“They’re a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus,” Connie said with a wistful smile. “Always nodding and agreeing with each other, no matter what. In the afternoon when the sun gets too hot, they move around into the shade on the south side of Hillcrest and watch the animals come and go from the vet’s instead of paying attention to what’s going on along High.”
I followed Connie as she headed up the sidewalk. “Hello, Mr. Schneider!” she called.
Mr. Schneider turned in our direction. “Why, hello, Ms. Connie! Say, whose funeral is it today? Not one of us, I know. I checked it out-no empty beds!” He snorted with laughter.
“It’s Katie Dunbar, Mr. Schneider. The girl who disappeared a while back.”
“Katie Dunbar.” He grasped his knee to steady his trembling hand. “I remember Katie Dunbar. Taught her in American history. Not a scholar, by any means, but turned in a fairly decent paper on the triangle trade first semester. Second semester, though, her grades went into the toilet. Squeaked by with a D, as I recall.” He shook his head. “Frieda and Carl must be devastated. Devastated.”
“I’m sure they are, Mr. Schneider.” She patted his other hand where it rested on the head of his cane.
“Send them my condolences, will you?”
“I certainly will.”
While we waited for the light at the intersection to change, Connie mentioned that Mr. Schneider had taught at the high school well into his late sixties. “Pity he’s now so frail.”
“Yes, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his mind or his sense of humor.”
As we crossed High Street, Connie explained that St. Philip’s Parish was one of the oldest in Maryland, founded in 1697 when a chapel was built by a group of Anglicans on that very spot. The present building dated from 1923 after a fire had destroyed the original structure. The “new” church was of sturdy red brick with an elegant white wooden steeple that seemed to scrape the sky. Stubby transepts hinted at the cruciform shape of the building. From the louvered panels in the bell tower, the somber tolling of a tenor bell rolled out across the town and deep into the countryside, drawing us in. It seemed to resonate on the same frequency as my body, sending chills racing down the back of my neck and skittering along my spine.
Among the last to arrive, Connie and I accepted a printed bulletin from a solemn usher stationed in the nave and made our way as silently as possible to vacant seats he indicated in the back of the sanctuary. The door to our pew groaned alarmingly, and two old dears with stiffly permed hair and hats like fat headbands turned disapproving frowns on us as we eased past an elderly couple rigidly determined to remain seated next to the aisle. I stumbled over a kneeler and, with a mind to the old dears, suppressed an “ouch” as my hand hit the hymnal rack.
Near the front of the church and to the left, an organist with more enthusiasm than talent, her back to the congregation, was halfway through “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” her body swaying from side to side as she played. When the chorale melody kicked in, she leaned back so far I feared she might topple off the organ bench.
To the right, opposite the organ, stood the pulpit, rising gracefully from a stone floor with a circular staircase leading up to it. Directly over the pulpit hung an acorn-shaped cap of carved stone. Fine stained glass windows lined the sanctuary. I peeked over the tops of my sunglasses at the one nearest me, a colorful depiction of Christ calming the sea. The early-morning sun blazed through the windows, scattering a patchwork of dazzling jewels over the heads, shoulders, and backs of the congregation, shapes that buckled and bent as they moved; distorted triangles that slid along an arm, down a leg, to fall into bright, geometric puddles on the floor. I was thinking of a kaleidoscope Emily had played with as a child when I suddenly became aware that the organ music had stopped. A rustling from the front made me turn my attention again to the altar, where a young African-American girl, her hair an elegant sculptured cap, had stepped out from the choir stalls to stand near the organ. Within seconds the haunting, unaccompanied strains of “Amazing Grace” filled the sanctuary, her sweet soprano voice soaring into the rafters.
Behind us the west doors opened, and through them glided Katie’s casket, drenched in flowers, three pallbearers in dark suits on each side, guiding it, towering over it. The shortest of the six pallbearers must have been at least six feet. The only one I recognized was Bill from Ellie’s Country Store.
Connie inclined her head toward mine until our temples touched, her voice a husky whisper. “It’s the Jonas Green basketball team from the time Katie was in school. That’s Chip in the front on the side nearest us. I’m amazed they were able to get them all together.”
It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but Katie’s former boyfriend appeared to be six feet five or six if he was an inch. His hair was straight, the color of strong tea, parted on the left and combed neatly to the side, where a single lock had escaped and hung, quivering, over his eyebrow. I’d never seen anyone who looked less like a murderer. Except maybe Ted Bundy.
Several rows up a too-tall toddler-she was probably standing on the kneeler-peered over the wooden pew, pointed a chubby finger, and shrilled, “Daddy!” None of the pallbearers appeared to notice. A woman who must have been her mother put an arm around the child and whispered something to her, her lips close to the little girl’s ear. The child sat down abruptly. Two older children, a boy and a girl, sat in the pew to the woman’s left, busily occupied with pencil stubs taken from the pew racks, using them to scribble on their bulletins and, when space on the bulletins gave out, on the backs of offering envelopes. “That’s Chip’s wife, Sandra, and their kids,” Connie explained.
The service continued with a congregational hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” which, according to the program, had been Katie’s favorite. In the front pew I could see the back of Mrs. Dunbar’s head, bowed while we sang. Next to her Mr. Dunbar stared stoically ahead. When Reverend Lattimore stepped up to deliver the eulogy, Mrs. Dunbar gazed at the rose-colored casket where it rested in the center aisle near the steps leading up to the choir. Bands of colored light streamed in from one of the windows, spilled over the casket, and reflected off the white of Mrs. Dunbar’s hair, which had been coaxed into an old-fashioned French twist. She kept reaching up to touch it, perhaps to check for escaping strands or wayward hairpins. Or maybe the hairdo was simply unfamiliar. When we sang “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” a white gardenia pinned to her left shoulder trembled as she sobbed.
Connie and I waited until almost everyone had left the church before following the crowd outside. We exited through the west door and proceeded around the north transept, weaving through ancient headstones, some dating back to the eighteenth century, where the carving and inscriptions had been etched away by weather and the years. Ashes to ashes, I thought. Dust to dust.
The sun, high in the sky by now, slanted through elm and maple branches, casting dappled shadows on the tombstones. This was a day to live, not a day to die! Would anybody care as deeply for me when I died? Would Paul? Would Emily? My daughter and I had come a long way toward mending our relationship after she’d more or less gotten herself straightened out in college, but the fact that much as I tried, I could never mask my disapproval of the men in her life kept her at a distance.
Emily was attracted to the wounded birds and lame puppies of this world. I kept waiting for her to bring home a boyfriend who didn’t need rehabilitation, but despite our objections, last year she’d moved to Colorado Springs with a Haverford dropout named Daniel Shemanski, who pierced his body in places I didn’t even want to think about and made a living massaging the slope-sore bodies of the almost rich and famous. He was asking everyone to call him Dante these days. Just Dante. One name, like Pavarotti or Cher or Madonna.