The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  “Poor moose,” Trish whispers, “he must be terrified.”

  “No doubt he is, but he can’t hear us through the windows.” Matt says.

  “I know but …”

  “The moose isn’t the smartest animal,” Matt says, “I’d say his IQ is about the level of your horse’s.” Matt often teases his wife about the Appaloosa she boards at Elkana Ranch.

  “Well, he finally smartened up enough to get off the road,” Trish says as the moose saunters down the embankment and breaks into a run on the narrow strip of grass alongside the road. With his wife beside him, Matt is in no hurry to go home and he eases the car onto the gravel shoulder. While the line of vehicles behind them passes, Matt tells Trish that his uncle is coming from Florida to attend the reception on Sunday.

  “Your father’s brother.”

  “The doctor. Welland and Dad haven’t seen one another in years. I don’t know why. Dad always referred to his brother as the clever one.”

  “When was the last time you saw your uncle?”

  “I haven’t seen Welland since we moved from Dartmouth twenty years ago.”

  It is ten o’clock when the Mazda pulls into the driveway. The downstairs windows are framed in black but the lawn is splashed with upstairs window light. Matt parks the car near the veranda.

  “You go ahead,” he says to Trish. “I’ll bring the bags.”

  Hal and Claudia are waiting at the top of the stairs. Hal embraces his daughter-in-law. Trish holds him close and says, “Oh Hal,” which makes him cry, and taking out his handkerchief, he wipes his eyes. Trish hugs her sister-in-law. “We were worried,” Claudia says. “What took you so long?”

  “There was a moose on the road.”

  “Are you hungry? Because if you are …”

  “Thanks, but I had a meal in Halifax.”

  “We’ll have some wine and cheese,” Matt says, and carries the larger suitcase into the kitchen.

  An hour later, Claudia is alone in the kitchen when the telephone rings. She is relieved the family has gone to bed and she won’t be asked who is calling.

  “Hello, my beauty,” Leonard says. My beauty: words that belong to Claudia’s other life. “How are you?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Well then, can you tell me what’s been going on?”

  Claudia tells Leonard that her mother is being cremated, that the burial will be on Sunday afternoon followed by a public reception; that afterwards there will be a family meal at home.

  “Is it all right with you if I attend the reception?”

  “Leonard, you never knew my mother. Why would you want to attend the reception?”

  “To support you, of course.”

  The same old Leonard, always ready with a suave response. No wonder he has a long track record of bedding women.

  “Leonard, my family and I will be concentrating on honouring my mother and I don’t want any distractions.”

  “I promise I won’t distract you,” Leonard says.

  Claudia is too tired to insist Leonard stay away and when he asks the time and place of the reception, she says, “Between two and four at Adair’s Motel. Adair’s is on Main Street across from Kirk Hill Cemetery. We’re going to bury Mom’s ashes there before the reception.”

  “I’ll leave here before noon.”

  “I’ll ignore you,” Claudia says.

  “That’s all right,” Leonard says. “Seeing you will be enough.”

  Again, those beguiling words Leonard says so easily and Claudia finds difficult to resist.

  “Good night,” she says, and hangs up before he can prolong the conversation. It is only when Claudia is in bed that she remembers she forgot to tell Leonard that she will not be accompanying him to Nuremberg next month.

  Even with the help of trazodone and the comfort of having his children nearby, Hal cannot sleep. Staring into the dark, he counts the gentle pings of the living-room clock. Twelve o’clock and here he is wide awake trying to make sense of what happened in the kitchen this morning, trying to make sense of why the truck driver came to the house and said he was sorry he hit Lily. Didn’t the truck driver know that an apology was no excuse for killing someone? Didn’t he know that the last person Hal and his family wanted to see was him? As if that wasn’t enough, Laverne had put her hand on the truck driver’s jacket and told him that it took courage for him to come here and apologize. Why would she say this after he had killed her sister? And why would she tell him that the accident was her sister’s fault when the driver had already apologized because he knew it was his fault?

  Hal isn’t excusing himself for his own mistakes. He knows it was his fault for agreeing to live in the same house with Laverne; he knows that if he had not agreed to co-sign the mortgage with Laverne that Lily would still be alive. It was Lily’s idea that she, Hal and Laverne buy the Old Steadman House. Hal is still troubled by the fact that the sisters had talked about buying the house before Lily mentioned it to him. Two months earlier, Hal had been squeezed out of his job with Merck and was in no position to raise the down payment on his own. Even so, he was reluctant to pass up the opportunity to buy a house listed at a low market price because it required considerable repair. While Lily listened, Hal spent most of a week pacing the floor, talking about the pros and cons of buying the house.

  The fact is that until they shared a house, Laverne had been more of a passing acquaintance than a sister-in-law, Hal having seen little of her since she introduced him to Lily thirty-four years previously. If he had known how high-handed and interfering Laverne could be, he would never have agreed to buy the house together, no matter how hard up he was, or how much Lily wanted it. Laverne was a nuisance and unless she was travelling or was otherwise busy, seldom missed a day coming upstairs. She never telephoned ahead to ask if it was convenient, she just popped up the back stairs on one pretext or another: Would Lily like to go for a drive? Did Lily want her to buy her some sweet corn from the farmer’s truck? Did she know about the clothing sale at the Mercantile? Lily tolerated these intrusions and explained to Hal that Laverne had lived alone for most of her life and that once she got used to having family nearby, she would settle down. But Laverne did not settle down and continued making a nuisance of herself, coming up the back stairs as soon as she was home from school until, to avoid her, Lily undertook her errands in the afternoons instead of late mornings. When Lily told Hal that Laverne insisted on regluing a kitchen wallpaper seam and repairing a loose baseboard in their apartment, Hal said it was time to lock the back-stairs door, but Lily resisted. “Laverne thinks she’s helping,” she said. “But she isn’t helping,” Hal said. “She’s interfering.”

  Without a sister of his own, more than once Hal has asked himself if sisters are more tolerant of one another than brothers. Certainly he and Welland were not tolerant of one another and by the time they finished high school, graduating the same year because Welland skipped a grade, they had grown far apart. How patient Lily was with Laverne and how Laverne doted on her. She seemed to think Lily needed looking after. She was wrong about that. Lily did not need looking after, except by Hal, and that was a problem for Laverne.

  Now Lily is dead and the problem is what to do about her sister’s betrayal. Given her attachment to Lily, why did Laverne betray her by telling the truck driver that the accident wasn’t his fault, that it was Lily’s fault for walking in front of the truck? Now that Laverne has sided with the truck driver she will not back down; she will not back down because she is never wrong. If Lily knew her sister had betrayed her, she would be furious and she would be hurt. As for Hal, he is impervious to hurt. His heart is broken and cannot break again.

  V

  Claudia tiptoes downstairs and into the soggy grey morning. She usually ignores the weather but the morning gloominess combined with the task ahead makes her uneasy. Backing the Honda onto Church Avenue she follows the back streets to the stone bridge. She drives past the park and her father’s store without a glance a
nd pulls into the driveway of Alyward’s Funeral Home.

  Claudia has telephoned ahead and the undertaker is waiting at the door. “Good morning,” Clive says and, ushering Claudia into his office, he gestures to a chair then seats himself on the other side of the desk. Hal’s daughter reaches into her handbag and takes out a chequebook. Clive waves it away. “Not now,” he says. In his experience mourners are unaware of the decorum and trust required in the undertaking business, that it would be gauche and inappropriate to accept payment before all services are rendered. In due course an invoice will be mailed, along with a notice that her mother’s wedding and engagement rings are inside his safe and can be picked up at the family’s convenience. In Clive’s experience, families who choose cremation often prefer to make their own burial arrangements and he asks Claudia if a decision has made about the disposal of the ashes.

  “The ashes will be buried on Sunday at Kirk Hill,” Claudia says.

  “Very well,” Clive says. “Then it is my duty to inform you that regulations recommend the ashes be placed in a waterproof container. An urn is the most commonly used receptacle. We have a wide selection of urns to suit every taste.” Although his former assistant now runs the funeral parlour at the other end of town, Clive continues to use the royal we.

  “My father is looking after the container.”

  “In that case, please inform Hal that the container must be large enough to hold approximately five pounds of ash and bone.”

  “Bone.”

  Clive tactfully explains that during cremation not all of the skeleton may have been thoroughly pulverized because of the density of the bones. Claudia does not to want to hear another word about the density of the bones. “I’ll take the ashes now,” she says.

  “Very well,” Clive says, “but you might want to consider leaving the remains here so that I can transfer them into the container for you. It is a service we provide.”

  “I prefer to take them with me,” Claudia says.

  “Then allow me to carry them to your car,” Clive says. Opening the mahogany cupboard, he removes a cardboard box and follows Hal’s daughter outside and waits while she decides where to put the remains. Clive has observed this ritual many times: whether to lock the remains inside the trunk, or place them on the floor or on the front or back seat of the car. Clara Thorne put her sister’s remains in the glove compartment, drove them around for months before scattering them in her flower garden. Ora Hayes carried away his brother’s remains inside a fishing creel and scattered them on the Miramichi River. Jerry Kyle carried away his girlfriend’s remains in his backpack and later scattered them over the countryside from a hot-air balloon. Privately, Clive scorns this kind of sentimental nonsense that, in his opinion, robs the deceased of a dignified burial. Ruth Rendell never indulges in such foolish behaviours in her crime novels and following the post-mortem, the corpse is properly and respectfully buried. Fortunately, Hal McNab’s daughter comes from sensible stock.

  Clive watches her unlock the trunk and point to a space amid the clutter of snow scrapers, plastic bags, empty wine bottles, a plaid car rug. Clive places the box in the space and watches as Claudia carefully covers it with the rug. “Thank you,” she says. It would be inappropriate for Clive to say, “You are welcome,” and with a nod of his head, he returns to the house and slumps in his office chair. There are times, and this is one of them, when Clive is overwhelmed by the business of undertaking, the loneliness and isolation of mitigating death. But that is the profession he inherited, the profession of attempting to guide mourners through the valley of the shadow of death by sparing them the most painful of decisions: how and in what manner to dispose of their loved ones. If only Clive’s faith in the Lord was as firm and unshakable as his father’s, but it falters, it often falters.

  If George Alyward were here now, he would remind his son that he was led to the honorable profession of undertaking by the Lord. Take up the torch and wave it wide Clive’s father would sing, The torch that lights time’s thickest gloom. The Lord was George’s torch bearer and Saviour. Eleven-year-old George, the youngest pauper sold at the last public auction held in Sussex, New Brunswick, thirty-three years after slavery was abolished in the United States. Lester Alyward, the proprietor of a modest funeral parlour behind the Reformed Episcopal Church in Sussex Vale, took Reverend Hubley’s thundering sermon about the treatment of the wretched poor to heart and after paying fifty-seven dollars to the town authorities, he brought George home to his childless wife, Addie. No more sleeping in the hayloft, no more eating pig slop, all that was now behind George. At last his belly was full of Addie’s chicken stew and he slept on a feather bed. During the day he dug graves and helped Lester build pine coffins, and in the evening Addie taught him to read and write, a necessary education for a boy destined to take over the undertaking business. After Lester died, George bought the house where Clive is sitting and set up shop. He married Ida Murray who died in childbirth when Clive was born. It was Addie who cooked and kept house for George and Clive until she died at the age of eighty-nine and was buried beside Lester in what has since become known as Sussex Corner.

  ——

  Claudia parks in the driveway of the Old Steadman House and slogs upstairs, leaving the cardboard box inside the trunk. It is not even ten o’clock and already she is tired. Leonard’s telephone call upset her and even with a sleeping pill she was awake most of the night. Against her better judgement she allowed Leonard to talk her into letting him attend Sunday’s reception. She should have stood her ground and told him not to come. The reception will be difficult enough without the distraction of her lover. Leonard promised not to distract her but will she be able to ignore him? Claudia hears her father calling from the kitchen, asking if she would like a cup of coffee.

  “You made coffee?”

  “I’ll have you know that I made coffee every morning for your mother and myself. Where have you been?”

  “Picking up the ashes. They’re in the Honda. Inside a cardboard box.”

  “How big is the box?”

  Claudia draws a rectangle with her hands. “It weighs five pounds.”

  “Five pounds.” Hal shakes his head. “Not very much.”

  “The container for burial has to be waterproof. Regulations.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Are you sure you want to look after the container, Dad?”

  “I’ve already told you I would.”

  “I’ll scramble some eggs.”

  Claudia hears her father mutter, “About time,” in the cranky voice he sometimes used with her mother and is tempted to tell him he can scramble the eggs himself, although she doubts he knows how. How will he manage when he is living alone?

  Matt appears in the doorway dressed in his suit, a shirt and tie. Hal asks where he is going.

  “I have to drop by Larry McIntyre’s office.”

  “Judge McIntyre’s son,” Hal says. “Your old law school friend.”

  “Right.” If his father asks why he is dropping by Larry’s office, Matt will fudge an answer. It is too soon to tell his father that Larry has agreed to pursue the accident insurance claim. But Hal doesn’t ask; instead he says that if it’s no trouble he would appreciate a lift to his store.

  “It’s no trouble,” Matt says, “no trouble at all.”

  True to her word, Hennie Pronk is back, this time with cheese blintzes and vanilla custard which she insists she and Laverne eat for breakfast. Laverne lacks the energy to resist and watches Hennie lay placemats and set plates and glasses of water on the table. Laverne surprises herself by eating a cheese blintz and a small helping of the custard Hennie calls vla.

  “Vla is good for you. I made some for Jan when I was in Holland,” Hennie says. “Jan said he is looking forward to seeing you soon. He and Lucas have moved to another apartment and Jan says there is a bedroom where you can sleep.” Jan said no such thing but depending on the circumstances Hennie is willing to stretch the truth; she advises La
verne to go through with her trip to Harlingen. “You remember after Henrik died, I went to Harlingen. We were married in Harlingen.”

  The Pronks did not stay long in Harlingen. After Henrik’s brother found out that the Gestapo had discovered evidence in a Lutheran church record that their grandfather was one-quarter Jewish, before the war broke out both brothers emigrated to Canada, Lars to Alberta and Henrik, Hennie and Jan to New Brunswick where for years they lived on a small farm on the Belleisle. It was Jan who discovered clay near their farm and helped his parents build the pottery and the shop. But the farm was too far out of the way for buyers to find Hennie’s pottery and Henrik’s silver jewellery and when Jan was sixteen they moved to Sussex, where there was a high school nearby. Jan was a good student and after he finished university, he taught geometry and algebra at Sussex Composite High, living at home and saving his money so that he could return to Holland. Jan was pleased when Laverne Pritchard joined the teaching staff because he finally had someone to talk to about his trips to Holland and about books he read. He did not like the staff room where teachers talked about shopping and sales and spoke meanly about their students. Although they appreciated one another’s company, Jan was careful not to see too much of Laverne. He wanted her to understand that their friendship was based on nothing more than interests they had in common.

  “I might not go to Harlingen this year. I might stay here,” Laverne says. The baseboard tiles and the blue cushion would have to wait.

  “It is too soon to decide,” Hennie says and changes the subject. “I will need your help unloading the kiln tomorrow,” she says. Another white lie: Hennie is capable of unloading the kiln herself. “I will come for you at one o’clock.” Before taking her leave, Hennie helps Laverne wash and dry the dishes. Afterwards Hennie places the bowl of vanilla custard inside the fridge. “Be sure to finish the vla,” she says.