"Hey, babe," he said, "care to accompany me to a funeral?"
She shrugged and didn't answer, but when he hung an arm around her shoulders she let him lead her out to the car.
To find any place in Deer Lick, you just stopped at the one traffic light and looked in all four directions. Barbershop, two service stations, hardware, grocery, three churches-everything revealed itself at a glance.
The buildings were set about as demurely as those in a model-railroad village. Trees were left standing, and the sidewalks ended after three blocks. Peer down any cross street; you'd see greenery and cornfields and even, in one case, a fat brown horse dipping his nose into a pasture.
Ira parked on the asphalt next to Fenway Memorial Church, a grayish-white frame cube with a stubby little steeple like a witch's hat. There were no other cars on the lot. He'd guessed right, as it turned out: Continuing on Route One had been quicker, which wasn't all that fortunate, since it meant they'd arrived in Deer Lick thirty minutes early. Still, Maggie had expected to find some sign of the other mourners.
"Maybe it's the wrong day," she said.
"It couldn't be. 'Tomorrow,' Serena told you. No way you could mix that up."
"You think we should go on in?"
"Sure, if it's not locked."
When they got out of the car, Maggie's dress stuck to the back of her legs. She felt shellacked. Her hair was knotted from the wind, and the waistband of her panty hose had folded over on itself so it was cutting into her stomach.
They climbed a set of wooden steps and tried the door. It swung open with a grudging sound. Immediately inside lay a long, dim room, uncarpeted, the raftered ceiling towering above dark pews. Massive floral arrangements stood on either side of the pulpit, which Maggie found reassuring. Only weddings and'funerals called for such artificial-looking bouquets.
"Hello?" Ira tried.
His voice rang back.
They tiptoed up the aisle, creaking the floorboards. "Do you suppose there's a ... side or something?" Maggie whispered.
"Side?"
"I mean a groom's side and a bride's side? Or rather-" Her mistake sent her into a little fit of giggles. To tell the truth, she hadn't had much experience with funerals. No one really close to her had died yet, knock on wood. "I mean," she said, "does it make any difference where we sit?"
"Just not in the front row," Ira told her.
"Well, of course not, Ira. I'm not a total fool."
She dropped into a right-hand pew midway up the aisle and slid over to make room for him. "You'd think at least some kind of music would be playing," she said.
Ira checked his watch.
Maggie said, "Maybe next time you should follow Se-rena's directions."
"What, and wander some cow path half the morning?"
"It's better than being the first people here."
"I don't mind being first," Ira said.
He reached into the left pocket of his suit coat. He brought out a deck of cards secured with a rubber band.
"Ira Moran! You're not playing cards in a house of worship!"
He reached into his right pocket and brought out another deck.
"What if someone comes?" Maggie asked.
"Don't worry; I have lightning reflexes," he told her.
He removed the rubber bands and shuffled the two decks together. They rattled like machine-gun fire.
"Well," Maggie said, "I'm just going to pretend that I don't know you."
She gathered the straps of her purse and slid out the other end of the pew.
Ira laid down cards where she'd been sitting.
She walked over to a stained-glass window. IN MEMORY
OF VIVIAN DEWEY, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER, a plaque .beneath it read. A husband named Vivian! She stifled a laugh. She was reminded of a thought she'd often had back in the sixties when the young men wore their hair so long: Wouldn't it feel creepy to run your fingers through your lover's soft, trailing tresses?
Churches always put the most unseemly notions in her head.
She continued toward the front, her heels clicking sharply as if she knew where she was going. She stood on tiptoe beside the pulpit to smell a waxy white flower she couldn't identify. It didn't have any scent at all, and it gave off a definite chill. In fact, she was feeling a little chilly herself. She turned and walked back down the center aisle toward Ira.
Ira had his cards spread across half the length of the pew. He was shifting them around and whistling between his teeth. "The Gambler," that was the name of the song. Disappointingly obvious. You 've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them . . . The form of solitaire he played was so involved it could last for hours, but it started simply and he was rearranging the cards almost without hesitation. "This is the part that's dull," he told Maggie. "I ought to have an amateur work this part, the way the old masters had their students fill in the backgrounds of their paintings."
She shot him a glance; she hadn't known they'd done that. It sounded to her like cheating. "Can't you put that five on the six?" she asked.
"Butt out, Maggie."
She wandered on down the aisle, swinging her purse loosely from her fingers.
What kind of church was this? The sign outside hadn't said. Maggie and Serena had grown up Methodist, but Max was some other denomination and after they married, Serena had switched over. She was married Methodist, though. Maggie had sung at her wedding; she'd sung a duet with Ira. (They were just starting to date then.) The wedding had been one of Serena's wilder inventions, a mishmash of popular songs and Kahlil Gibran in an era when everyone else was still clinging to "O Promise Me." Well, Serena had always been ahead of her time. No telling what kind of funeral she would put on.
Maggie pivoted at the door and walked back toward Ira. He had left his pew and was leaning over it from the pew behind so he could study the full array of cards. He must have reached the interesting stage by now.
Even his whistling was slower. You never count your money when you 're sitting at the table . . . From here he looked like a scarecrow: coat-hanger shoulders, spriggy black cowlick, his arms set at wiry angles.
"Maggie! You came!" Serena called from the doorway.
Maggie turned, but all she saw was a silhouette against a blur of yellow light. She said, "Serena?"
Serena rushed toward her, arms outstretched. She wore a black shawl that completely enveloped her, with long satiny fringes swinging at the hem, and her hair was black too, untouched by gray. When Maggie hugged her she got tangled in the tail of hair that hung down straight between Serena's shoulder blades. She had to shake her fingers loose, laughing slightly, as she stepped back. Se-rena could have been a Spanish senora, Maggie always thought, with her center part and her full, oval face and vivid coloring.
"And Ira!" Serena was saying. "How are you, Ira?"
Ira stood up (having somehow spirited his cards out of sight), and she kissed his cheek, while he endured it. "Mighty sad to hear about Max," he told her.
"Well, thank you," Serena said. "I'm so grateful to you for making the trip; you have no idea. All Max's relatives are up at the house and I'm feeling outnumbered. Finally I slipped away; told them I had things to see to at the church ahead of time. Did you two eat breakfast?"
"Oh, yes," Maggie said. "But I wouldn't mind finding a bathroom."
"I'll take you. Ira?"
"No, thanks."
"We'll be back in a minute, then," Serena said. She hooked her arm through Maggie's and steered her down the aisle. "Max's cousins came from Virginia," she said, "and his brother George, of course, and George's wife and daughter, and Linda's been here since Thursday with the grandchildren. ..."
Her breath smelled of peaches, or maybe that was her perfume. Her shoes were sandals with leather straps that wound halfway up her bare brown legs, and her dress (Maggie was not surprised to see) was a vibrant red chiffon with a rhinestone sunburst at the center of the V neckline.