A Wedding on the Banks

by Cathie Pelletier

  “She told Kevin she wants a divorce,” Winnie said finally.

  “Well,” said Sicily. “I must say I’m not surprised.”

  “Me neither,” said Winnie.

  “How’s Kevin taking it?”

  “Alice says he’s going to Connecticut and look for a job in construction. Ain’t that a shame, though?”

  “Poor man. He’ll miss them kids.”

  Winnie wanted desperately to hear tidings of Amy Joy and to get Sicily’s feelings on the issue. Then she could happily call Claire Fennelson and say, “Beautiful day, ain’t it? Looks like spring is finally here, don’t it? I just barely hung up the phone from talking to Sicily.” Then she could sit back with her morning coffee and let Claire beat the latest news out of her, as if she were a rug. But Sicily gave her no such relief.

  “I’ve got a cake in the oven, Winnie,” Sicily said instead. “I gotta run.”

  Winnie hung up the phone with a plunk.

  “Cake in the oven at eight o’clock in the morning, my foot,” said Winnie. How could she call Claire now? What would she say? “Nice day! Spring’s here! Guess what! You’ll never believe this, but Sicily’s got a cake in the oven!” What if Sicily talked to Claire or Girdy or Edna-Bob first and they called Winnie with the breaking story? Winnie thought about this.

  “I’ll just tell them I couldn’t care less,” Winnie decided. “I’ll tell them all that Sicily Lawler is my best friend and has been for years, and that I have no intention of gossiping about her, or poor little Amy Joy for that matter.” Amy Joy. Maybe Lola, when she finally got up at the crack of noon, would at least have the latest scoop on the jilted bride. Winnie would just watch Captain Kangaroo and wait, damn it.

  ***

  Junior was freshly shaved and dressed, his corpulence partially hidden in a dark striped suit, when he stepped outside his room at the Albert Pinkham Motel. He was to meet his father at Una’s Valley Cafe for a hearty breakfast, the kind the local potato farmers put away each morning, and then together they would inspect Watertown’s only funeral home. All night, even as the Cadillac was being deflowered, he had dreamed of his father Marvin dangling a big silver key just out of his reach. It was only when Junior got good footing on something solid beneath him that his fingertips reached the key and it fell into his grasp. His own funeral home! When he looked down to see what his footstool had been, he saw that he was standing on Monique Tessier’s back.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Junior had told himself while he shaved, remembering the symbolic dream, “then I’ll do it. I’ll step on anyone I have to, especially her. And today I’ll tell the old man the truth. I’ll tell him I want my family back together too, like he wants. And I’ll tell him Monique is here in Mattagash looking for trouble. Then I’ll go to the Watertown police station and get that little son of a bitch out of jail. The old man won’t even have to know.”

  Now Junior stood on the snowy walkway outside room number 1 and stared with popping eyes at what was left of his precious treasure. He felt his heart doing the same acrobatic flip-flops as the raven had done. He felt little firecrackers going off inside his temples. He tried to breathe deeply, as his eyes caressed the bruised body, filled the gaping holes, soothed the obvious cuts and scratches. His 1969 cream-colored Cadillac up on blocks like something you might see on television from Appalachia. Or in a Gifford’s yard. Junior sensed a bad case of hyperventilation coming on. A pickup went slowly past the motel, with Bert Fogarty and Herb Fennelson peering out their windows until the horn sounded rudely and the driver yelled, “Get a Ford!” at Junior. Junior’s neck bristled as the small needlelike hairs stood on end. His breathing returned to normal. He had to think. This obviously wasn’t Randy’s doing. Randy was in jail. Not only that, Randy was an idiot. This was the work of professionals. How could Randy remove a radio, an aerial, a rearview mirror? Randy still thought cars were born all in one piece, for Chrissakes, in some goddamn huge cabbage patch, in Detroit maybe.

  “Giffords,” Junior said with disgust, and the word stuck like welfare peanut butter to his tongue.

  ***

  Thelma left her place at the window and slipped into the bathroom. Now that Junior was safely out of range, she popped a Valium into her mouth and felt it stick to her throat. She drank more water to dislodge it, as she wondered why Junior had treated his beloved Cadillac so shabbily.

  “He’ll have me up on four blocks one day,” Thelma decided with certainty, “if I’m not careful.”

  ***

  “Need a ride?” a cheery voice rang out behind him. Junior spun around to see Monique Tessier, dressed to kill in what looked like an honest-to-God business suit. “Looks like you’re having a little road trouble.”

  Junior bit his lip. Even though he intended to dump her, he was embarrassed for his ex-mistress to see him thusly, the mark of his manhood displayed limp, useless, before him.

  “Yes,” he said to Monique Tessier. “I need a ride to Una’s Valley Cafe in Watertown.” And for the second time since he decreed I will never get inside your car again, so don’t plead, Junior got into Monique’s old Buick and they went off down the road like a regular married couple.

  ***

  Pearl watched Marvin drive off for his appointment with his son.

  “I hope they don’t buy it,” Pearl thought. “I don’t want Junior and Thelma so close to Mattagash. Forgive me, Lord, for even thinking it, but it’s true.” The phone blared. Sicily.

  “How are you gonna handle this?” Pearl asked her younger sister.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” Sicily said, “and I’m gonna handle it just the way Marge would. I’m gonna pretend it never happened.”

  “Bully for you!” said Pearl. “And Amy Joy?”

  “To tell you the truth, I think she cares more about what Dorrie Fennelson will say than the whole town,” Sicily told Pearl. “But I know Amy Joy. It won’t be long before she’ll put it all behind her.”

  “Bully for her, too!” said Pearl. Amy Joy had some pioneer blood in her veins after all.

  When she and Sicily finished chatting, Pearl stood for a while and watched a flock of snow buntings rise up in a graceful arc to catch the sun. They shimmered white, like porcelain birds, then disappeared. Maybe back to the Arctic, now that spring was coming.

  Pearl fixed a second cup of coffee and looked out the back window at the old summer kitchen. There had been so much racket out there the night before that she thought the roof might come crashing down on the ghostly revelers. Marge, Marcus Doyle, and friends. Even Marvin had finally noticed it, coming out of a deep sleep to mutter, “What?”

  “Go back to sleep,” Pearl had told him. “It’s nothing.” She no longer wanted to share the secret of the summer kitchen with her husband, but to protect him from it. It was, after all, her problem.

  Pearl noticed that Marge’s old curtains hung in the windows of the summer kitchen with the stiffness that comes with accumulated dust and cobwebs. As soon as spring was really here, which was soon judging by how fast the sun was gobbling up the last snow, Pearl would venture into Marge’s old domain and give it a thorough cleansing. She’d take Lestoil and Windex and S.O.S. pads to all the ghosts. She’d fling open the windows and exorcise all the past sins that had occurred among the three sisters. Surely that was the thorn in Marge’s side, if ghosts still had sides, which was causing her such unrest, and not the tattered love letters. She had gone to her grave with much anger in her heart, anger at Pearl and Sicily and the old reverend.

  “She missed out on her own life to raise me and Sicily,” Pearl thought. “And yet we never once thanked her for it.” She wondered if Sicily ever did, once Pearl had run off to Portland and found refuge in the Ivy Funeral Home. Ah-ha! She’d said it herself. Run off to Portland. The very words that used to send her into a tizzy if they came from Marge’s or Sicily’s lips had now come from her ow
n. Run off. Run away. Run from. It was true. Her sisters had been right after all. But which was the better of two failures, then? Was running away any worse than being too frightened to run at all? That was the affliction that killed Marge young, at barely fifty-nine years of age.

  “She was younger than me,” Pearl whispered. And it would kill Sicily, too, if she wasn’t careful. Fear was the worst enemy of any young woman in Mattagash, in any small town. Fear of big ideas, big decisions, big towns. By the time they became older women, the fear had already turned into anger, tightening their mouths, curling their hands into arthritic fists. Even if they’re not afraid to run, as Pearl ran, as Amy Joy tried to, the anger follows them. It’ll go to Connecticut, to big cities like Chicago, all the way west to California. Anger knows no geographical limitations, and it needs no bus ticket.

  “If she’s not careful,” Pearl thought, “it will kill Amy Joy, too. It’s in our blood, this thing, this disease. The men used to get rid of it by beating workhorses in the woods. Now they run their machines into early graves. They work hard and drink hard and die hard. But women? All we can do is fight our wars with words, instead of real bullets.”

  She stood for a long time and traced the outline of the summer kitchen, the snow on its sunny roof already beginning to drip from the eaves, to go back to the earth, to nourish the barren soil. She herself had come back to Mattagash to be nourished. If Marvin returned from Watertown with the intent to buy Cushman’s Funeral Home for his son, Pearl had a plan.

  “Give the business in Portland to Junior,” she would plead with her husband. “You take the one in Watertown. You need a good rest anyway. You’re tired. Your health isn’t that good anymore. Give the Portland business to Junior, or give me up.”

  Pearl relaxed the curtain and let spring go back about its business. When the weather was just right, she would clean the summer kitchen. She would bury all her hatchets, the ones she’d been lugging down the years. She’d dispose of the anger.

  “I’m an old dog,” Pearl said, “but I’m still learning some new tricks.”

  ***

  “How’d you get here, then?” Marvin asked Junior, when he’d been told of the Cadillac’s demise.

  “I thumbed a ride from a couple of local yokels,” Junior said, remembering the two men in the pickup truck. “In a Ford,” he added.

  “Well, once we’ve met with Cushman, we’ll stop by the police station and make a report,” Marvin assured his distraught son.

  “I suppose we better,” Junior said, his voice far away from his thoughts. “I got something to pick up over there, anyway.” Junior stared at his father.

  “I got a lot to tell you,” Junior confessed softly. “I didn’t want to spoil your breakfast or upset you in any way before our meeting with Cushman. I thought it best to wait till afterward.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Marvin, and he meant it.

  ***

  “So why are you wanting to sell?” Marvin asked Ben Cushman, once the three men had settled comfortably in his office to discuss the life of the funeral home.

  “I guess you could say the winters are getting to me,” Ben said. Marvin liked him instinctively. Ben Cushman was an honest man. Whatever he told Marvin about his business, Marvin would believe. “They make my bones ache,” Ben added. “My only child, a daughter, lives in Florida with my two grandchildren. She thinks I’ll like it there.” Ben smiled.

  “I can understand what you mean about the winters,” Junior said, nervous. “The springs up here are bad enough!” Marvin frowned. You let a man belittle his own territory, his home turf, because it’s his right. But you don’t agree with him, and you certainly don’t go one up on him. When would Junior ever learn? But Ben Cushman was the kind of man to overlook men like Junior.

  “This profession continually reminds me how fleeting time is,” Ben went on. “I want to know those grandkids now, not someday.” Marvin agreed, although he didn’t tell Ben that he considered him a lucky man to live in a different state from his grandkids. He didn’t tell Ben that there were some grandkids you should never get to know.

  “Mind if we look around?” Marvin asked.

  “We promise not to disturb anyone.” Junior grinned as his father grimaced.

  “Help yourselves,” Ben Cushman said. “I’ll be here when you finish.”

  Marvin and Junior toured the chapel, and the four rooms where northern houseguests had been reposing for family and friends ever since Cushman’s Funeral Home opened its doors. Even old-timers from Mattagash, who vowed never to darken the door of an establishment that made money from the dead, were hastened quietly down to Cushman’s once their lips were sealed forever. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Funerals were for the living anyway. There were still a few wakes taking place in living rooms here and there along the river, but this at-home notion had become quaint even in remotest Mattagash, barbaric to some.

  Marvin and Junior stopped in the coffee lounge for a quick cup before heading downstairs to the embalming room.

  “We have no clients in there right now,” Ben Cushman had informed his visitors earlier. “Check it out.” This room was, Marvin was telling Junior, by far the most important room in funeralology.

  “It can make you or break you, son,” Marvin had managed to say just as a small voice broke into the conversation. As blood drained from Junior’s face, as Junior’s face embalmed itself, Marvin Ivy looked into violet eyes, at a perfectly chiseled nose, an arrogant chin. Monique Tessier.

  “I said good afternoon, gentlemen.” Monique had brought forth her best business voice to match her mauve wool suit. “Mr. Cushman told me where I might find you.” There was no response from either man until Junior said, in an almost inaudible whisper, “I can explain this.”

  “I think you’d better,” Marvin whispered back. He wasn’t sure if Ben Cushman had followed Miss Tessier out of his office and was standing somewhere nearby.

  “Have you had a chance to have that little talk with your father yet?’ Monique asked Junior. Marvin looked sharply at his son, who could see Cushman’s Funeral Home disappearing like a smashed toy before his eyes.

  “She’s lying,” Junior whispered.

  “Oh, Junie.” Monique’s tone was playful. “I’ll help you stand up to him. Don’t be afraid.”

  “I tell you, she’s lying!” Junior’s forehead broke into a shiny sweat. “The last thing I said to her when she dropped me off at Una’s Cafe was that I was going to tell you everything.”

  “And so you are telling him everything,” Monique said.

  “I thought a couple of yokels gave you a ride,” said Marvin.

  “I was waiting until the deal was closed,” Junior whined, “so I wouldn’t upset you.”

  “Don’t whine,” Marvin scolded. “For Chrissakes, please don’t yammer.”

  “He wants a divorce,” said Monique unabashedly.

  “No!” Now Junior was disturbing the houseguests at Cushman’s Funeral Home. “I tell you she’s lying. She came to Mattagash on her own.”

  “Oh, really, Junie.” Monique was patronizing. “I didn’t even know that horrible place existed.”

  Marvin looked at Junior, who looked at his feet.

  “You wait outside,” Marvin said sternly to Monique Tessier. “You, come downstairs with me so we can straighten this out.”

  The embalming room was not the most perfect place for a father and son heart-to-heart. But the thick doors would afford them privacy, and most likely Monique Tessier wouldn’t follow them in there. Marvin closed the door then stood, slack-jawed and steely-eyed, as he stared at his son. Junior wiped the upstairs sweat from his forehead and looked at the ceiling. Warm tears pushed out onto the crow’s feet around his eyes and then rolled, unchecked, down his face.

  “Don’t cry,” Marvin said. “For Chrissakes, don’t cry.”

 
“I can’t help it. None of that is true.”

  “What the hell is going on in your head?” Marvin shouted. He slammed a fist into his palm and then began to pace around the embalming table. “I give you chance after chance after chance. I offer you a business, for Chrissakes. I pay you far more than you should be paid. You should pay me, just for letting you work for me. Do you know that?”

  “I know it,” Junior agreed. He mopped his face with his tie.

  “I even let that miserable excuse for a grandson into my business to keep his dope-crazy ass out of jail!” Junior winced. Oh Jesus, don’t let him find out that his grandson’s ass is in jail as he speaks!

  “Yes, sir,” Junior wept. “But I tell you the woman’s lying. I put my best foot forward and now she’s messed it up.”

  “I oughtta put my best foot into your fat ass,” Marvin threatened, the blue veins in his temples working like earthworms beneath the skin.

  Then it happened. Everything exploded in his chest, in the interior of Marvin Ivy’s pear-shaped heart. He clutched at his breast.

  “What’s the matter?” Junior yelled, as Marvin fought for air.

  “Pearl,” was all Marvin could whisper. Oxygen wheezed in and out of his nostrils as though from a small bellows. He reached a hand toward the counter, grabbed at the embalming machine to hold himself up, but his legs buckled and he went down on his knees. What he had intended to say, take care of Pearl, what had seemed important to him, was no longer meaningful.

  “First,” Marvin Ivy told himself, with clinical detachment, “they will disinfect my eyes, my nose, and my mouth with disinfecting spray, before they close them for good.”

  “Help!” Junior yelled, hoping Ben Cushman would hear him from beyond the thick doors, from beyond the veil of this newest tragedy. “Daddy,” Junior moaned.

  On his knees, Marvin was eye level with the counter and noticed for the first time an empty McDonald’s drink container, its straw at half-mast.