“Why, thank you.” Had I been quick-witted, I’d have said something funny, but luckily, I couldn’t come up with something. It wasn’t the appropriate time or place, anyway. I needed to continually remind myself I wasn’t myself, I was a grieving fiancée. Acting in real-life wasn’t nearly as easy as I’d thought it would be.
I handed Clementine the small box of items from Buford’s rig and then crooked my finger for the burly boys to follow me. “My car is the Tribute. I’ve got a few things in the back I’d love y’all to help me with.” I flattened out my black skirt. “A girl can’t get too many wrinkles in her skirt when she’s mourning the love of her life now, can she? It’s just not right.”
I pulled a tissue from my bra and patted my eyes with it. I thought it was tacky, but in the dossier, tacky was a keyword used to describe Ivy Sawyer, and I’d yet to really play that part, so I figured I’d better start. I could pull off slightly flamboyant and maybe lacking class, but tacky tipped me over the edge when it came to being respectful of the dead. I wasn’t all that comfortable with that, but it was the job I’d signed up for.
Clementine’s boys saw what I’d done and averted their eyes immediately. I’d succeeded in my tackiness attempt and blushed a shade of red only the devil would appreciate. At least that’s what my Momma would say.
I hoped I’d never have to do a nude scene in anything because Lord, I didn’t think I could. Just pulling that tissue from my bra made me redder than an over-ripe tomato.
“We’ll uh, bring the boxes to Mr. Lester’s room, ma’am,” one of the boys said. He stared at the box.
I doubted he’d ever look me in the eye again, poor thing.
“Thank you, I appreciate it.” I dabbed the tissue in the corners of my eyes again. “I’ll be there right quick. I just have to freshen up.” I scooted over to the bathroom. On my way, I noticed another shadow race past me on the wall, a shadow that I knew in the pit of my soul was of a person running next to me, only there wasn’t a person anywhere running next to me. I dropped the small bag I’d had with me, screamed and jumped back. “Oh holy heavens, there’s a ghost here!” I tripped over myself, fell on the floor and bumped my head in the process.
Then, I just felt like a big, clumsy fool that happened to see a ghost run by her in a funeral home.
I’m sure ghosts frequented funeral homes. It seemed like they would, at least.
Clementine was nearby and rushed over to me. “Honey, are okay?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook uncontrollably. “I…I…”
“Oh dear, you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s wrong?”
She held my hands, my sweaty, clammy hands. “I…” I whispered close to her ear. “I think I just saw a…a…a ghost.”
The left side of Clementine’s mouth twitched. “Oh bless your heart. You’re not the first person to say that, and you sure won’t be the last.” She picked up the bag I’d dropped. “Steven,” she hollered. “That’s one of my boys.”
Steven walked out of the room reserved for Buford. “Come get this and bring it on in the room with you, please. I’m going to take Ms. Sawyer into the Guest Lounge for a moment to collect herself and have a little chat.”
Steven and Clementine exchanged a slight, similar smile, and he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I…I’m so embarrassed. I’m sure it wasn’t a ghost.” That was a total lie. I was sure it was a ghost, but from the twitchy mouth thing she’d done, I knew she thought I was a crazy person, and that was the last thing I needed getting out about me, or Ivy Sawyer, anyway. “But it just…it just seemed so real.”
She waved her hand and then rubbed my shoulder. “No, please. Like I said, you aren’t the first person this has happened to. Last week we had a sweet older gentleman swear his wife’s spirit spoke to him in the men’s restroom. Told him clear as day that he should have worn his blue suit instead of his black one.” She giggled. “He said he’d fretted over which suit to wear for hours the night before. He knew her favorite suit was the blue one, but he thought he should wear the black one because black was the appropriate color for a funeral and he was distraught that his wife disapproved.” She opened a door that said Guest Lounge on it. “I’ve been in this industry for over twenty-five years, and I’ve not seen one single ghost. Everything that’s happened here and in every funeral home I’ve worked in can be logically explained.”
We sat on a long gray sectional couch.
I blinked. “Everything?”
She nodded. “Everything.” She handed me a fresh tissue. “When we pass, I don’t think we stay here. There’s something better than this, and I believe we go to that. Yes, we have loved ones here, but we’ll see them again, and when we pass, we know that we understand that. We know it’s time to move on, and that’s what we do.”
“But I saw a shadow, and it moved. It moved across the wall.” Actually, it ran, and it was kind of actually next to me, but whatever. She had her feelings on it, and I had mine. She could pretend they didn’t exist all she wanted. I saw what I saw, and it was a ghost.
She smiled. “There’s a window across from there. It reflects light from the sun and sometimes when cars go by outside, shadows fly by and seem like other things, especially at times like this, times when our souls are weary, and we’re feeling such a loss.” She patted my knee. “You’ll feel better soon, and things won’t seem so intense. I promise you, one day you’ll see your love again.”
Using my self-created nickname for Buford Lester was smart. I noticed it immediately. Very, very smart, Clementine James. Very, very clever.
“Thank you, Clementine.” I smiled a genuine smile. “I feel better, and I’m sorry. The whole concept of ghosts, and being here, and missing my love, it’s all just so overwhelming.” I shed tears, but they were real. Even though I didn’t know Buford, I did feel sad for his loss, and I was freaked out and overwhelmed by the whole experience.
“I understand.” She stood. “Now, how about we get your memorial display set up and honor your fiancé in a way that you can find comfort?”
I stood too. “Yes, ma’am.”
We walked back to the viewing room, and I was surprised to see Buford Lester’s coffin and Buford Lester lying it in already in the room.
“Oh.” I swooned, but not in a pleasant way. “I didn’t know he’d, uh…he’d be here already.”
Clementine took my hand and squeezed it. “Would you like a moment alone with him?”
“No, why would I—oh, I mean, uh, yeah…yeah, I would.” I coughed. “I’m sorry. I just…I just wasn’t expecting to…” I pressed my hands to my face and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or what I’m supposed to do. My love is dead. He’s dead. He always told me he’d be here for me and he’s not. I…I can’t.” I fell into a chair behind me and threw my head to the side and cried. I peeked out through my right eye and saw Clementine motion with her head to both Steven and the nameless other burly boy helper to leave the room. They scooted right on out like good little burly boy helpers, and she sat next to me.
“Honey, I’ll close the casket if you’d like. You can handle this however you’d like. It’s okay. There is no right or wrong. You hear me? No right or wrong.”
I blew my nose into the tissue, and she handed me a little to-go packet of them.
“Thank you.”
She walked over to the casket and yanked on something. Whatever she did set the lid in motion to close.
“No, no. It’s okay. Please. I just need a moment. I’ll be fine.”
She nodded. “Okay. When you’re ready, just open the room’s door back up, and we’ll know others can come in.” She relatched the casket, so it stayed open.
“Thank you.”
She nodded again and left me alone with Buford’s body.
I stared at the casket for nearly an eternity until I finally gathered enough nerve to all but crawl over to the dead man and pay my respects.
When I did, I could have sworn his spirit floated out and left the building. I didn’t actually see it happen, but the air cooled and thickened around me, I felt a sense of sadness wash over me and then relief, and then gratefulness, and then an air of lightness. I’m not psychic, and none of that ever happened in any of the vampire stuff, so I made a decision to check out ghost-like stuff when this was all said and done.
Since I didn’t personally know Buford, I’d taken so many odds and ends from his truck’s cab, I wasn’t exactly sure what I had. When I finally spread it all out on the table, I was surprised at what I’d found.
If Buford Lester was a cantankerous thirty-six-year-old man, he’d not always been that way, and I wondered what made him end up like that. He had a photo album from his childhood filled with photos of his dad and pictures of his mom from when he was a baby. Pictures of a soccer park and a chunky little boy with long blond hair kicking around a soccer ball. From the looks of the boy the photos, Buford played soccer until his dad passed away. I’d found his old high school yearbook, signed by many girls, whose pictures weren’t unattractive by the way, and one particular girl signed with hearts and flowers drawn all over it with the words I’ll love you until the day I die written in bubbly letters just above her signature. A girl named Ivy Barrow.
Wait, what?
Ivy? Buford’s high school girlfriend had the same first name as his made-up fiancée?
That couldn’t be good. Why wasn’t that in the dossier? What if that came back to haunt me? No pun intended of course. I put the yearbook back in the box.
I ended up decorating the table with two trophies even though his family said he had none, several knick-knacks, and three articles about wasp allergies he’d cut out and left in a file in a drawer. I thought it was ironic but important. I still couldn’t shake the fact that he’d died from a wasp sting with his EpiPen so close by.
Buford Lester’s family didn’t arrive until fifteen minutes before the memorial service started. So much for spending the afternoon before the service with the family. Luckily, I didn’t mind setting up the memorial table for a man I’d never met by myself. Actually, I found a certain kind of peace in doing it.
Alice showed up first, dressed in what I could only call casually comfortable. My mother would have considered it highly inappropriate for a funeral, and I assumed the man who swore his dead wife had lectured him for wearing the wrong suit would have given her a what-for also. Modern-day casual didn’t require an all-black outfit for a funeral, but a bright floral print dress two sizes too big and literally hanging off her bone-skinny shoulders made a statement, and it didn’t quite say mourning aunt to me. Then again, what did I know, asked the girl that pretended to be the dead guy’s fiancée.
“You set that up?” Alice pointed to the memorial table.
“Yes, ma’am. What do you think?”
She fingered the EpiPen articles. “What’re these out for?”
“I thought it was important to display them seeing as that’s what killed him, an allergy.”
She turned them over making them face down on the table. “Honey, we all know what killed the boy. Don’t need nothing to remind us.”
I flinched. “I just thought...”
“Well, you thought wrong is what you did.” She glanced at the photo album and quickly flipped through the pages and then inappropriately judged every other item I’d laid out for her nephew. “You think all this is necessary?”
I did my very best not to lose it. “Just exactly what did you think I should put out to memorialize your nephew, ma’am? Maybe some of the mounds of trash you’ve got stored in his bedroom in your trailer? Or how about I just go out back and grab something from the dumpster?”
Okay, so I did my very best to not lose it, but it didn’t work.
Alice Mableton snarled. She showed her anger by showing me her teeth, which weren’t all that straight, and definitely needed a good cleaning. She balled her hands into fists and charged toward me though not swiftly since she could barely walk over a shuffle, and her breathing was more of a wheezing and coughing combination. It wouldn’t have mattered because Atticus Mableton pulled her back by the collar of her dress.
“Momma, enough.”
I wanted to thank the guy, but I wasn’t sure I could get the words out. She wasn’t tough, she was mean, and she scared me. Besides, the urge to run took over, and I had to force myself to remain calm, so I repeated to myself that the gig paid well and my future depended on it while fixing the mess Alice made of the memorial table. Atticus dragged his mother to the side, gave her a firm talking to and the next thing I knew, she’d apologized.
The child parenting the mother. The only way that would happen in the Buckley house would be if Jesus came back to earth and personally demanded it.
She left the room, and Atticus apologized, too. “She doesn’t mean to act like that. It’s just weird, you coming around all of a sudden, and more so, his momma, like that. We ain’t seen nor heard from her in years. Thought she was dead, you know?”
“I know. He was going to introduce me, honest. I guess we should have done it sooner. We just thought there’d be time for that, you know?” I glanced over at Buford’s body lying in the casket. I actually wished I’d known the man. He didn’t look all that friendly, but he didn’t seem all that mean either, and I felt sorry for him. His life couldn’t have turned out the way he’d hoped. I took solace in knowing he’d had a relationship with his mother before he’d passed. There had to be something good in that, at least.
“Momma ain’t that bad. She loved Buford in her own way, but he was bitter. He wanted more than he got, and I understood that, but that wasn’t her fault. She did the best she could, you know what I mean?”
I did know. The world didn’t work the same for everyone, and my daddy taught me that while it might not be fair, it was what it was, and no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t fix everything for everyone. I saw that in what little I knew of Buford Lester’s life. “I know. He never said much, but I guess I could tell.”
“I don’t get it, though.” Atticus shook his head.
“Get what?”
He walked over to the coffin and stared at his cousin lying inside. Atticus’s face was as blank as a stone, but his stuttering assured me he was upset and even more confused than he’d probably wanted me to think. “He’d been allergic to wasps and bees his whole life. He knew the signs. He carried that shot with him everywhere he went.” When he turned and faced me, a lone tear rolled down his cheek. “Why didn’t he use it?”
I handed him a tissue from the packet Clementine gave me earlier. “I’ve wondered that too. When I went to his rig to get some things for the memorial table, I saw the EpiPen right there in the cab. He could have just reached over and grabbed it.” I glanced at the large vase filled with white carnations and roses next to Buford’s coffin and then just stared off into the distance. “I read that sometimes it doesn’t happen for hours, and other times it’s quick. Maybe he didn’t realize. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention?”
He rubbed his chin. “Don’t see how that’s possible. From what Momma taught us, those stingers have venom in them, and that gets right in the blood. Momma said it’s darn right immediate. He would have had enough time to grab the shot, though, but not hours or anything like that.
“After Buford’s daddy died and he came to live with us, Momma said we had to be mindful of wasps around him because he might be allergic. He had asthma, and the doctor told her his immune system was weak, and she didn’t want him around anything that might make it worse.”
Asthma wasn’t in the dossier, and I wasn’t aware of the connection between it and allergies, but thinking it through, I could see how it might be related. “He played soccer before his dad died and he seemed to enjoy it.”
“That’s when they found out he had asthma. Almost died on the field. Never got over not being able to play anymore. I think that was part of his bitterness.”
; I nodded. “I see.”
He gazed at his cousin again. “Just don’t make sense. I’ve been stung many times. Those things hurt. He would have felt that. He would have seen it in his rig, too, flying around. Don’t you think?”
Everything Atticus said had just rolled across the stage of my mind like the credits of a movie screen. “I’m beginning to wonder those same things, Atticus.”
Alice returned with Boone and Tucker Hyut. I didn’t even have to see Tucker to know he was with her. The smell of onions clued me in right away. I wasn’t craving a burger or anything. His onion smell wasn’t a good thing by any means.
Alice curled the right side of her lip when she saw me, but I took it in stride, telling myself she needed to hate someone because she was in pain, and given the situation, I was the perfect person for the job. Boone wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box and didn’t even notice the disdain on his mother’s face. He just meandered into the visitation room like he was attending a party or something, oblivious to the reality of the event at hand.
Tucker Hyut was something else entirely. Dressed in a pair of dark jeans, scuffed brown leather cowboy boots, a white button down shirt with sweat-stained armpits and begging for a good pressing, and a paisley print tie knotted too short, and if I knew proper tie knotting, it wasn’t tied correctly, either. He’d braided his beard, and just washed and greased his hair back, so, I guess he’d done his best to dress respectfully, but the crazy in his eyes flashed like a red light over a set of train tracks after ten o’clock on a weekend night. I knew I needed to be cautious around him, that the façade he presented wasn’t real. What rested on the other side of his theoretical train tracks, though? That was as real as the day was long.
“Dang, why’d he have to show up?”
“Boone?” I asked.
Atticus laughed. “Heck, he’s harmless. Don’t let him scare you. I’m talking about that good for nothing Hyut. People think I’m white trash? That boy’s the bottom of the can.”
Mourning Crisis Page 8