The Undertaker's Daughter

by Sara Blaedel

  “But, you’re not…you’re not finished.”

  “No. It seems you weren’t well enough prepared. I suggest you contact another school photographer. I will send out photo orders only to those students we photographed. Have a good day.” She hung up.

  Okay. One less client to hand over to North Sealand Photography. Her mother of course would want to take good pictures of every single child. She should have realized that. She could see it now: her conscientious mother using far too much time in placing the students properly, getting the light just right, adjusting the height of the chair so everything would be perfect.

  She smiled. What a mess.

  29

  “Shall I order the zinc coffin for Ed McKenna, or will you?” Sister Eileen asked. She looked disapprovingly at Ilka, who was sitting in her chair.

  The white band of her wimple sat tight around her forehead, hiding the short dark hair Ilka had noticed the night she roused the nun out of bed to help with Mike. She stood erect, with a closed, dismissive look of professionalism—Get out, it seemed to be saying to Ilka.

  “We also need to make reservations on the plane for the coffin. The dog will need its own zinc coffin. It will be embalmed this morning. I can imagine it would fit in a child’s coffin.”

  Ilka nodded. If this was how it was going to be between the two of them, then okay. She’d given up on trying to follow the shifts between the warmhearted sister who brought tea and cookies and the person in front of her now, the one trying to freeze Ilka out. But if Sister Eileen wasn’t going to cooperate and accept she had a new boss, she’d have to go. Ilka didn’t have the same devotion to nuns as her father.

  “What about putting the dog into the coffin along with him? That way we’d save one coffin.”

  Stone-faced, the sister said, “You’ll have to talk to Artie about that.” She laid a pile of envelopes on the desk. “Bills.”

  Ilka looked them over; she should start handling the mail, if she was ever going to have a clear understanding of their situation.

  Artie stepped into the reception area. “Let Sister Eileen order the zinc coffin so we don’t risk having him stranded here.”

  Ilka had the feeling he’d been standing out in the hall, eavesdropping on them. And that the sister knew he was listening.

  His long hair was now gathered in a bun on his neck, and the gaudy red shirt with the palms and surfers hung outside his pants. He walked over and set his glass of Red Bull and coffee on the desk; suddenly Ilka felt trapped between the two people who knew the daily routines of the funeral home and her own ignorance. Again, she sensed they had a secret agenda, while pretending to be going down with the ship.

  She went into the arrangement room, where her breakfast lay untouched. Her coffee was cold. Artie appeared in the doorway after she sat down.

  “What about the dog?” she asked. Without looking at him, she started in on her egg. “Can’t we put it in his coffin?”

  “Ed McKenna wasn’t very tall; let’s see if there’s room for it at the foot end.” He asked if she’d like fresh coffee, but he’d already picked up her cup and walked out to fill it. When he returned, he set a bag from the bakery in front of her.

  Ilka surrendered and pushed her cold egg aside. She stuck her hand down in the sugary, oily brown paper, brought out a warm glazed doughnut, and laid it on her plate as she told him about the call from the funeral home chain.

  “Damn!” Artie said. “Guess they didn’t get the message. I thought I’d made myself clear yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah, they called me and wanted to set up a meeting. I told them we weren’t interested.”

  “And then they call again after that? Why didn’t you say something? So I could have been ready for them.”

  “I didn’t think they’d be so stubborn. American Funeral Group is always on the lookout for acquisitions. What did you tell them?”

  “They definitely heard about the deal with Golden Slumbers failing, but I told them Jensen Funeral Home wasn’t for sale, so there was no reason for a meeting. I think we three should sit down sometime today so I can tell you about my plans for the funeral home. When is a good time for you?”

  Artie had been leaning up against the doorframe, his coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. Now he laid everything down and fished out a cigarette, which he lit on the way out the back door. “I’m going to start embalming Mike Gilbert now,” he said over his shoulder. “Then I’m driving Mrs. Norton to the crematorium. But I’ll have time when I get back.”

  Clearly he wasn’t happy about it being her plans, not their plans. She walked back into the reception area and asked Sister Eileen if they could all meet that afternoon.

  The sister nodded, friendly now, as if the little episode they’d just gone through had never happened. “I have an errand to do in town around noon. I should be back around two.”

  Ilka thanked her, but before she could leave, the nun added, “Would you please consider how much we can give to the fall church bazaar next month? Your father was known to be very generous with donations.”

  Ilka squelched her anger and studied Sister Eileen for a moment, wondering if she even realized that the business was almost completely underwater, gasping for air, that she should count herself lucky if she ended up keeping her job and room. Then Ilka reminded herself that even factoring in the generous donations, the sister probably was the least drain on the budget, given that she wasn’t paid for her work. And besides, tongues in the community would start wagging if they were less generous to the church. Not a good signal to send if they wanted to give the impression that the business was stable and under control.

  “We’ll give the same as last year,” Ilka decided, even though there wasn’t much left in her private accounts. She asked how the sister wanted the money to be donated.

  “Cash would be best. Two thousand dollars. It will be greatly appreciated. Shall I order the zinc coffin?”

  Ilka was sitting at her father’s desk with the mail when Artie knocked on the doorframe. “You want to come by for a beer tonight?”

  Beer was the last thing he was interested in; she could hear that. She shook her head as she sorted out the advertisements and threw them in the wastebasket. He stared at her for a moment, then nodded and walked out.

  It didn’t take her long to go through the letters. She opened a yellow envelope from the local racetrack and pulled out a bill. It was time to renew her father’s weekly racetrack ticket. Occasionally back home she bought a ticket herself; once she had even had a subscription. She could handle that if she stayed away from the racetrack and the smell of horses, the excitement as they neared the finish line. Ilka was about to wad the renewal up, but instead she stuck it in her pocket. She was almost finished going through the bills when Artie showed up in the doorway again. “You have a visitor,” he said, his voice muffled by his mask. He was wearing his white coat, and he smelled of formaldehyde.

  “If it’s that man who wants to hold the business meeting, tell him no, he’ll just have to leave.”

  “It’s not him. It’s some guy who wants to talk to you. You want me to send him in?”

  She eyed him for a moment, unused to him playing the secretary and unsure who wanted to see her. But she nodded, and a moment later the guy from the bar appeared at the door. She ignored Artie’s look. “Thanks,” she said, and she gestured for him to leave.

  “Hi,” Larry said, a bit hesitantly. He glanced over his shoulder when Artie left. “You have a moment?”

  “Not really,” Ilka said, quickly covering up how flustered she was by his suddenly stopping by. Before she could find a way to get rid of him, he was standing by the desk.

  “I was just thinking that maybe you’d like to go out to eat some evening? Or for a drink?”

  Ilka was standing behind her chair now, as if that would stop Larry from reaching her. The rain had plastered his dark hair to his skull, and his blue Windbreaker clung to his chest, but
there was a sparkle in his eye, something she couldn’t totally resist. She had to stop herself. Immediately. That was the whole idea with casual relationships.

  “I’m sorry.” She started for the door to follow him out. “I’m just way too busy.”

  She could hear how lame that sounded, and she was being mean, too. But damn it, it was a one-night stand, with no obligations, nothing that committed her to having seconds.

  He followed her reluctantly. “Can I call you?”

  She shook her head. Out in the hallway she noticed Artie ducking back into the preparation room. Presumably he had been at the door, listening.

  “How did you find me?” she asked as she opened the door to the parking lot.

  “People are talking about you.” She was relieved he didn’t say anything about her rejection. “There aren’t that many supertall foreign Viking women in town right now. And not so many of them who came to take over a funeral home.”

  She smiled at him. So, people in town knew who she was and what she was doing here.

  The door to the preparation room was closed, and Ilka assumed Artie was at work inside. Out in the foyer, Sister Eileen was stuffing brochures in the holders beside the glass case displaying charms. The brochures contained information about the funeral home’s services and gave the dates for the next senior citizen fair, where Jensen Funeral Home would be explaining about their offers and the advantages of making payments on a preordered funeral. Ilka would have to learn about all this, too, if she was going to try to lure more customers in.

  Though she’d never done anything remotely like selling funeral home services, she already knew she was going to hate it. That and going around holding home parties, like Golden Slumbers did. The question was if she could afford not doing these things; the only way to turn the business around was to increase revenues.

  Her mother and Hanne would be perfect for something like this. They would come off as trustworthy, and they were both good at talking to people. And her mother would throw herself into it body and soul, like when she started her online yarn business and the knitting courses she taught.

  Unsure of what to do now, Ilka felt a bit useless. Artie was working, and the nun was taking care of her duties; she felt she should be the motivating force, the engine in her father’s business, but the others had the fuel to make everything run. They knew the routines; they had the experience—they should be the ones trying to get the business back on track so it could be sold. So Artie could take over the house and start his own business.

  Determined now, she walked over and knocked on the preparation room door. She had to knock again a few times before he unlocked it.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” She walked inside and looked around for a white coat. “It would be good for me to know how this is done, and I promise I won’t get in the way—”

  She looked down at the steel table. The exhaust fan hood loomed over Mike’s body, which was covered by a white sheet from the waist down. It was so very different from seeing the bodies they had picked up. There was something clinically dead about this, yet it seemed almost intimate, vulnerable.

  “Are you okay?” Artie joined her. She stood motionless, her eyes stuck on the exposed upper body like thin skin to a frozen iron pipe.

  She knew bodies were pumped full of formaldehyde during the embalming; Artie had explained that. But she hadn’t imagined a person could seem so lifeless.

  He’d made an incision on each side of the throat. On one side the embalming fluid entered through a tube, while on the other side the body fluids drained out. A pump whirred, and at short intervals it emitted air. It sounded like sighing.

  In her head, she heard Erik’s calm voice, and she tried to imagine him explaining how to photograph the body in bright light: Use a filter and change the aperture. But she was still unable to move. She struggled to find a suitable expression, one that would look professional.

  Artie was back at the table, but occasionally he glanced over his shoulder, as if making sure she was still standing.

  “During the embalming, you remove the eyes,” he explained, after she’d gotten a grip on herself and put on the white coat he’d handed her. She fumbled to put on the mask. “Eyes are too fragile to handle the process.”

  He turned and pointed at some small plastic boxes on the shelf beside the door. “We have fake eyes over there, but I don’t put them in until I’m done. And it’s only for cosmetic effect, the facial expression. The eye cavities have to be filled, because I close the eyes.”

  His deep voice was calm, something like her mother’s in schoolteacher mode when she forgot that Ilka wasn’t one of her students, not to mention an adult.

  She nodded and watched. The skin over Mike’s stomach was bumpy—the fluid had gathered in pockets—and Artie concentrated on smoothing the skin by stroking it carefully with the flat of his hand.

  The odor in the room stung her sinuses when Ilka breathed through her nose. She opened her mouth and sucked in air through the mask, which hopefully filtered the poisonous particles. But the rough paper didn’t stop the sensation of breathing in fumes from a putrefying body. She pressed her tongue up on the roof of her mouth to hold back her nausea.

  Though slightly dizzy, Ilka stood beside Artie while he finished up. She was determined to file away every single detail of his work so she would understand the process.

  He turned off the pump and pulled out the thin tube. “You thinking about coming along to the crematorium to watch Mrs. Norton burn up?” He took the tube over to the sink, but he didn’t shut off the exhaust fan. “Everything has to be rinsed and washed; otherwise, it’s too dangerous to be in here.”

  “I’d like to go along to the crematorium, yes.” He mumbled something behind his mask. “If you don’t mind?”

  She had the feeling her presence made him uncomfortable, prevented him from getting into his work as he normally did. He nodded and said she was welcome to come along; they could leave as soon as Mike had been laid in the coffin and wheeled into the cold room.

  “It’s too hot in here for him; he needs to be cool. I got a coffin ready out in the garage. You want to give me a hand with it?”

  Ilka nodded and asked if she should keep the white coat and mask on.

  “The mask doesn’t matter; it’s only for not breathing in too much poison. But keep the white coat on so you don’t get your clothes dirty.”

  He went outside and opened the garage door. He’d already covered the bottom of the coffin with a white sheet. There was no embroidery or decoration, just a common white sheet and a small flat pillow up at the head. He tossed her a thin blanket in a plastic sack and asked her to unwrap it. Then he rolled the casket carriage over to the door. “You want to help me with the step here?”

  She leaned over and grabbed a small handle on the front of the carriage. The coffin looked like the coffins common in Denmark, not like the ones she had seen since she’d arrived. Apparently, this was the discount model.

  He parked the coffin in the hallway. “Normally I’d wheel the body out and lift it over, but since there’s two of us, we can carry him out.”

  She nodded and tried to conceal her discomfort. Though it wasn’t the first time she’d lifted a corpse, she wasn’t really used to it. Though Mike Gilbert now looked more like a wax dummy than a real person. But she followed him, and when Artie told her to grab under his knees and lift while he lifted his upper body, she did so without batting an eye. A moment later the body was in the coffin, and she covered it with the blanket and swept the wrinkles out until it looked as smooth as a tablecloth.

  “Do they want anything in the coffin with him?” Artie asked.

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of, but maybe they’ll bring something along at the viewing.”

  “When are they coming, do you know?”

  “Five o’clock. His father is coming too; he’s driving up here, so they couldn’t make it earlier.”

  Artie nodded. “Do they n
eed anything for the funeral service, or maybe that’s been arranged already with the sister?”

  “There won’t be a service. They just want to sit with him and say good-bye.”

  “Okay. Make sure the stereo system is ready so there’s music in the background. Otherwise it can be really hard for the relatives to take the silence.”

  Ilka nodded.

  They rolled Mike’s coffin in and parked him beside McKenna and his dog, who were to be flown out Wednesday or Thursday; the details weren’t taken care of yet—they were waiting on the final papers.

  “Ready?” Artie grabbed the casket carriage with Mrs. Norton’s coffin. “I’ll clean up when we get back.”

  Ilka wanted to take a quick shower, but Artie was already on his way to the hearse. He asked her to find Mrs. Norton’s death certificate in the office while he loaded the coffin.

  “And bring the urn with you,” he said.

  “Is there a specific urn, or should I just pick one out?”

  Artie let go of the carriage, obviously annoyed. No, she couldn’t just pick one out. “Which urn did they pay for? It’s on the order sheet. That’s not ready?”

  She looked at him in confusion and asked if this was something she should have taken care of.

  “It’s something Paul always did, anyway.”

  Ilka was about to defend herself, but instead she straightened up. “Starting today, that will change. From now on, the person driving the body to the crematorium will also take care of the urn.” She stared at him until he gave her a nod.