The smell of flowers and a guy in a dark suit met me at the door. He was several years younger than I, but seemed infinitely wiser — his smile, which was barely there, was delivered with practiced compassion. I was no longer wearing the Bilko T-shirt and camouflage shorts (and shame on you for thinking I might be) but hadn’t quite seen my way to a suit, wearing a short-sleeve white shirt and gray slacks. The suit could wait for the graveside services tomorrow morning; I was just here for “family visitation.” The guy, a sort of maître d’ of death, led me by the arm to the guest book, which was on a little table at the foot of stairs that rose to darkness. I wasn’t interested in what was upstairs at a funeral parlor. I was even less interested in what was in the cellar.
I signed the guest book — under a flowing signature that spelled out another name from the past: Jill Forest. I’d dated her a few times, years ago. I glanced up the page and got no other similar twinges from yesterday. I did see Brennan’s signature.
Visitation rooms, as they say in the trade, were to my right and left. The one at right wasn’t being used; the one at left was barely being used.
Ginnie’s mother, a sweet-faced, pudgy little woman, wore a black dress but no veil; she clutched a hanky and the strap of her purse in one hand and with the other held the hand of her son, Roger. Neither Ginnie’s mother nor her brother Roger looked anything like her. Mrs. Mullens had a round face, and so did Roger. Same delicate features. Both wore glasses, but Roger’s were thick and black-rimmed where his mother’s were delicate and wire. Mother and son weighed about the same and were of a similar height and, despite the twenty years between them, could have been older sister and younger brother but for her white hair and his black, sitting there like a plump pair of salt and pepper shakers.
“Mrs. Mullens,” I said, standing before her.
She stood and hugged me and looked up at me with a brave smile and red eyes; a whisper of liquor on her breath. “Mal. Oh, Mal, I’m so glad you’re here...”
The coffin was nearby; closed. Plenty of flowers, though there had been few visitors. A few relatives — uncles, aunts — were walking around looking at the cards on the flowers, seeing who’d sent what.
“You just missed Jill Forest,” she said, sitting down. “She was in you kids’ class, wasn’t she?”
I nodded, took the chair on the other side of her; Roger looked over at me blankly, like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Roger was two years older than Ginnie, and had always been something of a brain. As smart as Ginnie was, her brother was said to be smarter. Twenty years later, and he hadn’t set the world on fire, yet. Last time I talked to him, perhaps ten years ago, he’d been a computer programmer at Maxwell Consultants, an engineering firm.
“Hello, Roger.”
“Hello.”
“I’m sorry about your loss.”
Roger shrugged. “I’m not worried.”
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t need that job anyway. I was too good for them.”
“What are you talking about, Roger?”
Mrs. Mullens, gravely, said, “Maxwell’s laid Roger off last month.”
Roger said, “What did you think I was talking about?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Mrs. Mullens smiled like a fairy godmother and patted Roger’s arm. “Roger will find something soon, I’m sure.”
Something like a smile curled in his pudgy face. “I may go into business for myself. I can write programs with the best of them.”
“I’m, uh, sure you can, Roger.”
Silence.
Roger stood. “I’m going to catch a smoke, Mom. Be right back.”
“That’s fine, Roger.”
She watched him go, with rheumy eyes. “I wish he wouldn’t smoke.”
“Is Roger still living at home?”
She smiled just a little, sighed pleasantly. “Yes, and he’s a godsend.”
“Helps you around the house, you mean.”
“Well — he doesn’t really have time for that. He has to work with his computer. But having his company — just to have him there at mealtime — it means so much. And now with Ginnie gone... I... I treasure his company even more.” She turned a very serious gaze on me; her eyes were Ginnie’s — nothing else about her was Ginnie, just her eyes. “You know, it occurred to me this morning... thinking about losing Ginnie... I just take that boy for granted sometimes. I just don’t appreciate him like I should.”
I tried to think of something polite to say about the fat little bastard and instead said, “I saw Ginnie at the class reunion last month.”
“Was that the last time you saw her, Mal?”
“Yes.”
No. Last night I’d seen her put into the back of an ambulance. Under a sheet.
“Mal, how were her spirits?”
“Good. I’d say, good. She said she was happy.”
“How could she have...” She let out a confused sigh.
“I don’t know. Ginnie didn’t seem the sort of person who would take her life.”
She looked off somewhere, nowhere, nodding to no one. “Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do. As close as Ginnie and I were, I... I would never have guessed this of her.”
I took her hand and squeezed it a little; we smiled tightly at each other. Blinked our individual tears away.
But Mrs. Mullens was lying. Not to me.
Herself.
She and Ginnie had been anything but close. Ginnie had always treated her mom rather callously when we were kids in junior high and high school. Back then I’d found it amusing, being a teenager myself and getting a kick out of seeing anybody get away with talking to a parent like that. Anything to kick authority in the pants.
Now, looking back, I could see Ginnie had treated her mom pretty shabbily.
“We had a special relationship, Ginnie and I,” she said. “We didn’t see each other often, but when we did it... it was quality time.”
“When did you see her last, Mrs. Mullens?”
She thought about it. “Christmas. No. Not this Christmas, the Christmas before that.”
Ginnie lived twenty-some miles from her mother and they hadn’t seen each other in over a year.
“She was down for the reunion,” I said. “Didn’t she stop by...?”
“That was a busy day for her.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, that was kind of a frantic weekend.”
She dabbed at her eyes with the hanky, glanced toward the coffin, tentatively. “Oh, she and I, we didn’t see each other so much, but we talked on the phone, all the time.”
“Really.”
“Sure. Sometimes she’d call at night and we’d have mother-and-daughter talks into the wee hours.”
I hoped that was true.
What she said next I knew was true. She squeezed my hand hard and looked at me harder and said, “A mother and daughter can drift apart, but that doesn’t make her any less a daughter... any less your baby. Does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
And I held her and she cried into my white shirt. I patted her back and said, “There, there.” As she drew away I again smelled the alcohol on her breath. An old problem of hers.