In one swift motion, Jason grabbed Sirus's hands, pulled him up out of his chair, and folded his arms around him. Without even knowing that he did, he rocked his friend in his arms, and for a moment Sirus's full weight collapsed against him.
Jason now knocked at the front-door screen of Sirus's house as Lucas and Earl waited with the hearse at the curb. Jason strained to see into the darkened front parlor, but Sirus got to the door before Jason's eyes adjusted so that all he could make out was Sirus's broad frame.
“Hello, Sirus,” Jason said, stepping back as Sirus swung open the door.
“Morning, Jason,” Sirus said, nodding also toward Jason's two assistants, who now stood in the middle of the sidewalk.
Jason turned slightly to include Earl and Lucas in his statement. “We've brought her home,” he said. “Do you want to go upstairs while we bring her in?”
Sirus didn't move. “No, I'll wait here,” he answered, sliding the metal hinge that held the door open along its rod.
“Are you sure, Sirus?”
“I'm all right, Jason,” Sirus said. “Please, just go ahead.”
“Okay,” Jason answered. “It'll take us about five minutes to get things all set up.”
He turned and walked down the porch and sidewalk, motioning to Lucas and Earl to precede him back to the hearse. They swung open the heavy black door, one of them on either side, and pulled out a folded metal cart. Watching them, Sirus remembered that until a few days ago he had been able to carry Mattie easily, sweeping her up in a second, her arms around his neck, supporting her whole weight with one arm. Now it would take three men and five minutes to bring her inside.
“Sirus, why don't you roll back the edge of the rug?” Jason called from the steps of the porch.
The coffin rose up in front of Sirus like a whale breaking from the sea. For a second, if he closed his eyes, he thought it could be a month ago, at Highland Beach: Mattie's face breaking the water, her mouth spouting salt water, laughing, her thick brown hair holding the water and salt like a sponge so that it caught the sunlight bouncing on the surface of the ocean.
“Catch me, Daddy, catch me.”
She had flopped toward him, her arms stretched out over her head, her legs and feet beating the top of the water like butter. And he had caught her up, just under the ribs, swinging her around in the water so fast that there was, for a moment, only spray and motion, making a small circle in the middle of the ocean around them.
“Again, Daddy, again,” she had called out in her high, breaking voice, pushing off with her feet against his thighs. She had flopped and smacked and dived and he had caught and swung and lifted until his arms felt there was nothing else they had ever done before but catch her and carry her and whirl her around deliriously in the midst of her zest and joy. When he asked Aileen that night to put salve on his shoulder, she had said, “Sirus, you spoil that child. Why didn't you just tell her your arms were getting tired?” “She's a lovely child, Aileen; we couldn't have asked for one better,” was all he said in reply.
Jason cleared his throat.
“Of course,” Sirus said, flipping back the edge of the carpet with his foot. Jason and the boys pushed the cart up the last step and through the doorway, steadying it carefully as the wheels ran over the threshold. So she was coming home, Sirus thought, stiller than she had ever been, with a stillness that felt more still than death.
“We'll put her here,” Jason called, as they traveled across the living room like a small caravan, “by the window.” By the time Sirus turned, the coffin was off its cart and resting on a pedestal the same color as the coffin.
“We'll be able to bank the flowers here nicely,” Jason continued, spreading his arms out on either side like long sails. “And if we move these two chairs”—he pointed at the two wing chairs that flanked the coffin—“we'll have a walkway for people to spend their time with her to say their goodbyes.”
Jason moved about the room, touching various pieces of furniture. There was something hypnotic in the way he spoke, as if the scene he was describing were not real. Behind his words, Sirus thought, another scene seemed to unfold. In that scene Jason's arms, raised and lowered, were a shepherd's arms; the square, slightly formal living room was a wide meadow; and Mattie's coffin contained not a dead child, but something magical, something created for a moment of worshipful celebration.
Sirus interrupted Jason, took him by the arm, and led him, Lucas, and Earl into the kitchen. There, Sirus pressed biscuits and coffee and eggs on them, encouraged by Mrs. Johnson. He left them there, Jason in the wide-bottomed oak chair he usually sat in, the boys scooted up to the table, their brown caps resting on their knees, as Mrs. Johnson turned to the stove and tended her biscuits, which were browning. Sirus, in the armchair next to the head of the coffin in the living room, could hear their voices.
“He's quite a man, that one,” Mrs. Johnson said somberly as she lifted the tray of biscuits from the oven. “Not a better man to work for in this world.” She dropped the tray on the counter, where the water beneath it made a hissing sound.
“He's a good man, all right,” Jason agreed.
“You better believe it,” Mrs. Johnson continued. “Don't let a person come anywhere near me saying anything different.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Did I ever tell you about how my Cora used to do her homework, right here at this table?” Mrs. Johnson continued. “Mr. Mac would come in, take a look at it for her—I mean, sometimes reading a whole report, cover to cover, like it was an important paper from the bank—and when he'd be done he'd say, ‘Well, Cora, that's really fine,' or ‘You ought to try and change how you end it. I got a little confused along the way.' Whatever he thought.”
“Umm-hmm,” Jason murmured, taking a bite of the hot biscuit.
“And those Genene girls, didn't he have one, then the next, then the next, till all three of them lived here at one time or another, every one of those girls coming up from the country to go to school. And they went, too, every one of them, and their parents decent hardworking people. But you know what I'm saying, about the expense and all. And the whole time, Mr. Mac not saying a word to anybody, except something about how he needs help down at the real estate office. I guess there might have been something they could have done, but who could for the life of them say what a country girl would know about all that work Mr. Mac is always doing. You know what it is I'm saying.”
Jason nodded, swallowing and chewing almost simultaneously.
“And don't tell me anything about loving that child,” she went on. “Oh, mercy, think I'd like to die myself than have to live to see the day something happen to that child, then die again to keep from living long enough to see Mr. Mac have to go through it.” She turned on the water in the sink full force. “He's been like something right out of the grave himself, walking and breathing, but not much more. Oh, Lord, I thought I'd never see this day.”
Jason looked at her, soap rising from beneath her hand swirling under the stream from the faucet. His large eyes clouded over. “It's a terrible thing,” he agreed.
“Terrible ain't even the beginning of it.” Mrs. Johnson turned to face him and the boys. “If I weren't afraid of blasphemy, I'd talk about pestilence and flood; that's how bad this thing strikes me. Must be near on to hell and damnation.”
Earl's and Lucas's eyes met across the table, their mouths motionless as they contemplated Mrs. Johnson.
“But I ain't saying nothing about that subject in this house.” The boys resumed their contented chewing. “Got to remember the good times, especially now you've done gone and brought her soul's house on home.” She stared at Lucas and Earl. “You boys brought her in here okay, yes? You been gentle and careful like with a lamb?”
They bobbed their heads.
“Good. I wouldn't want nothing more to disturb that child on her way to glory, and praise the Lord, I know that's where she's bound.”
“Praise the Lord,” Jason responded, bowing h
is head briefly as if in prayer.
Mrs. Johnson's words seemed to have caught up to her, and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Lord, that was one sweet child,” she said mournfully.
“That she was,” said Jason.
Sirus now heard silence in the kitchen. He had been aware of Jason's being there and of what his presence represented: the things they needed to discuss. But as long as he heard the voices, that moment seemed distant. Now, in the silence, it was a presence standing beside him. This was the moment he had been dreading, what he wished he could avoid, to face yet again this stillness that was supposed to be his Mattie.
When Aileen left the house yesterday, fled, really, she had insisted that she would never be able to sleep, knowing that her baby would be coming home in a box. She could not bear to see it, she told him. And she warned him, pleaded with him, not to let them make Mattie look like someone else. “They're always doing that,” she said tearfully. “Remember my father's mouth, how they filled it with cotton and his cheeks were all puffed out so that he looked like he was pouting and angry? Or they get the color all wrong. She's our child, a bright chestnut, a happy child,” she kept saying. And Sirus had promised that he would be careful, that he would handle this detail, make sure it was done right. But how on Earth could he do it, he wondered. Where would he find the strength to look in the coffin, much less talk with Jason about anything else that might need to be done?
He looked around the room. The sun was streaming through the window behind him; he felt it hot on his shoulders, spreading a warmth that his muscles yielded to in spite of himself. If he closed his eyes, with the feel of that sun, he could escape this room, he could once again be a small boy on his parents' tobacco farm, the sun reflecting on the tall grass that ringed the house. In that imaginary field, lit by this sun, he could keep his eyes closed, and what he sensed was not this coffin but something else, something more closely resembling a mysterious presence. He felt that if he were to turn and approach this inexplicable something, it would be with anticipation, a feeling tinged with yearning.
Drifting with the sun's warmth, he felt himself sink deeper into this scene. He became aware of an altered sense of time, a feeling of long hours, long days, no, long years, bringing him to this point. He kept imagining himself as the boy in that grass, looking to this future, and if he were to open his eyes, then or now, what he'd see would hold all of the years that had gone by. He could feel all of the tension held in his body over the past two days flow out of him. Gone were all the times he had held himself in check, all the movements toward or away from someone. All that was left was this thing, this something. As he drew nearer in his imagination, his heart swelled so that it nearly burst with anticipation.
Yes, that was what he was feeling, he thought giddily, a kind of rejoicing. Things were not as they seemed, he wanted to shout. Look, look, something wonderful has occurred, and he was the only one who knew or was allowed to see it. Privately, secretly, he alone was going to be given a glimpse, permitted only once in a lifetime, of something he couldn't name. And almost joyously, he opened his eyes and turned his head, and as he did, the living room slid into view. What was visible was not this magnificent presence, but the coffin, suspended. The vision faded, not all at once, but as a dream fades. His giddiness slipped away, and then his trembling hope, and the overwhelming joy he had expected to taste. One by one his senses returned him to himself, and what he saw and heard and felt was exactly what was here in this room—and no more.
He was alone. There were no sounds around him. He rose from his chair and lay his hand atop the coffin. She was gone. He ran his hand along the curved top of the molded lid. It was both smooth and cool. If he were to lift the cover, she would lie before him, lifeless. Her smile, her laughter, her smell of leaves and tart apples, her plumply muscled arms folded over her painfully angular legs would be shrouded, still. They would never move again, never explode from the center of the room. The cool, quiet body lying in this box would never again hurtle toward him, take his breath away. Now they were at an end. Now they were removed to a region of memory and shadow. Now he would never experience her again.
He heard Jason come into the room and felt his warm presence beside him as distinctly as a bell pealing in his ear.
“We have a few more things to discuss,” Jason said quietly, resting his arm across his friend's shoulder.
“Yes, of course.” Sirus's voice was close to breaking. He reached into his pocket for something, anything, and his hand came out empty. “I need my glasses, my pen,” he mumbled. He backed away from Jason and the coffin, then turned, stumbling over his feet. He regained his balance, hurried across the front parlor, and disappeared up the stairs.
Your Child Can Be a Model!
BY DAVID HAYNES
Football pools. Rumor mongering. Daylong seminars on the changing face of the twenty-first-century consumer. Apparently this is what Americans did at work. Sheila had no idea. Eighteen months ago she'd been a housewife. Who knew the glass on top of a copy machine could support a grown man's behind?
When Whispering Pines Junior High School rings her cellular to tell her that her son Briggs has been sent home from school for misbehavior, Sheila is arrayed across the entrance from her boss's, Marketa Winthrop, office in the sort of pose a really bad exotic dancer might mistake for sexy. She is trying to keep the production manager from stabbing Marketa Winthrop with an Exacto knife. The knife is right there in his hands, its edges bristling with bits of rubber cement and trimmed copy. Marketa Winthrop wants the blushing beauties on the bridal announcement page arrayed in alphabetical order. Ralph Johansen has his own scheme. He waves the paste up in Sheila's face.
“Ugly, bootiful, ugly, bootiful.” He fingers the alternating faces and assumes the bizarre and unrecognizable accent he adopts when he is angling after a date with her. Gypsy or marginally Latino, she thinks, but who could imagine? Ralph is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
“It's ten o'clock in the morning,” Sheila says to the assistant principal. “What do you mean sent home?”
“Dismissed. Until you bring him back for a conference.”
“You can't just send children home,” she says. She keeps Ralph at bay with her foot.
“I weel now keel her with my ber hends,” he seethes. Olive-skinned and vaguely ethnic like the villains on daytime television, Ralph has steely black eyes and a goatee, the same look sported by pictures of the devil on low-budget religious tracts.
“Important call,” Sheila mouths, but Ralph ignores her.
“Che ees evil, no?” He grabs her free hand and kisses the darker side, licking it with his tongue. Why did cute men have to be so nasty? Or maybe it was the other way around.
“I've got a district policy manual right here on my desk that says that I can send Briggs home. And my file says you agreed to this plan, two weeks ago.”
She did? Sheila doesn't remember, but she might have agreed to anything John Antonio said. Twenty-five years later she could still be intimidated by junior high assistant principals.
“Jou are bootiful when jou are engry.” The slobber on her hand tickles. She stifles a giggle.
“I'm sorry you find this amusing.”
“I don't.” Sheila clears her throat to indicate just how serious she is and also to stifle her laugh. These people didn't need more ammunition against her. She bares her teeth at Ralph. Ralph growls in response.
“Where is my child?” she demands.
“He should be landing on your front porch any minute now.”
“Briggs doesn't have a key.”
“That's for the two of you to work out. Can I expect you for a conference in the morning?”
“You can expect me in twenty minutes.” She tumbles into Marketa Winthrop's office, mashing Ralph's fingers in the jamb, and locks the door behind her.
Sheila is Marketa Winthrop's personal assistant. Sheila gets her dry cleaning, her oil changed, picks up her snack cakes at the 7-Eleven. Marketa Winthrop
is a victim of magazines like New Black Woman and Essence and Self. She reads in these magazines how successful entrepreneurs of the kind she imagines herself to be all have personal assistants: Camille Cosby, Linda Johnson, Jada Pinkett-Smith. Those gals snap their fingers and mountains of annoyance disappear. Marketa Winthrop believes this can happen to her. She believes that by modeling herself on rich and glamorous women, she, too, will become lithe and loved the world over. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air will move into her bed. Who is Sheila to disabuse her of this notion?
“I need to run up to school,” Sheila tells her boss.
Marketa Winthrop flips the page of another magazine. “Did Ralph redo the wedding announcements?” she asks. Her boss subscribes to dozens of magazines. Sheila delivers them each morning with a jumbo coffee and a bear claw from the convenience store. Marketa Winthrop spends much of her day paging through the glossies, dreaming of the big move she promises Sheila they will be making soon to the national publications scene.
“ABC brides,” Sheila lies. As if the order of suburban princesses mattered.
“Good girl. Because one thing Marketa Winthrop won't be having is a bunch of pissy mothers-of-the-bride.” Marketa Winthrop always uses both her names, always introduces herself as if the person she were speaking with had been hearing about her for years. “Hello, Marketa Winthrop,” she'll say, extending her hand. This despite the fact that, as the owner of a chain of suburban weeklies, the only place they might have encountered her name was on the masthead of one of her throwaway shoppers, just above the announcement for the garden club meeting and a full page ad for Cooper's Super Value.
Gumbo Page 20