“Holly, honey, you got to take care of business. No matter what. Saul Steinberg told me the other day there’s a new man in his firm that’s interested in Garland’s position. Wondered why the job wasn’t passed around. Times are hard for young lawyers now. They always want to make a name for themselves. It brings business to the firm. We got to make our plans and let our people know it’s going to be Miss Holly. Right, honey?” Ham patted my arm soothingly.
I felt my face go red, and tears rush to my eyes. I was too shocked to speak. This can’t be happening. I came home to practice civil law, not to be forced into prosecution.
Others rushed up to congratulate me on my new career. I resent them all and Uncle Garland for dying and placing me in this mess. So far, I dislike civil law but prosecution is worse. It isn’t fair and I’m trapped.
Lee returned shortly to inquire if the family was ready for lunch, and if so, where? “Serve us in the dining room when Victoria arrives. Your mama coming, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“When Miss Victoria and Miss Charlotte get here, show them in, Lee. And speak to the ladies. Tell them Queen Esther will serve the family a private lunch. Thank them. But let them know we’re not receiving until tonight. Today the family needs to be alone together.”
Wylie entered, hugged the women, and stepped to the desk to make a drink. “Everything’s taken care of. The article will be in tomorrow’s paper. Also in the Memphis and Little Rock newspapers. The bar association will be honorary pall bearers.”
“Have you lost your mind, Wylie?” Ham almost shouted. “There’s no body.”
“There’s an urn. Besides, honorary pall bearers don’t do anything anyway except wear dark suits and fill up the front pews.”
“All the pews will be full. I assure you,” Ham said confidently.
“Of course they will. Russell has had quite a few calls from Little Rock.” Wylie soothed his brother.
At that moment both doors flew open. A tall woman with swooped-back blonde hair and wearing a long, dark, Chanel mink coat and elbow-length leather gloves held out both arms as she proceeded through the doorway.
“Daddy,” she cried, rushing to meet the person that, today, she loved most in the world. Victoria was home.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT the Carter family of seven, Michael, and Binky assembled in the Russell Funeral Home parlor from six to eight to receive casual acquaintances and near strangers. The mourners, talking over each other and louder than usual since no dead were present to disturb, seemed to enjoy the evening immensely and, I was sure, wished to hurry home to call their friends to report on their visits with Victoria and Charlotte, whom nobody in Delta Ridge had seen in years.
Close family friends and business associates were invited to Ridgecrest Hall at eight o’clock. There the bar was opened, and Lee and Queen Esther tended the forty or so guests who ate the remains of the Episcopal women’s largesse and the crabmeat canopies Queen Esther had prepared and passed on silver trays. By the time the family arrived, the mood of the crowd was festive, and the Southern wake commenced. Victoria regaled a group of lawyers and judges in the drawing room while Ham told Garland stories to the newcomers, mostly from the medical and business community, in the library. By 9:30 the select mourners departed, satisfied that Garland’s memory had been properly mourned both by themselves and his devoted family who, although appropriately stricken, showed the courage good breeding demands by rising to the solemn occasion and hosting a damn good party.
ONCE THEIR GUESTS had gone, Ham, looking increasingly worn, directed his attention to the sleeping arrangements of the family. He announced that, with six bedrooms upstairs, there was room for everyone, including Michael if he wished to stay.
“Thank you Ham, but my son Robert’s at home with a sitter. I really must go.”
I was shocked when Aunt Elizabeth told me just a short time before that Michael had a son. Where was he when Michael lived in Little Rock? Michael never even mentioned an ex-wife, and now Aunt Elizabeth had learned more in a month than I had in the two years I had known Michael in Little Rock. He was paying Aunt Elizabeth as a therapist in order to bare his soul, and I had wanted nothing more than to enter any part of his life that he would open to me. Go figure. Maybe I chose the wrong profession. When, I wondered, had Michael’s son come to Delta Ridge?
Aunt Elizabeth recognized Michael’s retreat as a way to make her own escape. “Daddy, the girls and I have our clothes at home. We’ll be back first thing in the morning. You all need to get some rest.” Aunt Elizabeth gestured first to me and then to Felicia. We quickly kissed our grandfather and hurried toward the cloak closet in the front hall.
“Mother, thank you for coming. I love you. We’ll be back first thing in the morning,” I whispered to Victoria, kissed my grandmother, and exited the house immediately behind Felicia as Aunt Elizabeth stood in the doorway, retained by Uncle Wylie, who was requesting a ride since he didn’t drive after dark (nor after drunk). As we all walked out to the driveway, Aunt Elizabeth spotted Wylie’s Lincoln, which he evidently had no recollection of driving to the Hall that morning. She hesitated a moment as if to determine how, tactfully, to get both her uncle and his car home safely.
“Felicia, dear, would you drive Uncle Wylie home? We’ll pick you up there.”
Felicia opened her mouth to protest that she had to drive her own car home when her mother’s look stopped her in mid-sentence: “But Mother. I would love to, Uncle Wylie.” She took his arm and led him to his car.
“It’s a shame she has to ask for his keys,” Aunt Elizabeth said to me as we climbed into the Mercedes. “Otherwise he’d assume his car was home in the garage. His memory’s not what it once was.” Following the Lincoln to Wylie’s house on Cherry Street, we waited while Felicia saw her uncle to the door and turned him over to Moses, Wylie’s elderly version of Lee. After one more trip to the Hall to retrieve Felicia’s BMW, we headed home.
Greeted at the door by both Jigger and Mr. Blue, I fed the dog while Aunt Elizabeth changed the cat’s litter box. “You know, Blue does seem to be making an effort. This is the second day he’s used his box. I lost it, Holly, when I came in Friday at noon and found that pi1e—I think it was the third—on the living room rug. Maybe my screaming helped. Or maybe he thought he was being abandoned when we left for the farm Friday afternoon. He’s so arrogant he probably thought we weren’t coming back, and that he got the house in the split up and decided to take better care of it. I still don’t trust him.”
“Where do you think Ham put Binky for the night?” I asked, certain that my eyes were filled with both fatigue and mischief.
“Probably out in the back house.”
“Did you ever see such instant dislike?”
“I thought it might be confusion. Ham couldn’t decide if he was Victoria’s friend or Charlotte’s. Either way, he didn’t like him.”
“No, but did you see the expression on his face when Victoria came into the library? He looked twenty years old and a hundred at the same time.”
“I thought he might have a heart attack,” I offered. “When I saw his face, I knew I wasn’t the only one who doubted she’d turn up.”
“You and I were probably the only ones there who noticed Ham’s irritation at Binky’s presence.”
“I noticed it,” Felicia joined us in pale yellow pajamas and robe. “I could tell. When he offered Binky a drink, Ham’s eyes were dead as a door knocker. I’ll bet Aunt Victoria saw it too.”
“How dead is that, Felicia?” Aunt Elizabeth laughed.
“I’m afraid Binky’s presence may have been staged as part of Mother’s dramatic entrance. You know he would rather have gone back to the lake.”
“I don’t know, Holly, at one time tonight I saw him holding court for half the women in the drawing room while your mother was captivating their husbands.”
“Yes, I’m sure we gave the best party in the state tonight. I’m so sad and so tired.” I hugged my aunt who patted
my head in return.
“I’m going to bed,” Felicia announced, preferring to deal with her grief in private. She looked at the two of us embracing. I suspected she wondered when cousin Holly planned to return her mother. She said Good night and left the room.
“Who were all those people?” I asked Aunt Elizabeth. “Were they Uncle Garland’s friends?”
“No,” Aunt Elizabeth hesitated. “They were Ham’s friends and Garland’s acquaintances. Garland didn’t have close friends that I knew of. He was a very private man. He loved his family, tolerated his work. That was about it.”
“I was trying to remember tonight if I’d ever seen or heard of his doing men’s things, you know, like playing golf or duck hunting.”
“No, Holly, never. Garland liked to travel, usually three or four times a year and always alone. Occasionally he went to Memphis to the symphony or to the theater. He liked museums, good restaurants. I think he probably met people on his trips to socialize with. I doubt that he was so solitary or shy that he ate alone. You remember how well-mannered he was? He could be quite entertaining. None of the crudeness Ham can deliver when he’s had too much to drink. “
“Oh I know that,” I responded. “I was thinking of all those holidays when I probably never said much more to him than ‘How’s your work?’ or ‘How was your trip to wherever?’ You know, that kind of thing.”
“Holly, I think that’s the nature of families. We seldom say anything of real meaning because we assume that our dialogue will go on forever. Besides, not everybody wants meaningful conversation. I can remember going on about Ham or the husband of the moment, and raging for an hour at a time when I had Garland over, probably deliberately, to make him earn his dinner. But we shouldn’t feel guilty. Garland loved all the women in this family, and I think he enjoyed being with us. It was his nature to listen rather than to share. It’s time for bed. I’m going to stop in and check on Felicia.”
10 Death Is Contagious
AT 9:30 MONDAY morning the pews in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church were filled, and the Russell Funeral Home attendants were adding wooden folding chairs to the wide aisles. By the time the Carter family took their seats on the front rows at 10:00 o’clock, the small church was filled to capacity with five-hundred mourners.
The high church ritual soothed me. I didn’t know about Uncle Garland, but the formality was what my spirit needed. The priest conducted a dignified, if somewhat dull, service. I wasn’t sure he had ever met Uncle Garland based on what he said about him. But perhaps Uncle Garland was hard to know. He was an enigmatic man whose essence would have been difficult to discern and dispense in thirty minutes. I preferred a celebration of man’s formal relationship with his God to his informal relationship with his fellow men, including the priest. It was especially appropriate for Uncle Garland, the most private man in town.
Sitting there, my mind wandered to the funerals of my childhood, mountain funerals used by country preachers to save souls, and Delta funerals used by black ministers to celebrate auspicious occasions. The first were grim affairs of thirty minutes preaching ending with a final impassioned plea to the living to repent before the judgment said a little too loudly over the open casket of the example of humanity for whom it obviously was too late to be concerned. The deceased’s stony expression was little different from a half dozen other dozing mourners in the congregation. Only his color was better, he having been the recent recipient of the cosmetologist’s pot of blush. “Uncle Garland’s never looked better,” was the usual viewer’s response. Yes. Death did seem to agree with him.
Black funerals in the Delta were different. Black preachers preached for three hours to souls already saved who came to celebrate their brother’s passage to his reward. The splendor of the corpse was well-rivaled by that of the mourners who dressed up to “funeralize” their brother before giving him a final bon voyage for his journey to the sky. Programs were printed carrying a picture of the deceased when most alive and happier than he appeared in the splendid coffin before them. Obviously everyone present knew their brother well and was there to celebrate his big promotion. Is faith deeper in the black community?
White Delta funerals were more like Uncle Garland’s today—dignified and dull. All the different versions of Southern Christianity in action, I had witnessed in my childhood. I studied the etched silver handled urn among the flowers. How do we know those are Uncle Garland’s ashes and not the helicopter’s bucket seat? Some mysteries, of course, are best not explored. I need to concentrate on the ones closer to home, like at the office. I thought, maybe I’m becoming paranoid. Then I thought, as the old saw goes: sometimes the seemingly paranoid do have real enemies. What if my going into prosecution was what Ham had in mind from the beginning, but he was waiting until Uncle Garland’s retirement to tell me?
The Episcopal ladies served a buffet luncheon at the church following the funeral. Not the usual custom. Victoria had suggested the idea to Ham as a way to avoid an afternoon of mourners and well-wishers at the house. That way the family could greet friends, especially those who had come from Little Rock and Memphis, insist that the out-of-towners stay for lunch, visit more, and be back home by 1:30 P.M. If Ham wanted others to drop by later, he could invite them individually; but so far the family had had no time alone together to grieve for Uncle Garland. Pleased with Victoria’s suggestion, Ham was happy to be settled back in his own library, brandy in hand, with his own family plus two.
Once all the others had gathered in the spacious library, Ham stood up. “I propose a toast to Garland, my only son. May he be more at peace in his present home than he was in this one!”
Dead silence filled the room. Finally, Uncle Wylie, who had probably turned off his hearing aid during the funeral service and had heard nothing except “a toast to Garland,” raised his glass, shouted ‘‘Here! Here!” as the rest of the family followed in unison.
Nothing Ham did usually had the ability to shock any of them, but I was appalled. Forever reminded of Victoria and Ham and their tasteless theatrics, my eyes searched the room for Aunt Elizabeth and her response.
“I want to talk to all of you,” Ham continued to hold the floor. “Since yesterday morning, according to Lee’s tabulations, the family has received seventy-three telephone calls— seventy-two for condolence and one for blackmail.”
Every member of the group gasped in unison, then remained silent for a full minute before they began talking at once. I made my way to the teacart bar beside Aunt Elizabeth, who had finally arrived, and poured a large glass of wine. From opposite corners of the room, Michael and Binky headed for the library’s double doors. Ham turned toward them. “Please stay.” Caught out, both men stopped and turned around. “Binky, you’re my daughter’s good friend and Michael, you’re a firm partner and a part of this family. I trust that nothing I’m about to say will leave this room.” Both men looked trapped and curious at the same time.
Surely it was a joke, or a prank call. I looked around at Felicia who gulped a Coke and looked big-eyed back at me as I quietly moved away from the bar and closer to her side. Leaning down, she whispered in my ear, “Talk about hitting us with a boulder from the blue.” Before I could respond, Aunt Elizabeth stepped between us and put her hands on both our shoulders.
“Your mother must have told Ham that Binky was nobody’s boyfriend,” she whispered in my ear, as if to deflect the forthcoming bad news. I nodded, not wanting to miss a word of Ham’s speech.
“This problem concerns us all. We’re all adults here and we loved Garland. Charlotte was like a mother to him after he lost his own.”
That was five years later and Ham had another wife in there somewhere, I did the mental calculations.
“Victoria and Elizabeth were his only sisters, and they loved their only brother,” Ham continued. The two women nodded to their father affirmatively. “Wylie is Garland’s only living uncle. Having no children of his own, Wylie loved Garland as an only son.”
“Here! H
ere!” Having heard only his name and Uncle Garland’s, Uncle Wylie toasted again, and again the others followed.
“Holly and Felicia, Garland loved as his own daughters when, due to death and other tragic circumstances, they had no fathers of their own.”
When did Ham start shunning divorce? Only one of his four wives killed herself to escape him. Ham made Felicia and me sound like orphans or worse, and at last count Felicia had had three fathers. She rolled her eyes at me.
“It was Garland who brought Michael to us from Little Rock. He found there the son he never had,” Ham went on.
What? The two men hadn’t known each other fifteen minutes. Uncle Garland began spending his vacation days as soon as Michael hit town. Was Ham drunk? How embarrassing. Michael must think the whole family’s nuts. I glanced across the room at him standing near the door as if he wished to leap for it. Make me a getaway too. Michael brushed his hand across his face. Good lord, was that a tear? This whole group has turned mush brained. Across the room I caught Charlotte’s eye. She winked at me. Grandmother probably loved Uncle Garland as much as anyone else in this room, including Ham. Hers was the only honest face I saw. I tensed up as I watched my grandfather pour himself another brandy. When he’s on one of these tears, anything can happen, from an Irish wake to a Greek wedding. What’s it to be tonight? I guess we’ll see soon.
“We all loved Garland, although none of us really knew him. But I suppose that, as his father, I knew him better than anyone else.”
“Good lord, what did Uncle Garland do,” I whispered to Felicia, “leave a bunch of gambling debts for Ham to pay off?
“No, of course not. Uncle Garland didn’t gamble. Don’t be silly, Holly. Ham’s the gambler.”
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