“Edward Lawler, are you going to spoil our evening together? We don’t have that many, you know, and I had something special planned.” As Violet spoke she pulled several flimsy scarves of various colors from her dresser drawer and began to lay them on the bed. “In the three weeks we’ve been seeing each other, I’ve never danced for you in person. So, because you’re so special to me, I’m gonna give you a command performance.”
Ed lay a few minutes looking at the candle’s tongue flicking, as though trying to catch flies for food, manna from heaven that had fallen through the very roof of Violet La Forge’s room in the Albert Pinkham Family Motel. He wished he was smoking a cigarette but didn’t want to expend the energy it took to light one up.
“Well?” asked Violet.
“Sure.” He decided the cigarette was worth the bother. And there was beer. It could be worse than this. Much worse. He could be in the middle of his own living room, inhaling the horrible breath of the Ivys that filled the air like embalming fluid. Still on his back, Ed looked over the mound of his stomach at Violet, who was busy entwining the scarves around her body in what seemed to be an ordered sequence, at least in the ballroom of Violet’s mind. He thought how the candlelight was kind to Violet, how the soft flickers washed away the lines not even a thick layer of makeup could cover.
“This is my own dance. I put it all together myself. It’s about Isadora Duncan’s life. Each movement comes from individual feelings, just like she said it should. It’s in three parts.”
Ed slid up on the bed and into a sitting position. It was hard for him to concentrate on Violet’s words. The pain inside him was worse, probably brought on by the entire army of Sicily’s family. Sometimes he thought of the pain as a kind of tumor that grew and sprawled inside his gut, pushing his stomach out so that it hung like bread dough over his belt. It was not beer nor food that had created his body. It was pain.
“The first part is about her life in France and first performance in the United States.”
Inside his body of fat was a college athlete who had worked hard to see his muscles strong and his body toned. For years he swore he would one day go on an all-out plan to lose the weight, would take up some sport again. Maybe basketball. Maybe a hobby that called for a physical workout. He could coach a team of kids in football. No one played football in Mattagash. No one played basketball. There was no gymnasium. No one did anything but work hard, long hours in the woods and drink hard and long on Saturday nights.
“The second part represents the anguish she felt when her two sweet little children were killed in a car wreck.”
There were times, getting out of a chair or a bed, that the slender young man inside could barely lift the heavy body. Then the heart pumped more than it should. The lungs hurt from nicotine. The liver swelled with alcohol. And the truth about himself settled down like lead with such a thud that he hurried to the whiskey bottle in his study, and only with two straight shots tossed quickly down his throat could he quell the demons of regret and free his hands from shaking. It was then that the calm settled in, and the warmth in his stomach allowed him to turn to old yearbook pictures and look down at the confident face of the young Ed Lawler, study the muscled body lines, and think about dusting off his old football the next day and rallying the boys into a game.
“The third part is very sad and is done with this long black scarf. I call it the ‘Scarf of Death’ and it’s about how her scarf got caught in that car and choked her.”
Violet launched into her dance, hands and arms flailing like cobras, scarves aflutter, and when it was over, Ed was only relieved. The first part was almost indiscernible from the last. Only to Violet was there symbolism and interpretation.
“It was lovely,” he told her, and she smiled, looking girlish in the candlelight, gyrating her hips for him as she said, “Thanks.” The dance had stripped her of all the scarves, as though she really hadn’t stripped but simply followed the dance routine. It made her less ridiculous to him. She was naked before him and he looked at her. Her body was holding up well. The exercise it got, in spite of the quality of the dancing, was enough to keep the lines well defined. She sipped only an occasional glass of wine, ate only fruit and vegetables. At forty-six she looked years younger. And that’s what brought him to her. She had served her body, not abused it. That was the power she unknowingly wielded as she did her countless sit-ups and stretching exercises. And when he came to lay his head against her bosom, he ignored the fact that modern dancer or not, she was a stripper in Watertown. Because after the ridiculous scarves had been cast aside the first night he watched her dance, he had seen the body beneath and the respect she paid it, even if it was out of fear of aging, or fear of being too old to make a living. And he came to her on nights when his own terror became too great and it seemed his angry heart was refusing the heavy workload. He came to her and held onto her firm thighs, pressed his heavy belly against her solid one, thinking he was safe. Certain she could save him.
Violet came to sit on the edge of the bed, fanning the cigarette smoke away from her face.
“You hate breathing smoke into your lungs, don’t you?” he asked.
“It’s worth it if it’s your smoke.”
“I should quit.”
“You would if you were happy, and what you need to make you happy is the perfect woman for you.”
“I don’t think there is one for me,” Ed said as he stubbed out his cigarette. “Not unless it’s Aphrodite rising up from her clamshell.”
“Aphrodite? She danced at the Purple Tortoise just before I did down in Boston.”
“I don’t think it’s the same one, Violet.”
“Well, that’s funny because when I was dancing that circuit I ran into this weird dancer who had an act just like that. She carried this record player with her that played only sounds of ocean and waves. I would have sworn that she called herself Aphrodite. She had this big clamshell made out of plaster of Paris, and one night she goes to step out of it, and the side broke and crumbled.”
“Aphrodite broke her clamshell?”
“She cut her foot real bad and tried to sue Dewey. He owned the Purple Tortoise. Dewey said she had a reputation for causing trouble. How did you ever meet her?”
“Trust me, Violet, it’s not the same girl.”
Ed rolled his modern dancer over on her back and pushed between her thighs. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. With the excess weight he carried, everything was becoming a chore, even making love to Violet. He was always afraid that he might be too heavy for her, that he might relax the weight he balanced over her and come crashing down like a house. Touching the firmness of her legs, he felt a sorrowful wave come washing up inside him and before he could stop it, it burst out, and the tears he hadn’t shed since childhood came with it.
A shocked Violet clasped his head to her chest and held him, rocking him, saying, “There, there,” and wiping away tears that ran into the lines of his face. He fell asleep feeling the warmth of her body flowing into his, rejuvenating him.
Only Violet was awake to hear Marvin Sr. unlock the door to number 4. She listened two hours later as Pearl came in and heard their soft voices through the wall as they said good night. With Ed asleep in her arms, she watched the candle burn slowly down until it flickered and went out. She saw traces of dawn come to the window, and wanting to hold the man she loved in her bed forever, she lay as still as she could, not even moving to cover herself with a blanket when cold crept up her arms. But regardless of how still Violet lay, an instinct born from years of marriage, of being bound to the clock, stirred inside Sicily’s sleeping husband, and he came wide-awake, saying, “Jesus Christ, it’s daylight!” and reaching for his shoes.
SICILY SUFFERS THE SLINGS AND ARROWS: PAINS IN THE RIB CAGE
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the
flesh instead thereof; And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”
—Genesis 2:21–22, King James
All night she lay in bed and listened to the crickets, listened to each car that passed on the dark road outside, longing to hear one turn into the yard, to hear Ed slam the door, and then his footsteps downstairs. But each car went on its way, lost in red taillights around the turn. Looking out at the moon, Sicily noticed streaks on the window and scolded herself for not having them spotless while the Ivys were in town. The next day, she promised herself, she would wash them until they shone. The moon floated higher over Mattagash like a slow-moving balloon broken from its string. The river was quieter than usual, being low for September. A good rain would make it sing again. Frogs were awake in the marsh across the field and Sicily listened to their conversations.
“I suppose they got family problems, too. Just like us,” she thought. The house was so silent that she was almost certain she could hear her heart pumping sadly in her chest. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. Ed had never before stayed out until two thirty. Had something happened to him? He could have gone off the road somewhere between Mattagash and Watertown and no one would find him until morning. There were places where there were no guardrails to protect anyone from dangerous banks that dropped down to the river. The state should really do something about it. Two young boys from Watertown had driven off the bank by Labbe’s potato house and into the river. No one found them until the next day when their frantic families went looking for them.
They had taken their girlfriends home from the drive-in movie. So the sheriff started at the girls’ homes in St. Ignace and drove slowly back toward Watertown. That’s when the policeman riding with the sheriff spotted a flash of red in the bushes along the river. It was at that terrible turn in the road that had no guard rails and a fifty-foot drop. The red he saw was the car. The two boys were inside. One had died instantly, the driver hours later. He’d been pinned behind the wheel and couldn’t move. Sicily thought of his mother, living with the knowledge of her son being only a few miles away and trapped, waiting for someone to find him, or waiting for death, whichever came first. They said that boy’s mother woke up at exactly the same time the coroner said he died and she woke her husband and said, “I dreamed of raspberries. Bright red raspberries by the river. We need to go pick them.” And then she turned over and went back to sleep. Two teenage boys taking their dates home. Dead. The state should’ve put up guardrails after that. It was three o’clock and Sicily’s eyes were beginning to feel the lack of sleep. She rubbed them, thinking, “I’ve got to stay awake.” She crawled out of bed and reached for the extra blanket that lay at the foot. The autumn chill moved to her arms and she felt goose bumps spring up.
“Someone’s thinking of me,” she said. Wrapped in the blanket, she pulled her little wicker chair up to the windowsill and looked out again at the night and the narrow road that curved past the Lawler house. At four o’clock she was still waiting, still listening to the night sounds, still hoping one car would shift gears and make the turn into her driveway. But none did.
When the Reverend Ralph C. McKinnon took two suits of clothing and a box of Bibles and went off to save the lost souls of China, she had just turned nine years old. She used to think of China as the place where her mother was waiting for her. Once a little girl at school, trying to wrest a doll from Sicily’s hands, had lost. So she pointed a small finger at Sicily and shouted, “You killed your mama.” Later, she had asked Marge what that meant and Marge, only in her twenties but with the burden of a family, had run into her bedroom and wept for hours. It was after supper that same evening when Marge told Sicily that their mother never recovered from giving her birth and had gone to God when Sicily was only three weeks old. But the Reverend had talked so of China all those years before he finally packed up and went, that China loomed in her child’s mind as a magical place, a place God had moved to in masses, in the forms of sacrificing missionaries. “God is working in China these days,” the Reverend would tell his flock. “God is alive in the rice paddies of China. Our Savior is moving among the heathens of China’s vast lands.” It was obvious to Sicily as a child that God was indeed in China. And that meant her mother was in China, too, since everyone, even the Reverend Ralph, had said that she was with God.
After Reverend Ralph gave his three girls a stiff, uncomfortable hug and climbed into the carriage, he never turned once to look back. Marge had taken her old Brownie camera out and snapped a picture of the carriage as it pulled out of the drive and onto the main road. They stood on the front porch and watched him go, the horse’s hoofbeats getting fainter, the Reverend’s black hat becoming smaller and smaller until it was the size of a period at the end of a bumpy sentence. Only Sicily waved, waved the entire time, her small arm aching, so sure she was that he’d turn in the carriage and wave one last good-bye. But the small period finally disappeared around the turn and the last picture his daughters took of Reverend Ralph was of his back.
For three years Sicily had watched down the road, expecting him at any moment. She refused to believe the few letters he sent home saying his life was in China and that he would never see his homeland again. There was no love in his letters. Each began with “Dear Daughters” and ended with “Hoping God Keeps You Safe in His Bosom.” Sicily often wondered if he’d forgotten their names. Each Sunday Marge gathered them together in the parlor and they wrote him letters. Sicily mentioned each of their names as often as she could, to help him remember. But his letters never referred to his daughters individually. And every day she would find herself staring down the bleak road, expecting to see the Reverend round the bend driving six white horses, her mother sitting like Lazarus beside him, finally rescued from faraway China and brought home to the living and into her daughters’ empty arms.
At three thirty Sicily considered phoning the sheriff. All that stopped her was the thought of the gossip that would spread across Mattagash if Ed’s car was discovered behind the Watertown Hotel or some other motel, and if he himself was found, not dead in the river, but in some woman’s arms, very much alive. Sicily didn’t allow herself to think about the other women, although she was certain they existed. Ed had not touched her in years, which relieved her. But she was sure he would take his actions far enough away from Mattagash that she and Amy Joy would be safe from the tongues. Ed would look out for his family. He was a decent man in that respect. She was certain of it. At four fifteen, she was no longer certain of anything. Downstairs in the kitchen she made coffee and tried to work on a crossword puzzle from the Bangor Daily Times. She gave up on the second clue and read the front page instead. But the black words ran into each other. The obituary page held no entertainment for her. She was too frightened to look at the names, afraid one might be Edward Lawler, as if the world, or God, were playing a nasty joke on her, having taken Ed away without telling her. “The wife is always the last to know,” she remembered Lucy Matlock saying about a woman in Mattagash whose husband had been sneaking into the new schoolteacher’s house after dark.
At five o’clock, she stretched out on the sofa in the living room, her sweater spread over her arms, and lay there waiting. Her physical body was giving out, her eyes hurt, a small and sharp pain had begun at the base of her neck. She fought off sleep as long as she could, but finally the eyelids dropped like shades and images old and new bumped together and took their places in her subconscious. There was a bright red car shining from the bushes along the river and she walked forever, then ran as hard as she could to get to it, but it kept moving from her. When she finally grasped the door handle in her hand and opened the door, expecting to see the crushed bodies of two young boys, she found instead the Reverend Ralph behind the wheel and Ed in the passenger seat, both alive, both laughing.
“We’re driving to China,” Ed told her, and her hand let go as the car drove out onto the water, as weightless as
Jesus, and floated down the river until it was out of sight.
She was left behind shouting, “Come back! Come back!”
When Ed turned the doorknob softly and put one foot inside the house, Sicily heard it in her sleep and dreamed it was the Reverend Ralph come home with her mother. She sat up on the sofa, the warm autumn sun already established throughout the house. She sat up and said, “Mama?”
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: THE IVY GENES GET TESTED
“I figured that marriage wouldn’t last when the little man and woman on the top of their wedding cake got into a fight.”
—Marge McKinnon, About Newlyweds, 1955
From his perch atop the steep, tree-lined ridge that followed the river, Marvin Randall “Randy” Ivy III lay flat on his stomach and peered down on his sister Cynthia, who was comfortably sprawled on a blanket beside the camper. In her hands was her doll Ginger, whose hair had just been brushed vigorously one hundred times and who was being changed from pajamas to swimsuit to evening gown by a dissatisfied Cynthia. She was a fussy mother, already having inherited the role from Thelma, who in turn had come from a long line of nitpickers. Randy sucked in his breath and, silent as a snake, slid along on his belly until he was directly behind his unsuspecting sister. Still concealed by the bushes along the shore, he lay in wait.
“If you don’t learn to hang up your clothes, young lady, you won’t get any new ones.” Cynthia was warning the indifferent Ginger, whose stiff legs, movable at the crotch, were being made to walk across the blanket to an imaginary bedroom.
“Now you just stay there in your room, without any supper, until you’ve learned a lesson.” Cynthia shook a younger version of Thelma’s bony finger at the doll, who stared, unblinking, into the blue sky that covered Mattagash. Cynthia jumped to her feet and went off into the camper to search for the miniature makeup kit that Ginger would need when the punishment had ended.
The Funeral Makers Page 10