Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  “You both were fighting over me. You’ve won.”

  “You know she tempts you. Don’t make my dying a fool thing, Maude.”

  “Maybe you’ll be looking down from heaven.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. When I’m dead, I dissolve.”

  Maude imagined Partridge’s body liquifying and shuddered.

  “Go away, you’re making me nauseous. To imagine my body doing that.”

  “You saw my mind. You’re still using magic, then.” Partridge pressed her lips together. Her face wrinkled deeper. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. They looked completely untouched by age. “Magic seeps out the cracks. Always a bit left, Maude, no matter how you try to squeeze it out of you or push it away.”

  Maude bent over her and kissed her on the forehead. Partridge began to cry.

  Only one more square to add to the quilt top. Maude decided to put it aside.

  16

  * * *

  THE HOUSE’S INMATES

  The next morning, sitting in the room with Partridge, Maude looked at the Rand McNally maps of America, found California, and sighed. “I miss California,” she said. “It’s Nevernever Land,” Partridge said.

  Maude thought about the roads heading out of San Francisco going north, the difference of it, the land shifting under foot, wired by phone line through the Sierra winters to the East Coast, attached by the Pacific to Japan and China.

  Doug came limping in and saw what Maude was looking at. “So was I an exotic fuck, too?”

  Partridge stared at Maude.

  Maude almost said yes, but didn’t answer. Partridge smiled.

  Doug pulled at the atlas until he could see it. “I was born there.” He pointed to Maryville. “My grandfather lived on a ranch in the Sierras. The Indians hated him.” Maude said, “I’d like to go back.”

  Doug shrugged.

  “You could borrow Esther’s car and at least get out of the house,” Partridge said.

  Maude asked, “Doug, you need to get out?”

  “I feel centuries of European life and mysticism piled on my head. And my foot hurts.”

  Partridge said, “Get him out at least for a day.”

  “I can’t leave the county,” Maude said. “And I’d feel a little silly borrowing a car from Esther.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Partridge told her.

  “I would. Maybe that’s the difference in the times.” Doug said, “I’m going to stay here. I lost my job in Berkeley before I came here. When I was in North Carolina, I called a realtor and put the house on the market.”

  So Doug had crash-landed at her grandmother’s house. “Are you going to work for Follette’s research institute?”

  “Why do you keep harping on that? I’ve had two other offers. Luke wants John to have one of them. It’s only temporary, anyway, rigging a work monitoring system for a small assembly shop.”

  “Sounds 1984 to me,” Partridge said.

  “Luke wants to tell me about the other job later.”

  They heard Esther coming in and sat silently as she came to the back. “If you need some errands run, I can go out for you,” Esther said. Meaning, Maude thought, don’t ask to borrow my car and get it eaten up by the folks who want to trap you.

  Doug said, “I’d like to get out of the house some.”

  “I can take you with me. Maude might want to sit some alone with her grannie.”

  Partridge said, “You could all go.”

  Maude closed the atlas on California. “Better if someone was here. Betty might drop by.”

  “Or Luke,” Partridge said. “I’m not one of those fools who trusts Luke.”

  Doug said, “I’ll ignore that. Couldn’t we all go and leave Partridge alone for a little bit?”

  Esther went to get Partridge’s medical record book. She came back, took Partridge’s pulse, entered it, stuck a thermometer in Partridge’s mouth, then said, “When a person’s dying, folks you trust got to watch over. To make sure the soul leaves in peace.”

  “Okay.” Doug got up and tried to stand on both feet. His knee bent over the shot one. “Maude, we need to take a walk, then.”

  “Can you?”

  “I’ve got to get some exercise.”

  Maude also thought he wanted to talk to her in private. “Okay.”

  Doug got his crutches and hobbled out. It was cold. Winter equinox, Christmas, ceremonies against the dark, Maude thought. “Were you planning to be here for Christmas all along?” she asked Doug.

  He didn’t answer right away, then, on the road, said, “Maude, I don’t understand what’s come between us. I feel like something’s not quite right.”

  “I’ve told you not to trust the witches.”

  “Doesn’t that mean I couldn’t trust you?”

  “Why should you trust me? I’m just a country witch you picked up in a Berkeley bar.”

  “Maude.”

  “What is this? Did Luke suggest you make up to me?”

  “Maude, it’s not like that at all.”

  “Maybe it’s just biology. You’re bored. I’m female. We’re sniffing each other all the time.”

  “And your grandmother is dying. Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t have some feeling for you?”

  Maude felt rebuked. She felt uneasy that he could do that. “So?”

  “Maude, I wish we could start over again.”

  “Back in Berkeley. I want to live where there are no poor families to exploit or ignore if they do manage to accomplish something despite their lack of charms. Let’s live where you’re judged on what you do and what you know, not on who your people are or what entity’s behind them. I thought I could get away from that in the North, but who my people were became even worse. My people were Southern. I always thought Yankees went against the South because we were bigots and if I wasn’t one, I’d be welcome. But no. Yankees got to be both anti-black and anti-Southern. I didn’t play the class card.”

  “But, Maude, you come from a good local family. Luke and Betty have an original Picasso print, Claes Oldenburg prints. Luke knows French.”

  “I have my father’s people to consider.”

  “Ignore them. They’re just religious fanatics.”

  “Who told you that?” She could tell by his face that Luke had. She continued, “If people are fighting Luke and his kind, then maybe those people need the kind of religion my father’s people have.”

  “Luke’s civilized.”

  “Maybe you could bring little ugly but nonpolluting factories to scare the tourists and the urbanoids looking for a quaint country getaway with amusing, uneducated locals to patronize. Bring something here to give good jobs to the locals.”

  “But it’s so beautiful here.”

  “Like a naked woman in a battlefield,” Maude said. Doug looked toward the small mountain across the road. “More naked without the leaves. Maude, you could protect this place.”

  “Ugly little factories would protect it better.”

  Doug didn’t answer. Maude saw crows mob a redtail hawk and wondered how Belle fared. Doug didn’t notice the commotion. They walked on further, then he said, “I’m getting sore.”

  “Okay, we’ll go back now.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to bed a country witch when I met one. You think I’m too easy.”

  Maude said, “Doug, I get the impression Luke asked you to court me again.”

  “Maude, I’d rather you believe it was us being in the same house together than for you to think I’d do that.”

  “If you don’t like the idea of working for Follette, take the job rigging the computerized work station monitors. Don’t let John do that.”

  “It’s just temporary.”

  “So are you. So am I.”

  “But you don’t have to be.”

  “A long time isn’t forever.” Maude wondered if he understood yet that he couldn’t have magic. She asked, “Do you understand now that magic isn’t something you can learn?”
>
  He stopped at the door and set the crutches aside. She swayed slightly as he gathered himself to take her in his arms. Clinging to her, trying to bend her to him, he kissed her. Maude felt cold but compassionate. He pulled back and brushed his hand across her forehead, moving some hairs. She would have leaned into him, but he was too unsteady on his feet. She almost felt sorry for him for the life he’d lost in California. Or maybe what she missed was the life she could have had, had she not been so cynical, lazy, deluded into thinking just abstaining from witchcraft made a life.

  “Let’s go in now,” she said. “We can talk about this later.”

  “I feel like you’ve got untapped strengths.”

  “If I were them, I would get me out of here.”

  “Them?”

  “The people who want Partridge’s soul.”

  “Maybe you’re the target, not Partridge,” Doug said. And you, Doug, are the lure, Maude realized, only I’m like Belle, an unromantic hawk that expects people will feed her, so why hunt. How far could she push that metaphor—buteos and accipiters returned to the fist when they missed. “Oh, Doug, why did you have to lose your job?”

  “The company lost its grant.”

  Maude wondered if the previously California money found its way to Virginia, to Follette’s research institute. “But you could be looking for work back home.”

  “I can live for a couple of years here on the house sale money. Houses here cost about a third to a half what my Berkeley house is worth.”

  “Has it sold yet?”

  “No.”

  Money as hypothetical as the life Maude waited for, the future always so boldly promising, its gaudy colors and significant patterns just tricks of perspective if they existed at all. When a piece of the future turned to the present, it came so spaced from what was yet to come that one could never recognize the entire pattern. The future that really happened never had much connection with the imagined future. While its fragments accumulated in the past as jumbled memories, the future stayed bolder and gaudier than ever. Maude thought that an imaginary future had seduced her into a decade’s wait.

  The past once was the fabulous time, when the ancestors negotiated with the entities, conquered the barbarians, spoke language that called directly to things. Times changed. Now the future was the promised land. Maude hadn’t realized until now that the future, too, could seduce humans from the present, where all the real patterns form.

  When Maude got to the back room, Esther said, “Roach called and your car is dead.”

  Maude felt jolted into a present more real than the one she’d been imagining. “So, I’m really stuck in the house.” Doug said, “I can buy a car.”

  “When your house sells?”

  “No, I’ve got some savings.”

  Esther said, “I can take him to get to his money and maybe the garage people have a used car to sell.”

  Maude went to see Partridge. Her grandmother was sleeping. Sweat dampened the fine hair at her temples. Maude stroked it and wondered if the sweat meant anything. “How is she doing?”

  “Not well, Maude,” Esther said. She held up the quilt top. It was finished. “Now we’ve got to quilt it, but I can take it to my circle and have it done in no time.”

  Maude felt an itch between her shoulder blades. “Don’t rush. When can you take Doug to look for a car?”

  “We ought do it now, so you have a ride if you need to take her to the hospital at night.”

  “Now?” Maude asked. “Shouldn’t you call to see what’s available?”

  “I can afford a new car,” Doug said. “I do have savings. I have enough in my checking account to make a down payment. I ought to arrange to have the rest of my money transferred here.”

  Maude suddenly didn’t want them to leave her alone with Partridge. She realized that she’d enjoyed having Doug’s company all these nights, even if they hadn’t had sex since Lula died.Just a male body in the house. The present had been busy with her despite what she thought. Or perhaps the satisfaction she got from having Doug around, despite their disagreements, was simple biology. “What if she gets worse while you’re gone?”

  “Maude, you can always call an ambulance,” Esther said. “You did it before Doug and I came to help you.”

  I wish Doug had come to help me, Maude thought, but she said, “I keep waiting for things to happen.”

  “Doug, let’s go get you a car,” Esther said. Even though he had to brace himself against a wall, Doug helped Esther put on her coat. Maude realized she’d never before seen a white man help a black woman with a coat.

  Then Doug put on his coat and said, “Tomorrow, we can take a ride up to Roanoke.”

  “I don’t believe in that tomorrow,” Maude said. She wondered what insane witches did with their powers. Can’t take it, go nuts, hitch back to California, get injected with Prolixin for being a meds resister.

  “Maude, you seeing something?” Esther asked.

  Maude felt foolish then because she hadn’t really seen anything. Thoughts injected themselves into her brain. Just a normal paranoia, perhaps. “Go on. As you say, I can always call the ambulance.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve got to do something someday, I might as well start being responsible today.” As she spoke, Maude felt that sounded less like a commitment than a confession of past indecision. The future is now. Ips shaped by tricks of perspective. “Go on. I can deal with whatever happens.”

  “Try,” Esther said. She went to Partridge and felt her pulse, then looked at Doug and nodded.

  Maude sat down by her grandmother and took Partridge’s hand. The blue veins shrank as Maude raised the hand, then swelled again as she put it down on the sheets.

  Partridge opened gummy eyes and asked, “What happens next?”

  “I’m with you. Esther took Doug out to buy a new car so we’re not trapped here.”

  “Until they get back, we’re trapped here.”

  “Grandmom, I can always call an ambulance.”

  “If the line isn’t busy.” Partridge closed her eyes.

  “We have the right to interrupt a party-line call for an emergency.” Maude tried to remember. Hadn’t they gotten a private line?

  “Betty will know,” Partridge said. Her eyes opened again, glittering.

  Maude remembered this woman had outlived all her children. “I won’t be eaten. I won’t let you be eaten, either.”

  “Oh, Maudie, you think I’d do that to you? When you’re dead, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived.”

  But Maude felt her grandmother’s will push at hers. “No, Partridge. I’ll pray for you, but…”

  “Can you pray? Do you believe?”

  “I believe in a universe of consistent rules. No special deals.”

  Partridge closed her eyes. “You believe there’s nothing to me after I’m dead.”

  “I’ll have them bury you in the family plot, not at the church. With men digging the hole and men filling it, so you aren’t trapped in the grave. If you want to haunt me, you can. Do you know why you asked me here?”

  “Maudie, you were supposed to give me courage.”

  “You thought ambivalence took courage?” Maude leaned toward her grandmother. Partridge’s breaths rocked her body.

  “It hurts, Maude,” she said.

  “Badly enough that you need to go to the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. Take my pulse.”

  Maude took her grandmother’s wrist between her fingers. The pulse was faint, rapid. “Where does it hurt?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “I need some bicarbonate. I need to get up.”

  Maude helped Partridge sit up in bed. Her grandmother’s body was sweating under her nightgown. She grabbed Maude’s shoulder as though she were drowning. Maude asked, “Where do you want to go?”

  “I want to go to the graveyard and talk to my mother.”

  “The graveyard is too fa
r to walk.”

  “No, we can make it.”

  “Please, grandmother.”

  Partridge’s fingers clawed into Maude’s neck. “Why do I have to hurt?”

  “I don’t know.” Maude wondered if the pain was nature’s way of blocking the path back to life.

  “The universe you believe in wants me dead, Maude. It’s hurting me.”

  “Grandmother, did you eat all your children?”

  The old lady’s fingers dug deeper into Maude’s neck. “I’m hurting.”

  “I can take you to the hospital.”

  “Don’t want Betty here.”

  Maude heard the old Essex pull in the driveway. “She’s already here.”

  Partridge released Maude’s neck. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “How do we get rid of Betty?”

  “Take me to the bathroom. She can wait.”

  Maude helped Partridge into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet. The old woman’s ass dangled between her spread legs. Maude expected Betty to break in at any moment, Betty’s face to appear in the bathroom window despite the fifteen feet between the glass and the yard below.

  Partridge strained, then said, “I need Epsom salts. It hurts.” She urinated, then took a washcloth to wipe. Maude pulled toilet paper off the roll and wiped, then threw the washcloth into the sink and ran water over it.

  “You waste paper,” Partridge said. Maude helped her off the toilet and pulled the nightgown down over her grandmother’s grey pubic hair.

  Betty was banging on the door now. Maude asked, “You don’t want her in?”

  “Get rid of her.”

  Maude went to the door. She almost expected Betty to be transformed into a long-toothed beast, slavering, but when she opened the door, Betty stood in a blue wool suit, lapels bent, not pressed flat, holding out gloved hands. “How is Partridge?”

  “Fine.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She’s taking a bath. You might come back later.”

  “I’ve seen naked old women.”

  Maude realized she’d have to either let Betty in or block her physically. Betty pushed against Maude’s shoulder with one gloved hand and said, “You’re being paranoid.”