by Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Donna Ball, Debra Dixon, Nancy Knight, Virginia Ellis
Great Aunt Livvy nodded approvingly. Rosie knew proper protocol. Unlike me, she’d paid attention to the Mossy Creek Rules of Bereavement since childhood.
“Wow, Mom,” Willie said, tearing into a piece of fried chicken. “I could get into this funeral stuff.”
Great Aunt Livvy nodded. “Just wait ‘til you taste the Jesus cake.”
The next morning, I drove Willie and Great Aunt Livvy down to Bigelow. We curved through an old neighborhood where huge lawns fronted enormous old homes and finally arrived at Murial Bigelow’s big brick mansion. We were directed to pull off the driveway and leave our car behind a stand of ornamental shrubbery bordering the pool. “If I park back here, I’ll never get out,” I protested to the attendant, solemnly attired in a white dress shirt with a black armband, bow tie, and black trousers. The temperature was about thirty degrees. He shivered, and I felt sorry for him. “Oh, never mind,” I said. “I’ll figure it out, later.”
“Not to worry, your car’ll be taken care of, Ms. Salter.”
“Mrs. Bigelow,” I corrected. I never wanted Willie to think I wasn’t proud of his father’s name.
“Mrs. Bigelow. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
We were early, very early. The mansion’s huge, enclosed sun porch was awash in tables covered in crisp linen and lace tablecloths and flowers. Silver holders supported baking dishes of breakfast casseroles. A silver chafing dish was filled with cheese grits. Other trays contained assorted sweet breads, croissants, and fresh fruit. There were coffee urns, juices, and plates. I was right about the waiters wearing tuxedos and black ties. In the background came the comforting strains of live music.
For breakfast. At a funeral.
Hattie’s funeral plans were intricate but this party was beyond description. I’d spent half the afternoon at Mossy Creek Flowers And Gifts while Great Aunt Livvy decided which flowers she wanted on Hattie’s casket. She went for gaudy color and show—a huge blanket of hot-pink and purple carnations. Here at Murial’s breakfast wake—or whatever you’d call it—tasteful arrangements of white roses bloomed from crystal vases.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Great Aunt Livvy asked in a whisper. “I feel like we’re at a fancy dress ball, and somebody forgot to mention the hostess is dead.”
“Why, Livvy,” John said behind us, his voice deep and tingling on my spine, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
We turned and looked at him. “Nice set-up. I’m takin’ notes,” Great Aunt Livvy retorted, unabashed.
“Hey, Dad,” Willie said, and they hugged warmly. I looked up into my husband’s guarded eyes. “Hello, John.”
Several of our fellow breakfast mourners arrived at that moment. As if aware of the curious looks they gave us, and the potential for Willie’s approval, John suddenly slid an arm around me, pulled me close, and kissed me lightly on the forehead. When he stepped back, I was speechless. “Hello, Suzy,” he said.
Why’d he do that? What was he up to?
And how could I help but feel warm and alive?
I hated funerals.
Murial Bigelow’s funeral procession was an orchestrated parade of big cars and fat cats. Governor Bigelow was there, with his wife and kids and his powerful, viperish mother, Ardaleen Hamilton Bigelow, who is my kin on the Salters’ Hamilton side but never acknowledges me. The funeral director said Willie ought to ride with John and John’s great aunt—Muriel’s sister, Louise—in one of the Bigelows’ black Lincolns. Willie wouldn’t budge. “Not without Mom and Great Aunt Livvy,” he said.
John nodded grimly. “You’re right, son.” He turned to me and Livvy, holding out an arm to each of us.
Great Aunt Livvy shook her head at me. “You go with John and Willie. I’ll stay behind. This is your son’s great-grandmother’s funeral. And you’re still John’s legal wife.”
“But you’re my wife’s great aunt,” John countered. “And that makes you my family, too.”
She looked ruffled but misty-eyed. I felt the same way. John put her in the front seat. Willie and I sat in the back along with him. His Great Aunt Louise turned up her nose at us and took the next in a long line of black and gray vehicles.
I sighed and gazed out our window, dabbing my eyes. I’d already seen Governor Bigelow and a couple of Bigelow-related state senators. To my surprise, Mossy Creek’s Mayor Walker was there. Miss Ida knew about respect and tradition—plus she knew about politics. This was no different than a Mid-East Peace Summit—everybody was expected to show up and make the right noises, then go home and check their arsenals. I noticed that the governor avoided Miss Ida and how Miss Ida’s older sister, Ardaleen, turned her back. Miss Ida just smiled like a cat.
The funeral procession wound slowly through the streets of Bigelow. A half-dozen City of Bigelow police cars shooed other traffic away from us. Stoplights were set to blink, so the procession didn’t have to pause. People stopped on sidewalks and in crosswalks to wait respectfully. When we reached the Bigelow Covenant Presbyterian Church, the entire center section of the sanctuary had been roped off for the family. Great Aunt Livvy, her expression suitably pious, joined me, Willie, and John alongside dozens of Bigelows in the pews.
“Will you look at that,” she whispered behind her lace folding fan. There was no way anyone could not look. On one end of the communion table sat an ornate brass urn. On the other end was a large portrait of Murial painted sixty years ago, when she was kicked out of the debutante ball at the Piedmont Driving Club in Atlanta. She wore a slinky gown cut down to her, well, her piedmont.
Willie, sitting between me and his father, turned and gave me a toothy smile and a thumbs up. Great-Grandma was a babe, he mouthed. Murial, wherever she was, had to be grinning outright at the reaction of the mourners. They weren’t sure whether to laugh nervously or frown in horror.
“Where’s the casket?” whispered Great Aunt Livvy.
“No casket,” I answered. “She was cremated.”
Aunt Livvy was too shocked to reply.
The services started, formal and reverent. Prayers were spoken. Hymns were offered up by members of the choir with voices so professionally trained that they could have joined the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Finally, friends and family members were invited by the minister to come forward and say a few words.
“Are you going to say something, mother?” Willie asked.
“No, I—”
“I told everyone that you would,” John said and looked at me with quiet challenge. Get up and show them you belong here, his look said.
Willie persisted. “You liked Grandmother Muriel, didn’t you, and she liked you?”
That was true. Muriel had schemed with me to defy Bigelow snobbery from the day I married John. I hugged my son and nodded. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it? You’re right.”
I stood. Every eye was on me, including John’s, as I made my way to the aisle and up to the front of the church. I almost chickened out but looked at Murial’s portrait again and saw that devilish glint in her eyes.
All right, Grandmother Murial, I’m up with this. Word. I hope that your urn is big enough for more ashes because after this speech, I may be toast.
I faced the audience. I looked at John, and at Willie, sitting beside him like a miniature shadow of his father. They were so much alike. I nodded to Great Aunt Livvy and suddenly understood what she’d been trying to teach me. Sometimes, respect for the dead means respect for the living. I stared at all the cool-faced Bigelows staring back at me. Even when they don’t deserve it.
“Grandmother Muriel was a special woman who gave little pieces of herself to everyone. She’s gone now, but she lived a good life—on her terms. I salute her, and I thank her for accepting me.” I grinned at the racy portrait. “Miss Murial, wherever you are, I hope the music’s loud, the food is good, and the men are buying you margaritas.”
Almost every Bigelow in the audience scowled at me, but John and Willie smiled, and that was all that mattered. Af
terwards, I left Willie with John in Bigelow while I drove Great Aunt Livvy up to Hattie’s house in Yonder. But we had just stepped onto Hattie’s front porch when Miss Ida dropped Willie off. Willie looked subdued. “If I hang around with Dad too long, I miss him more when I leave,” he explained. “So I got Miss Ida to bring me home. I told Dad I had to find out if you were gonna say something weird at Cousin Hattie’s funeral, tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, my throat tight. “I’ve been weird enough, already.”
“Of course you are,” Great Aunt Livvy snapped in double denture time. “What was appropriate for Murial Bigelow is certainly appropriate for Hattie.”
I didn’t argue. I’d learned enough about respect for a lifetime.
The hard dirt of Hattie’s yard had been swept clean. It had become a parking lot filled with pick-up trucks and sedans around whose open doors gathered clusters of strangers.
“Now, what we do, Willie,” Great Aunt Livvy explained, “is welcome the family members.”
“Great Aunt Livvy,” I remind her, “we are the family members.”
“Then we let everybody console us.” Her dentures clicked in somber step. “Then we go to the coffin and pay our last respects.”
“And then we eat?” Willie asked, an old hand at funerals now.
I took Willie’s arm, and we followed Great Aunt Livvy indoors, listening for tambourines. According to Great Aunt Livvy, viewing a body in the deceased’s own living room isn’t morbid. It’s an excuse for a mini-reunion of old friends and family to share stories, a remember-when kaleidoscope of the past. So we politely allowed ourselves to be consoled, then we ate and listened to stories about Hattie’s life as a young woman.
Hours passed. People began to drift away until late in the afternoon it was just me, Great Aunt Livvy, and a few ancient neighbors. “She was the prettiest girl in Yonder,” one elderly man confided. “I was sweet on her myself.” His voice dropped. He looked around furtively, then whispered, “But she never had eyes for nobody but Ronnie Bigelow.”
My ears perked up. I was glad Willie had fallen asleep in Hattie’s bedroom listening to the latest rap CD on his headphones.
“Shush that loose talk, Bart Smith!” Great Aunt Livvy snapped, slapping her hand to her mouth to restrain her escaping upper plate. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Ain’t nothing ill about my speaking. The only ill was that the Salter family kept them two apart. Just think what might have happened if they’d run off and got married before Ronnie went off to fight in the Big War.”
I looked at Great Aunt Livvy with questions in my eyes.
“Nothing would have happened,” she insisted. “And the Salter family had nothing to do with it. Hattie was a lot like Muriel Bigelow. She always went her own way. Doesn’t matter, anyway. Ronnie died in Europe—Christmas 1942.”
“Yeah,” Bart said, “and Hattie spent the rest of her life alone—grieving for him.”
That news sent me to the back porch, where I sat on the steps in the cold, staring up a small pinecone wreath Hattie had hung from the rafters not long before she died. It occurred to me that maybe she hadn’t been celebrating Christmas, she’d been celebrating the man she secretly loved and lost.
I married a Bigelow and lived to regret it. Hattie didn’t marry one and spent the rest of her life grieving. All because the Salter women were doomed to make bad choices, especially when it came to Bigelows.
But had I made a bad choice? I was a Salter who’d felt out of place at Muriel’s services, but I suddenly felt even more out of place at Hattie’s. I missed John’s arm supporting me, and the feel of his hand on my back. I’d watched Willie with his dad today and felt his pain when he had to leave him. For years, I’d told myself Willie wasn’t being damaged by our strange marriage. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
The back screen door opened. I knew who it was even before he spoke.
“You know,” John said, “Hattie was just as tough as you are, Suzy. And, so, I’m beginning to think, was my Grandmother Muriel.”
“What are you doing here?” I said that softly, not accusing.
“I came to show my respect for your family. The Salters don’t have a corner on the respect market. May I sit down beside you?”
No! I wanted to say. We’ll only make more mistakes, and hurt each other, again. But I couldn’t. Something had changed, and I wasn’t sure what. Instead, I whispered, “Yes.”
He carried a paper cup and a plate full of Jesus cake, balancing it on one hand as he lowered himself next to me. He licked some icing off his fingertips. Neither of us said anything for a moment, as if he were waiting for me to set the terms of his encampment. “Tell me what you know about Hattie,” I finally said. “I just found out she was in love with a Bigelow.”
He nodded. “Here’s another secret—something Great Aunt Livvy says I can tell you, now.” He hesitated. Then, “Ronnie and Hattie got married the night before he shipped out.”
I gaped at him. “Married?”
“Yes. She inherited his share of the Bigelow Banking Company, despite every effort his family made to take it away from her. She used part of the money to build the Faith and Forgiveness Baptist Church. She gave the rest to other charities. The Bigelows could have killed her.” He smiled. “Wasting money like that.”
“How long have you known this story?”
“Grandmother Murial told me not long after you and I separated. She said Salter women are stubborn and proud—but they don’t stop loving a man, once they’ve chosen him.”
My throat worked. “Did you believe her?”
“Not right away. Too much Bigelow in me.” He smiled wearily. “Too much pride.”
“What do you think would have happened if Ronnie had come back from the war? Would he and Hattie have been caught up in the old feuds and differences? Would the Bigelows have disowned her for being from Mossy Creek?”
He jutted his chin forward as he always did when confronted with a problem. “I don’t know. I’d like to think he and Hattie would have made a go of it, but I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think they would have. She married the man she loved, and he loved her, and that would have been enough.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Simple. The name of the church she founded with his money. Faith and Forgiveness.”
“I never thought about that, before. But it occurs to me that my grandmother was right about Salter women. You don’t need the Bigelow name and money. You’ve been determined to make it on your own. And you have.” He paused. “But does that mean you can’t be my wife? And that I can’t take care of you?”
I cleared my throat, and then, trembling, I asked him the hardest question I’d ever considered, one that dogged the back of my mind for five years. “John, did you have something to do with my business loan to buy the Mossy Creek Gazette?”
Slowly, he nodded. “Don’t be angry. I wanted you to have a chance to prove yourself. And I knew it was the only way you’d stay in Mossy Creek.”
“And you wanted me to stay?”
“I did. John, Junior—sorry, I mean Willie—is my son. Our son. I wanted him close by. And, I wanted you close by. You don’t know how much I missed you, Suzy. How much I still miss you.” That statement shocked me into silence. He straightened, and stared out into the night. His throat worked. “But I won’t give you a hard time any more. If you still want a divorce, I’ll give it to you.”
After all this time, his offer came as a surprise. Finally, I managed to ask, “Why are you saying all this, now?”
“Great Aunt Livvy convinced me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She says maybe the star-crossed love affairs between Salter women and Bigelow men should end with us. Maybe she’s right.”
From somewhere in the forest came the cry of a fox, followed by the joyous call of its mate. Star-crossed love affairs? I answered him the only way I could. “You know I can’t let y
ou off this easy.”
There was a long moment before he said, “Do you mean about getting the divorce or being mad about the business loan?”
“Either one. I’m a Bigelow because that’s my son’s name. But I’m a Salter, too. I’ll always pay my own way, but unless you want a divorce, I think I’ll leave things the way they are.”
We both knew what I was trying to say. His eyes warmed, and relief washed over me.
“Well, Suzy,” he said softly.
Laughter broke out in the house behind us. It was obvious that Great Aunt Livvy had been right; this wasn’t a time to mourn but a time to share good memories. Stories about families, their joys, their sorrows, the very pain and laughter that held them in this place. Stories that didn’t change, even as life moved forward.
“Want some Jesus cake? It’s pretty good.”
He held out the plate. He’d managed to carve out the Jesus in purple icing. From inside the house came the sound of a tambourine and a banjo. I knew I was teetering between my old ways and the new. Arguing with my husband to stay married when I wasn’t sure where we were headed wasn’t fair to him. Still, Salter women don’t give up.
“Sure. I’ll have some cake, but only if we warm up with moonshine while we eat it,” I said, my teeth chattering in the cold. I sounded like Great Aunt Livvy.
“Brought that too,” he said and held out the paper cup.
As I reached for the cup, I looked up at Hattie’s little wreath. You kept loving him, and you survived. John took a bite of the cake then held it to my lips, and I took a nibble, too. We looked at what was left. The Jes was missing from Jesus. All that was left was us.
I raised the cup of moonshine. “Here’s to the Salter women and the men who are crazy enough to marry them.”
John nodded. “And here’s to you and me, Suzy. I only hope our Willie will learn from us and get it right.”
“He can’t miss,” I said. “It’s in the genes.”
John and I spent the most wonderful night together, and went to Hattie’s funeral together, the next day. We realized we shouldn’t try to live together—at least not anytime soon—but we’re happy enough, just visiting. I decided to start a new hobby.