The usher gestured us into the end of a pew about midway down the church. It was a good thing we’d come when we had, since it was the last place open that could accommodate three people. Janet glanced around the sanctuary with curiosity. Becca studied the program the usher had handed us. I wished I were somewhere else, anywhere. Jack would be here tomorrow and there was a lot I needed to do; I was worried about his visit, about the problems we faced. The scent of the banks of flowers filled the air of the church, already challenged by all these people, and my head began to ache.
Joel McCorkindale, in a black robe with even blacker velvet bands striping the sleeves, appeared at the front of the church after the organ had droned through several gloomy pieces. We all rose, and with due professional solemnity the team from the funeral home (one male Shields and one female Shields) wheeled the coffin down the aisle. After the casket came the pallbearers, two by two, each wearing a carnation in his lapel and walking slowly with eyes downcast. All the pallbearers were male, and as I scanned their faces I wondered how many of them had performed intimate acts with the body in the coffin preceding them. It was a grotesque thought. I wasn’t proud of myself for entertaining it. Most of them were older men, men the age of Jerrell and Lacey, who were coming in at the pallbearers’ heels.
Lacey was clinging to Jerrell, and he had to give her a lot of help just to make it to the front pew. As the couple went past the rest of the family, it occurred to me to wonder why Becca was sitting beside me instead of on the other side of the church. She was a cousin of Deedra’s, too, though she’d had little chance to get to know her.
It had been a crowded week for the Prader/Dean/Winthrop/Albee clan. I wondered how many of them were thinking of the burning of Joe C’s house the night before instead of the murder of the woman in the casket.
A few more people slipped in at the back before the ushers closed the doors. The church was packed to capacity. Not only was Deedra too young to die, she had been murdered. So perhaps the curiosity factor had a part to play in this crowd.
Maybe because I was stifling-the press of people and the heavy scent of flowers almost overwhelmed me-I found myself wondering if my own funeral would have been as well attended if I’d died when I’d been abducted years before. It was all too easy to imagine my parents following the coffin in, and I could even be pretty sure who my pallbearers would have been…
I yanked myself back to the here-and-now. There was something sickly self-indulgent about reviewing my own funeral.
The ceremony continued about like I’d expected. We listened to two singers plow through two old standards, “Amazing Grace” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Since I can sing myself, the performances were interesting, but no more than that. No one here in Shakespeare knew that I used to sing at weddings and funerals in my little hometown, and that was just fine with me. I was better than the woman who sang “Amazing Grace,” but my range wasn’t as good as the girl who performed second.
I sighed and recrossed my legs. Janet kept her gaze fixed properly on the singers, and Becca examined her cuticles and removed a fragment of thread from the setting of her diamond dinner ring.
I might have known Joel McCorkindale would not let the occasion pass with a simple eulogy, if he’d decided there was a point to be made. To no one’s surprise, he based his sermon on the passage in Thessalonians where Paul warns us that the day of Lord will come like a thief in the night.
The preacher made more of a meal of it than I’d expected. His point was that someone had usurped God’s rights in taking Deedra’s life. I found myself growing stern and affronted. He was taking away the focus of the funeral from Deedra, who was actually the dead person, and focusing on the man who’d killed her.
To my alarm, the people in the congregation who were used to his style of preaching began to agree audibly with his points. Every now and then a man or a woman would raise hands above head and say, “Amen! Praise the Lord!”
I turned my head slightly to check out Janet’s reaction. Her eyes were about to pop out of her head, and she gave them a significant roll when she saw me match her own astonishment. I had never been in a church where it was the norm for the congregation to speak out loud, and by Janet’s facial expression, neither had she. Becca, on the other hand, was smiling slightly, as if the whole thing was performance art staged for her benefit.
I could tell the men and women who ordinarily attended this church were very comfortable with this, this… audience participation. But I was horribly embarrassed, and when I saw Lacey leaning forward in her seat, hands clasped above her head, tears rolling down her face, I almost got up and left. I never talked to God myself, having gotten out of the inclination for faith after that summer in Memphis; but if I did have such a conversation, I knew it would be in private and no one around me would know. In fact, I promised myself that.
Janet and I were so glad when the service was over that it was all we could do not to bolt from the church. Becca seemed intrigued with the whole experience.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” she asked, but not in a voice low enough to suit me. We were still close to the other mourners, who were scattering to climb into their cars for the drive to the cemetery.
Janet shook her head silently.
“Who knows what’ll happen at the gravesite,” Becca said in happy anticipation.
“You’ll have to catch a ride with Carlton,” I said, nodding toward my neighbor who was just coming out of the church. “I’m going home.” I started down the sidewalk. Janet trotted after me.
“Hold up, Lily!” she said. “I don’t think I’ll go to the cemetery either. That service kind of shook me up. I guess Methodists are too repressed for something that emotionally… open.”
“ ‘Open,’ ” I snarled, and kept on walking. “I didn’t like that.”
“You mean the church? The people?”
I nodded.
“Well, I wasn’t raised that way either, but it seemed to make them feel better,” Janet commented cautiously. “I don’t know, it might have been kind of comforting.”
I shuddered.
“Listen, what are you going to do now?”
“Call the hospital.”
“About what?”
“Joe C.”
“Oh, yeah, he had a fire last night, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “See you later,” I told Janet. I forced myself to add, “Thanks for going with me.”
Janet looked happier. “You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me use your driveway.” She got into her red Toyota and started it up, waving at me as she backed out.
The street was filled with cars pulling away from the curb, lining up to follow the hearse to the cemetery. As I stood in my front doorway, the street emptied of all its life like one of those time-lapse films. Only one Jeep remained parked farther up the street. I was alone with the trees in the arboretum across the street.
No, not quite alone. As I finally took a step back into my house I saw a man get out of the Jeep and begin to saunter down the street toward me.
It was Bobo, I realized with some astonishment, and remembered our appointment. As he walked, he was loosening his tie and pulling it off, stuffing it into the pocket of his dark suit. He loosened his collar button with two tan fingers, and raked back his blond hair.
Suddenly the postfuneral exaltation of being alive hit me. I felt the crackle of lightning about to strike. The man coming down the sidewalk toward me felt it too. He quickened his pace until he was actually hurrying, keeping all his attention focused on me. When he got to my door, without saying a word he wrapped me in his long arms and held me to him and kissed the hell out of me.