Mourning Crisis

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  “Ain’t that the same thing?” Boone asked.

  She shook her head. “Not in the least. There is so much more to a will than final arrangements, and the final arrangements are handled much sooner than the will.” She folded the paper and put it back inside the envelope. “As for the cost of his services, that’s all been covered by another family member.”

  “There ain’t no other family,” Boone said.

  Ms. James tapped into her computer. “Actually, there is. A Grace—”

  Alice’s temper lit up like a firecracker. She popped out of her seat and pointed at Clementine, shaking her gangling, skinny finger up and down. “That good for nothing abandoner?” She coughed, and Atticus took the green and blue afghan resting on the back of the chair and wrapped it around his mother’s slumped curled shoulders.

  “Momma, you need to stay calm,” he said. He helped her sit back in her seat.

  “She thinks she can waltz back into our lives and take over after her son dies like she’s been here all along? Why I’ve got half a mind to hunt her down and shoot her in the foot or someplace better than that if my aim’s still good.”

  “Doubt it is with those shaky hands,” Atticus mumbled.

  I kept my mouth shut and covered it with a tissue because that comment was pretty darn funny, even given the circumstances.

  “Momma, don’t go threatening people in public like that. You know what your probation officer said,” Boone said.

  Probation officer? What had I gotten myself into?

  “Ms. Mableton, Grace Lester has prepaid for the entire funeral. Everything is free and clear. She has no intention of attending her son’s services.” She opened the other envelope. “Here is a letter from Ms. Lester, addressed to the family.” She handed me the letter to read. “It asks for you to read it, Ivy.”

  I opened the folded letter and scanned it over once before reading it to the group.

  “Dear Lester Family, it’s been some time, and I’m sure none of you are happy to hear from me. Please know I have no intention of attending my wonderful son’s funeral. Buford and I made our peace many years ago, and while I want to be there to say goodbye, I understand it is not my place. Buford’s fiancée has assured me his wishes will be honored and I take comfort in that. The least I can do is cover the cost of his final arrangements. Alice, thank you for raising my Buford when I could not. — Grace Lester.”

  Alice and Boone grunted their angst and disapproval, but neither of them refused the payment for Buford’s services. Atticus just sat patiently still.

  Clementine James detailed out the specifics for Buford’s arrangements. “Tomorrow we’ll hold his visitation here from five o’clock until seven o’clock. He’s asked for his burial to be here, next to his father, the next day, with a brief viewing just before the service. We’ll hold the service at eleven o’clock.” She paused and made eye contact with each of us as she typed something into her computer.

  “Does anyone have any questions?”

  “That’s so soon,” Atticus said. “How is everyone going to find out?”

  “The obituary was already posted in the papers this morning.”

  Alice Mableton perked up as much as was possible for her gangly, weak body. “What? I didn’t approve that. I don’t got the money for no obituary.”

  “As I said, Ms. Mableton, it’s all been covered already. You don’t need to worry about any of that.”

  Alice huffed, but Boone rubbed her leg, and that seemed to calm her anger somewhat.

  “Anything else?” Ms. James asked.

  The three of them shook their heads, but I hesitantly raised my hand up near my face. “Ms. James, when I arrived, I noticed a table in one of the rooms for, you know, one of the deceased, with things on it. Can you tell me what that was?”

  “That is a memorial table. Some families put those together for their loved ones as a way to honor and remember them. You’re welcome to do that, of course.”

  “What’s on one of those?” Alice asked.

  Clementine folded her hands and placed them onto her desk. “Anything you’d like, really. Photos, favorite books, shirts he liked, baseball caps he wore, trophies from sports he played in high school, that kind of thing. Things that were important to Buford, or things that represented who he was.”

  “He never played no sports in high school,” Atticus said.

  Boone laughed. “He drank a lot of beer. We might could throw a six-pack on the table and be done with it.”

  “I am not putting a six pack on my love’s memory table. He was a gentle, loving soul.” I sniffled and used the tissue Clementine had given me earlier to dab at my eyes. The mascara I’d applied earlier left black spots on it, so I knew I’d already had raccoon eyes. My acting was stupendous. I wasn’t bragging, more surprised, really. “I’m sure there is something in his cab or at your place, Alice. Something we can use to honor his memory.” I patted the tissue into the corners of my eyes once again.

  “I don’t know what he’s got back in that room in my trailer. I don’t go back there.”

  “Well, if you’ll let me, I’d be happy to go through his things.”

  Her eyes trailed over my body, starting at my toes and slowly rising up to my hair clipped tightly on top of my head. “I might could do that. Let you clean out his rig, too. Lord knows I don’t got time to handle that mess.”

  “Then it’s settled. I’ll follow you there now.” I felt sorry for the deceased. His momma chose not to attend his funeral, his daddy was long dead, and the people he’d very likely considered his family didn’t appear to give a rats behind about him. Someone had to be there for Buford Lester, even if that someone was his fake fiancée.

  “You want to come now?” she asked. “I was planning on going to the Walmart to buy me some toilet paper and frozen pizzas.”

  “That’s fine. I can meet you there in an hour.”

  Boone stood and pulled up his droopy, stained jeans. They had one too many holes, and I was sure he didn’t purchase them that way. “I can let her in Momma, I got nothing else to do anyway. You got a key to the rig?”

  “Yeah, it’s hanging on the beer bottle opener ring next to the front door.”

  “Well then,” Clementine stood also. She presented her hand to Boone to shake. He’d just rubbed his nose with his and didn’t bother wiping it off. I shuddered at the thought, but Clementine took it in stride. “I’m sorry to have had to meet under such circumstances, but I assure you we’ll treat your family member with respect and care.” She faced me. “And Miss Sawyer, it’s always hard to lose someone we’ve just promised to spend our life with. If you’d like information on support groups—”

  I interrupted her. “Thank you, but I’m keeping busy for the time being.”

  “Understood.”

  Boone asked if I had his mother’s address. I explained that I’d been to the trailer park before, just not inside the trailer. Of course, that would have been a lie to the average person, and though it did feel slightly dishonest, I reminded myself I wasn’t Mayme Buckley right then, I was Ivy Sawyer, Buford Lester’s grieving fiancée, and I needed to do what she would do, which was the right thing for the man she loved.

  I’d planned to stop for a quick bite to eat and head straight to the trailer park, but my phone’s GPS took me to a strip mall instead. I called Daddy who tried to locate the park on his map, but the road wasn’t even on it. I called Ruthie and left her a voicemail. I took a deep breath and then released it. New York is a hands-free state, and while North Carolina isn’t, I’d grown accustomed to not using my cell phone while driving, so I pulled over and fiddled with Google to locate the address. Much to my chagrin, I couldn’t find it, but I did see Christopher Lacy’s card on my passenger’s seat, so I figured, why not, and gave him a call.

  “Lacy here.”

  “Hey Christopher, it’s Mayme Buckley, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need help if you have a quick second.”

  “Sure Lacy, what’s
up?”

  “I’m trying to get directions to a trailer park, but it’s not coming up on my GPS. Even Daddy can’t find it. So, I thought maybe you could help me?”

  “I can give it a shot. What’s the name and address of the park?”

  I read him what Ruthie had in the dossier.

  “You’re going to Happy Trails Trailer Park?”

  “Actually, yeah, I am.”

  “Alone?”

  I hesitated to answer because of the concerned tone in his voice. “Yes.”

  “I don’t advise that. Where are you now? I’ll meet you, and follow you there.”

  I bit my lip. “No, no. That’s okay, really. I’ll be fine. My friend is meeting me there later. In fact, I could have called her. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry to bother you, really.” I disconnected the call.

  He called back immediately, but I let the call go to voicemail. I knew avoiding him wasn’t the right way to handle it, but I didn’t have the time to explain or deal with the situation at that moment.

  But dang it, I thought. I had no idea how to get there. Luckily, Daddy called me back right quick. “Meme, I talked to Jimmy down at the gas station at the corner by the shop. He said that’s a bad part of town and you shouldn’t go alone. How ‘bout I come with you?”

  “Daddy, it’s for work, so you can’t.”

  He hemmed and hawed for a minute, but finally caved. “Well then, here’s what he told me.” He gave me the directions. I jotted them down on the back of a paper in the dossier, said thank you, and headed on my way.

  Everyone was right. The trailer park wasn’t in the highest quality neighborhood. I’d grown up around trailer parks, but not one as run down as Happy Trails. The trails lacked any individual lawn space of their own. Really, there wasn’t any lawn space at all. Mostly it was gravel or broken cement, and the trailers were all but stacked on top of each other. The trailer parks near my parent’s house were like small neighborhoods, and the residents took pride in their homes, building decks and sheds alongside their trailers and landscaping their small lots. Happy Trails was more of a temporary place, a camping community of sorts where people stuck their camper or doublewide, and if it wasn’t deserted, it sure appeared that way. A discarded faded pink plastic flamingo with a broken neck stuck in the ground at one of the trailers beckoned me to save it, but I feared getting out of my Tribute. I drove at a snail’s pace through the community until I found the right address and pulled up alongside Alice Mableton’s single-wide, out-of-date trailer. I reminded myself to thank my parents for raising me in the three-bedroom, two bath split-level I’d hated throughout my entire teenage years.

  The green and white canopy covering the front door of the trailer had seen better days. Ripped to near shreds, it shaded nothing from the direct sun beating down on the door which, I assumed, had once been white but was now, from years of weathering and use, a grayish, dirty version of brown. Maybe. I wasn’t quite sure what to call it. At least Alice had satellite TV, and I knew that because the dish stuck right out from next to the front door, where a window once was, but the window had been boarded up with a piece of plywood covered in plastic.

  I held my breath to stop myself from swallowing down the rotten egg stench. I knew it wasn’t rotten eggs but likely sulfur, though I didn’t know if it was from the water supply or something else, though I couldn’t imagine what else would smell like rotten eggs, and frankly, I didn’t want to know, either.

  “Poor Buford, no wonder he slept in his rig most of the time,” I said out loud.

  The front door to the trailer swung open. “What was that?” Alice Mableton asked.

  “Oh, I was talking to myself,” I said. Play the part. Ivy Sawyer. You’re Ivy Sawyer, I reminded myself.

  “Well, I guess we all do that at one time or another, don’t we?”

  “I guess we do.” I stepped toward the trailer. “I thought your son would be here, not you?”

  “Changed my mind. Thought we could talk.”

  She moved to the side and motioned for me to come in. I entered and wished I hadn’t. The place was a mess, God bless her. Momma would have had a heart attack. If she knew what I’d walked in to, she’d hose me down outside before letting me into the house, that was for sure. I had a mind to do it myself. I wasn’t the clean freak my mother wished she’d raised, but dirt and dust an inch thick on top of dirt and dust two inches thick was well past my personal comfort level and gave me the creepy crawlies. “Okay.”

  Newspapers sat on the kitchen table piled to the ceiling, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. A garbage can next to that table had so much trash stuffed into it the lid wouldn’t shut, and pieces of garbage lay next to it on the floor. Not one spot of the countertop or even the rest of the table was visible. Filled with books, envelopes, dishes, boxes, yarn, and everything and anything imaginable—junk in Momma’s eyes—I realized Alice Mableton was very likely a hoarder like the ones on the TV show.

  Finding something belonging to Buford Lester in that trailer would be a miracle.

  “So, how’d you meet my nephew?” She asked, a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth.

  My acting skills took flight. “He moved my uncle about a year ago. I was there helping to pack, and Buford came in to take inventory. He didn’t move furniture, of course. He said he’d thrown his back out when he had his own company, so he had to close it down and work for the man, as he called it. But he’d kept one of his rigs, and since he had that and a whole bunch of experience, they let him be a supervisor. Timing and all, he’d said.” I took the tissue from my pocket and poked the corners of my eyes again. I hadn’t even bothered to swipe under my eyes on the way to Alice Mableton’s house, so I hoped the look did me right.

  “He loved that truck, that’s for sure. Suits him well to die in it, I suppose,” Alice said.

  “To think, a man of such stature can die from something so small and so…so insignificant. A wasp sting. It’s just unbelievable. He was so strong. Why he could practically squeeze me to death with those big muscles of his.”

  She eyed me up and down again, and I felt the judgment seep from her drooping, yellowish eyes. I wanted to kick her in the shins. I was curvy, not fat. Curvy, dagnabit. “Sugar, that wasn’t muscle. That was fat.”

  “With all due respect, Ms. Mableton, my Buford was a man of muscle in my eyes, and I prefer to keep my memory of him intact the way it was the last time I saw him.” I poked my eyes with the tissue again.

  “Whatever works for ya.”

  “You can say all you want, but I loved that big lug, and he loved me, and ain’t nothing going to take that away. I planned to marry him, and I intend to honor him now that he’s gone.”

  She leaned against her kitchen counter, and a pile of junk toppled over, but she didn’t pay it any attention. “I don’t mean you no disrespect, but I got to ask, why didn’t he ever bring you around? I was his aunt. I raised him after that good for nothing momma of his abandoned him and his pa done died. We was his family. He would have told us about you. Why didn’t he?”

  “We wanted to keep our love a secret until we were ready to share it with the world. It was special, and it was just for us. Some things just aren’t meant to be shared until the time is right, and we were waiting for that time.” I sniffled and wiped my nose with the side of my arm, which totally and completely grossed me out, but I felt it fit the character. Classy with undertones of immaturity and ickiness. “Now I regret not letting my love for Buford be known, but I intend to through his memorial and the service. I intend to let the world know.” I shook my head and did my best version of pride and drama queen I could. “Why, I might even take a writing class at the community college and write me a book about Buford. I could call it, Love and My Moving Man.” I wiggled my hand in the air. “Or something like that. It’s a rough title. I’ll have to work on it. I’m sure they teach that kind of thing at the community college.”

  She stared at me with her mouth half open. I tri
ed hard not to laugh.

  “The ending though, that would be tragic. Her lover, unable to save himself from the sting of a wasp, desperate to cling to life, struggling to breathe, whispers her name in his final breath.”

  She rolled her eyes, and even I thought I’d pushed it a little too far with that one.

  “I’m sorry. I get a little dramatic when I’m upset.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s a tragedy though, dying from a wasp sting. I don’t understand why he didn’t use his EpiPen. He should have had that with him.”

  That was the one thing that wasn’t in the dossier. If Grace Mableton knew about Buford Lester’s allergy, she hadn’t mentioned it to Ruthie. People with allergies usually mentioned them to others, unless of course, they didn’t know about them, but if someone had an EpiPen like Buford, apparently they knew, so it surprised me that Grace hadn’t mentioned it in the information.

  “Never could figure out why Buford did the things he did.” Alice fiddled with the pile of newspapers on the kitchen table. “Take you for example. Never knew you existed till now. Still, don’t make no sense to me, but here you are, in my home, getting ready to go through my things like the IRS.”

  Well, then. That was an odd comparison. “Buford’s things, ma’am.”

  “In my house.”

  “May I look in my love’s bedroom? Maybe I’ll find something there.”

  She hesitated. “Uh, I guess. Don’t think you’ll find nothing though. He hasn’t been in there in years.”

  Alice used her nephew’s room as a storage closet. No, that wasn’t the correct term. Alice used her nephew’s room as a trash bin. Because that’s what filled the room. Literally. Nothing in there belonged to Buford, at least not that I could tell. She was probably right. From the looks of it, I sincerely doubted he’d been in that room in years anyway. To get in, I’d had to push the door with my curvy, plus-sized–yes, I’d likely be bitter about that forever–hip five times before it opened. Unless he’d had something of importance buried somewhere in the small room, I had a feeling it wasn’t worth the effort on his part.