by Joan Barfoot
He speaks the little he knows about Philip Lawrence, gleaned from common town knowledge and from details passed by Sophie to Hendrik Anderson: that he was young for a visit from death; that he was a well-known designer and maker of high-quality furniture; that he had many friends in this town, where he not only lived for the past fifteen years but spent happy summers in childhood with grandparents whose names are old and familiar here. That’s about it. Like a wedding, that other life-altering ritual, it seems the words of a funeral don’t take very long.
But wait, there’s more: the impersonal part, vague but pretty words to do with death itself, and faith, transitions from one aspect of life to another, by which he presumably means the eternal sort, and evolutions of grief from shock to serene or respectful or affectionate memory. “What each person leaves behind when life ends,” is how he puts this. He looks relieved when he comes to an ending himself. “I would now,” he says finally, “invite anyone who wishes to say a few words about the life of Philip Lawrence to do so.”
Oh dear. There’s one of those awkward, shuffling silences before someone does rise, there are footsteps and here’s Dave Hamilton standing with a hand hovering over the coffin, glancing briefly down at it. He begins speaking in the anxious tones of a lawyer summarizing, without notes, the case on behalf of a guilty defendant. “I saw Philip at least once a week, and was always grateful that a person didn’t have to own his work to be his friend, because I sure couldn’t afford anything he made.” Can that be true? He’s a lawyer after all, and lawyers have money, so maybe, in fact, he didn’t really like Philip’s work. “We played poker just about every Thursday for years, but he wasn’t very good and he never got any better. If he had great cards, he couldn’t help smiling, and if he had bad ones, he was too obviously downcast.” Here and there, people chuckle—who knew comic relief, however marginal, would be welcome? Clever Dave. His voice relaxes, he smiles.
“He was bad at bluffing, that was his trouble. But what he brought to our games, besides the money the rest of us won”—more laughter—“was his good nature. He liked a good time, as everyone does, but he also knew how to create a good time, as everyone doesn’t. He was intelligent and knowledgeable about current events—well, as we all know, there’ve been times when he was part of current events, and he even managed to enjoy some aspects of that difficult period. All in all he took pleasure in his life, and gave others pleasure, so it’s especially unfair that he’s gone so early. His chair at our games is going to be hard to fill. We’ll miss his energy and enjoyment. And …” Dave looks down, gives the coffin a smile “… his money, of course.” As if this is just another lost game. Also as if Philip was not actually quite artful about bluffing.
That looks to be it for Dave Hamilton, who heads back to his seat. Now Max is rising and taking his place. He looks at Nora, looks at Sophie, looks around at the rest of the room. “I am here,” he begins, “as friend and admirer, and as someone with great respect for Philip’s attention and care for his work. He created comfort, he understood how important that is, and he also gave comfort to those around him.” This makes better sense. It not only sounds more or less true, but takes Philip seriously, as a serious person. “He understood that the design of his work should be simple and beautiful, but also comfortable, because life is often complicated and not comfortable. This is not a peaceful understanding, but it is a wise one. Those fortunate enough to possess his work should appreciate it in that spirit, as those of us fortunate enough to know him appreciate the fullness and generosity of his presence. He was no more perfect than anyone else, nor in death does he become so, but those who mourn him most profoundly will be sustained by the memory of a man who lived as fully and lovingly as he could, which is a great deal for anyone to leave behind in the world.”
When Max takes his seat, Nora takes his hand. “That was nice. Just right. Did you prepare it?”
“No. I only thought that although those were fine words from that other fellow, we shouldn’t leave it like that.”
Quite right. Time to wrap things up, though—except the minister, evidently insensitive to conclusions and pushing his luck, beams through what he must take to be just another awkward, shuffling pause and asks, “Would anyone else care to add a few words—a friend, a member of his intimate or extended family?” By intimate he must mean Nora; she’s all Philip had. By extended, who knows? Sophie perhaps, or even Beth, if he only means household. Apparently Lynn thinks he means her because here she is, striding as if by personal, heartfelt invitation up to the front, with her bare legs and honey-blonde hair and wide hips and flashing red nails. Nora’s grip on Max tightens. The minister looks pleased, Hendrik Anderson alert, if not alarmed.
“Most of you don’t know me,” she begins, “but in the midst of all this admiration I feel I have a few things to add. In case you don’t know, I was Philip Lawrence’s first wife, briefly but unforgettably, before he ran into his current wife.” His no-name wife. Nora leans forward. “Obviously we haven’t been close for a long time, and I don’t know what sort of man he was at the end—a better one than before, one might hope, although I doubt it—but when we were young I learned a great deal from him.” Lynn’s eyes narrow on Nora before skipping off, her expression as hard as her eyes. “As I’ve already told his last wife, it was instructive to care at a young age for a man of low principles and high desires. Given to whims but incapable of self-discipline. Although I’m surprised to hear he wasn’t better at poker, since he was a very good liar back in my day.
“Some of you will think these aren’t nice things to say about the dead, but I don’t believe you should leave with only one or two points of view. That hardly seems fair to the whole man, such as he was. Philip was more than you saw, and I think you should know that, contrary to some opinions,” and she gives the casket a glance, “there isn’t much in the way of proper love or fidelity in there. Not much of anything, I guess, in the end.” She stops, she regards Nora again. Her lips and hands are trembling as she considers the entire front row of women, and Max, and off she goes, sandals clip-clopping past everyone, right out the door.
Well. That was a moment. There’s a long silence, then shuffling and a man’s voice saying, “Excuse me,” and another departure. Good husband Bill, it must be. Will it have come as news to him how bitterly attached Lynn has been to Philip all these years? How passionately, it turns out, she still cares? That her attachment and passion are negative hardly matters. Bill will be wondering—oh, Bill will be wondering quite a few things. Meanwhile, Lynn’s performance has pretty much sucked the air from the room. Who will restore it?
Step up, Nora.
She had no intention of doing this, but she’s the only person in the room who can, wife-wise, widow-wise, trump Lynn. And Philip stood up for her and she has that favour to return. And although it keeps shape-shifting, and so is hard to keep adapting to and stay on top of, this is Philip’s day. For all these reasons, Nora finds herself standing at the front, her turn beside the casket, wearing a small, crooked grin. What a lot of faces!
What a lot of very interested faces.
“That’s a tough act to follow,” she begins. “But I must say, it occurred to me while Lynn was speaking how much Philip would have enjoyed this. Obviously I disagree with her about one or two matters, not least that beyond what Dave and Max have already said, Philip was in fact a very good husband; for me, if not necessarily,” she lets a smile drift over Sophie, “for anyone else. We had a good time for a lot of years, although nowhere near enough years, and one of the many ways I’m going to miss him is that later today we’d have had some great laughs talking about this. He’d have liked knowing how much people cared about him one way or another, and he’d be pleased to have stirred things up right to the end. Nothing could be more perfectly Philip.”
This is, generally speaking, not entirely true. Perhaps that’s what Max meant by pride? “I’m grateful you’re all here to say goodbye to our friend. My friend.” Her voic
e crackles. “My dear Philip.” She can’t say any more; she casts a glazed, lost glance around the room. Max rises and takes her hand and leads her back to her seat.
Hendrik Anderson clears his throat, fending off further disastrous ministerial invitations to speak. “Yes, thank you everyone. Let me bring this service to a close now with an invitation to silent prayer and farewell as we wish Philip Lawrence godspeed. There is a book of acknowledgements in the front vestibule for anyone to sign who hasn’t already done so, and there are refreshments in the main room off the vestibule. We hope you’ll be able to stay and visit with each other and share more of your memories.”
The music Nora and Sophie finally chose yesterday is no Tom after all, but a Leonard—a Cohen song they agreed would suit all of them, Nora and Sophie and Philip. “It’s very long,” Sophie said, “but beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not exactly funeral music.”
“No.”
Now, after a service in which music must constitute only the most minor shock and surprise, the opening bars of “Dance Me to the End of Love” commence their grim lilt. Hendrik comes to lead them out, and when they stand, there is the strangest, most intimate moment: these two women Nora and Sophie would, if they could, float in each other’s arms around Philip Lawrence in his plain box, they would dance light-footed up the aisle past all the staring people and out the doors and down the street to the words of “Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long” for Nora, “Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in” for Sophie, “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin” for Philip, Phil.
They do not do this. They proceed sedately up the aisle past all the people, followed by Beth and by Max, and when they reach the large foyer, the song still surrounding them, Nora whispers, “I could leave now and feel we did the right thing and it’s finished.”
“Yes,” Sophie says. She notes a new, generous aspect to Nora’s we.
There’s no leaving yet, though. Hendrik is drawing them into the waiting reception room with its urns of coffee and tea, its tiny cream-cheese and egg salad and ham sandwiches and half-slices of banana bread. People drift in, although a few are making good their escape, following the example set by Lynn and Bill, who must have sped out of the funeral home and right out of town. Dave Hamilton approaches Nora. “I hope I wasn’t too jokey. I just wanted to say what a good guy he was.”
“Yes, he was. What you said was just fine.”
Dave turns to Max. “I’d have liked to say what you did.”
“Thank you.” Max nods gravely. “I’m glad he had people here who gave him pleasure. Such a troublesome place.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Dave Hamilton glances uneasily at Nora. “But he took things in his stride.” Nora did not, is what she takes him to mean. Whatever Philip needed to take in his stride here, she was at the root of it, she caused it, maybe it killed him.
Well, that’s excessive, isn’t it? But this town has a gift for rubbing her raw. At least her opponents have convictions, however demented or dimwitted or shrill. She finds it hard to forgive this nice, sorrowful friend of Philip’s; but, then, she is not required to forgive, and no doubt Dave Hamilton is unaware of needing forgiveness, so that’s all right, isn’t it?
There is something to what Lynn said: that Philip, for all his support, his easy shoulders and comforting arms, was inclined to take easy routes to his desires, and could be unfortunately relaxed in his principles.
At least Nora is getting her tenses right. Next thing she knows, she’ll be referring to herself, without a blink, as a widow.
She is also an amputee, missing a large, vital, balancing limb—what will she do without him, dancing to the end of love all alone?
She doesn’t suppose deciding a future is a job she can just hand over to Sophie. “Here, you take care of it,” she could say. “You look after my life, I’m tired and my feet hurt and you’re good with details and plans.” Anyway, Sophie is busy with Hendrik Anderson, chatting and nodding, smiling even, for all the world as if they’re exchanging courtesies after a perfectly normal social event.
While Beth appears to be going quietly, publicly nuts.
Will this day never end?
Beth’s pale yellow dress drifts around her as she picks up a plate of tiny sandwiches and begins whirling about the room with a smile of such wolfish intensity that people shift at her approach and smile back very uneasily. Only the bravest person would refuse one of the sandwiches. Now she is back at the table, pouring tea, picking up cups and saucers and handing them about with the same ferocity, only now, along with the unnerving smile, tears are pouring down her face, and she doesn’t wipe them away, doesn’t even seem aware of them. Her nose runs, too, as weeping people’s noses do—an unpleasant prospect, accepting tea from her hands. Although people do. Although they immediately look around for places to set down their cups, and then begin to head for the door.
Beth is clearing the room, she is wrapping things up. Nora ought to be grateful. Max steps forward. He puts a hand on Beth’s arm—puts a hand entirely around her thin arm—gives her a little shake and starts to draw her out of the room. She pulls back, but he frowns, and a frowning Max is formidable. Sophie heads in Nora’s direction, while Hendrik Anderson and the minister move out to the hall where they can shake hands with people as they leave, which is probably where Nora is supposed to be too. Max and Beth sail out swiftly, Max so determined and Beth so light it looks as if her feet don’t touch the floor.
“What a shambles,” Nora says.
“Although you were right, Phil might not have thought so.”
There remains that, it’s true. And the music. Not entirely hopeless, not a total disgrace.
Hardly anybody got to the desserts. There’s still an untouched plate of banana-bread slices, another of small chocolate macaroons. They look home-made. After Hendrik Anderson finishes his work in the basement, does he hurry upstairs to bake?
Nora reaches out for a macaroon at the same time Sophie does, so they bump knuckles. “Still, I’m a bit speechless,” Sophie adds. Which about wraps it up.
When, with everyone else gone from the room, they turn to leave, they find themselves moving arm in arm, slowly. Hendrik Anderson and the minister, who looks to be suffering a little from shock, are shaking hands at the front door. “Thank you,” Nora says to Hendrik Anderson. “I’m sorry if the service went oddly, but I’m grateful you tried to keep it on track. And no one can say it wasn’t entertaining.”
“You’re quite welcome. I expect when you can look back from a certain distance, you’ll decide it was fine, in the sense of being appropriate. It sounds to me as if what you said was right, that he would have enjoyed it himself, and you know, that’s not always the case. Some funerals don’t suit the person at all.”
“Well, this one sure covered the bases.”
“I’ll be in touch in a couple of days, shall I?”
“With the bill?”
“No. Well, yes, but I meant about the remains. Whether you’ll want to keep them yourself, or if we should arrange a cemetery burial, and then there are different types of containers to choose from. But there’s no need to discuss all that now. I’ll contact you when it’s more appropriate.”
When Philip is a few handfuls of ash. How much does a big man amount to, reduced? What is his colour then, what is his texture?
What possible forms does he take?
“We won’t need to discuss it,” Nora says. “If you could send the ashes along in a box with your bill, that would be fine. I don’t want things dragging out.”
He bows slightly, as he did when he helped her out of the car—only an hour ago? Time twisting again. “As you wish.” For a few minutes it felt as if he almost liked Nora; now it seems he doesn’t again. As they separate, it’s Sophie whose arm he holds, walking back to the car. They can see Max and Beth, both in the front seat this time with Beth wedged between him and the driver. Hendrik holds back, letting Nor
a move ahead on her own. “This may be inappropriate,” and he turns his human, kitchen-and-living-room, non-funereal face up towards Sophie, “but I wondered, would you mind if I called you?” Well. Yes. It is inappropriate. Particularly for an undertaker, his timing is shockingly bad. Although, of course, from his perspective it’s not as if he’s asking the widow. And it’s not as if he would suppose anything’s out of bounds after that funeral.
“I’d like that.”
Now two women in black, one in pale yellow, travel in a large black car homewards from Philip Lawrence’s funeral. For Beth there’s no whirl graceful enough, no tea powerful enough, no winner’s smile brilliant enough to undo what she did. Who is she to be now? Sophie is restless, vividly conscious of moments that divide, like being in a plane, shifting rapidly overhead from one landscape to another. Now what?
Nora’s inattentive gaze is turned inwards rather than out at the tidy houses and streets of this town. She is preoccupied with various notions. If Max is right about the beloved dead speaking up, Philip will have something to say, which she can hope will be something sympathetic and clever and amusing and useful, but she’ll do what she does anyway, if only because now there are no reasons not to, no brakes whatever. She’ll have to be careful, though. Directions will need to be clear before she begins. Visions, like Beth’s teas, have to steep; and like Beth’s teas, they may turn out pale, dark or crimson, it all depends not just on shapes and materials, colours and textures but also, of course, on the main thing: intentions.
Fifteen
And so winds down the third day since Philip Lawrence died presumably, possibly, in his fortunate sleep. “Now comes the harder part,” says Max as the black car glides to a stop in front of the house.
How different the place looked the first time Nora saw it. Ramshackle and begging for work, for one thing. Full of hope and rampant possibility, a home for fresh starts for another. Now it could be a house she has never been in and knows nothing about; a shelter for strangers.