The Big Shuffle

by Laura Pedersen

  “Hang on—I have to get the babies.”

  The doorbell rings again.

  Bernard is standing on the front porch holding a casserole dish and a laundry bag, which he immediately sets down in the entrance hall table to give me the kind of hug reserved for people who have just experienced a major loss. “Gil is going to stay home and watch the girls today. And I packed up your clothes that were in the summerhouse.”

  The phone starts ringing again. Louise must have picked it up again because it stops.

  Bernard lifts the casserole dish and follows me toward the kitchen. “I brought leftover baby back ribs à la Bernard and my super-special Stockton shrimp scampi—hardly enough to feed everybody, but perhaps good for a little snack.”

  Over time one begins to notice that most of Bernard's recipes manage to work his name in there somewhere.

  “Unfortunately we finished all the cauliflower,” continues Bernard.

  “The kids hate cauliflower,” I say.

  “I must admit, I couldn't eat it for a year after what happened.”

  There's no doubt that I'm distracted at the moment; however, a cauliflower tragedy just isn't ringing a bell.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The brilliant French chef Bernard Loiseau searched nonstop for a way to transform cauliflower from an unsophisticated vegetable into a dazzling side dish by caramelizing it. He blanched, strained, puréed, and then finally committed suicide after it failed to impress the critics.” Bernard stares at me as if he can't believe a civilized human being could not know such a thing. He harrumphs loudly and adds, “Yet you never find any award-winning dishes named after critics, now do you?”

  Louise appears in the front hallway. She gives Bernard a nod and dutifully reports, “Eric called from the hospital. Mom is still in shock and she isn't coming home.”

  “What?” I might be in shock, too. Nothing makes sense anymore.

  “She's not yet recovered from the blow,” Bernard translates.

  “I know, I mean, what are we supposed to do?”

  “Eric says the hospital wants to know what to do with the body,” Louise somberly continues.

  A loud sob comes from the dining room. Louise and Bernard appear startled.

  “Aunt Lala is here,” I explain. “She just found out.”

  “Maybe she knows what to tell them,” suggests Louise. “Eric is waiting on the other end.”

  I walk into the dining room where Aunt Lala is still wearing her purple coat with an enormous handbag strapped across her chest. Strands of frizzy red hair hang down over florid cheeks, and her face is streaked with mascara, lending a clownlike atmosphere to the scene. Aunt Lala's naturally bright coloring goes a long way in explaining the red hair and freckled skin that pops up in every second or third Palmer child. Aunt Lala leans forward until she runs out of breath and then leans way back and loudly blows her nose into a fast-disintegrating tissue.

  “Mom is sort of in shock and so they want to know what we should do with Dad's body,” I say.

  Aunt Lala's eyes open wide and it looks as if she's about to say something but all that comes out is another huge wail.

  I step back into the front hall where Louise and Bernard are waiting. “She's not sure,” I say as we hear her get started on another round of weeping.

  “I know,” says Bernard. “Call Pastor Costello!”

  Bernard isn't a churchgoer, but he's quite fond of the regular poker games that Pastor Costello holds with some of the guys in the church basement.

  “I thought of that,” I say. “He's on that mission to Cambodia.”

  “That's right,” says Bernard. “I've been so busy recovering from the holidays that I haven't been to play poker in weeks.”

  “Does he have an assistant or a temporary replacement?” I ask.

  Louise brightens. “Yeah, there's some woman filling in. Mom really likes her.”

  “Tell Eric to stay at the hospital with Mom and call us back about the other stuff in a little while,” I say to Louise. “Then find out what happened to the rest of the kids.”

  Louise disappears into the living room and Bernard brings the casserole to the kitchen. Aunt Lala has quieted down a bit and I decide it's a good time to explain to her that we haven't yet told the kids, especially since they'll all be gathering for lunch soon. That is, if I can ever get some lunch on the table.

  When I return to the kitchen in order to make Aunt Lala a cup of tea, Bernard is examining the contents of the refrigerator and frowning.

  “Aunt Lala is really jet-lagged—she took a train to London, caught an overnight flight to New York, and then flew to Cleveland and didn't sleep a wink.” I don't know why I'm bothering to make excuses for her. Aunt Lala is very sweet and kind, but the truth is that she can't manage anything. It takes her an hour to get ready for a trip to the store and then she usually forgets the shopping list and goes to the bus station instead. According to Aunt Vi, if my mother hadn't taken her to school and back every day, it's entirely possible that Aunt Lala would still be in the tenth grade.

  “Yes, she must refresh herself after an international flight,” says Bernard. “Do you have a number for the church office?”

  I find Mom's address book on a shelf underneath the counter. “It must be in here somewhere. Do you mind? I have to change the twins.”

  “It's Sunday,” says Bernard. He looks down at his wrist-watch. “Church will be letting out any minute.”

  Bernard knows when all the churches let out because oftentimes people stop in his store afterward to browse or pick up a gift.

  “You're right,” I say. “Maybe I should just run over there now.”

  The phone goes off again but Louise must answer it from upstairs.

  “I'll go with you,” says Bernard.

  Louise appears in the doorway to the kitchen. “Eric needs some insurance papers that he says should be in Dad's filing cabinet.”

  “Oh great,” I say. “I don't know anything about insurance.”

  “The kids are out in the back having a snowball war with their coats unzipped and most of them aren't wearing hats or scarves,” reports Louise.

  “Call them inside,” I say. “It's time to eat anyway.”

  “Okay,” says Bernard in his best team leader voice. “Why doesn't Hallie show me where the insurance forms are kept and I'll sort that out, Louise can go consult with the minister, and Hallie will serve the lunch.”

  The phone rings.

  “I'll answer the phone,” Bernard says to Louise, “and you call the children in to wash up for lunch.”

  The twins begin crying from their new location on the dining room table. Apparently Aunt Lala's tears are contagious. The whole scene is like a public service ad for birth control.

  The front doorbell rings. Louise disappears, in the opposite direction.

  “I'll take care of the twins,” says Bernard, though now sounding slightly frantic, “and you answer the door.” Meantime the phone is still ringing.

  I open the front door and six women between the ages of forty and sixty all seize upon me at once. “Oh, you poor little darlings!” One of them practically shouts as she gives me a half nelson of a hug while the others bustle past and begin removing their coats. Within minutes their things are neatly hung in the front hall closet and there's a row of sturdy pocketbooks lined up next to the door. They wear wool suits with large brooches on the collar or patterned dresses that fall slightly below the knee. The fact that they travel under a cloud of pungent perfume and on the weekend basically rules out social workers. I vaguely recognize one woman from a long-ago Sunday school class. I'm pretty sure she was the teacher who, when you burped without excusing yourself, used to loudly declare, “That was well brought up, but apparently you were not.”

  Then it dawns on me—churchwomen!

  EIGHT

  THE HALF-DOZEN WOMEN IN CREPE-SOLED SHOES PULL APRONS over their church clothes and instantly go into battle formation. The smiling plump one takes
a fussy twin from Bernard. The taller one who wears her hair in a bun grabs the other. They make sounds of clucking and cooing, but their expressions clearly state bathing and feeding. A third woman, the one with her glasses hanging on a gold chain, moves for the ringing phone, scanning for a pen and message pad on the way, but bringing her pocketbook along just in case. Two more veer off in the direction of the kitchen.

  The last woman, whom I vaguely recognize as someone who once presided over a table of holiday wreaths for sale in the church basement and wore a bracelet of weapon's-grade masking tape, explains that the interim minister, Nancy Gordon, will be along soon.

  “How many of you will be taking meals at the house?” she asks.

  “I've lost track,” I say with embarrassment.

  She's off to take a head count, sensible shoes going squeaketysqueak across the wooden floor. The entire front hall is now filled to capacity with huge plastic containers, the contents of which, there's no doubt in my mind, could keep a large family in good working order for several weeks.

  It's like being liberated by a powerful but friendly army. This is the amazingly organized and energetic militia that runs the church school, craft group, bake sale, white elephant sale, and charity auction—basically everything except the buildings and grounds committee. (That's left to the husbands, who use the meetings as an excuse to play poker.)

  These capable women belong to a parallel universe of babies, PTA meetings, Scouts, and Little League. They know instinctively where the peanut butter and jelly are kept without having to ask. They've presided over many an illness, bereavement, wedding, shower, christening, and accident recovery. Their numbers move rapidly, speak in code, and hum with a Situation Room sense of purpose. The only groups of women who might present a more skilled front in the face of tragedy are the wives of soldiers and miners.

  “Well! I guess we can go and search for the insurance now.” Bernard is also recovering from the surprise attack, but equally relieved.

  Together we thread our way through the cooing, bustling, and clanging of the twins being changed, cleaning supplies inventoried, and meals being prepared. On the way up the stairs Bernard is close behind me and sniffing the air loudly. Finally he says, “Hallie, I've been smelling mildew or something ever since I arrived, and I believe it's coming from you!”

  Putting my hands up to my hair, which is hanging loose almost to my waist, I say, “Oh no! My hair stinks from the party last night. Is it okay if I take a quick shower? The minister is coming …”

  “Of course, just point me in the direction of the files,” says Bernard, now pinching his nose with his fingers.

  Looking through my parents’ closet I find that Dad's paperwork is not quite as organized as Mom's kitchen. In the corner sits a file cabinet chockablock with bills, bank statements, appliance manuals, envelopes for weekly church donations, loose receipts, and even a few old magazines on house construction.

  Bernard digs through the mess and in a somber voice announces, “This might take a while.”

  “Yeah. I guess when you arrive home every evening to all these kids and an urgent to-do list of home repairs, it's not that easy to maintain a system.”

  There are signs that Dad planned to eventually become organized: an unopened pack of file folders and labels, some empty three-ring binders, and a blank ledger. In the meantime, most papers have been stuffed back into the envelopes in which they arrived. Check stubs fill the cracks between the piles of envelopes.

  Tackling the mess with great gusto, Bernard waves me off in the direction of the shower. When I return twenty minutes later, he's humming “When You Walk Through a Storm” from Carousel and sitting in front of three neat stacks of papers with his back toward me.

  “I've made a separate pile for anything that has either the logo of an insurance company or a government return address, since your dad worked for the state of Ohio and they have their own benefit scheme,” he explains.

  While describing the new system Bernard looks up at me and knocks over a freshly organized tower of files so that the papers scatter across the floor. “Whatever have you done?” he asks.

  “Nothing. I haven't touched one envelope.”

  “No, I mean to your hair!” exclaims Bernard.

  I look in the mirror and indeed, my head resembles a strawberry blond Chia pet.

  “There wasn't any conditioner,” I inform him. “And the hair dryer is broken.”

  “I'll pick up both at the drugstore,” says Bernard. “In the meantime you're going to have to do a Jackie O. headscarf because that is not a good look unless you're planning to audition for the musical Annie.”

  “But you always say that women who are tall and thin can get away with anything.”

  “I meant anything short of making people think that Halloween has come nine months early this year.”

  The search continues. I find a handful of papers that are yellow with age. One is an award that Dad received for being an Eagle Scout. Another is for perfect attendance in high school, which is pretty amazing since Dad grew up on a farm about six miles outside of town. Then there are his varsity letters for everything that ends with the word ball—baseball, football, and basketball. I was aware that Dad had been a star athlete, since there's a box of trophies in the garage, but it's disconcerting to see all these things now that he's gone.

  Bernard finishes sorting through one pile and starts on another. “It appears that your father sends the checks on time, even if it's only a day before they're due. So there's a good chance whatever coverage he has is up-to-date.” Bernard looks over at me, stares at my hair again, and begins to laugh. “It's a good thing Craig isn't here.”

  “I'll pull it back as soon as it's dry,” I promise him.

  “You know what they say,” Bernard replies mysteriously.

  “No, what do they say? That no one has ever let their hair dry naturally?”

  “Same old coiffure, boyfriend secure. Brand-new hair, boyfriend beware.” Bernard gives me a knowing glance.

  Last night is a blur, only I can't help but wonder how long

  Bernard was in the doorway of the attic before we noticed him. Is it possible that he saw something—Josh's hand on my knee? Or does Bernard simply know me too well? I feel my face flush and decide the best strategy for now is to ignore him.

  Bernard clutches his chest and breathes deeply. “Ever since we left the hospital I've been experiencing chest pains. Gil says I'm going to be the first person to have a psychosomatic heart attack.”

  “Hey, look at this!” I dump out an envelope containing all of our birth certificates.

  “Incroyable,” says Bernard. “Your tribe has created a full-time job for someone down at the county clerk's office.”

  I arrange them in chronological order before returning them to the envelope, with Mom's and Dad's on top.

  “Keep your dad's out in case we need it for something,” instructs Bernard.

  In removing Dad's birth certificate I can't help but notice the birth year is not the same as Mom's—hers is two years later—and yet that's impossible because they're both the same age.

  “Can they make a mistake on your birth certificate?” I ask Bernard.

  “I suppose anything is possible,” he says. “You constantly read stories about people who go into the hospital for a kidney transplant and come out with an amputated leg instead.”

  “Here's something!” I pull out what appear to be policies from a big manila envelope.

  Bernard flips through to hospitalization coverage. “This is pretty good—only a ten percent deductible.” Then he moves on to another sheaf of stapled papers and points to a section with the heading Death Benefit.

  I instinctively turn my head away.

  “I'll read it,” he offers. “In the event of…” then he switches to mumble, mumble, mumble, “… the sum of fifty thousand dollars shall be paid to the family of …” mumble, mumble, mumble. “It's not much money.”

  “We don't hav
e much money.”

  “Look through here for anything about additional coverage.” He hands me a stack of papers. “Sometimes people have a supplemental policy or one with another company.”

  After a few minutes of sifting through papers Bernard reports, “He borrowed ten thousand dollars from the credit union last August.”

  “Oh gosh, part ofthat was money he gave me for college!”

  “Don't worry, it doesn't have to be paid back anytime soon.”

  I flip through the pages of the insurance policy. In the health section I find that Mom and Dad both received extra points for being nonsmokers. However, at the bottom is Mom's birthday across from Dad's, and once again it's two years later.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” I say.

  Bernard looks up to make sure I'm not having some sort of an episode. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I mean, there's something strange going on here with Mom's birthday. I just want to ask Aunt Lala. She's the youngest sister. Mom is the middle and Aunt Florence was the oldest.”

  “Now that your hair is almost dry, may I suggest a babushka?”

  Glancing in the mirror I note that my fright wig looks even worse now and grab a baseball cap out of Teddy's room. Then I twist up the bottom, stick it all underneath, and tuck the loose strands behind my ears.

  I find Aunt Lala on the couch having tea with one of the church ladies, who introduces herself as Vera Armstrong. Heaven only knows what they're talking about, but they both stop the moment they see me and look horrified, as if I'm a ghost. In fact, their looks are so disconcerting that I quickly check the front of my sweatshirt for boogers and food stains.