The Funeral Makers

by Cathie Pelletier

  “I wonder if I’d have really done it if you hadn’t come when you did,” Junior sobbed.

  “Tomorrow we’ll get Sicily to put us up between her place and Marge’s. Don’t think about it anymore, darling. Tomorrow’s a new day.” Junior allowed his mother to settle him in the backseat of the car, her coat around him.

  “I’ll be right back, honey. You stay right there.”

  “I just heard this awful roar inside my head. This real strange noise,” Junior said as Pearl closed the car door. Pearl opened the door again.

  “Did it sound like a swarm of bees?” she asked.

  THE IVYS AS NOMADS: NUCLEAR FAMILY ABOUT TO BLOW UP

  “All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

  —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

  Pearl was awake first, or at least opened her eyes first. Everyone but the children had slept fitfully. Regina kept a foot pressed to Pearl’s stomach throughout the night and, no matter how many times Pearl shoved it away, it came back in a matter of minutes. Thelma cowered on her side of the bed, not sure if she was more afraid of an outburst from Junior or her mother-in-law. On the floor by Pearl’s side were Junior and Cynthia. Randy and Marvin Sr. shared the floor near Thelma. Pearl had managed to persuade Sarah Pinkham, who was a bit ruffled at being awakened past three in the morning, to let them have extra blankets and pillows. But the room was not a large one, and the cluttered bodies lay upon the bed and floor like the sad remnants of a refugee camp.

  “We’re stuffed in here like sardines,” Pearl thought at five a.m., when Regina’s small hoof kicked her again. “This is as bad as them German camps.”

  At six thirty, Cynthia sat up and rubbed her eyes. She remembered being brought to her grandparents’ room in the middle of the night. It had been raining. But why they had left the campground was a bit vague. She remembered shouting and crying and threats of violence. There had been a fight between her father and mother, she suddenly remembered, and looked to see if they were still alive. Since they were, the night before was immediately filed in the back of her mind where its information might or might not be used someday. She started humming “Pop Goes the Weasel” and twiddling her fingers, sometimes snapping them loudly in hopes that the others would wake up. So much for Thelma’s prophecy the night before that the children would be scarred for life.

  Randy heard his sister and sang along with her, his fingers giving in to occasional snapping themselves.

  “It’s time for cartoons,” said Regina and sat up.

  “Stupid, there’s no TV up here in the sticks,” said Randy.

  “Aunt Sicily’s got TV, stupid yourself,” Cynthia said.

  “Shut up,” said Pearl. “We need some more sleep. If you want to talk, go outside.”

  “Children, hush now,” said Thelma, terrified to excite Pearl again.

  “It’s raining out,” said Cynthia, who had lunged over her father, stepping on his sore wrist, to get to the window.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Junior. Swearing was not one of his usual methods of expression, so Thelma feared he had been riled up again. She got up quickly, realizing the children were up for good, and tried to collect them into an orderly group. Pearl put both feet on the floor and clutched her housecoat about her. Marvin Sr., who had slept in his pants, splashed some water on his face. The rest of the group dressed arduously, bumping into each other, passing items back and forth, requesting that backs be turned, or eyes covered when strategic parts of the body were exposed. Junior and Thelma did not speak. Thelma and Pearl did not speak. Pearl was angry at the children. This unhappy family was definitely unhappy in its own way.

  It was decided that Pearl and Marvin Sr. would drive the injured Junior to the Watertown hospital, where his wrist could be X-rayed and treated.

  “It’s broken all right,” Junior whined to Pearl. “I heard it snap.”

  “What snapped was his mind,” thought Thelma, then felt a wifely instinct to pamper Junior. But Pearl had the position secured. Junior was her baby again. It felt good to be needed as a mother once more.

  While the others were in Watertown, Thelma was to unpack the cooler and feed the children their breakfast. Some cereal and doughnuts and milk would be enough until they returned and plans could be made to distribute Junior and his family between Sicily’s and Marge’s. From the window, Thelma watched the Packard pull away from Pinkham’s yard. The children were fussing more than usual. Randy managed, by eight o’clock, to slap each of his sisters twice.

  The fishermen in the opposite room, who were unable to fish because of bad weather, pounded on the wall each time one of the girls wailed. When Randy pulled Cynthia’s freshly made braid hard enough that the ribbon came off in his hands, the sound that left her vocal box could have shattered crystal. Thelma kept her hand pressed to the child’s mouth until she was quieted. But she could not muffle the sobs of a crying child and Randy at the same time. He had seized the tin pan provided by the Albert Pinkham Family Motel for heating water and beat the wall with it, pretending he was sending a drum signal to the fishermen. They signaled back loudly. Randy answered. Violet La Forge beat out a coded message on her own wall as well. Even the advanced stages of meditation could not raise her above such incarnations as the little Ivys. Caught up in the thunderous pounding that now surrounded him on two sides, Randy ran to the wall that had let Violet’s message through. Thinking of her as another, distinct tribe in his Western drama, he pounded out a response: Bang. Bang Bang Bang Bang. Bang Bang.

  Thelma, who had always been queasy, had twice passed out in the dentist’s chair while her teeth were being cleaned. When visiting her doctor’s office for a checkup, she always took a Mason jar that she had cleverly painted dark blue and covered with little blobs of yellow paint for flowers. When a nurse knocked on the bathroom door to collect the usual plastic container with Thelma’s urine sample, the dark blue Mason jar would emerge in Thelma’s shaking hand. She simply could not bear to have her personal body fluid exhibited in front of everyone, sloshing about like rainwater in a plastic pail. Thelma did not deal well with cogs in the machine, and Marvin Randall Ivy III was the biggest cog Thelma had ever encountered. For nine years old he was large, having the genetic structure of the Ivys and the McKinnons. Beating out at Thelma with his fists and leaving her in tears was not uncommon. But he had learned to control as much of his negative personality as possible when his father was around. If Thelma complained to Junior in the evenings that Randy had thrown another tantrum, hitting and kicking herself and the girls, Junior merely continued to look at his newspaper.

  “Randy, you mind your mother and leave your sisters alone” was the best support Thelma could get. So she had long ago thrown her hands up in despair. She was an abused mother. And her daughters were the unlucky victims of brotherly rage. Still pent up with tears from the way the vacation was turning out, Thelma saw white, the way Pearl had seen black during her breakdown. The way Junior had seen red the night before. They were a family of colors, a family of sad crayons scraping against each other in the box.

  She caught Randy by the arm, leaving Cynthia free to loose her anguish. In the struggle between mother and son, a quart bottle of milk crashed to the floor and splattered the tile and wall.

  “Look now what you’ve done, you little monster!” Thelma screamed. Suddenly, she hated Junior. She hated him because Randy looked so much like him, because the seed that had sprung from Junior’s body into hers had created him. It was all right for Junior to spoil the children, and he did in the short time he spent with them in the evenings before bed. But she was left with the aftermath of his fatherly affections, left with criticism from Junior and Pearl concerning their behavior.

  Randy chose this moment to kick Thelma in the kneecap and sling his arms so that the box of doughnuts flew through the air and scattered like small tires about the floor. Cynthia and R
egina stepped on two as they ran for the safety of the bed, mashing them well.

  The fishermen had stopped their war drums and retaliated by going for the head chief himself, Albert Pinkham.

  Violet came out onto the patio and peered through the window, unable to see the bedlam because of the curtains Sarah Pinkham had gotten on sale at J. C. Penney’s in Watertown. They were white with a bevy of pink swans floating about on them. As Violet turned to look in the direction of Albert’s house, the swans parted to let through a Mickey Mouse cereal bowl that broke the window and shattered on the pavement outside.

  “My God, I could’ve been killed,” Violet whispered and put a shaking hand to her mouth. Cornflakes clung to her hair like crisp, brown snowflakes. Violet stepped back from the window just as another missile came whizzing out. It was a coconut-coated chocolate doughnut followed by Regina’s corrective shoe. There was a mixture of noises coming from inside Room 4, as if a chicken coop had been placed next to a cage of foxes.

  “I’m sorry you was ever born,” Thelma was heard to say. “I should have left you right there in the hospital. I should have taken another baby. Even that colored woman’s baby. Anything would’ve been better than you.”

  Violet prayed that Albert would hurry. “That poor little boy,” she thought. “And they wouldn’t let me adopt because I’m single and a dancer.”

  Cynthia popped her head through the broken window and stared with big eyes at Violet La Forge. Behind her, Regina was still in tears over an incident concerning Randy, herself, and her one remaining corrective shoe. Thelma was shouting threats of leaving Randy in a straitjacket on a colored man’s doorstep and taking home a small dark child instead. Randy romped around the room waving Thelma’s bra over his head. Pretending it was a slingshot, he loaded it with a glazed doughnut and threw the entire apparatus in Thelma’s face.

  “Are you the loose woman?” Cynthia was a paragon of the old saying about little pitchers having big ears and filled hers often at the streams of adult gossip.

  “Go away, you awful little girl,” Violet said. She had still not recuperated from the cruel words she had found taped to her door.

  “Are you the woman who exercises with big titties?”

  Hearing Albert Pinkham’s voice followed by Sarah’s unmistakable squawking, Violet retreated into her room and locked the door. She did not want to see Sarah Pinkham until she was ready for her.

  When Pearl and the male Ivys returned at ten thirty from the Watertown hospital, they were in a cheerful mood. The huge breakfast at the Watertown Café had been a pleasant one. The bone in Junior’s wrist was cracked, but not broken, and it was now securely wrapped in a bandage. They were all willing to forgive and forget. To prop the train back on the track. To pull together as a family. But the first thing they saw when the Packard turned into Albert’s drive was Thelma and the children straddling Pearl’s and Marvin’s suitcases. All four were huddled beneath a colorful red-and-white umbrella that one of the fishermen’s wives, out of pity, had brought out to protect the outcasts from the rain still falling. The ground around them looked as if the birds had been having a messy breakfast and had dropped doughnuts and cereal from the sky. Thelma sat with her face in one hand, the other holding the umbrella. Regina had picked the gravel from one chocolate doughnut that still held remnants of coconut, and her cheeks now bulged with it. Cynthia was trying to dry off Ginger, who had been dunked in a glass of milk during the fracas.

  Randy ran to the Packard, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! Mama threw my Mickey Mouse bowl out the window and broke it.”

  The Ivys in the Packard stared in amazement. This was not a train back on the track. This was three cars and a caboose that had definitely been derailed.

  “My God, what do you suppose happened?” Junior asked.

  “She’s taken to throwing the children’s things,” Pearl said.

  DIVIDING THE IVYS: ONE MORE STORY IN THE NAKED CITY

  “The bride wore a floor-length gown of organdy trimmed with small cloth daisies about the waist and hemline. She carried a daisy bouquet and was given away by her father, Theodore Parsons of Portland. The mother of the groom wore black.”

  —The Portland Messenger

  (of Thelma Ivy’s Wedding), 1949

  Dividing the Ivys up between Marge’s house and Sicily’s proved more difficult than would be expected. Space was not so much the issue as personality differences. At first Ed told Sicily it was the Ivys’ own fault that they were asked to leave Albert Pinkham’s premises. They should have had Junior sterilized when he was a baby. Then he went beyond that, saying that if Pearl had been stupid enough to marry an undertaker in the first place, she should have had the foresight to put their firstborn in a sack, take it down to the river, and drown it, like they do to unwanted kittens in Mattagash. Finally, he said it was the entire Ivy family’s fault it was raining. In the end, Sicily persuaded him to let Pearl and the two girls stay with them. They would share Amy Joy’s bedroom.

  “As long as there’s no male Ivys in this house overnight,” Ed said.

  When Sicily drove to Marge’s with the news, she saw the camper parked in the yard. Randy’s sad face was pressed against the window, looking out at the rain.

  “He reminds me of the doggie in the window that Patti Page sung about,” Sicily thought. “Poor little boy. He can’t be that bad. After all, he’s got Junior and Thelma for parents.”

  Inside, she found Marvin and Junior watching Marge’s big television set. In the kitchen Pearl had made coffee and was having a cup. Cynthia sat on the floor near the table and brushed Ginger’s hair.

  “Where’s Thelma and the other little girl?” Sicily asked.

  “In the room Amy Joy’s been sleeping in.” Pearl poured Sicily a cup of coffee. “It doesn’t look as though this rain is ever going to let up,” she said, looking out the window over the sink.

  “Autumn rain,” said Sicily. “Poor farmers. I hope they can get their potatoes out all right. I’m sure they must be almost finished by now.”

  “I suppose folks will be getting back from the harvest soon,” Pearl said.

  “A lot of families already are. The Farleys finished for that farmer over in Limestone that they go for each year. And Ronald’s family is back. I saw the truck loaded down with their stuff yesterday. They do good each year. All of them little kids, and they got a hundred, all of them earn enough money for their school clothes.”

  “That helps a family out,” said Pearl, who no longer wanted to hear about potatoes and farmers and child labor. She had left that gladly behind her years ago and was not anxious to have it forced back upon her memory. Sicily had no choice but to level with Pearl about the predicament as to who stayed at her house and who didn’t. Pearl didn’t mind who stayed where as long as she and Thelma did not bed down under the same roof.

  “She’s in the bedroom now and it’s all I can do to stand it. Even though I can’t see her I can feel her near and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “Who is?” asked Cynthia, who rarely missed out on the spoken word.

  “Spelling don’t help none,” Pearl warned Sicily. “She knows how.” Pearl and Sicily went out to swing on the back porch.

  “Who’s driving you crazy?” asked Cynthia, who had thrown down Ginger to follow them.

  “Go back inside!” Pearl ordered, and Cynthia’s bottom lip dropped as she tried to muster up some tears. But she couldn’t. The incident at the motel that morning had drained her. So she turned and went off somewhere in the house.

  “That kid’s the spittin’ image of her mother,” Pearl told Sicily. “They even dress alike. Thelma had a whole wardrobe of identical outfits sewn up. They look like twins born twenty years apart.”

  Pearl and the two girls made plans to stay at Sicily’s. The others would stay at Marge’s. Marvin Sr. and Randy could sleep on Marge’s sofa that made up into a bed. Junior and T
helma would take the room that Amy Joy slept in. And Amy Joy would have to return to Sicily’s and bed down on the couch.

  Pearl took what things she’d need and put them into Sicily’s car. If there was a choice between Ed Lawler and Thelma, she would choose Ed. That’s how much Thelma annoyed her.

  “You’re lucky you don’t have a daughter-in-law,” she told Sicily on the ride over.

  Cynthia and Regina were in the backseat, a paper bag between them that Thelma had filled with pajamas, toys, and a fresh change of clothes for the next day.

  “Lucky you don’t have a what?” asked Cynthia.

  At Marge’s, Thelma drew herself a hot bath. She needed one desperately after two horrible days of roughing it in the wilds. She and Junior had not spoken a word since the angry ones they had shouted at each other the night before. This was one time she was not going to bend. If he wanted a reconciliation, he would have to come to her. She was tired of being his slave. She felt like one of those women in John Wayne movies, except without the romance at the end. And as for her mother-in-law, Thelma would see to it that all of Portland heard how shabbily Pearl had treated her. And she would let them know how shabbily Pearl had been raised, in a town of rusting chain saws, pulp hooks, and a family of nitwits. Not to mention the alcoholic. “If only I’d been born with a higher pain threshold,” Thelma thought.

  At five o’clock she fried some hamburger patties, mashed potatoes, opened two cans of peas and put bread and pickles on the table. There was a cake on the counter that Sicily had brought, so she arranged several slices on a plate. She laid out plates, forks, and knives for three. She put margarine on the table, then went to the living room door, where Marvin Sr. and Junior were watching a Western.

  “Dad, it’s ready,” she said to her father-in-law. “The milk is in the Frigidaire. Someone has to go unlock Randy.” Then she went back to Amy Joy’s bedroom and closed the door. Let them fend for themselves. They were grown men. If they needed anything else, they could surely get it on their own. Even Randy. She was not yet ready to welcome the prodigal son home. Junior had taken the key and locked his namesake inside the camper when the truth about that morning’s events was finally revealed.