The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  Claudia retrieves the list with Body written on top and shows it to her brother. “We should start with the undertaker,” she says.

  “Then let’s get it over with.” Matt has never forgotten seeing his grandfather at the undertaker’s in Halifax. Grandfather McNab was brusque and scary, but when Matt saw him laid out in the coffin at the funeral parlour on Bayers Road, he remembers being more terrified of his grandfather dead than alive.

  Claudia taps on the door of the purple spare room. “Matt and I are going out, Dad. We won’t be long.”

  “Take your time,” Hal says. He is relieved to be alone because when he is alone he doesn’t have to pretend he is all right. He can lie in bed remembering the happy times he and Lily had together. He can hear himself talking to her and he can hear her talking back, telling him he can do it. “You can do it, Hal,” Lily often said. “You can do it.”

  Alyward’s Funeral Home is on the same side of the street as O’Connell Park with its swimming pool, ball pitch and tennis court. Originally built by a prosperous lumber merchant, the china-blue house has white bargeboard trim and a wide veranda. Mindful that many of his clients are farmers, after his father passed on, Clive Alyward had Jimmy Klassen plant red geraniums in milk cans and place them on either side of the driveway entrance. He also hired Rusty Bitterman to renovate the exterior of a large outbuilding behind the house. Clive had Rusty raise the roof, install wide double doors and reshingle the exterior to match the house. The addition of a rooster weather vane adds a rural hominess meant to camouflage the embalming and cold storage facilities inside.

  Since completing the morning’s embalming job Clive has exchanged his lab coat for a navy blue blazer and settled in his office beside the window to reward himself with an hour’s reading. He opens the library copy of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone and is immediately caught up in the story. Clever Ruth Rendell putting the murder up front. Clive admires her recklessness, the way she wades into a story and buries the clues, the way she relies on coincidence, circumstance and character to do the job. Murder is of secondary importance.

  Clive is well into Chapter One when he hears the crunch of car tires in his driveway. He glances out the window, hoping the car belongs to nosey parkers who, after giving his property the once over, will move on. But the small black car does not move on. Clive watches as the driver parks between the house and the mortuary and he and a young woman get out. Who are these people? Clive doesn’t recognize the man but for some reason the young woman looks familiar. No question the couple are mourners. After forty years in the business Clive has learned to read body posture, to recognize those who are suffering a major loss. In the early stages of grief, mourners move like sleepwalkers unaware of time and place. Reluctantly the couple mount the back steps to the veranda. They do not want to be here and would much prefer a judge, a dentist, a surgeon meet them at the door; the last person they want to meet is an undertaker.

  Clive conceals A Judgement in Stone inside a desk drawer, buttons his blazer and waits for the doorbell to ring before entering what his father used to refer to as the vestibule. Through the frosted glass window Clive sees the outline of the couple. He opens the door and asks what he can do for them.

  “Our mother is here,” the young woman says. “Yesterday …”

  Of course. Clive ought to have guessed, the daughter so resembles her father. “You’re Hal McNab’s children. I’m a friend of your father’s,” Clive says. Etiquette forbids him from offering a hand.

  “I’m Claudia,” the woman says, “and this is my brother, Matt.”

  “Please come in,” Clive says, and ushers them into the high-ceilinged office furnished with a desk, wine leather chairs, a table holding a basket of fake carnations and a fan of brochures listing Services Rendered. “Do sit down,” he says. Erect, hands folded on the desk, face carefully composed, Clive addresses his clients. “Permit me to express my condolences for your loss,” he says.

  “Thank you,” the daughter says.

  “Have you made a decision about the body?”

  “The body,” the son mimics. “Can you please say your mother’s body?”

  Rudeness is often a symptom of bereavement, a way of apportioning blame. Ignoring the son, Clive addresses the daughter. “Your mother’s body,” he says.

  “Our mother is to be cremated,” she says.

  When the paramedics delivered the zippered bag containing Hal McNab’s wife to the mortuary, Clive was told that she was in bad shape, the back of her skull bashed in, both shoulders broken. Clive did not open the bag. Instead he opened the cold-room door and instructed the paramedics to place the body on the middle shelf. Clive never refers to the body as the corpse. Corpse is a cold word better suited to detective work than the undertaking business.

  The son asks how long cremation will take.

  “The process itself takes only a few hours, but New Brunswick law does not permit cremation until forty-eight hours have passed following the death.”

  “Why the delay?”

  “Although rarely a factor, foul play is the primary reason,” Clive says. “The delay also allows the bereaved time to consider various options for the loved one.” Loved one seems a more appropriate word for Hal’s wife than deceased.

  The son asks what options.

  “The option of having the body present during the church service or visitation. The option of having the casket open or closed.”

  “There will be no church service or visitation or casket,” the daughter says.

  “Very well.” Having spent the morning working mud-coloured makeup into Polly Virtue’s withered cheeks, Clive is relieved not to be asked to piece together Lily McNab. Only yesterday, in the hospital, Clive had the pleasure of glimpsing Hal’s wife and would prefer to hold on to the picture of her as a beautiful woman. “In that case, there are two crematoriums to choose from,” Clive says. “The large crematorium in Saint John and the smaller one in Salisbury. Some families prefer to use the smaller facility where it is possible to personally deliver the loved one and pick up the ashes when the process is complete. Others prefer to use a pickup-and-return delivery service.”

  “We prefer the pickup-and-return delivery service,” the daughter says. “Can you arrange that?”

  “Of course. For a small fee and transportation costs,” Clive says. At times like this, he knows mourners are apt to overlook the costs incurred by their decisions. Although the costs involved in this situation will be modest compared to the lavish funeral arrangements Clive has been asked to oversee, it is prudent to mention them now. “I would also suggest purchasing a coffin,” he says and before he can be interrupted, he explains that both facilities recommend a pine box rather than a body bag be used to speed up the cremation process. Even the son is silenced by the brutal simplicity of this fact. But the daughter’s composure gives way to tears and Clive nudges the Kleenex box within her reach. Mindful that other clients are due in fifteen minutes, he says, “Before you leave I’ll telephone the Salisbury crematorium and see if they can fit you in this week. I assume you prefer the cremation take place this week.”

  Both daughter and son nod.

  Excusing himself, Clive leaves Hal’s offspring staring out the window at the morgue, and in less than five minutes he returns to the office. “Salisbury can fit you in late Thursday afternoon,” he says. “Do you want me to arrange for delivery?”

  “Both ways,” the daughter says.

  “I will telephone you Friday as soon as the ashes arrive. I can bring them to your home or you can pick them up here, whichever you prefer.”

  “I’ll pick them up,” the daughter says.

  “Very well.” Clive accompanies her into the vestibule where the son is already standing at the door.

  “Friday,” Clive says, and not one word more. The meeting has wearied him. The calm demeanor. The studied distance. The dry, clinical facts. He has difficulty tolerating what is required of him in this heartless business. Throug
h the office window he watches Hal’s children walk toward the black car, the son holding his sister’s arm.

  Brother and sister pass Better Old Than New and O’Connell Park without a glance and cross the stone bridge Claudia still thinks of as the castle bridge. By now she has pulled herself together and directs her brother to turn left onto Magnolia Avenue. From here she can see the jagged tire tracks scarring the road and if they continue on Main Street, they will drive over the place where their mother was killed. Claudia cannot think about their mother being killed; later she will think about it but not now. “Take the back way home,” she says. Before they make the turn, she catches a glimpse of the brick house across from the Creamery and remembers waiting for the taxi with Corrie last night. Last night—was it only last night? “The woman who lives in the brick house across from the Creamery can tell you what she saw of the accident,” Claudia says. “Her name is Corrie Spears and she wanted me to tell you to come see her.”

  “In that case I’ll go see her after I drop you off at the house.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “We have to know how the accident happened.”

  “Of course, but can’t you wait until after Mom is buried?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  Claudia carries Sophie’s basket of food upstairs, past her parents’ bedroom to the kitchen. Not a sound from the purple spare room and Claudia decides to visit her aunt while her father is asleep. Down the back stairs she goes and taps on the pantry door. “Auntie?” she calls. Laverne doesn’t answer and, leaving the pantry, Claudia enters the main room of her aunt’s apartment with its dark overhead beams, checkered tile floor, plank table and wooden benches, one of them next to the side door. On the table is a florist’s bouquet of flowers which means her aunt must have answered the door. “Is that you, Claudia?” Laverne calls from the bedroom.

  “Yes, it’s me.” While she waits, Claudia glances at the card accompanying the flowers: Our deepest sympathy, the card reads, From all of us at Sussex Composite High, Walter Coombs.

  “A lovely bouquet,” Claudia says when her aunt appears wearing the same wrinkled skirt and blouse.

  “Yes,” Laverne says. “Walter is thoughtful. He also slipped a note under my door assuring me that he had handed out the report cards to my class this morning. I completely forgot about them.”

  “Of course,” Claudia says and plunges in. “Matt and I went to Alyward’s Funeral Home and I thought you would want to know about the arrangements.”

  But her aunt doesn’t ask about the arrangements. Instead she asks where Matthew is.

  “He went to see Corrie Spears.”

  “Corrie Spears?”

  “The woman who brought Dad and you home in a taxi. She lives across the street from the Creamery and saw the accident from her veranda.”

  Laverne does not remember seeing a woman on a veranda across from the Creamery but she remembers the fat woman sitting beside the taxi driver and, later, waiting upstairs for Claudia to arrive.

  Claudia is dying for a cigarette; how many times has she said she is dying for a cigarette? Never again. Even if she had her cigarettes with her she wouldn’t smoke in her aunt’s apartment. Claudia offers to make them a cup coffee, but her aunt says she prefers herbal tea and while Claudia fills the kettle, Laverne sits on the straight-backed chair beneath the portrait of the burgomeister. She watches her niece open the cupboard and take out two mugs and a box of tea bags, her motions slow and dreamlike. When the tea is ready, Claudia passes Laverne a mug and, sitting on the stool opposite, she tells her aunt that the body—she cannot say “Mom’s body”—will be taken to the crematorium today, that the ashes will be returned early Friday. Her aunt listens in silence as Claudia moves on to the burial. “Dad bought a plot for three in Kirk Hill Cemetery and Mom’s ashes will be buried there.”

  “A plot for three,” Laverne says. “Why would Hal buy a plot for three?”

  “So there would be space for you, Mom and himself. He bought it for Mom’s peace of mind.”

  “Lily didn’t tell me Hal bought a plot for me,” Laverne says. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “Well, it isn’t something likely come up in a conversation.”

  “But I should have been told.”

  Claudia is mystified. Why is her aunt put out?

  “I should have been consulted.”

  My mother is dead, Claudia wants to say. Do you know how much it bothered her that you didn’t like my father? Do you know that she often regretted using her inheritance to buy this house with you? Of course, Claudia asks neither of these questions. Instead she tells her aunt that there will not be a funeral.

  “But there must be a gathering of some kind,” Laverne says. “People will want to pay their respects.”

  “A wake.”

  “A wake is a family gathering. I mean a reception open to people in the town who knew Lily.”

  “Where would you suggest we have a reception?”

  “I would suggest Adair’s.”

  “The restaurant and motel?”

  “Adair’s has a large reception room that would suit the occasion.”

  “I will tell Dad and Matt.”

  “You’ll have to decide soon and place an announcement in the Kings County Record. Usually the announcement is included with the obituary.”

  Claudia never reads obituaries and “obituary” is not on her list, but of course there has to be an obituary. Laverne explains that when she advertised the sale of her trailer in the paper, the ad had to be at the newspaper office no later than closing time Thursday. Claudia gapes at her aunt: How can she remember the deadline for a newspaper ad when she herself cannot remember the day of the week? She tells her aunt she will bring up the subject of a reception tonight and asks if she would like to come upstairs for supper.

  “No thank you.” Laverne says.

  “There is plenty of food.”

  “I have little appetite for food.”

  Claudia hears a gurgle in the upstairs pipes which means her father is out of bed and it is time she went upstairs. Telling her aunt that if she needs anything, she has only to ask, Claudia slides off the stool and makes her way to the pantry, lit only by the small window. She opens the door and a shaft of light from the upstairs kitchen floods the stairway, reminding Claudia of the afternoon she tagged along with her mother when she was invited to view the renovations Laverne had made to the old servants’ quarters. The bedroom and bathroom were what Claudia and her mother had expected and the kitchen was compact and bright. It was the gloomy pantry and the living room that took them by surprise: the plank table and benches, the dark ceiling beams and thin doors, not so much as a carpet on the checkerboard floor. Lily was at a loss for words and it wasn’t until the two of them were behind the closed door of the upstairs kitchen that she declared the apartment was peculiar and asked Claudia what she had made of it. Claudia had not known what to make of it until two years ago when she and Leonard were in the Rijksmuseum.

  They were moving from one painting to another, Leonard lecturing, albeit gently, pointing out the characteristics employed by the early Dutch Masters: the alternating ochre and green tiled floors, the casement windows, the frequent use of Dresden brown, the portraits hung high on the wall. One painting in particular caught Claudia’s attention: a Dutch interior flooded with light and showing checkered floors and two windows, one in what seemed to be a kitchen, the other in what might have served as a pantry. It could have been the windows that jogged Claudia’s memory, that prompted her to mention a similar placement of windows in her aunt’s apartment. Leonard asked her to tell him exactly where the windows were located and when she told him, he trumpeted, “Perspective! You remember my lecture on de Hooch’s vanishing points, the way he manipulated the light, tricking the eye so that the viewer would look at the painting the way he wanted.” Claudia did not remember de Hooch, or Leonard’s lecture on vanishing points. After becoming his lover, she had moved to the back row where s
he watched more than she listened—so she thought, but something must have sunk in. Why else would she have told Leonard about Laverne’s apartment? From time to time Leonard insists on seeing Laverne’s apartment, insists on being introduced to her aunt until Claudia reminds him that they agreed to keep their affair from their families. From the beginning they have both understood that the affair is temporary and have agreed that when it is over, neither of them will leave a mess behind.

  From her picture window Corrie Spears watches the dark-haired young man standing beneath the giant elm. For a few minutes he looks at the Creamery parking lot and then he follows the black tire tracks on the pavement between the yellow crosswalk and the busted planter in front of Millie Keirstead’s house.

  Even if Corrie wasn’t expecting him, she would recognize this young man. Seventeen maybe eighteen years ago, he had a summer job at the Creamery and often scooped her ice cream. Also, there is the resemblance to his mother; the black hair and slender build. She watches him turn onto her walkway. By the time he reaches the bottom step, she is holding the screen door open. “You’re Hal’s son,” she says. “I’m Corrie Spears. I’ve been expecting you.” They shake hands and Matt follows her into the living room. “Take a seat,” Corrie says, pointing to the maroon velour chesterfield behind which on the windowsill is a row of china dogs, the kind Matt remembers his mother digging out of orange pekoe tea boxes. Hal’s son is white with exhaustion and Corrie offers a cup of tea. “No thank you,” he says. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get down to the facts. My sister said you were outside on the veranda when the accident happened and can tell me what you saw.”