My Mom's A Mortician

by Patricia Wiles

  Mrs. Goldwyn looked past me, but she wasn’t focused on anything. I noticed the rims of her eyes were soft pink. “Grandfather lived a good life. He’s not sick anymore—probably feels better than he has in years. It’s actually a relief to know he’s not suffering. And he’s with Gran. She died four years ago, and he’s missed her terribly.”

  Despite the sad conversation, she smiled, and we exchanged good-byes again.

  After the last group of women left, I found Mom pacing up and down the hall, waving her paper and pencil, her tongue clicking like when we packed for the move.

  If she was this whacked out for our first funeral, I wondered, how could she handle several funerals in a week?

  “Kev, here’s a list of things you need to do. We’ve been over these before. Eventually we’ll get a routine going so we won’t need these lists.

  Do these ASAP—I’ve got to get back to the basement.” She stuck the paper in my hand and took off for the stairs, ticking like a time bomb.

  The list was made up of simple things that I didn’t mind doing: put all the flowers in the front of the chapel; prepare the seating; vacuum the front hall. So I pushed the cart with Mrs. Goldwyn’s flowers on it through the double doors and down the center aisle between the pews. I placed the flowers on the stands on the left side of the room. I wiped down the backs and ends of the pews with a lemony-smelling dust cloth. The immediate family would sit in the first few rows, so I draped the red velvet covers with Reserved embroidered in gold over the arms of those pews. I checked to see that the padded folding chairs in the back of the chapel were lined up straight. Then I vacuumed the entrance hall.

  A van from Armadillo Florist and Greenhouse pulled up to the front door. I showed the deliveryman where to put the flowers, and then I went to the guest kitchen for a soda. Mom said I was entitled to free sodas, so I helped myself to a ginger ale. The smell of the food brought in earlier made my stomach growl. I looked at the clock on the wall and discovered it was after six.

  Dad walked in, grabbed a diet soda from the machine, and sat down beside me. “I just ordered some pizza,” he said. He popped the top on his can. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I took a peek in the chapel. It looks good. Have you seen all the flowers in there?”

  “I let the guy in to deliver them, but I didn’t see them. I came in here to get a drink.”

  “They’re gorgeous. McCulley must have had a lot of friends.”

  I thought about what Mrs. Goldwyn had said and decided he probably did.

  “One more thing. If you’ll put McCulley’s name and information on the board out front, you can quit for today. I have to go back downstairs and help your Mom finish him up. Then we’ll take a breather too.”

  We’d been so busy I hadn’t even thought about what Mom and Dad were doing to Cletus McCulley down in the dungeon.

  Suddenly my ginger ale didn’t taste so good, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted pizza for dinner anymore.

  “The family’s coming back at eight to plan the service. The visitation starts tomorrow afternoon at three, so I imagine the funeral will be the day after. When you fix the message board, just put the name and time for the first visitation.”

  Mom beeped, interrupting our break. Dad drank the last of his soda and got up to leave. “Don’t forget the pizza,” he said. He pulled out his wallet, thumbed through what little cash he had, decided which bills he could give up, and tossed them onto the table. Then as an afterthought, he pitched one more on the pile. “Give the driver a tip.”

  Mom beeped again, impatient for Dad to get back to the basement. The pizza guy buzzed in at the front entrance. “Don’t eat all the hot peppers!” I heard Dad yell as he descended the stairs.

  I walked down the hall to the front double doors. I could smell the crust even before I turned the doorknob. “One ‘Feed Four for $14.99 Special’ with extra peppers,” said the pizza guy like he’d been saying it all day. “That’ll be $15.89.”

  I counted out nineteen bucks and handed it over. “That’s stupid to sell pizza for four for $14.99 and then charge $15.89.”

  “Tax,” the pizza boy said, and yawned. “Thanks for the tip.”

  I took the pizza and started up the stairs to my room. The bottom of the box was hot and moist, and I could almost taste the Italian sausage. I wondered why Dad ordered enough pizza for four people when there were only three of us in the house who could eat it.

  Chapter Six

  After supper I got the key from the desk and opened the glass door covering the message board. The board was made of grooved black plastic, and there was a brand-new box of white plastic letters with points on the back that stuck into the grooves. I sorted through them and took out enough letters to spell:

  CLETUS DARNELL MCCULLEY VISITATION WED. 3-8 PM

  By then the sky had turned peachy. I filled a jug with water, grabbed the bucket of wild animal feed, and headed for the back lot. The frogs and crickets muffled the sounds of the few cars that passed on the highway out front. I dumped the old water out of the birdbaths, poured fresh water from the jug, and then started sprinkling feed on the ground.

  A soft voice spoke up behind me. “Look, Kevin!” It was Mrs. Goldwyn. She pointed to the trees.

  A doe stood about twenty feet from us, just beyond the pines at the edge of the woods. I moved forward to get a closer look, but I stepped on a twig, snapping it in two. The noise startled the doe and she leapt away, blending into the foliage.

  “This must be a good spot to see animals,” Mrs. Goldwyn said. “Especially since you offer free food and drinks.”

  “We have lots of squirrels and raccoons. Sometimes a deer or two.” I threw a handful of feed toward the trees. “And there’s always birds. Early morning is the best time to see any of the animals.”

  “There must be armadillos around here.”

  “I’ve only seen dead ones on the side of the road,” I said. “The live ones were coming out at night and digging up Mom’s plants. She had to call the pest control guys ’cause the armadillos were ruining our landscaping.”

  Mrs. Goldwyn reached into my bucket, grabbed a handful of feed, and pitched it underhanded into the air. The seeds scattered and fell a short distance away.

  “We’re making the arrangements for Grandfather’s funeral. My husband is meeting with your parents right now. I saw you out here and thought I’d see what you were doing. It was a good excuse to get some fresh air.” She took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder, as if she suddenly remembered she’d left something inside. The abrupt silence was awkward, so I pretended to pick bad seeds out of the feed bucket.

  I had almost a fistful of seeds by the time she spoke up again. “Your family has made this place look nice. The old owners didn’t care about it like your parents do.”

  I pitched the imperfect seeds toward the woods. “Dad says he likes working with Mom. Says it’s better than his old factory job.”

  “Your mom told me she couldn’t have done any of this without your help.”

  I kicked at a dirt clod with my toe and mumbled a thank-you. I figured she didn’t have to know how I really felt about it.

  “Would you mind coming in with me for a minute? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Mrs. Goldwyn waited for me while I put the jug and the feed away. We walked through Mom’s garden and entered the building through the guest kitchen. Then I followed her down the entrance hall and through the chapel doors.

  The room was thick with flowers. The heat from the bright lights in front of the chapel intensified their colors, and the air was so fragrant that if you closed your eyes you’d think you were outside. Halfway down the aisle, I realized Mrs. Goldwyn and I were the only two living people in the room.

  “It’s OK, Kevin,” she said. “I just want you to meet my grandfather.”

  She was talking about this dead body like it was alive! The chapel doors tugged at me like giant magnets. The urge to back up made my legs quiver.


  “Please, Kevin,” she pleaded. “Please come with me.”

  Then she smiled that smile again, the same one she gave me the first time we talked. Now I felt guilty—and stupid—for wanting to run. So I decided I wouldn’t think about the fact that I was about to see a dead body. I’d pretend it was something else, like a mannequin.

  I let her lead me forward again, but I kept my eyes glued to the large portrait beside the casket. It was of an elderly couple, seated close together. Gold letters at the bottom of the frame spelled out 50th Anniversary. The woman was round and red-cheeked. The man had his arm around her shoulders. He was built like a concrete block, with skin that had spent a lifetime in the sun. His snow-white crew cut fit his head like a cap; his smile was a perfect match to Mrs. Goldwyn’s. And his eyes—

  Inside his ordinary face, the man’s eyes sparkled with the color of a cloudless Easter Sunday when the sun is hot, the air is cool, and the sky opens up into forever. They looked through me and traced up and down the edges of my spine like two pieces of cold, blue steel.

  Cletus McCulley knew me.

  Mrs. Goldwyn gave me a gentle nudge. We’d reached the front of the chapel. She rested

  her hand on the edge of the casket. “Kevin, this is my grandfather.”

  Cletus McCulley was dressed in a white suit, every white hair in his army-regulation crew cut stiffly in place, his arms stretched out at his sides. His eyelids were frozen shut and his lips stretched tight, like he was holding his breath. The lights above the casket gave his skin a slight orange undertone.

  I couldn’t pretend he was a mannequin, because he didn’t look like one. But he didn’t look like a living person. He looked like his picture, except he didn’t look warm. But he wasn’t cold, purple, or decayed, the way corpses looked in movies.

  Mrs. Goldwyn’s voice floated like a milkweed puff. “No one can tell you what death is like, so it’s easy to be afraid of it.”

  I kept waiting for his big, broad chest to expand with breath. It looked as if it would move any second. But it didn’t.

  “See those medals?” She pointed to an oak box on a small stand beside the casket. “Grandfather served in World War II. He rarely talked about the war, but he told me once that one of his buddies died after being hit by sniper fire in a French village, after the Normandy invasion. His friend died in his arms, and Grandfather said that was a sacred moment.”

  Sacred. I thought people only used that word when talking about the Bible. Not that I knew much about the Bible, but somehow, even though I’d never heard anyone use the word sacred when talking about death, it seemed right.

  Mrs. Goldwyn stroked the satin lining of the casket. “When Gran died he held her too, and had those same feelings. I believe when Grandfather’s spirit left his tired, sick body behind, that was his sacred moment.”

  Cletus’s chest still didn’t move, but an easy warmth swelled in mine. I’d always thought if you were dead, you were all dead. Was there something inside people that didn’t die when their bodies did? My eyes went back to the portrait. “Where do you think he is now?”

  “He’ll stay as close to us as he can, in spirit.” A tear slipped from her left eye as she reached into the casket to smooth an imaginary wrinkle on her grandfather’s shirt. “But now he’s back with Gran and the friends who died before him. That’s what Grandfather and Gran taught me, from the time I was a little girl. And I believe it.” Mrs. Goldwyn put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “Today, I believe it more than ever.”

  I looked down at Cletus McCulley’s body again. The fear and disgust I’d expected to feel wasn’t there at all. It was a quiet calm instead, like the time our old orange cat gave birth in the tool shed. It was as if the earth stopped turning for a few minutes, just long enough for someone unseen to open a window as each squirming, wet kitten appeared. I watched the mother as she licked them clean, and wondered how there could be five wiggly fur balls when a few moments earlier there’d been none. They had to come from somewhere. But where, I didn’t know.

  Maybe Cletus, or what was inside his body that made him Cletus—his spirit?—had moved to a place I couldn’t see, a place like where the kittens came from. Maybe he was standing at an open window with his wife right now. Maybe he was listening to our conversation and bragging to his friends about how his granddaughter’s smile was just like his.

  Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you, Kevin, but I had to go. Glenda Sue was getting impatient!

  I shook my head hard and rubbed my hand over my temples. The lights were too hot, and it was getting too late. And who was Glenda Sue?

  That night, the first night we had a dead body downstairs, I dreamed I was inside a white mansion, wandering through white halls filled with flowers and crawling with newly weaned kittens. The kittens were all different colors and mewed to be held, licking at my bare feet and ankles with their small sandpaper tongues.

  Chapter Seven

  The next evening I took my post at the front entrance. Dressed in my new dark blue suit and fish-head tie, my black hair combed straight (except for that annoying cowlick to the left of my forehead), I was ready to open the door for visitors. Mom frowned when she saw the tie, but she didn’t say anything.

  By the time visiting hours started, our parking lot was fuller than Walmart’s on a Saturday night. About every half hour, Mom gave me a short break, so I didn’t get too tired. I didn’t get bored, either; it was interesting to watch people as they came in and out of the home.

  I got to meet Mrs. Goldwyn’s husband. He was at least seven feet tall and an ex-basketball player—for the Razorbacks while in college, then for the Lakers until he got tired of L. A. and traveling so many months out of the year. He said Mrs. Goldwyn’s smile dragged him back home to Arkansas.

  Mrs. Goldwyn also introduced me to the preacher who would conduct the funeral the next day, but instead of calling him Reverend Carter, she called him President Carter. Like Dad, he was almost bald. But President Carter’s remaining hair was carrot-colored, and he stood at least a foot taller. When he shook my hand, his grip was sure and strong.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Kevin. Your parents have told me a lot about you.”

  Great, I thought. I bet they told Cletus McCulley all about me too, while they were embalming him. So I just smiled and said thanks.

  “You may be in some classes with my daughter this year,” he said. He looked around the room. “She’s here somewh—”

  A slender finger tapped his shoulder. “Oh, here she is,” he said, and pulled her around to face me. “Dani, this is Kevin Kirk.”

  Dani blushed. She held out her hand and ducked her head slightly. She eyed me through the rims of her antique-gold eyeglasses. Her bangs brushed across the top of the frames. “Hi, Kevin.”

  “Hi,” I answered. Her hand felt warm and delicate, like I was holding a baby bird. I hoped I didn’t squeeze too hard.

  “You and I may see a lot more of each other, Kevin,” President Carter said. “I visit the funeral home often. Sometimes I conduct services for families who aren’t members of our church.”

  I was still shaking Dani’s hand. I let go.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” President Carter said, “I have to speak to Sister Goldwyn about the music for tomorrow. We’ll talk to you again soon.” Dani held the sleeve of her father’s suit coat as they walked away, but she looked back at me over her shoulder and flashed a shy smile. I saw a glimmer between her lips and realized she wore braces.

  President was a strange title for a preacher. I asked Mom about it, and she said President Carter was a Mormon, and the title meant he was like a preacher who watched over a small congregation called a branch. She said Mormon—or Latter-day Saint—branch presidents aren’t paid so they have regular jobs like most people. I also thought Mormons didn’t drink coffee. I’d seen several people in the guest kitchen helping themselves. Mom said Mrs. Goldwyn had asked her to have coffee on hand because many of her grandfather’s friends weren’
t Mormons.

  It was strange, too, that most everyone at the visitation acted happy. Some looked bluer than others, but no one cried or moaned or wailed. There was lots of hugging and sympathetic cheek-kissing between family, friends, and neighbors. Some people called each other brother and sister.

  As the night wore on, a group of old men gathered in the back of the chapel. At one point there must have been fifteen of them. They were all enthusiastic fishermen, and Cletus had been a part of their group. Someone started in on all the good times he’d had fishing with Cletus, and before long all the old men in the back were howling. That didn’t set well with the somber old women in the front, and a couple of puckery-faced ones turned around to shush them.

  However, the old men were on a roll and weren’t about to let Cletus’s fish tales rest in peace. I was glad, because I was having a good time eavesdropping. One of the men was a really good storyteller, and before I knew it he had me hooked—especially as he told the one about the time Cletus thought he’d caught a water moccasin on his line. It was really just a harmless water snake, but it scared Cletus so bad that he jumped backward and stumbled over his seat. The boat flipped, and Cletus, his tackle box, and brand new Zebco rod fell into the lake. Cletus, thinking the snake was mad and in swift pursuit behind him, swam to shore as fast as a seventy-year-old man with a stomach the size of a watermelon could swim. When he reached the muddy bank, it was so slick he had to crawl on his knees to get out of the lake. Thinking he could frighten the snake away, he hollered, “Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!” and beat his chest with his muddy hands, like some kind of white-haired Ozark gorilla.

  The picture of a fat old man sitting in the mud and beating his chest like a gorilla was just too funny. The storyteller caught my snicker and waved his arm at me. “C’mere, boy,” he said, and motioned me into the chapel. Afraid I was in trouble, I left my post at the door and approached the group, sheepish and redfaced.