After the doctor left, Sicily and Amy Joy sat down at Marge’s writing desk, took out her book of family addresses and telephone numbers, and made a list of people to contact.
“We may as well charge this to Marge. It’s her ball game,” Sicily said, dialing her sister Pearl Ivy, who lived with her husband on the top floor of the Ivy Funeral Home in Portland, Maine. Amy Joy leaned over, chin in hands, to hear the conversation.
“Amy Joy, your face is just a smattering of horrible little pimples. Do you have the curse?”
“Nope.”
“Are you late, honey? The heat sometimes does that. And all this excitement doesn’t help.”
“I guess.”
“Well, if it isn’t the curse, have you been eating Hershey bars with almonds again?”
“Nope.”
“Marshmallow cups?”
“I guess.”
“You’re about to come out of your clothes now, young lady. If you’re left with a single tooth hanging from the roof of your mouth, don’t you come crying…Pearl? Pearl, it’s Sicily. How’s your weather down there?”
A nurse had been hired to attend to Marge’s last needs, sponging her forehead and massaging her swollen extremities. Amy Joy stood in the doorway and dangled a pink flip-flop off the tip of one foot. The nurse looked up and smiled.
“A relative?” she asked.
“She’s my aunt,” said Amy Joy. “She gave her life like the great missionaries, to the service of God.”
“I thought the doctor said it was beriberi.” The nurse glanced nervously at the bed in fear that she’d been sitting with the wrong patient.
“She caught it as a sacrifice,” Amy Joy said and blew a pink bubble of gum.
“Oh, I see,” said the nurse and fluffed Marge’s pillow.
“She’ll have a room in heaven now.”
“I’m sure she will, dear.”
“I’m Amy Joy Lawler. My mom is Aunt Marge’s sister. I’m going to be a freshman in high school this fall and travel all the way to Watertown on the bus every day and I can’t wait.”
“I would have taken you for a much older girl,” the nurse said, glancing at the soft mounds beneath the tight blouse.
“Everybody says I look older than fourteen.”
“Yes, you certainly do.”
“We don’t have our own high school yet. We might get one built in 1965 but I’ll be graduated by then. At least I hope.”
“I’m sure you will,” the nurse said. “Just study hard.”
“I got a new boyfriend, too.”
“Aren’t you too young for that?”
“Mama thinks I am, but she don’t really know about him. She just suspects.”
The nurse put a fresh cloth in a pan of water and wrung it out. She folded it and placed it carefully on Marge’s forehead.
“You should listen to your mother, Amy Joy.”
But Amy Joy had already turned away and headed down the hallway to the front door, her tight white pants making soft squeaking noises. She pushed the screen door open and went out to the back porch. Leaning forward, she studied her reflection in a square of windowpane. She slid a rattail comb up from her hip pocket and teased her brown hair a bit on the top. The kiss-me-quick curls on each side of her face had dried, so she removed the bobby pins. The tiny sample tube of lipstick that the Fuller Brush man had let her select was Shocking Pink, to match her blouse and flip-flops. Amy Joy had flip-flops and lipsticks to match every blouse she had. After a bit of trouble squeezing the tube back into her front pocket, she peered again at her reflection to check the results. Inside, Sicily screamed. Something broke into many pieces.
“God in heaven, Amy Joy! Is that you out there with your eyes bugged out?” Sicily was edgy. This was her first planned funeral. In the past, Marge had taken charge of family functions.
“Mama, can I dye my hair?” Amy Joy asked through the screen of the door.
“Let me recover from one shock before you kill me with another one,” Sicily said. She was picking up the shards of a tumbler. Raspberry Kool-Aid was splattered about the kitchen floor. “The least you could do after scaring the daylights out of me is to help me mop this up.”
Amy Joy let the screen door bang.
“Have consideration for your dying aunt, young lady. And watch out for the ice cubes. They’re around here somewhere.” Sicily was on her knees, mopping up the mess. Amy Joy sat on a chair and pulled both knees up to her chin.
“I’ve been thinking of Sensuous Ash,” she said.
“What?”
“Sensuous Ash,” said Amy Joy. “You know, if I was to dye my hair.”
“Watch my mouth as I say this,” said Sicily, who felt the situation was important enough to stop mopping. “If you so much as alter a strand of hair on your head, especially so close to a funeral, if you so much as buy a bottle of Sensuous Ash hair dye to even read the instructions, your father will hear of it. And Amy Joy, do I have to tell you what will happen to you if your father hears of it? You wanting to dye your hair with him being principal of the grammar school. You know what kind of woman dyes her hair.”
“Oh, Mama,” said Amy Joy.
“What’s wrong with your hair?”
“It’s mousy.”
“It is not mousy. It’s wholesome. Besides that, it’s God-given.”
“Who is more wholesome than Doris Day or Debbie Reynolds? And they dye theirs.”
“Who told you that?” Sicily asked with interest. She found one of the ice cubes.
“I read it somewhere,” said Amy Joy, and went out to swing on the back porch.
“And wipe that pink stuff off your mouth!” Sicily shouted after her.
When Sicily went out later to tell Amy Joy that she had called everyone, had checked on Marge, and was now on her way home to cook supper, she found her daughter beaming into the unkempt face of Chester Gifford, who was only inches away from Amy Joy’s own chubby face. When Sicily cleared her throat, Chester jumped as though someone had shot him between the shoulder blades.
“Amy Joy, may I speak to you for a moment, dear?” Sicily held the screen door open as an embarrassed Amy Joy stumbled past her, losing a flip-flop. When she bent to pick it up, there was a loud ripping sound. The seat of Amy Joy’s faithful slacks had finally given in to the stress of adolescent fat.
“Just leave it there, miss,” said Sicily, and kicked the flip-flop to one side. She turned and looked back at their visitor. “Good night, Mr. Gifford,” she said. She let the screen door bang shut and latched it. Then she closed the inside kitchen window and locked it. In case Chester Gifford still didn’t get the hint, she closed the two Venetian blinds in the back windows and snapped off the porch light.
“We’re closed for the night,” she said and turned to Amy Joy, who was studying herself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet on the kitchen wall.
“All right, Amy Joy Lawler. Let’s hear it.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Was that Chester Gifford lurking out there like a thief in the night, or was it not?”
“I guess.”
“You guess, do you? Well, let me tell you that this will be brought to your father’s attention. I’m on my way home now to cook his supper, and Amy Joy, this is one time he will be told.”
“Oh, Mama,” said Amy Joy, and squeezed a pimple.
“Don’t pick at your complexion,” said Sicily. “And you look at me when I’m speaking to you.” Amy Joy turned to look at her mother, a dollop of blood on her chin.
“Now look what you’ve done to your face,” said Sicily, passing her daughter a tissue from her apron pocket.
“It isn’t bad enough that you’re thirty pounds overweight, you have to go around picking at your face. Honey, what’s t
o become of you? Reading True Confessions all day when other little girls your age are reading cookbooks and sewing patterns.”
“Who wants to cook and sew?” Amy Joy asked and turned on the radio Marge had won by punching the lucky name “Perry” on someone’s ticket board. “‘Life gets cold and empty, when your self-respect has died.’” Amy Joy danced along to the music. “‘What does it take to keep a woman like you satisfied?’”
Sicily turned the radio off. “Now you listen to me, little girl. Have you been seeing Chester Gifford?”
“I guess,” said Amy Joy.
“You guess what? Have you or haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Sicily sank into a chair at the kitchen table. Amy Joy snapped one last meager bubble, then tossed the dying gum into the trash can at the end of the stove.
“What’s wrong with Chester?”
Sicily removed more tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. She cleared her throat for the second time that night.
“Amy Joy, you are my only daughter. And you are only fourteen. You’re a baby. I thought God gave you to me as a blessing in my old age, but I swear, it’s getting harder and harder to think of you as a blessing.” Sicily looked at the floor as she spoke. Finally, she chose a time to look directly at Amy Joy, who was leaning against the refrigerator. A piece of tissue spotted with blood was stuck to the ravaged area of skin.
“Take that bloody rag off your face while I’m talking to you.”
“It’s bleeding, Mama,” said Amy Joy, and returned to the mirror to dab at the small volcano.
“Well, don’t pick it then,” said Sicily, raising her voice. This was something she hated to do. Marge was famous for voice-raising and Sicily was determined to pave roads of her own.
“Your friend Chester Gifford is at least thirty years old if he’s a day. And not to mention the fact that he’s been in trouble with the law a dozen times. You are barely fourteen years old, young lady, and he’s a full-grown man with a mustache.”
“Oh, Mama.” Amy Joy was now inspecting the damage done to the seam in her pants.
“‘Oh, Mama’ what?”
“Haven’t you ever been young?” Amy Joy pulled a thread and it snapped.
“Yes, I have been young, but I don’t think Chester Gifford ever was. That man was in trouble when he was a toddler.”
Amy Joy took two slices of bread from the bread box and popped them into the toaster. She found some homemade rhubarb sauce in the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. She poured it directly from the jar to her plate, then licked the drippage with her tongue. She waited for the toast.
“I don’t believe it,” said Sicily. “I don’t believe you would resort to that fattening stuff after our mother-daughter talk the other day about diets.”
The toast popped, Amy Joy buttered each slice, then spooned rhubarb onto one. She bit into the combination.
“All right, Amy Joy,” said Sicily, putting on her sweater and shouldering the strap of her purse. She pointed to Marge’s room.
“I’ve got a sister in that room dying of beriberi. And I leave you here to see to her last needs, and instead you’re gadding about the backyard with Chester Gifford.”
Amy Joy finished the first toast and smeared the second with rhubarb.
“Let me tell you how things stand.” Sicily had found her car keys and was twirling them in her right hand, like they were an oriental weapon. “If you so much as glance at Chester Gifford again, your father will hear of it. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Amy Joy.
Sicily opened the front door. She had the evening paper in her hand to take home and read after a long soak in the tub. Before she closed the door behind her, she looked back at Amy Joy, who had pulled the soggy tissue from her face and was trying to shake it from her fingers and into the trash can.
“If you spoil this funeral for me, Amy Joy Lawler, I will no longer be your mother. Do you understand?”
“I guess,” said Amy Joy.
THE IVY FAMILY COMES TO THE FUNERAL: THE PACKARD AS A HEARSE
“I sincerely believe that the best decision I ever made in my life was the day I bought the Packard.”
—Junior to His Father, 1958
At fifty, Pearl McKinnon Ivy was the middle child of Ralph C. McKinnon’s three daughters. She left home at the age of sixteen to attend the Portland School of Hair Styling in Portland, Maine. It was a long way from Mattagash, socially and geographically, and it was there that she met and became engaged to Marvin Ivy, a law student and aspiring politician. Pearl married him, thinking she had bagged a future lawyer, not to mention the possibilities of a governor or, when she dared to think of it, a president of the United States. But Marvin’s acumen was not capable of carrying such a strict academic load, and he dropped out in his second year, before he flunked out. They had been married only five months and Pearl was eight weeks pregnant with their first child. She suffered a nervous breakdown the day Marvin came home and threw his expensive law books, one by one, into the incinerator in the basement. Standing on the stairs and watching what she felt was a deranged man and not a future president, Pearl said later that all she remembered was a faint buzzing, as though a swarm of bees had flown through her head. For two days, she insisted she had gone blind. That she could only see black. It was the first nervous breakdown to be recorded in the McKinnon family. At least Pearl said it was a nervous breakdown, and never moved from her bed for three months, except to go to the bathroom. The day that the community center burned down, she insisted that Marvin move her to a chair by the window. With her feet on a footstool, she spent the afternoon chain-smoking as she watched the commotion of fire trucks and ambulances. Marvin thought it would jolt her back into the joys of living, but that evening, after the crowd had dispersed and the foundation of the community center was a smoldering pile of water and ashes among the blackened sofas and chairs, Pearl asked to be helped back to bed. Marvin tried to talk sense into her. The night he came home with the news that he had finally made up his mind to join his father in the undertaking business, Pearl covered her ears and said, “That’s the last straw. There’s more bees than ever now. You’ve driven me crazy. Take me to Bangor right now and lock me up with that Holy Roller we read about, who threw his little baby off the bridge because God told him it could fly.”
After weeks of this, Marvin gave up. He had put his best foot forward by going to work for his father, who was the sole owner of Ivy Funeral Home. Certain that the business would one day be his, he soon forgot about law and poured his heart into embalming and burial. Suspecting another woman was the cause of his late nights away from home, Pearl soon abandoned her notions of neurological disorders and concentrated instead on a new nursery. Marvin Ivy Jr. was born healthy and sound, despite his mother’s conviction that the shock of having married an undertaker instead of a president had damaged the unborn baby’s nerve endings. He was their only child. The final blow to Pearl’s self-esteem came when Marvin Sr. moved his family into the rooms above the funeral home, saying that not only would it save them money, but he would be closer to his work. Pearl would have divorced him then had it not been for the baby and the embarrassment of returning to Mattagash with neither a husband nor a hairstyling license. Instead, she went to plan B, knowing that if she lavished all her devotion on Marvin Jr. he would one day grow up to take her away from full caskets and sobbing women. But the plans she made during the many nights she sat up smoking cigarettes were squelched the day that Junior announced he was engaged to Thelma Parsons and would be the third generation of Ivys to partake in the funeral business. In her middle age Pearl was repaid for those years of motherly love when Junior stopped by to drop off his three undisciplined children for her to babysit. “Those kids could wake the dead,” Pearl once said to her husband, whose only reply was, “This would be the place to do it.”
“I smelled death in the air when I got up this morning,” she told Sicily.
“It might be coming from downstairs,” Sicily said in all innocence. Knowing this, Pearl let it pass.
“I just hope we get there before Marge passes on. But even if we don’t, we’ll at least make the funeral.”
“How about the others?” Sicily asked, wondering where she could put up Marvin Jr., his sniveling little wife, and those three heathens.
“Marvin Jr. was just talking about a camping trip with the kids last week. He’s got himself one of them campers with everything you need that you pull behind the car.” Sicily felt a pure relief. She would offer to cook meals for them, but to house the entire group would have been catastrophic.
“And big Marvin and me will get us a nice motel room. At times like this one shouldn’t think about money,” Pearl said. Despite its being a funeral home, it was the only self-owned business in the family.
“That should work out just fine,” said Sicily. She not only had to worry about getting the funeral off to a good start, she also had spent half the night worrying over Amy Joy’s infatuation with Chester Gifford.
The Ivys made their plans. They would make the trip a family vacation, since they’d probably never have another chance while the children were still small. It would be an opportunity for the grandparents to get to know the children. For the mother-in-law to pass her years of household knowledge on to the daughter-in-law. For the son to talk man-to-man with his father about the Ivy Funeral Home and what kind of future the business could expect.
At nine o’clock the next morning, Marvin Jr. tooted the horn of his new green Packard outside the Ivy Funeral Home. Inside the mobile home, the Ivy children were nestled with a stack of comic books, crayons, paper, and their favorite toys.
“Now don’t forget, Cynthia.” Thelma was at the door of the mobile home giving some last-minute instructions to the oldest child, a pudgy girl of ten with two stiff braids sticking out from the sides of her head and tipped with red ribbons. “If you get hungry, just make some marshmallow fluff and peanut butter sandwiches. And there’s milk in that little cooler with the ice. Now keep the door locked from the inside so it won’t open.”
The Funeral Makers Page 2