Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  Aunt Betty invited Maude to lunch at a restaurant in Taylorsville after the roads were plowed. When Maude came in, Betty was sitting at a window table overlooking the courthouse. The little yard in front of the courthouse was covered with snow, a blanket of white on the memorial stones and the statues.

  Maude felt rather allegorical and said, “Each whole flake is completely different than any other flake.”

  “Most snow doesn’t come down whole but in clumps. And the individuality is as meaningless as human individuality normally is.” Betty began to pull off her calfskin gloves.

  Maude remembered the clump of snow needles that took so long to hit the sidewalk. “And you have to look under a microscope to see the crystal shape.”

  “There you have it, individuality isn’t a normal human concern,” Betty said. “Fitting in, however, is. Maude, you can’t leave the county until you undo what you’ve done.”

  “What have I done?”

  “You brought people against John. By the way, Sue’s dead. Killed herself. Delusions of equality. I always knew the diagnosis was accurate.”

  “But you can’t get rid of the rest of them because I helped them,” Maude said.

  “And you said you’d never practice witchcraft.”

  “I failed.”

  “You aren’t much of a witch, Maude. Innate ability isn’t everything.”

  “But I’ve got lots…”

  “… of innate ability. No, Maude, you don’t.”

  “You’re just saying this.”

  “We’ll leave Doug alone if you help us.”

  “Then I do have some powers you could use.”

  “No, Maude, all I’ve ever wanted from you is a phone call when Partridge is dying.”

  “She wants to die into general reality.”

  Betty signaled for the waiter and said, “We want two specials and iced tea.”

  Maude hadn’t seen a menu. She wondered if the special was human flesh.

  Betty said, “You failed to make a place for yourself in general reality.”

  “How do I know I could make it in a pocket universe?”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “And you won’t kill Doug.”

  “I won’t kill Doug.”

  Maude almost asked what about John and Luke, but she realized that Betty could lie to her, that even if Betty the human decided to be generous, whatever was behind her might not. And I can lie, too, Maude decided.

  “You’re so transparent,” Betty said. “I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate willingly.”

  “What about Terry and John?”

  “They’re so immersed in the life, they don’t think what they have is unusual,” Betty said. “Magic is so good when it’s like that.”

  “I noticed they seemed oblivious,” Maude said. She wondered if Betty was nostalgic for a time when she was like Terry and magic was normal and no one thought badly of a woman for using a lethal map to snare poor white trash and black children with unseemly curiosity.

  “You’re observant, but without skills to use those observations. Your mother did you a disservice in teaching you to observe.”

  The waiter brought two plates, each with a quiche slice, a macaroni and pea salad, and slaw. Betty smiled at the waiter and asked him, “How’s your brother?”

  “Maybe he’ll quit drugs now.”

  “What happened?” Maude asked.

  “Failed at suicide. There was a lot of it going around a couple nights ago.”

  “When Sue died?” Maude asked.

  “When Sue realized what a waste her life had been and was going to continue to be. So she ended it, quite fitting.” Maude wondered how Sue’s soul tasted.

  Betty said, “You need to remember who I am, Maude. Why don’t you come on home with me now?”

  Maude almost asked, What happened to Reverend Springer? but caught herself in time, then wondered if she’d betrayed him anyway. She’d stop by his house later. “Are you going to show me more about the cards you stole from the hippies?”

  “No, this time I’m going to show you my engravings.” Betty smiled. After lunch, she put on her gloves before handling money.

  “Drop by now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll leave my car here and walk over.”

  “My Essex won’t eat your little car.”

  Maude felt foolish, but determined to leave her car parked on Main Street. Her aunt smoothed her gloves and said, “Ride in the Essex, then.”

  Unless leather had been a factory option, the Essex didn’t have its original upholstery. The hides seemed slightly unmatched. Maude wondered if these were man-killer bull hides. Betty put her finger to the throttle and turned the key in the ignition. She used both hands to shift into first, but the other gears came easier.

  The car went its hundred yards or so and slid in behind the house. Maude followed her aunt into the stone basement. She saw one of the Reverend Springer’s paintings hanging on the rock wall, a purple and green portrait of someone floating, off to Jesus perhaps.

  “A Baconesque primitive,” Betty said. “I’d have preferred a ‘Screaming Pope,’ but they’re hard to come by locally.”

  Maude didn’t ask how Betty got the painting, what she knew about the Reverend Springer. Betty showed Maude up a back staircase—narrow treads, completely boxed in—until they were three stories up under the eaves in Betty’s library. In the center of the room was a big table covered with leather worn through to the wood, dusty. Without Betty’s asking, Maude found a feather duster and a rag and cleaned it off.

  “Perhaps after Partridge dies, I could hire Esther.”

  “No,” Maude said.

  “I’ll ask her myself. Maude, let me show you my Jasper Johns and my Minotauromachy.”

  “How could you afford a Picasso?”

  “I bought it when it was new,” Betty said. “The Johns I bought in New York from his printer out on Long Island.” Betty went to a closet and brought back a large leather portfolio. She spread it on the table. “And the Oldenburg drawing.”

  “Doug likes art, too,” Maude said.

  “Does he?” Betty pulled out a drawing of a limp pen and lay it aside, then looked back in the portfolio. “Are you haunted by this?” She pulled out the Picasso etching.

  In the image, a woman held up a candle against a rampaging minotaur. Disemboweled horses and another woman, mangled with one exposed breast, surrounded the woman with the candle and the minotaur. The fragile mortal against the unnatural.

  “I’ve always liked the print,” Maude said. She hated that she identified with the woman holding the candle.

  “There’s also his painting of the bombing of Guernica. The outside world has its own terrors,” Betty said.

  Woman against monster, man against machine, Maude thought. “Why do you have Reverend Springer’s painting in the basement?”

  “It doesn’t fit in with our other things. It’s a very aggressive painting.” Betty smiled and continued, “It’s been a long time since someone worked art against us, but we’ll tame the painting and the painter eventually. Or break them both. After all, Picasso was a Communist once.”

  Maude pulled the Minotauromachy closer and almost touched the candle the woman held.

  “Don’t sweat on my Picasso,” Betty said. “I love art, music. I’m worth more than those stupid drug boys. I’m a repository of historical information, centuries under my skin. You could take your own sweet time through my history. Aren’t you curious?”

  “Are we still going to die someday?” Maude asked.

  “Magic wants… to be boss. Humans are the ultimate sacrifice. A little sack of packed humans like me…” Betty said her phrases as if she feared the words coming from her throat, wondered how they’d escaped. Then she threw her head back to show a pulse beating beside her windpipe. She coughed, threw her head back again, and gasped.

  “Can I get you anything? Water?”

  Betty gasped once more, then said, “I
wouldn’t want anything from you. You’re not sure crippling drug dealers is decent.”

  Maude said, “Let me think about it.”

  “Can you think?” Betty asked. She stood up and led Maude back down the front stairs to the street level.

  Maude felt her thoughts tumble as she walked back to her car. She opened the MiniCooper and tried to start the engine. The engine wouldn’t start, then did and made grinding noises as though the car chewed its pistons and rods.

  Maude went back in the restaurant and called Esther’s garage. Turner answered.

  “Hi, this is Maude with the Austin MiniCooper. It’s died.”

  “When Roach gets back, we can come tow it.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “Maybe four. Where are you?”

  “Main Street, across from the courthouse.” Maude felt that Betty had done this to mock her.

  “If you could leave the keys in the car, we could get it later.”

  “I need a ride home.”

  “Isn’t Esther working for you? Couldn’t she come pick you up? We can get the car later.”

  Maude thought, I’m not thinking. “Sure.” She hung up and called her house. Esther answered. Maude said, “Esther, my car died in Taylorsville. Could you pick me up?”

  “Where?”

  “Down behind town where they’re planning a park. I’m going to see Reverend Springer, if he’s in.”

  “That’s not a real good idea, Maude,” Esther said. “Betty has one of his paintings in her basement.”

  “That’s not a good sign, either.”

  “He never thought I was really crazy.”

  “If you need to be told that, I could have told you. But, if it’s what you want to do, I’ll pick you up there. Your grannie’s sleeping.”

  “In about fifteen minutes.”

  “How’d your car die?”

  “Sounds like it was grinding itself.”

  Esther sighed. Maude wondered if Esther saw the car as Maude’s own mechanical double. Car, he dead.

  Maybe I can’t think. Maybe all my thoughts are jumbles of book quotes, things other people told me, entity insertions. Maude began walking toward the road that cut behind Main Street to the shacks where the day help lived.

  When Maude got near, she saw Reverend Springer, wrapped in a coat, rocking on his front porch in a cane rocker. He looked purple and green. His head slowly turned.

  “My Aunt Betty has one of your paintings in her basement.”

  “Stole it. Can’t break me.”

  “Sue killed herself.”

  “Can’t break me.”

  Maude wondered if paranoid schizophrenics were too rigid in their own dementia for entities to find room to insert thoughts. “You always said I wasn’t crazy.”

  “I understand you better now. I learned what you were hiding from. She couldn’t bring me upstairs. My painting would get her. It’s a true painting.”

  “My Aunt Betty told me your painting was very aggressive, but that she’d tame it or break it.”

  “She won’t. I don’t believe she will.”

  “I need to find a place in the other universe.”

  “Destroy this one. Bring in logic, machines.”

  “I couldn’t find a place in the other universe when I was in Berkeley.”

  The Reverend Springer stopped rocking and said, “It’s not enough not to be a witch.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Stop looking for other people to tell you what to do.”

  “What if I’m wrong?”

  “I’m a certified paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. You asking me?”

  “You knew I wasn’t crazy.”

  He didn’t say anything, but started rocking again. When Esther pulled up at his house to pick Maude up, he nodded at Esther and said, “Can’t hold as is forever.”

  “Whatever happens is God’s will,” Esther said back. “Funny thing about the Bible,” the Reverend Springer said. “Read it literally and you worship a demon. Read it as metaphor and it tells you being a racist, or deciding people not in your church ought to die, is like being swallowed in isolation as though in the belly of a great cold fish.”

  Esther said, “The word is the word. God’s will is forever, before us and after us.”

  “You get preserved in grace, hallelujah, but the witches get the rest of the people.”

  Maude said, “I hope Betty never tames your painting.”

  “Maybe I’ll steal it back from her. Let me know when you need a distraction.”

  Esther’s lips moved; a silent prayer, Maude decided. Then she turned the car motor on and drove Maude back toward Kobold.

  “What was that all about?”

  “He crazy.” Esther’s foot pressed down harder on the accelerator.

  “It’s God’s will,” Maude said.

  “Don’t mock me, who’s got your grannie’s comforts in my hand.”

  “Sorry. I feel like I’ve got to do something, but I don’t know whether what I do will help or whether I’m being deluded by my desire to feel self-righteous.”

  “And you thought a crazy picture painter would help you sort it out. Excuse me, Miss Maude.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Maude wondered if God willed Sue’s death. Perhaps the Norsemen were right. The gods included the Norns, Loki the Trickster, and the Fenrus Wolf. Despite all the human suffering and striving, no human could interfere with the final destructions. She thought about what the Reverend Springer had said about the biblical God, as though the Bible was the language version of the paintings that showed gestalts of crone and young woman in the same desposit of paint or ink. Hold two things in the mind at once. What else was like that, Maude wondered. Betty saw herself as heroine, the bright and cultured woman fighting centuries of ignorance and spite only to die abandoned by the gods in the end. The gods told her she wouldn’t amuse them forever.

  “If you went to the magicians, what’s the guarantee you’d be a success with that?” Esther asked.

  “Can you do more than pray?”

  “My question doesn’t scare you?”

  “I’m too confused to be scared by a question today,” Maude said. “You’ll have to take me to pick up my car later.”

  “Same mechanics? They’re very good mechanics.”

  “Do you think Martin’s people will try to kill John?”

  “Depends on what drives them to it. Some black people into magic, too.”

  “Whatever happens, will you help me?”

  “If I can.”

  Maude was grateful. “I could be dooming myself,” she said.

  “Only one Dying Lamb,” Esther said.

  “Ah, you’re speaking figuratively.”

  Esther shook her head and smiled. “We always been having a figure in the Great Speckled Bird.”

  “After I help my grannie die and do what I can to put Bracken back in the physicists’ reality, after the magic’s killed, will I feel like a fool? Will the world seem stripped and simplified?”

  “You making it more complicated than it is.” Maude was home now. Esther pulled into the driveway and let Maude out.

  Doug rose from where he’d been sitting beside Partridge’s bed. Partridge was asleep, far inside her clammy skin. Her eyes rolled in REM sleep, her hands twitched. Maude sat down while Doug limped to the bathroom. She touched her grandmother’s inner wrist and felt the pulse—fast.

  Doug came back and said, “She’s been fussing all day. I told her she ought to be a bit more considerate. She said when I’m dying and know it, then I can criticize her. She expects us to be totally involved in her dying.”

  Maude looked up at Doug. “Be careful.”

  “I don’t know why old people expect younger people to be so concerned about old people’s dying. After all, I could die before her. We never know what’s coming.”

  Partridge opened her eyes and said, “That’s right. You could die tomorrow. But you wouldn’t u
nderstand what your death means. Maude might die, too, but she knows why.” She reached for the hand Maude left on her wrist and squeezed. Her fingers were weak. Maude squeezed gently back and held on.

  Doug turned to Maude and said, “She was trying to tell me I had to work for Follette. You women seem to think I’m something that needs to be hidden away on the back of a pickup. Your Uncle Luke says he might have something for me that would last after the funding’s been cut for Follette’s projects.” He went to the front of the house.

  “If they kill him, would I miss him that much?” Maude asked.

  “Luke craves him bad. He’s more to eat than a redneck druggie. John’ll trap his mind in a calabash gourd and make it work against his kind.”

  “I wish he wouldn’t be such a jerk about listening to us.”

  “You thought you were gonna get rescued by a straight-thinking engineer, now he’s all kinky for magic and refuses to realize he can’t have it.”

  “I’ve told him.”

  “He doesn’t believe you. You’re a girl. He’s a mental adventurer, and we’re the women telling him he’s in danger.”

  “I know. I’m proud of what you’re doing. Do you need to talk?”

  “Not yet. You’ll be here. You don’t have a car now.”

  “They’ll have it fixed in a week or two.”

  “The car is dead.”

  Maude felt tears welling in her eyes. Crying for a machine made her feel stupid, but didn’t stop the tears.

  “Not just tears for the car,” Partridge said. She squeezed again. “Why did you bring that fool boy anyhow?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sure is. I’ve been trying to help you both. Quit pestering me. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  Maude put her hand on her grandmother’s brow. Partridge said, “Are you doing that because you really feel for me or because you’re watching how noble you look when you put concern on your face?”

  Maude felt hurt, but realized she had been watching herself, the noble young woman tending her dying grannie rather than going out and getting laid.

  Partridge said, “Keep in mind you weren’t doing anything decent when Betty called you out of Berkeley.”

  “I thought that had been you.”

  “Only a little.”