by M. E. Kerr
“It’s a little dead around here, too,” I said.
“There’s a party tonight. Would you like to go?”
“You and Harriet and Charlie and me?”
“You and me,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“You have to start somewhere. Remember?”
“What’ll I wear?” I said.
“Jeans,” he said. “Eight o’clock.”
“Is it for dinner?”
“At eight o’clock?” he said.
After I hung up, Mama said, “Is Wally coming by?”
“We’re going to a party,” I said. “Tonight.”
“He told his father he isn’t going to be an undertaker,” Charlie said. “I hear his father’s barely speaking to him.”
“Is that okay with you, Mama?” I said.
“Is what okay with me, that Wally’s father doesn’t speak to him?”
“Is it okay with you for me to go out with him tonight?” I said.
“Honey, you’re a big girl now,” Mama said. Then she said to Charlie, “Watch my feet carefully.”
I looked at my watch again. It was four forty-five. For the first time in my memory, Hometown was on, I was in it, and we weren’t watching.
“Daddle daddle deedle dee,” Mama started up again.
“Deedle deedle daddle da—” said Charlie.
I thought of a line one of the sorority girls in Clear City said about being asked for her first date: “I felt as though finally I was beginning, after so long of wondering if there was a real me somewhere.”
That was the way I’d felt when I went for my first audition. I thought about that and ate the rest of the Mallomars.
15. Wallace Witherspoon, Jr.
At the cemetery, while the mourners gathered around Legs’ open grave, I sat in the hearse trying to answer Harriet’s latest communication. Hector Hren had hand-delivered it to our house that morning. It was in response to a telephone conversation I’d had the night before with Harriet.
There were the usual black smudges on the paper. Harriet always made carbon copies. Even when she scribbled a quick note in class telling me she’d expect me at eight o’clock that night, she slipped carbon under it to preserve a duplicate. All of them were filed under Witherspoon with my answers, numbered and dated. Harriet said her mother had done the same thing when Harriet’s father was courting her. For their first wedding anniversary, Mrs. Hren had organized them all into a leather-bound scrapbook; on the front in gold were the words Remember, Remember!
While Reverend Monroe began the prayers, I reread what Harriet had written:
Dear Wally,
We could have made a real go of the Witherspoon Funeral Home, but that’s beside the point. (I even thought of naming the Slumber Rooms. It seems so impersonal to have them I, II and III. I thought of The Adieu Room, The Au Revoir and The Arrivederci.) I think you are letting a good thing slip through your fingers because your head is turned by a certain Prize Narcissus and I don’t mean the flower.
I am not going to wait while you go to college and figure out what you do want to be. I would be Tuenty-two. My mother was married when she was nineteen, and had the ring already for a year.
Hector is right, you will never find someone like me again who is interested in helping the man she marries, as my mother helps my father. (I would have liked to create a special room for guests under eighteen. Death among the young is becoming even more common, particularly suicide: Statistics will bear me out on this.)
Wally, in a rash moment (I hope) you have smashed a family tradition and broken your father’s heart. Who is he to turn to now to entrust with his family’s future security?
If you could do something like this to him, what could you do. to the one you asked to be your bride?
Okay, maybe you will change your mind, and then (if it is not too late) I will consider taking up where we left off, but for now I must say we can’t see each other anymore, and the engagement is off.
Here is something my father likes to quote from the famous George Bernard Shaw, since you are so fascinated by words and sayings: “When a prisoner (which you claim you’ve been, Wally) sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.” Think about it!
So Wally, good luck if you really mean what you said, but count me out. (I would, however, be interested in knowing if this is a definite decision.)
Sincerely (I mean that!),
Harriet
P.S. Any ideas included herewith for the Witherspoon Funeral Home may be used if so desired. (I had a lot more, too!) HH.
My letter back to Harriet reminded me of the one Lauralei Rabinowitz had written me after she began wearing Maury Posner’s bar mitzvah ring around her neck and wanted me to stop calling ten times a night to hear her voice and hanging up. You know the kind of letter I mean, all about how you still respect the person and would really like to remain friends, blah blah blah blah, but while you felt love you weren’t in love, blah blah, and although you wouldn’t trade the memories of the two of you together for anything in the world (except Maury Posner, I told myself bitterly when I read Lauralei’s little masterpiece), this was the end. “The definite end,” I wrote, “to us and to my ever considering being an undertaker again. (I’ll find someplace to get my dinner outside, don’t worry.)
And so, Harriet, adieu, au revoir, and arrivederci! WW.”
I’d no sooner finished than someone from the Seaville American Legion stepped up to Legs’ grave with a trumpet and played taps. The woman Legs had been playing around with (her husband was being held without bail) dropped a bouquet of white roses from Slade Florist into the open grave, and Legs’ mother lifted the veil from her own face and spat at her. My father moved up behind Mrs. Youngerhouse with his hands fidgeting nervously, while Reverend Monroe called for another prayer. There was no further incident.
On the way back from the graveyard, my father rode with Mr. Trumble, who was diminished and feeble looking behind the wheel of the flower car. I parked the hearse in front of the Hrens’ with the motor running, and left the letter for Harriet with little Hedy Hren. Then I stopped off at Current Events to print up a shirt for Sabra saying “Grab the Reins!”
I expected Monty to make some crack about the fact I’d parked the hearse outside his store. Monty was putting in September issues of magazines and pulling out Augusts that hadn’t sold. Martha and Lunch were nowhere in sight.
I said, “Don’t tell me you’re minding the store for a change?” I grabbed a black, small T-shirt, and picked out silver letters to steam onto it.
“Hello, Wally,” said Monty (I think it was the first time he’d ever just called me by name, without interjecting some insult, which gave you an idea of his bad mood). “How goes it?”
“Okay,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Am I all right?”
“Yes.”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” Monty said. He didn’t wait for an answer. He slammed some old August Town & Countrys on the floor and said, “You can’t tell her to stop ordering ten of these things a month. I’ve been telling her that for six years and she goes right on ordering ten of these things a month!”
I positioned the letters and plugged in the steam press.
“Let him learn for himself,” Monty was muttering.
“Are you talking about me?”
“I’m talking about him. Have you seen him?”
“Who?”
“Some jackass lathe operator,” Monty said. “She’s having coffee with some moronic lathe operator who totes lending-library books around in his spare time.”
I held the press down and watched the minute timer. “I haven’t seen him lately,” I said.
“He must have a lot of brains if he’s falling for Martha,” Monty said.
I didn’t hang around to hear more. All my mother needed to hear was that our hearse was parked on Main Street while I fooled around in Curr
ent Events. Things were bad enough around our house without that.
The night before at dinner I felt as though I was eating at Monty and Martha’s. My father kept saying to my mother or A.E., “Ask him to pass the salt,” or “Tell him I’d like the butter.” He refused to say my name or direct any conversation to me. To make matters worse, he’d received a postcard from Uncle Albert that day, which he read aloud at the table.
No longer entertaining at Hiz ’N Herz. (You can’t win them all.) Moving along to Florida for the winter, where I’ll be holed up at The Sunny Haven Motel. Could use about ten sawbucks until I accept another position, whereupon I’ll scoot them right back to you. Well, how’s everything with you and the folks? No regrets, Albert.
“You can’t win them all,” my father said. “How many times has Albert written to say you can’t win them all!”
“Ten sawbucks, my eye!” said my mother.
“What’s a sawbuck?” A.E. asked.
“A sawbuck is a ten-dollar bill,” said my father. “Asking for money embarrasses Albert, as it should, so he resorts to slang.”
“All he’s ever done with his life is resort to,” said my mother.
“That’s right,” said my father enthusiastically. “He resorts to this job, he resorts to that place to live. A rolling stone gathers no moss and no roots. Of course certain people at this table aren’t particularly interested in roots, anyway.”
“I’m interested in roots,” I said, “but I’d like to be able to put them down myself.”
“Certain people,” said my father, “believe that old, established professions are to be scoffed at.”
“Linguistics is an old, established profession,” I said. “So is semantics. So is plain old journalism. I’m not scoffing at them.”
“Are you going to send Uncle Albert the ten sawbucks?” A.E. asked.
“Certainly not,” said my father, who would; we all knew it.
That night my father didn’t even come to the table. He had pains, my mother said. He was resting in his room. “Another thing,” said my mother. “Adelade Hren called me a while ago to say that Harriet is a complete wreck because of some letter you wrote her. Adelade wanted to know if I knew what was in that letter, and I told her I had no idea you’d even written Harriet a letter.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Mrs. Hren and you,” I said.
“I just hope it wasn’t a Dear John,” said my mother. “I wrote a Dear John to someone during the war and to this day I think about it at night when I can’t sleep. It’s something I’ll always regret doing.” In our house there was only one war, which was World War II.
A.E. said, “Is a Dear John a letter saying you don’t love someone anymore?”
“I never really loved this particular person,” said my mother.
“Then why did you write him a Dear John?” A.E. said.
“Because, Ann Elizabeth, I imagined that I loved him,” said my mother.
A.E. said, “ ‘After all, my erstwhile dear,/My no longer cherished,/Need we say it was not love,/Just because it perished?’ Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
“A.E.,” I said, “stop quoting yourself and saying it’s Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
“That really was her,” A.E. said. “If I could write like that, would I be sitting around this dinner table wasting my time worrying over what’s going on in your dull life?”
“Your brother’s life isn’t dull, A.E.,” said my mother. “Uncle Albert’s is a lot duller.”
“What does his life have to do with mine?” I asked.
“You’re thinking of imitating him, aren’t you?” my mother said.
“I’m not thinking of teaching canoe at a boy’s camp, or teaching dancing at Arthur Murray, or exterminating rats, or playing piano in a roadhouse. I’m thinking of going to college and doing something with words.”
“Well you’ve just done something with words,” said my mother. “You’ve dashed your father’s fondest hopes with words, and apparently you’ve done something with words to poor Harriet Hren.”
“You’re off to a brilliant start,” said A.E.
Since we had no guests in the house, my mother had made pork chops and home fries with extra onions. I could still taste the onions after I’d showered and brushed my teeth and dressed, so I went back down the hall to the bathroom to try mouthwash.
My father was sitting in his room with the shades pulled down, no light but the one from the television. He was watching a ball game, his leather recliner in the third position, a glass of skimmed milk on the table next to him. My father usually shut the door when he watched television upstairs, but the door was open that night to make a point, to tell me I was responsible for the shape he was in.
He finally called out to me, “Wallace?”
I went to the door and looked in at him. He was still wearing the trousers he’d worn to the funeral, a white shirt and dark tie, but his shoelaces were untied. He began cleaning his glasses with the edge of his fresh white handkerchief; it was easier for him to talk with me when he didn’t see my face clearly.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Tell your mother to put on the Ansafone. I don’t feel up to taking calls directly right this moment.”
“All right,” I said. I lingered a moment to see if he’d say anything else.
He finally said, “Is it the girl, Wallace?”
I stepped inside the room a little more. He kept cleaning his glasses, not looking up at me. “It isn’t the girl,” I said. “Her name is Sabra, by the way.”
“Your mother and I are well aware of her name.” He sighed.
Then he shook his head. “She’s just passing time at the end of the summer, Wallace.” He blew on his glasses. “She’s turning your life around, and all she’s doing is passing time at the end of a summer.”
“It isn’t Sabra,” I said.
“I’ll be lucky if Mr. Trumble lasts through fall.” He didn’t put his glasses back on after he finished cleaning them. He held them by one of the arms and swung them slightly. “It seems to me you’re burning all your bridges behind you, Wally.”
“Maybe that’s what you have to do if you don’t want to go back over old ground again,” I said.
“The Hren girl was one in a million,” said my father.
“Well she still is, for someone else.”
My father put his glasses down beside his milk and put his hand up near his heart.
“Are you all right, Dad?”
“Oh I’ll be all right.”
“I can help out around here,” I said. “I still have another year of high school.”
“If you even finish,” he said. He shut his eyes.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“What do you mean if I finish? I have to finish.”
“I’m beginning to realize you don’t believe you have to do anything.”
“I have to finish high school to go on to college.”
“I have to find a way to afford it, I suppose,” said my father. “If anything happens to Mr. Trumble, I’ll have to sell out, Wally, or let someone buy in.”
“I’ll look into scholarships,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said. “A girl comes along and pffft, you don’t listen to reason. I knew you took them in the hearses but I never said anything.”
“Dad, it isn’t the girl. I just don’t want to be in this business.”
“So you said,” my father answered, “so you said. Now shut the door and go.”
My mother was on the phone with Mrs. Trumble when I was ready to leave for Sabra’s. I asked A.E. to tell me if there were onions on my breath. A.E. pretended to keel over from the stink. She was stretched out in the hall her usual way, with her eyes open and staring, her tongue hanging out, legs and arms apart and stiff.
“Ann Elizabeth!” my mother interrupted her telephone conversation long enough to call in. “
I told you that you were never to do that again!”
A.E. got up and told me, “You’ll be fine, really, if you just don’t sit next to her, dance with her or talk to her.”
“I want you to go right to your room, Ann Elizabeth,” said my mother, “and stay there!”
“See how you’ve got everyone in a panic around here?” A.E. said. “Why can’t you just accept the idea that the dead are no different from you or me, they’re just in another stage of development.” Then she moved stiffly down the hall, lumbering like Frankenstein’s monster, her hands outstretched, face frozen in position, deep moans escaping from an exaggerated O-shaped mouth.
I bent over and kissed my mother’s forehead while she was still on the phone.
“Try to keep him in bed, Mrs. Trumble,” my mother was saying. “He should always rest between guests.”
16. Sabra St. Amour
Mama said she had this colossal idea: She’d go out and buy all the makings for paella if Charlie would like to have dinner with her. Charlie said he didn’t even know what paella was but he’d like to have dinner with her anyway. Mama said tonight’s the night you learn all about Spanish food. She said they’d start with gazpacho, paella would be the main course, they’d end with flan, and wash it all down with sangria.
“And what’ll I eat?” I said.
“You’ll eat some roast chicken which I’ll pick up for you,” said Mama. “You’ll have to eat earlier than us because of your party. We will dine at the fashionable Spanish dinner hour of around ten o’clock.” Mama did a few fast flamenco steps, and pretended to click castanets in her hand. “How does that sound to you, Señor?”
“Olé,” Charlie said.
Mama went charging off in the Mercedes to shop, and Charlie and I sat out on the deck playing backgammon.
“I hope you don’t feel like you’re stuck with Mama for the night,” I said.
“I hope she doesn’t feel like she’s stuck with me,” he said. “I really like your mother.”
“That makes two of us,” I said. “After you move to New York, you’ll see a lot of us.”
“If I move to New York,” Charlie said.