Going to the Chapel

by Janet Tronstad

  Jerry and Cassie both look as grim as I feel. Even the sort of happy feeling of knowing my mother is coming is tempered with the knowledge that, when everyone finds out that my fancy wedding chapel is a mortuary, it could be enough of a problem to stop everyone in the family from talking to me

  “I don’t know why Elaine can’t elope,” I say.

  No one even bothers to answer that one. We all know there is no two-hundred-person audience in an elopement. There are not that many presents, either.

  But then, maybe I am selling Elaine short. With all of her tearfulness about not having her parents on the cruise with her, I would say she understands one thing. If Aunt Ruth isn’t at Elaine’s wedding, no one will ever hear the end of it. That, more than the presents, may be why she doesn’t want a wedding that has no guests.

  Jerry decides to drive Cassie to her floral shop and then stop at a store near there and ask about video camera rentals. I get on the bus to go to the Big M.

  When I get to the Big M, I walk over to Miss Billings’s desk. She isn’t there, however, and I notice her coming out of one of the viewing rooms. She’s dabbing a handkerchief at her eyes.

  “Is something wrong?” I say as I take a step forward.

  “I went to pay my respects,” Miss Billings says with a nod at the viewing room that she had just left.

  At the Big M, we become so accustomed to funerals that we tend to forget that others on the staff might actually be here sometimes as a mourner as well as a worker. As I’ve said before, all kinds of people die.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Did you know the person well?”

  Miss Billings shook her head. “I didn’t know him at all, but no one else was coming to the viewing and he went to all the trouble when he made his arrangements to have the most beautiful guest book for people to sign and all those flowers. I thought—well, it’s a shame to have no one there to even sign the book, so I went in to be with him for a while and signed my name. I was the only one so far.”

  “Have all his family died already?” I say. “And no friends?”

  We often have small mourning parties, but usually everyone has at least one or two people who want to come and say goodbye. Miss Billings is the one who people call to arrange the final viewings so she usually knows most of the people who are coming to the small viewings. If she says no one is planning to come, then she knows.

  “His family is in town for the reading of the will and they sent a big plant, but they’re not coming over here,” Miss Billings says.

  “That’s not nice,” I say.

  Miss Billings shrugs. “Mr. Longe wasn’t a nice man. Made a lot of money in the housing market, but didn’t bother to make any friends along the way. I expect if enemies were invited, we’d have a few come just to be sure he’s dead. I think he foreclosed on a lot of people.”

  “Well, then he doesn’t deserve to have anyone come to his funeral,” I say.

  Miss Billings nods. “You’re probably right. Still, it’s sad.”

  The day outside is gray and that makes the lobby of the Big M look more subdued than usual. Miss Billings is wearing her black suit just as I am and, for the first time, I find the suits to be a little depressing. Mr. Z should lighten up on the gray days and have a navy suit made or something. Maybe I should get a few scarves, the kind my grandmother used to wear, and add a little flair to my black suit on days like this.

  I walk into the chapel every chance I get, hoping for new ideas on how to make it the chapel of Elaine’s dreams. I know it’s odd for me to start wanting her wedding to go well, but I do. Maybe seeing how upset she’s been has given me a little compassion for her.

  Jerry calls me on my cell phone just before lunch and I meet him in front of the Big M. I want him to get the full picture of the Big M so I tell him to park in front of the building.

  “It’s impressive,” he says as he steps out of his pickup and looks over at the chapel. He sounds a little surprised.

  There is a nice green lawn in front of the building and a walkway right up to the chapel. From the front of the building, you don’t see the new addition that Mr. Z added when he made the place a mortuary. There are a few tall trees on each side of the walkway and some dark green shrubs that line the base of the chapel.

  I nod. “I think it looks like one of those European cathedrals. You know the old, old ones.”

  “I hope it doesn’t have paved stones inside for floor. Those would make measuring difficult,” Jerry says as he shuts the door on his pickup.

  “No, it’s wood floor with a carpet runner between the aisles.”

  We start up the walk to the front door of the chapel.

  “I found a place to rent a video camera,” Jerry says.

  “Good.”

  The first thing I do is take Jerry to Miss Billing’s desk to meet her. She’s pleased to meet him, she says, and just the thought of an upcoming wedding in the Big M brightens up her eyes.

  “I always love a bride,” Miss Billings says. “Is the bride coming over to see the chapel?”

  Jerry looks at me.

  “Not yet,” I say as I lead him away from Miss Billing’s desk before he can tell her all of the troubles we’re having. Not that our troubles are a secret, I just want her to be able to keep her fantasies.

  I think I’ll remember for a long time the expression on Jerry’s face when he steps past the chapel doors for the first time. He is amazed at the inside of the chapel.

  “I don’t see how Elaine could find any fault with this,” Jerry says as he looks around.

  I don’t remind him that Elaine has a lot of experience finding fault with everything. I should know. Hopefully, though, on her big day, she will ease up and just enjoy the time. It seems to me that everyone is worrying so much about the wedding that no one seems to be asking what kind of a marriage Elaine is getting into. Her fiancé seems completely uninvolved in the wedding preparations. Even Jerry is here measuring things. And the fact that Elaine hasn’t told her fiancé that she is having problems with his mother makes me worry.

  I know Elaine and I have had our differences, but lately I have come to care more about her and I don’t want her to jump into a bad marriage just because so many other problems are going on that she doesn’t have time to focus on the questions she should be asking herself.

  Ah, who knows. I’m not Dear Abby. Maybe Elaine knows her Gary very well and maybe they sit and talk on the phone for hours. Or, maybe there’s some good reason that they aren’t seeing much of each other lately. Maybe Gary really is just hitting the books really hard so he’ll be able to totally focus on his wedding when it happens.

  Chapter Eleven

  We have two final viewings and a funeral service this afternoon so I am busy directing people. Jerry has ducked in and out of the chapel several times and I’ve seen him conferring with Miss Billings. He has a talent for measuring. He’s been using some graph paper. I think it’s from his Greatest Detectives kit, but I haven’t said anything to him about it since I kind of like the truce we have going.

  Finally, I have a free minute and go into the chapel to see how he’s coming along. He’s making a draftsman’s drawing of the entire chapel, including where the sound system is and how long the area is in front beneath the stained glass window.

  “We could put some candle stands there.” Jerry nods to me and then points to a place beside the pulpit. “I did manage to get some white taper candles and, if the wedding is at night, we can use candles and not worry about flowers. If we get enough of those candles going, it’ll look like we’ve got a blowtorch in here.”

  Just what every wedding needs—a blowtorch, I say to myself. But I say to Jerry, “Sounds good.”

  Jerry has a pencil behind his ear and a satisfied look on his face. “I checked out the hearse for Mr. Z, too, since it was idling funny. I put in some new spark plugs. Wouldn’t want it to stall on the way to the cemetery. Not that it would. That thing’s built like a tank. It’ll get you there.�
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  Mr. Z bought that hearse when he started the Big M back in 1980. Since he only drives it to the Hollywood Cemetery and back a few times a week, it doesn’t have all that many miles on it. He keeps it parked under a canopy close to the back door of the main viewing room. The staff takes turns washing it, but, so far, it hasn’t been my turn.

  “Mr. Z said we could use the hearse for the wedding,” Jerry says looking proud of himself. “They don’t make them like that anymore. It’s a classic.”

  “A classic hearse. Don’t you think it looks too much like what it is to use it in the wedding?”

  “Yeah,” Jerry says with a grin. “But it would be great for a little after-the-ceremony humor. You know to loosen people up after they’ve been sitting in the chapel. We could use some of that soap to paint Just Married on the back window and drive the bridal couple around. I bet we’d get some attention even in Hollywood.” Jerry looks at me and shakes his head. “I guess you need to be a guy to appreciate the humor of it. You know, now that they’re married, they’re dead.”

  “I get the point,” I say. I try to keep my face straight, but I must admit I give Jerry a grin at the end. “Elaine would never agree.”

  “Gary might, though.”

  “So do you know this Gary?” I ask now that we’re on the subject.

  “Not really,” Jerry says. “But I figure once he’s married to Elaine we’ll get to know him better.”

  “You don’t think he’s a little odd?” I say after a moment’s hesitation. I don’t want to gossip about a guy who is almost family, but I’m worried. “It doesn’t sound like Elaine has seen him for weeks.”

  Jerry shrugs. “When Elaine’s the way she is with this wedding, the guy probably knows what he’s doing by staying away.”

  “I suppose.” Not that that thought makes me happy. But maybe he and Elaine have their own weird agreement and it works for them. Sort of a love from a distance in the bad times and love closer up in the good times. I mean, people marry and still live in separate houses or even separate cities. Who am I to say what works? I’m not even married.

  I leave Jerry to his tape measures and go back to the other part of the Big M. I have some filing that I need to do. Working with the files usually calms me down. There is just something so steadying about making order out of all of those forms. The As go at the beginning. The Zs go at the end. Everything has its place and is easy to find. Today, though, the calming thing isn’t happening.

  I figure I’m on edge about Elaine and maybe it’s because I’m avoiding my own stuff. I’ll admit that’s a bad habit I got into somewhere in my life. It’s just that it’s easier to see problems coming at another person than to see them coming at yourself. I don’t think I am unique in that. Maybe we just watch other people more closely than we do ourselves.

  For a while this morning, Elaine almost looked like the toppler and I was the one who was the poised ice princess. Which makes me wonder if all of that toppling stuff that used to happen to me was nothing but a cry for more attention. I still feel that way sometimes. As if there’s not enough love in the whole world to make up for the love I didn’t get from my mother. Seeing that from where I am now, though, I wonder if I was like Elaine—always so focused on what I didn’t have that I couldn’t see what was being offered to me.

  While I was growing up, I spent so much time lamenting the lack of my mother’s love, I’m not sure I properly appreciated the love Aunt Inga gave to me. Oh, I relied on Aunt Inga; it’s just that I yearned for my mother. I thought my mother was the ultimate prize, but Aunt Inga was always the one there for me when I scraped my knee. It’s kind of like Elaine who is so focused on having this elegant to-die-for wedding that she can’t see we’re trying to give her a wedding that could be just as nice and is offered with what is, if not full-blown affection, at least increasingly good wishes.

  Toward the end of the day, Miss Billings needs my help to sit with the elderly father of a man whose wife has died. I do it willingly and not just because it is my job. I’ve come to see that simply sitting with people is sometimes the best service we offer at the Big M. Oh, I know, the caskets are impressive and what Miss Billings creates for the final viewing is amazing, but, in the end, the only thing to do with death is to sit with the people who are grieving.

  “I don’t know what my son will do without his Patricia,” the old man, Mr. Frankel, says to me. We are sitting on a sofa in a corner of the lounge. “They’ve been married since they graduated from high school forty years ago. They’ve never spent a day apart.”

  “He’s lucky he has you to live with him still,” I say. “He won’t be so alone.”

  Mr. Frankel shakes his head. “I’m to go into a home. We’ve decided. It’s too much for him to care for me and work all the time like he does.”

  “Maybe he could get help from a neighbor, or—”

  Mr. Frankel shakes his head again, this time slower. “No, it’s time for me to go. I’m ready to leave.”

  I reach over and take the old man’s hand and pat it. I know he’s not just talking about leaving his son’s house. We sit together and wait for his son to finish making the funeral arrangements.

  “I thought I’d die before either of them,” the old man says with a sigh and then looks at me. “Why do you suppose that didn’t happen? It should have been me to die, not Patricia.”

  “I don’t know why,” I say and pat his hand some more. I wish there was more I could do. “I just don’t know.”

  There was a time, not so long ago, when I hated to admit that I didn’t know why something happened or didn’t happen. Especially when it concerned God. I thought I had God pretty well figured out. I’d decided He liked some people and didn’t like others and all of His decisions were based on that liking or not liking thing. The fact that He didn’t answer the prayer I prayed over and over again about living with my mother pretty much confirmed what I had suspected. I wasn’t one of the ones He liked. I knew He liked Aunt Inga and I suspected He must like Elaine. He probably even liked Aunt Ruth. But me? No. He had no time for me.

  Now, since working at the Big M, I sometimes think there are more things I don’t know than things that I do when it comes to God. I certainly don’t know why God decides who is to die and who is to live. I don’t even know if He does decide. Maybe there’s just a random wheel of chance somewhere that sometimes spins to a slot named Live and sometimes spins to a slot named Die.

  I think of Elaine. I don’t even know why God decides who is to marry and who isn’t. And when I think of Doug, I have no idea why God lets some people walk down an aisle at a rally and make a crazy commitment that could change their lives while He lets others back away.

  I wonder if Mr. Frankel’s son will miss his father when he’s gone. When Mr. Frankel’s son comes back to pick him up, I give the old man a hug and a smile as I say goodbye. After I watch the two men walk out of the Big M I tell Miss Billings I’m going to take a quick break and I go into an empty viewing room so I can call Aunt Inga on my cell phone.

  “Aunt Inga?”

  “Is that you, Julie?”

  I smile. “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I just wanted you to know I love you.”

  “Oh,” Aunt Inga says and I can hear the warm pleasure in her voice. “And I love you, too, dear.”

  I feel better after I talk to Aunt Inga. She’s still crocheting those orange rose petals for Elaine’s wedding. I tell her she’s probably got enough, but she says she keeps making them because she needs to have something to do with her hands so she doesn’t, and these are her words, get ahead of God’s planning.

  I hadn’t thought until then that God might have a plan for Elaine’s wedding. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I mean, if He had a plan, shouldn’t He be doing something about these details that are laid square on the shoulders of the rest of us. Even if He’d just handle Aunt Ruth, that would be a big help.

  Aunt
Inga says she hasn’t convinced Aunt Ruth that Elaine’s wedding will be okay in my chapel. But then she hasn’t convinced her that my mother is going to be a help instead of a hindrance when it comes to decorating the chapel, either.

  Before long, Miss Billings is coming into the break room to sign out for the day and to say good-night.

  “Be sure and lock everything up when you and Jerry leave,” Miss Billings says. “And thanks for inviting me to stay and eat with you. I’m sorry I can’t.”

  Jerry has gotten permission to use the courtyard at the Big M for a candlelight dinner. Well, it’s not going to be much of a dinner. Doug is stopping off someplace and getting us all sandwiches. It’s really a working dinner. Jerry wants to see how the lighting will work for an evening reception in the courtyard.

  Jerry comes out of the chapel with his duffel bag in one hand and a fistful of drawings in the other. He’s also got a look of satisfaction on his face that I haven’t seen for a long time. I have to admit that he has gone to a lot of work and I want him to know I appreciate it.

  “You’re doing good,” I say.

  “Do you think Cassie has noticed?” he asks in a shy voice.

  Well, at least that explains his sudden desire to be the hero. I nod. “How could she not notice?”

  “Good,” he says as he walks over to one of the lounge chairs and sets the duffel bag down.

  “Cassie always did like a good wedding,” I say just to see if Jerry will flinch.

  He looks up from his duffel bag and grins. “I remember. You and her walking down the aisle. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that the groom was supposed to be a boy?”

  “I was symbolic,” I say. “I wore jeans when I was the groom.”

  “You always wore jeans, even when you were the bride.”

  That’s true. I remember that summer before I started school when Cassie and I played wedding every day. I had two pair of ratty jeans and I lived in them. That was the last time for years that I had my own clothes, ones that weren’t Elaine’s hand-me-downs. It was such a long time ago.