by Doug Burgess
Grandma catches sight of a mockingbird escaping its nest in the willow tree above and laughs. “Go on, you old hen!” she calls after it, while the rest of us stare at our shoes. “Go on south! Winter’s coming, and it’ll be cold as a witch’s left tit from here to Bangor. If I was an old hen, I’d fly south too!”
The choir takes this as a cue and breaks into a decent a cappella “Blackbird.”
The well-groomed couple stands too near the grave. The husband could be a professional mourner, so deeply felt appears his grief. But his wife takes surreptitious glances at her watch. I can feel the attention they are attracting, not all of it welcome. Aunt Constance clears her throat meaningfully. The husband notices. He whispers something and they retreat tactfully back into the crowd.
Suddenly I find my throat closing up and the unmistakable prick of tears. They are not for Aunt Emma. They are for me, for the body I left behind and this new one that I barely recognize or understand. For Grandma, caught like a ghost between a past that suddenly seems very real and a present that is slipping away. For my mother, whose funeral I never saw because Dad thought it would be too upsetting. She just left to get groceries and never came back. After the funeral Dad went back to his ship, and I moved in with Grandma and Grandpa. But for weeks Grandma was prostrate with grief, and Grandpa was out on his boat, so it was Emma that came every day and made my breakfast, packed my school lunch, made sure my hair was combed and my shoes laced up. And it was she who finally told me that my mother had gone and would not be coming back, and held my small, furious body as I fought against that truth. So maybe these tears are for Emma too, a bit.
* * *
We hold the wake at Grandma’s house, since Emma’s is too small. Every proper New England home has a ghost, and Grandma’s is so big it has two. Captain Barrow lurks around the parlor, not far from where his portrait hangs above the fireplace. Everyone in the family has seen him at some point, including me. He sits in a large wingback chair and stares into space, a grim, lantern-jawed man in a blue coat whose brass buttons twinkle in nonexistent firelight. I caught him there at Thanksgiving one year and came back to the dining room asking Grandma why the nice man had to eat his meal out in the front room. “Why don’t you invite him to join us?” Grandma answered. But when I tried to relay this invitation, he was gone.
The second is less forbidding but antic. Grandma calls it the Hired Help because it likes to fling pots and pans around and occasionally turns a hand to light housekeeping: switching on the vacuum cleaner at two in the morning, throwing open the kitchen windows in January to let in the fresh air, turning up the gas burners with empty pots atop them. I once asked Grandma if the Hired Help might actually be Captain Barrow himself, but she was appalled at the idea.
“A fine, dignified gentleman like the captain would never mess about in the kitchen,” she scoffed. Her own theory was that it was a kitchen maid who had served when Great-Grandpa William was a small boy and threw herself in Briggs Marsh after the family discovered she was pregnant.
Today, as guests file in from the funeral, the house looks just the same as it always has. This used to be comforting, but now it’s sad, as though nobody told the house the bad news. All my grandmother’s things are waiting for her to come back: the oversized wooden spoon above the range, Norman Rockwell plates, a winsome ceramic owl on the banister. Why owls? I used to wonder. What was this mid-century fascination with decorative owls? I remember as a kid every house had them. If someone didn’t, you almost wanted to ask what happened to it. Now I see them in the junk shops on Wickenden Street, knitted owls and porcelain owls and macramé owls with button eyes.
Somebody had the foresight to turn on the furnace, so the old radiators hiss and gurgle. The house is stiflingly hot. Aunt Constance and Aunt Irene hand out sandwiches, and Grandma sits in her rocking chair. Emma’s family came down from Fall River. Two elderly cousins and several flat-faced middle-aged second cousins. The men are heavyset and jowly; the women have that hard, lacquered look that is incomplete without a cigarette dangling from the lips. Emma didn’t bother much with blood kin, it appears. Aunt Irene plies them with gin and tries to engage them in conversation, without success. The elderly look uncomfortable, but their children find a quiet corner and begin to talk to Mr. Perkins about the will.
“Vultures,” says Aunt Constance, passing by with a tray. “Tuna or liverwurst?”
Constance Heckman, Irene Belcourt, and Maggie Hazard are now the three surviving members of the Laughing Sarahs. Aunt Emma was a member, too. The Sarahs meet in the back parlor of my grandmother’s house, the one next to the kitchen that’s really a pantry, every Saturday. The name is a Protestant joke. The Lord came to Abraham and told him his wife, Sarah, an old woman, would soon be with child. Sarah burst out laughing. Puzzled and a little annoyed, God turned to Abraham and asked, “Why did Sarah laugh? Does she think I can’t make her pregnant or something?”
“I didn’t laugh,” said Sarah.
“Oh, yes, you did,” said God.
This story might be mangled in the telling, but it makes a great deal of sense. Sarah was like an old Yankee, no nonsense about her. She took the news much the same way my grandmother would have, or any of her friends.
The Laughing Sarahs began as a social club composed of married ladies for whom God’s little miracle would be a similar surprise. Grandma, Constance, and Irene even own a company, New England Wrecking and Salvage. Aunt Constance founded it with Uncle Phil, Irene’s husband, and Grandpa Mike, but they’re both dead. The widows took it over with Constance at the helm. Not much changed. They still operate out of the same converted boathouse down at Dowsy’s Pier, with a sign over the door that never quite conceals the ghost of SALTY BRINE’S BEST LITTLENECK CLAMS in washed-out gray beneath. The front office is the “shop,” where Grandma, Irene, and Constance have their desks. The boathouse fans out behind and has a sexy history: it was built during the war to house submarines, one of a dozen or so secret bases along the New England coast. It’s a long, narrow tin structure with a flat roof and corrugated sides. The interior still has the old gantries and concrete slabs, even the original klaxon horn to announce when a sub was coming in. I played secret agent there for years.
Aunt Irene is the scout. She drives her ancient Dodge C-Series up and down the coast as far as Fall River, looking for scrap. It has so many dents and bruises that it’s become shapeless, a faded blue dumpster with wheels. Aunt Constance is the skipper of the Eula May, a wrecker that was once a Navy minesweeper during the war. Her two boys, Blue and Petie, act as crew. They scour the coast for abandoned fishing trawlers, pleasure craft, and the like. Hurricane season is a godsend.
Grandma is bookkeeper, or was, until the crisis. These are actual books, green leather ledgers with red penciled lines, along which she carefully notes every pound of scrap metal coming in, every bill going out. As a child, they fascinated me. The books are kept in a tall case behind her desk and go back as far as 1967. I could turn to any page and find her clear, precise handwriting. If one turns to July 20, 1969, the news of the day is not the moon landing but “4.91 tons best steel from scrapping Northern Endeavor. Paid Jim Cobb.” On August 17, 2007, the day my grandfather died, Grandma stopped by the office on the way home from the hospital and reported that the electric bill had been paid, $76.05. But next to this, she drew a small cross in black ink.
This was nowhere near as depressing, however, as what came later. The last ledger is dated this year. Entries are still rendered in a clear, crisp hand, but they make no sense. Who is “J.R.D” and why was he paid $450? What was the “Overlook Prize Commission,” and what did they do to deserve nearly $5,000? Too late, we found out. The scammers had gotten her number. Earnest young ladies got her on the phone and promised instant prize winnings, millions of dollars, trips to Aruba, and free automobiles. All she had to do was pay the taxes. So she did, again and again, entering the sums in the company ledger with
calm certainty of a promise to be fulfilled. By the time Aunt Constance intervened, Grandma had given away nearly $500,000 and New England Wrecking and Salvage was broke.
They are not my aunts, of course. It was Grandma who encouraged the idea. “Say hello to your aunties!” she would say, and gradually they and I got used to it. My father was unperturbed. Little Compton is so small and isolated that everybody is related in some way, so it’s just a question of degree.
The party, if one could call it that, is winding down. People who came for the food have already eaten it and left. Others who came out of a sense of duty have seen that duty fulfilled, and they are next to go. Emma’s family members are staying to hear the will read. I breathe a little bit easier and begin to wonder if Irene used up all the gin. Like a bottle imp, she appears at my elbow.
“Did you see our local celebrities?” she asks, nodding toward the well-dressed couple from the funeral. They stand off by themselves in one corner. The husband pretends to be interested in the books on the shelf beside him; the wife looks bored.
“Is he running for Senate or something?”
Irene chuckles. “Looks like it, don’t it? No, they’re just rich. Name of Rhinegold. Marcus and Alicia.”
“Where are they from?”
She shrugs. “People like that don’t really come from anywhere. They just move from place to place. Came in on a big yacht called the Calliope last summer and liked it so much they stayed. Well, most people would get a beach house near the pier. But Mr. Rhinegold decided he’d rather have the old Armstrong mansion up on Fogland Point.”
I know the place. There’s a pier and a little beach at the base of the hill where children play among the rocks. “I didn’t know that was for sale.”
“It wasn’t. That conservancy owned it for years, but nobody’s lived there since the Cavendishes left. You remember them. I guess Rhinegold made the conservancy an offer they couldn’t refuse. And, as if that weren’t enough, he bought all the land around it—basically all of Fogland Point. Now it’s just one long driveway. But that’s not what got everybody so worked up. They’re going to pull down the house.”
“No!”
“Fact. Rhinegold got some county inspector to declare the place unsound. The crew’s coming in a week from Wednesday.”
The Armstrong mansion is a local institution, a big, gaudy High Victorian with crenellated rooftops and a wrap-around porch. It’s ugly, but of the kind that fascinates rather than repels. When I was a kid it was the most popular trick-or-treat house in town. “Everybody must have been wild.”
Irene nods. “The Historical Association had a few words to say, that’s for sure. They even tried to get the place declared a national landmark, but since nothing’s ever happened in Little Compton that didn’t get very far. Then they tried picketing the shop, but Connie came out and gave them a stiff talking-to, and they went home.”
“Aunt Constance?”
“Well, sure. Who’d you think is gonna do the wrecking? We’ll be up there for a whole week.”
So Rhinegold is not a complete fool after all. He had infuriated the town yet salvaged some of his reputation by hiring the most local of local firms to do the actual dirty work. In fact, I rather admire his nerve. “But what is he doing here?” I ask.
Irene makes a face. “Trying to look like a native, I expect,” she sniffs. “Did you see how close they were standing to the grave? Closer than the family, even! They’ve got a lot to learn.”
I agree, but think to myself that they probably will learn, sooner or later. The rules of a New England town are not hard. Once Mr. Rhinegold gets himself some old dungarees and topsiders, and his wife trades in her Jimmy Choos for a nice comfortable pair of hospital flats, they’ll be just fine. The secret to village life is concealment.
Mr. Perkins puts on his glasses and clears his throat, which means it’s time to read the will. He sits behind the big partner’s desk in the study. Me, the Laughing Sarahs, and Emma’s potato-faced family all gather round. The Rhinegolds melt into the other room; I never see them leave. “The terms,” says Mr. Perkins in his dry voice, like crackling paper, “are perfectly clear. But the execution is rather less so, as you will appreciate. Ahem.” He clears his throat ostentatiously. “I, Emma Lynn Godfrey, of 434 Fillmore Road, Little Compton, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, do hereby in this year of two thousand and eight, by my hand and in front of these witnesses…”
“You can skip all that,” one of the male relatives growls. “Just get to the fun part.”
Mr. Perkins is scandalized. His practice is mostly confined to the shore communities here. Newport is far away; Providence is a foreign country. These Riversiders might as well be Ashanti tribesmen. He clears his throat again. “Yes, well, I suppose we can dispense with the preliminary material. ‘I hereby leave my home and all its contents to my cousin, Minerva Jardyce, née Godfrey…”
“That’s more like it!” the male cousin growls approvingly, rubbing his hands together. The elderly cousin—Minerva, presumably—sighs and shakes her head.
“And all other goods, chattel, and income to my daughter, Arabella Johnson, in the hopes that she might remember her mother fondly.”
There is a long silence. “Arabella Johnson?” someone repeats. “Who the hell is that?”
“Her daughter, obviously,” says Aunt Constance with a wicked smirk.
“But where is she? She’s not here.” The cousins look around, as if Arabella will suddenly pop up behind the aspidistra.
“Efforts are currently being made to locate Miss Johnson,” Mr. Perkins informs them. “Miss Godfrey set aside a portion of the remaining estate to hire private detectives. She was explicit, however, that no efforts were to be made until her decease.”
Something about the way Perkins enunciated that phrase “a portion” hints at great things. “Just how much are we talking about?” the male cousin asks warily.
Now it’s Mr. Perkins’s turn to smile, rather timidly. “After the settlement of all just debts, the liquidated estate is valued at approximately three million, four hundred-seventy-five thousand dollars.” He folds his hands on the desk.
The uproar is immediate. The cousins rise up en masse, crying aloud and shaking their fists. Aunt Irene tut-tuts. Aunt Constance still smiles grimly.
Finally Mr. Perkins bangs the palm of his hand on the table for attention. “Please! Please! Ladies and gentlemen, I beg of you! A little decorum, if you don’t mind. Now, as I said, efforts are being made to find this Miss Johnson. That is her birth name, so she might be married under a different name now—”
“But how could Emma never tell us?” one elderly cousin objects plaintively. He turns to Aunt Constance. “Did you know about this?” Slowly Constance shakes her head.
“Emma…Miss Godfrey, I should say, was adamant that no one should know,” Perkins explains. “The money came from the sale of some properties owned by her father, Ephraim Godfrey.”
“She never said a word,” Irene marvels, shaking her head. “Not one word.”
“Paid all her bills on time, though,” Aunt Constance puts in.
All this rank sentiment at a funeral has the cousins incensed. “That’s all very well,” one of them says nastily, “but what exactly happens if the detectives don’t find this lucky Miss Johnson?”
“Then, after a due process of inquiry, the estate will be awarded to the other legatee, Mrs. Jarndyce.”
“See that, Ma? You may be a rich woman yet,” the cousin says happily.
“Unless,” Mr. Perkins raises a finger, “Miss Johnson is located, or in the case of her decease, any surviving heirs.”
“Bad scran on the lot of them,” one of the female cousins snarls.
Minerva Jarndyce finally speaks. “Emma was a bitch. Five years ago, my boy Stevie was up for assault. No evidence. But she wouldn’t hire a lawyer, wouldn’t ev
en put up parole. He got six years upstate.”
“Where,” Aunt Constance interjects smoothly, “he has so far beat up two inmates, a guard, and the prison chaplain. Emma was no fool, Mrs. Jarndyce.”
“Who the hell are you, and what business is it of yours?”
“No one, and none, Mrs. Jarndyce.”
“I think,” says Mr. Perkins, rising, “that we have covered all the main points. I will, of course, be in communication with you as the search for Miss Johnson progresses. After one year’s time without success, by the conditions of the testator, the remainder of the estate will devolve to the legatee. I trust that’s clear enough?” His only answer is a collective growl. “Very good. Then, in that case, I bid you all a good evening. I’ll show myself out.”
Chapter Three
By nine o’clock, the cantankerous cousins have all left, and the temperature in the living room drops at least ten degrees. It continues to fall. The house is like a freshly dead corpse, halfway between life and corruption. Grandma is still in her rocking chair, sleeping. Each breath releases a tiny puff of condensation into the damp air. It’s easier when she is asleep to pretend that when she wakes up everything will be as it was. This used to be true. She would fall into a doze, the batteries of her mind would replenish themselves, and she would awake with a fresh charge. That lasted until April.
Now the other two surviving Laughing Sarahs are back, with cake. “I was going to bring this out as a surprise,” says Aunt Constance, “but then I saw that family of hers and thought, Nah.” She puts the cake on the coffee table with a possessive thud. Sugar sponge studded with almonds and icing hearts. It looks delicious but decidedly out of place.
“You made it?” I ask.
Aunt Irene laughs. “No, honey, Emma did.”
Is there something ghoulish about eating a dead woman’s last cake? What if Aunt Emma had been reaching for the cake tin, when the cake tin came to her? But Aunt Irene has already handed me a slice. I dip in a fork, thinking I will just have one bite, and realize this is really good. The frosting is buttercream, the cake thick and moist with the tiniest hint of anise, like a wry smile. Emma was always the best baker.