The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  “What do you think your grandmother would do?” she asked, but he’d already set the goodies on the floor. Two minutes later they were licked so clean that you couldn’t see the plates had been used.

  “What’s going to happen with the dogs?” Ilka asked as they walked out into the front hall. His mother was putting her coat on.

  “They’re going to stay with us.”

  Helen had red splotches on her cheeks. She smiled at her son. “It went so well.” She shook Ilka’s hand. “Everything was like Mother would have wanted. And there were no problems whatsoever. I am so grateful to you. Should we take the flowers with us, or will you take care of them?”

  “If you don’t want to take them with you, we’ll make sure they are laid on the coffin after it’s closed.” Ilka spoke with such authority that she surprised even herself. It struck her again that only a few days ago, all she knew about the funeral home business was what she had picked up as a child, but now here she was, talking as if she were running everything. Which, in a way, she was. At least on paper.

  She shook her head and watched Helen walk to the car with her arm around her son, the two dogs running at their feet.

  24

  Shelby had left by the time Ilka returned, so she kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her father’s stiff jacket, and hung it back in the closet along with the pants. She’d just pulled a sweater over her head when someone knocked on the door. At first, she thought about hiding somewhere, but they knocked again. When she opened the door, Sister Eileen was standing outside holding a small tray with tea and a bowl of cookies that had been left over from the funeral service.

  “Something to eat and drink?” The nun held the tray out and looked at Ilka exactly the way her mother did whenever she thought her daughter was working too hard.

  “Thank you.” She was surprised, and suddenly she felt hungry.

  “There’s also a plate of canapés downstairs. I wrapped them up and put them in the refrigerator.”

  Ilka eyed Sister Eileen, who politely stood out in the hall. Nothing about her smile gave the impression she was holding anything back from Ilka. She looked friendly and considerate. Maybe Ilka was only imagining this mistrust.

  She took the tray. “Thank you so much. I really am hungry, in fact.”

  Once again she considered asking about the clothes, but instead she pointed at the small pile of drawings beside the odd clay figure and homemade Father’s Day card. “I’ve been thinking about driving out to my half sisters and giving those to them.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” the nun said. She offered to find a bag for them.

  “That’s okay; there’s not very much, only those things. Is there anything I can do to help downstairs before I go?”

  Sister Eileen shook her head. She stood in the doorway, as if there was something else on her mind, but she didn’t say anything. Ilka broke the awkward silence. “How did you end up in Racine, by the way? Was it because of your parish? You didn’t grow up here, did you?”

  She was just being friendly, making small talk so they could get to know each other better, but the nun’s reaction was so dismissive that Ilka wondered if she had said something wrong.

  “I’ve picked up downstairs, and the tables have been put away. I’m going to lock up and take the rest of the day off. If, that is, you don’t need me for anything more.”

  She’d already turned to leave when Ilka quickly shook her head. “No, go ahead, take the day off. What time is Ed McKenna’s daughter coming tomorrow?”

  She answered from halfway down the stairs. “She won’t be here until twelve; there aren’t so many flights during the weekend.”

  “Fine. We can sleep a little longer.” Ilka smiled at her back.

  She had tied a wide green satin ribbon around the drawings and put them aside. While going through the drawers, she had also found some photos of her father with her half sisters. And a brown envelope with several letters from them addressed to him. It looked like they were written while he was traveling in California. Naturally she had read all of them; no one would mind, she thought. The letters were mostly about things like the rabbits doing well, their homework was hard. And their mother had been in the hospital, but they had visited her, and she had come home after a few days. Even though their father had been gone only three weeks, the girls had dutifully written him every other day.

  Ilka folded the letters up again. Surely he had written back? Nothing they had written seemed like answers to any questions he might have asked. They were just small, childlike updates. She guessed that some of the drawings had been sent with the letters.

  On the way to her father’s family, she tried not to think too much about meeting them. She tried to convince herself there was no reason to be nervous. And she wasn’t, not really. And yet. Should she have called, given them the chance to prepare for her?

  She still hadn’t heard from them. It struck her that they might be angry about her inheriting the funeral home business. They might feel she had taken something from them. But they could just come right out and say it. They could have it. Right now. Maybe that was why she was a bit nervous: They hadn’t reacted.

  She thought about the wheelchair. Possibly they assumed she would come to them. Maybe they couldn’t understand why she hadn’t already contacted them. But she was the stranger, the guest. She was the one to be welcomed.

  Stop it, she told herself. Though it felt like an eternity, she hadn’t even been in town for a week, and they’d had plenty to do after her father’s death. Of course they had.

  She drove under the viaduct, above which the wide freeway ran north. She thought of something else: Her half sisters must resemble her, surely? Did they share some of the same features? She hoped for their sake they hadn’t inherited her father’s height like she had. It had been hard to see the evening she’d caught a glimpse of Leslie on the porch. From a distance, she’d looked very feminine. Not a skyscraper, like the boys in Ilka’s class at school had called her, when they weren’t asking if her parents had forgotten the B when they named her—Bilka, the name of the Danish hypermarket chain. All through the lower classes at school, she was called Bilka. But that stopped one day when she lost her temper and grabbed a chair and smashed it over Jakob’s head—he had been her worst tormentor. The chair leg broke his nose, but otherwise nothing happened. After that, no one had felt any need to comment on her name. Or her height, for that matter.

  Leslie and Amber were two common names; no one would have teased the two girls. Her father must have turned into a lightweight after coming over here. Or else he hadn’t seen the same strength in them that he’d claimed to have seen in her as a newborn baby. That was his explanation when she asked him about her ridiculous name. “You’re a winner, Ilka, and they’ll find that out sooner or later. A person has the advantage when the odds are against them, when they’re the big surprise. When they’re someone no one had seen coming, when they strike when it’s least expected.”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” Ilka muttered to herself. It annoyed her that her nerves were getting the upper hand. And what the hell for? She didn’t need her father’s new family. “I’ll leave if I don’t like them,” she told her windshield.

  Massive treetops drooped over the street where Ilka turned off a bit later. She was close now. A large American flag hanging from the gable end of a corner house nearly touched the ground, and there was a round plastic swimming pool under a square parasol on the front lawn. Kids’ bikes were parked near the gate, and plastic toys were scattered around, as if some game had suddenly been interrupted. She drove past slowly, her eyes glued to her father’s house. Even at a distance she could see the porch was deserted, but the front door was open, though barely.

  She took a deep breath as she parked at the curb and shut the engine off. She sat and stared at nothing, then grabbed the bundle of drawings and letters. The small clay figure was in her pocket.

  Before she shut the car door, she saw Mary An
n in the doorway, coming through in her wheelchair. Ilka hesitated before walking up the flagstone sidewalk to the house. She smiled as her father’s wife, a frail, light-haired woman, wheeled across the porch to meet her.

  “Hello,” Ilka said when she reached the steps. “I’m Paul’s daughter from Denmark.” She started up the steps.

  “Yes, I figured that, when you drove by the other day,” Mary Ann said. She backed her wheelchair away from the steps so Ilka could pass.

  Ilka shook her hand and smiled, and immediately the two sisters appeared in the doorway behind their mother. “I’m Ilka. Ilka Jensen.”

  She walked over to say hello to the sisters, one of whom had stepped behind the door. There was something familiar about the dark-haired woman. After stepping closer, to Ilka’s surprise she saw it was the woman from the bench by the funeral home parking lot.

  How about that, she thought. Then the blond older sister, the one she’d seen on the porch the other day, asked if she could help her with something.

  For a second, Ilka wasn’t sure why she had come, but then she remembered the things she’d brought along. She smiled when she realized the older sister must not know who she was.

  “I’m your half sister.” She added that she had been looking forward to meeting them, that she hadn’t even known she had sisters. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

  The blond sister—Leslie, according to Sister Eileen—stood behind her mother’s wheelchair, and when no one spoke, the moment became so awkward that Ilka began to regret she’d come.

  “I brought this along,” she said. She showed them the bundle of drawings and letters. “I found them up in our father’s room.”

  The dark-haired sister—Amber, she must be—seemed uncomfortable; obviously, she hadn’t wanted to reveal who she was. Apparently the two other women weren’t supposed to know she and Ilka had met. Leslie reached for the drawings.

  “Thank you very much. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  Ilka gave them to her; then she fished the small clay figure out of her pocket. “And I found this.” She held it so it sat in the palm of her hand. Leslie took it, too.

  “We don’t have any of your things here,” she said. Then she walked back toward the front door.

  Ilka was about to follow her, when Mary Ann quickly stuck out her hand and thanked her for stopping by.

  Ilka stood for a moment and looked the three of them over. Her half sisters didn’t resemble her, apart from being tall, though not as lanky as Ilka. In fact, Amber’s figure had more than average female curves, which made her height less obvious. Ilka took a final glance at the younger sister; she looked a bit like a clumsy ox, she thought, rather ungenerously. Then, taking the hint, she started down the steps, but quickly turned around. “Would you like to get together for a cup of coffee one of these days?”

  “Unfortunately we won’t have time before you go home,” Leslie said. Amber still hadn’t said a word.

  “Thank you for stopping by,” Mary Ann repeated. “It was interesting to meet you.”

  Ilka started for the car again. She felt their eyes on her back, and she turned around again. “You’re very welcome to stop by the funeral home,” she said, staring directly at Amber. “There might be some of your father’s things you’d like to have.”

  None of them reacted to her invitation, and she decided to give up, yet she took a few steps back toward them. “By the way, are there any plans for when my father’s urn is to be interred?” This time she looked at Mary Ann, who simply shook her head and answered, “No.”

  Ilka nodded quickly and walked back to the car. For a moment, she stared out the windshield; then she pulled herself together and started the car.

  Twilight seemed to have fallen during her short visit with her father’s new family. Shadows had lengthened; the evening sunlight hung low over the treetops. Ilka turned on the windshield wipers when it began sprinkling. She drove slowly to the end of the street and was about to turn, when a gray squirrel darted over a low wooden fence. Over by the gate, a woman whacked a doormat against the fence; then she tossed it down by the front door, walked inside, and shut the door. Neighbors, people who had known her father, Ilka thought. It was hard for her to imagine the man she had known and missed all these years, living his life here. In a residential district, so dull that it reminded her of a stage set, and with a family as stiff as starch. So different from her own mother.

  They hadn’t given her one single opening. Not one sign of any interest in getting to know her. Obviously, they wanted nothing to do with her.

  Ilka tried to put herself in their shoes. The sisters had just lost their father, a man who had been with them all their lives, and of course they were mourning him. She could see that. And maybe they hadn’t known about her, either. But their total lack of interest in digging just a bit deeper into his past surprised her. And admittedly she had hoped his new family could help shed some light on what had happened back then. Why he had chosen to settle down in Racine. She had so many questions.

  Ilka made a U-turn, and when she drove by their house again, the porch was empty and the front door shut. Maybe they preferred to look on his life as having begun with them.

  “Have a great life, assholes,” she said. She noticed her hands gripping the wheel, so hard that her knuckles hurt.

  I was the first, she thought. As if that were a victory in and of itself, being the first child he had created. On the other hand, she was the one he had left. And the one he had cut off all contact with.

  Ilka drove blindly now, noticing nothing. The monotone voice of the GPS guided her as she relived the loneliness and abandonment she’d felt for long periods of her childhood after he left.

  She noticed a gas station up ahead, and on impulse she signaled to turn in. A moment later she was facing a freckled guy with wild red hair and a cap with the bill turned backward. Cash or credit card? “Cash,” she said. “And a pack of Marlboro’s.”

  She tossed the sack filled with bottles on the front seat, pulled out her phone, and checked the address.

  25

  Ilka parked her father’s car and walked down to the house. At first, she thought Artie wasn’t home. She walked up the stone sidewalk and called out several times, but no one answered. The lake was over to her right; she could sense it. A pleasing smell of freshwater and earth.

  She laid the sack of beer and root beer down on a table carved out of a tree stump; then she went up and knocked on the front door. After waiting several moments, she knocked again and called out his name. Finally, she walked around to the side of the house facing the lake. It looked a lot nicer than what she had expected, with an outdoor kitchen against the wall, a large stove with a log still glowing. To top it off, he had the largest gas grill Ilka had ever seen. And the wooden sculptures, some abstract, others animals, meticulously carved so even the slightest details were visible. Impressive! She walked over and admired the works.

  “Sorry.” Artie appeared around the corner, out of breath. “Must have left my phone in the car. You been calling a long time?”

  He wore a heavy sweater, and the tails of his Hawaiian shirt hung down in front. Judging from his rubber boots, he’d been down at the lake. He carried a rolled-up fishing net under his arm, with a bag over his shoulder. He threw everything on the ground beside the end of the house.

  “Where are we going?” He walked over and unlocked his door. Then he noticed the beer Ilka had laid on the table. “What’s going on? Are we celebrating something?”

  She shook her head and explained that she’d just visited Mary Ann and her daughters.

  “Say no more!” He lifted his palm up; then he fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket underneath the sweater. “They weren’t all that friendly, am I right?”

  She nodded. That was one way to put it.

  “I guess I’ve already explained they’re not really interested in the business. Truth is, I don’t think I ever saw the girls with their dad at work. Mary Ann wa
s there a few times, but only to pick him up when they were going somewhere. That was before the accident, of course; she doesn’t drive anymore. But the girls. I always got the feeling they were ashamed of what Paul did for a living. It wasn’t dignified enough for them.”

  While he spoke, Ilka walked over to him, put her arms around him, and leaned down to kiss him. Her lips were nearly touching his before he stopped talking. He tasted of lake water and something sweet he’d eaten. Hard candy, she guessed.

  He was startled. “Are you sure about this?” he murmured, but he allowed himself to be backed up and led into the house. With her hand on his chest, she tried to steer him around even though she’d never been inside his house. She backed him through the kitchen with big windows facing the lake, then through the living room. She sensed more than noticed the sofa and dining room table. The small TV on a box in the corner, low priority. Paintings on the wall, antlers. She felt his breath against her neck as her heart hammered away. And she felt the freedom to loosen the knot of anger that had built up since she’d left Mary Ann’s big white house.

  Artie managed to open the door at the end of the living room. “Are we sure this is a good idea?” he said, his words streaming directly into her mouth.

  Ilka kissed him harder and began unbuckling his pants with one hand, her other hand still around his neck. That seemed to wake him up. He ripped his sweater off and helped her loosen his belt.

  She sat down on the bed and pulled him down to her. Then she noticed he was still wearing his rubber boots. Her greedy hands got rid of the Hawaiian shirt in short order, and they both smiled when Artie stood up and took his pants and boots off. The bun of hair on top of his head was coming undone; it looked like something exploding. Ilka didn’t bother taking off the white shirt she’d been wearing since the funeral service. Her father’s shirt. Though that detail was the last thing on her mind at that moment. She stared as Artie pulled his boxers off and fell back onto the bed, muttering, “Jesus Christ!”