The Lawlers moved to Mattagash when Ed’s father was offered a job teaching the fourth grade. It was a long way for him to come, but rumor had it he couldn’t get a job teaching anywhere else. There was some hint in his letters of recommendation of irregular activity involving a young female student in his Current Events class. In Mattagash, nevertheless, he was offered the principalship at the elementary school. Later, Ed Lawler inherited the job from his father. He was teaching fifth-grade history at the time and was really the best successor, having lived with the job of principalship just by being his father’s son.
“When she graduates from high school,” Ed said, “we’ll send her off to some professional school that will take her. She might even manage to find a husband who has a job.”
“Oh, Ed, I don’t know. Pearl went off with that goal in mind. She thought she’d bagged a lawyer and ended up with an undertaker. You just can’t tell what you’re marrying nowadays.”
“Pearl couldn’t tell bird shit from bear shit,” Ed muttered.
Sicily silently compared the two substances. Other than the obvious difference in quantity, she herself wondered where the demarcation lay.
Ed went out to mow the lawn. Sicily watched from the kitchen window as he lumbered back and forth with the push mower, a tinker toy in his big hands. He stopped to light up a Lucky Strike and wipe the sweat from his forehead. She worried about his health. The fat that had gathered around his middle must surely be taxing his heart. He smoked two packs of Lucky Strikes a day, and the only exercise he got was an occasional outing with the lawn mower. Sicily had always believed that Ed Lawler was a victim of his environment. He didn’t fit in with the rest of Mattagash. The other men in town made their living in the woods, cutting and selling lumber to contractors who sold it to the big paper companies downstate, which in turn sold it to furniture companies in New England. The trees around Mattagash saw a lot more of the world than the people did.
Sicily was sure that if Ed were living in the city with a good office job he would be a different man. He would be around city men who weren’t ashamed to wear Bermuda shorts and sunglasses. In the city Ed would have the opportunity to develop as a sportsman, playing tennis and golf each week with other men. In Mattagash, if they even mentioned golf, they called it “gulf,” like the gasoline, and all they cared to do was pitch horseshoes in the field above the gas station. The main entertainment occurred each year at the Fourth of July picnic when the festivities included log rolling, log sawing, tree limbing, pulp peeling, and pulp stacking. And Sicily couldn’t see Ed Lawler running atop a moving log, much less climbing a tree.
Now here was Amy Joy, about to become involved with Chester Lee Gifford, who not only was a lumberjack but could barely hold a job lumbering for more than a month without being fired. Chester Lee had gone so far as to buy himself a chain saw on credit and then went off to work for himself as an independent cutter on some wooded acres of Gifford land. He lasted two days. The joke around Mattagash was that he had fired himself. But what really happened was worse. He sold the chain saw after having made only one payment and bought a bus ticket to Bangor so that he could buy Elvis Presley’s latest record and get a professional massage.
Sicily envisioned Amy Joy living in the Gifford house that was already bulging with daughters and grandchildren, the latter of which were not all legitimate. Her Amy Joy, helping to bring more little Giffords into a world of petty crimes and occasional arson.
“I should go on Queen for a Day and tell this,” thought Sicily. “I’d make that little needle go straight through the floor.”
Having Pearl around for a few days would be a consolation. She needed someone to lean on. A sister was the best answer to problems like these, and Marge wasn’t the type to confide in even before her illness. Sicily loved Marge because she had been told it was a sin not to love your family members. She never questioned this. Marge had been something of a tyrant all her life, growing worse as the years went by. Ed used to say all she needed was a bottle of whiskey, a room in the Watertown Hotel, and Paul Bunyan for one night. But it was deeper than that, Sicily sensed. There had been a young man at one time in Marge’s life, and then he wasn’t there anymore. Sicily, thirteen years younger than Marge, was only seven the summer he stopped coming to court. But she sensed, as a child can, that a change had come over Marge. Something took hold of her and never let her go again. Even now Marge was in its grip.
Sicily had never been told the circumstances of Marge’s young man, and she had never asked. Now she was sorry for that. Maybe Marge had been angry all these years because no one bothered to talk about the one thing she wanted to talk about. That happened in small towns. Everyone discussed a person’s business with everyone but the person in question.
When Edward Elbert Lawler came into Sicily’s life, he seemed to her a godsend. But Marge battled to have him removed from the picture forever. It was the only thing Sicily ever fought Marge about, and she fought her by retreating from her. She stopped speaking, stopped going outside the house, even to get the mail. The day she called Daigle’s Hardware Store and ordered a sack of rat poison to be delivered to her door, thirty miles away, Marge sensed a malady too big to handle and relented. Ed Lawler became the brother Sicily always wanted, the father she hardly knew.
The Reverend Ralph C. McKinnon had not been a good father to his daughters because he thought of them as members of his congregation. His religion was a delirium he caught from his own father at the age of seven, and he never shook it until it killed him. Dying of kala-azar in China was the high point of his life. It was the rare bone archeologists spend their careers digging for. The experiment that finally pays off for the scientist. When the Reverend left for China, he left twenty-four-year-old Marge as mistress of the house and she answered the call with vigor. The girls found a peacefulness in their lives after their father disappeared down the road, sitting stiffly in a neighbor’s horse and carriage.
Edward Lawler was a good prospect for a young girl. He was a class apart from the men in Mattagash. He once took Sicily to Watertown to see a college play and then to look at a photographic exhibit at the library. It touched her deeply. It brought a world to her doorstep that she had only imagined, and the taste of it was enough to turn her head. She was too naive to realize that he knew almost as little of plays and photography as she did, that he borrowed those things to impress her. But impress her he did. Sicily gave in to Ed Lawler on the soft sawdust that had piled up behind the Mattagash Lumber Mill, gave in to talk of the New York Times and the Statue of Liberty and Broadway. He promised to marry her and did when she was eighteen, not because he had really meant to, but because she told him she was in the family way. During her regular menstrual period she came up with a story of wicked cramps and a heavy flow, saying, “I must have lost the baby.” But she never doubted that Edward Lawler had guessed the truth. She was almost thirty-three when Amy Joy was born and it was only then that she stopped being afraid. The first time she picked up her baby daughter and held her, she knew that it would be them against him. And it was. He drifted further into obesity and school board meetings that lasted until one o’clock in the morning.
With Amy Joy for an ally, Sicily found it easier to digest Marge’s rantings and what the McKinnons considered a lack of culture amid the mosquitoes and horseshoe tournaments in Mattagash. But now she was faced with losing that ally, and not because Amy Joy had turned into a woman and was ready. She was losing her because Amy Joy had turned out so badly, because it seemed there was nothing hopeful to be found inside her.
“She’s becoming a real dipstick,” Sicily thought. “But I’ll save that child yet, if I have to battle Chester Lee every inch of the way.”
Amy Joy called from Marge’s to say that the doctor had phoned and would be late for his daily visit. There was a childbirth case that needed attending.
“Funny,” Sicily told Amy Joy. “They’re dying in one plac
e and being born somewhere else.”
“Can I go swimming?” asked Amy Joy.
“Where?”
“By the Mattagash Bridge where everyone goes.”
“With who?”
“Kids.”
“What kids?”
“Just kids. What are you? A cop?”
“I want to know what kids.”
“Cindy.”
“Cindy who?”
“Oh, Mama.”
“Cindy who?”
“Cindy Freeman.”
“Be home for supper,” said Sicily and hung up. Ed came in just then, his face red with exertion.
“Christ, it’s hot for September!”
“You’re overworking is all. I’m afraid you might have a stroke someday, Ed, pushing that mower around like you’re still twenty years old.”
“I’ve got life insurance.” He dropped down into the beige leather armchair in the living room and lit up a Lucky Strike.
“You need to at least sharpen the blades on that thing.” Sicily brought him a glass of Kool-Aid.
“You could bury me in the backyard and find a new husband before the sun goes down.”
“Let me get Marge buried first.”
“Maybe you could get a discount from Marvin Ivy by buying two coffins at once.”
“Sometimes you joke at the blackest things,” Sicily said, thumbing through her Hershey’s 1934 Cookbook. She needed to plan the menu for when Pearl arrived. There was no restaurant in Mattagash, and rather than see them drive the thirty miles to Watertown, she would take upon herself the responsibility of feeding them.
“Does Pink Tahitian Salad sound too gay for a time like this?” she asked Ed, who was watching television and didn’t answer.
Sicily spent the afternoon baking. The kitchen table held pans of brownies, cupcakes, and cookies. A double layer chocolate cake sprinkled with glittering bits sat like a king in the midst of the other baked goods. Ed had gone upstairs to snooze, but at eight o’clock he came into the kitchen and took a beer from the refrigerator. He had showered and was dressed in a clean shirt and suntan slacks. Sicily could smell his aftershave.
“There’s a meeting tonight about whether or not to raise the teacher’s salaries,” he said and took his car keys from the corner shelf over the kitchen sink and a toothpick from the box sitting on the stove.
“Another meeting?”
“There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s my job.” Ed opened the door and looked back at his wife.
“I’ll drop by Marge’s then and see how she’s doing,” Sicily said. “And make sure that Amy Joy is tucked in safe and sound.”
“I won’t be long,” Ed said and closed the door. She listened to the car door slam, to the engine starting up, the car backing out of the driveway, and the last sounds until it disappeared down the road.
“Any woman but a McKinnon would follow him,” Sicily thought. “Another woman would ask a few questions.”
Sicily walked to Marge’s. It was only a mile down the road and a few minutes to think was just what she needed. There was a harvest moon, a huge orange that dominated the night sky. The thought of Marge dying was brought home. It may have been the spectacular moon. It may have been Ed’s disappearance on a night when she needed him home. Whatever it was, there was an aura of death in the air. For the past three weeks, Mattagash itself had been like a huge graveyard. It had emptied the last week of August for the potato harvest, because independent woodcutters could make good money by converting their pulp trucks to potato trucks with grapples to lift the potato barrels. The majority of families piled their belongings each year onto the backs of their trucks and left Mattagash for four weeks to work for the potato farmers in Caribou or Limestone, seventy-five miles away. It was hard work, but even the youngest children could bring in a salary picking potatoes. The Lawlers and McKinnons were among the very few families who didn’t participate in the harvest, and Sicily was saddened each year when school stopped and the children left with their parents. “It’s just like that story about the Pied Piper who piped all the kids away and left the town empty,” she once said to Amy Joy, who had stayed behind with a few adults for company.
Sicily was thankful that Marge’s lapse hadn’t occurred earlier when the harvest was in full swing. She could see the lineup at the coffin: the elderly, one or two cripples, and children too young to walk. But now that the harvest was almost over, most of the families had packed up their potato money and belongings and come home.
Sicily passed the houses of her neighbors, the yellow lights of their windows, the night sounds of their lives. A radio played in one house, a television in another. The supper forks and knives were being put away in one kitchen. Laughter came from a backyard. The sound of a baby crying floated down from a screened upstairs window. “These are my neighbors at night,” she thought, and she wondered what sounds, what clues might issue from her house at night to a passerby.
At Marge’s there was no porch light on. In the yard Sicily picked up an empty potato chip bag that had been thrown on the ground. There was no doubt that it was Amy Joy’s. The house was quiet. She opened the front door. In Marge’s room the nurse was knitting by the bedside. Sicily waved to her from the door.
“Any change?”
The nurse shook her head. The lamp by Marge’s bed had a sixty-watt bulb. In its light, Marge’s features were gray as marble. Sicily felt as though something was about to burst out of the closets or pound on the ceiling. Something that needed to break the awkward silence. After a few seconds her ears became accustomed to sounds she hadn’t heard before: the soft clicking of the knitting needles, the curtains moving in a faint breeze, crickets beneath the window. An occasional car passed and disappeared in its own sound around the turn.
“It’s very lonely in here tonight,” Sicily said, putting a few strands of Marge’s hair in place. She was struck with how very white her sister’s eyebrows were. “She must have penciled them,” Sicily thought.
“It’s always lonely when someone is dying,” the nurse said.
Amy Joy’s room was empty. It was the guest room on the south side of the house. Sicily was shocked at the condition of the room. Dirty panties lay in a pile by the bed. A bra and two belts hung from the door handle. Clothes lay on the bed and covered the wicker chair. Dirty dishes were piled on the nightstand, and by the bed an empty box that had once held a pint of chocolate whirl ice cream sat with a spoon in it. Next to it, an empty Coke bottle holding a deflated straw lay on its side. On the bed a True Confessions magazine was opened to a story called “My Husband’s Ghost Saved Me from My Neighbor’s Lust.”
“This is the last straw,” Sicily said and kicked a pair of blue flip-flops that had been discarded in the middle of the floor.
In the kitchen she found dishes on the table with food drying on them. But no Amy Joy. Taking a flashlight from Marge’s utility drawer, Sicily went out the front door and walked past Marge’s dried hollyhocks to the backyard. She listened in the dark for noises. A giggle came from behind the garage. Few people in Mattagash owned garages. The indoor bathroom ranked higher as a necessity than did a warm house for cars and trucks, so if any extra money was found, it went toward indoor plumbing. And if a creature as indispensable as a car didn’t rate a house in Mattagash, a dog might as well forget it.
Sicily walked quietly over to the upper end of the garage and stood there listening. There was more girlish giggling and then something rustled. She got the flashlight ready, waiting for the cue that only a mother knows.
“Amy Joy, loosen up a little,” Chester Lee was saying. “Honey, you’re too stiff.”
“There’s a burdock sticking in my butt,” said Amy Joy.
“Here, put my John Deere cap under you,” Chester Lee said, in what seemed a wonderful display of gallantry to Amy Joy.
“Ouch! It’s sti
ll pricking me!”
Sicily swung around the corner of the garage and blasted the lovers with a beam of light. Their retinas lit up like tiny comets. Amy Joy’s pants and panties were down to her ankles. Her blouse was unbuttoned, bra unsnapped. Chester Lee quickly zipped up his pants and stood, squinting his eyes and holding his hands above his head as though Sicily were wielding a rifle instead of a flashlight.
“OK, miss. Get those clothes on,” Sicily said. In her hands the flashlight did, indeed, exert a gunlike power.
Amy Joy stuck one feeble hand up to shield her eyes. Pulling her blouse about her, she burst into sobs.
“Caterwaul until you wake up the whole town,” said Sicily. “That’s all we need.”
“Me and Chester Lee are getting married,” Amy Joy said tearfully.
“Get to your room. I’ll deal with you in there. Chester Lee, just wait right there a minute,” Sicily said to a retreating Chester. “We got something to talk about.”
Amy Joy was still buttoning her blouse as she trudged toward the house.
“Don’t let her scare you, Chester Lee!” she bawled.
“She don’t scare me,” Chester Lee answered. Then he dodged under the lilac bushes and was lost, like a leprechaun, in the black cover of the night. Sicily did not, in fact, scare him. But the thought of Ed Lawler was enough to make him leave his scarcely used green-and-yellow John Deere cap on the damp ground behind him.
In Amy Joy’s bedroom, there was no sound. Sicily switched on the light. Beneath the blankets and magazines, beneath the discarded clothing and candy bar wrappers, Amy Joy pretended to be asleep.
“You ain’t fooling me one bit,” Sicily said. “A bear in the middle of winter couldn’t sleep after that mess outside.” She poked at the pile on the bed but it didn’t move. She stripped back the covers and found Amy Joy cowering there.
The Funeral Makers Page 4