The Funeral Makers

by Cathie Pelletier

  And there were faces in the crowd who pursued her with drinks and hints of a family life and security, who no longer watched her dance once they’d taken her upstairs to a room, rented for twenty-four hours, and spent thirty minutes with her. A room rented for twenty-four hours and used for thirty minutes had always seemed such a waste. After the man had gone, she would run a bath and soak for as long as she could, then crawl into bed and sleep the night through, alone, some man’s smell still lingering between her thighs and among the sheets. She would use up as much of the twenty-four hours as she could. It had been another ticket bought, and it was another lonely ride.

  In Room 3 of the Albert Pinkham Family Motel, Violet La Forge sobbed for hours before she admitted that she was not a modern dancer but a second-rate stripper. That at the age of forty-six the last shabby circus had dragged its tattered tents and aging animals through her town and had passed her by forever.

  SICILY AS INSTRUCTRESS: CHESTER LEE GETS A LITTLE MANNA

  “Hell, it ain’t like I got a bushel to pick from. If you was to put on a beauty contest here in Mattagash, you’d have to ship in contestants from other towns.”

  —Chester Gifford, of His

  Preoccupation with Amy Joy, 1959

  In the candlelight Chester Lee Gifford studied the lineup of new Plymouths on the advertisement page that Homer’s Car Sales had placed in the Watertown Weekly. The 1960 models were already on sale and looked as delicious as forbidden fruit. Chester Lee traced the shape of one with his index finger. He could almost feel the smooth body come through the newspaper. There was something about the warmth of a car after it had been sitting all day in the sun, a heat that went through his hand and up his arm until he felt he was part of the car, like an extra aerial or a curb feeler. Even a woman sunbathing all day in cotton panties could not give off that kind of heat. And a car was so indifferent. So cool. Like a cat. Cars weren’t stupid. They were very, very smart. Women you could push forever. All except Margaret O’Brian, who had hanged herself after Willie was hit by lightning. “Used to a beating and no one to give it to her,” Chester Lee mumbled. A car would never do that. Cars just didn’t care.

  There was no doubt about it, he understood cars, and yet it seemed that he was doomed to be a pedestrian for the rest of his life, watching all the world cruise by. He felt a warm tingle in his genitals and touched them. Just the thought of owning a car could do that to him quicker than any woman could. Chester Lee closed his eyes and imagined his hands on the wheel of one of Homer’s new 1960 Plymouths. The dark blue one. He would put a handmade mat in the back window of pink carnations made from bathroom tissue. The kind the women’s auxiliary made for Legion members. He’d add some yellow flames down each door. A big set of foam rubber dice dangling from the rearview mirror. A fancy broad from Watertown, with big breasts crammed into a tight pink sweater, sitting next to him in the front seat. You could take your pick of any broad when you had a hot car. And the backseat, all soft and cushiony. There was no better place on earth to screw a woman.

  Chester heard faint footfalls on the floor overhead. No one but Amy Joy knew about his hideout in the basement. He zipped his pants up and crept softly to the bottom of the stairs and listened. It wasn’t a man. The steps were too light and springy. It must be Amy Joy. He had told her never to come there without his permission, but she had come at a good time. He could always take her on the cot and pretend that beneath them was the warm vinyl of the Plymouth’s backseat. It was better than being alone.

  “Amy Joy, I’m down here,” he shouted up the stairs and then went back to his cot. The footfalls inched their way slowly down the creaking steps and stopped at the bottom. Chester had gone back to the advertisement page. He quickly forgot about the dark blue Plymouth when he heard Sicily say, “Chester Lee, it’s time we had a little talk.” He bolted upright on the bed and flung the papers fluttering to the floor.

  “How did you find me?” he asked, unable to look at her. Giffords rarely looked the rest of mankind in the eye.

  “I heard you whispering about it to Amy Joy the other night.”

  “I’ll have to move,” he told himself, wishing there were some underground caverns he could swim to, like Jesse James had done. He was just starting to feel at home in the basement of the old building. He especially liked the quiet, as compared to the Gifford outhouse. And since no sheriff had come poking around after the traveling grocery truck robbery, he felt quite sure it was law-proof.

  “I don’t want any bad words or anything like that,” Sicily assured him. “I hope we can work this out like two decent people.” She realized this might prove difficult, considering one of those people was a Gifford.

  “Work what out?” he asked her.

  “You know what. I want you to leave Amy Joy alone. She’s only a child. Stick to women your own age.”

  “Women your own age,” he thought. How old could Sicily be? Fortysomething. He was thirty-two. That was pretty near his own age. He looked at Amy Joy’s mother closely, with new interest. It was one of two things: She would either be easier to get than her daughter or harder. It was always one extreme or the other.

  “I don’t want Amy Joy, although she’s a very nice little girl.”

  “You seem to.”

  Chester Lee poured himself some of his wine-whiskey and pointed to the extra tin cup that sat next to the bottle.

  “Want some?”

  “I didn’t come to drink with you, Chester,” said Sicily. She felt suddenly exhausted, tired of all the battles, fearful of the funeral still to come. She had had very little sleep for the past two nights, one waiting up for Ed to come home, the other worrying over where he’d been the night before. Her marriage was stretched to the limit. She felt something was about to happen, but divorce wasn’t the answer. That would scandalize the family. Mattagash could accept a marriage that didn’t work out as long as nothing was done about it. But change seemed to be the one thing that no one in town could tolerate. Yet the McKinnons had always been the style setters, the fashion makers. Sicily knew that if she got a divorce almost every other woman in Mattagash would want one too. She didn’t relish that kind of social pressure.

  “Could I talk to you?” Chester asked, his head down, staring sadly into his glass of wine.

  “About?”

  “Something that really hurts me. Something I never told no one before.”

  “I don’t know if I want to hear it.” Sicily leaned against the wall, perplexed. She had never thought much about the human side of Chester Gifford. Now, in the dim light of his candles, he looked almost boyish.

  “Is it still daylight upstairs?” he asked her.

  “Of course. It’s only suppertime. But it’s raining.”

  “Sometimes I think there’s been a bomb dropped and everything and everyone is gone. Blown to smithereens, and I go up and stick my head out the door just to if it’s all there. I never know down here. I just light the candles and I lay on my bed and think, and I never know.”

  “Why don’t you go up where there’s light and get a job like everyone else? You’re no better than a mole down here.” As Sicily moved away from the wall, she noticed a small black spider inching its way down a strand hanging above her head.

  “You don’t like me because I’m a Gifford. I can’t get a good job because I’m a Gifford. Everyone says I’ll just up and quit. That gets to preying on your mind when you’re trying to put in a good day’s work. Finally, you just throw it in. Why disappoint a whole town? And I don’t want to cut pulp like everyone else does, anyway. I want to be different.”

  “Well, you’re different, all right.”

  Chester Lee put his head in his hands and held it, like it wasn’t his head but a ball someone had thrown him and he was forced to catch it. He waved one hand to Sicily, a signal that it was too painful to go on. She came to the cot and sat on it, brushing what looked like half
a moldy biscuit to the floor. The right words were hard to find. She really had judged Chester for his family name. That wasn’t what Christians were supposed to do. What if Jesus came to her door, looking like a Gifford? Would she have turned him away?

  “I’ve got no one to talk to,” Chester Lee said and picked up his wine. “Will you hold this for a second?” he asked, and Sicily took the cup from his hand so that he could blow his nose. He stuffed the hankie back in his pocket, a custom of all the men in Mattagash and one that she hated. Seeing it done had always made her weak in the knees. Once Farley Baker had taken his hankie from his pocket at Blanche’s grocery, right near Sicily’s face. Before she could turn away, he had blocked off one nostril with his index finger to build up pressure in the nasal passage and then snorted like a bull into his handkerchief. It was so obscene that Sicily found it necessary to drop down on one of Blanche’s fifty-pound sacks of Robin Hood flour to let the nausea pass. Some men working in the woods, or simply caught without the accouterment, did the same as Farley, except without the handkerchief, aiming for the ground then snapping away any residue with thumb and finger. Other men raised it to the level of high art, jerking their heads, one foot placed firmly ahead of the other.

  “What’s botherin’ you?” she asked. He did look upset, and she could see that, in truth, Chester Lee Gifford was an attractive man. “He looks a little like Eddie Fisher with a mustache,” she thought.

  “It’s kind of a love story,” he said and poured wine in the other cup.

  “This is your wine here.”

  “A love story about someone you know very well. Someone who is doomed because of his love,” he said and drank some wine from the second cup.

  “Who?” Sicily was interested. She took a sip of wine. Chester Lee almost smiled. He knew the best way to get a Christian woman was to let her think there was a real-life parable floating around that she hadn’t heard.

  “Someone who lives in Mattagash. Always has.”

  Sicily drank a bit more wine, her face puckering from the taste.

  “What makes me so sad. What makes me not keep a job is that I’ve loved someone all my life and she married another man.” The candles flickered. The room hushed. The mice were asleep. It was only Sicily and Chester Lee and a gallon of wine-whiskey imported from the vineyards of northern Maine. He could feel the electricity about to snap in the air around them.

  “And I know her?” Sicily finally asked. The wine didn’t taste all that bad. She’d just finish off that one cup. A glass of wine or beer now and then was good for the soul.

  “She’s a few years older than me. I used to watch her when I was a boy, and I’d tell myself that when I grew up, we’d get married. But by the time I got old enough she’d already married someone else.”

  “How sad,” said Sicily.

  “You’re the only living soul who knows, so don’t tell.”

  “I promise,” she said, “but who is she?”

  “You know how I been over talking to Amy Joy and you been mad about it?”

  “Mad ain’t the word.”

  “Well, I go over and talk to Amy Joy so I can be near the woman I’ve always loved.”

  Sicily thought about this. She drank the rest of her cup of wine. Marge? Surely not.

  “I’ve loved you all my life,” he said, realizing she had missed his point. “Watched you. I think you’re beautiful.”

  “That’s enough,” said Sicily and stood up. “I’m a decent married woman and I’ll thank you to watch what you say around me.”

  “You used to wear a blue dress that swished when you walked by, your little nose up in the air. I thought you looked like a real princess.”

  Sicily put her empty cup on the barrel. She felt a bit giddy. She must have stood up too quickly. She put a hand against the wall as she cautiously climbed the stairs.

  Chester heard her feet walking across the upstairs floor. He didn’t mind giving a woman the right to be insulted, or the time it took to clear the air as to who was a whore and who wasn’t. He would know in a matter of seconds if he had succeeded. He picked up the page of Plymouths again and waited. He heard the same small footfalls cross the floor above his head. Soft as petals dropping. Soft as Jesus walking on water. They paused at the head of the stairs. Chester pushed his paper under the cot and quickly filled both cups with wine.

  “A Plymouth wouldn’t be that stupid,” he thought.

  Sicily came unsteadily down the stairs. At the bottom she stopped.

  “I didn’t come back because of what you said. I came to tell you to let Amy Joy be.”

  “You don’t have to worry none about that. It was only to see you anyway.”

  “I’m years older than you. I would’ve thought I was already married when you were barely born.”

  Sicily had tried, upstairs, to calculate the date of when she was married against how old Chester Lee must be, to see if there was any truth in what he said. But she had been so distraught lately with Ed and Amy Joy and Marge, and now this. And mathematics had never been her long suit. The numbers had tumbled over each other and were lost. Only the poetry, ageless, classless, had remained.

  “Did it have a narrow white belt?” she asked him.

  “Did what?”

  “That blue dress. Did it have a white belt and two pleats down the sides?”

  “Your waist looked as tiny as that,” said Chester Lee and made an O with his thumb and forefinger.

  “I bought that on sale at Penney’s. I’d almost forgotten it,” said Sicily and sat on the cot.

  “There were nice memories in the old days,” she said. She was relieved to talk to someone, especially a man. Men were strong and had heavy arms that could wrap around you until you felt safe. Sicily hadn’t felt safe in years and every autumn brought more uncertainty. Some nights she would wake up from a troubled dream and run to the closet to see if Ed’s clothing was still there, his suitcase still under the bed. The past few weeks had convinced her he was planning to leave. She’d heard of husbands running off to foreign countries like that and never coming back. Just as her own father had done. It was like a big map of all those exotic places had folded up and swallowed them. They were somewhere in the world and the world was too big to go hunting for them. The thought of Ed abandoning her to the gossips of Mattagash was a chilling prospect.

  “I don’t think you’re happy,” Chester Lee said.

  “You can tell?”

  “Sometimes I think I know how you feel every minute of the day.”

  “You do?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Do you think I’m still pretty?”

  “Beautiful. Like a picture. Prettier than the girls in the catalog.”

  Sicily sipped on her wine. Why couldn’t these words have ever come from Ed’s lips? If they had, maybe she would have been more like the woman he wanted. Maybe she would have been more like the women he went to when the screen door slammed behind him all those nights and she listened to his car drive away. Women who had no names, no faces, no addresses, but she knew they were there, could even tell when he’d tired of one and went on to another. Women who hovered about her marriage like ghosts she would never see.

  Sicily began to cry. Chester put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned against him. He took the cup from her hand, just as he had Amy Joy’s, and put it aside. He kissed her forehead, squeezed her hand. Sicily tried to remember why this was wrong. It was something worse than a McKinnon woman alone with a Gifford man. It had something to do with Reverend Ralph, with the Bible, with God.

  “You’re so soft,” he told her. Her mind was swimming with thoughts that kept moving, that didn’t stay long enough to present themselves to her, to advise her what to do.

  “You smell so nice.” He stroked her hair gently. If this had been Amy Joy, he told himself, he could have had her naked and
hanging by one leg from the ceiling.

  “The older ones take more pruning,” he reminded himself.

  Each flat button of her blouse felt like coins in his hands as they slipped easily out of the holes and were freed. He pushed the blouse off her shoulders. Sicily did not help him by lifting her arms. Chester lifted one limp arm and pulled it through the sleeve. Then the other. She sat on the cot in the dark basement of the American Legion Hall. A room full of dust bunnies and mice droppings. Mildewed boxes of newspapers and pamphlets that had melded together gave off the aroma of basement living. Some old army uniforms, used mostly in parades, cascaded out of a trunk in the far corner. A pants leg hung here, a collar stuck out there, an empty sleeve dangled, its buttons catching the candlelight. It reminded Sicily of a trunkload of soldiers fighting to get out. Like the picture she saw at the movies in Watertown of all those American troops storming off the boats at Normandy. It became almost funny to her, the sleeves reaching out like drowning men. “We’re all trying to get out of this town,” she thought. “The living and the dead.”

  Chester Lee quickly undid her bra. He slowed his efforts once the two hooks came undone. He reminded himself this was not Amy Joy and that at any moment his subject might spring from the bed and dart home, dragging her clothes behind her.

  “I don’t want her shifting gears on me,” he thought.

  Upstairs the wind had caught an open shutter and banged it shut. Two barn swallows that had flown inside to shake the rain from their feathers flew around the big upstairs, frantic until they found a window free of glass and escaped back into the drizzle. The old building held noises and sounds that Sicily did not care to hear. She let Chester Lee push her back against his cot and slide her skirt and half-slip up around her waist. When he stood up to undress, Sicily thought of the first time she had given in to Edward Elbert Lawler, on the scratchy sawdust behind the lumber mill. He, too, had pushed her skirt up about her waist and had pulled her panties down until they circled only her right ankle. “He should have taken them all the way off. Should have taken off my skirt. It should have been on clean, white sheets.”