The Funeral Makers

by Cathie Pelletier

  “What if I need to pee?” Randy had asked his father.

  “You should have thought of that this morning,” Junior said and locked the door.

  The three male Ivys ate in silence, except to ask each other to pass the salt or a slice of bread. They ate Thelma’s supper and then went back to the living room, to the newspaper and television. Later, when Thelma left the sanctity of her new bedroom for a sandwich, she found the dishes just where she’d left them, covered with cake crumbs and scraps of food. Rings of dried milk decorated each glass. Food particles were melded to the silverware. If it had been her house, she would have left them there. But it was not her house, and she was introspective enough to realize that it was too late to start sporting a new personality. Besides, Junior wouldn’t approve of her being an outspoken woman. “He’s seen enough of that in this mother,” Thelma thought and went about cleaning the kitchen. She fixed herself a plate of leftovers and took it back to her room. As she passed the living room door, she saw the back of Junior’s head as it rested in the recliner. He had dozed off watching television. A wifely ache raced through her. “He looks so cute,” she thought. “Like a little boy.”

  Marvin Sr. had undone the sofa and created a bed. He had already made it up with sheets and blankets from Marge’s linen closet. It was not a tidy job but Randy had thrown himself upon the result and was fast asleep. Sleeping did him justice. Thelma walked past her husband and bent over to brush Randy’s forehead with her lips.

  “Did he spit out his gum?” she asked Marvin Sr.

  “It’s on the coffee table,” he said and pointed to a teepee of pink gum.

  Thelma tousled Randy’s hair and covered his shoulders with the blanket.

  “The trip’s been hard on him,” she said to Marvin Sr.

  “It’s been hard on us all,” he answered.

  Junior had come awake in the chair. “Did the sheriff get killed?” he asked his father, who shook his head.

  “Poor Junior,” thought Thelma. “He still thinks Matt Dillon is gonna get killed.”

  “Good night,” Thelma said.

  “Good night,” said Marvin Sr.

  Thelma almost said good night to Junior. There was something very sad in the way he was scrunched down in the chair, in the angle of his shoulders, the droop of his head. He looked defeated. A few minutes later, Thelma heard a rap on her bedroom door. She pulled on her housecoat and opened the door a crack. It was Junior, looking sheepish and kicking the toe of one shoe against the door casement.

  “I guess I’ll sleep in the trailer tonight,” he said.

  “Whatever,” said Thelma.

  “I guess it’d be better till things calm down.”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, I guess.” He was hoping she would fling the door open and sweep him into her bedroom as though she were a spider who hadn’t seen a fly in a long time. But Thelma closed the door. Tears immediately filled her eyes and she made small fists out of her hands. It was the first time she had not reached her hand in and helped pull her husband up out of an embarrassing situation. He could not say the words “I’m sorry.” She knew that. Before, she quickly accepted his apology in whatever form he might offer it: movie, flowers, dinner, or sometimes just his hurt, boyish attitude. He had chosen the latter tonight because there were no movies, florists, or restaurants in Mattagash. He stared at the closed door and wondered how Mattagash men apologized. They probably relied on cunning alone, the way male pioneers probably did. A box of chocolates, Junior supposed, could have gone a long way crossing the prairie.

  For a few seconds Thelma almost threw open the door and ran after him. It may have been physical exhaustion that prevented her. After fights between them, Junior liked to make up with a bout of lovemaking. But after two harrowing days of vacation, Thelma did not feel like making love. So she let him go. She heard him outside in the camper as he slammed the door with a force that seemed excessive.

  “He just wants me to feel sorry for him because he’s sleeping out there,” she told herself as she crawled into bed and snapped the bedside light off. The frogs and crickets were noisy. She snuggled down beneath the blankets. It felt wonderful to be in a bed again with clean fresh sheets and plenty of room to stretch. A car passed on the road outside. The beam from the headlights raced across the ceiling and wall, then disappeared back into the blackness. The sounds belonged to the river again, and the night creatures, and the steady rain that was still falling over Mattagash.

  Before Thelma fell asleep, she put her arms around the spare pillow and held it as though it were alive. For eleven years she had shared her bed, as well as her life, with a man. Her husband. For better or worse. Now here she was at the end of the road, at the end of the earth. Alone. “This is definitely for worse,” she thought. She drifted off to sleep thinking of her mother, who had died several years earlier. Thelma wished there were some way she could talk to Madeleine Parsons directly instead of asking God to pass on a message. God was just another man, after all.

  At nine thirty Amy Joy burst into the kitchen, grabbed a doughnut, and headed for her bedroom. Sicily and Pearl were having a bedtime snack at the table.

  “Where have you been?” Sicily asked.

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Just out.”

  “With who?”

  “No one.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, Mama.” Amy Joy turned back for a handful of chocolate mints that lay in a candy dish on the table.

  “Watch your complexion now,” said Sicily. “I swear, Amy Joy, when the doctor slapped your bottom you didn’t cry. You reached for food.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Amy Joy.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Aunt Marge’s to get some sleep.”

  “You’re staying here tonight, Amy Joy.”

  “I’m staying at Aunt Marge’s. What if she has a turn for the worse?”

  “Junior and Thelma are sleeping in your room at Marge’s and you’re staying here.”

  “But I can’t!” Amy Joy was panicky.

  “Well, you have to. It’s already set.” Sicily kicked Pearl under the table and winked. She had just been telling her how close Amy Joy was to Marge, how protective she felt.

  “I gotta stay at Aunt Marge’s!”

  “I’m trying to tell you that Junior and Thelma are probably already asleep in your bed.”

  “They do go to sleep early,” Pearl said, to help Sicily’s cause.

  “I don’t care how early they go to bed. They’re not staying in my room.” Amy Joy was on the verge of a tantrum for the first time since she was ten years old and wanted Ed to take her into the girlie show at the Watertown Fair. When he refused, she had thrown herself, kicking and screaming, onto the ground in front of the show tent. Sicily wanted to take her to the Watertown hospital and get a shot of something to calm her down.

  “I’ll stop at Mickey’s Tavern and get us all a shot,” Ed had said, but didn’t stop the car until he was outside his own door.

  Amy Joy was frantic again. As frantic as that day at the fair.

  “I just have to stay at Aunt Marge’s!”

  “Amy Joy, have you gone completely crazy? It ain’t gonna kill you to sleep over here for a few nights.”

  “Yes it will!” She was all but jumping up and down.

  “What’s this racket down here?” Ed had left the room upstairs that he’d converted into a study when Amy Joy’s protests bounced up the stairs and intruded on his thoughts.

  “What are you bawling about?” he asked his daughter. Amy Joy fell to pouting and was silent. It was her usual stance against Ed, even when things were running smoothly.

  “She wants to sleep at Marge’s, though I’ve tried to tell her that Junior and Thelma are using
her bed,” said Sicily.

  “Do you want to sleep with Junior and Thelma? Is that what you want?” Ed always used this approach on Amy Joy. Asking her if she wanted the ridiculous and forcing her to answer.

  “Well, do you? Is that what you want? To snuggle up between Junior and Thelma?”

  There was a pause, but Ed was patient. He would wait it out. Finally, tears filling her eyes, Amy Joy said, “No, sir.”

  “Well, then. That’s more like it. Your mother’s made up the sofa for you. Now get in there and go to bed. You should have been in this house over an hour ago. Your mother lets you run wild.”

  Amy Joy went into the living room. Sicily had left a clean nightgown for her on the sofa and she took it and went off into the bathroom to change.

  Back in the kitchen, Ed said to Sicily, “You spoil her. She minds me because I don’t let her get away with all that shit.” Then he turned and went back up to his study.

  “Poor kid,” thought Pearl.

  “Poor Amy Joy,” thought Sicily and went in to kiss her daughter good night.

  BRAILLE AS SEXUAL EXPRESSION: CHESTER LEE DISCOVERS THE HOLY GRILL

  O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,

  So haggard and so woebegone?

  The squirrel’s granary is full

  And the harvest’s done…

  —John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

  Ruth Gifford was mixing scrambled eggs in a plastic bowl. Her granddaughter, Summer Daye, sat near her on the floor with a jar of marshmallow fluff and a spoon. The sticky mixture covered the child’s face and her hair was matted with it. The dog, Chainsaw, sat waiting for the occasional opportunity to move in, lick the spoon quickly, then retreat before being kicked by Ruth or slapped on the nose with a sticky spoon.

  “You already gobbled down half a jar of that stuff. Now put it away or you’ll be sick,” Ruth told the little girl.

  “Chainsaw got as much as she did,” said Chester Lee, who’d been watching with amusement.

  “Get away, Chainsaw!” Ruth shouted as the dog dived in for a lick. Chainsaw got one last taste before Ruth caught him up by the skin of his neck and heaved him, fleas and all, out through the screen door. He whined several times through the mesh, his nose pressed against it, then went off to lie on the front porch.

  “Doggie! Doggie!” squealed the little girl, her fat arms above her head. The spoon fell to the floor. Ruth took the jar away, helped Summer Daye to her feet, and pushed her off into the living room, where her mother was sleeping on the couch.

  “Summer Daye’s gettin’ so big. Look at her waddle!” said Ruth.

  “What a stupid name,” said Chester.

  “What’s wrong with it? Debbie saw it in a magazine a long time ago and remembered it.”

  “It’s pretty stupid to call a kid that when we only got three months of summer and the rest of the time we’re up to our asses in snow,” said Chester Lee.

  “It’s to remind us of summer, dummy. Can’t you ever think poems?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Chester Lee. “Debbie better quit spending her winter nights in bed with Boyd or we’re gonna have so many summer days around here we’ll think we’re in Florida.”

  “You just mind your own business,” said Debbie, who came into the kitchen to get a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. “Ask Chester Lee where he’s been hitchin’ his horse lately, Mama,” she said to Ruth and winked.

  “There’s usually a herd of horses at your hitchin’ post,” Chester Lee said as he ate the plate of eggs Ruth put in front of him.

  “I know where he’s been,” said Ruth. “Them McKinnons has had their noses up in the air for so many years their kids is born looking like little pigs.” Ruth Gifford was one of the many Mattagash housewives to make a connection between personality and genetics.

  “Amy Joy is fat enough to be a little pig,” said Debbie. “Does she oink, Chester Lee? Or does she squeal?”

  Ruth Gifford laughed with her daughter. Despite the teasing, there was an unspoken pride in the Gifford household that one of their own had scaled McKinnon walls and Chester Lee basked in the warmth of his social triumphs.

  “Oink! Oink! Oink!” said Debbie as Chester Lee heaved a biscuit across the room. It hit her on the shoulder, then rolled off under the table where Chainsaw would be happily surprised to find it at breakfast.

  “What are you gonna do if you get that little girl up the stump? That ain’t no laughing matter.” Ruth’s “facts of life” talks with her children had always been helpfully instructive, ranging from religion to politics and the legal processes.

  “You get that little girl in the family way, Chester Lee, and Ed Lawler’ll bury you so deep in jail all we’ll ever see of you again is your cowlick.”

  “I ain’t afraid of Ed Lawler,” Chester Lee lied.

  “If Ed Lawler catches you where it’s dark, he’ll hit you on the head so hard you’ll have to unlace your shoes to blow your nose.”

  “Don’t you worry none about me. I got it all under control.”

  “Chester Lee, you need more trouble right now about as much as Noah needed more rain,” said Ruth.

  “I ain’t gonna be in no trouble.”

  “Then keep your pants up,” said his mother.

  “Or keep Amy Joy’s up,” Debbie said and ran from the kitchen when Chester Lee pushed back his chair as if to chase her.

  “OINK! OINK! OINK!” she shouted again from the living room before taking Summer Daye up to bed.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Chester Lee told his mother and went out into the rainy night.

  Leaning on Marge’s garage and finishing off his Lucky Strike, Chester Lee cupped the cigarette in his hands as he smoked, hiding the telltale orange glow. He mashed the stub beneath the heel of his boot and flicked it into the lilac bushes. He wanted as little evidence as possible left behind, and a Lucky Strike stub could be incriminating. Even on mere social visits, Chester Lee rarely touched the objects in the room around him and left few fingerprints. The drizzle was still coming down, and he was anxious to get inside and into a warm, dry bed. He spit on the ground and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. He could have easily settled for claiming Amy Joy on his cot in the basement of the Legion Hall, but something about crawling between the whiteness of McKinnon sheets in a McKinnon house was a challenge any true Gifford would take up. It would bring McKinnon noses down that had been up for generations.

  But that was not the principal reason Chester Lee was anxious to visit with Amy Joy in her bedroom. She had promised she’d take the roll of money Ed kept hidden in his desk when Chester Lee hinted to her that money was all that kept them from a hasty wedding downstate. Away from Mattagash, no one in their right minds would believe that Amy Joy was only fourteen. She would pack her suitcase and they’d go off together. That’s what he’d told Amy Joy, and if he had allowed her to come to the Legion Hall, he’d have been bound to take her with him. Telling her he wanted to make love to her in a real house, in a real bed, like they were married, had made her romantic heart flutter and she’d agreed quickly. Now he could take her body one more time, take something a McKinnon owed a Gifford. It would be his last laugh. Then he could take the money, leaving behind a promise to wait down the road a bit in Boyd’s pickup truck. Alone, he would be free to get to Watertown by hitching a ride. The next day, he would catch a Greyhound bus downstate. What would Ed Lawler tell the police? That a Gifford had crawled through his willing daughter’s open window, made love to her, took money she had eagerly stolen for him from her father, and then ran off? Chester knew Ed Lawler would consider it worth the money to have him out of town and out of Amy Joy’s life forever. It was a job, really, and Chester Lee would be well paid. It warmed his heart to know that a man like himself, with no major education to speak of, could outsmart a college man who was a principal. He was
paving inroads for the Gifford clan.

  The window to Amy Joy’s bedroom was waiting for him. A spool of thread had been placed to wedge it open, so that Chester could reach inside and push it up to the hilt. Amy Joy had done this early in the evening so that she wouldn’t forget. It was a sentimental gesture, one of love, and Chester Lee was almost touched by it.

  The window lifted easily, noiselessly. Chester Lee was surprised that Amy Joy was not waiting at the window for him. When he heard the soft breathing that meant sleep coming from the bed, his ego was a bit bruised. That Amy Joy could fall asleep when she expected him had never occurred to him. Was he losing his charm? Had she come to her senses and decided not to rob her father after all?

  He carefully eased the window down behind him, resting it again on the helpful wooden spool. He gave his eyes several seconds to adjust to the objects of the room. The bed was against the opposite wall and he inched his way toward it, one hand in front of him to avoid a collision. He could hear the sounds a woman makes in sleep, the short half snores, the smooth breathing. He wondered if Amy Joy might be pretending to be asleep. Or if she was all naked and waiting for him. Waiting to say Boo! when he reached for her. He groped around in the darkness for the sleeping form. Finding her face, he bent down and kissed it. He felt for her breasts and, touching the prominent ribs on Thelma’s skinny body, Chester knew immediately it was not the body of one whose main diet was ice cream and Hershey bars. It was not the plump Amy Joy Lawler.

  “You could scrub socks on these ribs,” thought Chester, realizing that this was the skinny little woman married to Amy Joy’s cousin. Chester Lee had spied on the Ivys one evening while he waited for Amy Joy behind the hazelnut bushes that grew along the road across from Ed Lawler’s house. That was the evening the Ivys had come to Sicily’s to discuss the funeral preparations, and Chester Lee had given each one a close scrutiny. Thelma Ivy was not enticing to him but, after all, it was dark in the room. Any port in a storm was navigational advice a true Gifford would be happy to heed. And she was a city woman, born and bred away from Mattagash. The curiosity of making love to a sophisticated woman was enough to put flesh back onto Thelma’s bones.