prairie. Just follow Lake Michigan down to Kenosha. You’ll hit Highway 50, and then it’s straight west from there. Really, though, I doubt if you can get them to deliver today, in time for tomorrow morning.”

  She turned at the door, tired now. “And what’s Costco?
”

  “It’s a warehouse that sells just about everything, most of it in bulk. They’re about to drive the coffin suppliers out of business anyway, with their prices. You just have to pay an annual membership fee to shop there.”

  “Fine.” Ilka imagined people at the warehouse, shopping for giant packages of toilet paper, paper towels, and coffins.

  17

  She drove through a landscape of open fields, lakes, and lush forests. She was just as stubborn as she was mad; all she could see was the white stripes on the road and the notepad on Sister Eileen’s desk where she had crossed off the names of coffin suppliers one by one as they rejected her. In fact, she was enraged at how they had treated her. At the very least they could have given her a chance to make things right. They’d regret turning her down!

  She stomped on the brakes when a car passed and nearly swiped her bumper as they swerved back in the right lane. The hearse rocked heavily.

  “Røvhul!” she yelled, as loud as she could. Asshole! Not that the driver heard her, or understood her even if he had. It just felt good. If she stayed in Racine long enough to arrange more funerals, none of those fucking suppliers would get so much as one single order from her.

  “Maybe it’s a real idea to go organic,” she muttered to herself. Just like in Denmark, surely someone over here was making coffins out of recycled material or paper, in that ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust way in which coffins decomposed in a relatively short time. She’d be the first funeral director in town to think environmentally. That would get the Oldhams’ attention.

  Her thoughts were in a jumble as she pulled into an enormous, almost empty parking lot. She chose a space close to the main entrance. Banners announcing the weekly bargains hung from both sides of the sliding doors, and pallets with gallon jugs of laundry detergent and stacks of white plastic lawn chairs stood just inside. She stopped for a moment to get her bearings. The warehouse had an optician and a photo center with good offers on tripods for various cameras. Ilka walked over to ask a young man behind the vision center counter, which was crowded with glasses and offers on vision tests, but on the way, she noticed ends of coffins sticking out from a small niche in the wall.

  Seven hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. And the price was the same regardless of color—dusty rose, silver, or marine blue—but there were differences in how showy they were. Two of them boasted large rosettes in all the corners and a broad, gilded piece of trim—plastic, no doubt, Ilka thought. She looked at the price again. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than the ones from the suppliers—about a tenth of the price of some of them.

  She walked over and read a sign on the wall between the models on display: ALL COFFINS HAVE THE SAME FUNCTION. THEY ARE THE FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR THOSE YOU HOLD DEAR. CHOOSING A COFFIN IS A VERY PERSONAL DECISION. FAMILIES SHOULD CHOOSE A COFFIN BASED ON THEIR OWN PREFERENCES AND THE PERSONALITY OF THEIR LOVED ONE. Beside the sign was a plastic holder with order forms.

  That’s certainly good to know, Ilka thought, shaking her head. None of the models came even close to being black. But they all had a two-piece lid for viewing, and apparently, a coffin liner, pillow, and blanket were included. So far, so good.

  She pulled out an order form. To her relief, the coffins came in several colors, including gold. There was also one in black. She read the instructions:

  1. Choose a coffin in our selection.

  2. Fill out Costco’s Purchase Order.

  3. Take to the cashier for payment.

  4. Delivery time: 48 hours.

  “Shit,” Ilka said. She stuck the order form in her pocket; then she set off to find someone to help her.

  “No, not at all,” she assured the elderly gray-haired employee. Frank had reluctantly agreed to check returns storage to see if a black coffin had been returned, and he had come back with a discouraged look on his face. “One small scratch on one side doesn’t matter. But does it have glitter? Okay, okay, that doesn’t matter either. I’ll take it without.”

  Ilka had gone through three employees before ending up with Frank, the returns manager. The first two she’d talked to had told her she couldn’t get a black coffin delivered immediately; it was out of the question, even if they had them in stock. That’s not how things worked. The coffin had to be ordered and would be delivered. And the third employee got so sick and tired of Ilka that she finally said the only chance Ilka had of leaving there with a coffin was if they happened to have one that had been returned. But it probably had been damaged during transport.

  “Fine,” Ilka had said. That’s when Frank came into the picture. He refused outright to sell her a damaged coffin. He wasn’t going to risk her complaining afterward and him ending up with having to supply her with a replacement.

  “That won’t happen,” she said, but he wouldn’t budge. She persisted. He kept saying no. But finally, Ilka talked him into checking to see if there even was a black coffin in return storage.

  “I’ll pay you right now; I’ll give up my right to return the product,” she said.

  “You can’t get a truck to deliver it today anyway,” he said.

  “I can take it with me,” she replied quickly, and before he could say more, she added, “This is my last chance, and I will be so very grateful to you. My father is dead, and I’ve come all the way from Denmark to bury him. Yes, Denmark. Yes, like kringles. I never have, no, not with cranberries. We don’t have nearly as many kinds in Denmark; we just sprinkle them with powdered sugar and hazelnut flakes. No, at least I don’t think they taste plain.”

  He kept on about the kringles for a while, but finally he asked why she didn’t just wait until Monday, when a new coffin could be delivered.

  “I have to leave Sunday. Monday morning my mother is having some very important tests taken at the hospital. She’s a terminal cancer patient, and her medicine is making her dizzy and confused. I have to be there for her.

  “The thing is,” she added, again before he could butt in, “she’s too sick to come over here and be at my father’s funeral. It’s so terribly sad; none of us could bear the thought that there wouldn’t be any services for him because I couldn’t get hold of a coffin.”

  At last, he gave in. But only if she could arrange for the transportation of the damaged coffin to wherever she wanted it dropped off.

  “That’s no problem,” she said.

  He looked at her quizzically for a moment, but then he nodded and checked his watch.

  “Well then, let’s go get this taken care of.” He ushered her over toward customer service. Two of the employees Ilka had spoken with were standing by some tall shelving, eyeing them as Ilka strode along behind Frank. She already had a credit card out by the time they reached customer service. Frank gave a number to a coworker at the desk; then he handed Ilka two forms to fill out and sign: her membership application and the other acknowledging that she couldn’t return the item she was buying.

  She signed and stood for an ID photo for her membership card. Frank hadn’t told the man behind the counter what he had sold her, she was sure of that, so she didn’t say anything either, just took the receipt and her new card and then nodded when the man told her to have a nice day.

  “Give me ten minutes. I’ll go back in and get it ready for you to pick up,” Frank said, adding that he would help her load it in her vehicle.

  Ilka thanked him without commenting on what he said about helping. She walked back to the hearse. The parking lot was much fuller now, but according to her watch, she’d been in the warehouse for almost two hours.

  There wasn’t much room between two trucks unloading at the docks. She backed in, and just as she got out of the hearse, she saw Frank bringing the coffin over on a forklift. Ilka waved at him and asked if she should drive forward for better access to the rear door.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” he said when he spotted the hearse.

  “It’s my father’s; he was an undertaker. He went bankrupt just before he died.”

>   She could hear how suspicious that sounded, so she opened the door at once, then tried to distract him. “I want you to know how incredibly grateful I am for your help and your understanding of my difficult situation. And I know my mother will be, too, knowing that my father got a dignified burial.” She unlocked the wheels of the rollers to push it over to the coffin.

  “Wait just a second here,” Frank said, rubbing his full gray beard. “You’re not thinking about using this coffin in a funeral home business, are you? And I end up getting complaints and demands for replacement because it’s damaged?”

  “No, this is for my personal use. My father will be driven to the crematorium in it tomorrow.”

  Frank helped her get the coffin on the rollers and shove it in the back of the hearse. She slammed the rear door shut.

  “Which crematorium did you book?” he asked.

  Ilka pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to him. “Thank you so much for your help. I can’t tell you how important this is to me.” She meant every word she said, but then he startled her when he stepped back abruptly.

  “I can’t take that sort of money,” he whispered, as if he suddenly was afraid someone was listening.

  “It’s okay,” Ilka quickly assured him. “It’s a donation to the church you support.”

  “What the hell makes you think I support a church?” It was his turn to look startled.

  “People with a heart like yours always support a church.” She left it at that and thanked him again before he could say another word. He took the bill and watched her drive away.

  18

  Ilka had just parked the hearse in the garage when Sister Eileen came out to tell her that Shelby Gilbert was there with photos of her son.